one example of a me-shaped category

App: Application; most games require at least a minimal one, sandboxes generally don't. A summary of the character containing stuff like how you play them, what you want to do with them, any superpowers they have, their backstory, maybe some threads you've done with them in the past, depending on what the individual game requires. Mostly it gives moderators an idea of what to expect from a character they're not familiar with and some level of assurance that they won't break the game.

AU: Alternate Universe. When used to refer to a game, this usually means that the premise of the game requires or strongly prefers that characters be played as a version of themself adapted so that they were always part of that setting instead of one that was transported there directly from their canon universe. When used of a character it can also mean that they're from a version of their canon where events unfolded differently or the setting is different, including ones that were shown in the canon but not incorporated into the main continuity as well as fan-made ones.

Backtagging: Tagging at play-by-post speed instead of real-time speed, or continuing a thread started quite a bit earlier.

Bakerstreet: bakerstreet. Specific Dreamwidth community that provides lots of RP prompt memes to play around with.

Canon point: The specific time or episode of canon that the character came from before entering the game.

Canonmate: Characters from the same canon as yours, whether played by other players in the same game, NPCed, or hypothetical.

Community: Dreamwidth feature; a multi-user group journal that any member journal can post to. Games will usually have a minimum of two (an IC community and an OOC community) but may have separate ones for memes, navigation, RPing in a specific location or within a specific faction, whatever the mods think is useful.

CR: Character Relationship. Can describe both the relationship and the character your character has the relationship with.

CRAU: A character who carries over their memories, character development, and any new powers and/or lasting scars/injuries/transformations from one or more previous games instead of coming directly from any point in canon.

CR chart: Page on your character's journal for short descriptions of their relationships with other characters in the game.

Dressing room, musebox, sandbox: Low-commitment RP venue, often used for testing.

Fourthwalling: Most prominent meaning is pointing out to them ICly that another character is from a work of fiction in your character's world (also sometimes called canon-puncturing); also an umbrella term for things that interact with the fourth wall or the conventions of Dreamwidth RP, like acknowledging previous instances of the same character who had different players or pointing out that two or more characters share faceclaims/PBs.

Friendslocked: Describes a post that's only visible to certain people instead of everyone, in this context usually players who've been accepted to the RP. The term comes from LiveJournal, where 'friends' was the only group that could be given this kind of selective access to individual journals.

Gagtag: Posting a silly tag that's not intended to be a canonical part of the thread (often a meme), which is then edited or deleted and replaced with the real continuation of the thread.

Godding/godmod(d)ing: Dictating what someone else's character does in your tag without consulting their player.

Handwave: Summarising events instead of threading them out.

Inbox: Either your Dreamwidth inbox (which is where notifications for tags appear) or an IC contact page on your character's journal specific to one game.

Infomodding: Having your character know things they have no reasonable way to have learned IC.

IC: In Character. In-universe, diegetic, etc.

Jamjar: Setting that the characters can't ICly leave, based on an old joke about games set inside "a spooky jamjar".

Journal: Individual Dreamwidth account. One per character, except sometimes NPCs or characters being tested will share one collectively or share with a player character.

Log: Starter posted as a journal entry. The community where most of the RP happens will often be called the logs community.

Lone Canon Warrior (LCW): Character who doesn't have anyone else from their canon in a game.

Meme: In a RP context this generally means an open-ended, low-commitment prompt. Can also be the usual meanings of meme.

Mingle: A player post that allows other players to put their own top-levels and thread with each other in the comments. Often but not necessarily used for IC parties and social gatherings.

Mun: Alternate term for player, not used much anymore but may show up in old posts and resources.

Muse: Alternate term for character

Network: IC social media/mini internet facilitated by computers and/or smartphones, or magical facsimiles thereof. Not all games have them (two of the three I've been in don't, and the third only barely, technically does), but they're common.

Not here: Subject line used when adding a comment on someone else's thread to show your character reacting from a distance without affecting the main thread. Usually a single comment but can start spinoff threads, either with other characters who reacted or with one of the characters from the first thread.

Notifs: Short for notifications. Can refer to either the ones in your Dreamwidth inbox or the ones that (unless you turn them off) get emailed to you when you get a reply or a thread you're tracking updates.

OOC: Out Of Character. Player-level processes like applications and activity checks. (Can also be used in the fanfic sense, to mean a character not acting like themself or like they do in canon.)

OTA: Open To All, used on starters.

PB, faceclaim: Real person, most often an actor or other celebrity, used to represent what a non-live-action character or an OC looks like face-to-face. PB stands for Played By but the full phrase is rarely used.

Plurk: Plurk. Messaging/social media website heavily used for OOC communication among DWRPers, to the point where Dreamwidth has a built-in function to link to a Plurk account.

PSL: Personal StoryLine. A one-on-one (or sometimes 3- or 4-way, but not much larger) thread not attached to a game.

Regain: IC items or powers given to the character for completing an OOC process (usually, turning in threads above the amount for an activity check). Originated from games where characters started out missing all or most of their powers and/or memories from canon and gradually reclaimed them.

Reserve: Calling dibs on a character so you won't lose the slot to someone who writes an app faster.

Tag: One comment in a thread. Originates from telling people "tag, you're it" when you post on their thread.

TDM: Test Drive Meme. Attached to a game but often not 100% canonical to it. A place to test characters you might app and make sample threads.

Threading: RPing in threads.

Threadjacking: 3rd+ character joining a 2-way thread.

Thread tracking: Pressing the little bell button on a thread to be notified about new tags in it. Usually this is for interesting threads you're not involved in, but tracking the thread makes it easier to stay up to date if you're participating in a thread with more than one other character.

• Wilson may or may not have himself figured out before adolescence, but it makes very little difference in the long run when puberty blockers won’t be invented for another 80 years or so. However, he picks out his new name as a teenager; his exact choice, Wilson rather than William or perhaps something like Wilbur or Wilfred, and the way he discourages people from casually shortening his name to the first syllable, may be slightly pointed.
• His parents aren’t thrilled, but they don’t disavow or contradict him over it, and this is hardly the first time they’ve acted like they would prefer he was someone else. They maintain that their middle child has always been a son. By their standards this is being supportive.
• He goes through university and grad school presenting full-time as male and returns with diplomas in the name of Wilson P. Higgsbury. At some point around then it’s possible that he follows in the footsteps of Alan L. Hart and Karl Baer and undergoes gender-confirming surgery, though without the kind of media attention for being a pioneer thereof that would support a Wikipedia article about him solely on that basis a century later. (Certainly it would be more convenient later in life when he gets stranded in an alternate dimension consisting primarily of small unsettled forested islands.)
• His greatest scientific success as an independent chemist is what he refers to as his “beard formula”, an artificial androgen that in particular promotes vigorous hair growth. Early trials result in various animals developing thick, bristly black hair, as well as that one time he spilled it on the rug and it still managed to stain and fluff up the completely inert fibres. Eventually he deems it suitable for self-experimentation, and afterwards develops a talent for growing several inches of beard over the course of mere months or weeks. It actually seems to grow faster the longer it gets, up until it runs out of steam around knee-length.
• Unfortunately, he never manages to patent the beard formula before being sent to the Constant, partly because of difficulty reproducing the exact formula he used on himself and partly because of unchecked ADHD making it much harder to keep good records or follow a predictable schedule.
• By now he exists in various records as a young man with his current name, so the thought of being drafted into the Great War and subsequently outed by the medical exam causes him quite a bit of anxiety. When he actually gets called up before the draft board in 1918 the officers dismiss him for being short, underweight, and sickly-looking before they even get to that point. Wilson is simultaneously relieved and insulted.

Level -1: Shipwrecked. A self-contained world from which egress is difficult and limited, lacking a few of the dangers of the Constant proper but replacing them with tropical horrors of equal or greater lethality. Its edges wrap around to each other through transcendental fog. Even reaching the world of DST from here is a challenge.

Level 0: The recently-made-passable ocean of Return of Them, and the occasional saltwater lake enclosed inland. It has small waves, it has seabirds, it has wind but not to excess, it has kelp, and it has outcroppings of rock which cannot be mined and are fit only to smash holes into poorly steered boats. It can be used to access the opposite end of the island, or the fallen moon, or further places. Even on the outskirts of the true ocean, the shadows cannot seem to reach you in any tangible sense.

Level 1: The ocean across the border of the world. Darker in colour than the familiar ocean, whose waves reach perhaps a few feet into it and then break on an unseen barrier. The surface is utterly still apart from the immediate wake of whatever boats may sail upon it. No seabirds land here. The wind can still be harnessed but does not disturb the water’s surface. Dropped items fall through the seemingly solid deck of your boat to the waters below.

Level 2: Things do not stay in one piece from instant to instant. The parts of your own body are constantly flickering in and out of existence and clipping through each other, as are the parts of your boat. Your hair is visible through your flickering hat. Your scalp is visible through your flickering hair. Insides can be seen through outsides. The world can no longer be mapped. The wind is still here. The sun rises and sets. The shadows can see you, but they cannot catch you. The hounds, however, sometimes can.

Level 3: You and your boat become invisible except from a few specific angles, and cannot even be seen by a disturbance in the water. Sound still works reliably, as does nonvisual perception, and may be your only way of changing course to return to the world.

Level 4: You can no longer be seen at all, nor can your boat.

Recent innovations in boating technology have made it possible to pass from the outer reaches of level 1 to level 3 without ever seeing the telltale space-rending effects of level 2, but its existence - if that is the correct word - has already been documented. Whether the current state of affairs is a shortcut, a suppressant, or level 2 being subsumed into its neighbours has yet to be determined.