being an autonomous, cognizant being that communicates in one way or another means that you have the right to call yourself whatever you want. now, whether that is accepted or not by common society is a completely different conversation, but you do have the right. there are a lot of reasons why you may want to choose your own name, especially living in the society that we do where your name is predetermined for you and you may or may not feel attached to it or whoever prescribed it to you. trauma, cultural differences, gender identity and incongruence with gender roles associated with a "masculine" or a "feminine" name, identity shifts, and general preference are all some reasons why someone may want to choose their own name.
myself existing within a system and being trans, i have plenty of reasons for why i chose my own name. naturally, being plural has led all of us to choosing our own names anyway, but many of us are trans in one way or another or also have deeper histories with being given names in the past that we have really wanted to change to "remake" ourselves. jess isn't the first name i've ever been called- and it isn't even the only name i've ever chosen for myself- but it is the name i feel the deepest connection with that i can confidently be called and know that someone is truly talking to or about me.
in the past, i identified as our system's "host" for around 2-3 years (though we don't identify as having a host anymore, and likely never will again for a lot of reasons). we weren't... doing the best individually nor collectively at that point in time, and i wasn't a particularly great "host." i decided that my identity must have been our collective identity, me being the host. it's funny to look back on, honestly, considering i wasn't even the host for very long and yet my "host syndrome" was so strong.
with my issues at the time, i felt like an impostor. i felt insecure- both in my identity as a transmasc that wasn't a binary trans man, as well as our plurality in general. i masqueraded as a hypermasculine binary trans man, commandeering our entire identity the more that people in our life started to doubt we were really trans and began to disrespect us more and more.
at the time, unus annus- a temporary project discussing life and death shared by markiplier and crankgameplays- was wrapping up. during the final 12 hour live stream, which i watched all the way through, i decided that i wanted to make a life for myself. i suppose that i felt compelled to seek stability, to be more myself... to feel respected.
and so i changed our name to ethan.
we went by ethan for a while- until i stopped hosting, actually. and i stopped hosting because that change didn't win us any more respect at all. i fell apart, and so did our system. my efforts were all in vain, and in the process, i managed to disrespect everyone by attempting a coup d'état that didn't even help.
to be clear- i don't beat myself up over it now. we were still trying to gain footing with respects to existing a functional life while being plural. we were still scouting the perimeter, striking the balance of existing as ourselves while respecting each other's identities, too. i didn't do it well at the time, but that led us to knowing how to do it better today.
not having a host was the single most freeing change of existing and accepting being plural. not forcing ourselves to exist in a way that wasn't natural for us, not prioritzing one person's time and identity over another's, not prescribing a label on someone anymore... and not taking just one person's name.
of course, we respect people who do have hosts and who function that way quite well. i salute you for existing being plural however works for you and your system! not every host does what i did, slapping their name on the system as a whole. not every system would have a problem with that. but i did do that, and everyone else did have a problem with it. and so did i- i didn't enjoy being the host, i didn't enjoy my time as "ethan." the name, while suiting me for a while, symbolized a dark time where i didn't have any support at all, even from my own system. i mean, i didn't support them, either.
so yeah, i stepped down as the host. it took a lot of time. i needed to make ammends. i needed to step back. i needed to reconsider myself, my identity... everything, really. why did i care so much about what support i got from those in my life to the point of valuing it over respecting myself enough to be honest?
i was insecure. i needed time to work through that. slowly, i began to identify as transmasculine rather than as a trans man. bigender came more natural to me with time. i considered my sexuality for the first time in a long time, allowing myself to return to my lesbian roots without worrying about the lesbian police telling me whether or not i could be one. i talked with my system, i existed as a person within a group of people sharing one life.
finally, i named myself jess, something i chose due to its sentimental value shared by my in-sys girlfriend holly and i.
okay, so why mischa?
we obviously collectively go by homeworld, entirely referential to our innerworld being a planet, but we decided to choose a... "human" name to make things easier for the many interactions where we don't intend to disclose our plurality. mischa is a diminutive of mikhail, the russian equivalent of michael. mikhail is sourced from the hebrew name mikha'el, translating to the rhetorical question "who is like god?" we all agreed on it for varying personal reasons, but ultimately, we love the idea of the name lending itself to being self-made. being our own god. we aren't christian in any sense, so the term "god" here feels less prescriptive and more descriptive for our purposes. collectively, we can make or break this planet, and we choose to make it.