#naming inanimate objects

I got a new mixer that's red so I named it "Daredevil."

That this allows me say I made cookies with Daredevil is fun.

No one asked, but my flute officially has a name now. Typically, I name objects fairly soon after obtaining them, but my flute never had an official name. It’s an Artley flute, so I always felt like it should have a masculine name starting with an A. Unofficially, it’s been Arthur because I felt like it should be something like Arthur, but Arthur is the name of my uncle who is now deceased, so I really couldn’t use that name now. Not that I ever actually wanted to call my flute Arthur.

Anyway, the name of the flute is Atticaius (at-uh-kai-us). It’s like Atticus with a “kai” (pronounced the Japanese way) between the Atti and the us.

The name actually comes from me mishearing the name of a character from Razia’s Shadow: A Musical by Forgive Durden (and featuring a lot of famous people like Brendon Urie from Panic! At the Disco who sings the role of my favourite character Pallis). It’s...like...a concept album. Here. Listen to it. It’s beautiful and entertaining, and it’s only, like, an hour long. My favourite song is The Exit.

Anyway, the character’s name is Adakias. He’s a very Adrien character, I think. I used to listen to the album obsessively the fall I was studying abroad in Japan for the first time. I hadn’t seen the names of the characters written down, so...

Ok, so I had a conversation with my Father about my Laptop’s abilities and mentioned how ‘Loki (named after the mythological trickster god because I swear he’s pranking me sometimes) isn’t that old yet, he’s just sulking’.

Cue five minutes later I start wondering about whether or not other species find it weird we interpret character traits and human behaviour into machines and their malfunctions. Like, my mother’s laptop won’t work with my sister or my father and barely for her, but if I use it it is suddenly fast, so we all agree she likes me but dislikes them and that she’s moody (Mom called her female, not me).

Humans had been part of the Intergalactic Alliance for almost twenty Terra-years, which was to say they were very new to interspace travel and not many knew all that much about them aside from their general appearance.

As it was, Zygrk had happened to accept a human on board of xir vessel as part of the exploration crew. As such, Alex had to log everything they found via a human machine they owned privately and called a ‘Laptop’, which was surprisingly compatible with xir ship’s technology.

Most explorations went well, even if the human - xe really couldn’t say whether they were male or female, and Alex themself had just smiled tiredly at the question - showed some slightly questionable behaviour in their packbonding. It should not be anything to worry about as they contacted their family every second day in order to maintain contact with other humans, considering they were the only one on xir ship.

Such, xe was confused when xe heard the frustrated call of ‘Oh come on, Sophia!’ outside of the time they usually called their family, even more so when xe found Alex pouting slightly at their laptop while most of the crew was in the cafeteria or asleep.

“Is there a problem?”

“Sophia is sulking because I didn’t put her on the charger and now she’s really slow.”

“Excuse me, who?”

“Sophia. My laptop. She’s a bit older, but I adore her, and she’s responsible enough to usually not cause trouble.”

“I was not aware humanity had advanced AIs.”

“Oh, we don’t, not to this level at least.”

“Then how can your machine be ‘sulking’?”

“She just doesn’t like it. I guess it’s a bit like not sleeping for a long time to her? Either way, it always means she gets really slow, like, at most 12 frames per second.”

“If your computer has no AI, it cannot feel or like or dislike stuff.”

“That’s mean, she can hear you! And of course she feels, I mean, she completely refuses to work with Tim and only Tim. Always crashes within five seconds for no other reason. Which is probably a good thing, cause Tim is a massive jerk.”

Zygrk felt exasperation creep up at them at their human’s antics. Why did they refuse to see reason in this?

“Besides, I’m fairly sure it’s a common thing. I know of a friend who named his Wii Harald and cried when the thing broke. Kept saying he was only grumpy leading up to it, too. Was actually kinda funny.”

Oh well. If it was a common human thing, xe would probably not be able to talk them out of it anyway.

Xe would definitely note it down, though, to share with other captains.

I know it’s probably not as good as the last ones, but I really have no idea how to properly explain this.

On another note, if anyone wants me to write about a certain topic (regardless of if it’s already out there or not), just send me a notification with it and I’ll see what I can do.