Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come

Personal Fanfiction Website
Website:	Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Comes
Author:	Nostalgia, Nos aka Nostalgia-lj
Dates:
Fandom:	Buffyverse, Deep Space Nine, Doctor Who, Enterprise, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Star Wars, Voyager, The West Wing,
URL:	Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come
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Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Comes was Nostalgia lj's personal fanfiction site at gatefiction.com. It hosted Nos' fanfic for Buffyverse, Deep Space Nine, Doctor Who, Enterprise, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Star Wars, Voyager, The West Wing and other assorted fandoms. The site contained a links list, a warnings and disclaimers page, and a list of awards won by Nos.

This site was also home to a fandom glossary written by Nos.

Fanfic glossary

as we stroll through this crazy world called fandom, we will often encounter strange made-up words that aren't in the dictionary. some of these are mere typos, but some of these are the jargon you will need to know to successfully navigate the bizarre world of porn fanfic.

(4/7): as seen on mailing list subject headings. the number after the slash is the total number of parts the story will be posted in, the first number is the designation of a specific segment. so a fic labelled (3/15) would be part three of a fifteen-parter. comprende?

angst: the german word for 'fear'. angst-fic heaps on the pain, messing with the heads of the characters involved and presenting the reader with a seasoned dish of misery. there very often isn't a happy ending. Miriam points out that while it has a very specific meaning within existentialist philosophy, its fandom usage cheerfully disregards this and uses it to mean "oh, gloom" generally.

a.u.: 'alternate universe'. what happens when you deliberately break with canon, or get 'jossed'. au is when sg-1 are all firemen in someone's mad dream. no,wait, that's canon. umm.

beta: proof-reader/editor/first victim. the person who reads a story before it is posted on the net to stop it being posted as an incoherent mess of...well, messness. a beta is thus a good thing to have when you are making fic happen. make sure your beta can spell.

canon: what happened in the movie/on the show, etc. the rules of the fictional universe in which the fanfic is set.

crossover: fic which mixes two or more fandoms. some crossovers barely count (buffy/angel, f'r instance). crossovers have massive potential to be unrelentingly cheesey and sadly a large percentage of them don't work.

drabble: 100 word fic. no more, no less. unless it's a half-drabble (50 words), a double-drabble (200) or some other such concoction. or an almost-drabble.

erotica: porn written by a woman.

fanon: as distinct from 'canon'. stuff that didn't actually happen in canon but that fanfic authors seem to believe anyway (angel sired spike, the padawan braid-cutting ceremony). sometimes the boundary between canon and fanon is a miles-wide demilitarized zone, sometimes it's a disputed border that could flare up into conflict at any moment. sometimes my analogies make no sense.

feedback: comments/praise/hatred sent to an author in response to a fic. nostalgia finds that feedback makes her a better person. *hint, hint*

femslash: slash with girls in it. see also 'slash'.

humor: the american spelling of 'humour'. fun fics, intended to raise a smile.

jossed: you write a fic that follows canon. then they change canon. the name comes from joss wheedon of buffy noteriety. your fic says angel sired spike? joss makes an episode where druscilla sires the blond one. you've been jossed!

mary-sue: self-insertion of the author into a fic. less common in blatant form than you can be led to think, but very very common among authors who really ought to know better. usually done sub-conciously, 'mary-sue' is funny, cool and smart. she gets to have sex with the character the author most fancies. her name is oddly similar to that of the writer (real name or pen name). she gets all the best lines. she is wish-fulfillment with a tragic/glamourous backstory.

'moulin rouge': if these words appear together anywhere in a story header, stop reading immediately. you will one day thank me for this advice.

o.t.p.: 'one true pairing'. the belief that a specific pairing is the only one that anyone should be writing, as it is the only one that is truly a baz luhrmanesque epic with singing and dancing. nostalgia points out that mr luhrman often makes us vomit and that 'epic' is sometimes another word for 'bollywood rip-off'.

porn: erotica written by a man.

p.w.p.: porn without plot. does exactly what it says on the tin. alternative meaning - 'plot? what plot?' - encompasses non-porn vignettes. (thanks for pointing this out - you know who you are *wink*) i use the former meaning more, meself.

ratings: fanfic ratings are by convention based on the american cinema classification system. 'g' is for fic that middle-class people would let their children read. 'pg' starts to get slightly less suitable for the young uns, with 'pg-13' a still stronger version. 'r' is where you get the sex and drugs and violence and 'colourful language'. if you've got an 'nc-17', it's probably pornesque in places. recently, the evil corporate MPAA have felt that we shouldn't be using those because they are in no way public domain other than in the sense that they clearly are. hence a proliferation of confusing systems that make no sense to anyone.

rec: recommendation. is where someone has a page where they list fics that they read and felt that you should also read.

rps: stories about famous people having sex. or having a cup of tea, but that's rpf.

ship: (derivatives - 'shippy, 'shipper, shippage). short for 'relationship'. refers to the belief that the characters in question should be "together-4-eva!!!!!". some 'ships are angst-filled and potentially wonderous, but most are just embarrassing. nostalgia is herself an in denial 'shipper in many ways.

slash: same-sex pairings. note that this only applies if the characters involved aren't gay in canon, otherwise it's just gay fiction. the name comes from the 'slash' symbol (/) used to separate the names of the characters involved in the story summary. slash fics can be anything from subtle homoeroticism and full-on, hot-action boy-on-boy or girl-on girl porn.

songfic: fic based on/incorporating the lyrics to a song. generally very very bad. problems start with the almost-certainty that the reader either won't know the song or won't have the same emotional response. for instance, how many of you have heard the song 'nostalgia'? exactly. songfics are often written to sappy lovesongs. i've never seen a songfic i've liked. the absolute most i've seen work is a couple of lyrics thrown in as dialogue/narrative or as the title of the fic.

u.s.t.: 'unresolved sexual tension'. coined in x-files fandom and currently gaining popularity with west wing fic-kids. the fic in question has sexual tension, but it isn't resolved with sex. hence 'unresolved'.

w.i.p.:

'work in progress' as in those (47/?) epics that flood your email account on certain lists. grr.