Shipping Glossary

B

 * Bi - Short form of Bisexuality.
 * Bisexuality - The sexual attraction to both genders, opposite and the same.

F

 * Fandom - The community that surrounds a tv show/movie/book etc. Fanfiction writers, artists, poets, and cosplayers are all members of that fandom. Fandoms often consist of message boards, livejournal communities, roleplaying, people and much more.
 * Femslash - Femslash is the female version of slash, where instead of two guys, it's two girls. Basically, lesbians. Like slash, pairings are usually written in the top/bottom format.
 * Fluff - A fanfic which the story has no plot. Only humourous or romantic nonsense.
 * Frankenword - See Portmanteau.

G

 * Gay - See Homosexuality.
 * Gender - Gender is the range of physical, mental, and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity.

H

 * Het - Fanfiction slang that means "heterosexual." Refers to romance fanfics about heterosexuals.
 * Heterosexual - Sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex.
 * Homo - A word that is short for homosexual.
 * Homosexuality - When two people of the same gender love eachother.

L

 * Lesbian - A homosexual woman.
 * LGBT - Abbreviation term of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. Also a community.

P

 * Pansexual - A person who is sexually interested in other people regardless of gender including males, females, transexuals, tansvestites, gender benders, hermaphrodites, intersexuals, androgenous people, and those with sex-chromosome anomaly such as klinefelter syndrome or turner syndrome.
 * Portmanteau - The combination of two or more words to create a new word.

S

 * Sex - Sexual activity, including specifically sexual intercourse.
 * Shippers - Is a slang word derived from 'relationships' that generally means people who support certain relationships in fanfiction. It is a common joke to say that you "sail" on a certain ship.
 * Shipper Goggles - When you watch a TV show or read a book or watch a movie in which you ship two characters, and see their "moments" everywhere, whether they're together in canon or not.
 * Shipperpression - A depression caused by the end of one's favored ship i.e. a possible romantic pairing between two characters, be it in a book, a movie, or a television series.
 * Shipping - Derived from the word relationship, is the belief that two characters, fictional or non-fictional, would be interesting or believable (or are, or will be, or should be) in a romantic relationship. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction.
 * Slash - Genre of fanfiction involving pairing two male or female characters together; characters are commonly shown with a slash in between.
 * Straight - See Heterosexual.

T

 * Transsexual - A person born with the physical characteristics of one sex who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex.

Y

 * Yaoi - Yaoi is a slang meaning 'boys love' or homosexuality that is used in the japanese language.
 * Yuri - Explicit lesbian relationships in anime or manga.