Which fanfic titles are most common?

[snowgall]

In a recent tumblr post, eidheann_writes mentioned that duplicate titles of fanfics are quite common, so when reccing a fic you really need to give the author's name and not just the title. (Actually, there are many reasons why you should always credit the author of a work when you rec it, but that's not the point of this post :)

She gave as examples her own fic Twelve Hours and dysonrules's Twelve Months, both from last year's hd_erised fest. And while these titles are certainly similar, I was intrigued enough by her observation that I wanted to see how many true duplicates I could find (because I'm crazy like that). Duplicate pairs are too numerous to list, so I decided stick with titles that came up at least three or more times in my database.

Common Drarry fanfic titles:

Home by alovelycupoftea
Home by shine_alive
Home by sesheta_66
Home by starpleiades
Home by bloodisshrp

The Ties That Bind by phoenix_writing
The Ties That Bind by killerangels13
The Ties That Bind by alisanne
The Ties That Bind by cathouse_mary
The Ties That Bind Us by faithwood
The Ties That Bind Us by dracoxlovesxharry

The List by lucilla_darkate
The List by tari_sue
The List by badcook
The List by lamerezouille

Resistance by silentauror
Resistance by diagonfloo
Resistance by all_not_well
Resistance by lamerezouille (added 9 May 2015)

The Wand Chooses the Wizard by treacle_tartlet
The Wand Chooses the Wizard by ravenna_c_tan
The Wand Chooses the Wizard by writcraft


And here are some that are just eerily similar:

Burn by EliraWinter
Burn by hdwriter
Burn, Burn by marguerite_26
Burn, Burn, Burn by josephinestone

Hidden in Plain Sight by momatu
Hiding in Plain Sight by okydoky
Hiding In Plain Sight by beren
Hiding in Plain Sight by gestaltrose
Hiding in Plain View by autumn_veela
In Plain Sight by taradiane
In Plain Sight by oldenuf2nb

I hope it's clear that I'm not making a criticism - these titles are all great, and I don't think the fics should have been called anything else. I'm merely supporting eidheann's point that giving the title alone is not enough to conclusively identify a fanfic.

---

Edit: amorette just pointed out another one to me in the comments:

Best Laid Plans by 6shotamericano
Best-Laid Plans by leo_draconis
The Best Laid Plans by winterstorrm
The Best Laid Plans by cassie_black12
The Best Laid Plans of Lucius Malfoy by erised_dreams
The Best Laid Plans of Scorpius Malfoy by amorette
The Best Laid Plans of Hufflepuffs by birdsofshore

 

Edit 2: found another set 4/26/2015:

Rumours by silentauror
Rumours by winterstorrm
Rumours by gatewaygirl
Rumor Has It by emmagrant01
Rumour Has It by patientiapudor
Rumour Has It by roelliej

Comments

[susannah-wilde.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very interesting; I never noticed that. And cconsidering who's on the list, then great minds think alike, maybe? :)

[birdsofshore]

Wow, that's a great list! I'm impressed by your examples and I will definitely remember to give the author as well as the title in future when I am referring to a fic.

[vaysh]

Wow. That is an awesome post. "The Ties That Bind (Us)" is a surprise to me.

[vaysh]

A quick search at the Pit reveals that "The Ties That Bind" is immensely popular not only in H/D fandom.

[eidheann_writes]

This bit is part of the reasoning behind my post. Doing tumblr search for fic title leads to dozens (or hundreds/thousands) across fandom. Really impractical to search or track.

[capitu]

That's super interesting! :D I've noticed, this too. That's why I make notes at the end of each fic. Total dork, but hey, you're the same. *lol*

[snowgall]

Indeed. I think you see the same effect in mainstream publishing and movie titles too, but I don't have a database of those I can easily check :)

[snowgall]

♥

The tricky thing is when an author has different aliases, so you might see the same title recced with what seem like two different author names but come to find out it's the same story and same author after all. Don't really know what to do about that though :)

[snowgall]

I know! I thought that the duplicate titles would mostly be the one-word ones like "Home" and "Resistance" and that more words would make the title less common, but turns out some phrases are themselves so common as to act like single words.

But I shouldn't be surprised; that's pretty much how linguists treat idioms anyway. As phrase chunks that basically act like single words and aren't broken down.

[snowgall]

Interesting. But I bet "The Wand Chooses the Wizard" is fairly unique to HP :)

It would be cool to see which titles are widely popular across fandoms and which ones are only popular within certain ones, but I don't have the data to do this myself :)

[snowgall]

Totally the same! You gotta make notes or the all blend together, similar titles or no :)

[ravenna-c-tan.livejournal.com]

Oooh cool. Another one that seems to come up often is "Burning Day" variations. I have a fic called "Burning Day," but there are probably at least 2 others called that, plus "Burning Days," "The Last Burning Day," etc.

[snowgall]

Ah, good one. It seems like "burn" and variations thereof is definitely a popular word in titles.

Looking for the most popular words (that aren't 'the' or 'a' and such) in titles would be an interesting thing to track, but it would take a lot more work too :)

[snowgall]

I was too quick with my first reply - I didn't look carefully enough at the link you posted!

HOLY COW. 778 "Ties That Bind" titles on ff.net alone. Maybe that's one title that should be retired? :)

[vaysh]

Only the first 10 pages are fics with the exact same title, the other x pages are variations on the idioms. But yes, definitely time to retire that one.

[capitu]

You know it. ;)

[amorette.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting. I love your inquisitive mind :) I am always fascinated by the outcome of all your data collection projects.

I also suspect "Best Laid Plans" is a popular one. I titled one of my fics that before I realized I probably subconsciously stole it from someone else.

[snowgall]

Good one!

I just checked, and yup, I have 4 variations of that one in my database as well:

Best Laid Plans by 6shotamericano
Best-Laid Plans by leo_draconis
The Best Laid Plans by winterstorrm
The Best Laid Plans by cassie_black12
The Best Laid Plans of Lucius Malfoy by erised_dreams
The Best Laid Plans of Scorpius Malfoy by you :)

[amorette.livejournal.com]

LOL! :D :D

I think birdsofshore also wrote something with that title... let me go look!

[amorette.livejournal.com]

Oh it was a drabble.
http://birdsofshore.dreamwidth.org/4182.html

[snowgall]

Holy shit, you just pointed me to a birdsofshore fic I hadn't read yet! It may be a drabble, but still, I thought I had read them all :)

I'll add this one in a minute.

[amorette.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha :D I'm her fic directory.

[gracerene]

So interesting! I love this posts of yours, looking into fandom stats/behaviors. :D

[birdsofshore]

Oh, how could you, amorette! I deleted all my early embarrassing fics from my masterlist for a reason, LOL!

Snowgall, please don't link to it in your original post! It's SOOOOO silly! Let's just keep it a secret between friends ;)

♥

[amorette.livejournal.com]

Ha! I literally just googled that title + your name. LOOOOL