Which names shall they continue with?

[rhodrymavelyne]

Back in the late 20th century, early 21 century, I created a pair of twins called Danyel and Dayel. They were accompanied by an overprotective older brother (Llewell), a mysterious foster mother (originally Amarie), and the sinister leader of a half elven cult (he uses the name Divian among others), stalking them all.

I called this little family Half Elven Gothic. They were created for an online roleplaying game I got very involved with. The game took place in a fantasy world where elves were the elite, humans were slaves or criminal outlaws, and half-elves were caught between the two. There was a lot of creative writing involved.

I usually emphasize with characters caught between two heritages, warring ideologies, and different authority figures pulling them in divisive directions. The setting of this game played on my imagination. It took Danyel wandering through this world, trying to figure it and himself out, while searching for his family. Llewell took on surprising life when he started a romantic relationship with one of the other male characters. This made him stand up to the man he’d always worshipped and followed in ways which surprised me.

Needless to say, my heart and imagination were taken over by this game. :)

Alas, good things often come to an end, especially when life throws challenges and conflicts at those involved. The two gamemasters running our story took a break. They withdrew a couple of key characters from the story, one whom Danyel had gotten quite attached to. Eventually, they closed the game.

Depressed, hungry for more, and seriously addicted to the m/m yaoi possibilites in the story which I’d never explored in roleplaying games before, I decided to try something similar. Only it would be a closed game with a few willing yaoi fans instead a public one. Several players from the closed game, along with some new players started the Keep. It was an interactive rpg or writing project where each of us had a yaoi bishonen protagonist. We could have other characters as well, which interacted with our main and minor characters. We created our own villains, including a cleric with multiple personalites. A different writer wrote each personality. For our setting was one of conflict, where vampires and clerics struggled for dominance of the Keep. Our yaoi protagonists, along with many of our other characters were caught in the middle. Or actively involved in either side of the war.

It was in the Keep that Rhodry Mavelyne was reborn from his former selves in Fantasy Hero games, including one campaign I was very attached to. Rhodry was reincarned since into Rhodry Nevalyn, but his Keep self lives on in my handles for Archive of Our Own, Twitter, tumblr, NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo, my original livejournal, and here.

Names have power. Names have connections to certain times and places. Danyel, Dayel, Llewell, Divian, and Amerie were fixed to that particular game I created them for. I tried to transport them to the Keep. They found a home there, but I never quite captured the sense of them in that original game.

Challenges and conflicts caught up with the players of the Keep, eventually. This time, I was one of them. I found myself drifting away, distracted from other projects, other commitments. Eventually all of the players did. There was an attempt to resurrect the Keep, but it didn’t get very far.

I found myself busy writing a novel called ‘Stealing Myself From Shadows’, inspired by the imagery in the Greater Trumps in Tarot games. I followed all kinds of professional advice on writing a novel, presenting it when it was finished to a small group of beta readers. Alas, no one ended up liking it, not even myself. The most encouraging feedback I got was that the story wasn’t bad. My main character failed to engage the reader, though. I couldn’t disagree.

Ashamed, I crawled under a writer’s block. It took me years to crawl back out.

The thought of my Half-Elven Gothic was what coaxed me to try again. What if I were to write a new story with new versions of them? Recreate them like I’d recreated Rhodry so often?

My one problem with this was my characters’s names. At first, I was worried about legalites and copyright. Did the names belong to everyone I’d written a past post with? I checked and found out, no, they didn’t. My characters’s names belonged to me. I’d been mispronouncing one of them. Another I’d gotten from a different story. Two of them had been used to various authors in different books. All of them had associations with the roleplaying game they’d been born in.

I changed them. Danyel became Danyell. Dayel became Dayell. Llewell became Leiwell. Amarie became Map. Divian became Dyvian.

I’m happy with all the changes, except for Danyel and Dayel’s. Apparently, they’re not happy, either. They’ve just addressed me in a blog at inspirationcauldron.blogspot.com about this. They want their old names back. :)

What do you think, dear reader? Danyel and Dayel? Or Danyell and Dayell?