Re your post about perfect titles: how did you come up with the title for Hands of Clay? Asking only out of curiosity :)
becausethatsthething , that is an excellent question :D
How I came up with the title for Hands of Clay - it was my time honoured tradition of throwing words around until something fit. I was going with a “hand/arm” theme because we all know why because.
First off, so much of who James is when we first meet him has to do with his time in the military and the losing of his arm. His whole life is built around coping with one arm in a world designed for the two-handed. But he’s got to his coping place when the story opens; he’s raising a little girl and has a good job and all the things he has, but it’s not in spite of his missing arm, it’s that his missing arm is a part of him and how he is the man he is today, and that’s a parallel for the rest of the story (how James’ past has made him the man he is today etc).
And then! The imagery of “hands of clay” when I googled it pulled up a lot of potters, ie hands with clay on them, and that conjured up a lot of mental images for me how of James, as a youth, spent time working in construction (building) and then in the military as a Ranger and (tho it hasn’t been mentioned in the story) a sniper (using hands to destroy), then when he came back to the States after losing his left arm, he had to rebuild his life with one hand, and now he helps in construction again, building safe places for his clients (as he had done for himself and Natasha).
And then on the clay side of things: dried, unfired clay crumbles when you try to make anything with it, but once you shape into something good, something you want to keep, you set it on fire (er, fire it in a kiln) and if it survives the heat, it’ll last forever sort of like bucky and steve :D
How’s that for some title meta??
