Chances are if you are here on FANdemoniumNetwork.com reading this then you are a member of a fandom and you know the lingo that comes with it, but discussion among the bloggers here at FANdemoniumNetwork showed that there are terms some of us had never heard before. So if that sounds like you, or you just want a refresher course then get your notepad ready cos we’re going to give you some of the basics.
fandom – n – the group of people who are passionate about a specific TV show/movie/book/comic/etc (here on out I will just use TV show to encompass all of these).
ships – n (pl) – the relationships/pairings of a particular show.
shipping – v – the act of wanting a specific pairing together.
shipper – n – a person who wants a particular relationship to happen (become canon).
canon – n – what’s scripted in the TV show; whatever the creators say is fact in the universe where the ship exists.
fanon – n – ideas which are generally accepted by the fandom, especially in fanfic circles, that have never been explicitly stated in the show.
AU – n – abbreviation of “alternate universe,” basically anything fan-imagined that would go against the established canon rules/events of the TV show.
fanfic, fic – n – fan-written stories involving characters from a particular show.
cross-over – n – what happens when a character/characters from one show appear on another. The two CW shows Flash and Arrow are getting pretty good at cross-overs. Also used in fanfic in quite inventive ways, such as SuperWhoLock (cross-overs featuring Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock).
ship names – n (pl) – portmanteau combinations of popular ships, i.e. Delena or Stelena (Damon + Elena or Stefan + Elena from The Vampire Diaries)
ship wars – n – what happens when one character is shipped with many others. Delena/Stelena from The Vampire Diaries is a great example of this.
OTP – n – short for “one true pairing,” or your favorite ship; the people you want to be together most of all. A very popular example of this would be Klaroline (Klaus + Caroline in The Vampire Diaries).
BROTP – n – the platonic pairings you love most on a show, i.e. Scott and Stiles on Teen Wolf or Joe and Barry on The Flash.
slash – adj. – homosexual pairings, most often used to describe specific ships or fics, i.e. “slash ship” or “slash fic”
endgame – n – the couple that will wind up together at the end of a story, often the basis for ship-wars.
head-canon – n – Backstory for a character in fanfiction established by the author, if widely enough used it can become fanon (see above)
#MCM/#WCW – abb. – ManCrushMonday and WomanCrushWednesday – used on social media to denote days when you can celebrate your crushes. Much like ThrowbackThursday or FlashbackFriday only with more pretty.
Is there something missing from this list? Have you ever had someone say something to you in a fandom conversation that made you go ‘whut’? Let us know in the comments and we’ll do our best to find an answer and update the list.
