askerian | (no subject)

Um, I'm having the stupidest dilemma.

See, this fic is... well... unashamedly using Gundam Wing characters. But there's no gundams or other mobile suits and their backstories are kind of different, and I wonder if when it's done I could erase out all the GW things and make it entirely oficcy.

Basically I'm wondering if I shouldn't rename them NOW, so as to avoid confusion in my brain with my previous GW fic that also involved werewolves. Also because I want to get rid of unnecessary little details like Duo having an unnatural attachment to his braid, and it would help if readers don't associate the name with "priest kid with braid blahblah sister helen blah". So that's a bit farther from canon than I usually get. And since I don't have that association it would be easier for me to remember to actually add some freakin backstory in this mess, instead of assuming people already know it all, and making it readable to people who don't necessarily know the original canon.

But in the other hand I'm still using GW character personalities. Or at least the bases. And it would be kind of obvious (at least until the eventual rewrite) that it's more or less GW fanfic in disguise, because apart from the fact that Duo's got a ponytail and a three day beard, the physical appearances wouldn't be that different.

Would it come off as kind of fake to use different names?

[Poll #1479194]

The names would be: Tyr Lowe (Tyr being the son of Odin, i r so subtle. no more japanese ancestry btw, it was never even visible on him and he wasn't raised in the culture either), Duane Maxwell (I've got to change Maxwell for ... something not Maxwell. But so far I can't figure out a thing. Maxwell suits him so well. Also it's really easy to bark in an irritated manner >:DDDD), Tracy Bates (so Duane can tease him about the girly name XD not crazy about Bates though. Suggestions? Would like a name that starts with B and that sounds good when used in discussion -- a lot of people don't use his first name), Cameron Gabriel Wright (Probably goes by Gabe, I think), Xiang Yu Wei (I just liked the vowels the most in Wufei's name, so... yeah. XD;)

... Actually i'm gonna type out the story with those names, because I believe it'll help me remember to actually put some backstory and worldbuilding in instead of assuming. But I want to know whether I should switch 'em back when I post, either because it'll throw the readers out or because it seems too much like cheating/fake as if I was trying to pretend I built the characters myself from the ground up. Because the Gboys are very archetypal in a way and I do plan to deepen them and make them evolve a bit, but they're always going to be there at the core.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ohh, I'll add him an E, duane is gonna tease him more than enough as it is, no need to make it worse. :cackles: As for Frances and Francis, it took me a second to even realize they're supposed to be pronounced the same. In french we'd totally ignore the -es of the female name, so the two names seem totally unrelated to me. XD;

I never heard the middle name thing, but bwahaha, it's alright if Duane is so low-class, that's where he comes from. Wouldn't make sense to have him named something too cool, right? >:D (also i like the spelling. Dunno. It feels pretty to me.) I went with Keller as the last name, and then someone promptly pointed out "lol one letter off from killer" which, um, I'm sure he likes the coincidence so let's let him have it. XD; If I spend too long looking for the perfectiest perfect name I'll never write a thing.

Nooo don't shut up.

Are you doing nano this year? I miss your writing.

How do you say "duane" in french, what does your accent make it sound like? Because to my American (Southern) ears, it's a very dull sound, somewhat nasalized. It's halfway there, in that it's single-syllable, but it doesn't have any hard consonants. Like Wayne, it's more of a drawn-out low sound, which may be why I associate it with (and hollywood/TV reinforce this) people who aren't ambitious or even playful, but more low, kinda flat, and all the personality of wet bread dough, to be honest. Compare that to a name like Kip, or Tuck, or Nick, where there's a hard-K, one-syllable, strong sound.

Or just use Keller as his first name. Not sure if you're aware, but one tradition in the South is to name the first-born son after the mother's maiden name, which is how I had classmates named Douglas, Greer, and Leslie (all boys, btw). If you find a surname you like, that's one way to give him an unusual first name by using the surname, and might create some of his backstory hiding in there as well.

Although you could make his real name Duane and give him a nickname, but again, that name is awfully close to Duo, in terms of triggering reminders of original, which still is not so good.

(Btw, note that Duo works as strong name because the -o ending is open-jawed and thus tends to rise a bit before closing off, while the -ane ending on Duane goes from open to closed without variation. Okay, rather mangled way to describe how the sound works in English, ehhheh, but basically "dwayne" and "duane" are not even dipthongs, while "duo" is -- that is, you can hear both vowels in 'duo' while 'duane' is more precisely, vowel-wise, 'dwane'. It's not as strong as ending with consonant, but the dipthong in 'duo' is still a more emphatic sound than the lack of in 'duane'.

Trivia moment: this is where you get into triple and quadruple dipthongs, in which American English is apparently the only dialect in the world that uses them, or so I've been told by linguists. Duo, tripled, becomes something like due-uh-oo, where the first vowel sound is doubled, thus creating the triple. Or, if the accent is really strong, you get four syllables in there, because each vowel in the dipthong is further doubled: due-uh-oo-eh kind of thing. This is why my name, a single syllable hard-consonant name, actually has closer to three syllables and a false dipthong in its one vowel-sound, thanks to crazy Southern backwoods accents. Now! Don't you feel all smart, now?

One other thing to keep in mind: Tyr and Trace -- two hard-T sounds, one-syllable. Those will get confusing for readers pretty fast. I get what you mean about Tracey as a name defining a person's characteristics, but Tyr is an incredibly rare name. You'd end up with readers wondering more about back story than the character, because it'd be distracting at first, so I'd stick with Tracey and look for a non-T alternate for the primary character. Something still unique but maybe not quite so much, or at least not duplicatory with other characters.

(says the person who wrote and now has crystallized the character names of Mark and Spark, AAAUUUGGHHH I will never undo that one. GYAH.)

Nano... I've never actually done Nano, come to think of it. But I have been meaning to write a short story bouncing in my head. Hrmm.

Duane sounds soft and... suave (it *is* an english word too, right?) in French, which I like quite much in fact :p (unlike Kip or Tuck which sounds kind of... not real names or ridiculous ones ; first though would be "poor guys" and "what the parents were thinking??" but the goes too with names like Leslie for boys ^^; Poor guy. School must have been though, or would have been in France) but I'm with you about the maybe-be-too-much-closeness between Duo and Duane...

I like Keller very much, would make a great first name... Might not be easy to find a good surname to go with it, though...? (Or a Keller Mac Something maybe?)

You lost me with the dipthongs ^^; Sounds interesting, though, will re-read that part when I'm less sleepy.

Kip is actually a British nickname; Tuck is short for Tucker. (I think Kip is also a nickname for something, the way Trey is a nickname that indicates the kid is a III, eg John Brown the 3rd.) Those popped into my head first, but there's a variety of short, hard-sounding names: Mike, Mick, Deet (short for Dieter), Erik, Tom, Tate (another surname), Grant, Ken, Cade... I dunno, brain not working so good today.

Perhaps it's just that to American eyes, the name Duane has too many associations with lower-class, ill-educated, lazy drawled-sounding names that aren't sexy at all.

There's a babyname site online, erg, can't remember which one it is now. Babynameworld? Hrm. Whatever, but it's got this marvelous advanced search feature where you can search by number of syllables as well as starting consonant or sound, and ending consonant or sound, along with name's origins or meaning. I'd highly recommend playing with that site.

I've actually known several Kellers. It's a common name in the South, again with the first-name-as-surname. For that reason, you'll see it most often with a common British surname like Williams, Jones, Brown, Smith, etc. (Keller Williams, incidentally, is a really big realty company in the US, so you might want to avoid that combination.)

Dipthongs are when you combine two vowels to create a sound that's neither the first vowel nor the second. The french 'eu' is a dipthong, in that it's not an e-sound and it's not a true u-sound. Adding a w can sometimes create a dipthong, as in 'bawl', where the w changes the a into something more rounded. Every language has dipthongs in there somewhere, though some languages use a whole lotta them and some only use one or two, and other languages further complicate dipthongs (like English does) when you add in accents.

Leslie's a family name of mine, so I have cousins of both genders with that as a first name, too, though I have to say I've always regarded the use of "Les" as a nickname with some distrust. I mean, to basically be calling someone "less"? Sheesh. Then again, I've also known a Gayle (male!) and that was also an old family name, and I'm not sure if that's better or worse than my cousin's inherited name, of Alonzo. I mean, now that is old-fashioned. (No one calls him that. Ever.)

But then again, I almost got named Leroy, and maybe that's a fancy name in french but it's a name that'd get you beaten up during recess if you lived in the US. Snerk.

[kip, tuck: ah, I was thinking of Chip, which is an alternate nickname to Junior -- that is, what you call the younger of two in a family. As in, "chip off the old block". Very much a name associated with American all-around good kids who play touch football and like apple pie, that kind of good clean association. Tuck and Kip are definitely more Brit-names, and Trey is really unusual these days.]

Maybe your low class associations with Duane is a regional thing? Cause I'm from America and I don't have that association. If I really had to put an association with it I would be more of a person that works with their hands. A cow boy, mechanic or something like that.

Though I'm behind on looking at my live journal so this input is probably all a moot point.