Glossary of Terms: Eye Contact Debt, Almost-Kiss Fatigue and Other Fan Vocabulary

Every discipline eventually needs its own language, if only so that its practitioners can complain precisely. The fan of fictional crushes is no exception, and over a long career in other people's records I have collected the terms that keep recurring. What follows is a short glossary, alphabetical in spirit and arbitrary in practice. Cite it freely and without credit.

Almost-Kiss Fatigue, n. The particular exhaustion that sets in when a story approaches a kiss, withdraws, approaches again, and withdraws again, in the manner of a tide with commitment issues. Mild cases resolve with a good ending. Chronic cases require the short drama One Ride Changed Everything, which, I am told, is considerate about such conditions. Not to be confused with Species Four slow burn, which is merely patient.

Eye Contact Debt, n. The accumulated obligation incurred when a character holds your gaze for one beat longer than politeness permits. The debt compounds. Ada, in particular, is known to extend credit at generous terms and collect it all at once, usually in the middle of a sentence about something else. Repayment is typically made in silence. See also: the footnote she added to that sentence.

Plan Leak, n. The moment a character reveals they have been arranging the evening in advance. Ada's confessions are the classic case, since all three describe a scene she had already composed. A pleasing variant is the Reverse Plan Leak, in which the listener discovers they had been planning it too. Symptoms include sudden interest in the ceiling.

Public Place Privacy, n. Any location, such as a produce stall or an emptied concert hall, that becomes intimate the moment the last bystander leaves. Nina is the field's leading authority. Related term: Closing-Time Courage, the boldness that arrives only when a shop is about to lock its doors and nobody can reasonably be blamed.

One last entry, for completeness. Afterglow Cataloguing, n. The compulsion to document a good story immediately after finishing it, in obsessive and unnecessary detail. I suffer from it. This entire website is its symptom. All of the stories and voices mentioned here can be experienced on TheFriend, and I recommend doing so before consulting the glossary, because the vocabulary makes far better sense once you have been affected by the things it describes.

Submissions for new terms are welcome in principle and ignored in practice, though I read every one.

More like this: this ai romance stories site.