New year, new me.
Okay so it's still a few weeks until New Year's, but I think I'm gonna go ahead and post this now anyway. If you're wondering who this "Noa" person you don't remember following is, this account used to be named Reignsan.
It's been just about 19 years since I came up with the name Reign. I was 11 years old at the time and originally used it for a Sonic OC. I don't remember why I chose that name, I think it just sounded cool. You know, picking things the way that 11 year olds tend to do. Pretty quickly the name Reign went from being the name of my Sonic OC to the name I used everywhere online. For almost two decades that's what I've been called by.
But recently—cropping up every now and then in the last few years, but increasingly more often in the last few months—I've kind of found myself drifting away from Reign as an identifier. When people call me by that it's started to feel "off", like taking a moment to register that they're talking to me.
Earlier this year I renamed my FFXIV character Noa and that name really clicked with me. I like how it sounds. Ironically this actually happened shortly before I played Xenoblade 3, a game where the main character is named Noah, so that's actually a coincidence if you can believe it. I've started slowly transferring to using the name Noa on other places, like my FGO and Twitch usernames (for the record I don't stream, it's just when I'm talking in Twitch chat).
This isn't a trans thing; I'm not cracking an egg or coming out of the closet. I'm pretty comfortable in my gender identity. But it is still an identity thing. I feel kind of stupid making a big deal about changing an online username, but when you've used the same one for almost twenty years it is kind of a leap.
So long story short I'm committing to changing my screen name from Reign to Noa. For people who've known me a long time, especially my friends who've known me pretty much the entire length of time I've gone by Reign, I know this will be an adjustment. But I'd really appreciate it if you could keep it in mind. Of course I know you won't memorize it overnight and there will be slip-ups, but yeah.
So, yeah. New year new me. Please call me Noa.
