A writing community for people wanting to talk about the nuts and bolts of fanwork.
Do you like Fics titled with Song Titles or Lyrics?
I'm just asking this because I sent a friend a fic within a fandom we're both newly reading in, and she started talking about another fic which had the same title. I find this trend annoying, and it makes it difficult to find fics when they're titled after a popular song. (There are something like 300 fanworks titled King & Lionheart on Ao3. Good luck finding that fic you want.)




To me, a good fic title is one that reminds me of what the fic is about, so it's easier for me to recall the fic based on the title. Some song fic titles achieve this, some don't.
I have used lyrics for a title where they fit. Please don't judge! Thinking up a title for some fics is so freakin' hard. It's a step up from Untitled, for which there are also hundreds. I once wrote a 77k fic for which I swear the hardest thing was naming it. It got song lyrics suggested by my beta.
OMG, the only thing harder than coming up with a title is the beginning and end!
As long as they work for the fic, sure.
I can go either way. If it's something popular, like your example, it can be kind of annoying to find it,, and for some reason it really, really weirds me out when I recognize an obscure lyric as a title (I still can't bring myself to read one of those, even though it looks interesting in most other ways), but it can also be done quite well. I've done it myself when I was desperate for a title - both for exchange fics, so I couldn't just wait until I could come up with something decent. They're apparently the only fics with those titles on AO3, so I at least didn't pick one of the annoyingly popular ones. That's more "I can't just call it Untitled Yuletide Fic and deadline is in three hours", though. I don't think they're particularly good titles, but they're at least titles.
I mean, I title my fics almost exclusively with song lyrics, so I guess that answers the question. I write a lot in music fandoms, so it makes sense to me, although I usually don't use lyrics from the band I'm writing about. Sometimes titles are all right as well, but I don't like that as much.
I like titles that fit the story, where after reading the story I can see why the title was chosen and after reading the title I can remember the story that goes with it. Where it comes from doesn't matter so much, unless the connotations that come with knowing where it comes from affects the fit. (Or, I suppose, to the extent that it leads to the 300-stories-with-the-same-title problem.)
I don't offhand recall using song titles or lyrics myself, unless you count that one fic where the title is a pun on "La donna e mobile", but that's just because I have a terrible memory for song lyrics in general, so they don't tend to come to mind when I'm trying to think of titles.
I don't really mind... that's their creative choice as a writer... and i'm pretty sure you can narrow down the list by filtering.
It doesn't bother me personally. On my own stories I tend to avoid it although I have accidentally named a story or two after songs without knowing it :)
Chapter titles on the other hand I've been known to use song titles for and they're usually related to the content.
I mostly don't care and it's less of an issue these days, but back when I was hosting podfic on places like megaupload anything with a song name as a title got flagged as a copyright infringement and was taken down so I've got some lingering resentment there.
I definitely like this trend, although I feel you on the searching difficulty. I almost always associate songs or whole playlists with what I'm writing, and I like being able to communicate that to readers/give a snapshot vibe that is more than just a 5 word title if it's a song they already know. Also, I have discovered some cool music because I enjoyed a fic and the author named it after a song I had never heard of!