The Agony of Titles
I've always had difficulty with naming things. Naming characters usually takes me days, weeks after their creation, longest streak I've had was 6 years of a character unnamed even after being drawn and written. Because naming is committing something to them that, to me, is more permanent than a visual design. I know well and good I can change things if I wanted to but let's face it, it sure is a pain to go through all old instances of the thing and re-name it to prevent confusion. So when it comes to titles of things, it feels even more permanent than a character name and so the pressure to get the right name, escalates.
Of my Three comic concepts, 2 are named. One is Pretorians, the title comes from the name of the focus group, the units known as Pretorians, simple enough. The other is Starship Lollipop, the title of the ship the cast resides in, named after a joke of The Good Ship Lollipop (despite such a song not existing in the universe). These are easy enough names and I don't see them changing so I'm pretty committed to them, but it's the remaining story, the one I plan on releasing first that I find myself unable to put a title to. The comic that is supposed to be for Talon's story, the one I talk so dang much about, still doesn't have a title I can commit to.
Back when I first constructed the concept for it and was like 'yeah I'm gonna make this a story and not just an imagination in my head' I was like.. 13, and at the time I had picked the name 'Demon's Legacy' because oh ho ho, lead character is a berserker and a killer so people would call her a 'demon' and the story is about her legacy, the usual teenage cleverness. As I got older it felt more and more tacky and I kept it for a time because I had nothing else to name it but eventually I scrapped it. Ever since then I've not been able to think of a name that really.. fits. Right now if you look at my toyhouse or wiki, the information is categorized under the placeholder name of Cycles, but I definitely do not want it to be called that. So now I'm going to talk out-loud about what I'm trying to achieve with the title eventually.
The general theme of the story is supposed to be around the ramifications of choices made in the past and how they effect the future. The good, the bad, the malicious and well-intentioned. While the story's focus is on characters related to the Teotkoa project (another thing that took me years to name and was only named 2 years ago), I don't want to name it Teotkoa because the story is more than just that. Some themes in naming I wanted is something that had the same meaning as 'ripple effect' but I can't seem to find or create a word that I'm happy with that achieves this meaning. There are stories that explore this theme in a time travel sense, such as 'A Sound of Thunder' and 'The Butterfly Effect' and I don't want to get tangled up in either of these. It's not about changing the past, it's about living with the consequences of one's actions.
The other themes of the story have a lot to do with societal conflicts, there is heaps of social interpersonal conflicts peppered throughout the story. It's not just Humans vs Aliens social conflicts, there are social conflicts for the families of the victims of the previous war, social conflicts for the Ertakar's own social divides that existed long before the arrival of humans.
Finally of course, it is Talon's story. She is a culmination of all the themes I expressed above. Both victim of the choices made from the past war and privileged from it, both Human and Ertakar, and also none of those things. Technically I could just name the comic Talon, but that feels weird? Another theme of title might be the something that encapsulates this theme of being in two states but belonging to neither. Hybrid is too broad a term I think and doesn't convey the right thing. A word like Oxymoron, but a little more specific to an individual or experience. I could technically use the word 'Jal-Kar' as the title as that's the term used for the forcibly genetically altered Human/Ertakar hybrids that lived on after the war, but that still doesn't feel like that has the right kind of presence. Maybe the word I want exists out there but I have no idea how to look for it, or maybe if I can construct it. It doesn't even have to be a single word, if I could think of a phrase that encapsulated this state of being that'd likely work.
I guess if anyone knows words or phrases or even some way to construct a new word that conveys these themes you can give a suggestion, maybe something will give me a boost to figure out a title. (maybe with any luck I can figure out the title once and for all before my prelude comic is finished)
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/775649.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Of my Three comic concepts, 2 are named. One is Pretorians, the title comes from the name of the focus group, the units known as Pretorians, simple enough. The other is Starship Lollipop, the title of the ship the cast resides in, named after a joke of The Good Ship Lollipop (despite such a song not existing in the universe). These are easy enough names and I don't see them changing so I'm pretty committed to them, but it's the remaining story, the one I plan on releasing first that I find myself unable to put a title to. The comic that is supposed to be for Talon's story, the one I talk so dang much about, still doesn't have a title I can commit to.
Back when I first constructed the concept for it and was like 'yeah I'm gonna make this a story and not just an imagination in my head' I was like.. 13, and at the time I had picked the name 'Demon's Legacy' because oh ho ho, lead character is a berserker and a killer so people would call her a 'demon' and the story is about her legacy, the usual teenage cleverness. As I got older it felt more and more tacky and I kept it for a time because I had nothing else to name it but eventually I scrapped it. Ever since then I've not been able to think of a name that really.. fits. Right now if you look at my toyhouse or wiki, the information is categorized under the placeholder name of Cycles, but I definitely do not want it to be called that. So now I'm going to talk out-loud about what I'm trying to achieve with the title eventually.
The general theme of the story is supposed to be around the ramifications of choices made in the past and how they effect the future. The good, the bad, the malicious and well-intentioned. While the story's focus is on characters related to the Teotkoa project (another thing that took me years to name and was only named 2 years ago), I don't want to name it Teotkoa because the story is more than just that. Some themes in naming I wanted is something that had the same meaning as 'ripple effect' but I can't seem to find or create a word that I'm happy with that achieves this meaning. There are stories that explore this theme in a time travel sense, such as 'A Sound of Thunder' and 'The Butterfly Effect' and I don't want to get tangled up in either of these. It's not about changing the past, it's about living with the consequences of one's actions.
The other themes of the story have a lot to do with societal conflicts, there is heaps of social interpersonal conflicts peppered throughout the story. It's not just Humans vs Aliens social conflicts, there are social conflicts for the families of the victims of the previous war, social conflicts for the Ertakar's own social divides that existed long before the arrival of humans.
Finally of course, it is Talon's story. She is a culmination of all the themes I expressed above. Both victim of the choices made from the past war and privileged from it, both Human and Ertakar, and also none of those things. Technically I could just name the comic Talon, but that feels weird? Another theme of title might be the something that encapsulates this theme of being in two states but belonging to neither. Hybrid is too broad a term I think and doesn't convey the right thing. A word like Oxymoron, but a little more specific to an individual or experience. I could technically use the word 'Jal-Kar' as the title as that's the term used for the forcibly genetically altered Human/Ertakar hybrids that lived on after the war, but that still doesn't feel like that has the right kind of presence. Maybe the word I want exists out there but I have no idea how to look for it, or maybe if I can construct it. It doesn't even have to be a single word, if I could think of a phrase that encapsulated this state of being that'd likely work.
I guess if anyone knows words or phrases or even some way to construct a new word that conveys these themes you can give a suggestion, maybe something will give me a boost to figure out a title. (maybe with any luck I can figure out the title once and for all before my prelude comic is finished)
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/775649.html. Please comment there using OpenID.