A fine idea matey! For me, my online identity for gaming that I chose to hide behind first came to me many many years ago. While driving down the road there used to be many window stickers and bumper stickers on trucks or even cars with a picture of character that looked much like Calvin (From comic strips Calvin and Hobs) and he would be doing various things in those stickers. From urinating a fire to extinction to many other things that were funny. Occasionally they had a tag under them that simply said something to the effect of have no fear.

So, I decided that was the persona I would take in game. Have no fear. Several years ago, I met a clan in Game of War that called themselves Fun. The groups name intrigued me as I always thought that having no fear wasn't just about being blindly brave, but having no fear just fun. So I adapted my name to NoFears Fun. Which simply means - Have No Fears, Just Have Fun.

@vorondil1 Nice topic. Mine's a bit boring really. Waaaaaaaaay back when the xbox 360 was starring off on its online journey, I needed a GT and Game of Thrones hadn't reached the dizzying heights with its tv show etc etc. I used one of my favourite characters from the first book. Syrio Forel, the bald (in the book) bravosi sword master.

Ruigtand or roughtooth
Is the bad dino in the movie a land before time when he is hunting platvoet, bekkie, punt, cera en fladder :(

Nice! I knew @vorondil1 seemed familiar, hehe.
Well...
Being a PC user, trying to quickly sign up for this, in order to play in the stress tests of SoT...
I thought I was simply making a username, and didn't realize this would be my gamer tag, lol. Then, discovering they wanted $10 to change it, I decided to stick with it.

Still, it has a story - PDT is my name (sort of) and (The) Mindstream is my band and musical project that I lead (although, I'm taking some time off for reasons).

Jen Pekarek

The Mindstream Band

The Mindstream is an original band in NY, fronted by Paul Damon Thomas, with a unique style of prog-pop/space-blues/rock delivered with dynamic performances.

I've debated many times about changing it, but I've never decided what I'd change it to.
I've never had one steady gamer tag throughout my gaming life and the various platforms.
I wish I had stuck with one. I may go back to one many knew me as, Electric Knight, but then it has nothing to do with pirates, and this is pretty much the only game I play for the time being (and since launch). I have a list of the names I've used as my tags and forum handles, but maybe I won't share them here, lol.

Mine came from when I was signing up for the original Xbox after coming back from vacation. I rented a car in Arizona that was not allowed to be taken out of state, so we drove it to Colorado during monsoon season. Somewhere near Colorado Springs we had to stop on the road to let a tornado/funnel pass by. Unfortunately, that was followed by a torrent of golf ball size hail that lasted at least 15 minutes. Once it was over there was hardly an inch of the car that was not dented. When we returned the car, the rental place had their insurance guy look at it and there was $5500 in damage so they declared it totaled.

@vorondil1 Awesome thread!

My roommate & I were addicted to the show 'How I met your mother". One of of Barney's key phrases was, "Haaaaveeee you met Ted?" as a pickup line.

Seemed like a solid gamer tag idea at the time.

@nofears-fun

Awesome back story!

@vorondil1 I made my account on this email address to have a second account for my guests back in the day, on my xbox360. Now a days it is my main email. As I always had a console to play with buddies and a PC for when I was alone. It wasn't really meant to be an online gamer tag.

We used to call my place the Centre of the Universe, as we always chilled there as students. So, our Wifi was called CotU. The password of my wifi was at the time: "42theAnswerIs42".

I am named after the wifi information I used to have, like 10 years ago. That is my not so meaningful answer to why the tag is what it is.

Kudos on a great topic fellow Pirate.

Been using the same gamertag for as long as i can remember, in fact i haven't used another on a main account i have for any game.
The story is as follows.

Most irl call me Trick but alas the username Trick is vastly used up so naturally one has to select another.
Numbers on the end didn't cut it for me nor did an alternate spelling at the time.

I had decided, since back then i was playing games primarily (for the most part) as a solo player outside of groups clans ect and felt i'd like something to reflect this along with a nod to my irl nickname but with a twist on it.

Thus the "olos" part was born in homage to my long stint of solo game play and just the irl twist was needed.

This was half born from a tease nickname my dear friends (still to this day, darn blighters that they are) call me "Trixxabelle" this to my sort of shame was due to having hecked up legs as a child and teen that caused me to forever walk on my tiptoes ergo the ballerina esque twist to my nickname.

I decided the "Ixx" would be a nice nod to my fellow friends long term tease, which i love them for btw :P

And there we have it, how my gamertag "Ixxolos" came to be.

Funny Fact:
Strangely people have some funny and often at time confusing ways of attempting to say it back to me in game and i simply adore to see it butchered by a streamers and gamers alike. :D

Fair Winds to all, Some really good GT origin stories here.

Mine started when I was a kid: I drew a comic about a world of robots, and one guy in a robot costume who tried to blend in so he wasn't killed. Only trouble is that he was bad at being a robot and much hilarity ensued. Thus the title of the comic: Bad Robot.

As time went on this became a signature of mine for other art work. It began as a graffiti tag when I would paint the Bad Robot characters around my town. Since the awkward character was a representation of myself I decided to use it as a sort of alter ego, and any time I needed an online persona in the earlier days of the internet, it became my handle.

When it came time to create a gamertag the choice was simple. I added the second "T" at the end when I first learned about the production company.

Fun fact: any time I get to create a modern character in a game, I name him/her respectively Brad/Babs Robberts. Many pixelated golfers and baseball players have worn the name with pride. And in homage to the Dread Pirate Roberts, my pirate's full name and title is: The Brad Pirate Robberts.

@drbullhammer Congratulations on your degree!

Mine is something that has grown and coalesced over time growing up. It all started with a fascination as a kid in the 1st grade. One day a crow flew down near me while eating a snack during school. It hopped up to me and watched. I ended up sharing what I had with it. It returned several times over the days and weeks past that initial encounter.

Experience took me to the library to find a book on them. I have a deep love and passion for nature, history, mythology, philosophy, and pyschology amongst other things. My interest grew and deepened with crows and ravens through real life facts, Native American beliefs, tales of Odin's ravens Huginn and Muninn, Edgar Allen Poe, and stretching to comics.

There is a great PBS documentary called A Murder of Crows. Research shows they are up there with the most intelligent species on earth. They use great intelligence to adapt to a constantly changing world and find ways to solve complex scenarios to survive in it. They are very social, mate for life, and raise their young for years. Have a language of several hundred caws. They remember our faces and can recognize them years later. Warn other wildlife in the forest of danger. They will use sticks, string, wire, and other things as tools. They will drop nuts in roads for cars and trucks to run over and crack open. They learn from misfortune and act accordingly.

The heart comes from core beliefs and principles for one to live life. First we must always follow our hearts and live life to the fullest of who we are, through both the good and bad. We must never waver and fearlessly be ourselves for there will only be one of each and everyone of us for all time once we are gone. We must love and let love. Our hearts our both our compass and anchor in life. It is the home of everything we are and ever will be.

Thus crow and heart naturally came together. Thanks for such a great and insightful topic mate!

@badrobott

Very cool! Would love to see some of your artwork and comics.

@knifelife

Not immature at all mate. Fearlessly be yourself!

@ruigtand-nl

Coming to know you and sailing with you my friend it fits. :)

@x-crowheart-x Would be happy to share! Though I will say that the comics were a thing of my youth and through art school and life I shifted first toward photography and then toward narratives and writing. It's scattered about my house in portfolios but I'll see about uploading some more recent images.

A few too many tense encounters with the law forced me to shift away from the graffiti. Let's just say it was a good thing I also ran sprints for the track team back then!

My tag is supposed to be ancient Greek. During the days of halo 3, I was forced to change it a lot so the spelling has changed many times. I shall not go into further detail here.

@x-crowheart-x

5 hours work left then me weekend starts

Rumour of illegal activities surrounding wanderers refuge so we need to do some cargo checks :")

@ruigtand-nl

Many crews harbor deep fear of seeing the grin of the glaring red skull.
The Wandering Reaper cometh not with scythe in hand,
Tis the cutless and cannons making pirates tremble upon sight of a Mark so grand.
Promising departure to the deep and the Ferry beyond.
Though fear not lost souls for the Ferryman will see it not be ye final trip,
For pirates new and old with faithful ship,
Shall on the Sea of Thieves again spawn.

@vorondil1 I wanted my character to be a redcoat when sailing around and when I saw this photo of Pepe the frog wearing a redcoat I exclaimed
"Of course. Praise KEK! "

I rarely use reddit, 4chan whatever but just think that Pepe is one of the best memes out there.

@x-crowheart-x

Something need to be done!

They hunt the sea for all to see
They glow and glint in the wind

Illegal cargo in fake merchant ships
They reap and sow without chicken on the bow

A bad batch of captn chest
Music told mee

We better go and check
We can completely fill a galleon

We can help them carry the load
When a accident sinks yet another reapers boat :")