Rank (Your Own) Thread Titles

[MethodicalSlacker]

Based on a passing whim in the discord chat, rank the thread titles you've come up with and subsequently used for a thread, here. dont rank other people's thread titles though that's their job, unless they give you permission, but that'd probably be a different thread altogether, maybe for the critique section

anyway yeah that's what it is go for it

[Cactus]

Okay, let's g-

... I've been on this site for fifteen years, there's literally no way.

[dmboogie]

not counting pregame because i dont really care and this will be long enough as is, this also includes my mini cast. presented with a little commentary and some trivia

[+] eh

45. Wish I Had a Chance, Here
I was really into steampunk shit when I wrote V5 Alice. I’m no longer into steampunk. I wanted to have a thread naming gimmick where all her threads were named “Wish I…” after lyrics in an Abney Park song, but I didn’t commit and I didn’t name most of her threads anyways. Two thread names don’t make a pattern and on its own it’s just kind of bad.

44. A Safe Rest
V5 Alice. Boring and on-the-nose steampunk name from a song I don’t really like anymore.

43. Hello, Goodbye, Twas Nice to Know You
V5 Alice. Okay I still like Steam Powered Giraffe and I still love Honeybee. I wasted this name on a nothing thread, oh well.

42. Determination
Harold Porter’s opening monologue. I can’t remember when V6 started in relation to Undertale coming out but I totally just named this after like, the concept of Undertale I guess. I’m not really a one-word thread title guy but I think it’s fine.

41. Zoom, Kick, Persuasion, Tech
Anzu. This is a phrase that worms its way into my head even in the present day but it like. Doesn’t mean anything in the context of Anzu or SOTF. I just couldn’t fight the Zoom, Kick, Persuasion, Tech mantra, man.

40. Time steals us all away one day, does it not?
Asha. Ehhh this one’s kinda unwieldy. It fits the vibes of the thread, and it’s from a song I was obsessed with at the time, but it’s just not snappy. I think the ‘does it not?’ is what kills the flow there.

39. This Is Not My Country, This Is Not What I Believe
Harold’s death thread. I like the vibe of the song for him but the first half of it just kinda strikes me as over-literal removed from its context. Yes Harold the island isn’t your country, you’re from the United States, you are no longer in the US, get over it.

38. I Know in Darkness, I Will Find You (Giving Up Inside Like Me)
Alexander’s death thread. Further is a fucking goldmine for thread titles and I probably could have picked something better. “The Sun Was Born, So It Shall Die” was Revo Alexander’s death thread and I honestly should have stuck with that I think; this would’ve been a better title for a different scene.

[+] alright

37. The Keeper of the Inside
SC2 Daniel’s first thread. I find it kinda funny how melodramatic this title is when it just means “Daniel was alone in a building for a day” but whatever. His SC2 naming convention was just metal songs I liked.

36. Wish I Could Breathe
V5 Alice’s first thread. I know I talked a lotta shit about the naming pattern but this was the first one, so that falling apart ain’t its sin, and I think it works well on its own.

35. I Was Once Alive
Oh shit this is the first thread I ever named after mewithoutYou!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!! Back before my obsession with the band entered its full bloom. Memories… anyways the actual meaning of this song doesn’t really fit the scene or Michael, I just liked the way this line sounded.

34. I Never Said That I Was Brave
SC2 Alice death thread. A mewithoutYou reference that is simultaneously a Leonard Cohen reference and I think that’s pretty neat. Doesn’t really fit the thread in hindsight, especially the climax. Probably coulda leaned into that more.

33. They Stumbled Into Faith and Thought
Cass. I waited for years (probably) to get an island that had a church so I could use a variation of this thread title. Kinda silly but I’m glad I was able to use it.

32. swear i heard the angels cry, pray to god no more may die
SC2 Daniel. I’m noticing now that I arbitrarily shifted his thread titles to lowercase and that annoys me a little, but I’d been wanting to use this Iron Maiden lyric for ages. War is hell, dying in a battle royale is hell, the vibe :™: fits.

31. some day we may come to peace with the world within ourselves
SC2 Daniel. Kinda surprised this is my only Kamelot title, but I think this is just real pretty sentiment, and it was a real touching thread if you ignore the attempted murder. Good vibes.

30. A Pity Sight for the Magpie
SC2 Daniel. Boy was he pitiful! Not much else to say here.

29. We Know Who Our Enemies Are
SC2 Alice. I was really obsessed with mewithoutYou’s first album at the time, I hadn’t been able to get into it before because it’s way rougher than any of their later work, but it finally clicked for me right around SC2. Anyways there’s an instrumental break in this song that I thought of as basically Alice’s entire vibe - trying to be cool and collected but just, having a storm of inner turmoil and shit going on around her.

28. A Failure Played in Stereo
Anzu. Mindless Self Indulgence was one of my key moods for her and this particular song really captures the feeling of “you worthless fuckup.” Let’s just ignore the actual thread it’s in...

[+] pretty good imo

27. Bitch Please (In Memoriam)
Erik. A pregame exception just because I think a thread title commemorating a short-lived mibbit channel was a funny idea.

26. I Am A Hero
Michael. Why did I name this after a whole-ass manga? Who knows but it’s about a pathetic loser who isn’t really a hero at all, so, it fits with Michael’s whole deal.

25. Rivers of Sadness and Mutual Need
Cass, mewithoutYou, a winning combination. Also the title kinda tells you everything you need to know about what happens in the thread lmao.

24. Repeating, Repeating, I'm Dying, I'm Breathing
Cass. Like a lot about Cass, all I can say for this title is: big mood.

23. ...And in Her Self-Loathing and Despair, She Found Wrath
Anzu. Named after a fuckin’ Overclocked Remix version of a Chrono Trigger song, of all things. I’d call it on-the-nose but like, that’s Anzu, right there.

22. well it would've been, could've been worse than you'd ever know
A kinda funny name for a panic oneshot I wrote because I would’ve written myself into a corner if the woods had somehow turned into a fucking danger zone on day two.

21. The Heavy Weapons Guy
Michael’s first thread, a rare specimen that isn’t named after a song. It’s fitting and funny because the man had an automatic shotgun. An automatic shotgun. An automatic shotgun. A fucking automatic shotgun.

20. There ain't no more cowboys, only men with violent hearts
wherein: V5 Daniel is anticlimactically headshot by Hansel. Is it on the nose? Yes. Is it from a cheesy gamer song about Red Dead redemption? Yes. Am I still very fond of it? Yes.

19. Only Love is With Us Now, Something Warm and Pure
A pregame exception for Cass just because conceptually I find it hilarious to take a line from fucking Sundowner’s boss theme out of context and making it seem like something wholesome and pretty.

Fun fact: this oneshot was a mirror of one I wrote for Cass’s original PAHL version, named “Oh How Pretty, All the Scenery.” The events are mostly the same but I flipped some of the details: in the PAHL version, they’re painting someone in a mansion at bougie party having the time of his life, but there’s a barely-visible assassin seen through the window. In the V6 version, the assassin is the focus, with the mansion in the background instead.

It isn’t really that deep beyond me wanting to have some fun with alternate timelines or w/e but I wanted to go into it because the revo boards are dead and I’m literally the only one who knows what I did there.

18. nine times out of ten our hearts just get dissolved
:(

17. before the day is done, my prince is gonna come
Sorry Chris, your prince never came. The title inspired some Cass jokes and the thought of those two interacting made me smile. (mewithoutYou)

16. The World's an Ugly Place, but I'm Still Afraid to Die
Cass, a thread where they run into Isabel. Another mewithoutYou. What can I say except big mood even if it’s very on the nose?

15. Maybe You're a Joker, Maybe You Deserve to Die
Michael. Soldier Side is one of my favorite SOAD songs and a big mood for my favorite hatted dude. Watch out ahead for a callback.

14. At the End of Days, at the End of Time
Alexander. Absolutely everything went wrong in this thread so I think it’s fitting, also we stan Further here.

13. we took all that we could carry but we tried to carry more
Abe has 1000 oneshots and it’s only partially because I like naming threads, I swear. Anyways this was from King Rat itself and this specific line is just, Abe. It’s him.

12. survive, said the prophet! the people were ASTONISHED at his doctrine
A thread title with a whole-ass band in it. Why? I dunno it seemed like a good idea at a time to mash that up with a meme. “survive said the prophet” is one of the most evocative band names I’ve ever heard, had to pay it some respect.

11. and the wind died, too
Anzu. Desolate title from a desolate song for a desolate thread.

[+] top tier

10. It's Bad. We're Hit, Man, We Are Hit.
Anzu. When Scarlet Devil Mansion had its first casualty, and soon after its second. It’s a descriptive title and the song itself perfectly captures how fucked up the thread gets.

9. we found shelter in the woods and found savage acts hilarious
It bothers me how “shelter” is repeated twice here but like, that’s how the song goes. It’s just an evocative-ass title that fits SOTF as a whole perfectly imo.

8. the assassination of abraham watanabe by the coward abraham watanabe
Confession: I’m a poser and I haven’t seen the movie this title is riffing on. I think it’s just a really fun title okay? Maybe someday it’s just, like, I don’t watch movies ever in general, really, y’know?

7. king rat, the hit song by the indie rock sensation modest mouse
I was debating making this title even longer and more banal but I think Abe’s next stupid oneshot title uses the length better and it might’ve worn out the gimmick.

6. one day i'll be king rat but hell, just a cockroach is fine for now
There it is, right at the beginning - the birth of Abe’s central motif. Iconic.

5. Darlene and Sakurako Both Had One-shots and Abe Didn’t Want to Feel Left Out Even Though He Doesn’t Have Much to Say Now
I’m hilarious. In retrospect I wish I had kept it lowercase instead of title casing it.

4. When the Wizard Gets to Me, I'm Asking for a Smaller Heart
SC2 Alice. I realize that this is an Amanda Palmer song but it’s still great okay. This lyric is a mood and a half and it fits Alice’s headspace perfectly.

3. Flowers Hurt
Asha’s death thread. Yeah, we’re all gonna die... I like this title for a lot of reasons. 1. Flowers is basically Asha’s entire character in a nutshell. 2. Flowers Hurt is a pretty goth sentiment I think and it fits with the importance of Asha’s flower hairpin, which I’m pretty sure Jae still has. 3. Saying Flowers Hurt is like saying Sans Undertale and I think that’s funny.

2. Maybe You're a Mourner, Maybe You Deserve to Die
SC2 Michael (guest starring for SC2 Daniel.) I’m sure absolutely no one caught this callback but I was really happy with it. The duality! The shifting context as Michael stays home this time! I’m a genius.

1. IT'S NOT A PERSON WHO DIES, BUT WORLDS DIE INSIDE US
Cass’s death thread. My only all-caps title. It needed to be a primal scream. It’s the essence of the scene and maybe their whole character, right there. mewithoutYou.

[Brackie]

10 years, 36/7 characters, 92 threads (excluding one ongoing sandbox thread which I won't count because unfinished)

this is mostly off the cuff (...over the course of a few hours <_<) and based on a combination of feels, theme, accuracy, and sometimes just how pretty it is

[+] bad

92. Amazing Journey/Sparks (Aston Bennett; v4)
this thread title is what happens when you are 17 years old and completely misunderstand why the v3 thread "A Moment's Hesitation/The Pedestrian" is called what it is. I could make a sarcastic attempt that this thread was the start of aston's ~amazing journey~ and the ~sparks~ of conflict but I would legit go and change this if I could without hesitation

91. Splashdown! (Paige Strand; v4 pregame)
16-year-old learning-to-write me experimented with exclamation marks in thread titles and it was not a success, much like my character attempting to swim

90. Love Means What It Means (Brendan Wallace; v4 pregame)
get it? because movie date thread and it's a reference to a movie quote? god I was corny

89. Masterpiece (Clio Gabriella; v4)
who ordered the generic related-to-main-hobby one-shot opening v4 title

88. Ego Sum Volo Futurus (Brendan Wallace; v4 pregame)
i legit don't remember what this means but i'm betting a) I used google translate, and b) it has nothing to do with brendan meeting erik

87. don't go stretching your wallet (Gaelan Meloy; v6 pregame)
would have been immeasurably better if i'd just literally stolen that one v5 thread title about opening one-shots in the neighbourhood establishing character

86. Please Stand By (Brendan Wallace; v4 pregame)
brackie just wait until final apps, stop the corny earnest retcons

85. Lucky Flea (Jasper Rourke; v5 pregame)
legitimately no idea why this is a title or how it relates to Jasper flaking on a grindr date. i probably just liked a song title somewhere, although i legitimately have no idea who it's by and I'm not going to google it, i need to blowdry my hair instead

84. D'yer Ma'ker (Chanel Martin; PV1)
thank god my musical taste extended beyond the hallowed halls of dad rock for murder scene titles after this version

[+] meh

83. No Backward Glances (Oliver Davies; PV3)
i mean i guess it's fine but this thread doesn't need to exist thanks to giant future one-shots done better and the boring title doesn't really help

82/81. Four/Two (Maya Spooner; PV3 Prologue)
because of the meme, maya was always destined for boring thread titles unfortunately (although Stay Tuned if you actually read PV3)

80. Caught in Limbo (Yuko Sakaki; BRAU)
first-game-ever brackie wasn't exactly subtle with his BDA-clawing death thread titles for his first ever death thread (despite the fact there was no BDA on Mini what the hell past!brackie)

79. Light Up The Night (Brendan Wallace; v4 pregame)
I mean I guess it rhymes but I could have done better for brendan coming out/erik and him making out

78. Sensational (Penny Huang; v5 pregame)
again an actually apt thread title but i ended up doing (and had done by that point) pretty one-word adjective/adverbs better in nearly every other game. i suppose you can mentally raise this 20 points in rank if you assume it's from mallory's point of view and it's how she saw every interaction with penny go in this scene

77. Sparks of the Tempest (Jacqueline "Cameo" Conroy"; Virtua)
stealing an unfitting situationally boring song title for a one-shot thread for me was a Thing, Unfortunately

76. Preset Heaven (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 pregame)
you can /sorta/ draw strings from title to theme but at the end of the day I took this title from a house playlist because it sounded alright at the time

75. You Only Like Me When You Think I'm Looking Sad (Nani Clover; PV3 Prologue)
this is kind of a dick move since I was the one who made Kami name the thread this in the first place, and it /is/ technically a fitting title for what goes on there, but compared to the rest of the PV3/Prologue titles it kinda seems...saccharine? corny? tonally inconsistent? i dunno, it's hard to explain, even if I still love the song it came from. also the artist of the song this lyric came from is now Problematic so uh

74. Illusion Ain't Revolution (Calista Carpenter; PV3)
grabbing british song titles/lyrics was my PV3 Thing, Unfortunately (what was I even thinking with that 'Ain't')

73. We are the Dead (Holly Hergenroeder; TV1)
kinda on the nose for a deaththread title but I wanted it to immediately conflict with the previous thread title, a choice I stand by! what I don't stand by is not making kitten/frogue capitalize it properly

72. Tabula Rasa (Brendan Wallace; v4)
I stole this title from an episode of Heroes and I would have continued to do so for other threads in the future if I hadn't realized I could come up with better without resorting to stealing from Heroes

71. Aché (Santiago Ibarra; PV3 Prologue)
the only major clunker of my prologue spanish thread titles centering around regaining the identity of one sandy santiago ibarra, considering it bares little difference from a completely different word in english

70. Out and In (Clio Gabriella; v4)
I legit did not realize until today that I named the infamous maxwell/clio sex thread in such a manner, I promise you and all your future generations that I was just a really big fan of Kate Miller-Heidke and this song in particular!!! one day I will get over how clio is clowning me 10 years later via her mere existence but for now, it can stay on the cusp of the bottom 25th percentile

69. Black Canvas (Yoshio Akamatsu; BRAU)
gee brackie you sure did have a thing for imogen heap no matter how irrelevant the title was to the actual thread, yoshio running into a gang of juvie kids who? (it'd be lower if I still didn't love imogen heap)

68. The Edge of Something Final (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 pregame)
was keen on this at the time as a #SwiftBall wrap-up, now I'm not so much, especially compared to the other two in their simplistic perfection (main #SwiftBall) and funky foreshadowing (pre-#Swiftball)

67. At Least We'll Both Be Numb (Jason Andrews; SC2)
the only SC2 thread I named in both Sandbox and Main Game, Fs in chat plz; i vibed on something representing Jason's state of mind at the time but it's not clicking anymore for me rad song though

66. Rescue Me (Chanel Martin; PV1)
it's kinda spoopy much like chanel's death (uhhhh massive ridiculous formatting notwithstanding whoops I will one day atone for my past sins) but also i'm not into the rogue traders anymore so shrug

65. Clap Your Hands (Penny Huang; v5 pregame)
gotta love thread titles which evoke specific imagery that only i can imagine yet do not remember over half a decade on. it's fine but i can't remember whether i named it after the Sia song or that lyric from that Basement Jaxx song, but also this is a v5 pregame thread involving a character nobody except me remembers

64. It's Cold Out Here (Jasper Rourke; v5 pregame)
jasper rourke; school bully, avid meteorologist. even if I went out for cigarettes mid-thread I kinda wish me and fiori had actually done what we'd planned during pregame since I was so hype for it until uhhhh i had to go walk my microwave

63. Chaos Theory (Penny Huang; v5 pregame)
I think Solitair asked me to name the thread this? wish I remembered why

62. Stressed/Desserts (Rebecca Fitzpatrick, Penny Huang/Ryan Duhm, Dmitry Phillips, Jasper Rourke; v7 Meanwhile)
we love semordnilap words, even if this one is kinda boring in comparison to the other one/s (/future one/s)

[+] good

61. Somos Cenizas De Otro Fuego (Santiago Ibarra, Maya Spooner; PV3 Prologue)
i'm not entirely sure I got the translation right but I liked the english translation too much to let the opportunity go to waste - maybe not the /best/ title for a Serious Story Character meeting my Meme Character but I still think it's very pretty

60. Siete Diablos (Santiago Ibarra, Maya Spooner; PV3 Prologue)
my two characters stories ending in a title-appropriate way - if only i'd chosen a better name than a Florence + The Machine song (even if it /was/ incredibly appropriate when translated!!!)

59. Conquistador (Jacob Charles, Paige Strand; v4)
paige strand /also/ haunting me 10 years later smh, you died here, stop it!!! i'm glad i was able to confirm for everyone in an ironic way that, yes, songposts were a thing of the past (still like the title though!)

58. Misty Mountain Hop (Jacob Charles; v4)
first thread ever in v4 what whaaaaaaat! this one was a much more appropriate dadrock title than my PV1 equivalent since they were actually near mountains, compared to chanel who was in no way near either a d'yer or a ma'ker

57. Daydreamer (Holly Hergenroeder; TV1 Sandbox)
I...think I named this after the Lupe Fiasco song...? but wasn't that "Daydreamin'"...?...don't tell me I named this after the /Adele/ song!!! either way this title is fine.

56. Emboscada (Santiago Ibarra, Maya Spooner, Grant Moore; PV3 Prologue)
Exactly What It Says On The Tin (while also being a very æsthetically pleasing word)

55. Party Freaks of Nature (Jordan Brankovich; v7 pregame)
a backup title for #Swiftball that I threw at jordan so she could pregame, eventually, but then never again

54. Have It Your Way (Brendan Wallace; v4 After)
'brackie that's the burger king slogan!!!' yes but naming a thread where several classmates decide to got through post-traumatic stress disorder "I'm Lovin' It" would have been as inappropriate as it would be hilarious

53. The Dream Was Just The Same (Ma’afu ‘Maf’ Tuigamala; v4)
okay we get it 17-year-old brackie you like old music!!!! not an explosive title but at least thematically relevant for maf

52. One Slow Dancer (Jessica Rennes; v7)
mangling a title is better than using it wholesale, and that is my truth. a bit on the nose but then again it /was/ the first active suicide since v6

51. You Need Hands (Oliver Davies; PV3)
The Foreshadowing, It Burns

50. Little Bird (Yuko Sakaki; BRAU)
yada yada yada Imogen Heap titles everyone for three versions yada yada yada (still like her though!)

49. Beast of Burden (Ma’afu ‘Maf’ Tuigamala; v4)
after killing Nick Reid, Maf is indeed a beast who, thanks to being unconscious, is now a burden on the remaining sane flowerhead

48. Dude Descending A Staircase (Oliver Davies; PV3)
meta jokes are my favourite jokes but I'm also a fan of how low-key I made the title for one of the rawest one-shots I've ever done on main or mini

47. poetry has no place for a heart that's a whore (Ji-hyun "Jiji" Christensen; v7 Meanwhile)
~♪♫you bloody motherfucking asshole♫♪~

46. are you having a bad time? (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 pregame)
i chose this thread title because I always talked about how I imagined mikki and andy in a movie to be stargazing in a field as the song this lyric comes from plays over them intertwined in each others arms in the back of a pick-up truck under blankets, so to give it to a mikki/axel interaction instead was the kind of meta joke I like to make in this perilous game of high school

45. Picture Show (Brendan Wallace; v4)
a low-key thread title for a low-key thread that I don't really have anything negative to say about on either end except we never finished it, RIP. although there is a v4 reunion in meanwhile.............perhaps..................

44. Mark It Up (Matthew Payne; PV1)
even if PV1 was my unilateral worst version ever, I was occasionally on point with my references!

43. Siblings of War (Janie Sinneave; v5)
a thread i regularly forget exists got a pretty cool unique title at the end of the day/version/my attention span for SOTF circa 2014

42. Soapbox (Brendan Wallace; v6 Meanwhile)
you thought it was someone famous or relevant tweeting, but it was in fact ME, a long disappeared Brendan!

41. Teenage Lobotomy (Oliver Davies; PV3)
an innocent look at an oliver who once had hope and plans of rebellion before the latter was eradicted and replaced by denial-fueled insanity

40. The Personal Heights (Brendan Wallace; v4 After)
again, I could occasionally spin silk as far as putting relevant words together for thread purposes went (I am also very glad I got a "saved your life on Day 1" reunion because that really was the height of Brendan's island experience)

39. Gypsy Rap (Brendan Wallace; v4)
not sure it this is Objectively Bad a thread title or not (I mean not many handlers can say they actively chose to name a thread after a song in landmark universally acclaimed prestige drama Total Drama World Tour) but at least it looks pretty

38. Goodnight and Go (Clio Gabriella; v4)
no!!! more!!!! imogen!!!!! HEAP!!!!!! (I legit have two or more left I'm pretty sure whoops). probably should have saved this for a group thread rather than a oneshot but what can ya do

37. one time my whole apartment had a power outage and the only source of light I had was my louisa lynn light stick (Ashanti Baker; TV3 Sandbox)
someone who doesn't know anything about TV3 read this thread and it's title and try to guess what the hell is going on ( :3 )

36. There's The Rub (Jasper Rourke; v5 pregame)
the other shoe drops on the Jasper Rourke, High School Student, experience

35. Running Up That Hill (Oliver Davies; PV3)
the entire premise was Kami doing one of the things she does the absolute best on this site and me ruining it with an oliver intrusion, and the title played a big part in setting up the fall

34. God Bless America [Island Remix ft. DJ TAIPAN] (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7)
purely a dumb #Zootopia memejoke/probably a legit thread naming theme idea at one point before the lighthouse beckoned Mikki to the other side

33. This Nearly Was Mine (Maxim Kehlenbrink; v6)
the lesser of maxim's musical thread titles but it still makes near the top third for being so frank in the fact that "yep, this character gonna die"

32. God Bless America (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 memory)
I never got feedback on this thread poking a hole in the futility of the great american dream and mikki's place within her own friend group but oh well :c

31. La Reina Se Queda Reina (Sandy Ibarra; PV3 Prologue Sandbox)
Adios~

30. Take the High Road (Kayden Brockman; v7 pregame)
I think I made this thread right after the song the title came from won songtest because I was /just/ that into the typhoon of emotions it evoked and I really wanted to aim it at these damn slacking teenagers, pay attention to your poor incompetent teacher you young punks!!!

29. The Noise Before Defeat (Erin Underwood; PV2)
I had a really good idea for Erin and this thread title is an emblem of that but unfortunately I quit the site within a month or two so RIP

[+] favourites

28. Born Backwards (Oliver Davies; PV3 Sandbox)
"-you know, came out my mum the wrong way. I hear words go past me backwards. The people I should love I hate, and the people I hate..."

27. Burning Boats (Oliver Davies; PV3)
heel turns are fun when you have ominous thread titles to back them up :3

26. We Go High (Kayden Brockman; v7 Meanwhile)
"We Go And Do Something Majorly Spiteful Against Now-Dead Teenagers" didn't have the same ring

25. You Love When I Fall Apart (Kayden Brockman; v7 pregame)
my blazing return to unironically writing sex scenes and between the spoiling of the end of the post, the metatextual finger pointed at a certain purple haired frenemy, and coming from Rihanna's best album, I'd say I did a pretty good job (with the name at least)

24. I Told You Everything (Gaelan Meloy; v7 Meanwhile)
i learned a lesson w/r/t what I can manage in pregame this version, but at least I got to drop something on the way out

23. Restitution (Brendan Wallace; v6 Meanwhile)
when it's too far gone for redemption or forgiveness

22. Another Story Must Begin (Maxim Kehlenbrink; v6)
the aim of this thread was to nail what we in the adoption business call "The Transition" where you go from imitating the previous handler to forging your own path foward and making said character you own and for that purpose the title of the thread could not have been more apropos

21. A Perfect Day (Jacqueline "Cameo" Conroy; Virtua)
-to make Simon Mattheson insane.

20. Brace, Brace (Brendan Wallace; v4 After)
would it surprise you to know that the handler brackie got the name of this thread, detailing the first part of his self-insert dealing with the repurcussions of his horrifically cowardly island actions and horrible attempts at redemption, from a lame sex joke in a book about a feng shui detective? probably not, because you'd have to literally be psychic to guess that, my mind is a strange place at the best of times

19. 2-1 (Yoshio Akamatsu; BRAU)
for a while, the only Imogen Heap thread title that actually worked? yes this was also a songpost thread but also this was a songpost death thread in which Girl 01 and Boy 01 killed each other in a BRAU that should exist somehow, c'mon we can draw the strings later

18. Pandorama (Aditi Sharma; v7)
"In Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Bert White constructs a "Pandorama" depicting a Tory and a Liberal on a miniature stage kicking the prone figure of a socialist for suggesting that the only difference between them was that "they was both alike"."

17. You, The Living (Holly Hergenroeder; TV1)
a thread all about saving the life of a doomed drifter who happens to be my character's boyfriend, tell me I didn't do a good job with the title here. she does her best but will just have to settle for doing better in SC3 a future uncomfirmed version

16. Физичка својства воде (Jordan Brankovich; v7 Meanwhile)
you would not believe the hours of searching I had to do to figure out an appropriate culturally relevant title for my character's SOTF-related future and I ended up settling on an actually pretty name, and what more could I want from my pink-haired disaster child sticking her nose where she doesn't belong

15. Serration (Anna Hitchins; TV1 Sandbox)
legit forgot I made this thread - anyway, much like Pandorama and Restitution, the upper echelon of "visually striking and aurally unique words make good thread title" thread titles that I've made over the past 10 years. i wonder if the serration was between me and Cake after I left him hanging forever without ever replying

14. Half Psychotic Sick Hypnotic (Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 pregame)
i love it when a plan comes together

13. A Lo Hecho, Pecho (Santiago Ibarra; PV3 Prologue)
/such/ a pretty thread name my god where did i even find this one - also kicks off sandy santiago's peninsula arc with a well-placed jerk needling him from the side (again i'm super sorry i went inactive kermit :c plz forgive, i won't do again)

12. Just Dance (MIchaeilia "Mikki" Swift; v7 pregame) (#SwiftBall)
tell me there was any other more perfect thread name in the universe for the pregame party to end them all (uhhh maybe Party Freaks of Nature but that can stay in the hallway)

11. Lucidity (Holly Hergenroeder; TV1)
TV1 was a weird time for me but this weirdly serious yet completely in-character for holly thread name matches up with her same weirdly serious in-character plea for decency and groundedness in a version that played by MTV rules

10. Nacirema/American (Penny Huang/Jasper Rourke; v6 Meanwhile)
this is what happens when the kids left behind move on, in very different ways. also I just discovered what a semordnilap was at the time and wanted to be ~artistique~

9. The Wicked Die Alone (Maxim Kehlenbrink; v6)
Musicals are Good, not only for helping your logic become surpassed by your emotions, but also mining for thread titles that I'm still amazed I managed only a few months back into the game after a several years long break

8. Peripeteia (Brendan Wallace; v4)
"visually striking and aurally unique words make good thread title" again but with MURDER and a point of no return (uhhh excluding all of Brendan's other points of no return he just sorta dashed past without thinking)

7. The Gully (Brendan Wallace; v4)
one of the reasons storyspoiler was such an impactful writer on me was how she let me make my mark on the version's metaplot by naming one of it's biggest moments purely based on how good this song was

6. Cracking (Aston Bennett; v4)
on the surface it seems like a huge outliar but it's probably the most perfect thread title I could have come up with at the time for a conversation held peaceful by a danger zone

5. My Lucifer Is Lonely (Aditi Sharma; v7)
this thread went chockers so quickly and so thoroughly that my "idk i like Billie Eilish I guess?" thread name turned into something truly satanic

4. Birdland (Brendan Wallace; v4)
a simple thread named after a song but it's also one of my favourite songs ever so it receives special treatment!!!! in the form of, uh, placing high on this list. it's symbolic because brendan, much like a bird, flies away from any group that includes bipedal mammals

3. Taste Your Beating Heart (Jacqueline "Cameo" Conroy; Virtua)
tell me a more appropriate surface-level thread name to debut my completely surface-level goth girl in

2. Legoland Empire (Ma’afu ‘Maf’ Tuigamala; v4)
i can't help it that imogen heap imprinted on me at such an early age, get gud all other music artists!!! I remember hearing this line while casually listening to one of her songs and deciding that, yes, it /would/ be part of my bibliography

1. Vitriol (Aston Bennett; v4)
circumstances decreed that this would end up the peak of my aston island experience and part of the reason i remember those closing hours of v4 for me so fondly is the name of a thread holding some of my favourite writers, even if we stayed together just as long as my self-insert stayed with a group of more than one other person.

[Melusine]

top five because............fuck rating all of them

[+] main

5. I'm only satisfied by the finer things in life like Rodarte and Margiela and making boys cry
4. Although I'm Sad, You Won't See Me Cry
3. The Girls Made of Soot, Blood and Plastic
2. One Final Embrace
1. a dr36m come true and a star to wish upon

special mention: 70's horror movies

[+] mini

5. falling in love with mp3's
4. Lord of the Luz
3. My name is Private Gravel. Remember; you rock.
2. Princess Aquapussy
1. Anahuac

[MK Kilmarnock]

Everybody Loses is my clear winner, I won't bother ranking the rest.

Bloodgarden's easily second though.

[Maraoone]

[+] bad

39. Offended?
- Carmina, her one (1) pregame thread. lmao this is named after a 4chan meme that was already ancient when this was posted in 2013. I hate this thread because it's very OOC for Carmina, and also it's her only pregame presence, so it paints a picture of her far different from what she's actually like off-island, and this title plays into that false picture of her presented here.

Also a theme you'll notice for V5 and TV2 is that a lot of the titles are one-word because that was my thing back then but now that I'm thinking about it, it's hard to pull them off unless it really really fits and gets across the point of the thread. I think my reasoning was that I really liked the aesthetic of certain v4 thread titles like the cross symbol thread. But anyways, yeah, this thread title was a mistake.

38. Glass
- Juhan, the thread where the sleeper cell group breaks up. It's here because I genuinely can't remember why I named it this lol. Something about the tension???? In his group????? Shattering like glass?????????? Probably something dumb like that.

37. Despair
- Juhan, his starting thread. I mean, it fits, but despair describes almost every other kid waking up on death island too so. It's way too on the nose and just melodramatic. Also speaks to how generic it was when someone, thirty minutes later, Also named a thread Despair.

[+] meh

36. Grievances
- Cathryn, where she has a nice friendly talk with Leah's corpse. More one-word titles!!! Just a rather underwhelming title tbh, not much to say about it.

35. Makeup
- I think I was pressed for activity when I named this thread. Because Makeup was Cathryn's thing, but this title was reserved for a death thread concept for Cathryn where she dies after putting makeup on and prettying herself up (sound familiar? ), and there's not even any makeup in the thread itself so.

34. How Far I'll Go
- Diego, a one-shot. I mean, it fits, since the thread is about him resolving that he'll play to win, but the song really doesn't fit. It's from Moana lmao. I just, like, threw whatever title in there and left it as is and yeah.

33. Quixotic
- Juhan, pregame thread. My favorite of the v5 one-word titles. Not much really happened in this thread, but it's named this because they're in an English class discussing Don Quixote. Also I just like Quixotic as a word, so it earns a trip out of the bad tier.

32. Crimewaves
- Diego, shovel one-shot. Honestly just named it this because I needed to post the thread and it was the first title I had in mind, and he just came from another thread named after a Crystal Castles song. I don't really think it fits other than with the part where he's in the ocean, so yeah. But also crime.......because he's doing bad things......and waves........because he's in the ocean................

31. I Don't Wanna Be Myself
- Diego, where Billy bullies him and the gardening club protects him (also Declyn gets kidnapped and stuff). It's a bit on-the-nose. Also just a bit melodramatic for my tastes, even if fitting. But also this is from Soda by Nothing but Thieves it's a good song guys go listen stream on spotify

[+] ok

30. Red as Blood
- Carmina's death thread. Technically not my thread title as this was suggested to me by Riki and Nuggets but I posted the OP so yeah. It's on-the-nose but I'm a fan of the fairytale theme Jaquilyn and Joachim had going on.

29. Yellow Light
- Aditi's death thread! Also an OMAM song. What I was going for here is that Yellow Light is a song that starts off fearful but slightly hopeful but then Oh No you're caught in the midst of the Bad Thing. It's a really nice song, really fits for the title, but there's a disconnect here because by itself, Yellow Light is a painfully generic title.

28. Gimme, Gimme Shelter or I'm Gonna Fade Away
- Diego, where he meets Lorenzo and makes the first of Many bad decisions. Another on-the-nose, thrown together title. It's higher than the other thrown-together titles because it's a nice lyric and it vaguely fits since he and Stephanie were sheltering from the rain.

27. I'm Looking For a Place to Start, But Everything Feels So Different Now
- Johnny, starting thread. Lowest ranked SC2 thread title, which speaks to how On Point my thread naming game was back then. What happened mara????? What happened???? Anyways it ends up here because it's also a bit on-the-nose for a starting thread, also lends a different kind of aura to the thread than it actually has. But also omam good

26. I'm Not That Nice, I'm Mean and I'm Evil
- Joanne, one of the drug trip one shots. The least fitting of her one shot titles. It's another case where the song its from (When You Die, MGMT) fits more than its title, because, like, Joanne has issues with herself and thinks she's not doing enough good things, but I don't think she thinks of herself as Evil so.

25. The Fifth Announcement
- Yuka!! Yuka! I don't have anything against this title in the slightest, but the title is very utilitarian, it is what it is, so I'll just let it chill down here in the okay tier.

24. And I'm Not Sleeping Now
- Juhan, one-shot where he takes watch in the night and talks to his family, among other things. The title is from Lights by Ellie Goulding. Probably on-the-nose too but I have a personal fondness for this title idk. And Lights just fits into the aesthetic of the thread, or at least my idea of it.

23. The Gang Goes Out For Breakfast
- lmao. Diego, Cam and Theo forage for food in the forest. Just a joke title that I threw together because I couldn't think of anything else, but oddly fitting considering the Friendly Talk that happens here. My genius ugh

22. Your Bones
- the first of Many sad! Johnny one-shots. Honestly I literally can't tell the one-shots apart like I had to look them up to remember what specific thing happened in each one shot. Anyways this is after he has his sad talk with Soren, where he finds out More of his friends he abandoned are dead, where he thinks about the time he spent with his crush Rachael who is Also dead. Lots of dead friends! So yeah that's where the title comes in. OMAM song btw, same for the other Johnny one-shots. The title's nice but like a, 6-7/10 level of nice, same for the other OMAM songs, so it's just chilling down here.

21. Little Talks
- another Johnny one-shot. Here he has a small talk with his family back home, including his brother who was traumatized by accidentally shooting him in the face and is probably even more traumatized now that Johnny's dying. It's sad. He's sad. It's all very sad. So yeah.

20. Hiya sa Timog
- Diego's memory thread where he has a nice friendly talk with Mike Brown at a Filipino family party. Somer's suggestion but I translated it so. It's Filipino for 'Southern Discomfort.' It just has a nice funky energy, and honestly I should give more Diego threads Filipino titles but all of my ideas are for specific situations which haven't come up yet so rip.

19. Sinking Man
- Johnny one-shot, immediately after he fights and leaves behind his friends after finding out Rachael's dead. This goes above the other OMAM one-shot titles because Sinking Man is just a really nice title on its own. Like, it captures Johnny's sinking state after everything that happened. It's a nice follow up to the previous thread title too.

18. a concrete cave
- Olivia, two-day one-shot. not that this is related to the thread or anything but i just want to say it took me months of editing to finish this one shot this one shot brought me a lot of pains and tears aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. ok now that that's out of my system, like, it fits Olivia's small, tiny aesthetic if that makes sense? Nicely describes the concrete room she hides out in for days after her group disintegrates. Also got to do a nice callback to it in her death post. Not a song lyric from anything, probably the best of my original titles.

17. Untrust Us
- Diego, thread where he has a nice friendly talk with Ty and deals with certain news in a very measured well-handled manner. Untrust Us is a Crystal Castles song, it has a foreboding sort of energy that kinda fits the thread, and Untrust Us is just a really good title by itself, absent of context. It's in the okay tier because it doesn't fit the thread perfectly though, especially Diego's breakdown.

16. no one round here's good at keeping their eyes closed
- Diego, where he follows Lorenzo for a day and witnesses him commit murder. It's from Glory and Gore by Lorde which is just a very very fitting song for SOTF as a whole. I just feel slightly meh about the title because it's a bit on-the-nose, but it's a good lyric from a good song, and it captures the complicity going on in this thread.

[+] good

15. hold on to this lullaby
- Joanne's opening one-shot, where she talks to her younger brothers. Safe and Sound, Taylor Swift. It's a bit too sad for the mood of the thread, like, I think titles like this should be reserved for Really sad threads, but it fits! It's a nice mood setter too.

14. we keep these promises, write it in a letter
- the last of Joanne's drug one-shots. The lyrics are actually from a Beach House song but I pulled this from Kept by Crystal Castles. The song has, like, a crazy ecstasy sort of energy, and honestly the visuals that accompany this video are the best way to explain it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfbCLwNlGwU. The best way I can explain it is it's a nice comedown from the previous two one-shots, it has a sort of closing energy that fits this thread.

13. it's ok we're just scared
- Diego's newest one-shot!! Where he finally gets to penetrate Lorenzo hahaha ha ah ah ah aha ha hhhha a ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ h ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ a ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ h ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ a

Honestly I just named it and posted it the day before typing up this post so my feelings on this might change. The lyric is from 'We're Alive' by Cavetown, and Cavetown in general just really really fits the scared nervous energy I try to lend Diego posts, so I've been really wanting to name more thread titles after his songs. It's a bit lower than how I actually feel about it because the title's a bit generic on its own, esp. if you don't know the song, but I don't regret this title. It, and the song, fits the thread just well I think.

12. Saeglopur
- Olivia's opening one-shot. Honestly I feel like I used this title too early, I wish I'd saved it for Another staring-out-at-the-ocean one shot but it is what it is. Saeglopur is a Sigur Ros song, and it just really fits the atmosphere of looking out at the ocean, stranded by yourself on an island. It has a sad, lonely energy like the thread itself, so yeah.

11. there's a pale imitation burnt in my eyes
- Yuka, where she and Yuki finally reunite with Yuko : )

Another title I feel could've been utilized much better, because it's too strong for this thread, but it's a good lyric op. From Amen by Amber Run, which is also about a dead loved one I think. It's just a strong lyric that's all I have to say about it.

10. D.R.E.A.M.
- Joanne's first drug trip one shot. I really appreciate this title because it has layers to it that aren't immediately apparent. D.R.E.A.M. is a Miley Cyrus song Joanne would totally love, and it stands for 'drugs rule everything around me.' But also the thread does have a nice dream-like sort of feel to it. It fits well.

9. At Every Occasion, I'll Be Ready For The Funeral
- Damion's death one-shot, SC2. I just really like this lyric, even if it doesn't quite fit the thread since Damion is decidedly Not ready for the funeral. It's from The Funeral by Band of Horses.

8. Love itself is just as innocent as roses in May.
- suggested by Blizzard actually. Diego and Cam have a friendly talk


7. Take A Bite Of My Heart Tonight
- Damion (SC2), pregame thread with his girlfriend. Animals, Neon Trees. This thread kinda stalled out and doesn't have much of anything right now, but I love this title because it captures the toxic sort of dynamic I was aiming for with Damion and Jasmine. It's a nice intro to them.

6. black eyes looking up from below
- Diego, where he looks on at two people loving one another and handles it completely appropriately. Black Eyes, David Wirsig. The song is about a monster lurking from beneath the ocean and haunting this person long after the incident involving this monster. I thought it'd be a nice reversal because in this thread, Diego is the 'black eyes,' the monster looking on with jealousy at two people who only dared to be happy on this island. The song also has a really sad lonely energy that fits Diego as a whole.

5. one of a kind
- Yuka
part 2
death one-shot. Last of the triplets. this one is Actually the best original title I've made. I will take no further questions.

4. Though Far Away, We're Still The Same
- Johnny's death thread. King and Lionheart, OMAM. idc what yugi says this is a good title, it flows a lot better than 'though far away 3x we're still the same 3x.'

It's a good thread title for SOTF as a whole, and it captures how far everyone in the thread has come since they landed on the island. It also has the last couple of deaths before SC2 endgame, so it's a pretty climactic title for SC2 as a whole. I just really really love this title okay guys

3. Now, Wait, Wait, Wait for Me, Please Hang Around. I'll See You When I Fall Asleep
- Johnny, where he finds out Rachael's dead. Little Talks, OMAM (yes I named two threads after the same song fight me irl)

Honestly debated between putting this here or at number 1 but I'm fine with it being here. The lyric is incredibly raw, powerful, climactic, and it fits the energy of the thread, the mood of desperately wanting your love to stay around but being powerless to do so. It's just a really really strong title on its own. I also love this title

2. all of our heroes fading
1. now i can't stand to be alone
- LET'S GO TO PERFECT PLACES
(synths play in the background, intense sobbing)

Yuka, the thread where she finds out Yuko's dead, and the aftermath, respectively. When I applied Yuka as a character, I made her knowing that I'd eventually name a thread after Perfect Places by Lorde and I did!!! and I applied it at the perfect time!! I named two consecutive threads after that song!!

Perfect Places has a desperate party sort of mood that sums up Yuka to a T. And, in those lyrics in particular, it really captures the really shouty sad kind of mood that comes with SOTF. It takes away all your heroes. It leaves you lonely even when you don't want to be lonely. And also I'm just really happy because it completely fits the mood of both of those threads, and all too often I fire off good titles for threads that don't deserve it so yeah.

[Fenris]

i only have one version to pick thru so im absolutely gonna include all my pregame and meanwhile threads and no one can stop me

[+] not great

47. (yes i have 47 named threads in v7 jesus christ) Confessionale
translated: "confessional" (no shit). im mad at this one because i named it before i decided dante's thread title Thing was gonna be italian verbs specifically so this thread is the only one of dante's that i started that doesn't follow the pattern properly and hhhhhhhhhh

46. you are not a human being
(song) god this thread was SO on the nose and so is the title. subtlety is legal, fen

45. Ballare
translated: "to dance". most of dante's are gonna be pretty low down because they're all pretty minimal effort tbh but this one most of all. "to dance" for the prom thread wow i went all out there huh

44. my soul? so cynical
(song (duh)) lazy. the whole point of this oneshot is that ivy actually feels bad about what she did (yknow, sorta) so this doesnt really fit at all it was just on my mind because i Just used a billie eilish title so i just went with it cause i couldnt think of anything else

43. Rubatosis
n. the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

my least favorite of the nia thread titles mostly because i wrote her overactive heartbeat into the oneshot just so i could use the title because i was running out of good obscure sorrows and didn't know what to use lmao

42. on a quick sick rampage
(song) listen i picked this because ivy likes lana del rey and no other reason

41. Pregare
translated: "to pray". not as weak as Ballare but still kind of an obvious verb choice

40. Chrysalism
n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.

this one is also kinda "i set up the thread based on the word because i liked the word" but it's a pretty weak thread and i feel like i could have used the title better.

39. Bubble Pop!
(song) i really should have given zen an actual thread title identity earlier. this one is kind of purposefully meaningless since its just a cute thread but i probably could have come up with something more relevant

38. i'm gonna lose my baby, so i always keep a bottle near
(song) same category as "you are not a human being" tho like not quite As bad lmao

[+] mmm

37. "Stand up and walk. Keep moving forward."
this is literally just a quote from full metal alchemist because zen is reading fma. in the thread. but its also kinda appropriate? for the moment? so its not that bad

36. you can go your own way
(song) first axel thread! honestly this should probably be lower on the list because it's pretty meaningless, the song itself is totally inappropriate for the thread, but i thought the title sounded right, yknow

35. youngblood
(song) same as you can go your own way but higher because its a really good thread so i have a soft spot.

34. The Black Cat
the first thread in "artem's edgar allen poe adventures" (a series that will continue, eventually,). really just picked for the imagery and not for anything else.

33. Scusare
translated: "to apologize". kinda obvious but apologizing is what the thread centers around in a way that makes it kinda the only name i could have picked

32. Time to Tip the Scales!
this was absolutely a silly excuse to do matching thread titles with pip and i dont regret anything

31. it's future rust and it's future dust
(song) this thread title exists because i was really obsessed with foals by spanish sahara for like a month. it's not unfitting in a vaguely "everything is a mess" way but not really meaningful beyond that

30. Lost Souls
i looked at a list of gothic novel titles and picked the one that sounded the best : ) it is admittedly very appropriate just in like. kind of a generic way

29. Rigor Samsa
n. a kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine, built less like a fortress than a cluster of treehouses.

this isn't a particularly fitting thread title for the thread it was on but it's higher than it otherwise would be because i love the way it sounds. say it out loud. rigor samsa. sounds great. love that.

28. i see things that nobody else sees
(song) i had been planning to use a melanie martinez lyric for the ivy family meanwhile for Ages and then <stuff> happened and i was gonna change it but like i couldnt pick anything else so its this low because im not super. comfortable with having used it. but i think its pretty appropriate.

27. The Angel of the Odd
artem adventures pt 2 (pt 3 chronologically but whos counting). i actually thought about this one but its fittingness is kinda like wrapped up in Metaphors and its a lot. its fine

26. Mauerbauertraurigkeit
n. the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like—as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double-blind.

this is one of those obscure sorrows i think fits the thread its for but could have been in a more fitting thread, i guess? like saying nia really liked aoi ever is a stretch. more than a stretch. its just. not true? ideally i would have used this thread for a fight with like, jeremiah or stepney or something but THEY ALL DIED so i ended up using it here. its acceptable i guess. its also really hard to say

[+] works for me

25. Dormire
translated: "to sleep". rip dante. probably the most obvious title i could have used short of callign it Morire but also the whole "he's just going to take a nap" thing is important to the thread so it's a nice sturdy way to go about it i think.

24. the world is spinning but only in grey
(song) this is another one id go with "nice and sturdy" as a reasonable description for, like its a pretty basic "things are really bad" descriptor but also i associate lindsey stirling really closely with ivy so it feels more fitting. also it's just a nice evocative lyric i think

23. just let them think there's no place else you'd rather be
(song) i love this song a lot. really underrated paramore song. anyway this song is about Celebrity and Paparazzi and i thought that was a fun title for the country club thread and the kinda delusion of people like ivy that they're important because they get to live like this, yknow? i was pleased with myself i thought that was clever lmao. this would probably be higher if that thread went anywhere

22. Ambedo
n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details-raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee.

this one is unfitting for the thread but intentionally; the whole point of nia's bka pickup oneshot is that she knows objectively this is the safest she'll ever be and that she should appreciate the scenery while she can but she just Cannot because she's too trapped in her paranoia spiral. i had really wanted to use this one for a genuine peaceful moment for nia but she ran out of those really early on and yknow irony is good too

21. but i'm already someone else's baby
(song) this was the oneshot after Wyatt And Ivy Did The Thing (thats the name of the thread now) and it's, yknow, pretty straightforward, but the lyric and the song itself all line up, and its just the right song for the moment really

20. you didn't know me, but he knew me best
(song) this one would probably be Much higher if this thread went anywhere. as it is i feel like i wasted a title i really wated to use which makes me SAD but its still good in a vacuum yknow

19. give me love like them
(song) me, using an ed sheeran song lyric unironically: dont even fuckin look at me. anyway its a good song so you can fight me in the desert about it but the lyric Itself isnt super evocative i feel like you need to listen to the actual song and boy is getting yall to take an ed sheeran song seriously a losing effort

[+] goodo

18. and i know i need to feel relief
(song) i wanted to put this higher just because its such an important thread, like, to me personally and to my Writing Journey on sotf, but like the song's relevance to the thread and ivy's mindset in it is pretty broad. but it's still fitting and appropriate and a good lyric and man, this thread

17. heaven help me for the way i am
(song) lotta song lyric titles in a row here. dont worry theres like. loads more. anyway i like this one because its kind of off of ivy's usual aesthetic musically to signify how off her game she is here too and also the irony of "ive been careless with a delicate man" which would have been a very funny thread title but maybe a little on the nose funny for a kinda serious thread. anyway! its good im happy with it

16. The Tell-Tale Heart
artem part 3 or 1 depending on how we're counting. definitely the one i thought the most about. pretty straightforward but its what that thread should be called imo

15. she's ripping wings off of butterflies
(song) paramore is a good band ok. i thought about this one a lot since i prewrote ivy's first post so i had quite a lot of time to brainstorm titles, and i ended up here, with a song about dreams that fall apart and die. "she's ripping wings off of butterflies" also just feels like an ivy aesthetic line in and of itself

14. Monachopsis
n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.

considering this was kinda a throwaway thread this got really high mostly because, with one exception (coming later!!!!), this is probably the obscure sorrow that best defines nia. just this constant feeling whenever she's around other people that she probably shouldn't be there. its just a title that needed to be used for her at some point

[+] thumbs up emoji

13. don't go wasting your emotion
(song) lbr the real title of this thread is the next line. laaaaay all your looooove oooooon meeeeee. ivy has absolutely Zero right to be possessive of wyatt in the situation theyve wound up in but here she fuckin is anyway and she definitely wasnt looking for him to fuck him but like, woops, here we are, this is how she marks territory i guess-

12. baby, you're the highlight of my lowlife
(song) i had plans to use this song before pregame even Started, tbh. we almost didnt get a chance to use it at all but this song and this line are the summation of axel and hel's entire relationship and therefore are everything they need to be.

11. Demordere
translation: to give up. my last dante thread title and also the highest ranking meanwhile. super simple, but it emphasizes the point of the thread; that dante's sister feels she has no choice but to give up because dante is the man that he is, and how angry she is that he's forced her to have no hope for him.

10. and i know no one will save me
(song) this one's also obviously about that missing next line. i'm just asking for a kiss. this is a transitional thread but the title sets up your expectations for this thread and the next one, it lays out ivy's headspace, and it does its job there real well i think

9. close ain't close enough
(song) this is the song that best defines the ivy/wyatt relationship for me, and this particular line doubles as a callback to a line from in and i know i need to feel relief, which makes it EXTRA clever,, im smart once a year

8. i hope you know that you were worth it all along
(song) this is a bummer of a song for a bummer of a fuckin scene with the context changed intentionally; the song is about a breakup, the scene is about, yknow, sort of a breakup, as caused by extreme brain damage followed by death, but the point is still the same. leaving the person (people, in this case) you love behind. this is another line id wanted to use for a long time and im glad i got my shot in

7. who is the lamb and who is the knife?
(song) this was Not going to be ivy's death thread when i named it, but if i was gonna go back id split the thread in half and name the first half something else. id still name the second half this, though. who's the real enemy? really should have been pretty obvious, huh?

6. Exulansis
n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

this is the obscure sorrow i think best defines nia's existence; her total inability to relate her experiences to others, especially regarding her past, which makes it near impossible for her to connect to most people. i dont think this is one of my best pieces of writing, but the title says almost more about nia than the oneshot does.

5. you should see me in a crown
(song) this was literally the only possible thread title for this thread, sorry

4. sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell
(song) this is like, this is just a feeling. this is just the emotion of this thread boiled down, and i listened to the song in question a million times writing the thread until the drum beat was playing on my heart, and other weird artsy stuff like that. idk man. just listen to the song and read the thread and maybe you'll feel it too

3. Lachesism
n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.

i am shocked no one has ever used this as an opening thread title before because it is so perfect for that purpose that i checked multiple times before i used it

2. cause you're my king and i'm your lionheart
(song) i will start crying again dont make me talk

1. my heart will be blacker than your eyes when i'm through with you
(song) i knew i was using this song for an axel thread from the moment i heard it in songtest. the question was what for, and while the circumstances i had in mind for it didnt come to pass, i got a chance to use it anyway. it perfectly encapsulates axel's state of mine; how the darkness in him has swallowed him to a point that he will destroy anything that dares to mock him by being alive when andy isn't. that's just axel. that's where he was. i dunno if im ever gonna happen on a lyric this perfect for a moment again but there it is, the best i can do

[D/N]

Well, I was the one who brought these up so I guess I had to do it. Including pregame because 1) It has some of my favourites, thrown away on never-read pregame things oh no, and 2) I really only pregamed in one version so it's not like it's gonna kill the numbers THAT much. These are of course mostly off-the-cuff but I doubt I'll really ever want to go through them with a fine-tooth comb or anything. They ended up being pretty fun though!

[+] TERRIBLE TIER - 56-51

56) She Bopped - Carly Jean Dooley - v4 Island
No offence to anyone who thinks it was funny! But this thread title possibly the dumbest thing I’ve done in SOTF and one of the only things I still feel shame about.

55) Pearl and Destiny - Carly - v4 Island
Jeez, sorry Carly. I looked this up to see what the hell it came from and it took me two pages of Google search to find out it must’ve been from a really obscure Iron Maiden song. Ah, because when I think of Carly I think Iron fucking Maiden. This has nothing to do with her character, situation, plot line, SOTF in general or anything else and might be the worst songlyric threadtitle of all time.

54) Miasma of the Dawn - Kaitlyn Greene - v6 Island
Almost as meaningless and unfitting is this monstrosity. For one of my favourite characters, Kaitlyn has a couple ugly thread titles. More recent, so I do remember this was a line from Peter Pan, which Kaitlyn was reading. Why the hell I chose THIS line instead of what I must assume are myriad better ones is a mystery lost to the ages.

53) Follow Them Size Fives - Ricky Fortino - v4 Island
52) This Was My Dream, My Wish. It Didn’t Come True, So I’m Taking It Back - Kaitlyn - v6 Island
Ugh. So way back in v3, I gave Eris a thread title that was a quote from The Goonies. I loved it (spoiler - still do!) and so decided to make it a tradition going forward that no one including myself asked for or wanted. At least I threw them away in one-shots. V7 killed this running gag forever and good riddance.

51) Twin Towers - Imraan Al-Hariq - v4 Pregame
Imraan and Rob Jenkins are basketball players and tall. Was… was I trying to be edgy here?

[+] BAD TIER - 50-44

50) Larry King Live - Andrea Raymer - v4 Postgame
49) Azzurri Pride - Ricky - v4 Pregame
48) The Daily Grind - Imraan - v4 Pregame
47) One Whole Hour Ago - Andrea - v4 Pregame
I guess there’s something to be said for simplicity, but I also guess these took me about 30 seconds to dash off for long-forgotten pregame thread titles. Oh, and “Larry King Live” where Larry King prepares to interview v4 survivors in one of many abandoned postgame plots. Also Ricky had a memories thread where he goes to Italy and I fart around talking about his Italian cousins and their distant ties to the Naples mafia for whatever reason.

46) Everdreamers - Badass Johnny Lancer - v3 Island
This is probably tainted by my overall distaste for Badass Johnny’s dumb melodramatic novel plotlline. Ah well.

45) Daddy Long-Legs and Dead Things - Jesse Jennings - v5 Island
I guess I like this Goonies quote a bit better than the others. Not enough to actually like it though.

44) These Walls - Johnny - v3 Island (BEST JOHNNY TITLE)
This was my first SOTF thread title yay! It was also my first songtitle thread boo! See, he’s in the island prison. Which has walls. I also made the post itself a songpost because of course I did.

[+] MEH TIER - 43-35

43) Freedom Just Across - Kaitlyn - v6 Pregame
Kaitlyn also has a memories thread I keep forgetting about. I actually like the abbreviated post, but it’s just another song lyric or title thread that doesn’t say or mean much.

42) You Gotta Learn to Dance Before You Learn to Crawl - Nikki Nelson-Kelly - v7 Island
Nikki gets off to a not-particularly auspicious start. I’d planned to potentially do like one one-shot a day with Jim Steinman lyrics for her. Maybe it’s a good thing I went inactive in v7.

41) Hollywoodland - Andrea - v5 Meanwhile
Warning. Andrea has a lot of freaking threads. This is certainly the title of one of them.

40) The Bright Side of Life - Andrea - v4 Pregame
39) Make Your Own Kind of Music - Andrea - v4 Island
38) Land of Hope and Dreams - Andrea - v4 Postgame
As are these. At least we’re at the point where the songthreads start fitting the actual content in a sense. Way too obviously and bluntly, but we’re getting there.

37) No Such Thing as a Free Lunch - Carly - v4 Pregame
This is kinda cute.

36) Whom Gods Destroy - Eris Marquis - v3 Island
Rugga were you the one who used Star Trek Original Series episode titles in v4? Looks like you stole that from meeeeeee.

35) Broken Hearts of Gold - Deanna Hull - v5 Island
Deanna also has a lot of thread titles and this is the lowest ranking one so pretty obvious favouritism to certain characters hmmm?

[+] DECENT TIER - 34-30

34) You Can’t Run Away Forever, But There’s Nothing Wrong With Getting a Good Head Start - Nikki - v7 Island
This is my longest thread title ever, and I generally dislike long thread titles, but it’s not like it would work as a shorter one. Second better and last of Nikki’s one-shots.

33) Wants and Needs - Imraan - v4 Island
32) Your Cross to Bear - Imraan - v4 Island
I’ve described Imraan as a clunky character before and he is and so are his thread titles, but I don’t mind these ones.

31) The Deconstructionist - Carly - v4 Pregame (BEST CARLY TITLE)
This is me trying to be extremely clever and succeeding more than some of my other attempts. Also obscure movie reference shoutout.

30) The In Crowd - Ricky - v4 Pregame (BEST RICKY TITLE)
- This is the opposite in that it’s not clever at all but I still like it OK.

[+] I LIKE THEM TIER - 29-21

29) Crash and Burn and Never Learn - Andrea - v4 Postgame
28) The Lesson Today Is How to Die - Andrea - v4 Island
27) Last to Die - Andrea - v6 Meanwhile
Here are more of Andrea’s songtitle threads. Better ones for me. We still haven’t quite reached the point of subtlety or cleverness, but that’s OK. I like them.

26) Sink or Swim, Better Dive Right In - Nikki - v7 Island (BEST NIKKI TITLE)
This is fun and better than Nikki’s one-shots as I moved onto a new musical theatre theme for her. I could’ve gone better places and moved her up with more stuff, but alas wasn’t to be.

25) Dark Necessities - Kaitlyn - v6 Island
This is the thread where Kaitlyn poops in a bucket in a janitor’s closet. See it, uh… well it’s also a Red Hot Chili Peppers song… not about pooping but chili peppers might make you OK forget that… but y’know it fits in the sense that it’s like a necessity of human biology, and she’s doing it in a dark space… and SCREW YOU I STILL THINK IT’S FUNNY

24) Paper Conquest - Deanna - v5 Island
I enjoy Dee’s thread titles too much. The good thing about a more flowery character is that the more I can just like the imagery of thread titles and think they fit, in a way that something like “Pearl and Destiny” doesn’t. I can’t find this as a lyric so it’s one of the ones I made up. They’re also often the better ones I find.

23) The Kids at the Back of the Classroom - Andrea - v4 Pregame
Sometimes you just like the way a title rolls off the tongue and fits the character. A shame a lot of them were used on pretty pointless pregame stuff but OH WELL.

22) You’re Driftwood - Deanna - v5 Island
Simple, fun, fits her, songlyric yeah whatever.

21) Girls from the Valley - Deanna - v5 Island
Simple, fun, not a songlyric.

[+] I LIKE A LOT TIER - 20-12

20) They Got Game - Imraan - v4 Pregame
Why do I like this kinda silly pregame basketball threadtitle more than Imraan’s other stuff. Hrmz. Maybe it’s because he has no game whatsoever? Maybe I still think He Got Game is one of the most underrated films of the 90’s? WHO KNOWS.

19) Can Fall Down - Andrea - v4 Island
This only works in conjunction with another thread of course, but I still like the callback no matter how blunt and obvious it is.

18) Four-Act Structure - Andrea - v4 Postgame
DN congratulates himself on coming up with a clever writing-reference title for his first post-game thread and moves on.

17) A Hot Air Balloon with a Rusty Nail - Deanna - v5 Island
Now we’re getting into Dee’s completely esoteric songlyric threads that I still unobjectively love. Do I just think it fits? Like the imagery? Just how it sounds? All and more? OK, more to come.

16) Robber Barons - Kaitlyn - v6 Island
One reason I can still be salty about Kaitlyn not lasting longer is because I never got a good chance to use Captains of Industry as a thread title to continue her trend of occasional libertarian references across timelines.

15) Cause When You Try Hard - Jesse - v5 Island
That’s when you die hard. Because Jesse dies in this thread, you see. And he tried hard. And that’s the one time I’ll probably get to use Kanye in a SOTF thread and that’s kinda sad.

14) The Dead Nineties - Deanna - v5 Island
Ooh, I loved weaving this theme and imagery into the post that followed. Not as much as Dee’s all-time best one, but enough.

13) Black and Smoking Christmas Trees - Deanna - v5 Island
I knew from the start I was going to use a lyric from Nick Cave’s Deanna to intro Deanna, and it ended up being this one. I’m not sorry. Oh Deanna…

12) You Always Get What’s Coming - Imraan - v4 Island (BEST IMRAAN TITLE)
Imraan broods and vows vengeance in a one-shot with one of my only movie-inspired threadtitles, which looking back is kinda interesting seeing as how I’m a movie guy. I really dig the sense of inevitability and menace it invokes.

[+] BEST THREADNAMES TIER - 11-1

11) Tomorrow’s Garden - Andrea - v4 Postgame
One of the few threadtitles I can 100% say is unique to me.

10) Greene’s Gulch - Kaitlyn - v6 Island
Oh man I love this one. And it really only fits as a one shot, which I why I loved when it popped into my head for Kaitlyn’s BKA pickup.

9) I Love the Dark… But I Hate Nature - Eris - v3 Island (BEST ERIS TITLE)
The original Goonies quote and the only one that actually worked. I think it’s just how much I love the idea of hating nature, and following that up by having Eris grumble about how we should crush it.

8) The Visionary - Jesse - v5 Island (BEST JESSE TITLE)
My best opening threadtitle for sure. So succinct, and simple, yet so fitting. Especially good since Jesse had no pregame so I had to establish him pretty quick.

7) Flaws - Andrea - v4 Pregame
My shortest theadtitle. It says something how looking back the simple ones can end up your favourites. Yeah, we all got flaws like drug dealing, and this was where I really established Andrea’s voice in pregame by exploiting them.

6) The Adolescent Sky - Deanna - v5 Island
Fun fact: the original title of Dee’s deaththread thread was “Underneath this Adolescent Sky” which I groaned at for a day or so before sneakily changing it. Funny how getting rid of one pointless word can make all the difference in the world. Would be my best songlyric title as well were it not for…

5) Out on a Tether - Andrea - v4 Island
No one on earth ever got this connection that I know of and so I still think it’s the most clever I’ve ever been. Which is kinda sad because it’s not THAT clever but hell it’s a thread title how much are you really expecting. I still grin at it to this day.

4) Stillwater Runs Deep - Andrea - v4 Pregame
But this one even moreso because I made it up myself and who cares if it’s wasted on a pregame thread that never finished due to the other guy leaving the site? I loved Andrea’s promnightjourney to the border town Stillwater with Chad so much that I was like fuck it and continued it as a flashback on the island.

3) Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room - Deanna - v5 Island (BEST DEANNA TITLE)
I love it I love it. I’m not sure where or how I got the inspiration to see if Disneyland had something comparable to the v5 Aviary but I am so glad I did. It just really ties the thread together, the Dude abides.

2) Can’t Fall Down - Andrea - v4 Island (BEST ANDREA TITLE)
Andrea plops herself down on top of the mountain at the cell phone tower and begins developing her plans for the game. The early-game thread that hits and establishes a character in three words and in better fashion that I’ll probably ever do again. I was more creative back then in some cases.

1) The Girl Who Owned an Island - Kaitlyn - v6 Island (BEST KAITLYN TITLE)
And the deaththread that sums everything up. I love that Kaitlyn, blunt as she is, straight-up brings out the source material for this title and explains to to Alba. It’s one of my favourite threads ever and it’s so perfectly titled for Kaitlyn to go out on.

[MethodicalSlacker]

fuck rating all of them

After going through round robin style and deciding what my bad at math brain thinks is probably over 4,000 different matchups of thread titles, I can say yes, I agree, fuck rating all of them.

There's one thread name I left out—Nervous Young Inhumans—because even though I named that thread I wasn't actually present in it at any point. Otherwise, this is it; 65 thread titles across eight characters between Mini and Main (I haven't named a thread for Jodi or Mariko yet) as well as several MSMU threads. Maybe someday after I've done a few more characters I'll come back to this and slot their thread titles in (fuck doing a round robin that large again) but as of right now this is the complete and total Methodical Slacker Thread Name Ranking Countdown.

[+] The List

65. Rebuild - (Kitty Gittschall, SC2)
One of the ideas I had for Kitty's thread name themeing was a series of thread names that started with "Re-." It was a play on the whole novelty of "Second Chances" and stuff. I got through two of these before I realized that this was pretty dumb. Kitty doesn't rebuild anything in this thread. The title is just a word. Very lazy.

64. Room 804: I Want Wind To Blow - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
My big pet peeve here is putting the room number in the title, and it's a big enough pet peeve that this is all the way down here in spot 64. In my opinion this was the single worst thread naming trend in all of V7 and the room numbers should have gone in the subtitles. I didn't think this at the time, though, and here we are. I Want Wind To Blow is a song by The Microphones that I still really enjoy. I wonder if it would have been relevant if this one hadn't stalled out.

63. TV People - (Arthur Bernstein, V6)
Durr hurr they're people and they're watching TV so let's call the thread TV People yeah okay this one is garbage let's move on.

62. Consuelo's Departure - (Lili Williams, V6)
This one is named after a song by The Residents, a band Lili likes, called Consuelo's Departure. The Consuelo in the title is probably Consuelo Vanderbilt, but I just went with the title because it was goofy experimental music that she likes. No thought here. Consuelo translates roughly to "solace" but that doesn't mean much here, because Lili wasn't exactly offering Lily peace or anything like that. It's just a bit cringe.

61. Dream of Horses - (Bert Wren, V7)
A reference to Judy and the Dream of Horses by Belle and Sebastian. Does that mean anything for the thread? Nah, it was just a song I was listening to, and that I figured Bert probably did. This is a theme here, threads named after songs the characters like without any thought to meaning or anything like that. Bert isn't a horse girl, I swear.

60. Sun Giant - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Named after the Fleet Foxes song of the same name. I want to make it clear that it's not like I suddenly think of these songs suck, I just think they were used pretty ineffectively as thread titles. This has nothing to do with the thread.

59. Ship's A Going Down - (Lili Williams, V6)
This one does, but it's still a bit lame. From Not Available, again by The Residents, is Ship's A Going Down. I used most of the song titles from this album and I did so out of order, which totally ruined whatever effect they were supposed to have. The problem here is that the only part of the song that really has any relation to the thread is the title and whenever it comes up in the lyrics, but the ship already went down a while ago for Lili so it's a bit redundant.

58. My Human Gets Me Blues - (Lili Williams, V6)
From the track of the same name by Captain Beefheart. This one is another Lili song pick but kinda relates to the thread because she meets Darius and decides to hang out with him, so I guess that technically is a human that gets her, sort of.

57. The Mascara Snake - (Bert Wren, V7)
Named after a recurring character/phrase in the Captain Beefheart the previous thread title is from, Trout Mask Replica. Bert doesn't listen to that, but the title is fun and stupid like what goes on in the thread so I won't knock it too hard. It's just a little pointlessly weird and could have been attached to something better.

56. Four Line Poem - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
Here's the inverse problem of most of the threads that have been in this sort of Worst Of part so far; this title is too descriptive. Functionally, this thread is like the poems at the end of Lucas' pregame threads, a poem or something he wrote vaguely inspired by what he went through or done on the same day that the thread took place. It's the only poem he writes on the island because he can't think of anything else. But it's also just an incredibly plain title, which is a shame because of what comes after.

55. Minus Something - (Lili Williams, V6)
What semi-obscure not-really-experimental band did we take a song name from today? Swans? Brilliant! Lili is definitely minus something by the end of this thread (or someone, actually) and the title does an okay job of obscuring that. Problem is that it doesn't do anything to foreshadow it, and the song is about something completely unrelated to anything Lili experiences or even thinks about in the entirety of her run, and it clashes terribly with the optimistic first part of the thread, and it's just pretty bad. Thankfully, I think this is the last of the actually bad thread titles I've done and the next begins the just mediocre ones.

54. Retrograde - (Kitty Gittschall, SC2)
The other theme for thread titles Kitty had were terms related to astrology. Here I tried to combine the "Re-" theme and the astrology theme and got pretty alright results, except for the fact that I'm pretty sure this title has already been used. It's also just sort of basic. If you want to pretend this is related to the James Blake song, go for it, I'm sure Kitty probably listened to that one once and then forgot about it so it fits nicely with the meaningless song title trend.

53. Never Known Questions - (Lili Williams, V6)
Another track title from Not Available. Listen to it here if you care. Note that this is Part Four and the climax of the album its on, and also Lili's second thread. Goes to show how much thought I put into this. Lili sings this diegetically (groan) so it gets some points for relevance but also come on.

52. Play Me A Song To Set Me Free - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
One of Violet's actual thread naming themes, for the island, was references to other more notable threads from the past. This one is a reference both to Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying the song and also Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying the thread. I didn't commit to this thread naming theme because this was around when I decided that those were pretty dumb to force down everybody's throats (check out how often Lili shows up and how much of those are in the bottom of the list) so this one kinda is just meh. Neither the song nor the V6 thread have much to do with this Violet thread.

51. The Making of a Soul - (Lili Williams, V6)
Fucking guess. I don't know whether the implication is that Lili doesn't have a soul before this thread (incorrect) or what, but it's spooky and sad sounding and that fits so it gets points.

50. The Eternal Return - (Cybil Price, PV3P)
A potentially cool thread title wasted on a thread that doesn't have much to do with it other than Cybil is returning to a place that he already was. Combined with that, there's a bit of dread in here that matches the thread okay enough. Overall though it's just alright/

49. Colorless II - (Charlie Bernstein, MSMU V7)
Needs a subtitle. This thread title stays relevant throughout the thread but it's pretty plain without a subtitle. Colorless III will have one. After this title is where I think things get more mixed quality-wise with the titles.

48. Feedback Loop - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
In retrospect, a pretty alright title because of its greater foreshadowing of Violet's whole gimmick but as it refers to the thread it's a little tame.

47. Disc Rot - (Max Rudolph and Bert Wren, V7)
Disc Rot is what happens when CDs or DVDs become unreadable over time due to physical and chemical deterioration in the disc itself. Is it evocative? Yeah, enough. Does it have much to do with the thread? Nah. But that's alright I guess. Maybe it's a metaphor for a breakdown in communications but that's a bit of a stretch.

46. Song For A Warrior - (Lili Williams, V6)
Lili is not a warrior at all but I think this song fits her a lot better than all of the other ones that have come up for her so far. It's by Swans but sung by Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The song relates a bit to what Lili's doing here, beginning anew by leaving her friends behind, somehow, it doesn't make too much sense. But it's a very lonely early morning song and that's the vibe here.

45. Twin Infinitives - (Lili Williams, V6)
This one's alright. It comes from the album of the same name by the band Royal Trux which I guess Six Things To A Cycle are supposed to sound like somehow. It also refers to Asuka and Lili meeting and being together, paired in some way. I hadn't actually heard this album when I titled the thread and I wouldn't for another few years. It's okay to be a poser if you're doing so with the full intention of becoming the person you're posing as after a while, and nobody can figure it out. That said, I would have called this thread something else if I made it today knowing what the album actually is like.

44. God In Three Persons - (Lili Williams, V6)
This thread actually has four people in it, but that's alright if you choose to believe that the three people referred to in the title doesn't include Lili. It's another reference to, you guessed it, an album by The Residents. I've heard a bit from this one but not the whole thing still. Whoops!

43. Manifest Content - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
This title refers, of course, to dreams. The Manifest Content of a dream is the actual story and plot, whereas the Latent Content of a dream is the symbolism and what is actually going on. Does that mean there will be a Latent Content thread at some point? Not if I've learned my lesson, because even though this sounds cool it has nothing to do with anything. Lucas isn't the character plagued by bad dreams. She comes later.

42. In C - (Lili Williams, V6)
Not a bad first thread title. It's the name of the piece that she's listening to while flying her kite (intense!), composed by Terry Riley, and I think it was probably the Bang on a Can version. If it wasn't, it should have been. It's tongue in cheek because it's like declaring the key signature at the start of the piece, "Lili Williams is to be read in the key of C" this suggests. Too bad that's not how things went on the island or else this'd be higher.

41. Colorless - (Marie Bernstein, MSMU V6)
Comes from the first half of a book title that I'll reveal later. Refers to the general depression and listlessness Marie feels in the days after her brother dies. A plain title, but an effective enough one that should have been iterated on more strongly the second time I decided to use it. This one is higher because at the time it was "original" even though nothing is.

40. Void of Course - (Kitty Gittschall, SC2)
The thread titles that I think have some good qualities without needing to finagle anything start around here. Maybe a little bit after this one. It's an astrology term, the Void of Course Moon, the best possible time for divination and meditation and magic and whatever. Here's an excerpt from an astrology website I found talking about it by quoting the person who came up with the idea;

"Every couple of days there comes a time which is best used to subjective, spiritual non-material concerns, like prayer, yoga, play, psychotherapy, or passive experience, sleep or meditation.

This period may last a few seconds, or it may be three days and nights in a single session. It begins when the Moon in transit makes the last major aspect it will make before it changes from one sign of the Zodiac to the next. It ends when the Moon enters the next sign. The name of this period is Void of Course Moon. You may call it a silly season, or vacation from normal living.

Decision-making in such periods turns out later to be unrealistic. Creativity diverges into unplanned directions, improvisions [sic], false starts, error. If you buy any object you never use it fully. Enterprises founded while the Moon is Void of Course do fail after long and costly effort. Human judgment is more fallible than usual during the time the Moon is Void of Course. This is the principle factor in all observed experience thus far.

Routine proceeds readily, but often requires an adjustment later. Defects or shortages come to light. Delay and frustration are commonly experienced while the Moon is Void of Course."

Funnily enough if you read it literally it refers to how clueless I was about what I was doing with Kitty at the time, but that's less funny and more just sad if you think about it.

39. Ferris Wheel on Fire - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
This is the name of an EP by Neutral Milk Hotel that I'm pretty sure Violet is listening to in the thread. It's a pretty catchy title. It feels related to how Violet sort of just tumbles out of the thread, but who can say? It's just a good phrase in this case and that's good enough.

38. Feel The Earth Move - (Cybil Price, PV3P)
This phrase was pulled off of a bad aesthetic wallpaper. I'm not reposting it here. It feels momentous but also a bit vacuous as well. Cybil's thread titles are generally pretty ambiguous and don't have any overall broader theme. His thread title document is pretty extensive (I have one for every kid and sometimes I just mine thread titles from things without a specific character in mind) but I only used two thread names from there.

37. Somnambulists - (Cybil Price, PV3P)
This word means "Sleepwalkers," and I think it's a pretty catchall thread title that I could have used for a good deal of the bottom twenty in this list and it would have worked just as well.

36. Let's Try The After - (Cybil Price, PV3P)
This is the name of a couple of EPs by the band Broken Social Scene. Neither in particular, just the whole thing. A reference to how the thread zone is called, subforum, idk. Cybil's best titled threads were started by other people.

35. Generation Loss - (Bert Wren, V7)
The better of the two "Media Deterioration Duology" thread titles. The name comes from the loss in quality that comes from making a copy of a copy due to the way that data transcodes work or something. It sounds easy enough to avoid—just don't copy a copy—but there are a lot more copies out there than it seems. If you don't use lossless image editing software, generation loss can occur when you rotate a JPEG, as is the example of the concept on the Wikipedia page. On a broader note, I've always wondered how SOTF has impacted Gen Z in universe. Maybe they wouldn't be called Gen Z at all, but they probably are anyway.

34. Drawn To The Blood - (Lili Williams, V6)
Another Lili song thread title, but this one's a little different. It's a compromise between my running thread title theme with her at the time, naming threads after songs, and VoltTurtle's title theme for Penelope being titles related to blood. Not a song Lili would listen to because it's too mainstream for her, but it makes a better thread title than most of what she did. In retrospect I should have just let Volt title the thread without insisting on a song connection, the blood thing was a lot cooler than what I was doing.

33. Midheaven - (Kitty Gittschall, SC2)
This thread title is another astrological term. The Midheaven in astrology is the "highest" point on one's chart, roughly speaking. Tenth house cusp, if that means anything to you. One of the most significant features of the chart, and at this point in Kitty's life entirely meaningless to her. But to me the position looks like when you've just come up the hill of a roller coaster and there's a period of weightlessness before you go back down. Which would be a feeling she probably would relate to at least a little, except that the reason roller coasters are fun is because they don't last that long.

32. Ready For The House - (Lili Williams, V6)
A lot creepier of a phrase than the thread is. I played with the idea of a deranged Lili and this might have been the breaking point for it but in the end it's just a creepy thread title put to Lili deciding to choose hope. Named after a pretty infamously scary outsider music by the artist Jandek. Listening to this in that asylum would be pretty horrifying. So is having it fresh in your memory at all.

31. I Want To Make You Cry, I'm Nothing Like You - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Another one of Violet's old version reference titles. I don't remember exactly what thread this one is a reference to (and the words it is made of are surely too common for the site search engine) but I'm pretty sure it's V2. Good but misused in my opinion. Could be read as a statement "towards" Lorenzo, but it really isn't. I'd reuse this for a different thread if I had the chance.

30. Demons Dance Alone - (Lili Williams, V6)
The name of both an album and a song by The Residents, but specifically the song in this case. Fits the thread pretty well musically if nothing else, which is pretty much a first for any of these thread titles. I don't know whether abandoning Darius was good or bad for Lili's wellbeing in the long run, but she felt pretty strongly about it.

29. Prometheus Rising - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson has a marker on its Wikipedia page.

"This article may be incomprehensible or very hard to understand. Please help by rewording it if the intended meaning can be determined. The talk page may have details."

And there's a second one.

"This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details."

28. "...we must try until it kills us." - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
I was really surprised when I found out "Though we may not survive it..." wasn't a phrase from a book or a piece of media that actually had an ending to it. Here's an attempt.

27. Because We Love You - (Milo Diaz, MSMU V7)
A barely spoken lyric from a song by Elliott Smith that he was working on before he died. The song has the line "Give me one good reason not to do it" in it, and allegedly when he sang it live Jennifer Chiba, who was Smith's girlfriend at that time, would say this in response from backstage—"Because we love you." When it was time to release the song on the posthumous album From A Basement On A Hill, she got to overdub it where she sang it. It's buried in the mix, though, distant, hard to hear, ignored. The song is called King's Crossing.

26. Sunflower Sutra - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
A poem by Allen Ginsberg about Jack Kerouac. I like the alteration in the title, and I like how desperate the poem feels. "We're not our skin of grime [...] we're golden sunflowers inside."

25. Crown of Shit (Liar's Chair) - (Lili Williams, V6)
It's a mangling of a line from "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. Specifically that version, because Cash changed the line in his. I don't think Lili would have listened to this one that much, but she'd appreciate it more than the Cash version (and she'd be right). There's a rock bottom feeling to this that feels pretty relevant to how Lili feels at the moment. The chapel was where I wanted Lili to die for a while, and realizing that she'd find Colleen's body there knocked over a domino in my head that maybe should have stayed unknocked, but it's too late now. If you're really fast at reading and you can time the noise burst to when she dies you get a rough approximation for what the AMV would be like of this if it was an anime.

I think the reason I picked the thread title was because NIN was getting memed in the chat at the time.

24. Say Yes! To T!nn!ss!! - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Sufjan again with this one. I had a few Sufjan song titles in the Violet thread document that I messed with to be Chattanooga region relevant but this was the only one that I got to use. Others included "Bartlett, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)," and "For The Widows in Montgomery, For The Fathers In Shelby" and "Fort Loudoun, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience, but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'"

23. This Be The Verse - (Arthur Bernstein, V6)
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself."
- Philip Larkin

The thread titles that I really like start with this one.

22. Who Can Stay The Bottles of Heaven? - (Max Rudolph, V7)
Part of a bible quote, Job 38:37. If Max was a quippier character, he would have made the bible quotes out loud. I like the reference here, though I acknowledge that the phrase is translated a bit archaically. Max is very much concerned with the questions presented in Job.

21. Everybody Needs Somebody To Hate - (Max Rudolph, V7)
A thread title that suggests something will go horribly wrong and yet nothing does. Not on screen, anyway. At one point I did think that Max's prom would be depicted on-screen but not showing it was probably the better call. Who does Max actually hate?

20. Breadcrumb Trail - (Lili Williams, V6)
A song by Slint.

Spiderland is one of the parts of Lili that I feel really mixed about. It's an interesting explanation for how she's able to handle a lot of the more scarring parts of surviving the island. Violet comes across the same term briefly in her first thread, and at one point or another it almost came back, but the one-off reference is good enough considering that although Violet absolutely would have been aware of Slint, she wasn't actually that into them. Will I find a way to bring it back up in V8? It won't be "me" that makes that call.

"Creeping up into the sky..."

19. In The Backseat - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Violet was almost named Alice. I don't mind Alice as a name but I'm glad I went for Violet in the end. Violet listens to this song in the back of her sister's car, it's from the Arcade Fire album Funeral. It's an incredibly cathartic song and one of my favorites, but the real best part is how uneasy it feels. The conceit of the song that's never actually stated is that you're going to need to drive someday. There's going to be a day when you won't have the people who have guided you in your life anymore. But I think that some of the words here can apply to Dana a bit too.

18. The Lines We Draw - (Milo Diaz, MSMU V7)
This thread title comes from the name of a story I wrote a while ago and it generally refers to the concept of boundaries. It refers to a lot of things. I want to do the Genius style explanation of what each thread title means, but in my opinion that's less doable with these later ones because the reason they work is the many ways they can apply to the thread. Part of figuring that out should be the reader's job. Whenever I read a thread, I'm thinking about the title at least a little bit, and the same goes for when I write them.

I'll talk more about where the title comes from some time soon because there's a lot of trivia related to the last couple of V7 characters I've yet to do a What Could Have Been post for. Working through that post has given me a lot to think about. I do a lot of thinking in the post itself, so it'll be a bit of an unreadable mess when I put it up. That's nothing anyone unfortunate enough to read my stuff will be unfamiliar with though.

17. Dogwander - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
This one comes from an unfinished, unreleased Radiohead song. The last two words of that sentence were a lot less important in picking the title than the words that came before it. Lucas left a lot undone in his life. For a while I was thinking of doing the same thing. In my gloomiest, edgiest, most self-important and adolescent of days, there was a file sitting in my Google Drive, a hypothetical just-in-case "Will," that described who got my stuff if I died somehow. I deleted it once I realized how much of a burden it would be—and also that there would be no way to get into my account because I don't write my passwords down anywhere so how would anybody even read that fucking thing?

16. Random Reality - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
I really like aliteration, okay? Sure this isn't the strongest title—it comes from one of the phrases Morton's List uses to describe itself on the box (I actually have the game and it is incredibly fun)—but it's pretty fun and in the end the way the thread went was pretty random. We actually did the rolling off OOC, so there was a game played for this thread, but we didn't make it to the actual quests. Maybe in V8. Actually, absolutely in V8. I don't care that it's a rare game that nobody knows, as far as I'm concerned it is actual Jumanji and it will be played here one of these days.

15. To Be A Brilliant Light - (Max Rudolph, V7)
It's hard being Max. It's hard to look at a bright light for too long. Sometimes you'd rather just close your eyes. I don't think Max is both bright and "light". If you believe he's smart, then you can't believe he's acting out of the goodness of his heart. If you think he's good, then you know that what he believes in isn't smart. He's one or the other, and it's up to the reader to decide how they reconcile the poison in his beliefs with the actual actions Max takes.

14. Beast Monster Thing - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
This one actually comes from a Car Seat Headrest song, with the full title Beast Monster Thing (Love Isn't Love Enough). There's a title drop in thread and I think that's explanation enough for what it means in context, or at least one way to read it.

"I co-write my songs with myself
He feels the feelings, I write the words."

13. Dude! FO(U)RTIFIED!!! Pt. 4: A New Hope - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
A reference to a few threads by now. The bit with Lucas' terrible sandwich is a direct intentional homage and one of the few instances of my writing I will always claim as "mine" without having to use scare quotes in text and hold back an entire sewer system's worth of vomitted quasi-essay-half-blogpost using only the muscles in my tongue.

12. But, What Ends When The Symbols Shatter? - (Max Rudolph, V7)
The name of both a song and an album by Death in June, but specifically the song is the reference here. There's a bit of neofolk in Max's thread titles, though I can't take full credit for thinking of Max with that music in mind (shout out to Toben because it's a great fit).

11. Starting Point for G007 - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
A reference to... well, not a specific thread, but a forgotten tradition. This thread doesn't sprawl quite as much as it would need if it wanted to live up to the insanity of old, but it does spiral a little. Violet lives this number. She dies to it. It convinces her that it is her name. Adds another letter so they can match. If you ever feel like I'm about to write "Illuminati Confirmed" at the end of a Violet post, just know that it's what she would have wanted.

10. The Hunger Artist - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
Another rare actual literary reference in my thread titles. This one is the name of a Franz Kafka short story, yet changed a little. The first word is different, a bit wrong, maybe misremembered. I think I single Kafka out as one of Lucas' favorite writers in his profile, and he's definitely the kind of person who'd relate to many of Kafka's characters. Whatever that means. I don't know. Sometimes the dot goes at the end of the sentence and then the next few keystrokes comes from someone else's hands for a bit.

9. Years of Pilgrimage - (Dana Schmidt, MSMU V7)
From the same book title as a couple of earlier MSMU threads, Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. This is really the only way that the threads are related in any way, except that they're roughly the same sentence but with different emphasis on either side. Dana is sort of a pilgrim in the dream world, I suppose, though it's hardly a willing journey.

8. The Despair Code - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
This one is actually a reference to an /x/ creepypasta/conspiracy theory. The actual substance of the conspiracy theory is pretty vague apart from the idea that there is an underlying truth to the world and the way the world is both metaphysically and hierarchically ordered that causes deep despair when truly understood. Or it's a specific frequency of sound that allows for mind control. Or it's just a copy of the Anti-Life Equation from DC Comics. Violet does see a strange truth in the end, or she just thinks she does.

7. The Erika Vendetta - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
This is in this spot purely because I'm incredibly happy it got to happen, that I ever got to title a thread this. Happy, mostly, for a reason that I said exactly once and won't say again. The part that I can say is that I like how it sounds. It's a pleasing combination of sounds to make, with one's mouth, aloud.

6. The Praise and Glory - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
Trying to find a suitably cryptic V4 reference (it was her fourth thread, so V4 was up in reference rotation) lead to this sort of Faulknierian sounding title in reference to May the Lord Accept This Sacrifice at Our Hands. The follow up to that part of the prayer is "For the praise and glory of His name."

IT'S ANGELS ALL THE WAY DOWN

5. King's Crossing - (Lucas Diaz, V7)
I knew for a while that if Lucas ever got to confronting Erika, I'd use this title. I'd already committed to half of it with the meanwhile title. Milo's thread is the interjection, faded in the background, of Lucas' sort of cry for someone to talk him out of it.

"I can't prepare for death any more than I already have."

The best songposts are the ones where you don't.

4. Ich Bin Ein Berliner - (Max Rudolph, V7)
I saw some reactions when this one went up that thought it was a reference to Max being a nazi. It's actually a quote from a speech by John F. Kennedy,
which has a pretty infamous urban legend that says he actually said the word for donut instead of the word for someone who lives in Berlin, and was laughed at.

3. Writing the Enigma - (Randy Rudolph, Marie Bernstein, James Bernstein, MSMU V7)
This phrase came from something and I can't remember what. It's an incredibly perplexing thing, writing the enigma, because why would one write something as intentionally confusing as that, not just a riddle or a mystery but a full misdirection? I thought for a while how this blatant act of handlercest would go over, but then realized that it didn't matter because no matter what anyone thought my response was going to be to double down in V8 either way.

2. Honeysuckle and Pain - (Arthur Bernstein, V6)
An incredibly vivid, incredible phrase that I cannot take credit for at all! This comes from the title of a Mark Z. Danielewski book, the third in the "The Familiar" series. Mark Z. Danielewski is someone I'd credit as a large influence when it comes to my writing, and he's one of my favorite authors, and he followed me on Instagram for a while after I took a photo of his book and tagged him and it made me really happy that day.

1. Walpurgisnacht - (Violet Schmidt, V7)
The top of the list, and it's... not a media reference. Walpurgisnacht is the a holiday dedicated to a Saint who battled against, among other things, witchcraft. I've seen the name used in other things, in Madoka Magica and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?, but the reference here is chiefly to the holiday itself. There's a lot that happens in this thread below the surface, and I'd say that within the context of Violet's thought spiral it can be read as a sort of allegory. But I don't officially endorse any reading of any of my characters. That's not what the point of this, or really any of the trivia that I fill out (because I'm addicted to it), is to me. Walpurgisnacht is my favorite thread title that I've done because I'm not borrowing somebody else's reference for once. The reference frames the events that the name it is tied to—the association is not via other works that have made that leap themselves. I want to move in this direction when it comes to thread titles, to cut down immensely on the titles that I borrow from other artworks. I've got a note document full of ideas for V8, and hopefully the next time we have this thread and I make this list it'll be really easy and I won't have to do the round robin thing again because this'll be where a clean break happens and all of the V8 thread titles come after this one because I like them more.

[Laurels]

Ok, I named 45 threads on Main. I'm counting only threads from games, so here we go:

[+] Shit

44. (tie) I solemnly swear that I am up to no good and Mischief Managed (V5, Sophie)

God, what was I thinking? I suggested the names of the multishots, and as part of the hindsight cringe of that whole experience, naming the two threads after fucking Harry Potter was such a dumb idea. I know I come off as pretentious and hyper analytical when it comes to threads (as this whole post will demonstrate), but even I think this was a bad idea. It doesn't work for the character I had in these threads (Sophie), and it's a bit silly for the somewhat lackluster escape planning threads to be named after that. I know I thought it was clever back then, since it was about a group coming back together to do rebellious teenage nonsense, but I've really come to hate these names as time passes. I should have thought of something better, or just not suggest anything at all.

[+] Low

43. Lay My Purple on the Grass (V6, Nadia)

Nadia's thread theme was "reference media that you are quite sure hasn't been used for thread titles on the site." Aside from the ludicrous notion that I'd absolutely know everything that has and hasn't been referenced in thread titles, this was definitely the weakest effort from that theme. I named it from the ANOHNI song Drone Bomb Me, which I was sure I had discovered around the time. It doesn't work for the thread. I like names to actually mean something to what happens, and a song about a girl wishing to get drone bombed because she's depressed after her family was drone bombed didn't really fit for a thread where Nadia's just lying on the roof and everyone else there ignores her. You could stretch it, but in hindsight, it was a missed opportunity, and not even the best lyric from that song I could have used for this.

42. The Red Shoes (V5, Sophie)

Sophie had a more general music/dance theme for her threads, and I chose this thread because it's the thread where she needs to replace the shoes she left behind in a danger zone. The Red Shoes is a ballet movie with the main story centered around a ballet based around the red shoes fairy tale. It's a fun idea, and The Red Shoes is a great movie for coming up with references and themes to explore. But it failed as a title here because the themes were not expressed well, and the thread veered away from anything that could relate to the movie (unless the main character's self-destructive dedication to dance, which leads to her demise, matches how Sophie was nearly led to her death by following Gavin, but that's a mean hindsight interpretation and was not the intention at the time), so it just looks weird.

41. Wisteria Lane, After the End (V5, Claire)

Claire's theme was "movie and TV references," which is broader and had some great ideas for threads (as the rest of this list will show). This one is just stupid. I picked it because Claire and Kyle are in the decrepit neighborhood, and Wisteria Lane is the street the show Desperate Housewives was set on. The set is also a famous Hollywood backlot where all the houses are used for various film and television productions. I think I wanted to be clever since such an idealistic neighborhood was run down and left to rot after V5 island was evacuated, but this is just kind of silly in hindsight, especially compared to other threads. V5 was my first version and definitely where I wasn't at the thread naming levels I could get to, and this was an early example of where it needed improvement.

40. You Gave Up Being Good When You Declared a State of War (V6, Nadia)

I got into Grimes around the time this thread came up and wanted to reference Kill V. Maim. I don't think it's a bad name, but it's for the wrong kind of thread. It's a talking thread with almost no action from Nadia, Jerry, and Asuka. It'd have been better saved for later in the game, preferably in confrontation with a notable killer. Plus, everything Grimes has done since Artangels has made this kinda cringey in hindsight, so yeah, it's really low on the list.

39. Early Morning in the Garden of Good and Evil (V6, Noah)

Noah's theme was "LGBT+ media," but I found a lot of them pretty weak in hindsight. This thread was one where I thought I was clever, referencing the book/film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but changing it because it wasn't midnight when the thread was set. But really, my reasons were just "they're outside, it's Day 2, and it's morning." It's not as clever as it could be and I really could have tried harder for a story about a guy killing his gay lover and it rocking Savannah high society.

38. O-Lan, You Are the Earth (V5, Claire)

This is the last line in the movie The Good Earth, a film about poor Chinese farmers in the early 20th century. I named it because Claire was in a wheat field, and wheat was the family's main crop. It's not that clever. The character O-Lan was someone who cared about the earth and the harvest, making difficult choices for her family's sake, and the line comes after her husband realizes he was pretty shitty to her after their whole marriage and not really appreciating her. It's not a terrible idea, but it didn't work for the thread, for Claire, or for the events that happened.

37. I Pray to the Lord You Reveal what His Truth is (V7, Tanisha)

Tanisha's thread theme was "lyrics from Beyonce's Lemonade," and this one wasn't really that great. It's from Sorry, an amazing song, but nothing is really revealed. It's just a talking thread early on in Tanisha's journey, so little came from it. It's definitely not the best usage of such a lyric and could have found a better thread. But then again, it's not too awful. Just kinda meh.

36. When you hurt me, you hurt yourself (V7, Tanisha)

This was right after Ned died, and Tanisha is trying to come down from the horror of nearly dying and seeing her ally die. It was a good idea and would have worked better if something in the thread made the assertion in the title mean something. Like, if Tanisha resolved herself or whatever. The events in the thread didn't match it, so it's fairly low here.

35. Cucurrucucú paloma (V6, Alba)

Alba's thread theme was "Spanish-language media," and for this thread, where she goes to the radio tower because she hears "Jenny from the Block" but finds nothing, only later Blair and Enzo, sort of works. It's a song about lovesickness, and Alba is led by hope that one of her allies found the message and made it there, but is let down. Again, it's not bad, but it's a bit of a stretch.

34. Santa Sangre (V6, Alba)

This is named after a movie, and it's one of those threads where the name is cooler than the events. It's a bit of a violent thread, since Alba removes a crossbow bolt from Brendan and then they and Fiyori do target practice. It's not terrible, w doesn't connect to the source as much, since the source is a pretty trippy movie. The kind that earns the name "Saint Blood."

33. Made My Decision to Test My Limits (V7, Katrina)

Katrina, being an Ariana Grande impersonator at the time of abduction, had all her threads named after Ariana songs. This lyric from Dangerous Woman was supposed to be affirming of the quartet of ladies she was in and their resolve to survive together. It works better in the context of the successive threads, but not much is resolved here. It's a fine pair with the immediate thread, where the quarter run into a dangerous group and everyone gets into a fight. That does elevate it a bit more.

32. The Strange Case of Nadia (V6, Nadia)

This thread is a reference to the Portuguese film The Strange Case of Angelica, a movie where a photographer is asked to photograph a dead woman before her funeral, but finds himself haunted by her and seems to be lured towards death by her. Since this began Nadia's story, I thought that it would be a good name for the start of a story about a photographer who is now flirting with death, just with Angelica switched to Nadia. And since Nadia was being watched by the cameras and two-way mirrors, it worked a bit. It's got a bit more meat to it, but since I used it I started to dislike inserting character names into thread titles (more for myself than anyone else doing it), so it's not something I'd do again.

[+] Medium

31. Un Certain Regard (V5, Claire)

This was Claire's first thread, named after an award given at the Cannes Film Festival. It means "from another angle" and is for films with non-traditional styles. I figured it made sense for Claire since this was her start and she begins sending a message to the real world. Her story is now a non-traditional movie, in a way, so it seemed to apply for her. But I do think it's not the best name for her start, so while it's not bad, I don't particularly love it.

30. Pick Apart the Pieces of Your Heart (V5, Sophie)

This is the first lyric in Gotye's Hearts A Mess and is right after Sophie watched her friend walk off a cliff. It's her calming down and being comforted by Alex, so it does apply for what's happening. It works, but it's not spectacular, and choosing the lyric over the song title didn't really improve it.

29. Babette's Supper Club (V5, Claire)

I remember this one being a stretch even back in V5-era. So, in the show Boardwalk Empire, one of the main locations was a dinner and theatre venue called Babette's. A lot of major scenes happened here in the first three seasons before the place was blown up. I chose it just because Claire was on the boardwalk, and since it ended up being a violent thread, it seemed fitting that a glamorous place became a place of bloodshed. It's a bit weird as it's own title, I'll admit, so it's shunted down a bit.

28. Norwegian Wood (V5, Rachael)

Rachael only had two threads she began, so she didn't really have a theme. This oneshot, where she's been abandoned, has seen a lot of death, and flirts with the idea of suicide, was named more after the Murakami novel than the Beatles song. Mostly because it's about suicide, which isn't really the best reason to name a thread, but since Rachael was a literary person, I imagined she had read the book before. It's also about loneliness, which seemed to work at the time. It's not really the best thing I could have done, but I do think on its own it's a good name.

27. Come on, Everypony! Smile, smile, smile! (V5, Claire)

The absolute dumbest fucking thread title I came up with. So Claire had to be references to film and tv shows, and this thread is her and Kyle burying Jason. I didn't have much to go on other than Jason being a brony, so I figured I'd be "ironic" and choose an MLP reference that didn't match what they were doing. I love how absolutely stupid it is, but also think it was absolutely stupid to choose for what was supposed to be a serious thread, so I'm a bit mixed on it years later.

26. If We Could Have Tomorrow in Technicolor (V6, Noah)

I chose this line from an Adore Delano song about a break up to convey Noah's sadness over his frenemy dying. Irene died before Noah could make peace with her over their issues, and it's fine for imagining a time where things would be better and brighter. I don't think it's bad, but I think it's a bit weak as far as references go.

25. Falling Slowly (V5, Sophie)

So Sophie just fled the escape plan and is alone with Alex. I thought referencing a song about a duo desiring one another and helping one another out seemed right for her current mental state. I don't know if the song applies perfectly to the thread, but it's a nice name, so I don't dislike it.

24. I'll Carry On When the Valley's Deep (V6, Noah)

This title does not match the thread at all. Noah's trying to calm himself down after his run-in with Nancy and tells an obscene joke to calm himself down. It's also a reference to a Martha Wash song. So yeah, it sorta applies, but for completely ironic reasons. I don't hate it, and think it's a bit funny. But it's definitely the middle of this list for those contrasting reasons.

23. By the Time I Get to Phoenix (V5, Sophie)

Sophie just fled the escape group, and this song, about a guy fleeing his lover and imagining what she's doing at each stage of his travels away seemed fitting. Sophie's probably wondering what the others are doing at each moment she gets further and further away from the group. That could work, although I'm not a super huge fan of the singer or the song. I think it's fine for Sophie, and I think it's just fine in general.

22. Just keep breathin' and breathin' and breathin' (V7, Katrina)


This thread is Katrina's first and has her panicking upon realizing the seriousness of the situation. It's fine because she's flooded with anxiety and needs to calm down, and it definitely signals her issues on Day One. I do like the reference and think it was a good idea, but looking back, I think it should have been "Keep on breathin'" or something shorter from the Ariana song instead of just the verse before the chorus.

21. L'Avventura (V5, Claire)

The name is so cool for such a lackluster oneshot. It's a reference to an Italian film where a woman goes missing on vacation and her boyfriend and best friend go searching for her. Since Claire's looking for the rest of her friend group after Corey's death, it seemed fitting. But since nothing really happened in the thread, it's a title I really like but wish I could have used in other circumstances.

20. Rolodex of Hate (V6, Noah)

Noah's first thread is named after a joke from drag comic Bianca del Rio, where she says she stores all her comebacks and insults in a "rolodex of hate" that she can flip to and use if opportunity presents it. I thought it was a good reference for Noah, especially for his start. There are a few jokes as well, so it's not completely wrong to use. But it's one that would have been better later in Noah's story instead of right at the start, when he's more worn down by the game and willing to unleash the hate against the terrorists.

19. What a Wicked Way to Treat the Girl That Loves You (V7, Tanisha)


This is Tanisha's first thread, and a lyric from Hold Up. I think it's a good song for her start since Tanisha's definitely more in control of her situation at the start than past kids, carrying that Beyonce-in-the-yellow-gown-with-the-bat energy. It doesn't fully play out as well as it could have, but I think it was the start I wanted for Tanisha, even if her story didn't match that energy level.

18. Malagueña Salerosa (V6, Alba)

This oneshot where Alba loses Bryony and leaves a message for her is named after a song about a man who can't be with his lover because of their class differences. It's one of the first times where Alba has lost her connections and faces disappointment, so it's somewhat fitting for her start, and for what comes later.

17. El ángel exterminador (V6, Alba)

This is one where the title doesn't match the thread so much, but is cool enough that I can ignore it. Alba and Brendan are alone in a church to think about what they've done, what they're gonna do, and where the first bit of sexual tension between them plays out. The movie it comes from is a surreal film about people who can't leave a room despite there being nothing preventing them from. I think it's a bit of a stretch, and I think I was playing more with the religious imagery in the thread (not that there isn't a religious side to the movie). It could be better, but it's not bad, and I think the name itself is cool enough to excuse it.

[+] High

16. Why Y'all Gagging? (V6, Noah)

Okay, I just like this phrase. It achieved popularity from the documentary Paris is Burning ("Why y'all gagging? She bring it to you every ball!"), and it seemed like a good one for Noah's early game. It's mostly to tell them not to be surprised the radio tower doesn't work ("Why y'all gagging? You should have known the terrorists wouldn't have a working radio for you to use"), but it's also when Noah reunites with Rene and has the group's morale boost a bit, so I think it goes from being esoteric to being clever in a fairly subtle way.

14. (Tie) One Taught Me Love, One Taught Me Patience... and ...One Taught Me Pain (V7, Katrina)

Thank god this actually worked out. When I knew Katrina was going to be Ariana-themed, I knew I had to reference the famous lyric/meme from Thank U, Next. I thought about doing three threads where this played out, but knew it was more unlikely due to the RNG being a potential parade-rainer. So I did it for two threads, the first when Katrina gives rites to Yuko, the latter after she and Willow lost Sierra. You can apply all three statements to various characters, with the former applying to Yuko (as Love and/or Patience) and Tyrell (Patience), and the latter thread to Sierra (Pain). You could argue Willow counts for Pain too, but either way, it was an experiment I think was successful, so I'm happy it played out as it did.

13. Even Jesus got his crown in front of a crowd (V7, Meka)

Meka only got to name one thread. I took this lyric from the song Glory, since I was hoping Meka's theme would be "black media and culture." I do realize it's a bit risky to equate a character with Jesus (Meka certainly should not), but the lyric notes that Jesus was tortured and executed with public approval. Meka basically allowed an agent of chaos and death into his cabin and allowed him to kill Mackenzie. If anything, Meka's more like the people who allowed Jesus to die (and Mackenzie should not be compared to Jesus either, but she was an innocent who died due to the sins and failings of others), so I think that's where it works. I also realize I could be stretching it, but it's still a cool title and I think it can be argued to the above interpretation, so that's why it's high on this list.

12. I'm telling these tears, go and fall away, fall away (V7, Tanisha)


Aside from Freedom being one of my, if not my, favorite songs off Lemonade, it works for her death. Tanisha's attacked by Erika, mortally wounded, but doesn't dwell on it because she wants to save Shauna and Angie. It's her sacrificing her sorrow and grief over her situation to think of the bigger situation and try to stop a major player. It doesn't work, but it emulates the title well enough that I'm really happy with it and love it.

11. Que sera, sera (V6, Alba)

This probably doesn't count a ton for Alba's theme since Doris Day made the song popular, but the phrase ("whatever will be, will be") seems fitting for the scene. She and Brendan are confronting their actions, and then Brendan fucks up and kills Jaime, putting Alba in moral conflict. She does make a decision to be Brendan's conscience, so I think it fits for the decision she made. She and Brendan will do bad things on the island, but it's how the flow will go. They don't have to like it, but they have to accept it will happen and should be accountable for it.

10. The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (V6, Nadia)

I named this thread after a book by an author I met and worked with, and he's not someone you'd know unless you looked for specific kinds of nonfiction literature. I haven't read it, but I've read other books by him to get his idea down. Nadia encounters Will, who is dragging his dead girlfriend's body around, and she notes how it's a bit wrong to do so. It's a thread about confronting mortality and one's actions while alive, so I think it's fitting for this thread. I also just like the title and think it fits Nadia's snarky nature.

[+] Best

9. Volver (V6, Alba)

"Volver" means "to return," which is fitting for a thread where Alba and Fiyori return to Brendan's body. The film Volver is about two women who encounter the ghost of their dead mom and are forced to confront their past and their actions, primarily in regards to how men have fucked them up. Brendan was an important person for Alba's story, and she's returning to him to make some sense of everything that's going on now. It's also good that it's a thread between two women talking, since it's a female-driven film, so I think it's a subtler, more successful title.

8. Rabbit Heart (V5, Rachael)

Rachael's first thread has her confront the reality of the game, end up in a dangerous situation, and break down immediately because of it. In the Florence song, it's about how Florence needs to strengthen herself. It's basically telling Rachael "get over it, because people are going to die." She never becomes that lionhearted girl like in the song, but it's the sort of title that characterizes her at the start, so I think it works really well.

7. 7 Rings (V7, Katrina)

The song 7 Rings is a song about how awesome materialism is. It's a song where Ariana sings about all the finer things she has in life and how much better she is because she can have them. The title comes from Michael Jordan having six championship rings, and she's saying she's better because she's got seven. So it's a bit of a braggart song, whose success rides on whether or not you believe she's being serious or ironic. I chose it because I knew the thread was going to be Zach and Willow negotiating items and weapons between one another. It's where the material need plays into survival instinct, where guns and billhooks are equally valuable. Katrina's quest for getting them fresh water also plays into this because she's in pursuit of something she needs ("I want it. I got it.")

Now that Zach has left, Justin has come in and is now greedy but in a more dangerous way. He wants the girls's supplies and weapons, and is now trying to kill them for it. This greed is going to result in Katrina's death, Justin's further injuries, and Willow's emotional and mental trauma. On top of that, the bragging and reckless behavior demonstrated in the song can apply to Willow, who throughout the thread has made some questionable and dangerous moves that could lead to herself or others being hurt. She lied to Zach about Katrina wanting to kill him, she antagonized Justin by throwing water at him, and now she's about to pay for her reckless and thoughtless behavior by losing her last ally, but gaining all of her items and weapons left behind. Willow's getting figurative seven rings out of this, even though she caused a lot of issues.

Now that Katrina is dead, here's the other reason why this name worked so well for the scene. The titular song samples the song My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. In the musical, the song is Maria comforting the Von Trapp children in a difficult time by suggesting they think of things that make them happy, whether they be kittens or packages, whatever. In the musical, this is the first time when Maria introduces music to the children, which allows them to recover from the trauma of losing their mother, accept Maria as a governess and later stepmother, and gives them something to bond with their distant father and to help them deal with the encroaching war.

In the thread, Katrina, in her last moments, takes the time to comfort Willow and weakly tries to sing a song to her to make her feel better or give her something to cling to to recover. Whether she's as successful as Maria is left in the air, but it's an additional reference that adds to the situation. Willow is leaving 7 Rings with more supplies and weapons to help her survive the game, making her more of the Ariana in the situation than Katrina. She may have the comfort of Katrina singing One Last Time to her, but these items are probably what's going to stick with her, especially considering how complicated she feels towards Katrina. So yeah, it definitely ended up being more of a loaded title than planned, but the sheer number of ways it applied to the scene vault it high on this list.

6. The Society of the Spectacle (V5, Claire)

This title comes from the book of the same name by Lacan. It's important reading for anyone who studies media and film about the way we as people crave and use spectacle. This final thread for Claire is about how she's fooled by a potential partnership with KK, but also how she tries to play dying in order to surprise KK with the shotgun flashlight. It's a dramatic scene and a fitting end for Claire, and I think it's a thread title that sums up her and her story really well, while also playing into KK and Hansel's story.

5. How Could I Own a Real Chanel When There's So Much Poverty in the World? (V5, Claire)

This is a line from the film All About My Mother, which I've made abundantly clear on this site is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's said by a transgender prostitute when the protagonist asks her about her outfit. It's a funny response from a comedic character, and I think it's fine here since Claire is trying to figure out what she can do when all this death and madness surrounds them. It may be a long title, but it's one I think is good for its comedic and serious nature. It's one thing to tell jokes and avoid chaos, but there's still chaos in the world and they should do something about it. It's a weird one, but I really enjoy it, even years later, so it's high up here.

4. How Easy it was to Lie to Strangers (V6, Nadia)

For Nadia's death thread, I wanted to reference Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie since she came up in Nadia's pregame a bit. This line, from her novel Americanah, is fully “How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.” Nadia's reunited with her friend, but realizing what's going to happen, pretends she's still his friend and lies to get an easy kill and spare him from the game, as well as to get her mandatory kill without it being one others would hunt her for. Nadia's telling herself and Min-jae a lot of lies, and while it seems easy, she's lying to a friend and to herself. Thus, it all falls apart. She doesn't kill him, she puts him in a position where he could get another name added to his list, and she kills herself to spare him that. I think it was clever and appropriate for how it played out, so I'm glad I used it.

Also, fuck the original title for this thread and the jokes about it. I'm so pissed about that.

3. Something Something Movie Reference (V5, Claire)

I originally chose this because this would be the thread where Claire would learn she killed Matthew, but became the thread where she saw one of her oldest friends die before she lost her shit at Zubin and his callousnes and insensitivity, and then was sufficiently creeped out by Paris and his shady and invasive nature. Claire is at her absolute lowest in this thread. There's no humor in anything she says or does, and she's definitely acting out. I wanted to convey that state in the title, where Claire is in such a bad state she can't even make any references. I think I chose the title because of a line from Archer ("Something, something, Danger Zone") but modified it for Claire. Unlike the Wisteria Lane one, the modification works for the story, and since she leaves the thread with some resolve and a plan for the future, the references are allowed to come back. It's a layered title for one that seems comedic on the outset, and I think it really works for her.

2. The Latest Story That I Know is the One That I'm Supposed to Go Out With (V6, Nadia)


I chose this line from the song Stars, particularly the Nina Simone version. Here, Nadia is confronting a group of people, when suddenly Caedyn appears and kills Bridgette. It's the first time Nadia sees death, and while she's safe, she has to act quick by raiding Bridgette's stuff and getting out of dodge. It's a song about confronting the price of fame and legacy, and it's fitting for Nadia at this turning point, as well as for everyone here. Everyone has a story and has to think about what kind of story they want to leave in the world. Bridgette's ends here, Caedyn's is bolstered by the action, Nadia's changes into more overt pragmatism, and everyone else is left to add this traumatic incident to their story. I think it's great for where it's placed in Nadia's story and is just a good line in general, hence why it's my second-favorite thread title.

My favorite?

1. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (V5, Claire)

Hoooooly shit was this a great one. So it's the thread where Claire and Kyle are attacked by Hansel, with Kyle killed and Claire taken hostage. It's great on numerous levels. It's still a media reference for Claire, the burying part works since Claire and Kyle were preparing to bury another body, Wounded Knee is a Western event that references Hansel, it's known for being a massacre and a turning point, since it radically alters Claire's story, and Claire ends it with the resolve to not let Hansel kill her and to stop faffing about. So she figuratively "buried her heart" because a cowboy, the symbol of white men moving in on indigenous territory, attacked her. It's not the perfect reference, and there's a lot of complications behind it, but it's a cool, multilayered title that's important for the turning point in her story, so it's easily my favorite title.

[Shiola]

I think I can't really rank any outside of my top three, so I'll just explain the thread titles as I came up with them.

[+] Caroline Ford

Though her time on the island was short, my plan for Caroline was to use a mixture of psychiatric terminology and phrases and ideas borrowed from her Mormon faith.

Least Of All Young Caroline
A reference to this song, and the place I got Caroline's name from.
"None of us need this / Least of all young Caroline"

Differential Diagnosis
A term used to describe the process of differentiating one condition from another, when they share similar symptoms. It seemed to fit given that the piece was about Caroline's process of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia and the way her psychiatrist failed to identify it. You may recognize traits in Geordie Paulson from a certain politically active canadian psychologist. It was largely based off of my partner's experience having the man as a professor - given that the character was only going to appear once, I needed a strong personality to base him off of.

The Spirit World
A reference to the Mormon conception of the place where spirits of the dead await resurrection. Given that it was Caroline's death thread, it seemed appropriate. I was happy to see it got something of a sequel.

[+] Henry Sparks

For Henry I tried to choose titles that reflected his interests in ideas and space exploration.

Starlight
I pulled the title for a Muse song. It seemed fitting given the context.

Apogee
This is one of my favorite title choices and I wish the thread had gone further. Apogee is the furthest point in a given orbit from the Earth's surface. Tonyk and I were hoping to explore some romantic tension between Amelia and Henry before we ran out of time in pregame. I still think they'd have been adorable. Given that it was the highest point for Henry before everything fell apart (flirting with a spacegirl in the air & space museum) it felt like it fit really well.

Entanglement
I used this as a thread title in reference to quantum entanglement, which fit given that Henry & Cam were kind of in two places at once with the whole walkie-talkies across threads thing.

Tragedy of the Commons
A reference to the theory of resource management that states individuals in a given system all acting according to individual self-interest ultimately are working against the collective good. It pertains specifically to natural resources but it seemed to evoke well enough Henry's general sentiment towards people on the island acting only to save themselves.

Our Mutual Fiend
Borrowed from a chapter in Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Marco Volker was a mutual enemy of all of the members of the group, and the thread was ultimately about fighting and killing him. While I'm unhappy with how the thread turned out, this is one of my favorite titles.

Shaka, When the Walls Fell
A reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation's episode "Darmok." Just watch it. Adam and I wanted to make a series of threads using terms from that episode when the prospect of a Morgan / Henry alliance looked like it had more legs. We also had a notion when I was still working on escape attempts that Henry and Morgan would use the concept of the Tamarian Language to talk in science-fiction references to describe what they were doing in the escape attempt, hoping to confound the AT's surveillance.

Silent Key
It's described pretty well in the thread why I chose the title. I first learned about the concept through this song about the Challenger Disaster; though the way it showed up for Henry's character ended up making this far more than a song reference. I'm really happy with what I did for Henry's death and the way I was able to work the thread title and death tag in. While I have a lot of regrets about Henry as a character, I was really glad I got the chance to write a scene like that for him. Thanks Mara, Pip, & Cactus!

[+] Tyrell Lahti

More of Ty's thread titles come from song lyrics than my other kids, as far as I can tell.

Where Did you Sleep Last Night?
Pretty simply a reference to the song "In The Pines" famously rendered by Leadbelly and Kurt Cobain.

Life Between The Lines
A reference to the song by Polar Bear Club. In my mind, the fictional band Malthusian Catastrophe had a similar sort of energy.

Vindication
I kind of just picked this one as a one-word title in reference to the feelings Ty had about tormenting his father and how he justified it to himself. The whole thing was supposed to be kind of uncomfortable. I wrote this as a way of understanding Tyrell as a character and what his home life was like.

Gifts
Ended up with a couple different meanings. It's a reference to the gifts Tyrell had bought for Erika, his natural "gift" as a fighter, the "gift" Wyatt and Bret were giving to Ivy by beating up Ty on her behalf, and the "gift" of Claudeson saving Tyrell. Kinda hokey, I know, but it was pretty memorable as a title and as a thread.

Room 713: We Didn't Start The Fire (Yet)
Tonyk picked this one - I'm not sure why. We started one hell of a fire in here, that's for sure. Probably one of my favorite threads in pregame but I can take or leave the thread title.

Borrowed Time
A reference to the Murder By Death song "Last Night On Earth." In particular, the final stanza.

If You Must Fight / Make It Clean
Two oneshots, a reference to the MbD song that is my namesake on the site. It's one of my favorite songs and I liked to use the motif of a lost family when thinking about how Ty felt about his life. At this point he was still kinda fooling himself about his proclivity for violence and what he might do with it if he wasn't to kill himself.

The Shores of Hell
Was searching for thread title when I decided to fire up Doom. Given that he was traversing the island's shore at the time, I opted to name this thread after Doom's second episode.

Raw Deal
Another MbD reference, to this song. The entire song pretty much fits what Tyrell was feeling at that point. I really liked writing a character who really misjudged himself and everyone around him, and who ended up paying the price for trying to be something he wasn't.

Hello, My Name Is Human
Another one chosen by Tonyk, this one I really endorsed because it's a fucking great song and fit the kind of energy we wanted in the Ty/Lorenzo fight to start with. We knew it was Lorenzo's last fight, and I wasn't sure how far Ty was gonna survive past this point, so we definitely set it up as something of a final confrontation between them. I'm really proud of what we accomplished, and it remains one of my favorite threads I wrote in the whole version.

A Roaring In The Blood
This one is an oblique reference to "Hunted" by MbD (gee do you think I have a favorite band or something?). In particular, I was thinking a lot about Lucas Diaz's obsession with hunting down Erika and that line from the song came to mind.

Something To Believe In
Cactus chose this one. Claudeson and Tyrell were supposed to be a very particular kind of opposite number to the other, and I really liked what we ended up accomplishing with the saga that unfolded between those two. It's a very particular kind of spiritual/ideological battle that took a long time to really spill over into this kind of confrontation. It was really cool to write with my brother in this version and it was interesting to see the line between our similarities and differences as writers as we went.

Will All Be Forgiven?
A reference to the refrain from the song "Shiola" by MbD. I knew this would be the title of his death thread from the very beginning. Ultimately I hope Ty came across as an interesting and complicated character who wasn't entirely following a conventional "redemption arc" angle. I wanted his death and the peace he found in it to seem earned. Props to Mara for being an excellent thread partner in this and in Silent Key as well.

I think the answer to the thread's question is "No." I think in the end, Tyrell was okay with that.

[+] Erika Stieglitz

Hard World
I picked this one from a MbD song that was written about women who'd been kidnapped and killed. Not very inspired; I wasn't really sure what else to use as a thread title here.

There's Nothing Wrong With "Better"
This is pulled from something Obama said. It was my first thread back in SOTF if I recall correctly, and I wanted to use something that wasn't a song title. It comes up in the thread as something Erika tells herself because it's something I was telling myself at the time, and she's pretty close to a self-insert in personality and thought patterns.

Forest Green
Erika's favorite colour. I'm a huge fan of the work Frozen and I did with Erika & Faith here, and they had a really interesting relationship I really wish we'd spent more time exploring. It's also a really long thread for pregame, and helped me sort of warm up to writing the way I do now.

A Minute To Breathe
A reference to this song by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I was feeling really melancholic about the end of pregame, as exciting as it was. It fit really well for the tone of the thread, and I kinda had the soundtrack to that film on repeat as I wrote it.

Direct Impingement
Impingement literally means to make an effect or an impact, but the full title is a reference to a type of gas system used in semi-automatic rifles. Given that it was the moment when Erika decided to start killing to try and take some control of the situation, the idea seemed to fit well. I really like this title, it's up there as one of my favorites.

Devil Like Me
Kermit and I have really similar musical tastes and we tossed a few songs back and forth before settling on this one as a title for our shared BKA pickup thread. I really like it, and it fits the theme of the thread we were working with quite well.

Zero Sum
SOTF is very much a zero-sum game, and this thread was probably the most dramatic and horrifying realization of just how far Erika was willing to take the idea. While Erika's first kill was especially senseless and intentionally random, and the second was disturbing, yet largely improvised, this was the most calculated and cruel act of violence on Erika's part up to that point, far outstripping the two others. This was pretty much the point when I realized she was well beyond any kind of redemption to a positive/heroic character.

Leviathan
The whole scene takes place on the beach, and at the time Erika was kinda wrestling with some pseudo-hobbesian ideas about precisely why no one could co-operate in SOTF in any meaningful way. Grim managed to incorporate the theme into Tom's death post, which was really cool. Skraal's description of Oliver's mangled face was haunting and I was really impressed with how he took the concept we were using and ran with it.

Red Of Tooth And Claw
This is probably my favorite thread title I've used so far. It's a reference to a Tennyson quote and a Murder by Death album, though the former far more than the latter. The part of the poem refers to the brutality and indifference presented by nature, with the broader piece addressing themes of faith and death. Given that much of Erika's surface-level conviction that what she was doing was an expression of her natural survival instinct, this worked well as a title for the thread and the themes I wanted to address on her end of it. The thread itself is one I'm quite happy with, though I think as someone else pointed out it tends to stand better on the individual merits of the handlers than the thread being especially cohesive. In particular, I regret that we didn't spend more time on Sal's death and in retrospect I think he should've had more of a role in the scene. Still, it was a pretty pivotal moment and I think we all did pretty good work here.

Reflection
The thread features Erika staring at a mirror. Go figure.

No Hell But The One We Made
Another MbD reference, this time to the song No Oath, No Spell. The lines kinda speak for themselves:

There is no oath, there is no spell
To deliver us, so help
Cut me loose, I wish you well
No oath, no spell
No prayer and no hell but the one we made


At this point I was really trying to highlight just how much Erika is the architect of her own misery, and how trapped in her own thought patterns and fears she really was.

After the Twilight, Always a Sunrise
Kind of a housekeeping oneshot where I was addressing a lot of what had happened in between threads and after a day shift. In it, Erika's trying to recuperate from the injury she took fighting off Tanisha's group and still searching for a way to inure herself to the mental anguish she continues to feel both from the act of killing people and the fact that she's become so proficient at it. A lot of what this character has been was me writing someone whose capacity for violence far outstripped their stomach for it, and how they'd wrestle with that. A reference to Good Luck by Broken Bells.

Searching For A Former Clarity
I wanted to write first-person for a long time, and I decided in this one-shot to just go for it. This thread immediately follows Erika's kills of Amber and Tonya, and sort of underpins the break in reality she was starting to experience. I put a lot of myself into this oneshot. Almost all of the anecdotes are basically mine rendered in the context of SOTF. The nature of her break from reality was also basically borrowed from my own experiences with an episode of Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder and I found it extremely difficult and rewarding to write. I wanted to start showing the toll that her actions and life in SOTF was taking on her psyche over time. I don't really expect people will sympathize with Erika as she's acted in ways that are cruel, manipulative, and pathologically focused on her fear of death and survival at the expense of all else. She knows it too. The main thing is, I hope her journey reads as complex and interesting one where the marks she reaches feel earned and realistic. This was kind of an effort to show the part of her that existed outside of the game, and how it would reflect on what she's done. A reference to this song by Against Me!, featuring this song by Silver Mt. Zion as suggested listening.

No Exit
A reference to the play "No Exit" by Jean-Paul Sartre. The line "hell is other people" was on my mind when I was thinking of the themes of this thread and how the characters in it reflected off of one another.

Are You What I Think You Are?
A reference to Satellite by Guster. I was going to use it for Henry but there wasn't space to do so, and the line from the song really fit for the clash of perceptions that characterized the relationship between Garnet and Erika. Probably one of my favorites in terms of how it fits with the material in the thread, and I'm eternally thankful to Namira for sticking with me in these threads when I was a right mess mentally and probably not the greatest thread partner. I was really happy to have a chance to show my character in a fresh context compared to a lot of what she'd been through.

Don't Look Away
This is a callback to the oft-repeated line in Erika's kill of Blake, way back at the beginning. Another first-person oneshot, this time basically a soliloquy. I started writing some thought italics at the end of the previous thread, and it spiraled into this stream of consciousness rendition of Erika in her own words. I wasn't sure what to do with it by the end, but I decided to edit it into a oneshot and post it. I'm quite happy with how it turned out; this was sort of supposed to be an end to her wrestling with what she's become. By this point, she's decided that it's not something she can resolve in the moment and it's killing her to try and do so. After this point, she's basically accepted her role.

Piece By Piece
So while there is a MbD song with the same title, it wasn't my inspiration for this title. I was thinking back to Erika's horror at how her experiences on the island would destroy her a piece at a time, a sort of spiritual equivalent to what she physically did to Amber before killing her. The tenor of the thread is overall a tense gunfight, but it begins with a coda to Connor Lorenzen's death post which I was really fond of, and a callback to their pregame rooftop hangout. One working title was "Another Minute To Breathe" but I didn't think it fit for the events that would follow the opening post. It also follows the similarly named "Little by Little" which as some have mentioned is oddly satisfying. At this point I'm working on trying to show Erika as she puts that halfway-acceptance of herself to the test, and how that plays out as she continues to fight her way to an end she (and I) can be okay with.

[+] Erika and Tyrell

The Good Times Are Killing Me
A reference to the song by Modest Mouse. Given the way Swiftball was going, it seemed like it fit the general theme.

Fear & Delight
A reference to this song. Not the lyrics, really. I just thought those two emotions pretty well summed up how those two felt about Prom. I think in the end they had a really good time.

I mentally referred to these as a trilogy, because of what they depict. The beginnings of their relationship, the divide between the two of them, and their final meeting. As far as my solo work this version, I quite like it with my preferences being Ricochet, then Wanderlust, then Heimweh.

Wanderlust
Named for the concept and yes, a song. I've never written romance or relationships before, and I originally didn't write Ty and Erika together. The more time I spent thinking and contrasting their character traits, the more I liked the idea of them being a couple. It was also something of a personal mission of mine to write a believable transgender character, given my deep personal contact with that experience. I hope that the trans and gnc folks on the site feel I've treated Erika's relationship to her gender identity well. I channeled a lot of things I went through in my own relationship, and feelings I had back towards the end of high school when I was wrestling with where I should go and how that would impact the relationship I was in at the time. I got a lot of really positive reaction to this post and the messages people sent me about it made me feel really good about my writing and what I was doing with these characters.

Ricochet
This is probably the best of the oneshots I've written this version, both for the content and the stylistic choices I made. The thread title is almost self-evident, and it's just a reference to what happens between the two, following up on the firearms motifs in Erika's thread titles. Getting to this point with these two was kinda heartbreaking to me, and I was still not sure at this point who I was going to push as the killer among my cast, of the two of them. I knew Ty would start shit wherever he went, and I knew Erika was gonna snap at some point, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to proceed.

Heimweh
I put a lot of work into this one, and I felt like the returns were generally pretty positive in terms of what it did for the two characters. I decided in advance this was going to be the last time the two of the characters would interact. Because they both took up so much space in each others' narratives, I knew I didn't want to spend too much time with two characters in the same thread. While they were inextricably tied to one another, I wanted them to still have space to define their own stories. So for this oneshot, I basically opted to depict the end of their relationship in a way that would set them apart for the rest of the game. Even in the post on Day 11 where I showed Erika finding Tyrell's corpse, I opted to leave out as much as I felt I could so that this oneshot remained sort of the final word on their relationship as it existed between the two of them.

I also wanted it to serve as a depiction of just how the events so far had warped Erika's psyche, hinting at where she was going to go from there. Murderweasel's meanwhile actually did a really cool job of assessing exactly what Erika's actions said about her mindset at this point in the game.

SOTF brought out the absolute worst in these people, and part of me wanted to show that the real tragedy of it was that it was completely unnecessary. If they'd woken up in the same place, things would've gone differently for them. Tyrell really would have protected Erika to his dying breath, and would've offered himself as her ticket off the island. He truly needed someone to steer him away from his worst impulses, and if she'd been there he would not have done the horrible things he did on the first day. Tyrell himself would have been able to rein in Erika's worst impulses, and given her the strength to fight her pathological fear of where their paths might end. What happened to the two of them was a combination of bad luck, character flaws, and sincere fuckups that tore them apart for no reason intrinsic to the two of them.

Given the amount of legwork that I put into these kids, it should probably come as no surprise that Ty and Erika live on in the book I'm working on, closer to their pregame selves than the ones that played out on the island. I wanted to give them a place where they could face challenges together, and to find some kind of happiness with one another. I know it sounds crazy, but they do feel quite real to me by now and I want to do right by them.

[+] Top 3

Red of Tooth and Claw
Ricochet
Silent Key

[Kermit]

aight now that my v7 kids have been dead for a suitable amount of time here's my main + mini thread rankings... kind of...

/shrug im putting them into tiers instead of a specific order because that feels less arbitrary. So like, everything in a specific tier sits at a roughly equal place

i reserve the right to obfuscate when i dont want to give away my pretentious bullshit and/or brainworms and additionally reserve the right to not make it clear necessarily when im obfuscating so naturally some of the explanations may be red herrings

the rankings are pretty accurate though

[+] Kermit no like these thread titles

Murder: Often a regrettable action. - (Everett Taylor)
....damn i really named a thread that didnt i

The Death Of The Author - (Michael Froese)
Okay so this meanwhile was originally going to be me kinda riffing on... sotf readathons and how they're sometimes more like MST3K than literary analysis. Basically, the POV was gonna be some dude watching mickey frog & just kinda memeing on him instead of idk like watching him I guess. I can't really explain too much of what the title was supposed to mean / be commenting on without giving away too much of my high concept bullshit memery but i ditched this thread before it could become relevant so therefore ME NO LIKEY

[+] Kermit feels... conflicted...

Deep Red Bells - (Valerija Bogdanovic)
It's a song about Gary Ridgeway (The serial killer)! Why Val got the Gary Ridgeway song thread instead of Michael, I'm not sure! IDK i named this thread before i decided i would do sneaky thematically meaningful thread titles. I'm pretty sure i mostly chose this name because it sounded ominous. Like, idk I like it as a thead title for Michael, but it is Irrelevant generally to Val. idk maybe i was riding the previous thread's jim jones quote title

Burton Harris, Kouji Ginsenshi, Mariavel Varella, and other dead children you may have heard of. - (Michael Froese)
ok so in theory i really love the idea of having a bunch of oft-memed sotf characters in a thread title and then having the thread itself being someone at the SOTF memorial looking at names on the memorial and contemplating them as human beings or whatever BUT ugh why did i have to make the title so long and unseemly and clunky reeee my aesthetic sensibilities are being offended

More like FART EXHIBITION - (Michael Froese)
hehe fart joke

True Affection - (Michael Froese)
SONG TITLE (True Affection, by The Blow)! The song is thematically relevant to this oneshot & m froggy's feelings BUT without the context of it being a song reference the title could kinda come off as Me, The Author Kermit calling m froggy's affection for Beryl "True Affection", which Was Not my intent. EDIT: OH ALSO REMEMBER THAT BERYL WAS BURIED AT SEA OHOHO I AM THE CLEVEREST FROG EHEHE UUUUUUU

Dance Yrself Clean - (Michael Froese)
WALKING UP TO ME EXPECTING, WALKING UP TO ME EXPECTING -
SEE NEXT ENTRY

Love Love Love / Pa Pa Power - (Michael Froese)
okay so basically if you swapped the titles of Dance Yrself Clean and Love Love Love / Pa Pa Power these would be mmmm in one of the top tiers but they are Not Swapped and im very sad & i refuse to elaborate. Also all three are song titles. (Dance Yrself Clean, by LCD Soundsystem; Love Love Love, by The Mountain Goats; Pa Pa Power, by Dead Man's Bones (fun fact ryan gosling is on vocals))

[+] I AM INDIFFERENT

Ammonification - (Everett Taylor)
the nitrogen cycle makes me cry too

Oofy Ouchy Oh No - (Harland Strange)
hehe funny meme hehe. Also the only thread i named with Harland, and thus is above the other meme title.

The Afternoon of August 12th, 2017 - (Valerija Bogdanovic)
Exactly what it says on the tin. The thread deals with a thing that happened in real life, on the afternoon of august 12th, 2017! (aside: v7 pregame has... two threads named after August 12th, 2017 (the other one is Madison's). SORRY TO STEAL UR THUNDER MIMI BUT I COULDNT MAKE THIS THREAD SET ON ANY ARBITRARY DATE)

The Mad World Songpost - (Michael Froese)
Also exactly what it says on the tin. Anyways i blame this thread and cicada for all my v7 songposting

Xanioascus canadensis - (Michael Froese)
FUCK YOU IT'S THE NAME OF AN EXTINCT CTENOPHORE FROM A FEW HUNDRED MILLION YEARS AGO

Youth - (Michael Froese)
oh my goooooosh u guys it's the song in the post!!!! woW!!!!!!!! (Youth by Daughter)

Comfy in Nautica - (Michael Froese)
ew gross who let me do a song title thread where the the song didnt end up being all that meaningful (EXCEPT MIKEY WAS LITERALLY COMFY IN NAUTICA OHOHOHO I AM SO CLEVER YOU SEE but that's it).

Land Locked Blues - (Michael Froese)
SONG TITLE (Land Locked Blues, by Bright Eyes)! Unlike most of mick froggle's song reference thread titles, this one gets (moooooostly) spelled out in the thread. THEREFORE IT IS LESS FUN FOR ME >:C

Surveillance is your busy work. - (Luanne Grasset)

[+] Ehehehe

The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Edward Ruscha painting.

Singers Sing Sad Songs When They're Sad - (Greg Craig)
Factually accurate! Also a lyric I stole from a Dan Mangan song.

Reefer Madness - (Greg Craig)
I mean i don't really need to explain the title do i

It's raining leprosy and acid. The saints were taken out and shot. - (Astrid Millar)
A lyric from a Jason Webley song that i'd been wanting to use for about four years

[+] Frog likes these but not as much as some other titles

I'd Rather be at the Aquarium. - (Everett Taylor)
have i been foreshadowing m frog since 2017?????? no. but it's fun to imagine i was.

When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire. - (Everett Taylor)
im so mad i used this for everett instead of mikey but also not mad because it works thematically for some of the folks in the thread (wendy is my frendy). Also a song lyric (from Your Ex-Lover Is Dead, by Stars)

Mao Tse Tung Said - (Valerija Bogdanovic)
SONG TITLE (Mao Tse Tung Said, by Alabama 3)! wow also this song has an extended sample from a speech by jim jones, noted mass murderer & cult leader. Basically I saw the Jonestown aesthetic of the island and laughed ominously to myself. that's just how i be sometimes

Raconte-Moi Une Histoire - (Michael Froese)
it's a song about a frog..... like me kermit the frog..... and also it's relevant to the words that come out of mikey's mouth occasionally maybe idk. FUN FACT I ugly cry sometimes when i listen to this song. Also at the risk of [frog statue], as a wise owl once said..... "I don't speak French.......".........

Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire) - (Michael Froese)
(from the song by YACHT) we are all hungry we are all tired

Severed - (Michael Froese)
hehe get it because quinn severs limbs or whatever BUT ALSO i took the name from a song by The Decemberists about a demagogue and that's all im contractually allowed to say.

Low Times - (Michael Froese)
P - R - E - D - A - T - O - R
THAT - IS - WHAT - YOU - ARE

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Richard Hamilton collage.

A Dark Pool - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Laura Knight painting. This one's pretty simple.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - (Luanne Grasset)
You all know. Anyways actually the scene directly preceding this one contains more allusions to the artwork than this one does. But also, you see, Luanne was a conceptual escape artist. And also I'm just really glad I was able to accidentally trick inhuman into dying in a thread with a funny meme title.

The Distance Between the Landscape and Dusk - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Kansuke Yamamoto photo. This one would be higher but Mara chose the thread name and legally I'm not allowed to validate his choices.

Jacob & Greg Go to White Castle - (Greg Craig)
No they don't.

And We Got Older - (Greg Craig)
Named after an instrumental bonus track that I didn't know was part of a video game soundtrack until literally a few seconds ago when I searched it up to grab the YouTube link.

04 Ghosts I - (Astrid Millar)
The song by NiN. Jumpscares me in approximately the same way as sudden loud explosions do.

Purple Yellow Red and Blue - (Astrid Millar)
All I wanna do is live in ecstasy, I know what's best for me

[+] kermit likes these more but also not as much as some other titles

Hippy Hill - (Valerija Bogdanovic)
OOHHHHHHHH I'D RATHER BE A HIPPY THAN A HIPSTER WHOAAAAAAAAA

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) - (Michael Froese)
more like fart jeremiah

Becoming A Jackal - (Michael Froese)
[frog statue] toben knows.......... (or does he)

Devil Like Me - (Michael Froese)
You see the devil don't mean to be evil. He just regrettably forgets to exceed expectations. (also wew thematically relevant song for both parties in the thread yayyyyyyyy)

The Darkest Side - (Michael Froese)
When I die, I'm alive. When I lose, I find my identity.

We Are Your Friends (you'll never be alone again) - (Michael Froese)
hehe i like writing things with double meanings.................... or do i..... anyways this is the song

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Gauguin painting.

The Barque of Dante - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Delacroix painting.

[+] Fun Fact eugene delacroix modeled for this dead guy on The Raft of the Medusa

Monochrome Red Untitled - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Yves Klein painting. A minimalist oneshot with a minimalist title named after a minimalist painting. It's even so minimalist that nobody remembered to list it on Luanne's wiki page.

SOTF-TV PRESENTS LUANNE GRASSET AND HER EXPLODING PLASTIC INEVITABLE - (Luanne Grasset)
A reference to this. I think this one would get CHEF KISSES tier if weren't for the thread title character limit not letting me use the full name, "SOTF-TV PRESENTS LUANNE GRASSET AND HER EXPLODING PLASTIC INEVITABLE (SHOW) ******FEATURING****** THE NEW LOOK OF STEPH'S VELVET PIRATE HAT ******WITH****** JEWEL - Pop Girl of '21"

Double silver disaster - (Luanne Grasset)
Named after the Warhol painting. You can tell I went into this one fully resigned to the fact that at some point in it Luanne was going to inadvertently cause her own death by electrocution or electricity-related collar tampering explosion. well guess what? she lived bitch

Burning Down the House (Naive Melody) - (Greg Craig)

[+] And the heat goes on, and the heat goes on. And the heat goes on. SHE IS NOT A LUMINEERS FAN. And the heat goes on, and the heat goes on. AND GREG IS NOT A BURNING BUILDING. And the heat goes on. SHES ON TUMBLR. And the heat goes on. DROWNING CANNOT HURT A GREG. Where the hand has been. And the heat goes on. FIRE CANNOT HURT A GREG. And the heat goes on. NOT THE GOTHVERNMENT GREG.

There’s a club where you’d like to go. - (Astrid Millar)

[+] The river goes where the water flows

call the police - (Astrid Millar)

[+] Just text the cops.

34 Ghosts IV - (Astrid Millar)
Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack

[+] CHEF KISSES

3WW (The Loop (For 12)) - (Michael Froese)
like a pretentious onion

They're here for the porn and the sirloin. - (Michael Froese)
White Gold, by Metric

Putting The Dog To Sleep - (Michael Froese)

uwu im mara uwuuu

anyways i took the title from a song that uses a dying dog as a metaphor for a dying relationship and that's what i'll say about that


The Mute - (Astrid Millar)

[+] Believe it or not, The Mute is my most personal thread.

[+] Elaborate on that.

[+] No.

Spent Gladiator 2 - (Astrid Millar)

[+] A song about the last tooth in your mouth.

Rain in Soho - (Astrid Millar)
Oh, you know.

[+] Literally perfect in every way, so I added a new tier just for it.

Scène de Naufrage - (Luanne Grasset)
After Géricault.

[Kermit]

I, kermit the cool frog, have now added all 900 of my tv3 thread titles to my rankings

[Kermit]

once again doing yet another biennial update to my post in this thread