Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Lori told me about the title meme, though her own response was lost in the ether. I did see Liz and Rocky’s answers. I’ve never had much trouble assigning titles, but most of them fall into a few large, uninteresting categories:

Abstract Nouns: Assimilation, Ambassador, Colony, Hiatus, Lethe, Lurking, Taboo; Ship in a Bottle, Preliminary Debriefings, Home Front, Holodeck Safety Protocols

Concrete Nouns: The Author, The Dance, The Museum; The Bottle of Bajoran Blue Wine: A PADD Story, The Efficiency Expert, A Maquis Holiday; Jade’s Drabble, Mushroom Soup, Beta Energy, Haiku for Anne

Other Fragments: Choose Life, Like This, Logic Dictates, Thrive, Tertiary

Now those are all servicable titles, right up there with real-life titles like The Hobbit and Memory. You don’t find too many artsy, obscure titles on the bookshelves - publishers tend to go with short, strong and memorable. On the other hand, a Trek writer has the example of Shakespearean quotes used for TOS titles and the temptation to reuse good titles from Trek past:

Literary Quotations: To Perish in that Howling Infinite (Moby Dick), Once More Unto the Breach (Henry V), Honey-Dew (Kubla Khan), Video Meliora Proboque (Ovid: “Video meliora proboque; Deteriora sequor” - I see the better way and I approve of it; I follow the worse.), Sans Ailes (Byron: “L’Amitie’ est L’Amour Sans Ailes” - Friendship is Love without his wings!)

Song Quotations: Take it on the Run (REO Speedwagon), The Wrong Emotion (REO Speedwagon), Every Word I Said (REO Speedwagon), A Light Beyond (Art Garfunkle), Than Fade Away (Neil Young), and about 70 filked filk titles which I won’t include here

Episode Names: Mirror, Mirror; Borg Error (a coda to Human Error), Au Naturel (a coda to Natural Law)

The Borg title classification above leaves only a few titles creative (or uncreative) enough to need explaining:

The Dance (Tunkai), one of a ream of Voyager stories called “The Dance.” The title was one of the requirements of the “The Dance” J/C contest for which this story was written. I gave my “The Dance” a subtitle from the story’s linguistic history of Tsunkatse to distinguish it from the other hundred stories of the same title.

The ChetSev Series is a nickname that eventually made it onto the website. JetC stands for Janeway et Chakotay, so I coined “ChetSev” as a joke to stand for Chakotay and Seven. Since it took too long to say “my series of episode additions to C/7 episodes” every time, I ended up making it the official series title.

One Line, Two Dimples was a short response to a challenge to write the same scene two ways, from the producers’ and fans’ perspectives. To TPTB, Robert Beltran has one line and he can’t get it right. To the fans he has…two dimples.

The Lamne’rau is Romulan for “the Borg.”

What’s Left of Her is a relevant Janeway quote from Unimatrix Zero. The story itself is an AU coda to UMZ.

If Ayn Rand Wrote ST:VOY is a response to the If My Aunt from Minnesota wrote Star Trek challenge.

The Unity of the Multiverse is a quote from near the end of the story, but I believe the title came before that section of dialogue. This one is my favorite title, for its techno-poetry.

Marriage is Irrelevant is one of Seven of Nine’s lines in the story. Otherwise, she was not a major character.

DQ Babes in the Mirror-Mirror Universe was intended to be as campy as the title implies, but the muse undermined it in production. I loved the title so I kept it.

Janeway: The Musical! (Filk of La Mancha) was inspired (as a title) by Jim Wright’s review of the episode “Muse,” which he nicknamed, “B’Elanna: The Musical!” The subtitle makes it clearer which musical is being filked.

Seven of Borg is analogous to Locutus of Borg. Seven of Nine is already Borgy, but I needed a title that said “over the top with Borg.”

148 is the number of days that Buffy was dead (the second time). At least one other fic uses that number in the title.

The Silent Movie of the Soul is another Buffy title. I’m pretty sure the story involves an actual silent movie, but the ponderous title style seems more appropriate for Buffy fic than Trek.

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