Fan Fiction Dictionary

hotpot

The Bubbly
Have you ever seen the description of a story that is described as 'AU Slark Slash' and not had a clue what that meant? Or how about read a review on your story that said ‘Your OC is great and I love all the UST!’?

The fan fiction moderators at AA have decided to put together a list of some common terms that you may come across as you read through assorted stories. If there is a term that you don’t see and would like to know the meaning, go ahead and ask. We’ll do our best to find it for you.

A:

A/N – Author’s Notes
A/U – Alternate Universe
Alt – Alternative
Angst - A piece that is emotionally wrenching or a piece where a character deals with an emotionally distressing situation.

B:

Badfic - Fan fiction that is intentionally written badly for humourous purposes.
Beta/Beta Reader - A person who critiques a story for an author. The critique normally examines the following parts of a piece: grammar, spelling, characterizations, plot, similarities to canon, and language.

C:

C – Crossover piece. For example, in Alias, Sydney goes to Sunnydale to help Buffy track down a vampire terrorist.
Canon - Established history and characterizations of the show, movie or book. Much of canon is open to interpretation based on a viewer’s perceptions and what is canon will differ from fandom to fandom.
Challenge contest – An idea given out by a reader that encourages and tests authors to write a piece with the ideas listed.
Challenge fic – A piece written for a particular challenge contest
Cliché - An over used plot device, or description. For example, Sark smirked at Jack or Vaughn’s green eyes pooled with tears at the sight of Sydney, his soulmate, before him.
Crossover - A piece that involves characters and or locations from more than one fandom. See ‘C.’

D:

Dark - A piece with an unpleasant or unhappy theme. The piece may or may not have a happy ending.
Deathfic - A piece where most of the characters die in a horrible and grotesque fashion.
Disclaimer - A part of the fan fiction header where the author claims they do not have the rights to the show, book, movie, game, etc. This is often found the author's notes or introductory material for a fic.
Distribution - Is a section in the author's notes or fic introductory material where the author states where the fan fiction may be archived or distributed to.

E:

Ep – Episode
Epic - In literature, a book, poem or movie that is long and contains a lot of action.

F:

F/F - Stands for female/female. This designation means that the piece will include a romantic or sexual relationship between two women.
Fandom - All fan actives around and about a tv show, movie, book, cartoon, etc. Writing fan fiction is one such activity.
Fanon - Is a belief in a fandom that is widely believed to be true though there may be little canon evidence to support the belief. An example being, until Season 2, it was believed Sloane could have been Sydney’s father.
FB – Feedback
Ficart – Fan created artwork depicting scenes or original characters from a piece of fan fiction.
Ficlet - A very short piece of fan fiction.
Flame - A comment that offers no constructive information for the author or that is intended to insult a person rather than discuss the pierce or issue at hand.
Fluff - A light piece with no real message. Fluff often is a happy piece. Fluff can be derogatory meaning in that a piece lacked substance.
Fluffy angst - A piece that starts out very angsty but that ends happily.

G:

Genre - A style of literature, music, etc. Examples of genre in literature include the following: science fiction, mystery, humor, romance, and horror.

H:

I:

IC - Stands for In Character. In Character means the characters behave in a fashion that agrees with canon behavior.

J:

J/I - The romantic pairing of Jack and Irina.
JuSi - The romantic pairing of Julia and Simon.

K:

L:

Lark - The romantic pairing of Lauren and Sark.
Love Triangle - An angst ridden situation where two people are in love with the same person, or one person is involved with another, and the third suffers unrequited love for one of them. Alias fans know this all too well.
Love/Hate - A story type where the characters start out hating each other and end up loving each other. This is common in Sarkney fan fiction.
Lurker - A person who belongs to a discussion group or forum who does not participate. They read a fic and fail to leave comments.


M:

Mary Sue - A character that may be loosely based on the author. The character often is perfect and has a tendency to save the day. The story may focus around canon characters and their relationship to the character. If a character is called a Mary Sue, it is generally considered a not nice thing.

N:

NCC – Non-canon character. Is created by author. Also called OC.
Non-canon - A piece with a direct violation of canon. An example of Non-Canon would be Laura Bristow never leaving Sydney as a child. Non-canon is similar to AU but differs in that the history of the piece meshes with Canon except for a detail that happens in the piece.

O:

OC – Original character. Made up by author.
One True Pairing - This term is used by people who support a single pairing in their universe and don't bother to stray too far from it because they believe that the couple they support is the best and nothing else comes close or makes sense. For example, many believe S/V is Alias’s one true pairing.
OOC – Out of Character. The character is doing something that he normally would not do.
Orphan plot bunny - A story idea that an author has finally given up on.
OTT – Over the top.

P:

PM - Personal Message. Sometimes, if you are writing a WIP, readers will ask for a PM to let them know when you've updated and posted a new chapter.
Plagiarism - Taking some one else's work, word for word, and claiming it as your own. This can be a few sentences to whole pages. If you do this, you need to quote it in your story. If you put it in your story and say "This is an homage to so and so," it isn't an homage. It's plagiarism.
Plot Bunny - A story idea that arises at a bad time, a story idea that spawns many story ideas, a story idea that the author has no intent of writing or a story idea that hops into an author's mind and won't leave until the story is written.
PoV/POV – Point of View
Prefic – A piece that takes place before the canon events in a fandom.
Prequel - A piece that takes place before the canon events in a fandom or a piece that takes place before a series of stories written by the author.
PWP - Stands for “Plot, what plot?” This piece generally consists of a sex , humor, or other genre scene with little or no plot. Also, it can stand for Porn without Plot.

R:

R/R – Read/Review. An author loves it when you R/R.
RWR - Real World Responsibilities. If an author hasn't updated in awhile or a reader hasn't reviewed in awhile and explains it's because of RWR, that means they've been busy with 'other' things like work, school, etc.
Revenge fic - A piece where the author takes revenge on characters by having the author or other characters attack them. Some Sarkney shippers enjoy writing revengefics using Vaughn.
Round Robin - A piece written by several authors. The piece is normally written via e-mail or on a discussion forum. Each author normally writes several paragraphs or a chapter and then submits it to the next author who will add to the piece.
RST – Resolved Sexual Tension. S/V achieved this mid-Season 2.

S:

S/M:S&M – Sadism/Masochism
S/V - The romantic pairing of Sydney and Vaughn
Sarkney - The romantic pairing of Sark and Sydney.
Sequel - A piece that takes place after the canon events in a fandom or A piece that takes place after the fan fiction events of a series of stories.
Shameless Plug - A blatant plug for a commercial product (example – an F-150) in the a piece of fan fiction. Also, a blatant plug for your own or some else's fan fic.
Shipper - A fan that supports a romantic pairing for a genre. An example of a shipper is some one who supports Sydney and Vaughn as a couple or Sark and Sloane as a couple.
Slark - The romantic pairing of Sloane and Sark. Many feel this is destiny.
Slash - A piece with the central theme, plot or characterizations involving a romantic or sexual relationship between two members of the same sex.
Slasherfic - Is similar to deathfic in that all the characters die horribly. Slasherfics differ from death fics in that the deaths are the plot of the story.
Sloadney/Slydney - The romantic pairing of Sloane and Sydney. Some feel this is disturbing.
Smut - A piece that has sexual content. Smut has many levels. Some smut pieces may have scenes with sexual intercourse. Some smut pieces may not. It can also be fan fiction that is primarily focused on sex.
Songfic/Song story - Stands for song fan fiction. A songfic is a piece that normally starts out with the lyrics from a song. This song either inspired the writer while they wrote the story, relates to how the author views the character, helps set the mood of a story or sets the basic plot for a piece.
Spoiler - A piece of information that tells the events that happen in an episode, book or movie that a person who has not seen that episode, book or movie doesn't want to know.
Sweiss - The romantic pairing between Sydney and Weiss.
Swill - The romantic pairing between Sydney and Will.

T:

TIIC – The Idiots in Charge. In Alias world, some consider this would be ABC.
TPTB – The Powers that Be. Same as TIIC. Also includes producers, writers, etc.

U:

UST - Stands for Unresolved Sexual Tension. UST is percieved tension between characters that can't be dealt with in canon. In Season One, S/V has a lot of UST.

V:

Vignette - A short piece that normally examines a moment in time. A vigennette normally has between 100 and 3,000 words.

W:

WIP – Work in Progress. WIPS are generally posted chapter by chapter to a mailing list or other discussion forum. After the WIP is finished, the author may go back and revise the story.

Y:

Z:

All definitions were found at Writers University's Fan Fiction Dictionary.
Thank you to alias_fan for suggesting this idea.
 
I think that would just be called illegal sex anna :lol: I think Slash just means m/m or f/f ;)
--mandy :angelic:
 
Alias Anna said:
aren't slashes also defined as minor/adult? :confused:
[post="945355"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]​

Found this at the BBC's site.

Slash Fiction

The term 'slash' comes from the practice of describing this kind of fiction as x/y (x-slash-y), where x and y are the characters doing the deed in the fic5. Slash fiction is frequently PWP, but not always.

There are two common definitions of slash fiction, each paired with a definition of gen fiction.

Fan fiction incorporating intimate/sexual encounters between characters of the same sex.

Fan fiction incorporating intimate/sexual encounters between characters who do not have, and never have had, such a relationship in the canon material.

While the nature of broadcast television means that examples of the first definition are almost always included in the latter (with the exception of Willow/Tara in Buffy fan fiction) the reverse is obviously not true.

The first definition is the older and more common, and dates back to the first Kirk-slash-Spock Star Trek fan fictions. M/m slash fiction was - until recently - by far the most common kind, and the Kirk/Spock example gives the classic reasoning behind it. In early fan fiction - which incidentally was predominantly written by women, as m/m slash still is - attempts to create a sensitive, equal relationship between Kirk and any female character who seemed to belong on TOS6 were seen to be hopeless.

As a way out of this dilemma, Spock came to be seen as the only, logical7 romantic foil for the philandering captain. The continuing dominance of television by male characters meant that m/m slash fiction was probably only displaced - or at least complimented - by m/f and f/f with the arrival of the X-Files, Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and perhaps some of the new Star Trek series.

F/f is also called femslash.
I didn't find underage person with older person labeled as slash anywhere else that I looked either. I would assume that being pedophilia would be in bad enough taste.
 
wow there are a lot. ive never come across most of these but they're great to have (in case my beta ever decides to use them, hehe)
 
man there's stuff in there that i totally mistook and now you've corrected me!

thanks hotpot!

luv JuJu :harp:
 
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