Meanwhile, I Just Title My Blog Posts With Whatever First Comes To Mind.

[rionaleonhart]

Titles are something I've always struggled with when writing fanfiction. I thought I'd take a look back at the fics I've posted this year and note down exactly why I chose the titles I did

Comments

"There's a fine line between 'Nuanced Title' and 'Stupid Pun'" nicely sums it up!

[nadramon]

Fic titles are difficult, but I like thinking about them. When I get a fic idea, my first reflex is to give it a title (or several title ideas). As a result, I have a mountain of fic-less titles.

Analyzing them is pretty fun! Here are the ones I’ve posted on AO3:

2013 Matchmaking Alphabet Meme A challenge I took up in 2023, where you had to pair up your lj icon characters together in alphabetical order and write a mini ficlet about it - except the fics I wrote got too long, and I never finished the challenge. I regret not coming up with something more creative, but at least it’s functional.

That Old Black Magic The title was inspired by Harold Arlen's song, and by caffeine_buzz’s lj icon, which prompted me to write this fic for the aforementioned challenge (in this case, Ada from Pandora Hearts was paired with Ahiru from Princess Tutu). It’s about Ada meeting a duck from the sorcery book she found, using black magic to turn the duck human, and getting a crush - so the literal and metaphorical meanings of ‘That Old Black Magic’

Re: "There's a fine line between 'Nuanced Title' and 'Stupid Pun'" nicely sums it up!

[nadramon]

The Golden Hourglass Death starts turning to gold because of a curse, and uses the titular hourglass to buy himself time to find a cure. Things seem fairly straightforward initially, but the hourglass serves another function later on (sacrificing your own time for others), and is eventually revealed to symbolize the reason Death got cursed in the first place. It was great fun to see my readers’ reactions when the full meaning hit them!

All Cats And Wolves Are Grey In The Dark Those are drabbles I wrote for DeathPuss Week 2023, a series of prompts centered on Puss and Death (who looks like a wolf in the movie). The proverb implies that appearance (and whether the fic is an AU or not) doesn’t change much to the tension between them. (But let’s be real: I used it because Puss is a cat. I can’t resist the siren call of terrible puns.)

Words Unspoken I got the idea from a song lyric in a Puss in Boots 2 AMV. Puss and Death lose all their magical powers, including the ability to speak, but still manage to communicate their intent to fight

Re: "There's a fine line between 'Nuanced Title' and 'Stupid Pun'" nicely sums it up!

[nadramon]

The Broken Cup is a reference to Kuzuryuu’s quote from his last FTE in the game (which I use as an epigraph). I am a little frustrated with it because it could work for any KuzuHina fic, but it does become relevant later in the story, and the quote itself illustrates important aspects of Kuzuryuu as a character, so I kept it as is.

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite It’s an allusion to Monokuma’s daily prerecorded ‘goodnight’ speech from the first game, but in the context of the fic, it foreshadows what Komaeda and his ladybug daemon attempt in order to start the killing game. It was extremely fun to witness my readers’ horrified reactions (including yours!) when they realized what the title hinted at. Pretty proud of this one!