Talk:Glossary of fan fiction terms

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This article was nominated for deletion on 3 December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Page creation 2 Removed materials 3 Spellings you need to watch for... 4 "Slash" chronology? 5 Exclamation Point 6 Crack or Acid? 7 Flusty? 8 Vegthro 9 Sources? 10 Angst 11 Hurt and Comfort 12 AU\AR\AT

[edit] Page creation

I have begun moving the Terminology and Subgenres sections from the Fan fiction article to here, in the hopes of cutting down on the size of the original article and making it a little more palatable, similarly to how the Legal issues with fan fiction section got seperated into its own seperate article.

In other words, the initial history of the content in this article can be found in the history of the article "fan fiction".

Still to Do:

• Move Subgenres over here.
• Fix those damn internal links that I keep trying to get to direct the user to a specific section of the page, but which aren't really working. :\
• Categorize this puppy.
• Refer the Subgenres and Terminology sections at Fan fiction to this page.

Runa27 20:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Whew! That was a lot of work. Did not delete the "Subgenres" terminology from the original article because I wanted some discussion on what exactly to do with it over there, but I think having the information on Fan fiction terminology is a good idea either way, so I went ahead and copied it over (with some tweaks here and there). I'm of the opinion that they could still use some reorganization, however, especially with "Alternate pairing and 'shipping'" under "subgenres based on character relationship". Both are more of a concept than a genre, aren't they? Should they go under "Characters" terminology? RPF is definitely considered a genre, though. Runa27 20:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, great job so far. It seems to me like it look nicer if reorganized a little. Isn't there some way to make categories so that there are not so many "see above"s? I would maybe suggest doing away with the abbreviations section and moving those terms into the other categories but I don't know if that really makes sense. Crito2161 01:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a brilliant thing, Runa. I'm willing (probably eager, but without time) to work on how to recategorise the lists of terms so that it's a little more intuitive to work through. Maybe I can do a little on the formatting, perhaps we can categorise them by where you find them on a fic: Warnings, reviews, shipping terms, genres, etc (that way we can explain the -fic suffix). I'm very excited about this development. RoseWill 11:02, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed materials

I'm glad a lot of people are editing this, but we shouldn't forget to keep track of what's been added in. For instance, I just removed the following section from "SI" (Self-insert/self-insertion):

"Though few, some authors will even go to the extent of making the readers hate the charecter at first, and then slowly changing them through the course of the story to a better person."

This is far from unique to self-insert fan fiction. You could do that with any kind of fiction, as a matter of fact. Thus, my reasons for removal are that it does not apply only to SI fiction and is too general too be of use in that subsection. Note that I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, just that it's not particularly useful to add it in where it was. :) Also, please be careful to remain NPOV. For instance, as a neutral encyclopedia, we should not say "While Mary Sues are common in...", since the term Mary Sue is itself completely subjective (hence, my changing that turn of phrase to read "While accusations of..."). Runa27 22:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spellings you need to watch for...

• It's spelled "character". Multiple times and on multiple pages I've seen the misspelling "charecter" or similar misspellings. There are two 'a's and one 'e'. I'm not trying to get on anyone's case here, especially not with English being so weird with spelling to begin with, but it's something you need to remember when editing the page. :) Otherwise, we end up spending an awful lot of time correcting spelling!

• "Mary Sue" is two words, both capitilized since it's derived from a proper noun (the name of a parody character in a particular story). I haven't seen this problem in a while, but I just wanted to bring that up

• "Fan fiction". Not "fanfiction", and not "fanfic". The academically accepted spelling seems to be "fan fiction", the more common form favored in English-language newspapers from what I've seen is "fan fiction" and that's the title of the original main article. And, not to mention the abbreviation "fanfic", while handy and extremely common, is not particularly encyclopedic-sounding. We should take care to be consistent in this, or it'll just make the page look all messy. And yes, I say this as a person who DOES use the term "fanfic" all the time and prefers the spelling "fanfiction" for the longer form when outside of Wikipedia, so this isn't a personal bias towards my own preferences so much as a desire to make sure the page looks clean, professional, and consistant and also does not use spellings which do not appear to be as "accepted" in sourceable references. Runa27 22:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Slash" chronology?

The article says that the term "slash" in Star Trek fandom refers to "any non-canon ship", but in other fandoms "has morphed into referring specifically to same-sex" relationships. Is there a reference for this? My own memory tells me that "slash" in ST fandom always meant same-sex fic (derived as it is from "K/S"); only recently, and mostly in other fandoms, has it come to include opposite-sex pairings. Cactus Wren 01:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

SO many people have a different definition each for "slash". It depends largely on the fandom you're in. In ST fandoms, it's used for any pairing whatsoever. In the Harry Potter fandom, it tends to be used only to refer to male/male pairings, and most of the other fandoms I've seen (and I'm in a LOT of them, too), that's the usage, though some fandoms use slash for any same-sex, but it's fairly rare. Most of the anime and manga fandoms eschew the vaguer "slash" term altogether and use more specific Japanese-based terms such as "shounen-ai" or "yuri" (part of why I like being in anime/manga fandoms, as a matter of fact, is that they're much more specific in their labels. "shounen-ai" is guy/guy usually with focus on romance, "yaoi" is the same but more often sexually explicit, and the same two apply to "shoujo-ai" and "yuri" only it's girl/girl with those too terms, "lemon" means sexually explicit "lime" means sexual but not so explicit, etc. You gotta love that kind of specificity!). Seriously, though, if you get a reasonably wide cross-section of various fandoms, like they have at Godawful Fan Fiction or FanFiction.net (both of which have several thousand or more users each from hundreds or thousands of fandoms), you'll notice people will actively argue over what "slash" even is. Now, when I was still posting over at Godawful Fan Fiction, there was a HUGE Star Trek fanbase over there (not least because the site originally started life as "Godawful Star Trek Fan Ficion"), for multiple ST series, multiple generations of fans and these were folks who'd been around reading fanfic for ages. They repeatedly told me that Trekkers and Trekkies tend to use "slash" to mean any pairing story. It came up every single time somebody started saying how not liking "slash" meant a person was "homophobic", at that. As far as I can tell, though, the ST fandoms are the only places where "slash" has quite such a broad meaning, so if you're aware of others, please list them, because I don't believe I'm familiar with them. :) Runa27 20:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Slash and het are mentioned, but not gen. Shouyldn't this be included also? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.245.72.35 (talk) 11:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Exclamation Point

I'm not sure where this would fit or how to even explain it specifically, but I think it might be noteworthy to mention the meaning of an exclamation point in fanfic slang. As in the notation (descriptor)!(character's name). Like "slut!Hermione" in the Harry Potter fandom, for example. 24.144.151.182 06:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Crack or Acid?

I've never heard the term acid pairing before I saw this page. I've always heard it as a Crack pairing.

Nor have I, but it seems to make sense. I've seen a crackfic though (it was quite scary!). Leemorrison 21:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Same here. I altered the title of that section to refer to both, as I've almost always heard it as "crack" pairing myself and believe it to be more common. You'll notice that before my edit, there was one British spelling ("humour") in there, so I'm wondering if it's more common in UK circles to say it as "acid pairing". The Crack!fic section is a little muddying on the matter though, as it insists that crack pairings can be included in stories that basically make sense, which is not what the actual section on crack pairing states. I'm a bit torn on this, actually - all the crack pairings I've seen seemed to be humor fics, but I suppose taking a weird-sounding pairing and attempting to make it plausible isn't impossible... I'm just not sure it's called the same thing. Anybody know if the usage actually does extend that far? 4.238.13.115 22:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but someone went back and took it out after you were done. Don't worry though, I put it back in. (linky) --Gp75motorsports ^{REV LIMITER} 18:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flusty?

I've been floating around, and for some time was involved in, the fanfiction 'verse for close to five years and not only have I never heard the term 'flusty' used, the whole entry for that particular term sounds like an advert for a livejournal coupled with an urbandictionary.com definition feel to it. I vote that entry is deleted. Vaguely 13:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Same here. I've been reading/writing fanfics for the better part of a decade and have never seen nor heard of that before... Actually, I think the same could be said for "OTVB," which, as far as I can tell, has only been used by one LJ community revolving around Sakura from the Naruto franchise. (That's what Google gave me anyway...) Rhine Elmao 00:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I found TWO - count it, TWO - usages outside of LJ in relation to fanfic that wasn't quoting from this same exact page. They were both from story descriptions on fanfiction.net, which for all we know are sockpuppets (if there had been something like a dozen results from there, maybe we'd be on to something - but with how active the site is, two uses doesn't make it all that common). Four or five people (tops) makes it an in-joke, not common jargon. It's a cute and useful little word, it amuses me, it does... but this reads like an advert for somebody's new coinage/LJs. If somewhere down the line we see hundreds of people using this on any given site, by all means, re-add it. But as of now, I'm deleting it. ETA: Not to mention the Urban Dictionary listing (let's not even get into how UD is amusing, but hardly a good reliable source) doesn't even list this usage as the main one. Is it an American slang term? Yes. Does it mean what the LJ kids want us to use it as? Not really. 4.238.13.115 22:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vegthro

Okay, I have been looking at some VeggieTales fan fictions and fan pics and I keep coming up with the word “Vegthro.” After some research, I’ve learned it means “the concept of turning VeggieTales characters into humans.” I don’t know if this would go under this category or where to put it. Lady of Versailles 02:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

That's kind of interesting, but unless it's part of a multi-fandom naming pattern, I'm afraid it's a bit too specific and obscure to be suited for this article (otherwise, we'd be inviting a million fans to add the countless dozens of slang terms for their thousands of fandoms and communities. You might be able to work it in as a trivia item in the VeggieTales article or something, though. :) 4.238.13.115 23:25, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources?

This article survived AfD, rightly in my view, but it still has problems - in particular, it needs better sourcing. The 'References' section only lists on item (with a couple more under external links), and there's a general lack of inline references. Judging by the examples of other articles on internet slang, this one ought to have a source or citation for each term in the list; if none can be found for a term, then it's probably non-notable anyway. Terraxos (talk) 05:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Angst

I think the concept of "angst" in fan fiction deserves a little subsection, not just the mention in the definition of fluff: "A genre in which the story is devoid of angst and takes on a mood of light-hearted romance." I'm not sure about writing this myself, though, because it bugs the *beep* out of me that the fan fiction use of the word tends toward "agonizing" and "anguish" rather than the proper definition, along the lines of "A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression."

[edit] Hurt and Comfort

This subgenre needs a subsection, too.

[edit] AU\AR\AT

Those terms are very similar, but they could be explained as:

AU (Alternative Universe) is usually used when the characters come from the 'canon' word into 'our' real word. This means almost every "high school" fic is usually marked as AU. (btw. the term "high school fic" could be also consider as a term on it's own) In AU the characters don't have their special powers or their job is a common job, on contrary to their canon 'super job'. Hence it's rarely used in fanfics based on works that play in the real world.

AR (Alternate Reality) is not as widely as used as AR. In AR the world is the same as in the canon, however the character is someone else i.e. a princes in canon become in fanfic an ordinary girl, and vice versa. There can be some major changes, like instead of using magic all character use machines ect., however basically it is the same world as in canon (the same rules, the same geography, the same names)

AT (Alternate Timeline) is the least used them, with the exception of fanfic based on time travel idea. AT, as the name is suggesting mean, that the story begins at some point in the canon story and since that point the author write his own version ('one moment that changed the time')

Is this description enough correct? Can it be used in the main article.

It's hard to verify/give citations, since for there's no legal/official rules for fanfics.--MadaMag (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)