I finally have the option to change my username after procrastinating the whole idea of moving accounts since some people cannot access my work due to the double hyphens at the start and end of my username (which totally dates my account to almost a decade old before DA realized it was illegal character, non-standard host naming and would only work on some browsers).

However, this still places me at a loss of what name to change to... because sadly, Achiru/~achiru is taken by someone who abandoned their account a long, long time ago. Hmm... I guess to honour the multiplicity in me, I'll call us Achiru-et-al.

It will be easy to remember. Trust me. Because typing Achiru-and-the-rest-of-the-cast is too freaking long.

"Et al." is a scholarly abbreviation of the Latin phrase et alia, which means "and others," commonly used when you don't want to name everyone involved in the project. I like et al. better than "etc." which is more commonly used for "and so on," or "and other things," which has a more impersonal feel to it (like listing inanimate objects).

I'm sure anyone who starts watching me will notice that I let my characters take over occasionally. I call them my "cast" in the studio I have in my head. I also like to keep track of all the influences that have pushed my characters and I to grow and develop both artistically and personally, which includes everyone here on DeviantART who has made some outlandish comment, insightful remarks or asked some inquisitive prying question which begged to be answered or attended to either by myself or one of my cast members, often revealing things I had not known about them or about myself before.

So in some extended-metaphor-kind-of-way, you are also part of that "et al." in shaping what we do. Hereby, we have the birth of Achiru-et-al.