Age Statement: The ‘click here if you are over 18’ part of websites. It’s amazing, but there appears to be no physical barrier preventing the under 18s from using a mouse. Weird.
Angst: O! Woe is me! Woe and thrice woe! (Insert object of affections here) is straight/dead/married/ignoring me/part of a left wing conspiracy! Thus is most of the plot of Angst. It can work with established relationships, with (insert object of affections here) has sodded off with someone else!
Archive: Cemetery for deceased plotbunnies. Storage of stories, often of varying quality.
AU: Cunning way of utterly ignoring every salient plot fact about a given movie/TV program except for the most important one, i.e. that it stars Orlando Bloom.
B
Beta Reader: Someone who reads your fic, tells you it sucks and tells you how he/she would have written it instead. Also good at pointing out exactly how illiterate you actually are, and how the word ‘grammar’ to you is your mother’s mother. Surprisingly highly recommended.
Bondage: Large amounts of films about 007.
C
Canon: What actually happens in book/TV shows/ movies. Almost always ignored by ff writers.
Challenge: Method for annoying the heck out of people on a fic list.
Crossover: Method of getting Horatio and Obi-Wan into bed together, with very little consideration for plot, but lots of consideration for smut. Also good for bringing Sayians into Middle-Earth so they can fry the One Ring, or making the startling discovery that Albus Dumbledore and Gandalf are, infact, long-lost identical twin sisters…
D
Deathfic: What Vel writes when she has an essay due. Any resemblance of dying person to tutor is purely coincidental.
Disclaimers: Attempt to pretend copyright theft is not happening. “JRR Tolkien owns ‘Lord of the Rings’. No. I’d never. I’d have given money that Rolf Harris wrote it.
F
Fanfiction: Occasionally culturally acceptable form of copyright theft.
Fangirl: See ‘Mary Sue’.
Feedback Slug: A slug. Requires constant feeding, unsurprisingly with feedback. Otherwise it’ll end up on ‘Animal Hospital’ and you don’t want Rolf Harris getting involved, do you?
Flaming: Personal insults dressed up as a fic review. Goes something along the lines of ‘That was crap, my budgerigar could write better than that and he’s been dead for ten years, your mother was a hamster and your father smells of Elderberries.’ In dealing with Flames, remember: No one ever puts someone else down from a position of strength. So laugh at MiSsNiCeReViEwEr, then use her fire to roast a marshmallow of two.
Fluff: Like that strange bluey-purple stuff that clogs up the clothes drier and stops it working. Though bagged a lot, it is usually one of the most popular read stories, as it supplies us with our daily dose of warm-fuzzies.
G
Gen: See ‘pre-slash’.