I feel it's vaguely pretentious to go by the name of characters online

That's not *so* bad... what really bothers me is when I meet someone in person, at an anime-related event, and they introduce themself as their online name, which is taken from an anime or video game... and I never find out anything to call them other than the name of a fictional character.

I cosplay dead people!

I've only been properly cosplaying for a year or so, but it seems like almost everyone on my list of characters I want to cosplay is dead. But that's what I get for being a Gundam fan.