The Fiery Paw or How I Spent My Saturday

I was planning to include a bit more about Bard and the help the AI gave me in coming up with a name for my character in Ship of Heroes but the write-up ran long and I had to cut that section. Every silver cloud has a grey lining or something like that, so since I had both the time and the inclination I thought I might spin up a whole post about it. Aren't you glad I had nothing better to do yesterday?

Let's start with the full text of my question and Bard's reply :

I'd like a list of ten names for a female superhero with fire-related powers and a feline appearance.

Here is a list of ten names for a female superhero with fire-related powers and a feline appearance:

1. Felidae
2. Pyre
3. Ember
4. Feline Flame
5. Flameclaw
6. Cataclysm
7. Firetail
8. Inferno
9. Ashes
10. Phoenix

These names are all evocative of the superhero's feline appearance and fire powers. They are also strong and memorable, which is important for a superhero.

Here is a brief explanation of each name:

• Felidae is the scientific name for the cat family, so this name is a perfect fit for a feline superhero.
• Pyre is a funeral fire, which is associated with both fire and death. This name could be a reference to the superhero's dangerous powers or to her ability to defeat her enemies.
• Ember is a small piece of glowing coal, which is a symbol of both fire and new beginnings. This name could be a reference to the superhero's fiery powers or to her potential to make the world a better place.
• Feline Flame is a simple but effective name that combines the superhero's two main characteristics.
• Flameclaw is another simple but effective name that highlights the superhero's sharp claws and fiery powers.
• Cataclysm is a natural disaster that causes widespread damage. This name could be a reference to the superhero's destructive powers or to her ability to prevent disasters from happening.
• Firetail is a reference to the long, bushy tails of some cats. This name could also be a reference to the superhero's fiery powers.
• Inferno is a large and intense fire. This name is a good fit for a superhero with powerful fire powers.
• Ashes are the remains of something that has been burned. This name could be a reference to the superhero's fiery powers or to her ability to rise from the ashes of defeat.
• Phoenix is a mythical bird that is reborn from its own ashes. This name could be a reference to the superhero's ability to overcome any challenge.

I hope this list helps you to choose the perfect name for your female superhero!

Felidae

I've noticed that Bard has a tendency to offer more information than you ask for. It's like the keen kid in class who puts up a hand to every question, jiggling in place and calling out "Miss! Miss!" I'm still working my way through Young Sheldon and the similarities between the eleven-year old Sheldon Cooper and Bard are hard to avoid.

Looking at the list, all ten seem like perfectly good superhero names to me. In fact, they look like names that must already have been used somewhere, although with one exception I couldn't immediately place any of them. I imagine everyone reading this knows who Phoenix is but the only other ones I was sure I'd seen before were Pyre and Inferno and I couldn't recall exactly where that was.

Pyre

To find out, I ran all ten through Google, using just the name and the word "superhero" as the search term and to my considerable surprise it appears half of them have never been used by anyone, including the one I chose, Fireclaw. I would happily have bet money that one was too obvious not to have been picked up already. I guess it's mine now, since I'm in print with it.

The other Bard Originals are Feline Flame, Cataclysm, Firetail and Ashes. Again, I'm dumbfounded to find no-one apparently ever thought to use Firetail. There is a Pokemon of that name but Pokemon are not superheroes so it doesn't remotely count. There's an Ash but no Ashes and of course Cataclysm has been used many times as the name of an event involving superheroes but never for an actual superhero, at least according to Google.

Ember

With the exception of Phoenix, even the names that come up as already in use are pretty obscure. Felidae is an open source character, Pyre refers to three different, very minor Marvel characters, Ember is an equally obscure Wonder Woman villain, so technically not even a superhero, although that would be splitting hairs since they all change sides all the time. 

Inferno at least has the distinction of being a very minor character at both the majors. For DC she's an associate of the Legion of Super-Heroes while at Marvel he's one of Inhumans. I was mistaken in believing I'd heard the name in either context.

Props to Bard for both originality and canny cribbing, then. If it wasn't for the thudding faux pas of Phoenix right at the end, that would have been pretty much a perfect score.

Feline Flame

As for the descriptions, at first I thought they were fatuous and unecessary but as I come to look at them more closely I find they're more cogent and purposeful than I realised. If I was writing the back story of a character I planned to roleplay I might very well use some of Bard's ideas.

On this evidence, coming up with ideas for new
superheroes seems to be a thing Bard can do reasonably well. It's nice to find something! The obvious next step, of course, was to get one of the other AIs to show us what these superheroes might look like.

For that I went to NightCafe. I never go anywhere else for my AI Art needs these days. It's so convenient and offers so much choice. I have nearly five hundred credits saved so I thought I'd splash out and use one of the more capable models.

Flameclaw

I chose DreamShaper XL alpha2. It's only a credit a shot and I get five free credits a day so why not?

For the prompt I used each of the suggested names plus the exact wording from my query to Bard, in the following format "Felidae: a female superhero with fire-related powers and a feline appearance". I considered adding a style or a genre but I thought I'd just leave it and see what came out. The result was so good I did the whole lot with just the bare prompt and no further tweaking.

As you can see, the results were both impressive and consistent. As even the least-attentive comics fan can tell you, comic artists differ wildly in style, approach and ability. If you had ten artists draw the same character you might well only be able to it was supposed to be the same hero by the costume. 

Cataclysm

All of DreamShaper's illustrations could quite easily have been drawn by the same hand. There are some differences here and there but things like the shape of the mouth and jaw seem very coherent. Also exhibiting considerable thematic affinity are the costume designs, the color schemes and more concerningly, the skin tones. Even the one actual cat is white! That, along with the equally limited range of body shapes, makes for some interesting talking points about both the superhero comics industry and AI training methods.

The consistent color schemes are less problematic. It makes sense for the colors to be predominantly reds and oranges. Superheroes with fiery powers generally dress to match. Other than the first result, where the name Felidae, "the scientific name for the cat family", as Bard helpfully explains, nudges DreamShaper into producing an actual cat, the "feline appearance" part of the prompt seems to be restricted to cosplay cat-ears and the occasional set of claws.

Firetail

Historically, AI art has always had a real issue with hands. That's fair; so do many human artists. It has been improving but of the ten results here, not a single one shows two correctly articulated, five-fingered hands. A couple avoid the issue by not showing them at all, a couple more conceal the issue with flames but just about every visible hand looks distorted in some fashion. Some of them horribly so.

You can get away with a lot with superheroes, who by definition can never be said to be "normal", but some of these "hands" are particularly disturbing. In the case of Flameclaw, I think the AI has tried to represent the name literally by giving her paws. If so, it hasn't worked. 

Nothing in Phoenix's name explains the seven distorted digits on he right hand or the weirdly

Inferno

overlong talons on her right. At least it marks her out as different from her X-Men namesake, with whom she otherwise shares a worrying number of features, not least the very similar costume. I do really like the way Bard has managed to keep the feline theme going by shaping Phoenix's hair into two cat-ear tufts, though. That's smart.

I like all of the images. Apart from those hands and a few minor infelicities that could probably be cleaned up in an edit, I'd be happy to use any of them for a profile picture if I was playing that character. 

Unsurprisngly, my favorites are the true catgirl, Felidae and the most cartoony, Firetail. I'm a superhero fan, sure, but I do like my funny animals and my cartoons. I'm wondering now if all that fire and flame behind Firetail isn't really her fire tail. You know, I think it most probably is! That makes her my pick of them all.

As a supplementary question, I asked Bard to come up with some names for a superhero team the my heroes could form:

Please give me five names for a superhero team involving some or all of the above heroes. It should again reflect their feline nature, their fiery powers, or both.

Ashes

Sure, here are five names for a superhero team involving feline and fire-related powers:

• The Fiery Felines
• The Cinder Cats
• The Inferno Squad
• The Phoenix Force
• The Cataclysmic Claws

The first two are good. I particularly like The Cinder Cats. The rest aren't bad but having the name of one of the heroes in the team name suggests some kind of proprietorial relationship. It'd be like calling The Avengers "Cap's Crusaders". 

I asked Bard to have another go:

Those are all good but can you give me five more that don't include any of the names of the individual heroes (So no Phoenix or Inferno, for example.)

That got me some genuinely impressive suggestions:

Sure, here are five names for a superhero team involving feline and fire-related powers that don't include any of the individual heroes' names:

• The Wildfires

  

  Phoenix

• The Blazing Cats
• The Ashwalkers
• The Felis Flames
• The Fiery Paw

I'd use any of those in, say, a superhero tabletop roleplaying campaign. I really like The Fiery Paw. It sounds like a feline superhero version of the Black Hand Gang. It would work even better for an individual hero.

Bard was pretty pleased with what it had come up with, too. It likes to pat itself on the back occasionally and it did this time:

"These names are all unique and memorable, and they reflect the team's feline nature and fiery powers. They also sound like they would be a force to be reckoned with!"

Bard's right about them being unique, too. I checked. No-one's used any of them.

Maybe I will.