fic titles meme
I'm a little late on this one, but then, I've been out of town.
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.
Okay, most of my titles are pretty simple - either they're perfectly obvious ones like "The Tale of Myra and Merrilil", or they're a bit punny like "Spiked Blood", or they're quotes. But checking out my stories, I found that there were a few that might merit a comment, and I chose ten of them.
The Second Time You Fall (The Young Riders)
Funny thing about this title - it's named after a song I'd heard Rickie Lee Jones sing, and it was only later I found out that the actual title of the song is "The Second Time Around". Oops. But "the second time you fall" is also a line from it ("Love's more comfortable the second time you fall"), and even now I think that fits the story better - both Ike and Sandy are falling rather harder than they'd want to.
Fairy-born and human-bred (The Young Riders)
This is a quote from Jane Eyre. Rochester is using it about Jane, and it's not a compliment though it may sound like one. I used it on this fic because Lena is the kind of person who can't understand other people and thus will never really belong anywhere.
Guess Who's Coming to Manchester (Angel)
The allusion in this title is fairly obvious - "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" with Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Just like the film is about interracial love, this story is about interspecial love. This refers to Wes and Doyle, of course, but it also refers to Bess and Raja, which means I can bring the significance of their love story into the title without giving anything away. That amused me. *g*
Unnamed (The West Wing)
I suck at coming up with titles. So this story was unnamed for a while - and then I realized that "Unnamed" actually fits the theme of the story perfectly, since what it basically came down to was that Joey didn't have to risk accidently using the wrong name during sex. And so it was named that. Me and my odd sense of humour.
The Son, and Yet Not (Zorro)
This should be pretty self-explanatory for those who've read the story. To all intents and purposes, Felipe is Diego's son, but he's not willing to take on the changes in his life that would come to pass should he take the consequences of that, and so he rejects the formal adoption.
Should be self-explanatory, I said, but evidently it isn't, since I saw it on one site archived as "The Son, and Not Yet". Whatever the archivist thought the story was about is beyond me.
Noah and the Storm (The Young Riders/X-men)
Another attempt at humour. The two main characters in the story are Noah Dixon of The Young Riders and Ororo Munroe of the X-Men, also known as Storm. When it became clear to me that the two of them would be involved, I couldn't resist turning Noah/Storm into "Noah and the Storm" and thus make it a Biblical allusion.
Nine, Ten, and Eleven O'Clock (Press Gang)
There's a scene in the show where Sam tells the story of three guys she used to date who were all called Peter. Since she couldn't call them all Peter, she decided to rename them "six, seven and eight - o'clock!" Those are pretty early hours for a date, and it made me wonder what she did later in the evenings.
As a sidenote, I've always loved Sam. She's drop-dead gorgeous, she's bitchy, and of all the guys in the newsroom, she chooses to flirt with the shy and nice one.
Merry Wars and Sad Songs (Angel)
I remember how relieved I was when I found the G.K. Chesterton quote alluded to in the title: "But the great Gaels of Ireland are the folks that God made mad, for all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad." It seemed to convey precisely what I wanted this story to be: serious and funny, drama, romance and action-adventure, and in a blend that's not entirely expected. For some reason, though, I've seen it archived as "angst", which puzzles me. There's angst in the story, but it wasn't supposed to be all about the angst any more than it was supposed to be all about the humour.
All Talk (Angel)
The reason for this title is fairly obvious - nothing much happens in this third Birthdayverse installment. And once I realized that, I amused myself by putting the word "talk" into the first sentence of every scene. Unfortunately, a scene was added in the beta process, and by then I'd forgotten I was doing it. So as the story stands, the word "talk" is included in the first sentence of every scene but one.
The Visitors (Angel)
For the Birthdayverse, I've mostly used short, simple titles, and this is no exception. It's taken from a surprisingly creepy ABBA song about a woman waiting in her apartment for her enemies to break through the door, with lines like "these walls have witnessed all the anguish and humiliation". Once I started thinking of Faith's torture of Wesley, the song immediately came to mind. For those who haven't heard the song, the title still works (though in a rather ironic manner), since both Faith, the Watchers, and Buffy are in a way visitors, though unwanted ones.
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.
Okay, most of my titles are pretty simple - either they're perfectly obvious ones like "The Tale of Myra and Merrilil", or they're a bit punny like "Spiked Blood", or they're quotes. But checking out my stories, I found that there were a few that might merit a comment, and I chose ten of them.
The Second Time You Fall (The Young Riders)
Funny thing about this title - it's named after a song I'd heard Rickie Lee Jones sing, and it was only later I found out that the actual title of the song is "The Second Time Around". Oops. But "the second time you fall" is also a line from it ("Love's more comfortable the second time you fall"), and even now I think that fits the story better - both Ike and Sandy are falling rather harder than they'd want to.
Fairy-born and human-bred (The Young Riders)
This is a quote from Jane Eyre. Rochester is using it about Jane, and it's not a compliment though it may sound like one. I used it on this fic because Lena is the kind of person who can't understand other people and thus will never really belong anywhere.
Guess Who's Coming to Manchester (Angel)
The allusion in this title is fairly obvious - "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" with Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Just like the film is about interracial love, this story is about interspecial love. This refers to Wes and Doyle, of course, but it also refers to Bess and Raja, which means I can bring the significance of their love story into the title without giving anything away. That amused me. *g*
Unnamed (The West Wing)
I suck at coming up with titles. So this story was unnamed for a while - and then I realized that "Unnamed" actually fits the theme of the story perfectly, since what it basically came down to was that Joey didn't have to risk accidently using the wrong name during sex. And so it was named that. Me and my odd sense of humour.
The Son, and Yet Not (Zorro)
This should be pretty self-explanatory for those who've read the story. To all intents and purposes, Felipe is Diego's son, but he's not willing to take on the changes in his life that would come to pass should he take the consequences of that, and so he rejects the formal adoption.
Should be self-explanatory, I said, but evidently it isn't, since I saw it on one site archived as "The Son, and Not Yet". Whatever the archivist thought the story was about is beyond me.
Noah and the Storm (The Young Riders/X-men)
Another attempt at humour. The two main characters in the story are Noah Dixon of The Young Riders and Ororo Munroe of the X-Men, also known as Storm. When it became clear to me that the two of them would be involved, I couldn't resist turning Noah/Storm into "Noah and the Storm" and thus make it a Biblical allusion.
Nine, Ten, and Eleven O'Clock (Press Gang)
There's a scene in the show where Sam tells the story of three guys she used to date who were all called Peter. Since she couldn't call them all Peter, she decided to rename them "six, seven and eight - o'clock!" Those are pretty early hours for a date, and it made me wonder what she did later in the evenings.
As a sidenote, I've always loved Sam. She's drop-dead gorgeous, she's bitchy, and of all the guys in the newsroom, she chooses to flirt with the shy and nice one.
Merry Wars and Sad Songs (Angel)
I remember how relieved I was when I found the G.K. Chesterton quote alluded to in the title: "But the great Gaels of Ireland are the folks that God made mad, for all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad." It seemed to convey precisely what I wanted this story to be: serious and funny, drama, romance and action-adventure, and in a blend that's not entirely expected. For some reason, though, I've seen it archived as "angst", which puzzles me. There's angst in the story, but it wasn't supposed to be all about the angst any more than it was supposed to be all about the humour.
All Talk (Angel)
The reason for this title is fairly obvious - nothing much happens in this third Birthdayverse installment. And once I realized that, I amused myself by putting the word "talk" into the first sentence of every scene. Unfortunately, a scene was added in the beta process, and by then I'd forgotten I was doing it. So as the story stands, the word "talk" is included in the first sentence of every scene but one.
The Visitors (Angel)
For the Birthdayverse, I've mostly used short, simple titles, and this is no exception. It's taken from a surprisingly creepy ABBA song about a woman waiting in her apartment for her enemies to break through the door, with lines like "these walls have witnessed all the anguish and humiliation". Once I started thinking of Faith's torture of Wesley, the song immediately came to mind. For those who haven't heard the song, the title still works (though in a rather ironic manner), since both Faith, the Watchers, and Buffy are in a way visitors, though unwanted ones.