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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

Doing stylized text as a part of emails, IMs, or anything similar would be neat, but definitely something I think I'd want to keep forum themes in mind for because I wouldn't want to choose colors that were obnoxiously bright on lighter themes or colors that were too dark to read on darker themes. Gotta find that balance. I think it'd be fun to try and work with, but I just don't really ever have a reason to outside of RP stuff, and even then, like I said earlier, I only really just bold the text and maybe add one color, nothing too extravagant.

A question I do want to pose to y'all though: what do you guys do for chapter titles? I just started writing a Once Upon a Time fanfiction the other night, and I ended up just putting a placeholder for the title because I just didn't know what to title the chapter. I'm sure I'll come up with something by the time I'm ready to post it, but we'll see. Usually I just come up with something that fits along with what's going to be happening in the chapter. I know what's going to be happening in this chapter, of course, but nothing's coming to me in terms of a title. Hoping this discussion sparks some inspiration with me and gives me a good title, haha.
 
I usually have a rough idea of what's going to happen in a chapter before I write it and come up with the title first, but it's liable to change. I like chapter titles because when I'm re-reading fanfics, it makes it easier to remember what happens in each chapter.

The chapters of The Wayward Butterfly are all named after Pokémon abilities (inspired by another fanfic, where the chapters were all named after moves), but now I'm wondering if someone will think I got the titles from a prompts list. Can we make ability prompts a thing?
 
Since both Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own list character's Japanese and English names in tags, have any of you read a non-Japanese Pokémon fanfic that uses Japanese names? Because I haven't. The closest I can think of is one that called Popplio "Ashimari", but used every other Pokémon's English name.
 
I can't name any, but quite a lot of fics at the start of the decade (2010s) would nickname their Pokemon using its Japanese name, typically those written by anime fans. It was especially egregious when the Japanese names sounded similar to the English ones, such as Rukario/Lucario or Kiruria/Kirlia.

Due to where I've seen it, I tend to associate it with childish authors, but there's nothing wrong with using a naming scheme like that in principle, I guess. Maybe it would make sense if your characters came from a region based on Japan.
 
I can't think of any that I've seen. I know for me personally, I sometimes draw inspiration for nicknames based on the Japanese name, but that's probably about as close as I get; when I'm actually referencing the Pokemon as a species, I use the English name.
 
It was fairly common for a while (and still may be for all I know) to use Japanese names before the English name was revealed. People just couldn't wait to write about new characters and pokémon, I guess. You also do find the occasional author who prefers "Satoshi" to "Ash" for whatever reason and so on.
 
Using Japanese names seems to have largely gone out of fashion. I've seen a couple of stories over the years that use them, but honestly, I don't really see much advantage to doing so. Unless you're an anime fan you're unlikely to use them at all, and so most of the readership isn't going to be familiar with them either
 
At its beginning, the Black Adventures web comic (which is loosely, very loosely based on Black and White) used the Japanese names for Pokémon and Gym Leaders (with the exception of Snivy being "Smugleaf" which was its English nickname at the time). It switched to English names later on, though explained this for the NPCs by having the Japanese names be first names and English ones surnames (maybe vice versa for some, I don't remember).

It's... actually the reason behind the name Red Akai. I wish I'd thought ahead when I was just a little baby in 2015 doing silly comics but here I am now. I think I've managed to come up with a good enough background story for that name, though. The HH sequel will address it... if I ever actually get around to it, that is.
 
I haven't read one, but I have written one! Two reasons: first, because a portion of the backstory involved a bunch of the palm trees on Fisherman's Wharf turning into exeggutor and murdering thousands in San Fran, and I figured it'd be distasteful for in-universe botanists to be "hurr durr these are eggs and they executed a ton of people let's call them exeggutor"; second, because a critical plot twist is that several of these characters actually aren't from this universe, and their use of the English names is the first major indicator that they don't belong.

but yeah, given that neither of those points are revealed until about halfway through, it definitely threw readers off a bit, and for good reason -- it's hard to make the miniboss a lugarugan when everyone who's reading wants to call it lycanroc
 
Oh, now I actually remembered that I named the street Red lives on Koratta Row, from the Japanese name of Rattata, as Japanese is the indigenous language of the region that through one way or another got replaced by whatever the characters are speaking now (that shows itself to us as English). There's also a police Arcanine in HH named Wendy, a corruption of Windie. She's a pretty minor character so I didn't think too much of it.
 
I've never used them myself, though if I ever write using the ultrabeast codenames I might. I like a lot of the Japanese ultrabeast codes better.
 
I've never used them myself, though if I ever write using the ultrabeast codenames I might. I like a lot of the Japanese ultrabeast codes better.
Changing "lightning" to "lighting" is Digimon levels of pointless name-changing. Or Cosmovum to Cosmoem.

I once wondered that if Pokémon say their names, would they say different names depending on where they're from?
 
Well, the pokémon world of the anime is apparently monolingual. Name-vocalisations have always been something of a cringey sticking point for me. I believe pokémon should make proper animal vocalisations or at least something more like their in-game cries.
 
My approach to Pokémon speech is that intelligent Pokémon don't quite sound like their anime voices, but don't quite sound like animal noises either. That suggestion was more of a joke.
 
I'm going to write that.

Also, once I read a fanfic where Pokémon said their names. There was a Porygon-Z who said "Z-Z-Z" (not like snoring, presumably), which bothered me on an irrational level because it sounds like "eh-eh... eh..." in PokéPark. (Incidentally, the only Pokémon who I've ever written saying parts of its name is Porygon2. Think about it...)
 
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