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Post by JTB on Aug 5, 2009 21:18:03 GMT -5
...what would you name them? For instance, instead of The Reptile Room, I'd rename it The Ruthless Return. (It doesn't have to have the same alliteration letters.)
My series:
The Bad Beginning
The Ruthless Return
The Lousy Lake
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator (I'm working on this one)
The Forlorn Fowls
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Miserable Mountain
The Wretched Waters, The Sickening Submarine, or The Ominous Oceans
The Gruesome Gathering
The Infernal Island, The Great Unknown, The End, The Terrible Tree, The Sorrowful Snake, or The Cruel Conclusion
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Post by Dante on Aug 8, 2009 3:32:22 GMT -5
I've sometimes wondered what the books would be titled if they didn't obey their usual titling pattern - that is, if they were named as if they were any other book. I imagine that it would be extremely tempting to give them all titles of the type "The [X]" - "The Fire," "The Village," etc. These would probably strongly resemble what we actually got, but with fewer adjectives. I suppose one is left with a choice between identifying the crucial element of the book for a title - "The Man With Three Eyes," or some such - or going for something arty that resembles a sentence from the book itself. "A Bittersweet Reminisce."
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Post by Tiago James Squalor on Sept 17, 2009 11:09:37 GMT -5
I've got a few names for some of the books, not all of them.
The Bad Beginning - xxx
The Reptile Room - The Sneaky Snake
The Wide Window - The Horrid Hurricane
The Miserable Mill - xxx
The Austere Academy - The Skewering School
The Ersatz Elevator - The Shadowy Shaft or The Pitchblack Passage
The Vile Village - The Terrible Town
The Hostile Hospital - The Critical Clinic
The Carnivorous Carnival - The Sinister Sideshow or The Fearsome Freakshow
The Slippery Slope - The Perilous Peaks
The Grim Grotto - The Dank Depths or The Ominous Ocean
The Penultimate Peril - The Ruthless Reunion
The End - The Ruthless Revelation
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Post by Dante on Sept 17, 2009 11:45:06 GMT -5
It occurs to me only now to mention that The End itself feels like a renaming from a "true" title which we (obviously) do not know.
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Post by Tiago James Squalor on Sept 18, 2009 18:09:09 GMT -5
It's interesting indeed, because 'The End' abruptly ends the series, and it abruptly ends the alliterating titles, in an unexpected turn of events.I've only read up to THH so far, unfortunately.
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Post by Dante on Nov 20, 2011 14:03:36 GMT -5
Unashamedly bumping this because it's a good thread, and also because I have the authority to do this, because you know I'll actually provide real content.
I was thinking about this very issue today and wondering if any more people had other ideas on fresh titles for the books - or even the series. "The Mystery of V.F.D." might be a good title for the series as a whole, for instance. It's also worth bearing in mind that TBB was originally titled The Miserable Marriage, and they thought about retitling TRR as The Good Guardian.
I was also thinking that we could come up with provisional titles for the remainder of the paperback series (a game I'm sure we've played before) - we have Orphans!, Murder! and Disappearance!, and we know that Hypnotism! and Kidnapping! were planned. What other one-word melodramatic titles could we give to TEE and the books after it? Here are my thoughts:
TEE: Darkness!
TVV: Imprisonment!
THH: Surgery!
TCC: Freaks! or Disguises!
TSS: Traps!
TGG: Poison! or Betrayal!
TPP: Arson!
The End: Castaways!
What does everyone else think?
Reason for Editing: Only just noticed the coding error.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 20, 2011 15:17:43 GMT -5
I was thinking about this very issue today and wondering if any more people had other ideas on fresh titles for the books - or even the series. "The Mystery of V.F.D." might be a good title for the series as a whole, for instance. Renaming the series to something less of a mouthful sounds appealing. The particular title you suggested would probably be more appropriate if V.F.D. was introduced earlier on, though; that is, if there were more acknowledgements of the overarching plot at the beginning of the series. TEE: Trickery!TVV: Tyranny! THH: Anesthetic!TCC: Abuse! or Lions!TSS: Ambush! TGG: Treachery!TPP: Corruption!TE: Shipwreck!Similarly, I've thought before that renaming certain chapters in ASOUE would be an interesting exercise (For example: TBB, Chapter One: The Alarming Announcement.) |
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Post by Abeja on Nov 20, 2011 16:17:26 GMT -5
I wrote something like this in my notebook a while ago....let me go dig it out....
Here:
TEE: Deception
TVV- Rules
THH- Arson
TCC- Eaten
TSS- Climb
TGG- Betrayal
TPP- Secrets
TE- Conclusion
@sherry Ann, I love your idea of naming the chapters, I always thought the ASOUE chapters would've been better if they were titled.
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Post by Dante on Nov 20, 2011 16:54:55 GMT -5
Naming ASoUE chapters would either be a very easy or a very difficult exercise; after all, there's a highly predictable number of chapters in each book, but the large number of chapters in books which tend to have chapter titles makes it easier to give them throwaway titles. In ASoUE, they'd all have to be relevant. By the time you got to the one hundred and seventieth chapter, you would very likely have run out of good adjectives.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 20, 2011 17:05:18 GMT -5
They wouldn't all have to be alliterations, though; that was just an example. My thought was that by naming them the books would gain ... well, the best way I can think to explain it is "mock sophistication." Not unlike Snicket's "a word which here means ..." lines.
It's interesting how some of these titles are duplicated - "Betrayal" in particular.
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Post by Hermes on Nov 21, 2011 9:55:07 GMT -5
I was thinking about this very issue today and wondering if any more people had other ideas on fresh titles for the books - or even the series. "The Mystery of V.F.D." might be a good title for the series as a whole, for instance. Renaming the series to something less of a mouthful sounds appealing. The particular title you suggested would probably be more appropriate if V.F.D. was introduced earlier on, though; that is, if there were more acknowledgements of the overarching plot at the beginning of the series. It would also put a bit too much focus on the mystery, making people even more upset than they actually were when the mystery isn't solved at the end. (To an extent it is solved, but the solution, to the extent we get it, comes in book 10 or thereabouts. After that the focus moves to the large and mysterious world.) |
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Post by bryan on Nov 22, 2011 16:51:14 GMT -5
One book that I would actually like to be re-named is The Wide Window. I wonder why they didn't go for the obvious and just name it after the lake, as it's a much bigger part of the story then the window is.
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Post by Dante on Nov 22, 2011 17:06:26 GMT -5
It's not even as if L was ever taken by another book, either. Yes, TWW's title is a bit of an anomaly; the window doesn't feature heavily in the plot, it isn't even dwelt upon or of great thematic significance. Curdled Cave is barely less significant. I guess it's partly that the series hadn't gotten into its stride? TRR's title is also a little bit out-of-place against the near-universal formula of The [negative adjective] [location]. I guess if it were me, I'd rather change TWW to fit the window in more, than change the title, for some reason.
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Post by Sora on Nov 23, 2011 2:13:29 GMT -5
My Retitling.
1. Death.
2. Murder.
3. Suicide.
4. Duel.
5. Punishment.
6. Torture
7. Kidnapping
8. Decapitation.
9. Mauling.
10. Arson.
11. Drowning.
12. Revenge.
13. Adulthood.
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Post by Dante on Nov 23, 2011 3:26:23 GMT -5
I'd really like to hear your reasoning for some of those, Sora. I'm rather curious about Torture and Drowning in particular.
Does anyone have ideas for non-paperback-styled titles, though? A lot of books are titled after quotations from particularly thematically-relevant portions of dialogue. TPP could be Smoke and Mirrors, for example. The End could be Rocking the Boat, although that might give the wrong impression; it could also be either Tree of Knowledge or Tree of Life.
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