Some settings pull it off better than others. Stitch in SaV stands out among the more standard names for the other playbooks, but all the playbook names in BitD feel suitably thematic and evoke the concept of a criminal underworld with its own lingo and subculture.
Stitch stands out, sure. Not just because the other names are standard, but also because the other names (mostly) describe a type of person/character in plain English. You don’t need to read the flavor text to know what a pilot is. Stitch isn’t that. It doesn’t tell you what it represents, you have to read on to find out. It gives you no clue, even. I asked several people who haven’t played scum and villainy what they thought the Stitch “Class” might be, and none guessed medic or doctor or anything like that, it was all crafter, fixer, etc.
It also stands out because the other names are just terms we all know, and Stitch comes across (to me) as trying to be something that one character might call the doctor in a show like Firefly, but it just doesn’t pull it off.
Blades has “Cutter, Hound, Leech, Lurk, Slide, Spider, Whisper” which are just as bad IMO on both points above. The
only improvement is that they’re all reaching toward the same genre-savvy “cool lingo” vibe.
Someone upthread said that it doesn’t matter because these aren’t terms used in-world, but that makes them even worse names. If no one in apocalypse world is calling the healer “Angel” why isn’t the playbook just called “The Healer” so that everyone knows what they’re looking at, at a glance?
Likewise, what’s a Lurk or a Slide? What world are people actually saying these terms in? If I read a novel where people are using all these terms how they’re used in bitd, I’d roll my eyes almost as much as I did reading the Night Angel series, with its “Wetboy” profession of hired killers that doesn’t have “targets”, they have “deaders”. I managed to enjoy the series in spite of this painfully tryhard edgelord naming, but it definitely didn’t help.