Fanfiction Terminology A-L

BNF

'Big-Name Fan'. A BNF is a person who is well known in the fan community, whether for fanfiction, fanart, maintaining a website, moderating a community, or sometimes just for being an opinionated loudmouth whom everybody hates. The label carries a certain amount of (often ironic) prestige, and fans often aspire to 'BNFhood' or 'BNFdom'.

HURT/COMFORT

- a term used to describe a piece of fanfiction in which a character is physically or emotionally abused, then nursed back to health by his or her True Love.

HSAU

- acronym for 'high school alternate universe', referring to fanfiction or fanart depicting characters as American high school students.

FURRY

- can be used as an adjective or noun. Something is 'furry' if it pertains to anthropomorphic animals; art, stories, comics, costumes, and many other things can be 'furry'. A 'furry' is a person who either roleplays as or claims to be such a creature. People in the latter category are usually considered a bit crazy and are often accused of bestiality.

C&D

A legal document ordering a fan to remove a published work or even a word or phrase from the internet, from print sources, or from RL (this is why you can't call your hamburger stand "McDonalds".) Stands for "cease-and-desist." Companies seeking to protect their brands - and authors seeking to squelch fanfiction - will sometimes issue a C&D.

ANIME

ANN-ee-may. Japanese animation. The term has both a general and a specific meaning. Generally, it means any two-dimensional (drawn as opposed to computer-generated) animated entertainment made in Japan. Specifically, 'an anime' is the set of episodes of a weekly half-hour television show.

ICWYDT

Acronym for "I see what you did there."

AU

Alternate Universe. This acronym labels a piece of fanfiction occurring in a world based on but different from that of the source material. Examples of Alternate Universes include *Twilight* as a hockey tournament, "Sherlock" as a high-school AU, or a zombie apocalypse version of the "Little House" novels.

EBERT'S LAW

Ebert's Law, named for Roger Ebert the film critic, states that somebody does not need to be good at something to know when other people are very bad at it. A person who answers criticism of their fanfiction or fanart with, "well, let's see you do better!" will be told that they have broken Ebert's Law.

G, PG, R, NC-17

MPAA's rating system for films; used to describe level of explicitness and language use in a fic.

HEADCANON

Term to describe how a fandom or pairing seems to a particular fic writer; especially in RPF

FANZINE/ZINE

a collection of fanworks, usually fanfiction, published in the form of an amateur magazine. Issues are usually available only to the members of a club. Before the internet, zines were the only medium in which fanfiction could be shared, and many older fans reminisce about the era of zines as a golden age of quality control.

FANART

a drawing of characters, objects, or situations from a piece of work the artist admires. Where the original piece is in a visual medium, such as a comic book or animated movie, the fanartist will usually attempt to match the original art style.

BADFIC

a general term for badly written fanfiction.

FANBOY/FANGIRL

a particularly geeky or obsessive fan, usually of some stereotypically 'boyish' or 'girlish' medium. Also a verb: "We were fangirling over it. . "

BETA READER, BETA

a person who acts as an editor for a friend's fanfiction, reading it for content, spelling, and grammar so that the writer can make any necessary changes before posting the piece.

ELITIST

a person who considers him or herself and his or her friends 'better' fans than anyone else. They may form a special messageboard or chatroom where only 'good' or 'true' fans are allowed to participate. Are generally mocked behind their backs as pseudo-intellectual wannabes.

ICON

a picture identifying a fanwork creator; most creators have multiple icons used for different fandoms and purposes

CROSSOVER

a piece of fanart or fanfiction in which characters from two different sets of source material meet. Crossovers tend to be either very good or excruciatingly bad, depending on how plausibly the writer handles the connection between the two universes. A crossover in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer teams up with Blade against their common foe could be very good - the scenarios have much in common and are easy to link. A story in which the cast of Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon travel to another galaxy to assist Luke Skywalker in overthrowing the Galactic Empire is likely to be painful.

FANON

a pun on 'canon'. Concepts that are not explicitly stated, or perhaps not touched on at all, by the source material, but nevertheless accepted as true by most of the fandom, are called 'fanon'. For example, a significant part of the Harry Potter fandom accepts as more or less factual the idea that Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were at some point homosexual lovers. The faction that believes this spends a great deal of time arguing vehemently with the faction that doesn't.

CANON

a term borrowed from the Catholic Church, meaning 'established truth'. The "world" or body of works upon which a fandom is based, and any information contained therein. This is sometimes extended to include information in guidebooks, interviews, and other such sources. Also used to refer to information from different versions of a story: for example, the school uniforms in Harry Potter 'book-canon' are different from those in 'movie-canon'.

IAWTC

acronym for 'I agree with that comment.'

FAQ

acronym for 'frequently asked questions'. Many websites and communities have an FAQ page to answer the questions most commonly asked by new members.

IIRC

acronym for 'if I recall correctly.'

IC

acronym for 'in character'. Can mean either a post made to a roleplaying messageboard or mailing list as the character a person is playing, or that a character in a piece of fanfiction or fanart is behaving in a way appropriate to his or her personality.

IMHO

acronym for 'in my humble opinion'.

EYESPORKING

an adjective used to emphasize that something, usually fanfiction, is particularly terrible. 'Eyesporkingly bad' is about the worse insult an author can receive. The word is used to imply that the piece is so awful the reader wanted to dig out his or her own eyeballs with a spork (a combination spoon and fork) so that he or she would not have to look at it anymore. As far as anyone has ever determined, the term arose because sporks are exactly the right shape and size for the job, though it's unlikely anybody has ever really tried to use them that way.

LEMON

an explicit sex scene in fanfiction. The term refers to a pornographic anime called Cream Lemon.

AVATAR

an image, usually a hundred pixels square, that a person uses to represent themselves on a messageboard or weblog, though the weblog versions are generally called 'icons'.

CANON RAPE or CANONRAPE or QANONREIP

blatantly disregarding aspects of the source material in writing a work of fanfiction.

DOWNTHREAD/UPTHREAD

directing the reader to search or look either up the thread or down it.

ANGST

fanfiction dealing with emotional extremes such as depression and suicide.

FANFICTION

fanfiction is writing that uses characters or situations from a piece of work the artist admires. The term is often abbreviated to 'fanfic' or just 'fic'. Fanfiction - and fanart - exist in something of a legal gray area; while the authors almost never earn money from this hobby, fanfiction is still a use without permission of somebody else's creation, and it is considered polite to preface a piece with a short disclaimer disavowing all claim to the source material. Some authors disapprove of fanfiction or allow it only under certain conditions.

FEMMESLASH

fanfiction or fanart dealing with homosexual relationships between women. The term comes from the SLASH notation used to indicate a M/M pairing, eg: Kirk/Spock, Frodo/Sam, etc. By convention, the first name listed is the 'dominant' member of the relationship. 'Slash' is used as both a noun and a verb: to 'slash' a pair of characters is to write erotic fanfiction about them. An author who writes such pieces is called a 'slasher' (not to be confused with 'slasher' as in 'mass murderer'). Source material is described as 'slashy' if the characters behave in a way that can be interpreted as homosexual romantic tension.

FLUFF

fanfiction or fanart that does not have much of a plot or point and/or does not deal with dark emotions.

GEN/GENFIC

fanfiction that does not deal with romantic or sexual relationships.

DISCLAIMER

language added at the beginning of end of a fic indicating that the fic/characters are not the writer's property, that the events depicted didn't happen, etc.

FILK

poetry, often humorous, in the form of lyrics that can be sung to the tune of a popular song. Weird Al Yankovic makes his living at this.

CONCRIT

short for 'constructive criticism'; helpful advice given to a writer or artist about how they could improve their work. Often interpreted as flaming by authors who do not wish to improve.

COSPLAY

short for 'costume play', a 'cosplayer' is somebody who dresses up as a character from their fandom. The term originated in Japan and was originally anime-specific, but has moved into wider use, and is both a noun and a verb: a cosplay is the costume itself, or the event at which it is worn. 'Cosplaying' somebody is shorthand for 'dressing up as' that individual.

HET

short for 'heterosexual'. A 'het' fic is one that explores romantic or sexual relationships between members of the opposite sex. Also GEN for 'general."

LURKER

somebody who reads but does not contribute to the discussion. Many people will 'lurk' in a community for some time to learn what is considered acceptable behavior before they introduce themselves.

ANON

term of address in a thread for referring to someone who has posted anonymously; an anonymous poster

FANDOM

the entire community of fans devoted to a particular person or work.

BASH

to 'bash' is to repeatedly insult something just for the sake of insulting it, without supplying any evidence.

FLAME

used as both a noun and a verb. A 'flame' is an insult or a stream of vitriol. 'To flame' is to post such things. A 'flamer' is the person doing the flaming.