The story behind your story's name?

[Cresselia92]

Well, I guess I can dump the reasoning behind the various names of my stories.

SWAP — This is literally meant to evoke the main theme of my oneshot: two Ninetales end up trading places, so they literally swap.

Finding Mahoun — Now this is a bit more interesting, namely for one reason: Mahoun is the anagram of “human” with an extra “o”, arranged in a way to evoke a foreign term. And “finding”, well, it’s the entire quest of Tiny Fang to meet a Mahoun.

Fl4k3s — Honestly, just open the vocabulary for “flakes” for this one: “A flake is a tiny piece of something. A flake could be a tasty morsel like a croissant flake”.

And flakes are a recurring theme: they symbolize the cornflakes (#831\1’s favorite food), they symbolize the glitches (which flake off) and symbolize the roles of the NPCs of the games (which are nothing more than tiny pieces of a big something).

The Meaning of Ambition - “Nobunaga’s Ambition” vs N’s ambition vs “Ghetsis’ Ambitions”. This story is about the confrontation of the two main characters to understand what “ambition” truly is and what that does entail.

The Meaning of Power — To be fair, it got the title “The Meaning of…” because it was supposed to be a sister project of Ambition, but ended up dethroning the other story and becoming muuuch bigger and, ironically enough, ambitious.

Anyway, why “power”? Well, the titular character is Silver, who always aimed to become the strongest Trainer in the world and to gain more power. However, “power” has so many meanings — what “power” does Silver truly seek? Is that what he truly needs? What will happen once he gains “power”?

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Delta Dossiers — The PMD part is self-explanatory, “Delta” is the name of the continent and “Dossiers” is related to cases, mysteries and crimes.

 

[Bluwiikoon]

pcb0000 - It's a PC Box! 0000 is the default or null state. It was kind of a placeholder name, but in a way it evokes the feelings it needs to. You can tell from a glance that it's a kind of meta-narrative or technical story.

Go!Go! PokéCure Warriors! - It's a reference to the Precure (or Pretty Cure) series! It's several different anime seasons where magical girls fight for love and happiness and peace. Sometimes there's even despair, too! 😄 PokéCure is a mash-up of Pokémon and Precure.

 

[LiquidMadMan]

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon - Wildcard: I chose the name Wildcard for quite a few reasons. One, the main character is adept at card and parlor tricks, and often uses them in various situations throughout the story. A Wildcard is also often referred to as the "Joker" card in classic playing card decks. Two, the main character starts and becomes the leader of Team Wildcard. And three, perhaps most important of all, is the fact that the term "Wildcard" is indicative of the main character as a whole and the team he ends up leading. He's a true Wildcard in the world of the story.

The definition of Wildcard is; an unknown or unpredictable factor. (According to Merriam-Webster)

The main character starts off as an outsider of the story's primary setting, even though all signs are pointing to him winding up there in order to fulfill his goals. Once he ventures there he becomes an unpredictable and unforeseen variable in the eyes of many characters and factions, and this inevitably leads to him stirring things up and upsetting the balance of power that was there before. He basically comes in and makes change happen, whether intentionally or unintentionally and for better or worse. There are many aspects to how exactly he induces change in this environment, but I won't spoil the story for you!

I'm pretty happy with the title, as it seems simple on the surface but has a lot of different meanings and layers to it that become more apparent the longer you read the story.

 

[Equitial]

I don't have much to say except that I'm terrible with titles and I was *very* close to just calling my fic two kids lost in a cave

 

[Flyg0n]

Legendary Adventures is pretty straight forward. There are Legendaries and it strongly features adventures! Fun fact though, it used to be called New Horizons. because... idk. It was about discovering things I think.

I settled on Legendary Adventures after I decided I wanted something that felt reminiscent of the anime, and better represented the point and vibe of the fic.

Home is Where the Hoenn is is just... based off a pun/play on words? I love the Hoenn region so much and it just came up by accident on the discord. It loosely fits with some of the themes though, thankfully enough!

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Obsession--it's about an obsession so ferocious that our dear "hero" can no longer recognize the world outside the small one he's built. It consumes him and drives away all sense and rationality.

In Vino Veritas--"In wine, there is life", with a bottle of wine from Lusamine's honeymoon being perhaps her last remnant of stability.

Walls--Po Town and Guzma himself are both very guarded, with very powerful walls of their own.

Life Is Not Ice Cream And Chansey Dances--Mitsumi's life has great and whimsical things in it, but just having great things in your life doesn't make you happy.

If I Ever Lose My Faith In You--is from a song. Both Morty and Eusine have a religious bent to them, but they also have faith in each other.

Figurehead--a figurehead in this context is a puppet ruler, someone who likely has no idea that they're being manipulated. Exactly what King N's role is.

Answering Machine--All we hear from Lysandre in this fic is the same line from his machine as Sycamore tries over the course of the game to reach him.

Solar System--It's a Galactic fic. Duh.

 

[Yodakage Kira]

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Frontier Justice - I was always a fan of old western styled justice, the tone they took and the buildup to the confrontations always intrigued me. So I decided to attempt to make a fic like that, but have it be in a PMD setting.

The Shattered Sword - I love swords, and I also really love metaphors. To quote my fic "Swords are esteemed weapons, they can be used to fight for justice and self-defense. But like anything, they can also be used to fight against those very ideals. But the sword itself is neutral, is it not? The sword is an inanimate object, unable to have feelings or a soul. The same cannot be said about people or Pokémon."

Resolute Light - All I did was take a fancy word for being determined and unwavering and stuck "Light" at the end of it because its a Destiny/Pokémon crossover damn it.

The Intruders - With this fic, Pokémon are appearing randomly all over the globe and the SCP foundation has to deal with every single one. So I just Occam Razor'd the name, something mysterious yet simple for people to grasp onto.

 

[Homestar!]

The Loser: Mike's a LOSER The story focuses on Mike, a 23-year-old who wants to lose weight. He decides the 'best' way to do so is to go do the "trainer thing," which he never did as a kid. Along the way, he runs a blog/vlog where he posts about his successes, failures, and other silly things concerning his training journey. He calls this blog "The Loser Project."

Spoiler: Act I Finale

After suffering a televised defeat at the hands of Skyla, he has a breakdown. This shatters his image, and people start finding out about his backstory and blog. The title "The Loser" is thrust upon him, much to his initial chagrin.

Spoiler: Act II

A medium-ish therapy and medication arc later, Mike returns to the spotlight. Unable to shake the title of "The Loser," he instead decides to embrace it. He dons a jacket and starts to offer out white tally marks to anyone who can beat him. As he loses, he collects their signatures on the tally marks, which he then attaches to his jacket.

Professional training, and the personas/characters that those trainers develop, plays a large part in Acts II and III. Mike, who falls into this world almost accidentally, falls into his persona in much the same way.

The 35th Annual Hunger League: I just wanted it to sound official.

The Odyssey of Mike: This fic is dead. I initially had the MC (named Mike) going on one hell of a journey, criss-crossing the four "Japanese" regions - primarily Kanto - in a long coming-of-age story focusing on a character who is already a champion when the story starts.

 

[Sinderella]

White Swan, Black Swan is more or less a title that’s meant to “make fun” of the fact the main character’s name is Odette. I have “make fun” in quotes because there is quite a little bit of stupid ironic name/theme play happening too that I personally find like 25% clever 😂 But in the end it is more or less trying to poke fun at the MC’s name. If you’ve ever seen the ballet Swan Lake or the old animated movie The Swan Princess, you’d know the main character/white swan’s name is...Odette.

White Swan, Black Swan used to be called “Champ in the Making,” because the original concept for the story was primarily centered around Odette finding her path to glory after facing trauma and falling into the clutches of a crime syndicate. But, the story quickly devolved into something much more dark, political, and occult-y, and “Champ in the Making” started to not really fit the story anymore. Odette finding glory is no longer the main theme—somewhat of a subplot, but most certainly not the focus. The story is now her finding her way out of a dumpster fire of sin she’s completely unaware she’s in until the smoke blows in her face, while coming to terms with her...other half, so to speak.

The apparent two-sidedness to the name White Swan, Black Swan just ended up making more sense. I additionally felt it just fits the overall dark atmosphere the story has. Also HEEHOO ODETTE THE WHITE SWAN LOLOLOL FUNNY FUNNY 😂

 

[Yap#2]

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)

Take payday, take mystery dungeon, slam it together and tadah

 

[Z2H]

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: The Phantasmagoria

It's a bit of a strange word, right? One that you quite never see unless you're reading some intellectuals paper and you do a quick google search for what it means. It's bizarre, which I why I chose it for the name of my story. It encapsulates the main threat of the story: Mystery Dungeons, which are very surreal, strange, and almost alien in nature.


To discuss the true meaning of the word choice in my story would be major spoilers, but exploring it on a surface level would reveal that a phantasmagoria is a series of real or imaginary events, like you're dreaming. Enter a Mystery Dungeon and it is like you're dreaming, filled with shifting terrain, walls made out of trees, rocks, etc.

So what if that dream-like essence could be captured to make... paradise?

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

In general, I name my stories after something related to its fundamental theme or premise. In order of when they were originally published:

Dragonspiral's Children - It's about 3 kids in Icirrus City and a Druddigon from the Dragonspiral Tower area growing up in its shadow. Thus the name. Not here yet, but SOON™ after I'm done rewriting it to be less of an embarrassing mess.

Context Switch - Computing term for the process of storing the state of a process or thread, so that it can be restored and resume execution at a later point. It's a short story about Not!Ruby/Sapphire being developed and fish out of water experiences, so there you go.

Fledglings - It's about a cosmically important babby bird and the inexperienced Rescue Team that bumps into him. Thus "fledglings" operates on a few different levels there.

[NO AUDIO] - It's a story with zero dialogue that's presented as silent surveillance footage from a gas station. The title is just exactly what it says on the tin with regards to the premise, and is formatted as text you might see on the surveillance footage in the corner or something.

Once a Thief - First half of the idiom "once a thief, always a thief". It's an excuse to write about PMD Outlaws doing Outlaw things, hence the title.

 

[Muted_Programmer_404]

The name of my planned story's series, "Shifted Earth" is due to an event that completely uproots Earth - the appearance of Pokemon on a world that had never encountered them except as fiction. It deals with small personal shifts, but some larger ones too.

My first story doesn;t exactly have a title yet. But, it deals with resentment, fear of change, and denial of the events in one's life. In my first story in the series, Jackie for example cannot accept that his attempt to attack a Pichu by strangling it to near-death was wrong. He saw it's use of Thunder Shock as an attack on himself and his son, despite it being an accident on the Pichu's part. Currently, he now pays for his action by being crippled and unable to walk without the aid of a crutch. With this, he habours anti-Pokemon views and believes them to be nothing but monsters.

The Pichu's truamatic experience at such a young age has left it distrustful of humans as a whole.

 

[MikaelBrigman]

I read a book about religious metaphors and a shepherd seeing God, and I intended to include a lot of the same themes, so I called it The Alchemist. I can't remember what it was called before that, because the doc was untitled for a good while before that, but the name stuck and I forgot to quote the original book like I intended. Oops.

 

[Katanaeyegaming]

Darkheart Era: My original and main fic got it's name from a story known as A Sound In Permafrost a popular original fiction from around the time I released Darkheart Era. The Darkheart is a legendary evil sword that inherits the soul. It is also known for making the person wielding it go on a rampage. It's that second aspect that plays deeply into the name of Darkheart Era.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

The Objective Truth of the Universe is a line in the story, where Cogita tells Volo he isn't...well, the title line. It took me a *very* long time to name that fic. The whole time I was writing it, it was just "volocogita.txt", and it wasn't until it was time to post it that I had to hurry and decide on a name.

 

[Joshthewriter]

Journey - it’s a journeyfic lol. Also, it’s a personal journey of discovery. The title is generic AF, but I think it fits too well to change. I originally considered “Death in Duty”, but considered that too edgy. Working title was “Warpath”

Salvation - The “Salvation” of humanity is a massive part of the fic and the delusions of the main villain led to this title. Was originally “Shattered Thrones”, but I figured that was too generic-fantasy-like.

The Champions - A group of powerful trainers forms the titular group. It follows this group (two members in particular). Alternate choices were “Shades of Grey” (rejected for obvious reasons lol), and “The Real Heroes” (but I thought that was too light of a title for the fic).

Pokemon: Legends Sinjoh - I flip-flopped between this, “Legends Johto”, “Collapse”, and “A Broken Mirror”. I think Sinjoh works best and let’s me play around with the history of Sinjoh/ancient Johto/Kanto as much as I want. The other titles make it more about the multiverse stuff.

Chosen? - Fic follows Morty through the years as he ponders the question… What if he isn’t special? What if he wasn’t chosen? This has never had any other working title.

Eternal War - I flip-flopped between this and “An Endless Feud”. I think the one I chose works better. Working title was “The Farmer and the Zangoose”

A Second Chance - This was one of the hardest choices. I had half a dozen titles “The Voice of the Forest”, “The Forest Spirit”, “The Fey of Ilex Forest”. A Second Chance sits better with the events of the fic and the effect on the characters.

Fate’s Design - I never had any other title in mind. What else can humans do against such fearsome power? What can be done when we struggle against fate?

The Visitors - Never had any other title. Deoxys are visitors to the planet. The title is a glorious match.