Behind the Name "Aster"
This is also a good introduction to the wild and convoluted way I work.
My thought processes could be drawn as a fractal of interconnecting stars with all different numbers of rays, if you wanted to be creative...
...or as a bulleted outline, if you wanted to be dryly informative.
I'm going to go with the outline here. It's clearer. Feel free to imagine it as a fractal if you want.
Meanings of "Aster"
1.) Linguistic
- (a.) Means "star." Of course I've always felt a connection to stars and outer space... or at least fictional depictions of them. My first love was Star Trek and it's still right up there.
- (b.) An aster is also a flower similar to a daisy.
--- (i.) My passions definitely include gardening as well.
--- (ii.) "Daisy, Daisy" is a song familiar from my childhood (due to my family's fascination with tandem bicycles), but is also often referenced in fiction about machine intelligence. (See "TRON" section below.)
--- (iii.) Though I usually associate "daisy" with a white flower, the ones called "aster" are very often purple flowers. Both "Aster" and "Daisy" are fairly well-known as women's names. My "real" legal name can also refer to a purple flower... which also has another, near-synonymous name which is also used as a woman's name. Many parallels here!
- (c.) My passions also include sewing. The pun "Poly-Aster" makes reference to two things:
--- (i.) my fabric crafts (polyester isn't my favorite fabric but it's among the ones I can afford)
--- (ii.) my polyamorous lifestyle (yes, my tendency to do many different things also extends to romantic partners!)
- (d.) "Ast" means tree-branch in German, which brings to mind the whole branching structure I'm going on about here.
- (e.) Aster is also where the word "asterisk" comes from. And that's where most of the rest of the meanings come in...
2.) Visual appearance
- (a.) An asterisk looks like a star. (Hence the name.)
- (b.) Also looks like the symbol for emergency medical services (my day job is in healthcare).
- (c.) Also looks like a butthole. This is not of particular interest to me, except that I appreciate the parallel connection of how the beginning of the word also just coincidentally sounds like "ass."
- (d.) And of course, it also looks like several lines connecting at one point... and oh, how my brain loves to connect things. (Case in point, this whole page!)
3.) Uses
- (a.) An asterisk is used in writing to indicate a footnote-- just like my brain going off on a tangent.
- (b.) It's also used in internet chat to indicate a spelling correction. I'm extremely skilled at editing and finding spelling errors... although, due to not being an asshole, I long ago swore off doing it in internet chat (or for anyone who hasn't expressly requested such editing from me).
- (c.) An asterisk in programming is a wildcard, stand-in for "anything."
--- (i.) This is one of the few programming things I have actual experience with, beyond HTML, because it's used in GREP commands, which I use for mass-editing a whole lot of HTML pages at once.
--- (ii.) And that meaning fits me too, because I AM a wildcard who can do a WHOLE lot of different things.
4.) Forty-two
- (a.) In ASCII, the asterisk is represented by the number 42 (or 101010 in binary).
--- (i.) There was a whole fan theory that this was Douglas Adams' reasoning behind the use of the number forty-two in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: if the answer to the Great Question is an asterisk, and an asterisk is a wildcard that can stand for anything, then the Answer is "whatever you want it to be."
--- (ii.) Douglas Adams denied this, and said he chose the number at random. Which means it happened just BY COINCIDENCE, which I like even better! It was the Universe Itself, not Adams, making the connection! (Wonder if he chose the number at random by pulling Scrabble tiles out of a bag?)
- (b.) Forty-two was also my age at the pivotal moment in my life when I began making this website... a year of introspection, finding myself, and deciding to connect all my creativity into this site as I turn towards the future.
5.) TRON fandom-specific
- (a.) I came up with this name in a very random way. See, I'd just developed an intense interest in, of all things, the 1982 TRON movie. (It was the same year that movie turned 41 and I turned 42... where had it BEEN all my life?) Anyway, the whole reason I was looking for a name was because other fans were encouraging me to make an original character for that fandom.
- (b.) But once I'd come up with the name, I realized it's extremely fitting for, well, me in general... especially when talking about my many different and interconnected interests!
- (c.) Aster rhymes with Castor, who may be my favorite character in Legacy. I DEFINITELY have headcanons about Castor. (I don't like Legacy nearly as much as the original movie... BUT, both movies and the Uprising series are all so very unfinished, with so much hinted and unclear and left hanging! It's... like a trap just for me, baited with connections to be made. I am addicted to the specific kind of problem-solving needed for filling in plot holes and mysterious missing details.)
- (d.) Aster rhymes with Master, hence this site's name, "Aster Control." I am not TRON 1982's "Master Control Program," not by any stretch of the imagination... but I do like to have control over my own website, as much as possible.
- (e.) Of the ways I responded to the 1982 movie, appreciating all those gorgeous spandex-covered butts was pretty high on the list. Hello again, first syllable that sounds like "ass."
- (f.) Of course, there are programmers all over the real world, and they've got more projects going than there are words in any language...so GOOD LUCK finding a name that isn't already taken by some boring real-life program. But the real program called ASTER is also pleasingly relevant. It's something called "multiseat software"...
--- (i.) "Multiseat" sounds like it could mean "lots of butts," and, again, that's very cool with me.
--- (ii.) What it actually does is allow multiple people to connect to one computer at once... which also resonates with my connection-making self.
Anyway, all of these connections are explored on my fanfiction and fanart pages, too, where you can see more about my character and stories I've written in that setting.
Here's the story that introduces Aster, and her User ERSchmitz42... who are both very much me).
Introduction to Aster the Pattern Recognition Program
Warning: story has some sexual content. Not too extreme, but marking it as sexual just to be safe.
Done reading this footnote? Feel free to return to the introductory page, or continue to the rest of the site.