Fanfiction Dictionary, or what AU, OOC, OTP and all those other abbreviations mean

When I started reading fanfiction in English years ago, I thought the language itself would be my biggest obstacle. But little by little I found out that even when you understand every word in a sentence, it doesn't mean you understand what other fans are actually talking about. Because fandoms have their own vocabulary, and you won't find much of it in ordinary English textbooks. So on top of English, I started learning one more language. The language of fanfiction people.

At first it seemed that every other story contained some abbreviation I had never seen before. AU, OOC, OTP, OC, WIP and who knows what else. Some terms I worked out from context, others I had to look up, and with a few I spent a long time convinced I understood them before finding out that I didn't at all. And then, of course, there are tags that look like a random conversation the author is having with themselves, and you're never quite sure whether you've just found a new literary term or a very specific fandom joke.

These days I find my way around fanfiction terminology much better, and still I come across something new now and then. Fandoms keep changing, new generations of readers and authors arrive, some terms slowly disappear and others settle in so firmly that we can't imagine even an ordinary conversation about a favourite pairing without them.

And because I spent quite a lot of time looking up what individual terms mean, I decided to put together a dictionary where you'll find not only the basic abbreviations, but also lesser known terms, writers' vocabulary and labels you might come across while reading, writing or browsing Archive of Our Own.

It isn't a list of rules you have to know to count as a real fan. Fanfiction isn't a closed society with entrance exams, even though it can sometimes feel that way when you're staring at twenty unfamiliar tags. Think of this dictionary more as a little helper you can come back to whenever you run into something that doesn't make sense to you.

And if you're interested in how to search for stories on AO3 and use all those filters, I've also written a separate guide. Here we'll dive mainly into the language of the fanfiction community itself.

The basics of the fanfiction world

Before we get to the more complicated terms, let's start with the ones you can hardly do without in any fandom community. You may have known some of them for ages, while others look similar at first glance even though they mean quite different things.

The basics of the fanfiction world · show terms (17)

Term	Meaning and example
Fanfiction / Fanfic / Fic	A story written by a fan based on an existing work, its characters, its world or real people. Fanfiction is the full term, fanfic or fic its common short form. If someone writes I found a great fic, they're simply saying they found a great piece of fanfiction.
Fandom	A community of fans connected by a particular work, series, artist or other shared interest. The word can mean the community as a whole as well as the area of fan creation itself. When I say I moved from Harry Potter to MDZS, I'm talking about moving between fandoms.
Source Material	The original work the fanfiction is based on. It can be a book, a series, a film, a game or another source. It's usually what people use to judge what belongs to the original story and what is already a fan interpretation.
Canon	Events, relationships and information confirmed by the original work or its accepted sources. The fact that Harry Potter went to Hogwarts, for example, is canon. What exactly counts as canon can get more complicated with series that exist in several versions, though.
Fanon	An idea that isn't confirmed by the original work but has spread so widely among fans that many people automatically accept it as part of the world. It can be a personality trait, a character's past or an event the community keeps repeating in fanfiction.
Headcanon	A fan's personal idea about a character or world that the original never explicitly confirms. Unlike fanon, it doesn't have to be widespread. If I imagine that a certain character secretly reads romance novels, that can be my headcanon even though the original story never mentioned it.
Canon Compliant	Fanfiction that tries not to contradict the known events of the original work. It can, for example, add a scene the original author didn't show, or tell events from another character's point of view without changing how they turn out.
Canon Divergence	A story that follows the original plot up to a certain point and then branches off at a specific moment. What if Sirius Black hadn't died, for example? A completely new course of events can grow from that one change.
Canon Rewrite	A rewrite of the original plot, often with changed events, relationships or character decisions. Unlike a single branching point, the author may gradually rework a larger part of the original story.
Canon Blind	Describes an author or reader who doesn't know the original work, or an important part of it. If someone says they wrote a fic canon blind, they may be working only with what they picked up from other fanfiction or from the fandom community.
Fandom Blind	A story that makes sense even to people who don't know the original fandom. The author gives enough context about the characters and setting for the story to work on its own. It doesn't automatically mean it was written by someone who doesn't know the source.
Retelling	A new retelling of an existing story. It can keep the main plot points and change the perspective, setting or characters. For example, a fic that retells Cinderella with characters from another fandom.
Fix-it Fic	A story meant to fix something the author or the fans weren't happy with in the original. It can prevent a character's death, change a tragic ending or give someone a happier future. So a fix-it often grows out of a very personal disagreement with the original plot.
Missing Scene	A scene that didn't appear in the original work but could have happened between known events. The author may add a conversation between two characters that the original skipped, for example.
Gap Filler	A story that fills a gap in the plot or in the characters' past. It's similar to a missing scene, but it can cover a whole period rather than just one missing scene.
Post-Canon	A story set after the original work ends. The author explores what happened to the characters later, how they live and how they deal with the consequences of the original events.
Pre-Canon	A story set before the known plot begins. It can focus on the characters' childhood, their past relationships or events the original only hints at.

Canon, fanon and headcanon are three terms I'd really keep in mind. Especially once you start reading lots of fics from one fandom, you may gradually stop telling apart what really happened in the original story and what has simply spread so widely among fans that it started to feel like a given.

With Harry Potter or MDZS this can get quite interesting. After a few dozen stories, you sometimes start accepting certain interpretations of the characters automatically, even though they never appeared in the original. It's one of the fascinating things about fanfiction, but when writing your own story, I think it's good to know where the source material ends and our own imagination begins.

Alternate worlds and characters

One of the things I love about fanfiction is the chance to take familiar characters and put them into situations their original author would probably never have written. But there are differences between an alternate universe, a change in the original plot and a completely new character, and they're worth knowing.

Alternate worlds and characters · show terms (20)

Term	Meaning and example
AU / Alternate Universe	An alternate universe where the conditions of the original story change. It can be a different historical period, a modern setting, a different society or a major change in life circumstances. Imagine Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian as university colleagues instead of cultivators.
Modern AU	An alternate universe set in the present day. The characters may work in an office, go to school or deal with everyday problems. It's a specific type of AU, not a separate storytelling principle.
Historical AU	A story set in a different historical period than the original. Characters from a modern series might live in Victorian England, for example.
Fusion	A blend of elements from two different works, usually taking the world or rules of one story and casting it with the characters of another. For example, MDZS characters studying at Hogwarts without Harry Potter or Hermione ever having to appear.
Crossover	A story combining two or more fandoms, often through a meeting of their characters or a connection between their worlds. Harry Potter meeting Sherlock Holmes in person, for example. The main difference from a fusion is that a crossover usually keeps both original worlds or their characters existing separately.
OC / Original Character	An original character created by the fanfiction author. They don't come from the source, but they can become an important part of the new story. For example, your own Hogwarts student with a personality, history and relationships the author made up.
OFC / Original Female Character	An original female character created by the author. It's used as a more precise label for an OC, especially when the new character is the heroine or part of a romantic relationship.
OMC / Original Male Character	An original male character created by the author. It works the same way as OFC, it just marks a male character.
OOC / Out of Character	Used when a character behaves very differently from their established personality. For example, a very reserved character turns into a loud, impulsive person without any explanation. OOC is, however, a somewhat subjective judgement.
IC / In Character	The opposite of OOC. The character acts in a way that matches their known personality, motivations and experiences. They don't have to make the same decisions as in the original, but their behaviour should feel believable.
Self-Insert / SI	A story in which the author places a character representing themselves, or a strongly stylised version of themselves, into the fictional world. It doesn't have to be a literal autobiographical portrait.
Reader-Insert	A story that lets the reader imagine themselves in place of one of the characters. It often uses the second person or deliberately leaves some traits of the main character undefined.
Y/N / Your Name	An abbreviation used mainly in reader-insert stories. The reader is supposed to imagine their own name in place of Y/N. Similarly, Y/H/C is sometimes used for hair colour or Y/E/C for eye colour.
Genderbend / Genderswap	A change of gender for one or more characters compared to the original work. It can be used to explore different social dynamics, a different life or an alternative reading of relationships. The way the change happens differs from story to story.
Racebend	A change in a character's racial or ethnic portrayal compared to the source. It appears in fanfiction and fanart alike and is often part of discussions about representation and cultural context.
Aged-Up	The characters are older in the fic than in the original plot or the period the story is based on. Often it means moving the story into adulthood.
De-Aging	A character becomes younger, sometimes even a child. Sometimes it's a magical transformation, other times an alternate timeline.
Time Travel	Time travel that lets characters interfere with the past or the future. It can be used to change the original events, bring different versions of the characters together or fix a tragic ending.
Dimension Travel	Moving between different dimensions or versions of reality. A character may step into a world where their life went completely differently, for example.
Reincarnation	A character reborn into another life. They may remember their previous existence or slowly discover it. The concept itself isn't specific to fanfiction, but it appears in many fan stories.

Let me add a personal note about OOC here, because it's one of the things I really watch for when choosing stories. I have no problem with alternate universes, and I definitely don't think a character has to act exactly the same in every fic as in the original. On the contrary, I'm curious how a familiar personality might develop under different circumstances. But I still need to believe it's the same character.

If an author can explain why Lan Wangji is more open in a particular story than in the original, I don't mind at all. But if, for no reason whatsoever, he loses his usual traits and nothing remains of him but the name, it stops making sense to me. The difference between a character's growth and a complete transformation matters a lot to me as a reader, and that's exactly why the OOC tag often puts me off before I even open the first chapter.

Shipping, pairings and fandom relationships

If you've ever stumbled upon a discussion about who should end up with whom, who is a perfect match and why a certain relationship makes absolutely no sense, you've probably already witnessed some form of shipping. Fandoms can discuss relationships between characters with a passion many political commentators would envy.

Shipping, pairings and fandom relationships · show terms (23)

Term	Meaning and example
Ship / Shipping	Supporting or imagining a particular romantic or sexual relationship between characters. Ship comes from the word relationship. If someone says I ship them, it means they love the idea of those two together.
Pairing	A specific pair of characters connected by a romantic or sexual relationship. It can be a relationship confirmed in the original or purely a fan idea. Snarry, for example, is the pairing of Harry Potter and Severus Snape.
OTP / One True Pairing	A person's favourite pairing, often the one they root for the most. Even though the name suggests a single pair, some fans have several OTPs across different fandoms.
NOTP	A pairing someone doesn't like or definitely doesn't want to read. It doesn't automatically mean they think its fans are bad people, the combination just doesn't work for them.
OT3	A relationship of three characters that a fan supports. It often means a romantic or polyamorous trio, but the meaning can vary with the fandom context.
OT4 / OT5	The same principle extended to four or five characters. It's used mainly for favourite group relationships or closely connected characters.
Canon Ship	A romantic relationship confirmed by the original work. Fans didn't have to invent it, but they can keep developing it through fanfiction.
Non-Canon Ship	A relationship the original work never confirmed. It can grow from subtext, the characters' chemistry or pure fan imagination.
Rarepair	An unusual or not very widespread pairing with relatively little fan work. What counts as a rarepair depends on the particular fandom.
Crackship	An unusual, often absurd or deliberately unlikely combination of characters. Sometimes it starts as a joke, but it can inspire a seriously written story too.
Multishipper	Someone who supports several different pairings, sometimes even with overlapping characters. They don't feel the need to decide which relationship is the only right one.
Slash	The traditional fandom term for fan stories focused on a romantic or sexual relationship between male characters. The word came from the slash used between the names.
Femslash	Fanfiction focused on a romantic or sexual relationship between female characters. The label F/F is also used.
Het	A label for heterosexual romantic or sexual relationships in fan works. On AO3 you'll usually see the F/M category.
Gen	A story in which romantic or sexual relationships aren't the main focus. It can be about friendship, family, adventure or the characters' personal growth. It doesn't mean no existing couple can appear in it.
Pre-Slash / Pre-Relationship	A story hinting at a future relationship that doesn't fully develop within the story itself. Two characters start to feel something for each other, for example, but their romance hasn't begun yet.
Subtext	A meaning or relationship dynamic suggested indirectly, without being explicitly confirmed. Fans may see romantic tension in the way two characters behave, even if the original presents their relationship differently.
Endgame	The relationship that ends up as the final or definitive romantic couple at the end of a story. If a pairing is tagged as endgame, readers usually expect the characters to end up together.
Background Pairing	A side romance that appears in the story but isn't its main focus. On AO3 it's good to notice this, because your favourite couple may only play a minor role in some stories.
Ship War	A conflict between fans supporting different pairings. Sometimes it's innocent bickering, other times very heated arguments about which relationship is supposedly more correct or more faithful to the original.
Ship Name	A shortened or blended name for a pairing. Wangxian, for example, comes from combining Wangji and Wuxian, while Snarry combines Snape and Harry.
RPF / Real Person Fiction	Fan fiction that uses real people, such as actors, singers or athletes, as characters in imaginary stories. It doesn't claim the events described really happened.
RPS / Real Person Slash	A subcategory of RPF focused on romantic or sexual relationships between real people of the same sex. Again, it's a fictional idea, not information about their actual private lives.

There's one thing about shipping I'd like to stress, because it feels important to me. Loving a certain pairing doesn't mean I need the original to confirm it. Fanfiction is exactly the space where we can imagine relationships developing differently without automatically calling the original story into question.

In the same way, I don't think we need to fight everyone who has a different OTP. If someone loves a pairing that doesn't interest me at all, I simply don't read their stories. The fandom is big enough for us not to all share the same taste.

And if you're wondering why some relationship dynamics are so popular, I've also written a separate article about fanfiction tropes. There we'll look at Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Mutual Pining and other labels that describe the way a story is told.

Fanfiction formats and ways of storytelling

Not every fic is a classic multi chapter story. Some have barely a few hundred words, others are longer than an entire book series. And then there are formats built on letters, messages, diaries or other unusual ways of telling a story.

Fanfiction formats and ways of storytelling · show terms (24)

Term	Meaning and example
One-Shot	A standalone story published as a single piece, usually without a sequel. It can be short or very long. What matters isn't the word count, but that the story stands on its own.
Two-Shot	A story split into two parts or chapters. The label isn't as common as one-shot, but it's used in fandom spaces.
Multi-Chapter Fic	A story divided into several chapters. It can be posted gradually or all at once.
WIP / Work in Progress	An unfinished story that isn't complete yet. It may be updated regularly, but it may also have been inactive for a long time. WIP alone tells you nothing about whether the author plans to continue.
Longfic	A long fic with a large number of words or chapters. There's no universal threshold at which a story automatically counts as a longfic.
Ficlet	A short fic, usually shorter than a typical story, but without a fixed word count. It's used mainly for small standalone stories or scenes.
Drabble	Traditionally a story of exactly 100 words. In some communities, though, the word is used more loosely for any very short piece, so it's good to watch the context.
Double Drabble	A text of 200 words, twice a classic drabble.
Flash Fiction	A very short prose story that, despite its small size, usually has its own plot or a complete meaning. The exact length depends on the definition used.
Vignette	A short text focused mainly on atmosphere, a moment or a character. It doesn't have to contain a fully developed plot.
Anthology	A collection of several standalone stories that can be connected by characters, a theme or a shared world.
Series	A series of related works. On AO3 it can contain several standalone stories that follow on from each other or share the same universe.
Spin-Off	A derived story focusing, for example, on a side character or an event from another work. It can also grow out of the author's own fic.
Companion Piece	A story that accompanies another fic. It often shows the same events from a different perspective or fills in a side plot.
POV / Point of View	The perspective a story is told from. It can be a particular character's view, a first person narrator or another narrative approach. Lan Wangji POV, for example, means we follow events through his eyes.
Alternating POV	Switching between the perspectives of several characters. One chapter may follow Wei Wuxian and the next Lan Wangji, for example.
Outsider POV	Storytelling from the point of view of a character who stands outside the main group or relationship and watches it from the outside. They might observe the relationship of the two leads without knowing their shared history.
Unreliable Narrator	A narrator whose view may not match what really happened. They may hide something, misinterpret things or lie to themselves.
Second Person POV	Storytelling in the second person, typically by addressing the reader as "you". It often appears in reader-insert stories, but isn't limited to them.
Epistolary Fic	A story told through letters, emails, messages, diary entries or other documents.
Textfic / Chatfic	A fic built mostly on text messages or group chats. Sometimes it imitates the look of messaging apps.
Social Media AU	An alternate universe or story format based on social media, posts, comments and private messages. It often combines classic narration with fictional online interactions.
Podfic	An audio version of a fic in which a reader records the story much like an audiobook. It can be their own work or another author's story recorded with proper permission.
Recursive Fanfiction	Fanfiction based on another piece of fanfiction rather than only on the original work. An author might be inspired by another fan writer's alternate universe and write a story set in that world.

What fascinates me about this part of the fanfiction world is how little the length of a story actually matters. Sometimes a two thousand word fic can hit me harder emotionally than a novel I read over several evenings. Other times I need a long story where the characters have room to grow, make mistakes and slowly change.

That's exactly why I don't use the Word Count filter in my everyday searching on AO3. If the premise catches me and I believe in the characters, I don't really mind how many words the author needed to tell their story.

The author's world, writing and publishing

This part is a little closer to my heart now than back when I only read fanfiction. Once you start writing yourself, you find out that alongside the readers' abbreviations there's also a fairly rich vocabulary used by the authors themselves.

The author's world, writing and publishing · show terms (32)

Term	Meaning and example
Beta Reader / Beta	Someone who reads a text before it's published and gives the author feedback. They may check grammar, style, plot continuity or how believable the characters are. How much they do always depends on the agreement.
Alpha Reader	The first reader of a very early version of a story. They often help with the overall concept, the plot or how the characters work before any detailed language editing.
No Beta / Unbetaed	A label for a story that no beta reader checked before it was published. It doesn't automatically mean it's badly written, only that it didn't go through that kind of check.
No Beta We Die Like Men	A humorous version of the note that a story wasn't beta read. Authors often change the end of the phrase to fit their fandom or a favourite character.
Concrit / Constructive Criticism	Constructive criticism focused on specific aspects of a text. It can point out unclear passages, language problems or weaker parts of the story. In the fanfiction community it's important to respect whether the author wants it at all.
Feedback	Readers' responses. It can include praise, personal reactions, questions and suggestions for improvement.
Plot Bunny	A story idea that settles in an author's head and refuses to leave. Often it's a tiny premise that can grow into a whole fic.
Plot Hole	A logical gap or contradiction in the plot that breaks its internal consistency. A character knows something they couldn't possibly have learned so far, for example.
Plot Twist	An unexpected turn in the plot that changes how the reader understands the situation or where the story is heading.
Plot Armor	When a character survives or succeeds mainly because the story needs to keep them, even though the circumstances feel unbelievable. It's often used as a criticism.
Character Arc	A character's development over the course of the story. It can involve a change in values, beliefs, relationships or the way the character sees themselves.
Character Study	A story focused mainly on the psychology and inner world of a particular character. The plot can be fairly simple, because the main attention goes to their thoughts, emotions and motivations.
Worldbuilding	Creating or expanding the rules of a fictional world. It includes its history, social structure, politics, magic, geography and other elements.
Lore	The body of knowledge about the history, mythology and rules of a fictional world. In fandom it often refers to a deeper knowledge of the source.
Backstory	A character's past and the events that shaped how they behave now. Fanfiction often fills in the backstory of characters the original only touched on.
Foreshadowing	Hinting at future events through subtle clues, details or motifs.
Chekhov's Gun	The principle that a strongly emphasised element of a story should matter later. If the author pays a lot of attention to a certain object, the reader can expect it to come into play again.
Pacing	The tempo of the storytelling, the way fast plot events, slower scenes, dialogue and description take turns.
Show, Don't Tell	A writing recommendation to convey some information through actions, dialogue and situations rather than direct explanation. It isn't an absolute rule, though, because direct narration has its place too.
Purple Prose	A label for an overly ornate and complicated style in which the amount of metaphor and description can overshadow the actual meaning of the text.
Writer's Block	A creative block in which the author struggles to keep writing or can't develop their own ideas.
Pantser	An author who writes mostly by intuition and lets the plot emerge while writing. The term comes from the English phrase by the seat of one's pants.
Plotter	An author who prepares an outline, plot points, character development or a more detailed plan before writing.
Discovery Writer	An author who discovers the story gradually while writing. The meaning overlaps with pantser, but some authors prefer this name.
Writing Prompt	A prompt or spark for writing a story. It can be a single sentence, a specific situation, a picture or a relationship dynamic.
Prompt Fill	A story written in response to a particular writing prompt. It often comes out of fandom events or themed challenges.
Fic Exchange	A fandom event where authors create works for other participants based on their requests or preferences.
Gift Fic	A story dedicated to a specific person, often as a thank you, a gift or part of a fandom exchange.
Big Bang	An organised fandom event where authors write longer stories, often in collaboration with fan artists. The rules and minimum length vary from event to event.
Mini Bang	A smaller version of a Big Bang, usually with a lower required length.
Fest / Fic Fest	An organised event focused on creating fan works around a shared theme, prompts or rules.
Fandom Event	A general term for a community event, such as a themed week, a monthly challenge, a story exchange or a joint project.

And since we're talking about beta reading and feedback, I think it's important to remember that every author works a little differently. Some need a fully prepared story structure before they start, others begin with one scene and slowly find out where the characters will take them. In the same way, some people welcome detailed criticism, while others write fanfiction mostly for joy and don't want any analysis of their work.

The fact that a story is published publicly doesn't automatically mean the author asked for an editorial review. And even though constructive criticism is useful, I think it makes the most sense when the other side really wants it.

AO3 and fandom communication

Some terms are closely tied to how fanfiction archives work, others are used across the whole online fandom world. Even though I already mentioned most of them in my AO3 guide, I'm giving them their own place here so the dictionary works on its own too.

AO3 and fandom communication · show terms (21)

Term	Meaning and example
AO3 / Archive of Our Own	A non profit archive of fan works run by the Organization for Transformative Works. It allows fan works to be published, searched and preserved.
Tag	A label describing qualities of a work, such as characters, relationships, setting or content warnings. On AO3, tags are essential for searching and filtering.
Canonical Tag	A standardised tag under which AO3 links together variants that mean the same thing. The word canonical here refers to how tags are organised in the archive, not to the canon of the original story.
Freeform Tag / Additional Tag	A looser label used to describe the content of a work beyond its fandom, characters and relationships. It can be an established trope or the author's own note.
Tag Wrangling	The process of organising and linking tags on AO3, done by volunteers. Thanks to it, different variants of a label can be linked under one searchable tag.
Overtagging	Using so many tags that the labelling of a story becomes confusing. What counts as too many depends on readers' personal preferences too, though.
Undertagging	When an author uses very few tags or leaves out some important motifs, which makes it harder for readers to guess what the work contains.
Kudos	A simple form of appreciation from a reader. On AO3 it's a way to show the author recognition without having to write a comment.
Hits	Recorded views of a work. They're not the number of unique readers or the number of people who actually finished it.
Bookmarks	Saved favourites that let you keep fan works and add your own notes or tags to them. On AO3 they can be public or private.
Marked for Later	An AO3 feature for marking a work you want to come back to later. It's tied to the history of a logged in account.
Subscription	Signing up for updates to a particular story, series or author.
Series	A group of related works. AO3 lets you gather standalone stories into one series.
Collection	A collection of fan works created for a specific purpose, such as a fandom event, an exchange or a themed grouping. It isn't the same as a series.
Orphaning	An AO3 feature that lets an author permanently detach a work from their account and transfer its authorship to orphan_account. It isn't the same as deleting a story.
Anonymous Work	A work published in an anonymous collection, so its author isn't shown publicly in the usual way. Unlike orphaning, the author can, under certain conditions, keep the ability to manage the work.
Pseud	An alternative author name linked to an AO3 account. It lets you publish under different names without creating separate accounts.
Co-Creator	A co-author or another creator added to a fan work. It's used for collaborative writing, for example.
Archive Warning	An AO3 content warning that covers specific sensitive topics. It isn't the same as the author's freely chosen additional tags.
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings	The author decided not to use specific archive warnings. It doesn't mean the work contains no sensitive or potentially disturbing content.
No Archive Warnings Apply	The author declares that none of the specific AO3 archive warnings apply to the work. It doesn't automatically mean every sensitive topic is absent.

Tagging itself is worth a mention when it comes to AO3. As a reader, I sometimes feel an author can give away half the story in their list of tags before I even open the first chapter. Other times I find a story with hardly any tags and have to decide based on a short summary alone.

From an author's point of view, though, I understand why it's tricky. You want to help readers find your work, warn them about important content, and at the same time not give everything away. Finding a reasonable balance between those things isn't always easy.

Content warnings and lesser known fandom slang

This is a part I would never leave out of a proper fanfiction dictionary. Some terms show up mainly in older communities, others are typical for AO3 or social media. And some can be pretty confusing for newcomers, because their literal meaning makes almost no sense.

Content warnings and lesser known fandom slang · show terms (24)

Term	Meaning and example
SFW / Safe for Work	A label for content that's generally fine to view in a public or work setting. It isn't an official age rating, though.
NSFW / Not Safe for Work	A label for content not suitable for an ordinary public setting, often because of sexuality, nudity or other explicit material.
CW / Content Warning	A warning about content some readers might find unpleasant or disturbing. It can cover violence, death or other sensitive topics, for example.
TW / Trigger Warning	A warning about content that might cause a strong personal reaction in some people related to their own experiences. The term often overlaps with content warning, but it originally emphasises the possibility of a triggered response.
Dead Dove: Do Not Eat	A fandom label signalling that the difficult or challenging motifs listed in the tags really are part of the work and the reader should take them seriously. The label itself doesn't specify any particular type of content.
Squick	A word for a theme, motif or pairing someone personally finds deeply unpleasant. It doesn't have to be about trauma or moral judgement of that content.
Squish	In some fandom and aromantic communities, a word for a strong non romantic attraction or wish for a close friendship with a particular person.
Squee	An excited, often very emotional fan reaction. If someone starts squeeing over a new scene of their favourite pairing, they're simply overjoyed.
YMMV / Your Mileage May Vary	A phrase pointing out that an experience or opinion is subjective. A story one reader finds beautifully romantic may feel dull to another, for example.
YKINMK / Your Kink Is Not My Kink	A way of saying a certain preference isn't yours, without necessarily judging someone else for having it. It often comes up in fandom discussions about personal taste.
DNF / Did Not Finish	A label for a story the reader didn't finish. It's used in book communities generally, not just for fanfiction.
DNI / Do Not Interact	A request for a certain group of people not to interact with an account or its content. It appears more often on social media and in profiles than as a standard fanfiction label.
Spoiler	Information that reveals an important event or twist in a story ahead of time.
Spoiler Warning	A warning that the following text contains plot information that may give away important events.
Smut	A fandom term for sexually explicit content. It isn't an official AO3 rating and on its own says nothing about the story's overall genre.
PWP / Porn Without Plot	A story focused mainly on sexual content with minimal plot. The abbreviation is sometimes jokingly read as Plot? What Plot? too.
Lemon	An older fandom term for sexually explicit content. It often appeared on older fanfiction sites, especially in anime communities.
Lime	An older label for less explicit but sexually charged content. Its exact meaning was never quite the same across communities.
Dub-Con / Dubious Consent	A label for situations where consent to intimacy is unclear, problematic or questionable. It isn't an official AO3 archive warning.
Non-Con / Non-Consensual	A label for sexual acts without consent. On AO3 it relates to the Rape/Non-Con archive warning.
Underage	A label that, in the AO3 archive warning system, refers to specifically defined sexual content involving people under eighteen. It isn't a general sticker for every story with teenage characters.
Major Character Death / MCD	An archive warning about the death of an important character. It doesn't necessarily have to be the reader's personal favourite.
Choose Not To Warn / CNTW	Short for the Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings option. The author doesn't say which specific archive warnings might apply to the work.
Graphic Depictions of Violence	An archive warning about vividly described violence. It doesn't automatically cover every action scene or every conflict.

I'd like to pause on Dead Dove: Do Not Eat for a moment, because it's one of those labels that can seem completely absurd the first time you see it. It comes from the TV series Arrested Development, and in fandom it caught on as a warning that if the author put something in the tags, you should expect to really find it in the story.

It doesn't automatically mean the story contains violence, sexual content or any other particular topic. The meaning depends on the other tags. If you see tags warning about very dark motifs and Dead Dove next to them, the author is telling you those warnings aren't just some distant possibility. I personally think that with labels like this, it's good to understand what they really mean instead of reading them only by their literal translation.

Internet and community slang you might come across

Fandoms of course don't live only on AO3. A big part of their communication happens on Tumblr, Discord, Reddit and other platforms too. That's why there are terms that aren't fanfiction terms in the strict sense, but you'll very likely run into them as you move around the community.

Internet and community slang you might come across · show terms (23)

Term	Meaning and example
Fannish	An adjective for something typical of or related to fan culture. Fannish activities, for example, can include reading fanfiction, cosplay or making fanart.
Fanwork	A general term for fan creations. It includes fanfiction, fanart, videos, music, podfic and other formats.
Fanart	Visual art inspired by existing characters, stories or fandoms.
Meta	An analytical or interpretive text about the original work, its characters or fan creations. It may examine characters' motivations, symbolism or a particular theory.
Fanon Interpretation	An interpretation of a character or event that has spread through fan discussions and fan works, even though the original doesn't clearly confirm it.
Fic Rec / Recommendation	A fic recommendation from another reader or author. It can be a single story or a long themed list.
Rec List	A list of recommended fics, often organised by fandom, pairing or theme.
Fic Search	Searching for a particular story you remember but can't find again. Fandom communities often have whole discussions dedicated to identifying a forgotten story.
Lost Fic	A story that has disappeared from where it was originally posted or that readers can't track down. It isn't necessarily deleted for good, sometimes it has just changed its address or author.
Fic Archive	A website or database for preserving fanfiction. AO3 is one example, but there are other fandom and historical archives too.
Fandom Migration	Fans or authors moving from one platform or fandom to another. It's often connected with changing interests, the availability of content or how community sites work.
Fandom Old / Fandom Elder	An informal name for a long time member of fan culture. It can be used with respect, irony or humour.
Newbie / Newb	A newcomer who is only just getting to know a fandom, its rules or its vocabulary.
Lurker	Someone who follows a community and reads its content but takes part only a little or not at all.
Anti / Anti-Shipper	In today's fandom debates, often a name for someone who actively rejects certain kinds of fictional content or pairings. The meaning varies between communities, though, and is often part of heated disputes.
Proship / Pro-Shipper	A label linked with the view that the existence or depiction of problematic fictional motifs doesn't have to mean approving of them in real life. The meaning and limits of the term are debated in fandom, and individual users may understand it differently.
Ship and Let Ship	The attitude that everyone can enjoy their own favourite pairings without having to attack fans of other combinations.
Don't Like, Don't Read / DLDR	A fandom principle that you don't have to read content that doesn't suit you. It's often used in discussions about personal preferences and the freedom of fan creation.
Flame	An aggressive, hostile or insulting comment aimed at an author or their work. It's different from factual constructive criticism.
Flame War	A heated online fight with repeated aggressive replies from several people.
Bashing	A strongly negative or one sided portrayal of a certain character, often used on purpose to mock them or make them the main villain. Dumbledore Bashing, for example, marks stories with a very unflattering portrayal of Dumbledore.
Discourse	Fandom discussions and disputes, often about character interpretations, the ethics of creating, representation or relationships between fans. The word is sometimes used ironically.
Fandom Etiquette	The unwritten rules of polite behaviour in a fan community. It can include respecting authors, tagging sensitive content, handling spoilers or the way feedback is given.

Especially with these last terms, I think it's important to remember that fandom isn't one huge community where everyone shares the same opinions and rules. What's normal in one group can seem strange elsewhere or be a subject of debate. And some terms have changed so much over the years that people use them a little differently today than they did ten or twenty years ago.

That's why I'd recommend always taking fandom slang in context. Sometimes it's a simple label, sometimes a very specific joke, and sometimes a word hiding a whole history of community disputes.

And what about fanfiction tropes?

You may have noticed that some terms you probably see very often on AO3 are still missing from this dictionary. Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff or Found Family.

I didn't leave them out by mistake. I just think they deserve a little more space than two sentences in a table. These terms often don't describe fanfiction vocabulary as such, but specific story motifs, relationship dynamics or the emotional tone of a story. And that's exactly what I cover in a separate article about fanfiction tropes and dynamics.

So if you're looking for an explanation of why Slow Burn is a complete obsession for some readers, how Hurt/Comfort differs from Angst, or why Enemies to Lovers can be a completely different experience from Rivals to Lovers, you'll find it in the next part of our little fanfiction guide.

The language of fanfiction keeps changing

When I look back at my first attempts at reading fanfiction in English, I actually enjoy thinking about how many different things I learned thanks to it. Not just new words, but also ways of telling stories, fandom customs and, little by little, how differently people can think about the very same characters.

Today I use some of these terms completely automatically. When I see OOC, I know what to expect. When someone writes that they have a new plot bunny, I understand pretty well why they don't feel like working on the story they already have in progress. And when I come across No Beta We Die Like Men, I usually smile, because fandom humour really has a strange charm of its own.

Still, I would never dare to claim I know every single term the fan community uses. Fandoms keep changing, some words take on new meanings and others appear depending on what people are reading, writing or sharing right now. And the lovely thing about that is that this dictionary never has to be truly finished.

So if you come across a term that's missing here while reading, feel free to write to me. I'll be happy to look at it and keep adding to the dictionary, so it can help other readers who are just finding their feet in the world of fanfiction.

Because if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you really don't need to know every fandom term to enjoy a good story. All you need is the wish to explore and the courage to ask when something doesn't make sense.

Yours, Mimosa

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Where to go next?

If you're completely new to AO3, I recommend starting with my guide to searching for fanfiction, where I explain how to use filters, sort stories and find ones that suit your taste.

In the article about fanfiction tropes and dynamics, we'll look at the labels that describe the content and dynamics of the stories themselves.

And if you're interested in Chinese danmei, you can also continue with my danmei glossary, because that world has its own vast vocabulary, and it's just as easy to get lost in it as on AO3.

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Mimosa Confiante

By day, I work somewhere between marketing, copy and campaigns; by night, I usually end up somewhere between fanfiction, cosplay and yet another “what if” that refuses to leave me alone. I write mainly in the Harry Potter and Mo Dao Zu Shi fandoms, most often Snarry, Snamione, HarryLu and WangXian. My healthcare background means that anatomy, medicine and far too much research occasionally find their way into my stories. Cosplay is another way for me to play with the characters I love, whether I stay close to canon or turn them into my own fanfiction and AU versions. In Diary of a Slytherin Girl with ADHD, I write openly about life with a brain that usually has far too many tabs open at once.

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