around the end of 2019/the start of 2020 i decided i needed a new username since i got bored of my previous one. i decided on "moth" because moths are cool. at some point i found out about the mothman and thought that's even cooler so i changed it to "mothman". in early 2021 i got into toki pona and eventually decided to change my username to "kije motan" (short for "kijetesantakalu motan" - kijetesantakalu being a joke word meaning procyonid and motan being the tokiponised form of mothman. by then i'd become a furry with a racoon as my fursona). during that time i made a tumblr account, and when trying to come up with a url i thought "wouldn't it be funny if i named myself "the motan"". and it was. a year or two later i'd changed fursonas again (now to a dragon) and fully changed my username to "the motan".

mothcultist came around during the mothman era. i wanted to make a new, thematically appropriate email adress and decided on that. a few months ago i rediscovered pesterchum and needed a chumhandle, so i just repurposed that