What Does Anthropomorfic Mean?
Fic TypeFanfiction starring anthropomorphized non-human, non-character entities — countries, programming languages, buildings, holidays, or abstract concepts — written as if they were people. The pun on 'anthropomorphic' plus 'fic' is intentional.
Anthropomorfic in Practice
Anthropomorfic is a small but long-running corner of fandom, celebrated especially in rare-fandom exchanges where prompts like 'the Moon/the Sea' or fics about anthropomorphized fonts genuinely get written. The genre overlaps with canon properties built on the same premise, like Hetalia's personified nations, but pure anthropomorfic invents personalities for things that have no canon at all. At its best it reads like fable or poetry; at its silliest it is gleeful crack. It stands as a good example of fandom's founding principle that absolutely anything can be a fandom.
Example usage
"The exchange matched me on anthropomorfic, so I am writing 2,000 words of the Mississippi River pining for the Atlantic."
Related Terms
Crack
Deliberately absurd fanfiction — premises and events too ridiculous for canon, written for pure comedy. The name implies you would have to be on something to write it, or that the fic itself is addictive nonsense.
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Yuletide
The legendary annual rare-fandom gift exchange: participants request and write fic for tiny fandoms — obscure books, cancelled shows, commercials, anything too small for regular fic traffic. A December institution since the early 2000s.
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Rarepair
A ship with a small body of fanwork compared to a fandom's dominant pairings. Rarepair shippers are famously dedicated, because if they don't create the content, no one will.
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Fic
The universal short form of fanfiction — both the mass noun ('reading fic') and the countable unit ('a fic,' 'three fics'). The word fandom actually uses day to day.
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