So, why Boffo? Well, the actual title of Birds of a Feather came to me after Jubal started molting all over the main characters. *cough* I mean, "blessing" them...originally, as with just about all of my stories, it didn't have a title; I was just writing it. (This is a huge problem that I have, because I don't use an outline or a story board or any sort of vague organizational tactic; I just sit down and write and I have no fucking clue what it is that I'm going to write until I've written it. Well, for the most part. Generally once the story has gotten going, it'll have told me what it's doing but in the beginning...woo...) The first working title I had was "Only Human" but that was the working title for about five other stories I was tinkering with at the time as well. (Okay, more like two, but still- I like the way it sounds way too much.) But then the whole thing with the angels and demons and Jubal was revealed to me in a flash of semi-divine inspiration (or semi-bovine, but that's another story altogether...*cough*) and Birds of a Feather just seemed to fit, given the way each of the characters interrelate. It'll all be made a little bit clearer soon...and once the whole thing is done, I'm tearing it all down and rewriting it so that it makes sense. And I'll put in a prologue and chapter interludes and things, just to amuse me and to make it all make sense. Since it really doesn't right now. (Part ten, by the way, is fermenting. Right now it's apple juice, but I don't want to post it until it's at the very least cheap cider; apple brandy would be great, but my writing generally doesn't reach the brandy stage- it just goes right on in to vinegar. *sigh*)
As for the nickname, "Boffo"- that has less to do with the fact that it made more sense than calling the story "Feathers" than with the fact that it's a very obscure reference to something that amused me a great deal a great many years ago. I mean, I could have just referred to the thing by its initials: Boaf. But that looks and sounds awkward. "Boffo" works, and I like the way it sounds. But I also first heard the word in a (I think) made for TV movie quite a while ago...I can't even remember what it was called, but it basically parodied all those sci-fi epics like Star Wars and similar things- it was really something of a parody within a parody, and I was probably about ten or eleven when I saw it, but I remember the weirdest things...It was about this sci-fi actor in the forties (I think) who got zapped to the world that the sci-fi drama he acted in took place in. You know, your typical "hero from the other world" type of thing. The guy was clueless- he was an actor, after all, and a bad one, at that. And on his TV show, which was really just a glorified way of pushing this breakfast cereal that sponsored it, had a catch phrase: "Chocco Socco! It's Boffo!" Chocco Socco being the source of the TV persona's power, of course. And for some reason, the memory of this movie and that catch phrase just stuck with me, and now it serves as the shorthand for my story, which doesn't involve aliens or sexy prophetesses (it was a hilarious movie, it really was), or guys with goatees (I may be getting my made for TV movies mixed up now, but who's counting?), but it does involve quite a few clinically insane people who wouldn't have been all that out of place on a forties black and white TV sci fi drama.
At any rate, I find it funny, because whenever I write "Boffo", I think of that movie (I'll figure out what it was called eventually) and I share a discreet chuckle with myself. Basically it's just me being silly and rather unoriginal. *shrug* That's what I'm good at, y'know?
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