#anna's title might be my favorite just because of the massive foreshadowing haha

[iron-parkr]

Alright, I'll ask. How did you pick the fic title? Because gotta say "Count the Cost" has meaning, there, for sure lol

How did you pick your ocs' names? Do any of them mean anything?

This has been sitting in my inbox for a couple days and I'm so sorry!

So usually my titles come from song lyrics or something of that nature. "Choose Something Like a Star" is the title of Callie Jo's fic, and is actually the title of a poem by Robert Frost! We were going to sing an arranged version of the poem as a song in one of the choirs at university and I thought the lines fit well with Callie's story of looking at the Doctor for so long as someone to be worshipped, to give her life meaning, and eventually learning that the Doctor is simply a person who will make mistakes and will sometimes burn too brightly for her to handle. Idk I think it's pretty neat haha

"A Single Thread of Gold", Bernie's fic, comes from "invisible string" by Taylor Swift! Bernie's fic centers on her jumping around the Doctor's timeline, and the idea that there's something intentionally pulling the two of them toward each other, a thread tying them together and binding them with one another, which eventually leads to them falling in love, always really appealed to me, which is why I chose that title!

Now, "Count the Cost." Anna Pond, my beloved, probably has the most spoilery title of the three. It comes from a poem written for the show, specifically the episode 'A Good Man Goes to War', in which a lot of spoiler stuff happens that I won't say because I don't wanna ruin it if you do end up watching the show haha. But the poem is:

Demons run when a good man goes to war Night will fall and drown the sun When a good man goes to war

Friendship dies and true love lies Night will fall and the dark will rise When a good man goes to war

Demons run, but count the cost The battle’s won, but the child is lost

That last little bit? Demons run but count the cost, the battle's won but the child is lost? Very big foreshadowing for Anna's story, which I'm really quite proud of :D

As for the names, some of them just kinda happened and others took forever to figure out. I think I had Callie and Bernadette just sitting in my list of future OC names and I decided 'hey, these OCs will have these names!' Callie is short for Caroline, which in some cases means 'joy' or 'song of happiness', which is kind of ironic because Callie's story is not usually one of joy lol, and the Jo in Callie Jo is short for Joelle, the inspiration for which came from Joey @alinastarkhov! And Fraizer came from a town near where I live haha.

I wanted Bernie to have a last name that had to do with music somehow, because some of the characters call her Birdie and her nickname from the Doctor is his songbird, so you know, kinda needed the 'song' part of that. And Keke @kazinejghafa helped me pick between Singer and one other one I can't remember.

I think Anna's gave me the most trouble. Keke also helped me a lot with this one. Because I wanted her to have a name that started with 'A' just like her sister Amy, but there was another spoilery component to it that put a difficult twist into the naming process. But Keke was amazing and helped throw out tons of ideas and stuff and then Anna just stuck! And it's brilliant!

Thank you so much for asking!!