About that title...

Since Internet memes play such an important part in this story, it seemed fitting to make the title out of one. I started by Googling "tiny lights in the darkness," which had the imagery I wanted but was too mundane. The first hit is some crazy Spanish-language art blog that is waaaay too hip for me, but which seems totally down the with memes, and has the unbelievably fantastic title "stubborn tiny lights vs. clustering darkness forever ok?"

Hit #2 is a (weird, terrifying, violent) short story on everything2, whose author seems to have recognized the awesomeness of the aforementioned title, thus cribbing it for their own. I suppose it could also be from the same author as the blog, or the original source. Nonetheless I of course could not be the second short story author to crib this title. I needed somehow to make it mine!

Off to yet another Internet meme: Translation Party. TP performs the invaluable service of translating your English-language phrase into Japanese, and then back into English, and back again to Japanese, and so on until it reaches equilibrium. FUN! It really seemed to like "stubborn tiny lights vs. clustering darkness forever ok?" and went through more than twenty iterations before settling on "If you are a bit dark, if possible, or cluster, or a stubborn case, the decrease of the signal?"*

Which is well and good, but I appreciated the brevity, implied dynamism between narrator and audience, and allusions to digital technology of English Translation #9, which became my title. Voila!

*For bonus points, try TP'ing the original phrase either without the question mark or without the ok.