If you followed me over from Jaka’s Tea Party (and thank you if you did!), you remember that when I entered the blogsphere, I used an alias.  I was nervous about using my real name for various reasons and fell back to one I’d invented for myself when I in middle school.  I’d decided that I was going to be a writer when I grew up but never liked the sound of my own name.

This is the story of Jaka Merriman.

When you’re 14, you’re writing a lot of angsty poetry. It’s god-awful, but because you’re 14, you think it’s world-changing and that someday everyone’s going to sit up and take notice. I needed a name that was bigger, more real than myself.  I’d just started reading Cerebus for the first time and loved the name of one of the main female characters: Jaka.  I fussed with a last name for a while, trying dozens of combinations, until “Merriman” fell into place.  Pretty simple, eh?

I imagined Jaka to be everything that I wasn’t, drawing on both my immature understanding of the character and my own desires for the future.  Jaka was graceful, witty, clever, beautiful, dangerous, and strong.  She could write anything she wanted because it flowed out from her naturally.  She was vulnerable, too, but had the self-confidence to heal her own wounds and not let other people damage her.  I built her up into a real person who only existed for me.  I knew that all I had to do was wait until I was 18 so I could change my name and magically actually become her.

Throughout high school and into university, I still wrote under her name, but she didn’t need so much upkeep anymore (and I didn’t change my name).  She was such a constant feature in my imaginary landscape that she took on her own life.  Her name graced long-discarded email addresses, logins for chatrooms I’ve forgotten, and even a recently-abandoned Livejournal.  Jaka didn’t represent a split in my personality; she was part of it – all the things I aspired to be.

When I joined the Camarilla, something clicked.  Here was an opportunity to make Jaka real, to take her out of my head and put her into the world.  There was never any question about who my PC would be.  I set out to create her as everything I’d imagined as a teenager: she is an ex-mafia worker, is supernaturally witty and dexetrous, speaks nine languages, can read people like a book, is fierce in her friendships, and is unwaveringly honourable.  But as I wrote her into life, I found she had changed.  Instead of a head-turner, she blends into the background; rather than being vulnerable, she prides herself on being unassailable.  Jaka had changed to mirror how I had changed over the years, just as I had taken on many of her traits.

Upon emerging on the blog-scene, I automatically went to my fallback alias.  I didn’t want people to know my real name; it seemed too dangerous as far as privacy and my own feelings.  I don’t deal well with haters, so I felt that having the barrier of a false name would serve me perfectly.  But it only took a few months to start chafing.  It wasn’t that Jaka wasn’t “me”, per se, it’s that she was too me.  She wasn’t a separate person anymore; the strange symbiosis that had been going on for ten years had become a fusion.  Jaka was part of Ellie, now, so to use the “fake” name wasn’t protecting me mentally and emotionally the way I thought it would.  So I slipped off the mask and freed myself – freed Ellie – from an idea that I had outgrown.

In all this time, I never admitted to anyone what the name meant to me.  People would see my handle and ask, but I’d mutter/type something noncommittal; “It’s personal,” I’d say.  Until pushing the “publish” button on this post, I’ve never actually talked about the real meaning behind the alias.  Jaka Merriman has meant many different things to me over the last decade and change.  She’s still around in a way, but not like she used to be.  I’m her, she’s me – we go together.  Now that her story has been told, maybe I can lay her costume lovingly and gently aside as a fond memory rather than clinging to it in nostalgia.

Note: I still play Jaka Von Saenger (nee Merriman (long story)) in the Vampire venue in the Camarilla.  Her story has gone on for far too long, and I attribute my weariness of the character to many of the same things that chafed me by using her name as a blog alias.  I’m essentially playing myself now, forcing the old Jaka to match the new Ellie.  Soon the story will end, naturally or by force, and I’ll be able to start again.

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