Het: Relationship between male and female.
Humor: If you’ve got this far and not worked this one out, you’re in trouble.
Humour: See above, but with 50% added sarcasm.
Hurt/Comfort: Best to demonstrate with a mini-fic here. Writer takes character A, strips him, strings him up from a tree, covers him in honey and sets a swarm of wasps on him. Character B wanders past, and says, “What’s happened to you then?”
A replies, “I’ve been stripped, strung up from a tree, covered in honey and had a swarm of wasps set one me. It’s really quite painful.”
B, “Oh. Poor you. Fancy a shag?”
L
Lurker: The fanfic world’s equivalent of a dirty mac wearer. Breathes heavily, but is rarely observed to speak.
M
Mary-Sue: Strange, mystical creaures often found lurking in the depth of bad fics. Their plotbunnies are strangely shimmering and don’t bite, but nibble affectionately.
Hair: colour varies, always long and shiny. Almost always stands out.
Eyes: Have been know to range anything from ‘the deepest blue’, to ‘empty black’, or in extreme cases, ‘silver-violet’.
Looks: Phenomenal.
Relationship to other characters: Knows them all. E.g. is Sauron’s daughter, brought up by Gandalf, loves Legolas, Galadriel’s granddaughter, is loved by Haldir and looked up to by Pippin. Usually good friends with Aragorn/Legolas/Elrond.
See also ‘Spawn of Satan’.
M-Preg: Since there exists no fanfic genre of ‘M-PMT’ or ‘M-bloody awful period pain’, this is one outlet to make your characters get all the suffering of being female with none of the benefits. Bwahahaahahaa!
MST: ‘Mary Sue Torture’, an ‘unacceptable’ form of protesting against the cruel torture that canon characters are put under by these mystical creatures. However, true MSTers have become rarer as time goes on, and these remarkable creatures are often seen in hiding from flamers and writers.
P
Plotbunny: How a story starts: you’re innocently watching TV/film, and then you feel a strange sensation of... pain. You look down. A creature resembling the bunny from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ has attached itself to your leg with three-inch fangs, and you suddenly have an odd idea along the lines of ‘what if Legolas & Aragorn had been ‘Full Monty’ style strippers before they joined the Fellowship?’ And it will stay there till you buckle down and write the story.
Habitat: depends on the bunny; a Sam/Rosie fluff bunny gambols about in the sunshine, eating lettuce, while a Frodo or Gollum angst bunny lurks behind the radiator, making horrible heavy breathing noises.
How to rid yourself of them: write the story. Suffer a head injury involving loss of memory. Get bitten by a better bunny. Rentokil (though for bunny extermination their rates are extortionate).
Pre-slash: What happens before slash. Duh.
PWP: ‘Plot? What Plot?’ The ‘Eurotrash’ of fanfiction.
R
Round Robin: “I have no idea how to finish this story, so I’ll just pass it on to someone else.”
Ratings: Based on the US system, because that’s what fanfiction does, since they have (as in Americans) taken over the world!
G: Squeal! He held her hand!
PG: Ah yes, a nice good snog makes us all feel better.
PG-13: Oh, helllooo boys...
R: Can you do that with a melon?
NC-17: Now, really, I’m sure you could only get four people into that bed, at most.
Stolen from Bagenders. Made clean by Vel.