【2016年发表于知乎】
My longtime readers know that for the past decade-plus, I used the pen name “Crazy Diamond” when writing film reviews. For many years, except on Baidu, that rogue search engine, searching for “Crazy Diamond” on any other search engine would bring up my Mtime blog as the first result.
But looking at it now, choosing “Crazy Diamond” as my pen name was a little too casual—I should have come up with a truly original name, or simply used my real name.
Now this name has run into a bit of trouble. Because not long ago, on April 1, the TV anime adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond Is Unbreakable began airing.
The protagonist of Part 4, Josuke Higashikata, has a “Stand” (a supernatural ability possessed by the characters in this series) named “Crazy Diamond.”
That’s right: the pen name I came up with on a whim was copied from this Crazy Diamond. I’m a fake. But what can you expect? I’ve been a die-hard fan of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga since I was a kid.
In the not-too-distant future, lots of people will know this official Crazy Diamond, and recognize only this Crazy Diamond. Many new readers will surely find it awkward when they see “Crazy Diamond” on the byline of my articles. That has already started happening:
To be honest, I’m finding it more and more awkward myself. That awkwardness first surfaced when I published a book the year before last. The book, The Alluring Illusion: Psychological Secrets in Light and Shadow, was, after all, a serious work of popular psychology, so using my real name would have made more sense. But, thinking about sales, I still had to make use of the tiny bit of recognition I’d built up under the name “Crazy Diamond,” so in the end I went with a tortured name that was a combination of the two.
Looking at it now, I was being self-important, because some experiences over the past two years have made me realize that the recognition I’d built up under “Crazy Diamond” was actually negligible.
I write on several platforms now, and the most popular one is probably Zhihu. When I registered on Zhihu, I accidentally used my real name, and it can’t be changed. But my articles under my real name have gradually gained traction. And my future writing plans include quite a bit about psychology and relationships between the sexes, so using my real name is still the better choice for that kind of writing.
Taking all this together, I think I should give up the pen name “Crazy Diamond.” But let me be sentimental for a moment: after using a name for more than a decade, it’s a little hard to just throw it away. Let me agonize and be self-important for a little longer. I’ll do my best to make my real name known throughout the jianghu ^_^
Goodbye, Crazy Diamond.
P.S.
I once wrote a series called JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: An Absurd Epic. I doubt many people will read it now, but I’ve organized it again anyway, and I’ll post it shortly.
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