David Johnston writes:

I like it, but really, giving Youma normal (western!) names and just 
tacking "ite" on the end is very cheesy.  Dark Kingdom nomenclature is 
very simple.  Major villains are named after mineral substances.  
Disposable villains are named after their central gimmick.  

     I meant to mention this in a note somewhere, but forgot - all
the youma names in this story - Adamite, Brookite, etc. - are the
names of actual minerals.

     When I was looking through a list of mineral names some months
ago for this story, I kept running across names like that, including
others like Allanite, Stephanite, Vivianite, and Austinite. Of course,
I thought, "I can't use these, they're just Western names with an
'-ite' on the end. That'll sound bogus."

     Then it struck me how silly the whole thing was. Was "Kunzite"
really any more likely a name for someone born 1,000 years ago (or
in the case of my timeline, 20,000 years) than "Adamite"? Many of
the minerals on the list I was looking at had only been named in the
last couple of centuries anyway.

     I decided to go with the names I used because it amused me. I
even considered using some names like "Simpsonite" (a real mineral)
for a youma who liked doughnuts, or "Proustite" (also real) for a
youma with a pet haddock, as well as doing a bit explaining why
the youma all had mineral names, but it just got way too silly.
I kept the ones I used as a sort of humorous (to me anyway) salute
to fics using the NA dub names and all fics introducing Western
characters into a Japanese setting.


Reid Carson
rcarson@rcarson.com
rcarson@mnsinc.com