This was originally posted on Weebly on March 21, 2021. At the time, this game was titled "Yobidasu".

I've referred to my VN as "Call to Me" in the past, but as you can see, the title became some bizarre Japanese word. What happened? I'm a stupid weeb, is what happened.

This VN is partially based on an old Pokemon fanfic about some Pokemon stuck in PC Storage during a crisis. Obviously, this isn't going to actually be in the VN, but computers are sorta still kinda relevant. I came up with "Call to Me" as a tentative title, which could also be a pun on calling a method or function in coding.

What a boring title, I thought to myself.

One thing I really want to do with this VN is to make it the sort of VN that I enjoy reading. I'm more familiar with Japanese visual novels than English visual novels, so I guess that means making my VN feel similar to the typical Japanese VN. For example, the mouse wheel will open the backlog instead of RenPy's rollback system.

So, why not spice up the title by making it Japanese? I might not be that good with Japanese, but I can sorta kinda figure my way out. Probably.

The verb 「呼び出す」("yobidasu") can refer to summoning or calling someone over the phone, and is also used when talking about calling methods or functions in programming. But "yobidasu" is the dictionary form, some kind of verb conjugation is probably necessary. The -masu form is 「呼び出し」("yobidashi"), which sounds a little nicer, so let's go with that!

However, "yobidashi" already has a colloquial meaning. Apparently, it refers to the announcer in a sumo match, who calls the sumo wrestler to the ring.  The protagonist likes to keep to herself for the most part, so an "announcer" wasn't quite the sort of feeling I wanted to convey with the title.

What am I trying to convey, anyway? It's more like the protagonist's desire for someone to call to her.  The "-tai" suffix is used to indicate desire (e.g. Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai). And the "-are" suffix makes a verb passive. Which gives me 「呼び出されたい」("yobidasaretai"), or "wants to be called to."

What a long, unwieldy word for a title. Sure, it's more interesting than "Call to Me", but it's too interesting. Who's going to type out that long word every time they want to find my game?

After some thinking, I came up with 「エラよび」("Erayobi"), as an abbreviation of some hypothetical, absurdly long Japanese title that refers to the protagonist as "Error-chan" and also contains some form of "yobidasu." Something like:

• エラーちゃんを呼び出して下さい ("error-chan o yobidashite kudasai", or "Please call Error-chan")
• エラーちゃんが呼び出されたい ("error-chan ga yobidasaretai", or "Error-chan wants to be called to")
• エラーちゃんが彼氏から呼び出されたい ("error-chan ga kareshi kara yobidasaretai", or "Error-chan wants to be called to by a boyfriend")
• エラーちゃんが呼び出す彼氏を探したい ("error-chan ga yobidasu kareshi o sagashitai", or "Error-chan wants to search for a boyfriend that wiill call to her.")

Each one sounds worse than the last. I'm really not good enough with Japanese to know if any of these would make decent titles. Also, the protagonist isn't actually called "Error-chan" in the story.

Titles are hard. Maybe I should've just stuck with "Call to Me."