PWP: “Porn without plot”; roughly synonymous with lemon.
Smut: General term for sensual and/or sexy scenes, fics, etc. A “smut fic” can mean anything from a lime to a lemon.
Smexy: Roughly a combination of sexy and yummy. Highly desirable.
OC: “Original character”; a character of the author’s own creation inserted into a canon. Not synonymous with self insert.
Self insert: an OC intended to represent a (sometimes idealized) version of the author. Not synonymous with Mary Sue/Gary Stu/Marty Stu, but often conflated.
OOC: “Out of character”; in fic this means poor characterization of a canon character. In RP this means a comment made by the mun.
IC: “In character”; the antonym of OOC, used in RP.
Mun: The person behind a character (the muse) in an RP.
Muse: The character someone (the mun) plays in an RP.
A/N: “Author’s note”; most often used at the beginning or end of a shorter fic or a chapter of a longer fic; somewhat of a fic equivalent of OOC in RP; sometimes inserted in the middle of the writing as a sort of metatextual commentary.
Meta: Short for metatextual, which means “beyond the text.” Often refers to fourth wall-breaking behavior (characters acknowledging they’re in a piece of fiction), but can include such things as outside strategizing (in a game) or commentary on the work.
OTP: “One true pairing”; this is the ship you would die for.
NoTP: Opposite of OTP, this is worst possible ship you can think of for a material or a character.
OT3: “One true threesome”; same as an OTP, but with one more character (variations such as OT4, OT5, and so on are fairly uncommon but used).
Slash: Male/male fic. Mostly used for Western works, derived from K/S (Kirk-slash-Spock), the grandaddy of all slash fiction. Has nothing to do with the musician.
Yaoi: Male/male fic, often used specifically with manga, anime, and Japanese video games. Sometimes interchangable with shounen-ai, but sometimes used to describe explicit male/male fic.
Shounen-ai: “Boys’ love”; similar to yaoi but often used to refer specifically to less explicit works.
Femslash: General term for female/female fics (equivalent to slash, though the use of slash for female/female pairings is not unheard of).
Yuri: The female/female equivalent of yaoi.
Shoujo-ai: “Girls’ love”: the female/female equivalent of shounen-ai.
F/F, M/M, M/F, etc: Shorthand for the genders in a specific relationship in a romantic and/or sexy work. Sometimes varied with capitalization or order to imply a top/bottom or dom/sub dynamic.
Kinkfic: A fic specifically focused on catering to a kink.
Noncon: “Nonconsensual”; here there be rape.
Dubcon: “Dubiously consensual”; here there be scenes that border on rape.
AU: “Alternate universe”; can mean anything from having the characters as mundane college students to straight up putting Naruto characters in the Harry Potter setting. This can also mean an alternate ending or continuity from canon.
Fixfic: Overlaps with AU. A fan work created to fix what the creator perceives as something wrong in the source.
Fluff: Sweet, romantic, cute fic. Can also mean a fic that’s cute but has no bearing on the plot.
WAFF: “Warm and fuzzy feelings”; the feeling you get from well-written fluff.
Hurt/comfort: Kind of like fluff, but with one character comforting the other.
RPF: “Real person fanfic”; what it says on the tin. Things like YouTuber fic, band fic, actor fic, etc. fall under this umbrella. Crossover RPF can mean people from different groups, such as members of different bands or actors from different shows.
RPS: “Real person slash”; the slash-specific equivalent to RPS.
Mpreg: “Male pregnancy”; (typically cis) men getting pregnant.
A/B/O: “Alpha/beta/omega”; an AU where there are biological and well-defined social classes somewhat based on outdated ideas of how wolf packs are structured. Very complex.
Vignette: Can be a synonym for either drabble or ficlet, on its own can mean either a single short self-contained scene or a fic around 500 words long.
Detail!Character: Used to mean a specific variation of a character, sometimes in an AU context, such as trickster!Dave or fem!John.
Genderbend: aka “cisswap” or “rule 63.” A type of AU where the characters’ genders are “switched” in accordance to the gender binary.
Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it. (Sometimes followed by rules 35 “if there is no porn of it, it shall be made” and 36 “it’s someone’s fetish”; occasionally also with rule 63 “for a given male character, a female version exists; for a given female character, a male version exists.”)
Watsonian vs. Doylist: The perspective of within the fictional universe vs. outside the fictional universe (from the perspective of the fictional author John Watson or the real author Arthur Conan-Doyle).
Canon: The main meat of the source, such as the original book, movie, show, etc. This means the default, vanilla version of things happening exactly as in the source. Can also refer to just the source, or the continuity of a particular AU.
Word of God: What the creator/s have said about the canon. Considered either a form of lesser canon or as canon outright. Can get very complex if multiple creators say conflicting things. (Example: Dumbledore being gay; never mentioned in the books, but confirmed by the author.) Some fandoms have specific names for WoG (such as the tiers of canon in the NGE fandom).
‘Verse, (thing)verse: The overarching world (universe) surrounding a piece or pieces of fiction. For example, the Harry Potter books share a ‘verse with Fantastic Beasts. Sometimes portmanteau’d with the name of the source (Buffyverse for what started with BtVS and including Angel, Potterverse, etc).
Original Flavor: A fanwork that sounds/looks like it came from the original canon; an author or artist whose style closely mimics the original.
