#and like... half the point of bb's name is the arbitrary nature of it. this can have meaning too.

[silvery-bluish]

Bookish! Thank you for letting me know your questions were eaten by the abyss! Sorry about that. So, here is the first month's question: Where did your Sidestep get your name? Do they know what it means? Do they feel any particular way about their name? And a bonus "sorry I had to resend this question" behind the scenes question: What was your process for finding your Sidestep's name?

Tumblr truly did eat them huh. Thank you so much for resending!!

I named Arsinoe back in 2019, before actually playing them through the game, entirely based on sticking the word 'mind' into a baby name website and going 'yeah that one sounds cool and not super gendered'. This has meant I've vaguely struggled to give them an in-universe justification, lol.

Mostly what I've settled on, is that back in the Farm days, when they were a nameless thing, they ended up hiding in a library in a fancy house during a mission they were technically already done with and just waiting on pickup. They ended up poking around the books, over-emphasizing with the story of the Minyades (didn't want to do the thing they were being prompted to do, got driven mad by Dionysus for refusing to follow him, did it anyway, etc) and just sat with it in the back of their head before sticking with it. Their last name (Becerra) they picked up from a motel guest book and they're not attached to it, they just have it 'cause people are supposed to have last names.

Names are kind of weird for them, Arsinoe is Their Name and they care about it, but more because it's who they are with the people that they care about knowing who they are? When someone they care about thinks 'Arsinoe', they think about the person that Arsinoe is. The name's just how they get to the concept. That's part of why they like the nicknames they're given, because that's an even more *specific* way to get to the concept of them. But the actual essence of them isn't really a being that has a name, to them.

They told Anathema and Ric their name first, after they'd already been dubbed Sidestep, and consider the day that they spoke their name aloud for the first time to be their birthday, which presumably makes Someone very smug.

I didn't know there was a character named Arsenaux (pronounced the same way as Arsinoe) until Retribution came out and I started poking around the code, Arsinoe didn't know about this until Months Minimum of them using the name and didn't know they knew anyone with a personal connection-ish to her until the Void Incident (tm), and at that point I was committed and they were committed. They'll fight the seven foot tall cannibal who may or may not be on fire, it's fine.

BB's easier. BB is BB is BB, he got given the alliterative letters in his Farm ID code and said Mine Now and refused to let go. Half of it's a joke, half of it's... building an identity in defiance of their refusal to let him have one. His official civilian name is Bailey Becerra, because I wanted his last name to match Ars, and he liked the idea of being a fortification, but he doesn't really consider that his actual name (because his actual name is BB). He calls his bike a BBike. His puppet's name is Bambi because it's sneaking the double B's in there.

I called him Baby Boy too many times when he was in a nascent state and it stuck. And sometimes he gets called Baked Beans. I have an emoji somewhere of his hair drawn over a can of Bush's Baked Beans.