The story behind your story's name?

[canisaries]

A brief question on how to name a story on another forum made me curious about this. Story names have a lot of variety between them - some are long, some are short, some are literal, some are cryptic. But where did your stories get theirs? How did you choose them? Did they use to be called something else? Was there some other name you almost picked instead? Is the meaning behind the title obvious for the reader from the start, or does it make sense only later on?

There's a lot in a name, and I want to know what's behind yours. Let us know the answer to any or all of those questions! (I hope to post some of mine after some others so it doesn't seem like I made this just to talk about myself lol)

 

[NebulaDreams]

Deli's Delivery Service - Obvious reference is obvious.

The Curious and The Shiny - Obvious protagonist reference is obvious. Well, I was debating switching it over to something like Contronatura (Against Nature) because Stereolab reference, but also because it ties in a lot to the themes and the eventual plot it follows. It seemed a bit too serious for the fic though, and TCATS also seemed a bit more memorable.

Black Paint - Obvious Death Grips reference is obvious. Well, I thought it tied into Sal's character and the darker events throughout the story, but originally, in its WIP stage, it was just called The Commission. Bleh, pretty boring IMO.

Outside the Frame - 'is what you're leaving out...' The original title was going to be another musical reference (Tears in the Typing Pool by Broadcast), but I moved past that and went for something a bit more meaningful, A. because title drop, and B. because it also relates to Gyro's connections being on the internet.

I used to put lots of musical references in my works, but I've moved past that since it feels a bit lazier now and I'm thinking of more creative ways to title my works now.

 

[Keleri]

Gods and Demons - this is from the opening voiceover of the dub of Princess Mononoke, where Keith David intones the backstory:

In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests,
where, from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods.
Back then, man and beast lived in harmony,
but as time went by, most of the great forests were destroyed.
Those that remained were guarded by gigantic beasts...
who owed their allegiance to the Great Forest Spirit,
for those were the days of gods and demons.

I saw Princess Mononoke when I was like 15 and naturally it ruined my life and made me unsuitable for a lot of jobs.

O LOATHSOME RABBLE
YOU SHALL KNOW MY HATRED AND DESPAIR

Anyway, imitation is the highest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. I wanted to capture that feeling of an awe-inspiring, wild world where monsters lurk in old forests as deep as the ocean.



Gods and Demons subtitles:
1. ad terminos terrae -- pretentious Latin version of "at world's end"; this is intended to be evocative of the lengths to which main character Moriko (new high school grad and INFANT) feels that she has to go to find meaning for herself, her semi-conventional suburban upbringing having betrayed her (this is what the high school drama/familial abuse first chapter is about), as well as the feeling that I want for my fan region of Gaiien, a wild land where monsters lurk outside the borders of your walled town, where a sword or a gun will not protect you and you need your own monsters as allies

1.5. So Comes Ice After Fire -- this is from The Hobbit, "So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings."; this is intended to reference Moriko's growth from wild and untrained junior trainer to the beginnings of better and more careful battling and situational analysis from her time at Ranger university (but also like literally Moriko going from the fire pokemon's cooperative steel mill to the ice gym :V). And of course the dragons do not end in my stories :3

2. Among the Exiles -- I thought I made this up but google is telling me it's right there in Ezekiel 1:1, fricking bible; this is going to be a major theme in the sequel, literal and metaphorical exiling and return, clash of cultures, etc.

2.5 She'll Find You and She'll Kill You -- (tentative) From a song by Chad VanGaalen, "Molten Light" (cw: violence, death)

3. A Time For Monsters -- this is from a loose translation of a quote by communist Antonio Gramsci, "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." :3 :3 :3 :3 :3

Side Stories:

The Raikou Queen -- reference to The Lion King; my fic is less "Lion Hamlet" and more seizing the memes of production

Saving Lillie -- it's about saving Lillie (OR IS IT)

Those Who Can't Be Kept -- Meditation on "keeping" sentient beings, whether that's a person or a legendary pokemon. Breakup angst; Rayquaza is there

Ooooooold Fics:

Blackbird -- Nori is a proto-Moriko looking for freedom from her oppressive family situation; from "Blackbird" by the Beatles

The Immortals -- (I deleted this one, it used some friends' OCs in ways that were kiiiiiiinda tactless but I was like 14 when I wrote it) a reference to the Tamora Pierce series as well as the intended main characters of the fic, terrifying unaging trainers cursed to wander the earth for eternity. Ten years later, Pokemon X and Y came out. COINCIDENCE???*

*Yes

 

[NonAnalogue]

Mew-child's name is, I hope, pretty obvious, since the entire story revolves around the main character trying to find the child of Mew before the baddies do.

Run Boy Run, on the other hand, is named after the song that inspired the story.

I usually try to put more thought into the titles of the chapters - the titles of the fics themselves are more just "what sounds good/what will I not get tired of seeing countless times".

 

[kyeugh]

wandersword's title came before the fic itself, and i sort of built the premise around it. utter malarkey really.

mongrels in castelia, which is the fic i failed to take anywhere from the serebii forum, is a pretty lazy name that mostly arose out of my failure to think of anything better. the fic itself was inspired by Tokyo Ghoul, so i kind of just lifted its title, except Castelia Mongrel doesn't... really sound like anything...

it occurs to me that perhaps i'm not the best at titles.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Hoo boy.

So, like everything else related to LC, the story behind its title is a long one, involving a lot of old story concepts that got purged long ago.

Despite what you might think, The Legendarian Chronicles isn't just saying "this is a chronicle about Legendaries." No, that would be too simple. What "Legendarian" actually refers to is the fact that the fic's backstory used to center around an ancient human-Pokemon war over the lands that belonged to the Pokemon. This PMD-like nation was essentially the canon regions that we know today, before they fell to human control. And it was known as--you guessed it--Legendaria! A "Legendarian," therefore, was any citizen of that nation. In modern times, most Pokemon have forgotten their heritage, but the Legendaries themselves still preserve the tales of the old culture, and could therefore be described as Legendarians.

So yeah, the Legendarians are all just Legendary Pokemon in the end, but in a way that sounds cooler. :P

Well, obviously that backstory got scrapped years ago, so none of that applies now. So is LC an Artifact Title? ...nnnoooot quite.

See, I got a bit of a dual meaning behind it later on. While the Pokemon nation of "Legendaria" is a thing of the past, the term does still get used in the fic eventually And then there's the fact that a synonym for “chronicles” is “timelines”. That means that “The Legendarian Chronicles” can potentially be deciphered as: “the timelines of the world where Legendary Pokemon exist.” But that’s so obscure that no one would ever glean that just from reading the title, lol.

And, as a bit of extra trivia, it I were starting the fic from scratch, I’d probably name it Doorway to Infinity after the current title of Chapter 82.

 

[Sike Saner]

The Origin of Storms and Communication were just me referencing this song and this song, respectively, despite there being very little to connect them to the stories in question.

Everything else was just me throwing things until something stuck. The Worldslayers in particular was really stubborn about being titled and so had a few completely random working titles prior to posting it anywhere. The only one of those I can actually recall right now is Bludles. I don't know what a bludle is, either.

 

[StellarWind]

Honestly, I am absolutely awful at titles and fic names - so most of mine tend to either be very straightforward or A Terrible Pun™.

The one exception I can think of is the one fic I keep mentioning that I fully intend to remake someday - At The End of the Wilderness. Wilderness derives its title from the title theme from the Wild Arms series (alternately translated as "Into the Wilderness", "To the End of the Wilderness" or "At the End of the Wilderness" depending on the actual game it's in, the quirks of assorted translators and/or the lunar phases) - and its chapter titles were also intended to refer to names of thematically related tracks from assorted Wild Arms OSTs.

The reason for that is that quite a few elements of that particular story were meant to be nods to the Wild Arms series as a whole, down to being set in Orre (which is probably the closest Pokémon ever got to Filgaia) and involving ancient civilizations, elemental golems and weird nanomachine shenanigans. If anything particularly interesting happens in future fics title-ways, I'll let you know. XP

 

[Negrek]

Good stuff! Some really fun backstory on people's fics here. As far as what I've posted on this site goes...

"Decoherence" - From quantum decoherence. Unfortunately I didn't actually understand what quantum decoherence is, and it's not actually relevant to the story at all, so please pretend I had some Deep reason for picking this one.

Salvage - This one is a little unusual in that it's purely thematic, while most of my chapterfic titles refer to something concrete within the story, although I suppose there is some literal salvage going on in Salvage as well. The working title of this story was Children of Mew, which referred to the two main characters (the third main character was only conceived of after I'd started posting the story). This title struck me as a bit self-serious and amateurish, though, so I went hunting for another. I don't know how I settled on "salvage" specifically, but it refers to what the characters have to do constantly throughout the story: pick up the pieces after disaster, learn and take what they can and try to do better the next time. Learning how to go on after you've fucked up royally is a major theme of the story! (As is not really clear yet, since the characters are mostly still living their best/worst lives in the "fucking up royally" stage.)

Little God - A spinoff of Salvage, and tbh this would have made a fine title for it, too. From the flavor text for the Ancient Mew TCG card, which reads, "Little god... or evil?" This phrase really made an impression on me back when I first learned the translation. Mew has really always been portrayed as cute, playful, mostly friendly or harmless, so this piece of flavor text that seemed at such odds with that image was fascinating. It suggested a rawer, more nuanced picture of Mew, which perhaps could be cute and playful but perhaps also ruthless, even terrifying. This idea strongly shaped how I portrayed the Mew-relatives in Salvage, and since Little God focuses on Mew herself, it only makes sense for it to appear as the title!

...according to the Bulbapedia page the translation is actually supposed to be "Little cat... or evil?" instead, so perhaps my life has been a lie, that still works more or less but is way less dramatic, damn.

The working title of my next chapterfic is "Blackest Sun-Fire," which comes from the first line of the little story/prophecy that the fic is built around: A lamenting goddess left this prophecy for the five warring kingdoms below: that their world would end in blackest sun-fire. I'm ambivalent on this one; I think it's kind of badass and distinctive, but on the other hand it doesn't really roll off the tongue and it might end up not actually having much to do with the story once I sit down and write it, so... We'll see where this one goes!

 

[windskull]

So Places We Call Home essentially came from the idea of being dissatisfied with life, and finding a place where you can be satisfied. This is perhaps most literal with Nip, who left his home because he couldn't consider it a home anymore. But on a more figurative level, most of the main cast is dissatisfied with where they are in life. Toshi wants more than his ordinary life, and wants to take up rescuing or exploring. Shimmer is striving for Toshi's hand - er... paw - and perhaps more. Muse is... well, her desires enter spoilery territory. Haru probably seems to fit this the least, but even then, she's still striving to be something more. To get her name out there, even if only to expand the family business.

What's interesting, though, is that the original working title was "Tales of the Berry Islands." Originally, when it was going to be a comic, it was envisioned more as a series of stories centered around an archipelago of islands, with Nip's story being the first in a set of many (though I didn't have any others planned out). But that didn't really fit the plot I had in mind well due to the limited size of the islands not fitting well with the idea of Nip coming from a long distance north. So when I started converting it into a fic, it became one large landmass. (Technically two, but that enters spoiler territory again.)

On that note, Theran Village is kind of an artifact name from that time. "Theran" is literally just "The Oran" mashed together.

 

[canisaries]

Glad to see so many responses! And they really prove my theory - names can have many kinds of origins. I think it's reasonable for me to post about my stories now.

Let's start with Seiren, as that's my main story over here and it's also the one I consider the first "serious" fic I've written. Well, that's a little false - back when it was first written, it was named Agápe and quite different. Red had no insidious plan of befriending Shirlee and subtly steering her career into ruin but instead just went straight ahead and kidnapped the idol after one of her shows, making the story really only a few chapters long (and pretty crappy).

But for the name: agápe or agapé or however you want to transliterate it is one of the four Greek words for love, meaning "love between man and god" by one definition. This is kind of a stretch, though, as in that context it really refers to the Christian God and his benevolence, which is where the other meaning of "altruistic love" shows. Past me would say this is intentional as irony, given the only way Red is humanitarian is in regards to his diet (get it), but I can admit now that the name choice was just kind of a blind interpretation of "love between man and god", which would refer to the obsession Red has in terms of Helix.

This isn't the only reason I changed it to Seiren in the reboot, though - you see, I have this friend who streams, and on one stream she happened to say aloud the title of the fic... as "agape", as in the English word for "gaping". This of course made sense in immediate retrospect, as the platform she had seen it on did not allow accents and the title had to simply be Agape. I laughed like hell, but knew I definitely had to change it now. And so came Seiren, which is the Greek word for "siren", the deadly seductresses of myth. This, of course, refers to how Red views Shirlee. I chose the Greek word instead of the English because I didn't want to have yet another misunderstanding, this time with the wee-woo kind of siren, and I'd grown attached to the Greek theme from the previous title.

Moving on to Hunter, Haunted: This one I came up with pretty early and it's somewhat straightforward - Red is a hunter (predator, killer, whatever) and because there is a ghost he is haunted. String them together for a snappy title and there you go. But here's an interesting tidbit: Before settling on that title, the working title was Surreal Killer. And I'm pretty sure it came from a comment in Jacksfilms' Your Grammar Sucks. Very appropriate for a psychological horror drama, yes.

Lightning round for the rest so I don't prattle on forever:

Vivarium - Refers to the enclosure Red finds himself in.

HIM - Refers to special pronoun Red comes up with for HELIX.

Whelp - May be a spoiler for HH? It refers to the birth of the Beast, which is a sort of personification of Red's bloodlust and id. Can also be taken to refer to Red more directly, as he's only 15.

Washed Up and Burnout - Washed Up used to be What the Cat Dragged In, referring to the flareon dragging herself in, and before that it used to be Reprise, referring to how Martyr and Red meet up again after so many years and the latter tries to kill the former again. Washed Up refers to how Martyr "washes up" on the Akai household due to a blizzard, and also to the infamous SINK scene. Burnout is fire word + preposition to contrast Washed Up's water word + preposition, and you could definitely say Martyr is burnt out mentally from all the stress.

Barricade - Both the name of the Shadow Aggron protagonist and a reference to how "the door to their heart" is forced shut. You'll see when I (hopefully) finish up the revision soon and post here.

Dragony - Dragon + agony! The perfect name for Keith's angst over not being a dragon.

Pletora's Story - For the life of me, I couldn't come up with a better title. It's just a story whose protagonist is named Pletora.

Mail for Welltown - There is mail and it is for Welltown. I was under a time constraint.

Think that's all of the big ones! There are more stories I've written, but they're either outdated or uninteresting, and this post is already way too long.

 

[Namohysip]

Titles are things that I don't really put an inordinate amount of time in. I have a little bit of cleverness to it, but I guess I put my efforts into the plot more than what I wrap it in. That being said, I guess I have some reasoning behind the names I give things~

I guess we'll get the big one out of the way first: Hands of Creation refers to... a lot of things. The most obvious one is that I went with the Legend of Zelda style of naming things (pre-Breath of the Wild) where it centralized around an object or person (Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time) and how that object is important to the story as a whole. In this case, Hands of Creation refers to the "thousand arms" used by Arceus to create the universe. I guess for some people, that's a big thing that they don't get until way later in the story, so don't click if you want to figure it out for yourself.

The second meaning, though, is the fact that a lot of the story around HoC revolves around people trying to create and shape things in ways that they want, and what it means to be a "creator" and what that means for their "creations." Be it a world, an ambition, a child... Lots of things. Lots of mistakes.

Okay, so that's the big one. Let's look at the one-shots next. I'm not sure how many of them I posted here (lost track) but...

Lunar - it's centered around Cresselia and Darkrai, so a moon theme was pretty important. That's about it, really.

In Beta - Okay I'm kinda proud about this one. Since it's about Porygon's creation, it's literally... ah you get it.

One Last Game - This was actually a gift fic I wrote featuring two characters from other authors in an AU where they're siblings (two Riolu, so that was easy to arrange.) It refers to the fact that one of them is moving away to bigger and better things, but the little one isn't quite ready for that.

Prayers Unheard - I was going back and forth for a while on this one because I didn't want to spoil the story, but I also didn't want to make it too ambiguous. Since the story centralizes around how prayers from the living become letters sent to the dead, they aren't really heard, they're read! ...I made that up on the spot about five seconds ago. No, the real reason is actually the other way around: the prayers the dead want to send to the living... aren't things that can be delivered. This actually leads to another alternative title I had for this story -- Prayers are One-Way. Doesn't roll off the tongue as easy. Didn't like it.

The Great Dunsparce Apocalypse - It was a silly story that I wrote for April Fools. Like the story itself, I wanted the title to sound both epic and stupid while also going over exactly what was happening in the plot--because it indeed covered an apocalypse in the making.

 

[Starlight Aurate]

Gods and Demons - this is from the opening voiceover of the dub of Princess Mononoke, where Keith David intones the backstory:

Glad someone else loves Princess Mononoke as much as I do! One of my first fics was going to be Princess Mononoke WITH POKEMON but I realized that would be stealing so I quit. lol.

...according to the Bulbapedia page the translation is actually supposed to be "Little cat... or evil?" instead, so perhaps my life has been a lie, that still works more or less but is way less dramatic, damn.

Noooooooooooooo I refuse to believe it. That card made such an impression on my younger self, lol

I like reading all these posts! It fascinates me to see how everyone else thinks of coming up with their titles. For me:

Drowning: probably my only title with multiple meanings; the fic is about a Team Aqua grunt, so I wanted a water-based title; she finds herself figuratively and literally drowning at multiple points in the story from working with Team Aqua; it also referenced a song by Scary Kids Scaring Kids under the same title name about people "drowning in fear," so I thought it fit

Keeping Friends: has to do with a girl growing up through high school listening to her friends talk about moving away and wondering if she'll be able to keep them as friends; also has to do with the parasite antagonist LITERALLY keeping its hosts friends by turning them into dolls and hiding them away; it's a Yu-Gi-Oh! one-shot I posted on Serebii way back when


Stuff I never posted:

Under a Bed of Clover: a trainer's Raticate dies and its grave is under some shamrocks; idk, the phrase just popped into my head one time and I thought it sounded poetic so I decided to use it for an arbitrary bit of information ^_^;

Yuletide of the Ages: I couldn't think of anything else and the people are celebrating Yule

Separate Spheres: It had the Red and Blue Orbs and two peoples' different lifestyles

 

[Umbramatic]

I'm just gonna do my chapterfics:

Rude Awakening: It's. It's a pun. On Fire Emblem Awakening. What more do you want.

Heroes After All: Very loosely derived from a line in the dub of Movie 8 which I kept because figuring out a good title for this one was a massive pain in the ass

Greenhorn Prometheus: The alternate title of the original Frankenstein was "Modern Prometheus" so given this was a Pokemon-ized retelling of Young Frankenstein I wanted a suitable play on that; would have been "postmodern prometheus" but that's an X-Files episode whoops

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Tales Of Arrival: mainly picked to sound like how an actual PMD x Tales Of crossover's title would probably sound; think Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE (go play that game it's great and is on Switch now)

 

[WildBoots]

Oh god, I spend way too much time thinking about titles for chapters, etc. But it's fun, so no harm done.

Spring - I'm sure it's had many other names before, but I could not even begin to recall. None of them were good. The main reason for the title is the first chapter, where the protagonist finds a girl in the snow...and when he moves her, there's grass under her. There are also references to Persephone from Greek mythology in the 3 section titles.

Continental Divides - has also had many names in the past. (Out of Hand was one. Also Tides and Precipice, which still tickles my fancy but breaks tone. ) This story deals with the Aqua/Magma conflict, so it’s definitely a divided country. A continental divide is the line that marks how rivers drain water not different seas: on one side of the line, they all flow to one place, and on the other side they flow someplace else. I liked that the phrase evokes both water and mountains (the continental divide in the Americas runs down the Rockies and the Andes), and it also reminds me of carving up pieces of the country between warring factions.

 

[Pen]

Story titles are funny. I find they either come first or last--either the seed from which the whole story springs, or an agonized deliberation when I'm ready to post.

The Peak -- This story, in its first incarnation, many years ago, was called Waterloo, because it begins with Hunter J meeting a battle she can't win. Once the story became more about what happens after, it took me a while to settle on a name. I chose 'The Peak' because the peak of Mount Silver is where most of the action takes place, and it has a lot of resonances in the story. The peak is the place where you can look out over your whole life, and decide what you want to change.

The Suicune's Choice -- For the longest time this story sat in my drive as Route 119. It's called The Suicune's Choice because it's about a boy who makes a choice, that he wouldn't have made if not for the fact that in some deep, fundamental place, he does believe in Suicune. What the Suicune's choice really means, and how it should influence his own choices, is what he has to figure out afterwards.

Making It Big -- The phrase just has a directness that fits the voice of the main character. It's also easy to say and harder to do, which is sort of the point.

Fiddlehead -- Definitely one of my weirdest titles! The story is about an alakazam and his human, Fern, who is chronically ill. Fiddleheads are harvested young and the whole thing struck me as vaguely poignant.

Freezing Point -- The title came before the story with this one. It's about someone literally reaching freezing point as they metaphorically have to open themselves up to the warmth in their life. With bonus vengeful winter god.

Out in the Open -- Pretty simple double-meaning. An error (or is it) in the pokeball system releases pokemon out into the open. In the process, the coercive nature of the system is exposed.

That's probably enough for now . . . 😅

 

[K_S]

As normally theres no method or rationlaity to my titles, (I usually just number/sequence things until I get bored and flip though a dictionary or something...) I've got one 'mon story that I did deliberate on the name:

Two paths to one end:

The title actually had to deal with a plot point that I dropped out of the outline as the story progressed and it became too unfeasible to stitch back in. In short terms, the two protagonists were meant to split paths and literally met at the end having two different experiences and dealing with the antagonist at that point as a team. It... wound up happening, the split, but their reunion and methods never meshed. The original moral -of their circumstance overcoming their moral differences- got subverted, hard. They both had to work morally on things or their circumstances and proximity were pointless. I cut the ending, kept the work title since I liked how it sounded, and wound up with a supporting character dealing with the main threat by deceit rather than conflict...

And merrily burned the rest of the outline, because wow, that didn't work in the slightest.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

I'll warn now that I haven't really got any big-brain reasons for my titles; they're kind of just... slapped together on a whim. Just like my username.

Do Psychic-Type Pokemon Dream of Electric Sheep? - For some reason, the title "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the novella that inspired Blade Runner) always stood out to me. When I began writing DPTPDoES, one of the things I knew I didn't want to do was go with a stock "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: X Y Z" title. I also wanted a long-winded, pretentious title, because Espurr is a long-winded, somewhat pretentious character. And Apmharos, one of the main players in the story, is an electric sheep... It kind of clicked together and I used it as a placeholder title. And then never switched out the placeholder.

Pocket Monsters - Cooler, more "mature" spelling of Pokemon. That's literally it

 

[cynsh]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Fractured Elements - obligatory PMD prefix. Fractured Elements because the biggest conflict driving the story is the chaotic weather that's happening. Lots of people have said they like this name, but for me looking back on it (it's been ~3 years since I started uploading it) I find it way too 'on the nose'. And 'Fractured Elements' just sounds a bit... edgy. And the story is as much character driven as it is by weather events anyway. >_<

Fighting Nature - much better! Most obviously it refers to the fact that Pokemon have an innate tendency to fight, which is a major theme of the story. There's also the fact that Pokemon have slowly had this tendency ground out of them through generations of fighting being banned - this is fighting their natures. And, with the fight society that gets set up by the main characters, this fights against the government's natural order of things!

 

[BossCar]

The main character became aloof, bitter, distrustful, and mostly a loner as a result of war, hence The Price of War.