the eponymous: why is it called 'swifty's hq'?

i can't remember whether i've written a blog post about this before, so i figure i'd write something about it, because 'swiftyshq' is a handle i've started to use frequently enough i've actually gotten a couple questions about it, and the story behind it is a little long-winded for a username that's nine letters long.

'swiftyshq' is, if you're familiar enough with this website, a shorthand for 'Swifty's HQ!', the name of this little strand of the web. the name itself is two parts, which i hope are a little obvious, just for sake of explanation. if not, well...

the word 'swifty's' is a possessive form of the name 'swifty'. i have had at least three(!) people assume i was a taylor swift fan, but that is not what the 'swifty' refers to. 'swifty' is the (now-abbreviated) name of my (forest's) first warrior cat 'sona, 'swifttail'. that's two T's, as i wrote on its ref sheet back in the day.

'swifttail' is one of the names (or the first one? maybe? i was assigned when i used warriorcats.com for the first time. back when their website used flash and the url ended with 'warriorshell' (which always made me go 'omg, like warriors hell??'), they had a page where you could input your name and your hometown and get a prefix and suffix that'd 'match' based on the first letter of the string. i used to have the list written out on paper, and hell, i might still, somewhere in this room, but i've misplaced it.

anyway, point of the matter is, it gave me 'swifttail', and i really liked the name and started using it everywhere. my first deviantart profile was named "swifttail27" for this reason (with 27 being my birthday... day). i continued using this name in warrior cat spaces until i was, like, 18, when i switched to 'gingernose', when i was still fixated on traditional warrior cats naming. obviously, i've since retired the name gingernose in favor of swifty again.

swifttail was abbreviated to 'swifty' by others when referring to me on deviantart et al, but was renewed again in 2022 when i made this website again.

so, the first half refers to 'swifty' the character, who is the trunk of the tree that is 'forest'. this is swifty's place. but what about HQ?

HQ is pretty straightforward, really. it stands for 'headquarters', like the base of operations for a larger company or association. this was not an arbitrary term.

the primary inspiration comes from my puppy days, where i used to scour pokemon fansites like i breathed, only stopped by parental intervention or my dial-up speeds. this isn't the first time ive mentioned any given pokemon fansite, either, and for good reason.

the web design and general ambiance of a fansite in the early 2000's was massively influential on both my tastes in web design and my own personal expression. there's one website i chalk up to the name format: eevee's HQ. nowadays i think the webmaster of that site runs a site called route 50, which i've been meaning to give a shot sometime.

eevee's HQ has all the hallmarks of a 2000's fansite: three-column layout, large fancy banner, an update table on the front page, and gutters on either side. familiar, huh? its navigation category organization reminds me of concurrently-run-and-outlived-by the cave of dragonflies, run by dragonfree.

to a lesser (but not insignificant) extent, the name and style was also inspired by joey and jolty's hq, which still exists today, though only as an archive. i was always endlessly entertained by all the things you could do on it, and i liked azy the 'sykik' a lot. i'd say it was one of the chief exposures i had to 'rAnDoM' humor that proliferated at the time.

and that's the long and short of it. this is swifty's headquarters, with no relation to 'tay tay' and her stupid jet plane. it's a storied name with history that roots itself in two of my primary childhood interests.

thanks for listening!