Fan Fiction: A fiction that utilizes characters or settings from popular culture. Rarely authorized by the original publisher, “fan fic” often infringes on copyright. As Henry Jenkins writes, in “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten,” “Like cultural scavengers, fans refuse to read by the imposed upon them by the schoolmasters. For fans, reading becomes a type of play, responsive only to its own loosely structured rules and generating its own type of pleasure” (p. 471).
Gamenvironment: In their article, “Video Gaming, Let’s Play, and Religion,” Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, Michael Waltemathe, Xenia Zeiler, define “gamevironments” as “an analytical concept based on the actor-centered approach, which integrates the analysis of the game narratives with a view to combining the narrative and the ludic approaches.” (p. 14) {The article} For these researchers, the “media practices” from which game environments emerge are composed of two conceptual levels: the technical side of the hardware and software, and the aura of cultural discourses that surround and contextualize game play.
(http://gamingconceptz.blogspot.com/2012/10/huizingas-magic-circle.html)
Media Practice: Greg Grieve, in CyberZen, defines media practices as activities “such as reading a book; watching television or film; listening to the radio; or screening a computer, smart phone, or other digital device. Media practices do not merely transmit content but rather are the performance of embodied social activities that users execute with varying degrees of regularity, dexterity, and flair. Media practices emerge from a relationship between possible human action, on one hand, and systems of communication, on the other, and describe how social beings, with their diverse motives and their diverse intentions, tactically use the technologies of communication at hand to make and transform the realities in which they live.” (p. ). {}
Vanilla: The standard regular version with no special or extra customized features.