Names are hard

Am trying to find names for the human form avatar that first meets people on their way in to the matrix.
( Read more... )

I don't know, I'm not inspired. He's a bit protean to actually name.
I should probably not worry about naming him unless I actually write this stuff.


Have also been trying to name the planet. It has names of its own, but it has a bazillion of them, all the different characters have their own version. Thousands of years, tons of different languages, they call it different things.

I've been thinking they don't have the same alive/dead/inert distinction we do. Like, they look at a lump of rock and think of it as dead, because they don't have a category that would put it outside of the dead-alive cycle. Life transforms into other life until it goes wrong, and then it's dead.
So to them, their planet isn't earth or water, it's a living ecosystem. ( Read more... )

Ecosphere is a good word. I like the sound. It's not all religion and evocative, but it's an idea that covers how they think of their world.
... it is also trademarked. I probably need a different word then.


I also need a catchy name for the series. I'm tagging everything Rhodri because that's nice and searchable, but it isn't specifically about him. ( Read more... )

Okay, to figure out the distinctive features that need to be conveyed by the name, actual story must be written.

So these are three names I need to make story on before I'll know what shape they need to be, and it don't matter much until I've got story.

That was a productive hour of pondering there then.

No seriously, have all the names been used?

I'm still thinking of what to name SF series. I thought maybe 'Offworld', because offworlders is one of the most consistent words I use for humans of another planet. But there's a film on imdb called Offworld.

I like the word cause it sounds like a world where something's off. Without being, like, Weirdworld, where it's waving its weird flag.

So anyways, I'm looking at lists of names of TV shows on wiki and stuff, and I'm wondering if there's any left.

Also I'm wondering how there is so much science fiction I don't got yet.


I suppose there's worldgate, which is another word for stargate that isn't so far as I know trademarked.
It feels like it'd be on borrow anyway, cause it was in young wizards books.
But there's only the one world to gate to, which is a bit rubbish if you're going to emphasise the gate bit.

Really you can get all the stories ever out of just one completely new planet. It's not like this planet has run out yet. You just go somewhere that's like an alternate history with a tech path that went variant after the stone age, and suddenly there's all the stories all over again in new suits.



In other news today I have been being very productive by reading GURPS rule books and finding out which ideas I had would be too character point expensive to do without a ton of modifiers, and also why some weapon choices make more sense than others when arachnofiber ballistic armour is pretty much standard. It's new and interesting cause I never play a hitting things character. Actually I never play a character any more, it requires knowing people and being invited to games and stuff. But now I know how the weapons rules work a bit better. I like learning rules, especially when there's absolutely no penalty for getting them wrong. It's just a lovely tidy organised system with none of this confusing stuff in it.

I was going to type other stuff in here but it fell out.
Okay, back to the rule books :-)