Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Terms, Abbreviations and Assholery: M - Z

These final terms are from The Fanfiction Glossary and Fanfiction Terminolgy. This list, as you will see, is incomplete. I am sure I will be able to find many more terms to throw at you later. I haven't even gone into anime yet. EEeeeeeeeeyugh! *shudders*


Marie-Suzette

A coy fandom-specific nickname for Mary Sue.

I prefer to to use the term Crap Suzette. Much more accurate.

megacrossover

A crossover involving characters from several different works -- at least four or five.

Wouldn't it be super-sqee-y-cool if Hannah Montana as My Little Pony, Pirates of the Caribbean, Little House on the Prairie and Warrior Cats?????!!!!1111!!11111!!?????

my hed iz pastede on yay!

A phrase coined during CrystalWank to describe a photo in which Dominic Monaghan's face had obviously been Photoshopped onto another photo. The phrase spread and mutated.

My understanding is some lame fan girl once tried to claim that she met Dominic Monaghan in a bar and he came to home and just sprawled on her bed. She tried to prove it with a poor picture that fooled no one. The picture is too large for me to plunk down here so I provided a link: Encyclpedia Dramatica. This term is relevant in rpgs, to me, where I have seen authors post pictures of themselves getting it on with Tom Felton and other poor people caught up in this freaky mess.

netiquette

Rules of acceptable online behavior. Whether assumed, word-of-mouth, or painstakingly recorded, these rules vary from situation to situation -- and from fandom to fandom. If you're not a "local" (or even if you are!), it's best that you mind your manners.

Manners! Haw! Mary Sues don't need to follow no stinking netiquette! Rules are for fools! If a Mary Sue doesn't like something, she can stick her magical tongue out at it and make it all go away. She just rocks that much!!!!

PWP

Plot? What Plot? -- refers to stories with little to no plot. May be vignettes, character studies or, most frequently, pure sex.

Let's just go on and on talking about Mary Sue's bouncy blonde curls, how awful her past was or just fuck every every available male. No plot needs to muck up Mary Sue's narrative. If she's preserved in a directionless morass then you may never notice that she doesn't have an interest in anything other than herself.

Sex Pollen

refers to stories in which some sort of external influence (often the pollen of a plant, hence the name, but may be any kind of drug or mind-control) causes the characters to spontaneously engage in sexual relations, often oblivious to gender or sexuality or even propiety. Is a classic sci-fi genre.

I caught this once with a character of mine. Those dumb aliens made my character have sex with a Mary Sue again and again and again. I can only hope that one who has had a sex pollen attack is immune from it forever.

Squick

refers to possibly offensive elements (ie: bestiality, BDSM, rape, domestic discipline, etc...) of a story which may cause feelings of unease or revulsion in a reader. Derived from the word "squeamish" and the slang term "icky." Authors should provide warnings of any and all possible squicks in their stories. (Remember: Different people are squicked by different things! Besides, one person's squick may be another's kink... so it's not always a bad thing to advertise.)

Still confused about what this means? Look at any anime rpg. Every time you flinch or feel the bile rising in your throat, THAT is a squick!

Whump

refers to stories in which physical or emotional pain is heaped on a favourite character, often repeatedly and brutally. Very similar to Hurt/Comfort, but differentiated mainly by motive: H/C fics exist to provide one character the chance to offer comfort to the injured one, whereas whump fics are usually written more for the sheer pleasure of seeing the whumpee battered and bruised. See also: 'H/C'

Whumping can go either way. Someone may whump on a character they like to get others to feel sorry for it, like an Emo Sue. She's the one who not only lost her parents to vampires, she was also raped by several members of the vampire clan, dropped down a well, rescued by werewolves, bitten by one, shot with a silver bullet that missed the heart so she lived but must crawl to the nearest roadside diner for help, run over by a motorcycle on the way there, raped by the motorcyclist, gets AIDS, becomes a cutter, finds out she's some freaky vampire/werewolf hybrid with magical powers and a sudden knowledge of guns, and know she is too hardened to ever look for real love with any man.

Or, whumping can happen to a character an author doesn't like. The character is either someone from the show/movie/book they don't like or a real person fictionalized into a punching bag. As therapeutic as this may be, it really hinders an rpg when this character demands constant beatings, rapings and mutilations. This type of behavior gives me major feelings of squick.

Then again, I often feel like I'm getting whumped everytime I enter an rpg. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

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