My Patient Husband and I were discussing, on the way to church of all places, what it would be like to have a secret underworld name.
I’ve noticed that in fiction, you can call your bad underworld guy just about anything as long as you put “The” in front of it. You can do it with your good guy too. Just try it: pick a shady-sounding noun and insert it into this sentence:
“I’m not the one who wants to kill you. I’m acting on orders of The _______.”
“I have an offer for you from The __________.”
“When The ________ comes to town, you’d better have the money.”
It makes things sound more desperate than if someone slipped up beside you in a bar and whispered, “I’m here because Mitchell sent me.” Right?
Some of us have internet handles that would work nicely (check out my comment box: The Mystery Nurse? The Cricket? The NiceWarner? We here at 7A4K1F are replete with superheroes and underworld figures.) Others would be easy to assign a name. Ivy could easily be The Purl or The Stitch. (Scary! “I spoke to The Stitch. She is displeased with that dye job. Very displeased, if you know what I mean.”)
But my Patient Husband and I weren’t coming up with our own Shady Underworld Names(tm) and that was a bummer. Until I called him The Geek.
The Geek would have an underground lair full of computers. His very office would have three computers on the same desk, and — Oh. Uh. Ah-heh. Sorry.
But he’d have a ton of electronic equipment, and you could easily imagine it was surveillance equipment and mysterious hacker stuff. I have no idea what underworld business he’d be taking care of (who has the time?) but boy, would it be well-organized and well-documented!
Later I was thinking, you don’t need “The” at the beginning of the name. Remember that New York bookie, Jimmy The Greek?
I hereby dub my shady underworld husband Jimmy The Geek. I think he’ll like it. What about you?
I don’t know. I tried inserting “The Pixie”. It just didn’t seem to work.
From:
The Captain.
The Pixie is a female drug dealer, slender and with waist-length black hair, who smokes thin cigarettes in bars and gives orders to her burly henchgoons about which crates to pick up down at the docks at midnight.
The Happy Fluffy Bunny?
One of those delicious ironic titles: the man is eight feet tall, bald, wears wife-beater t-shirts and torn jeans over work boots, and he’s known to have rubbed out four other crime bosses during his time.
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Ooh, I’m now “The Hat Enabler.”
Ivy, if you’re on the side of good, can we call you The Yarn Whisperer?
I like the name, but benevolent isn’t on my resume.
Control over yarn would be a cool bad guy power. Have the threads in someone’s tie just strangle him. Unravel the superhero’s mask to reveal his secret identity. Cause the strands in someone’s pocket to push out a wallet–pickpocketing from a distance. We won’t even discuss The Doomsday Wedgie.
Ooh, I like that. Would it only work on wool-based products? Most superhero costumes are made of spandex, and that would explain why.
How about your sidekick? “We call her The Slip-Slip Knit, because she’s THAT twisted.”
Yarn can be cotton. I’m knitting a cotton sweater now (Hey Teach, not Sitcom Chic, though that is cotton too). Yarn can be acrylic or rayon, and oddly, yarn can include crab shells.
Side kick is kbl, pronounced “cable”. Each way is just a different kind of twisted. 🙂
kbl, pronounced “Kibble”, because that’s what she’ll be if she makes a mistake. “The Kbl” if she’s doing her job.
Supervillan rule number 1: Always be good to your side kick. This is the person who has your back in a battle, knows your secret identity, and can do the most damage by betraying you. Anyone who disrespects The KBL might just find herself shy a few buttons, if you catch my meaning.
When “The Atre” comes to town, you’d better have the money.
Especially when you want to see “The Wizard” and the “The Wicked Witch of the West”.
If we’re going to play it that way, how about The Saurus and The Ology? 😉
“You’d better play your cards right, or The Saurus will injure, maim, hurt and inflict pain upon you.”
and describe what’s he’s going to do you in seven different ways. 🙂
I must respectfully disagree that your Patient Husband is “The Geek.” Unfortunately, I must give that title to my own husband. 3 computers on the office desk? Maybe he does at work, but in this house there is no office… there is just my living room. And it’s covered in computers and computer pieces. There are two lcd monitors mounted to what was originally supposed to be a tool bench. I can’t walk through there without tripping on some computer he’s working on for “someone” and my coffee table is covered in a bath towel – to protect the glass or the computer chips I’m not sure. Oh… and his own main computer is hooked up to the television. I can’t watch NCIS without him playing tech support at the commercials. It’s only one button to push to go back and forth.
That was way off topic. If I had a personal superhero (or supervillian) name, it would be “The Baker” or something not very exciting. My own computer is in the kitchen so that I can pull bread out of the oven between bosses (we play WoW). My superpower is totally making the world fat and lazy so that I can take it over (anyone having flashbacks to “Phineas and Ferb?”
Welp, Philangelus should be “The Author” as in, “The Author of Your Demise.” 😉 As for me, I think “The Gaijin” still fits.
LOL! Actually, about two author-agreements ago, all the legalese got to me and I wrote back that from now on, I was going to refer to myself as The Author. 🙂
The Gaijin, and of course, The Reputation. 🙂