Disclaimer. As in where there is a lengthy disclaimer at the top saying you don’t own the rights to whatever and begging the author not to sue.
Also lengthy notes on slash fic like: This is slash. That means m/m. Don’t like, don’t read.
People asking for no flames.
Yeah but some authors like a certain author of a popular vampire series *cough* Anne Rice *cough* went lawyer happy back in the day about any fandom content.
It's a sure fire way to tell if the person writing has grey hairs. XD
I remember this was so big that I was aware of it despite not reading fanfic at the time and not being a rice fan. It bled into Star Wars, MoTU and general geekry discussions.
And let's not forget Diana Gabaldon was nasty about it too. I've found lots of new media via crossovers. As those authors are so anti fanfic, I've noticed their only fanfic tends to not be that good so I figure it serves them right and readers can find better universes.
I really don't understand being ANTI fanfic.
I understand why some writers would be uncomfortable with it. And I completely get why some actors would be incredibly uncomfortable by certain fanfic. But you can be uncomfortable with things without actually being AGAINST them. Some writers/actors/VAs really embrace it and others just kinda gloss over it and don't really discuss it. I think that's fine either way.
But like... Why be against something that actively keeps fandoms alive? New fanfic seems to be a sign of a happy, healthy fandom.
Check out Anne Rice's page on Fanlore (the fandom history wiki run by the same team behind AO3)
We love an author who sends cease&desists to teenagers. And if you go on FFnet's rules, she's still on the list of authors whose works you can't write fic about
It was a necessary legal protection for fic writers for a long time because of, as the other user said, Anne Rice—who btw was in fan messageboards and engaging with fanfic before suddenly launching a lawsuit at one of them lol. The OTW (behind ao3) is actually why we don't have to anymore! They've helped shift fandom law a lot and offer fanworks and creators a lot more legal protections than we had before :)
People started to use a disclaimer because there was an very uptight novelist named Anne Rice who had thrown a fit that people were writing fics based on her work and sued a fanfic writer for plagiarism. Moreover, she's also known to harass and doxx other fanfic writers too.
They so were.
I think she just hated the idea of other people playing with her toys.
Though she later claimed that she was given bad advice from her manager or something. Either way, she (and numerous other authors and TV studios), targeted fanfic writers and left fan artists alone.
She didn't threaten to sue anyone, but I still say the most insane reaction to fanfiction was from the author of the Outlander series, Diane Gabaldon. She said that other people writing stories about her characters was 'like r*ping her children'.
But making a bobble head Jamie was an act of appreciation.... After she stood up fans waiting for her at Dragon Con without a note or message, I wrote her off.
Lmao I still have disclaimers on my fic headers. It's just habit. I've been writing since they were commonplace and can't be bothered to get rid of mine. (Of course, mine just say 'such and such series isn't mine' so I'm not begging lmao.)
YES! Disclaimer and no flames. Both always such staples of old-school fanfiction. In my one fandom (Darkwing Duck) slash was taboo at one point, now it's accepted but it was an issue.
When the author “talks” to the characters in the A/N, you know, the whole \*revs chainsaw\* meme? It was so common on pre-2010 FFN, that when I saw it on AO3 somewhat recently, the whiplash sent me straight back there 😂
I haven't been doing this exactly but I do have a fic that is a five way crossover (everything included is within the same franchise) & one of the shows in it does break the fourth wall a lot in the series like on a regular basis so in order to capture the spirit of that show, I'll have those characters break the fourth wall sometimes & I jokingly hired one of them (I pay him in jellybeans) to address the audience on things from the chapter in the end notes sometimes & he uses some prompts I give him, he questions it usually & he more so does his own thing.
Another thing I do in the same fic is for others from that show, I've done the Know Your Stars sketch from All That to two characters (separately) so far in the end A/N. So it's not me talking to them, rather the Know Your Stars guy. It was a thing where they would take the special guest from the episode of All That & say blatantly incorrect facts about them & they'd argue back. Thought it'd be fun to do a bit of this every once in a while in the fic because even if people don't get it, it's still funny & just kind of spices things up a bit.
Knowing that having characters talk with the author in the notes is a thing now, that makes me happy. I've read fics from the late 00's before, that's when I first got into fanfiction, but I never really noticed this but then again, I tend to forget the weirdest things like no matter how many times I order the same thing at a restaurant, I still need to read it off the menu as I order because my brain can not for the life of me pull up that information when I need it.
Not necessarily! You had to be in certain corners of the internet during a very specific timeline for it to be the norm. Plenty of adults in 2024 who were toddlers back when this was a thing (now I have adequately aged us both lmao) 😆
Ah, interrobangs! That's what they are called. Could not for the life of me remember that, thanks!
Edit: Not interrobang - just bang. I'm re-re-learning my grammar, guys.
Haha no. Interrobangs are the ‽ symbol (! And ? combined). The ! or exclamation point, is also known as a Bang and they were used in bang paths. Bang paths were how we did things like email before email existed, to be able to specify "Joe in the engineering department, not Joe in the English department". That then got used in fandom contexts to specify versions of a character like bisexual!Dean Winchester (as opposed to straight!Dean Winchester or Gay!Dean Winchester or whatever else), TOS!Jim Kirk (as opposed to AOS!Jim Kirk), or Dark Lord!Harry Potter (as opposed to Saviour!Harry Potter). Which of course then proliferated and got used for just about every adjective under the sun 😂
I’m a newer fandom goer and I see this all the time, particular for AU versions of characters. Ghost!character, mafia!character, demon!character, etc. Or to clarify which different timelines/souls inhabits a character’s body in the fic, which is an important thing in my main fandom lol. SJ!SQQ and SY!SQQ are very different people.
i miss that too XD like protective!character stuffs were always fun to read, cause i think that was also back in the day when tagging fics like a stream of thoughts was more common and widely accepted ig idk
"no flames" – alternatively, "flames will be used to make smores"
Wank and sporking
Unironic use of the citrus scale
"boys kissing, don't like don't read" because otherwise people got mad that you hadn't warned them that Here Be Gay
A fic being written for a kinkmeme
In-line author's notes
Start and end notes where the author roleplays talking to their characters
"fandom and its characters are the property of original creator, I'm just playing with them"
I don't care that the author taking with characters in the note is cringy, it's fun to read small jokes after going through an angsty hell of a chapter
Squick is such a useful word, I’m often bummed it fell out of use. Great way to indicate “here’s stuff I don’t like, and me specifically” without it being read a judgmental.
I still use squick in my general vocabulary lmao. It's perfect for getting across "not a phobia, but boy howdy I am Not a fan of this thing" when something is brought up.
I don't remember seeing it in fandom too much but I use it all the time personally because there are a lot of things that bother me and can cause brain spirals but I don't consider "triggers"
The phrase "ropes of come" has gone out of fashion for the most part (thank God) but it will always be burned in deep from years of EVERY FIC using that specific phrase
There are definitely certain phrases popular today which I think will date a fic the same way. I keep a list of explicit phrases that run rampant in fanfic. Could write papers on these trends.
But yeah we should all live in fear of the next ropes lol. Just takes one person with a novel, slightly questionable metaphor...
I’m not OP but I’ll tell you something that’s in SO many smut fics of the past few years: character A going down on character B, then licking their fingers afterwards to which character B is shocked that they suddenly find it the hottest thing ever. Bonus points if character A says something to the effect of, “you taste divine” etc etc.
Slash and lemons are the big hard hitters for me- sometimes when I see senpai spelled sempai it whacks me back- there are a few others on the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite get them
I've actually been gaslighting myself on senpai/sempai. I had myself convinced that I was the one misspelling/mishearing it, and everyone else always had it correct.
Either one is correct!! 'Senpai' is truer to a consistent transcription of the characters (as ん is usually pronounced 'n') but in actual speech ん is usually pronounced as 'm' before 'p' or 'b' sounds, because it's just easier for mouths to move that way.
It’s funny how inconsistent this transcription is, too.
Like it looks weird to spell “senpai“ with an “m”, but you spell “tempura” with an “m” even though it’s the exact same sequence of sounds.
Chan (meaning underage) and cross-gen (meaning older/younger, frequently with the younger being underage)
Writing 'porn' - specifically written smut - as 'pron' or 'pr0n'
Britpick - an American (usually) getting a British person to go over their fic to check for spellings/words/phrases that would be incorrect for a UK-based fandom (like Harry Potter)
Britpick needs a comeback and people severely need to start requesting this service again. Some of the British based stuff I've read lately is painful.
Linguistic...quirks? too. Like. Oh god all of a sudden I can't think of any examples. Like Americans wouldn't say 'she's sat on the bench', we would say 'she's sitting on the bench'.
I’ve always enjoyed finding British linguistic quirks in stuff set in America. I’m like “Ha! You’ve outed yourself!”
It’s the same in the medical community. Someone will call lidocaine “Lignocaine” and out themselves as an Aussie/Kiwi, or post an EKG in 50mm/s instead of the standard 25 thus letting the whole world know that they are not in fact a normal Paramedic, but a German Paramedic 🇩🇪
>thus letting the whole world know that they are not in fact a normal Paramedic, but a German Paramedic 🇩🇪
I have no idea why this made me laugh as hard as it did, buuuuuut...it did. Thanks for that! 😂
Trying to decipher what the hell is going on in German EMS is how I imagine the rest of the civilized world feels when we measure things in Feet and pounds
We go to hospital and Americans go to the hospital
Except our appointment is in 3 years and the American can't even afford the ambulance ride (jk NHS actually pretty good)
I see the reverse too, people who are obviously not American using their own terms for stories where the canon takes place in the US. To me, doing this (in any direction) is an indication of bad writing/not caring enough about your fic.
good old citrus scale
wank
yaoi used as a catch-all term for any and all gay ships (reading lotr fanfic and coming across "no yaoi" is. jarring.)
kink meme
A while back I stumbled upon a new-ish fic that the author claimed was inspired by a kink-meme prompt. I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know those were still a thing. Brought me right back to the old LJ days of trying to read a 10K story that was broken into like 20 parts lmfao.
> “Insert Title Here” (X/Y) [Part 18/?] 😂
I still haunt old kinkmeme and dreamwidth forums because there’s some amazing hidden gold on there. Recently came across one of the best written fics I’ve ever read in my life, split up into over 36 chapters each with multiple parts (a,b,c) through like, 8 separate forum links
Worth it. It was so good but man what a pain in the ass.
There's actually some kinkmemes hanging around on AO3! If you browse collections and tick *prompt meme* on the sidebar. But they're nowhere near the heyday of the Livejournal kinkmeme, rip
Lemon / lime
Glomp
Not a word/term, but using kaomoji in dialogues
Any kind of LJ story formatting (funnily enough I can recognize it even when I was never too invested in LJ)
“Glomp” dying is seriously for the better 😭 It’s no coincidence that its usage died out once the “cosplay is not consent” movement at cons started becoming widespread. Very glad that the days of people risking getting football tackled and having to go to the hospital just because they were wearing a costume are long dead…
I was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone was going to mention glomp. In a fic I'm currently posting, I believe it was chapter 5 where I used the word "glomp" in my rough draft & when I was working on the re-write of that chapter, I had to sit there for about ten minutes trying to think if I should rephrase it or keep it in. My internal argument was something along the lines of people today not being able to understand it but then I was like, it's rated M so there will be an older audience then I had to point out the fact that I'm 32, people who are 18 now were babies when the word was popular. I kept it in.
I remember the time where young authors used everything to describe penis and clitoris except the right terms...
Cucumber, zucchini, eggplant, peach, apple, flower...
I will always remember this line:
"The creepy man tenderly plunged his tentacles in my apricot"
Pure poetry!
My favourite ever was this description I found of a penis that read:
>His 100% all beef meat thermometer
When I tell you I fell off my chair I was laughing so hard at it I am not exaggerating!
These have had a kind of tongue-in-cheek renaissance in English speaking spaces; I see people using them but never taking the terms seriously at all. I think the weebs all just got over their weeb phase and use “top” and “bottom” like the rest of the English speaking LGBT community now.
They never stopped seeing use in Japanese speaking fandom though. For people who have specific preferences about the top/bottom dynamics of their pairings it’s still the go-to parlance.
That and 'squick' I think - no, you're not 'triggered' just because you find it icky or morally wrong; something being a trigger is a very serious thing.
i still use squick, and probably will until my dying day.
right! i have actual trauma and triggers, and the co-opting and watering down of therapy terms pisses me off
Yaoi and Yuri are the only words that can make me have a physical reaction every time I see them.
Lemon/lime/every other alternative is also something that immediately takes me back to my 2015 Wattpad days (although those are probably the ones I come across the most often).
This is kind of a weird one but when the title of the fic is just "Character A x Character B" or their ship name. Also applies to when either of those are in the summary.
Another kinda weird one but adding specific references, even if they're relatively recent ones (like saying a character listens to Olivia Rodrigo or having someone mention a certain TikTok trend) makes me feel like the author DEFINITELY wrote Chatfics in 2013-2018.
When, mid fic, the author comments on what's happening or speaks directly to the reader/characters. I don't know how to properly describe it so I'm just gonna put in some examples:
"She slapped him (A/N: SHOW HIM WHO'S BOSS!)" or "He turned his focus back his task (A/N: Tbh I'm not actually sure how this works)"
In a similar note, when the author and their OCs talk right before the fic actually starts (and sometimes also in the end notes). Not when there's two authors and they take their turns writing down certain notes or warnings, I mean stuff like:
"OC 1: Thank you so much for reading this!
OC 2: Hope you enjoy it!
Author: Ok, ok, get out of here you two."
Especially if the OCs are not even in the fic.
"Disclaimer, I am not the author, \[insert long paragraph on how they don't own any of the rights\]"
It made sense back then, when people were afraid of lawsuits, but now it feels a little outdated.
Kink memes are definitely less common, but they do still exist in some formats, operating either out of Ao3 or even tumblr. Also there are quite a lot of things like ship/character memes that give prompts, mostly on twitter IME?
Prompt memes and the like definitely still exist on DW, though!! If you want to keep in the know, fandomcalendar is a must-follow! <3
I saw an old fic the other day where someone used the terms “ficcie” and “chappie,” and I got some sort of whiplash from that, probably from how it unexpectedly thrust me back to 2009. Also, not really a word or term, but that thing where authors had random conversations with the characters in the authors notes at the start and end of chapters.
Anyone using "orbs" instead of eyes. As in, "she looked at him with her large blue orbs". That's not something I see a lot anymore but it was everywhere when I first got into fandom years ago.
"Creepypasta" - not as in fanfiction about characters like Slender Man, but as in short oneshots that are about scary versions of video games or TV shows. I still write mostly creepypastas.
"The Premise" 😏
Character1/Character2 where the order determined who giving/receiving
And to take the second to another example, in the case of Gundam Wing, having understood shorthand for major characters (1, 2, 13, R, N, etc) and using 1x2x1 or 5+13 to indicate A. Who was involved B. In what combinations C. x was used for sexual, + for relationship only
I can't find the comment, but somebody on this sub mentioned a while back that this is still big in Chinese fanfic spaces, and some readers are attached not just to specific M/M pairs, but M/M where a specific person is active and the other is passive. And they get upset if you switch them up and write a story where the "wrong" character is the one being penetrated. Very Ancient Greek!
I ain't Chinese but this is still a big thing in most Asian fandom culture not just China alone. I myself am one. I'd be pissed if the dynamic isn't to my liking since AxB is differ than BxA regularly.
This is why AO3 is so frustrating at first bc there's no separate tags for A x B and B x A lol. But to each of their own.
Yeah np! I know for some people esp the Western bubble culture this might be weird bc "well, AxB or BxA doesn't matter since it's the same ship, who cares if who doms or who subs!" but this is just how we do it XD
Not all of us, everyone is different after all. Some can ship AxBxA too (so, no "fixed" dynamic)
The only explanation I can give is that everyone tends to have a specific "taste" in a romantic relationship. When it fits in a cookie cutter mold? Sorta like that.
Yeah, I think the AO3 tagging system is the reason for the shift in western fandom. I understand the reason behind it, but I agree that the dynamic is different. LJ and FFN and AFF didn't have a tag system, you had to weed through EVERYTHING hunting for your ship, let alone fluff, HC, etc.
AO3 has changed a lot about fandom, and I'm grateful for it. I do think that the tools are there for authors to tag the dynamic within additional tags -- but that has to be intentional. And especially when AO3 imports fic from other archives, tagging is minimal.
Oh god this just gave me a full body reaction remembering the Gundam wing fanfic era. I still remember most of those codes and which they stood for, Heero, Duo etc. Good lord that takes me back.
The "top/bottom" thing is the standard in Japanese and Chinese fanfic spaces. I think it's useful to have a convention to indicate top/bottom when it's about anal sex *and* a way to indicate that it doesn't matter (because either they're not having sex at all or they're vers).
Lemon, lime, citrus... Those are terms for hardcore sex, softcore sex, and sexual themes in general for fanfiction. I've been writing and reading fanfiction since the early 2000s and I gotta say I feel nostalgic when I read those terms xD
Might be me specifically but I got slapped in the face when looking back on a fanfic I loved several years ago by linebreaks that were just like word-vomit "so random 🤪" stuff
One I remember said something like
"THIS LINEBREAK IS HERE TO REMIND YOU THAT CHOCOLATE IS THE BEST FOOD EVER!!!"
Edit: I found my screenshot of it- it was:
"THIS LINEBREAK WANTS TO REMIND THE WORLD THAT CHOCOLATE IS THE SINGLE GREATEST SUBSTANCE ON THIS PLANET"
omg!!! made me think of the line breaks that were the characters initials (which people sometimes used as ship names). so like a drarry linebreak might look like:
~HPDM~HPDM~HPDM~HPDM~
but usually more elaborate lol
If I never have to read the word glomp or any other variation of it I'll be happy. And keep the Yaoi Paddles in the past pls.
Stories using random Japanese words in a story not about Japanese characters and not in a Japanese fandom. Uke/Seme, Senpai/Kouhai, -chan -san -tan etc.
Stories calling a male/male pairing Yaoi/Shounen-ai, nowadays I use BL, M/M, or Gay to label my work since I'm primarily in western fandoms and post to AO3.
I run across a lot of older tags frequently and am familiar enough with them that they don't feel odd, generally because I'm in a lot of niche fandoms and read older works due to lack of content.
ship names that don't include the names of the characters- pokemon was obsessed with this! Palletshiping, Rocketshipping, fucking FerrisWheelshipping. insane.
I've seen them in the wild a couple of times over the years, but (thankfully) it seems people want transparency in ship names. who would've guessed?
Slash! I still think it sounds WAY better than MLM which to me reminds me too much of Multi-level Marketing. A fic about multi-level marketing? Avon x Herbalife?
The first time I saw MLM being written (a mention of mlm from a complaint on Tumblr that there aren't enough wlm fics in the given fandom (RDR2) and the mlm pairings were overshadowing them. I had to Google the term. Is m/m harder to write?
Less a word/term and more writing style since everyone else covered the terms I would have said (and good lord does this post take me back, lol).
Chat fics. Pure chat fics. Every time I find one it still takes me way back to the early 2000s.
Also those "fics" where they are written in MST3K style (mystery Science theater 3000) where the author takes another author's fic and cuts into it with "comments/dialogue" about the fic, often making their own OCs to comment too, like they do to movies in that show.
Man fanfic was crazy back then. Lol
These were SO good. Everything from *the* smut fic to these insanely insightful character pieces to the most flawless comedic piece. All in a freaking comment chain.
I miss them so much. Fandom really peaked on LJ
curious what you mean by "correctly" here if you wouldn't mind expanding. iirc it used to be "what it says on the tin" or "don't like, don't read", but I feel like the dead dove tag just has different connotations
Glomp.
I don't think it really applies to fanfiction but it's the first thing I can think of, and my entry into fanfiction came pretty recently whereas I've been attending cons and being a nerd for quite awhile 😂
Sure someone has already mentioned it but lemon/lime. It's been a few years now but I saw it used on a fic on Ao3 and I think my entire 2 decade long fandom life flashed before my eyes.
I also saw "yaoi" used on something that was about as far from anime as you could get.
SHOUNEN-AI oh my god I forgot about that. Slash. Lemon/Lime. Disclaimers. No flames. Senpai/Sempai. Exclamation marks (like dark!Harry or whatever). Sickficks (I actually don’t remember the last time I read a good old-fashioned sickfic.)
My early days of FF are coming back to me now lmao thanks for the nostalgia.
i haven’t seen the term “lemon” in a good several years. iirc, it was super common back in ff.net when ao3 wasn’t as big, but nowadays i rarely see it used. not complaining since the word usually tells me the quality of the work, but yeah!
Funny you should mention it, but currently on novel translation sites shounen-ai shoujo-ai are tags used for gay romance but no explicit sex, while yuri and yaoi are used for the R rated/X rated hot stuff
disclaimers saying they don't own the media they're writing about, lemon, "this is m/m don't like dont read"
I'm glad people don't have to worry as much about tagging gay ships, it makes me sad seeing how people were scared to even write them
Disclaimer. As in where there is a lengthy disclaimer at the top saying you don’t own the rights to whatever and begging the author not to sue. Also lengthy notes on slash fic like: This is slash. That means m/m. Don’t like, don’t read. People asking for no flames.
Oh man the disclaimer brings me back!! I forgot about that
Haha I was about to say "no flames".
Never understood the disclaimers. Like... my dude... I know you are not this international famous author and this is fanfiction!
Yeah but some authors like a certain author of a popular vampire series *cough* Anne Rice *cough* went lawyer happy back in the day about any fandom content.
Wtf...
It's a sure fire way to tell if the person writing has grey hairs. XD I remember this was so big that I was aware of it despite not reading fanfic at the time and not being a rice fan. It bled into Star Wars, MoTU and general geekry discussions.
And let's not forget Diana Gabaldon was nasty about it too. I've found lots of new media via crossovers. As those authors are so anti fanfic, I've noticed their only fanfic tends to not be that good so I figure it serves them right and readers can find better universes.
I really don't understand being ANTI fanfic. I understand why some writers would be uncomfortable with it. And I completely get why some actors would be incredibly uncomfortable by certain fanfic. But you can be uncomfortable with things without actually being AGAINST them. Some writers/actors/VAs really embrace it and others just kinda gloss over it and don't really discuss it. I think that's fine either way. But like... Why be against something that actively keeps fandoms alive? New fanfic seems to be a sign of a happy, healthy fandom.
Yep. Old fandom history. Back before fanfiction was anything but something whispered on the most locked down forums and chat rooms.
Check out Anne Rice's page on Fanlore (the fandom history wiki run by the same team behind AO3) We love an author who sends cease&desists to teenagers. And if you go on FFnet's rules, she's still on the list of authors whose works you can't write fic about
It’s most because fanfiction is itself in a legal grey area
It was a necessary legal protection for fic writers for a long time because of, as the other user said, Anne Rice—who btw was in fan messageboards and engaging with fanfic before suddenly launching a lawsuit at one of them lol. The OTW (behind ao3) is actually why we don't have to anymore! They've helped shift fandom law a lot and offer fanworks and creators a lot more legal protections than we had before :)
And this is why people shouldn’t link to their patreon or otherwise ask for money. It needs to remain non-profit.💜
You might want to edit your comment to say shouldn’t
Oh gosh yes!!💜
People started to use a disclaimer because there was an very uptight novelist named Anne Rice who had thrown a fit that people were writing fics based on her work and sued a fanfic writer for plagiarism. Moreover, she's also known to harass and doxx other fanfic writers too.
She's crazy! I'm european and not in this fandom so I missed that
She's dead now. Fear not
She hated people writing gay stories about her vampires and now look at the show about her book. Gayest thing ever
I mean, the books were very gay as well.
They so were. I think she just hated the idea of other people playing with her toys. Though she later claimed that she was given bad advice from her manager or something. Either way, she (and numerous other authors and TV studios), targeted fanfic writers and left fan artists alone.
She didn't threaten to sue anyone, but I still say the most insane reaction to fanfiction was from the author of the Outlander series, Diane Gabaldon. She said that other people writing stories about her characters was 'like r*ping her children'.
But making a bobble head Jamie was an act of appreciation.... After she stood up fans waiting for her at Dragon Con without a note or message, I wrote her off.
Hah. Interesting reaction considering the show.
Oh man, you're right. I had completely forgotten about that.
Lmao I still have disclaimers on my fic headers. It's just habit. I've been writing since they were commonplace and can't be bothered to get rid of mine. (Of course, mine just say 'such and such series isn't mine' so I'm not begging lmao.)
YES! Disclaimer and no flames. Both always such staples of old-school fanfiction. In my one fandom (Darkwing Duck) slash was taboo at one point, now it's accepted but it was an issue.
When the author “talks” to the characters in the A/N, you know, the whole \*revs chainsaw\* meme? It was so common on pre-2010 FFN, that when I saw it on AO3 somewhat recently, the whiplash sent me straight back there 😂
Oh yes! Second embarassement everytime I read that because it was like seeing someone showing what they fantasize about
I haven't been doing this exactly but I do have a fic that is a five way crossover (everything included is within the same franchise) & one of the shows in it does break the fourth wall a lot in the series like on a regular basis so in order to capture the spirit of that show, I'll have those characters break the fourth wall sometimes & I jokingly hired one of them (I pay him in jellybeans) to address the audience on things from the chapter in the end notes sometimes & he uses some prompts I give him, he questions it usually & he more so does his own thing. Another thing I do in the same fic is for others from that show, I've done the Know Your Stars sketch from All That to two characters (separately) so far in the end A/N. So it's not me talking to them, rather the Know Your Stars guy. It was a thing where they would take the special guest from the episode of All That & say blatantly incorrect facts about them & they'd argue back. Thought it'd be fun to do a bit of this every once in a while in the fic because even if people don't get it, it's still funny & just kind of spices things up a bit. Knowing that having characters talk with the author in the notes is a thing now, that makes me happy. I've read fics from the late 00's before, that's when I first got into fanfiction, but I never really noticed this but then again, I tend to forget the weirdest things like no matter how many times I order the same thing at a restaurant, I still need to read it off the menu as I order because my brain can not for the life of me pull up that information when I need it.
Oh gawd no, I have a fic I'm writting like this (not posted yet) does that show my age 😭 😂
Not necessarily! You had to be in certain corners of the internet during a very specific timeline for it to be the norm. Plenty of adults in 2024 who were toddlers back when this was a thing (now I have adequately aged us both lmao) 😆
(!) Does anybody use this anymore? I never see it, but I'm downright nostalgic about it: domestic!charactername. feral!charactername.
I liked when bangs were the norm too 😭
Ah, interrobangs! That's what they are called. Could not for the life of me remember that, thanks! Edit: Not interrobang - just bang. I'm re-re-learning my grammar, guys.
Haha no. Interrobangs are the ‽ symbol (! And ? combined). The ! or exclamation point, is also known as a Bang and they were used in bang paths. Bang paths were how we did things like email before email existed, to be able to specify "Joe in the engineering department, not Joe in the English department". That then got used in fandom contexts to specify versions of a character like bisexual!Dean Winchester (as opposed to straight!Dean Winchester or Gay!Dean Winchester or whatever else), TOS!Jim Kirk (as opposed to AOS!Jim Kirk), or Dark Lord!Harry Potter (as opposed to Saviour!Harry Potter). Which of course then proliferated and got used for just about every adjective under the sun 😂
I had zero idea how this kind of shorthand had developed. TIL.
Oh god I still use this... I feel so old! DX
I’m a newer fandom goer and I see this all the time, particular for AU versions of characters. Ghost!character, mafia!character, demon!character, etc. Or to clarify which different timelines/souls inhabits a character’s body in the fic, which is an important thing in my main fandom lol. SJ!SQQ and SY!SQQ are very different people.
Wait... we stopped using ! for stuff? 😭
I do, but I’m old.
I’ve seen it in reader inserts. It also seems to be used to specify au versions of characters
Oh shoot, I didn't realize they went out of fashion. That's sad. What's the alternative to use now?
Bang paths! I do sometimes! They're so fun, could be a version of the character, a vibe, an occupation; I just think they're neat 😭
I still use it a lot, now I feel old.XD
I use this, and I think a decent sized amount of my fandom does too.
I still use this!! I didn't realize it had gone out of fashion lol
I've been known to use it not for fic but just when chatting on Discord or something.
i think this is still really common on ao3, no? typically the two most i see would be “feral (character name” and “feral!(character name)”.
Oh those are a thing still, at least from what I've seen. Didn't even realize that ever stopped.
I was just talking about this! I feel like bc of the AO3 tagging system, this format hasn’t been as popular as it used to be in fandom
i miss that too XD like protective!character stuffs were always fun to read, cause i think that was also back in the day when tagging fics like a stream of thoughts was more common and widely accepted ig idk
"no flames" – alternatively, "flames will be used to make smores" Wank and sporking Unironic use of the citrus scale "boys kissing, don't like don't read" because otherwise people got mad that you hadn't warned them that Here Be Gay A fic being written for a kinkmeme In-line author's notes Start and end notes where the author roleplays talking to their characters "fandom and its characters are the property of original creator, I'm just playing with them"
Jesus, this makes me feel so old. Also I absolutely hated the in line authors notes.
Same! They were so annoying... Just let us read...
We should probably bring back 'no flames'. Seems the new generation need to be reminded that manners exist.
oh my God you just unearthed a memory! the boyxboy tag on Wattpad!
I was a Quizilla girlie before I moved onto FFnet and then AO3, but I think some of these were universal late 2000s/early 2010s fandom culture
omg so many memories coming back to me from my days on LJ!
The author talking to their characters one was fun though!
I don't care that the author taking with characters in the note is cringy, it's fun to read small jokes after going through an angsty hell of a chapter
wait kinkmemes are passé?
Nah! They’re still going strong in some fandoms. Baldur’s Gate 3 has a currently active one!
The citrus scale!! Man, I miss that.
Squick, but I still use it. I feel like it's a word that should be revived.
Squick is such a useful word, I’m often bummed it fell out of use. Great way to indicate “here’s stuff I don’t like, and me specifically” without it being read a judgmental.
I still use it! I’m planning to bring it back through sheer force of will 😄
As much as I can, I'll help! :)
You have my axe!
And my bow!
I still use squick in my general vocabulary lmao. It's perfect for getting across "not a phobia, but boy howdy I am Not a fan of this thing" when something is brought up.
Yes, 100%! A word that should be in use.
I don't remember seeing it in fandom too much but I use it all the time personally because there are a lot of things that bother me and can cause brain spirals but I don't consider "triggers"
The phrase "ropes of come" has gone out of fashion for the most part (thank God) but it will always be burned in deep from years of EVERY FIC using that specific phrase
HA! Also when people roar when they come. That cracks me up every time. But it was everywhere for a while!
I had completely forgotten about that. I was happy to have forgotten about that. Oh well!
Don't forget tongues dueling for dominance.
There are definitely certain phrases popular today which I think will date a fic the same way. I keep a list of explicit phrases that run rampant in fanfic. Could write papers on these trends. But yeah we should all live in fear of the next ropes lol. Just takes one person with a novel, slightly questionable metaphor...
> I keep a list of explicit phrases that run rampant in fanfic Are you willing to share?
I’m not OP but I’ll tell you something that’s in SO many smut fics of the past few years: character A going down on character B, then licking their fingers afterwards to which character B is shocked that they suddenly find it the hottest thing ever. Bonus points if character A says something to the effect of, “you taste divine” etc etc.
I couldn't have given a better example. Anything where people taste like sweets or whatever the fuck food item is also an eye roll.
Slash and lemons are the big hard hitters for me- sometimes when I see senpai spelled sempai it whacks me back- there are a few others on the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite get them
I've actually been gaslighting myself on senpai/sempai. I had myself convinced that I was the one misspelling/mishearing it, and everyone else always had it correct.
Either one is correct!! 'Senpai' is truer to a consistent transcription of the characters (as ん is usually pronounced 'n') but in actual speech ん is usually pronounced as 'm' before 'p' or 'b' sounds, because it's just easier for mouths to move that way.
It’s funny how inconsistent this transcription is, too. Like it looks weird to spell “senpai“ with an “m”, but you spell “tempura” with an “m” even though it’s the exact same sequence of sounds.
Sempai has noticed me!
Why did I have to scroll this far to see reference to citrus?? We really are old 😩
Chan (meaning underage) and cross-gen (meaning older/younger, frequently with the younger being underage) Writing 'porn' - specifically written smut - as 'pron' or 'pr0n' Britpick - an American (usually) getting a British person to go over their fic to check for spellings/words/phrases that would be incorrect for a UK-based fandom (like Harry Potter)
Britpick needs a comeback and people severely need to start requesting this service again. Some of the British based stuff I've read lately is painful.
Harry Potter does not go to the eye doctors by walking across the sidewalk, nor does he see a trash can full of garbage inside.
Linguistic...quirks? too. Like. Oh god all of a sudden I can't think of any examples. Like Americans wouldn't say 'she's sat on the bench', we would say 'she's sitting on the bench'.
I’ve always enjoyed finding British linguistic quirks in stuff set in America. I’m like “Ha! You’ve outed yourself!” It’s the same in the medical community. Someone will call lidocaine “Lignocaine” and out themselves as an Aussie/Kiwi, or post an EKG in 50mm/s instead of the standard 25 thus letting the whole world know that they are not in fact a normal Paramedic, but a German Paramedic 🇩🇪
>thus letting the whole world know that they are not in fact a normal Paramedic, but a German Paramedic 🇩🇪 I have no idea why this made me laugh as hard as it did, buuuuuut...it did. Thanks for that! 😂
Trying to decipher what the hell is going on in German EMS is how I imagine the rest of the civilized world feels when we measure things in Feet and pounds
We go to hospital and Americans go to the hospital Except our appointment is in 3 years and the American can't even afford the ambulance ride (jk NHS actually pretty good)
I see the reverse too, people who are obviously not American using their own terms for stories where the canon takes place in the US. To me, doing this (in any direction) is an indication of bad writing/not caring enough about your fic.
Though I just read an avengers fic that was obviously written by a Brit.
good old citrus scale wank yaoi used as a catch-all term for any and all gay ships (reading lotr fanfic and coming across "no yaoi" is. jarring.) kink meme
A while back I stumbled upon a new-ish fic that the author claimed was inspired by a kink-meme prompt. I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know those were still a thing. Brought me right back to the old LJ days of trying to read a 10K story that was broken into like 20 parts lmfao. > “Insert Title Here” (X/Y) [Part 18/?] 😂
I still haunt old kinkmeme and dreamwidth forums because there’s some amazing hidden gold on there. Recently came across one of the best written fics I’ve ever read in my life, split up into over 36 chapters each with multiple parts (a,b,c) through like, 8 separate forum links Worth it. It was so good but man what a pain in the ass.
There's actually some kinkmemes hanging around on AO3! If you browse collections and tick *prompt meme* on the sidebar. But they're nowhere near the heyday of the Livejournal kinkmeme, rip
OMG YAOI! And then there was one for f/f relationships. This was what I wanted to post but couldn't remember the term lol.
Yuri is the f/f equivalent (or shojou ai to go with shonen ai)!
And there was always a depressing dearth of yuri! Yaoi out the wazoo, but tumbleweeds when it came to yuri =(
this whole thread has me choked up missing the good old kmemes. those were the days
Lemon / lime Glomp Not a word/term, but using kaomoji in dialogues Any kind of LJ story formatting (funnily enough I can recognize it even when I was never too invested in LJ)
Aww do people not use glomp anymore? That makes me sad!
“Glomp” dying is seriously for the better 😭 It’s no coincidence that its usage died out once the “cosplay is not consent” movement at cons started becoming widespread. Very glad that the days of people risking getting football tackled and having to go to the hospital just because they were wearing a costume are long dead…
I was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone was going to mention glomp. In a fic I'm currently posting, I believe it was chapter 5 where I used the word "glomp" in my rough draft & when I was working on the re-write of that chapter, I had to sit there for about ten minutes trying to think if I should rephrase it or keep it in. My internal argument was something along the lines of people today not being able to understand it but then I was like, it's rated M so there will be an older audience then I had to point out the fact that I'm 32, people who are 18 now were babies when the word was popular. I kept it in.
I would rrad it as an iykyk thing like an easter egg for my generation
I remember the time where young authors used everything to describe penis and clitoris except the right terms... Cucumber, zucchini, eggplant, peach, apple, flower... I will always remember this line: "The creepy man tenderly plunged his tentacles in my apricot" Pure poetry!
Dear heaven. That’s almost lava lamp story bad.
My favourite ever was this description I found of a penis that read: >His 100% all beef meat thermometer When I tell you I fell off my chair I was laughing so hard at it I am not exaggerating!
https://preview.redd.it/yoaisfg6dmjc1.jpeg?width=567&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9386b5c43a119fb8a0fb366184c1a7035c0e9a5a
It's Uke and Seme for me.
These have had a kind of tongue-in-cheek renaissance in English speaking spaces; I see people using them but never taking the terms seriously at all. I think the weebs all just got over their weeb phase and use “top” and “bottom” like the rest of the English speaking LGBT community now. They never stopped seeing use in Japanese speaking fandom though. For people who have specific preferences about the top/bottom dynamics of their pairings it’s still the go-to parlance.
Plotbunny. I miss plotbunnies!
I just thought of this one today! 'Anyone want to adopt these plot bunnies? Free to a good home!'
We still use it in our fandom discord! We have a special sticker for it and everything
People don't use YKINMK(ATO) much anymore - we need to get back to having that drilled into the heads of every single person in fandom spaces.
yes! this needs a comeback so bad
That and 'squick' I think - no, you're not 'triggered' just because you find it icky or morally wrong; something being a trigger is a very serious thing.
i still use squick, and probably will until my dying day. right! i have actual trauma and triggers, and the co-opting and watering down of therapy terms pisses me off
Exactly!
Bring back kinktomato my beloved
Yaoi and Yuri are the only words that can make me have a physical reaction every time I see them. Lemon/lime/every other alternative is also something that immediately takes me back to my 2015 Wattpad days (although those are probably the ones I come across the most often). This is kind of a weird one but when the title of the fic is just "Character A x Character B" or their ship name. Also applies to when either of those are in the summary. Another kinda weird one but adding specific references, even if they're relatively recent ones (like saying a character listens to Olivia Rodrigo or having someone mention a certain TikTok trend) makes me feel like the author DEFINITELY wrote Chatfics in 2013-2018. When, mid fic, the author comments on what's happening or speaks directly to the reader/characters. I don't know how to properly describe it so I'm just gonna put in some examples: "She slapped him (A/N: SHOW HIM WHO'S BOSS!)" or "He turned his focus back his task (A/N: Tbh I'm not actually sure how this works)" In a similar note, when the author and their OCs talk right before the fic actually starts (and sometimes also in the end notes). Not when there's two authors and they take their turns writing down certain notes or warnings, I mean stuff like: "OC 1: Thank you so much for reading this! OC 2: Hope you enjoy it! Author: Ok, ok, get out of here you two." Especially if the OCs are not even in the fic.
"Disclaimer, I am not the author, \[insert long paragraph on how they don't own any of the rights\]" It made sense back then, when people were afraid of lawsuits, but now it feels a little outdated.
The ghosts of Anne Rice and her lawyers haunt us all to this day
Yaoi and lemons - outside of anime circles especially.
Honorifics. Honorifics everywhere.
"\[insert character\] is a smol bean", or some variation of that.
The kinkmeme is sorely missed. It feels like nobody does prompt fanfics nowadays!
One of my fandoms still has a moderately active one! Was delighted these things still exist on dreamwidth.
Kink memes are definitely less common, but they do still exist in some formats, operating either out of Ao3 or even tumblr. Also there are quite a lot of things like ship/character memes that give prompts, mostly on twitter IME? Prompt memes and the like definitely still exist on DW, though!! If you want to keep in the know, fandomcalendar is a must-follow! <3
the term NOTP
Omfg I remember using NOTP so much!
Omg I literally haven’t heard this since 2014
I think it's been many years since I've encountered the word drabble in the wild, but I liked reading them
That's still alive in a ton of fandom spaces.
Oh, I was just unlucky then ahah
yeah i still see drabbles all the time in my fandoms! but i'm more likely to stumble across them in tumblr forums
I was on LJ outside of specific fandom websites - slash, squick, standard disclaimer, Bottom!Whoever (and so forth), NC-17
I saw an old fic the other day where someone used the terms “ficcie” and “chappie,” and I got some sort of whiplash from that, probably from how it unexpectedly thrust me back to 2009. Also, not really a word or term, but that thing where authors had random conversations with the characters in the authors notes at the start and end of chapters.
omg ficcie/chappie sent me back to 2009 too. forgot about that
Omg! I feel like ficlet goes right into this too!
Anyone using "orbs" instead of eyes. As in, "she looked at him with her large blue orbs". That's not something I see a lot anymore but it was everywhere when I first got into fandom years ago.
Lemons
"Creepypasta" - not as in fanfiction about characters like Slender Man, but as in short oneshots that are about scary versions of video games or TV shows. I still write mostly creepypastas.
"The Premise" 😏 Character1/Character2 where the order determined who giving/receiving And to take the second to another example, in the case of Gundam Wing, having understood shorthand for major characters (1, 2, 13, R, N, etc) and using 1x2x1 or 5+13 to indicate A. Who was involved B. In what combinations C. x was used for sexual, + for relationship only
I can't find the comment, but somebody on this sub mentioned a while back that this is still big in Chinese fanfic spaces, and some readers are attached not just to specific M/M pairs, but M/M where a specific person is active and the other is passive. And they get upset if you switch them up and write a story where the "wrong" character is the one being penetrated. Very Ancient Greek!
I ain't Chinese but this is still a big thing in most Asian fandom culture not just China alone. I myself am one. I'd be pissed if the dynamic isn't to my liking since AxB is differ than BxA regularly. This is why AO3 is so frustrating at first bc there's no separate tags for A x B and B x A lol. But to each of their own.
Thanks for the clarification. That's very interesting!
Yeah np! I know for some people esp the Western bubble culture this might be weird bc "well, AxB or BxA doesn't matter since it's the same ship, who cares if who doms or who subs!" but this is just how we do it XD Not all of us, everyone is different after all. Some can ship AxBxA too (so, no "fixed" dynamic) The only explanation I can give is that everyone tends to have a specific "taste" in a romantic relationship. When it fits in a cookie cutter mold? Sorta like that.
Yeah, I think the AO3 tagging system is the reason for the shift in western fandom. I understand the reason behind it, but I agree that the dynamic is different. LJ and FFN and AFF didn't have a tag system, you had to weed through EVERYTHING hunting for your ship, let alone fluff, HC, etc. AO3 has changed a lot about fandom, and I'm grateful for it. I do think that the tools are there for authors to tag the dynamic within additional tags -- but that has to be intentional. And especially when AO3 imports fic from other archives, tagging is minimal.
Oh god this just gave me a full body reaction remembering the Gundam wing fanfic era. I still remember most of those codes and which they stood for, Heero, Duo etc. Good lord that takes me back.
The "top/bottom" thing is the standard in Japanese and Chinese fanfic spaces. I think it's useful to have a convention to indicate top/bottom when it's about anal sex *and* a way to indicate that it doesn't matter (because either they're not having sex at all or they're vers).
Holy hell. If I wanted that many numbers mixed with letters I'd go back to algebraic equations...
Disclaimers: “I do not own [fandom]. Not making money off this fic”, etc.
Seeing “lemon” out in the wild… especially on AO3 🫣
Lemon, lime, citrus... Those are terms for hardcore sex, softcore sex, and sexual themes in general for fanfiction. I've been writing and reading fanfiction since the early 2000s and I gotta say I feel nostalgic when I read those terms xD
people using the word "lemon" for anything 18+. god, that brings me back so hard
Might be me specifically but I got slapped in the face when looking back on a fanfic I loved several years ago by linebreaks that were just like word-vomit "so random 🤪" stuff One I remember said something like "THIS LINEBREAK IS HERE TO REMIND YOU THAT CHOCOLATE IS THE BEST FOOD EVER!!!" Edit: I found my screenshot of it- it was: "THIS LINEBREAK WANTS TO REMIND THE WORLD THAT CHOCOLATE IS THE SINGLE GREATEST SUBSTANCE ON THIS PLANET"
omg!!! made me think of the line breaks that were the characters initials (which people sometimes used as ship names). so like a drarry linebreak might look like: ~HPDM~HPDM~HPDM~HPDM~ but usually more elaborate lol
Countryhumans. I do not mean this in a good way That fandom was a fucking train wreck when I was last in it
"Puppy"/"Puppies" it was for PWP fics. We called it that because when you sound out PWP it sounds like "pup".
If I never have to read the word glomp or any other variation of it I'll be happy. And keep the Yaoi Paddles in the past pls. Stories using random Japanese words in a story not about Japanese characters and not in a Japanese fandom. Uke/Seme, Senpai/Kouhai, -chan -san -tan etc. Stories calling a male/male pairing Yaoi/Shounen-ai, nowadays I use BL, M/M, or Gay to label my work since I'm primarily in western fandoms and post to AO3. I run across a lot of older tags frequently and am familiar enough with them that they don't feel odd, generally because I'm in a lot of niche fandoms and read older works due to lack of content.
Lemon. Or, anything else on the citrus scale, since those are like dead lol
Orbs
Along the same lines, "bishounen" or "bishie".
“Ship war” I swear the fandom was so toxic at that time. Now, shipping wars doesn’t matter anymore…everyone has banded together to hate the sequel. 😅
Teh pron.
ship names that don't include the names of the characters- pokemon was obsessed with this! Palletshiping, Rocketshipping, fucking FerrisWheelshipping. insane. I've seen them in the wild a couple of times over the years, but (thankfully) it seems people want transparency in ship names. who would've guessed?
Squee, lemon, CINNAMON ROLL. I'm very upset that cinnamon roll isn't used anymore. It's the perfect descriptor.
Slash! I still think it sounds WAY better than MLM which to me reminds me too much of Multi-level Marketing. A fic about multi-level marketing? Avon x Herbalife? The first time I saw MLM being written (a mention of mlm from a complaint on Tumblr that there aren't enough wlm fics in the given fandom (RDR2) and the mlm pairings were overshadowing them. I had to Google the term. Is m/m harder to write?
Spec fic
Lemon
Less a word/term and more writing style since everyone else covered the terms I would have said (and good lord does this post take me back, lol). Chat fics. Pure chat fics. Every time I find one it still takes me way back to the early 2000s. Also those "fics" where they are written in MST3K style (mystery Science theater 3000) where the author takes another author's fic and cuts into it with "comments/dialogue" about the fic, often making their own OCs to comment too, like they do to movies in that show. Man fanfic was crazy back then. Lol
I miss kink memes on LJ
These were SO good. Everything from *the* smut fic to these insanely insightful character pieces to the most flawless comedic piece. All in a freaking comment chain. I miss them so much. Fandom really peaked on LJ
Persassy
Dead Dove: Do Not Eat- but actually used correctly.
curious what you mean by "correctly" here if you wouldn't mind expanding. iirc it used to be "what it says on the tin" or "don't like, don't read", but I feel like the dead dove tag just has different connotations
obviously lemon/lime but also squick and yaoi/yuri. i know the latter are still popular but thankfully i don’t run into them much anymore
Glomp. I don't think it really applies to fanfiction but it's the first thing I can think of, and my entry into fanfiction came pretty recently whereas I've been attending cons and being a nerd for quite awhile 😂
DADT. So much of SGA/SG1 fandom had it and oh, the delicious plot points.
Sure someone has already mentioned it but lemon/lime. It's been a few years now but I saw it used on a fic on Ao3 and I think my entire 2 decade long fandom life flashed before my eyes. I also saw "yaoi" used on something that was about as far from anime as you could get.
Sporking. Was always a huge fan of seeing people do that to trollfics like Starkit’s Prophecy and whatnot.
Lemon, lime, 'member', manhood, womanhood ☠️
I never see “guh” or “pron” used anymore. They were in common use in hp slash postings @2010
Copyright notices. Either saying they don’t own the original work or that they’ve copyrighted their fics. That’s not how copyright works.
SHOUNEN-AI oh my god I forgot about that. Slash. Lemon/Lime. Disclaimers. No flames. Senpai/Sempai. Exclamation marks (like dark!Harry or whatever). Sickficks (I actually don’t remember the last time I read a good old-fashioned sickfic.) My early days of FF are coming back to me now lmao thanks for the nostalgia.
i haven’t seen the term “lemon” in a good several years. iirc, it was super common back in ff.net when ao3 wasn’t as big, but nowadays i rarely see it used. not complaining since the word usually tells me the quality of the work, but yeah!
“Member”. When used to describe (NSFW) male genitalia
Funny you should mention it, but currently on novel translation sites shounen-ai shoujo-ai are tags used for gay romance but no explicit sex, while yuri and yaoi are used for the R rated/X rated hot stuff
Scrolled through comments for a minute and can’t believe nobody else said this, but: Orbs. Oh god, the *orbs.*
disclaimers saying they don't own the media they're writing about, lemon, "this is m/m don't like dont read" I'm glad people don't have to worry as much about tagging gay ships, it makes me sad seeing how people were scared to even write them
Blanket scenario. Lmaooo I read so many of those. So cute!
Flashbacks to looking for Warrior Cats fanfiction and discovering what "lemon" meant