Fun with fic titles
May. 5th, 2004 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mandolinCatching up on the fanfic memes. First, taken from half my friends list:
Pick five, or ten, or more, of your fic titles. List them in your journal and explain how you came up with each one. Post this prompt as well, so that the meme spreads.
Murphy's Law - This was the only title I could come up with for this massive cliffhanger resolution; it summed up the events of the series finale pretty well and suited the general insanity of the story. This was one of those titles where the line that referenced it came after I decided on the title. Even when I was approached to make this a three-part opener in a virtual season and was asked to come up with three separate titles, I couldn't find anything more appropriate.
In the Waiting - Going to mention this one because as soon as it popped into my head, I wanted to change it. Oh, it was a lovely title, and was taken from a great line in the story ("The agony is not in the action, but in the waiting. It's tearing him up inside.") that summed up what I thought Peter was thinking. The problem? It reminded me too much of Rheanna's excellent Angel fanfic "In the Waiting." After tossing out a handful of alternate titles, I realized in the end that none of the alternatives could hold a candle to the original. So it went back in.
Sleep to Dream Her - Didn't really like the Dave Matthews Band song all that much, and this wasn't a songfic by any stretch of the imagination, but reading the last couple paragraphs I realized that the title was absolutely perfect. Another title I couldn't abolish. :)
Sharp Edges - This title came about from the silliest train of thought possible: the fic was inspired by the thought of what would happen if Sara met Spike. Spike. Sara. The Witchblade. Sharp. I don't know where the edges came from. My original justification was along the lines that the title described both Spike and Sara in terms of personality, and there was something else to it that I don't recall. I suspect that if this story ever goes through rewrites and gets re-posted, the title may be changed.
Mind Games - When I wrote this, I had read a lot of "Teela discovers Adam's secret" fanfics that didn't sit right - either Teela accepted the big revelation without question or anger, or she immediately shunned Adam without a thought to why he had to keep it a secret. There was no middle ground, and it really annoyed me; even with the romantic angle in the original series, Teela either falling into Adam's arms or shunning him because of a broken heart (I saw the "falling into Adam's arms" reaction more often) didn't seem real to me. Then the 2002 series came out, and the Adam and Teela we saw in that series? At the time, still strictly platonic, although she was falling all over He-Man. Not to mention that Adam and He-Man didn't look exactly alike this time around. So it occurred to me that if this Teela discovered they were one and the same, it would seriously mess with her head at first. Hence, the title.
That's all for now...
Pick five, or ten, or more, of your fic titles. List them in your journal and explain how you came up with each one. Post this prompt as well, so that the meme spreads.
Murphy's Law - This was the only title I could come up with for this massive cliffhanger resolution; it summed up the events of the series finale pretty well and suited the general insanity of the story. This was one of those titles where the line that referenced it came after I decided on the title. Even when I was approached to make this a three-part opener in a virtual season and was asked to come up with three separate titles, I couldn't find anything more appropriate.
In the Waiting - Going to mention this one because as soon as it popped into my head, I wanted to change it. Oh, it was a lovely title, and was taken from a great line in the story ("The agony is not in the action, but in the waiting. It's tearing him up inside.") that summed up what I thought Peter was thinking. The problem? It reminded me too much of Rheanna's excellent Angel fanfic "In the Waiting." After tossing out a handful of alternate titles, I realized in the end that none of the alternatives could hold a candle to the original. So it went back in.
Sleep to Dream Her - Didn't really like the Dave Matthews Band song all that much, and this wasn't a songfic by any stretch of the imagination, but reading the last couple paragraphs I realized that the title was absolutely perfect. Another title I couldn't abolish. :)
Sharp Edges - This title came about from the silliest train of thought possible: the fic was inspired by the thought of what would happen if Sara met Spike. Spike. Sara. The Witchblade. Sharp. I don't know where the edges came from. My original justification was along the lines that the title described both Spike and Sara in terms of personality, and there was something else to it that I don't recall. I suspect that if this story ever goes through rewrites and gets re-posted, the title may be changed.
Mind Games - When I wrote this, I had read a lot of "Teela discovers Adam's secret" fanfics that didn't sit right - either Teela accepted the big revelation without question or anger, or she immediately shunned Adam without a thought to why he had to keep it a secret. There was no middle ground, and it really annoyed me; even with the romantic angle in the original series, Teela either falling into Adam's arms or shunning him because of a broken heart (I saw the "falling into Adam's arms" reaction more often) didn't seem real to me. Then the 2002 series came out, and the Adam and Teela we saw in that series? At the time, still strictly platonic, although she was falling all over He-Man. Not to mention that Adam and He-Man didn't look exactly alike this time around. So it occurred to me that if this Teela discovered they were one and the same, it would seriously mess with her head at first. Hence, the title.
That's all for now...
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Date: 2004-05-05 02:57 pm (UTC)Still, nifty! A great chance to see the inspiration behind fics, their titles, and the way their author's mind works... (Or in my case, *doesn't*... ^_^; )