Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol
a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:
NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.
Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.
YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.
DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.
SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.
As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.
(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)
bring the healthy fun back to fandom!
Co-signing all of this. Bring back the ancient texts
Also I saw someone saying they’d never use squick because it’s such a silly, made-up sounding word and I thought that this has been part of the problem. Fandom itself isn’t silly; it can be deeply meaningful (it has been to me!) however things can be deeply meaningful and silly. We (society) have got to stop acting like being childish is the worst thing you can do. Embrace silly whimsy.
Saying “this squicks me” is useful maybe because it’s a bit silly. It imparts no judgement. It’s like “this is about me” And importantly it doesn’t water down other terms which have important clinical implications that I don’t think I need to name
Squick = Squeamish + Ick.
Let’s bring back “Fandom Wank” as a term/tag too, because honestly calling it “discourse” is too dignified a word for the vitriolic circle-jerk melodrama and trolling that’s been going on. The flame wars never ended, it’s just sometimes wrapped up in therapy speak to pretend it’s more civilized.
And let’s be real about trollish behavior in fandom. Telling someone they are mentally ill, or that they deserve to die, solely because they have a different opinion on a piece of fiction than you, is fuckin nasty ass troll shit behavior. Sockpuppet accounts, sending anon hate, spreading unfounded rumors and straight up lies about someone, all nasty ass piece of shit troll behavior.
You don’t get to claim the moral high ground and then put the bar so low it’s a trip hazard in hell.




























