I'm slightly distracted from my homework, so I'm going to talk about the "meaning" behind the title Of Fruits and Vegetables because I'm bored. :V I might accidentally switch on-and-off between formal and informal speech because I'm writing my essay at the same time... xD;
I provided a little bit about the title in the description of OFAV that says "..I got it from the title of the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. ...
The title is referring to the main character's name, Tomato. Tomatos look like (?) vegetables, but are fruits."
When I came up with the title, I was just thinking about Tomato's name... and how a tomato is like a fruit, and is like a vegetable. Just about right after I wrote down the title on a piece of paper, I found the title kind of funny because "fruit" is slang for a flamboyant gay man, which Tomato obviously is. In addition to the quote mentioned earlier, I wrote this down in my sketchbook:
"Also a pun on the word fruit, which is slang for a flamboyant gay man. Also also refers to Tomato's similarity to a tomato, b/c he looks like a girl but is a boy."
And that's the history of the title. But now that I think of it, "Of Fruits and Vegetables" has a slightly different, less vague, meaning. Well, two; depends on how you look at it.
The first way I see the title is like this: As I mentioned earlier, "fruit" is slang for a gay man. If a fruit and a vegetable are to be taken as opposites in the title, then "vegetable" would be coined slang to mean "straight man". Or less specifically, fruit is a euphemism for "gay" and vegetable is a euphemism for "straight". Therefore, the title "Of Fruits and Vegetables" can mean "Of Homosexuals and Heterosexuals". That would make sense, but two of the main characters are bisexual (3 including Danny). And what exactly does the "of" mean in the title...? If I add in a bit of information (which I can do since I'm the author HOHO!), the title really means this:
[this comic is] Of Homosexuals and Heterosexuals [as well as everyone in between].
Which is true. The comic has no plot line, so it's just a bunch of comic strips of gay people, straight people, and bi people. (I don't have any transgendered/pansexual/asexual characters in OFAV, if you were wondering why I left them out.)
The second way (and idk, less controversial if you're uncomfortable talking about orientation) is like this: There are two categories implied in the title--"Fruits" and "Vegetables." The only way to organize all the characters into two groups is to do so by gender. So in this case let's say fruit = female, and vegetable = male. (Which food gets attributed which gender doesn't really matter.) In this case, the title becomes "Of Girls and Boys."
What's interesting about interpreting the title this way is that Tomato's name becomes relevant here too. Tomato's are fruits that are commonly mistaken for vegetables, and therefore don't quite fit into either category. Tomato is a man commonly mistaken for a girl, and doesn't quite fit into either gender as well. (Could also be attributed to him having "XXY" syndrome; he has the correct chromosomes to be a girl (xx), and the correct chromosomes to be a boy (xy).)
So in this case, the "extended" title is this:
[this comic is] Of Girls and Boys [as well as Tomato].
It's a little odd that Tomato would be the main character though, since he's not explicitly referenced in this interpretation of the title. Although, it does make him stand out a bit among the characters. But anyways, this title is also true because the comic is just a bunch of strips about boys and girls.
...And yeah! That's what the title means. To me, at least. I hadn't really thought of any of this when I came up with the title, but the more I thought about it the more I found the title to be fitting to the story. :M
Maybe you have a different interpretation of the title? ...Maybe you don't think the title means anything? xD That could be true, too.
Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you found this interesting. :)
