The Dissected Chicken

Part of The Whole Chicken

 

A Glossary Of Skyrim (and LoversLab) Terms

 

If you ever ran into a term, abbreviation, or acronym that confused you, please tell me so I can include it!

 

Don't you just love going into a new community or hobby or job or, well, anything, and finding that there are dozens or hundreds of terms you've never heard before, tossed around with reckless abandon by the folk there before you, and when you admit you don't know what XYZ means they act as if you've just admitted you never bothered getting potty trained?

 

So, these are terms I've found, used in MY playthrough (and the forums associated with them), in roughly alphabetical order.

Note that all the kinks links are for Special Edition only; not Legendary Edition (32bit) and not Anniversary Edition (AE)

255 plugin limit = see ESP below

 

3BA = a body for humanoids, with 3 Breast Bones (in the) Body, but Advanced!  I don't know how it's advanced compared to 3BBB (below) but I'm assured it is.  I also think it's been updated to 3BAv2, which logically would be even more advanced, but I don't know.

 

3BBB = a body for humanoids, with 3 Breast Bones (in the) Body.  Makes the breasts bounce a lot more, and a little more like a breast and less like a firmly-inflated rubber ball.  I think it's a refinement of CBBE.

 

7z = a type of file archive.  The program is free to download and use, and it compresses quite well, and it also uncompresses .RAR and .ZIP archives easily.  Download and install, even if you don't play Skyrim. 

If you find a multi-part archive and don't know what to do with it - the files end in ~~~.7z.001 then ~~~.7z.002  then ~~~.7z.003 - then follow directions in this post by @judge007

 

Address Library = for SKSE (see below).  This is what the Anniversocalypse (see below) broke.

 

Aedra = an entity in Skyrim/Elder Scrolls lore which is considered mostly or entirely good, sort of like a god.  I suspect the difference betwen Aedra and Daedra (see below) is either level of power (and so who got to grab what Area Of Supernatural Operation, like Love or Betrayal) or simply who grabbed what AOSO back at The Beginning Of All Things.  Of course the ones that do things people want would be considered 'good' and those that did things people don't want would be considered 'evil'.  But Skyrim isn't very instructive in philosophy, so don't go thinking you're all morally wise just because you've played a lot of Skyrim.

 

AFT = Amazing Follower Tweaks.  A mod to increase the number of possible followers from one humanoid plus one animal, to more.  I don't use this, though not for any particular reason.

 

Anniversocalypse = my own term for Modocalypse, see below.

 

ASLAL = Alternate Start Live Another Life - a mod by Arthmoor, who is somewhat disliked in some areas of the mod-user community, which allows one to skip the opening wagon ride into Helgen, the execution scene, and the tutorial escape through the underkeep of Helgen.  It also allows one to start in a number of alternate scenarios, such as already owning a player-home, being a guild member, staying in a particular tavern...  
I don't like it because the starting cell is cramped and poorly lit.  It also starts the main Dragonborn quest without you, sort of.  It does have a lot of add-on scenarios written by other modders.
And ANYTHING (that works) is better than enduring the same literally five minutes long buggy wagon ride and near-execution and the tutorial escape.  Like, not playing the game or never starting a new character.

 

BHUNP = a body type that is not compatible with CBBE.  You might even say it's opposed.  I don't know which one is better, CBBE/3BBB/3BA or UUNP; long ago, I read once that there were more clothing for CBBE so I picked that, and now I just don't want to go to the effort of finding UUNP versions of all my clothing mods.  If you're starting fresh, you might want to store both variants of a clothing or armor mod (if both exist), so you could switch at a later time without having to perform Internet archeology.

 

BS = may refer to BodySlide, a program which allows a user to adjust a body in many MANY ways, and adjust clothing & armor to fit the player-adjusted body contours.

May refer to something else which is not limited to Skyrim...

 

BSA = Bethesda [something] Archive.  Bethesda used a format to compress assets (like textures) into a single file.  Probably so that programmers could make changes without having to repack the entire archive, loose files (just sitting in the appropriate directory) will ALWAYS override things in BSA files.  I think there's some advantage to having a BSA other than convenience; I don't know what.

 

CACO = Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul.  Written by kryptopr, and criticized for changing more than it perhaps should.

 

CBBE = Caliente's Beautiful Body Enhancer.  A particular enhanced body type (or perhaps family of types - see 3BBB and 3BA above).  Not compatible with BHUNP or TBD.

 

CC = by itself, often means Creation Club.  This is Bethesda's way to make more money, by selling mods.  I don't have any.  I think the free made-by-volunteers mods are just as good if not better, they cost nothing, and I do not expect any kind of support or update or bugfix or anything good to ever come from Bethesda if I were to buy any CC mods. 

 

CCOR = Complete Crafting Overhaul Redux.    Written by kryptopr, and criticized for changing more than it perhaps should.

 

CGO = Combat Gameplay Overhaul.  What it says.  I haven't used it so can't comment on it.

 

CK - Creation Kit.  This is related to the way Bethesda developed Skyrim (and other games) in the first place.  I haven't used it.  I'm sure you can do all sorts of marvelous things with it; I've heard it can be fragile, though; and that it crashes easily.  I don't know.

 

CTD = Crash To Desktop.  This has two forms: the first is when the game freezes for several seconds (audio may and may not stop), then a small window pops up (in Windows at least) telling you that Microsoft Windows has detected a crash, and there's an activity-showing ribbon underneath as it claims to be looking for a solution.  I believe that in the history of the world this 'find a solution' has never ever found a solution once.  It certainly won't do anything for you if it happens to Skyrim.  Then it will show another small window claiming that it needs to report to Satan Microsoft.  I hate Microsoft and they can suck my ass.
The second form is when it pauses for a second or so and then the entire game window disappears; Windows doesn't seem to notice or care.  This seems worse, but I can't really tell if there's anything different between the two forms.

 

CTD on Save = When you hit 'Escape' and try to save, or hit Quicksave (normally F5); and Skyrim crashes immediately.
I think this usually indicates that this save has an error 'baked in' that is hard or impossible to remove, and hard or impossible to accurately diagnose the cause.  I don't have a solution for this problem; I have to go back to an earlier save and re-play from that.

 

Daedra = an entity in Skyrim/Elder Scrolls lore which is considered mostly or entirely evil, sort of like a demon or devil.  The vanilla game includes I think thirteen different quests in which the PC does something a daedra wants.  Some of them are not so bad (return a lost dog); some of them are morally horrific (kill a friend to upgrade a sword).

 

DAR = Dynamic Animation Replacer.  Basically a good (and recent, 2020) way to add in animations for all sorts of non-sex activities, like standing or sitting.  Very unusual manual setup; use a mod manager.  I mean, always use a mod manager, but this is an order of magnitude worse than other mods if you don't.

 

DAYMOYL = Death Alternative Your Money Or Your Life.  It's a mod that provides an alternative to die-ragdoll-reload.  I haven't used it.  It conflicts, in concept at least, with Defeat, Naked Defeat, Yamete, and possibly others.

 

DCL = Devious(ly) Cursed Loot.  See DD and Devious below; this mod installs lots of 'traps' which forcibly place Devious Devices like restraints, restrictive corsets, collars, harnesses, etc., on the player.  I don't use this, as having to fight the game programming, the mod programming, the monsters, AND the bondage gear, is just too much hassle for me.

 

DD = Devious Devices.  A mod from Lovers Lab that adds bondage devices on the player, such as gags or cuffs.
This mod drove me crazy for MONTHS because it does things without telling the player, and hides what it does from the player, which affect other things which I don't think it should because they aren't related.  And then, if you aren't careful in setting it up, it may lock you out of its menu.  This deserves its own post.
It used to be split into more pieces, like DD Expansion and DD Integration; as of 2022, they are all packaged and installed together.

 

Defeat = It's a mod that provides a rape-oriented alternative to die-ragdoll-reload, AND allows you to do the same to others.  There are far too many versions of this, including one updated by Bane (that I use) and one known as Baka.  Naked Defeat (see ND below) is the same concept but I think is a rewrite of the idea, concentrating on what happens when the player loses.  Defeat allows the player to defeat (and do awful things to) others.

 

Devious [anything] = related to Devious Devices, DD, right up there in this glossary.  Examples are Devious Followers and Deviously Cursed Loot.

 

DLL - Dynamic Linked Library.  A computer container of pieces of programs, that can be called from other programs.  This isn't a programming 101 class, so I won't explain further.  Just know that a .DLL is computer code, you can't read it, and you probably need to be reasonably comfortable with programming in general to work with one.  But you as a mod-installer shouldn't need to do more than put it in the correct place.

 

EFF = Extensible Follower Framework.  Especially notable for its in-game 'cosmetic' menu (also available as a standalone mod) which allows you to adjust the NPC's body using some (but NOT all) of the same sliders you do when generating your character.  Especially it does NOT allow adjusting face or hair, but it does allow modification via CBBE sliders (if you have CBBE installed) and body scales in general, as well as 'tattoos' (but not warpaint, I think; I just got this recently and I'm still learning how it works).

 

ENB = Enhanced Natural Beauty.  It's a way of changing the color profile and saturation of everything Skyrim shows you.  There's lots of mods that change this; you maybe should pick just one and stick with it.  Or don't use one if you have a 'lower-end' video card.  I can't explain 'lower-end video card' in this glossary; it's a big and ever-changing topic.  I have a 4Gb NVidia GTX 760, which was moderately powerful at one time, and I use Cathedral Weather as my only ENB; it's the only one I've tried, so I don't know if there's a better one out there, one I'd like better, or one that would run better with my hardware.
[from https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3787350]:
"In one sentence, what does an ENB technically do to the game?
"It is a .dll file that inserts itself between the game's code and the final rendering engine in order to significantly alter the game's lighting effects, thereby producing dramatic and spectacular visual enhancements when tuned appropriately."

 

ESL = Elder Scrolls Light (plugin)
ESM = Elder Scrolls Master (plugin)
ESP = Elder Scrolls Plugin.
These are all together because they are all ALMOST the same thing.  An ESP is a part of a mod, a plugin, that is usually present - not in retexturing mods, or a few others, but most - and you don't need to know (and I don't know) exactly what's in it.  What you do need to know is the '255 plugin limit', and what it means to you.
Skyrim's engine allows for two hundred and fifty-five plugins to be added, because each item, quest, dialog line, and many other elements, each have a number assigned to them that starts with two hexadecimal (0=0 to F=15) digits.  In fact, the first two digits should tell you what plugin the element comes from.  But some are already used.  In my Skyrim SE (which has no Creation Club content installed), I have:
00 to 04 - Skyrim.esm, Dragonborn.esm, Dawnguard.esm, Hearthfire.esm, and Update.esm, are the five core files you find in all Skyrim SE games.
05 to FD (253) - ESMs and ESPs
FE (254) - where the ESLs go
FF (255) - made during the game
And that '05 to FD' range is where the ESPs go.  ESMs are almost exactly ESPs except there's something about an internal table that I don't remember and can't find the reference to right now.  It's not important to the lower half of mod users, so don't worry about it now.
What you do need to remember is that 'FD minus 5 is F8' which is hexadecimal for '253 minus 5 is 248' because this is how many ESMs and ESPs you can have in Skyrim at one time.  It won't load more than this.  If you have more than 248 plugins, some of them MUST be ESLs. (you can also merge some mods together, but I think that merging mods is riskier than just getting an ESL if one is available  I'm doing some merging, but I don't know what I'm doing other than blindly following instructions...)
ESLs are like small ESPs; they have few enough elements inside, that more digits can be assigned for numbering the plugins; which means the game can install more of them.  I've heard both 2,048 and 4,096 both quoted as the limit one can have at one time.  ESLs are relatively new; older mods and very new mod authors (and sloppy mod authors) may make an ESP that could be an ESL if they'd only bothered.  There is a script for SSEedit (see below) that allows you to do this yourself fairly simply, and somewhat reversibly.  I don't think it's failed me yet.  And this (and merging plugins)(and mods that change nothing but existing textures) is how people get over a thousand 'mods' with the '255 plugin limit'.

 

FG = Flower Girls.  Adds a half dozen to dozen girls you can have sex with.  May do some other things; I don't remember.  It's compatible with both SL (see below) and OSex (see below), I think without talking to either.  I installed it once but didn't find it interesting enough to keep, compared to a pack of new dungeons.

 

Flash = needed for all menus in Skyrim.  This website explains: "The Skyrim GUI uses Adobe Flash and Scaleform. The format is SWF 10 and the scripts are written in ActionScript 2.0"
I don't know how to explain this.  Shockwave Flash was created by Adobe, many years ago, to allow video and animated games through the Web.  Adobe stopped developing it years ago, YouTube stopped using years ago, and I think 'everyone' has stopped using it on websites.  Why the hell Bethesda would use this to do its menus is... beyond my comprehension.  It makes me think of Lovecraft-ian insane cultists trying to poison the world and/or summon their dark entity.  It really does.  More likely it's just that whoever they hired knew how to use Flash and convinced the right people in Bethesda to go along with it rather than spend time developing something of their own.  But what the fuck do you need all that Flash can do (and all its bugs and security holes) to show menus (and maybe popups) and allow choices?  Obviously there must have been a deeper agenda...

 

FNIS = Fore's New Idles In Skyrim.  It's a way of changing the 'idles' or animations in Skyrim to something else.  It's older, clunky, and has the worst non-malware non-crashing program I've seen in Windows possibly in my entire life.  It's also what creature-sex animations require.

 

Havok = the multi-platform 'game engine' that Skyrim is written for.  Havok was NOT written by Bethesda.  It's easier for a game developer (Bethesda) to buy an engine that runs on multiple platforms, like XBox / PS# / Windows / Mac, than it is to write their own for three or four or more computer architectures at one time.  An engine handles 'everything' for a game, much like an operating system handles hardware functions for various programs.  

 

HCOS or HCoS = Horny Creatures of Skyrim.  It's an animation pack involving sex with creatures.  Notable because I think it's the only animation pack that has males with animals, and the only one with animal-on-animal.

 

HDT = This is named for the modmaker that created it,  hydrogensaysHDT. It's usually combined with SMP (see below)

 

HSH = Home Sweet Home.  An add-on to Paradise Halls (see PAH below), the name is similarly misleading.

 

Immersive: [from https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3787350]
"Used to mean 'doesn't seem out of place so it won't break your suspension of disbelief.' Now utterly meaningless due to pretentious masturbatory overuse. At best, you can be reasonably sure that the mod will not contain Cloud Strife's buster sword or Sonic the Hedgehog characters if it's called immersive."

 

ITM = Identical To Master.  You see or hear about this when talking about mods; it's when a mod copies a record (thing, spell, quest, location, whatever) in itself without changing it.  This is not good, because some other mod might need to CHANGE that thing, and depending on your personal load order the change might go away (or never happen or whatever).  Cleaning a mod with SSEedit (see below) gets rid of these ITM records, among other things.

 

LOD = Level Of Detail.  This controls how something is drawn when it's far away.  I think the usual program to alter this is DynDOLOD.

 

LOOT = Load Order Organiz[something] Tool.  Integrated with MO2 (see below), this arranges your mods so that they load in something like the preferred order.  Conventional wisdom is that It Sucks(TM) and you should organize your plugin load order yourself, but I think it's quite good.  Note that the 'master list' of what should go where gets updated damned near daily, sometimes more often; LOOT will download this and parse it before letting you do anything in itself.  Note also that running LOOT to rearrange mods in an already existing saveset (see below) will likely break that save.  When the load order of plugins changes, the first two hexadecimal digits of every record also change, and that's how Skyrim actually keeps track of (nearly) everything.

 

Lore-Friendly: [from https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3787350]
"See Immersive."

 

merge (mods) - using the zMerge function of zEdit (see below) to combine ESP plugins.  One does this to reduce the number of ESPs one must load in the 248 spaces available for ESPs (see ESP above).  There was an older way to do this, using a script in xEdit (see below), but I never used it.

 

mesh = the physics part of an object in game.  Think of it as an internal framework, around which is wrapped a 'texture' (see below).  Some meshes have animated parts that connect to each other like hinges or joints, some don't.

 

MHIYH = My Home Is Your Home.  A mod that allows you to keep a roster of 'ex'-followers in a place like a player home (like NFF does, see below) and summon them if you want one or more of them.

 

missing texture = if you have the mesh (see above) but not the texture (see below) for an item in the game, it will exist but have a peculiar and distinctive blue-to-purple color.

 

MME = Milk Mod Economy.  It adds a dynamic breast size increaser (and possibly decreaser), abundant breast milk, milking stations to various cities and possibly towns, and something of a market to sell (or buy) the breast milk collected.  I find the 'Holstein' visual theme - white with irregular rounded black splotches - associated with this mod to get tiresome after a while.  I get the cow reference, but enough already.

 

MO2 = Mod Organizer 2.  A mod manager, and what I use.  It's the successor to 'Mod Organizer' the specific program, and doing something similar to Nexus Mod Manager, Vortex, (one function of) Wrye Bash, and perhaps others.  I think it's better than the others because of its VFS (see below).

 

mod = modification.  Nowadays, it's (almost always) an entire package that is ready to un-archive right on top of the original Skyrim data files.  The problem is, if you don't use a modern mod manager, it does so in a permanent fashion; which makes it hard to remove that mod if you don't like it.  Which is why one should use a mod manager like MO2 (see above) or Vortex (see below).

 

mod manager = just read the entry above for 'mod'.

 

modal

 

modder = one who uses or writes mods.  I prefer to think of myself as a 'mod (ab)user' or mod-installer rather than a 'modder'.

 

Modocalypse = for the 10th anniversary of the original release of Skyrim (more formally, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim), Bethesda released a version that was compiled under a newer version of the language the game was written in.  This broke a modder-compiled list of addresses of useful things inside the Skyrim program itself, called Address Library, which was used and required VERY widely in mod-making; this in turn meant that if you allowed the update to happen, any mods that relied upon Address Library would break.  In fact, the reason Address Library was created, is because every time Bethesda updated Skyrim, it would break those mods, and the community would scramble for a few weeks to find the new in-program addresses they needed, if they were still supporting their mods (and if they weren't, the mod 'died').
The result is, if you allowed Skyrim to be updated on or after 11 November 2021, some mods would no longer work.
Which ones?  Oh, that's a harder question.  
Which is why it was called by a name similar to apocalypse, because it was a semi-catastrophe for modders, both mod-makers and mod-users. (and because there was a popular magic-oriented mod called Apocalypse already)
I call it "Anniversocalypse" because my word is uglier, and it shows that it was the Anniversary (edition) that was to blame.

 

navmesh = The programming that allows NPCs to wander around without going through walls or tables.  It's complicated and, like all programming, finicky and prone to errors when writing or changing.  

 

ND = Naked Defeat.  A rewritten alternative to the SexLabs Defeat (see Defeat above) mod.  The notes for ND say it is NOT compatible with SLDefeat, as the two do the same thing and interfere with each other.  However, one can open Defeat's MCM and set "Player Victim" to OFF, which then allows ND to handle those events.  

I used it for a while; it had problems.  As I recall, it had a tendency to not recover from any interruption - like more combat occurring.

 

Nemesis = an animation-selecting framework alternative to FNIS.  Newer than FNIS, and of course the program that sets up the animations for Skyrim to use is better behaved because I have literally never seen a worse program than FNIS that actually ran.  But Nemesis does not support creature sex, and I believe the author of Nemesis said that it would never support creature sex because he didn't like that stuff (though I could be wrong).  Nemesis is often required instead of FNIS for non-sex animation mods like combat-move-changers.  There is a way to have both FNIS and Nemesis installed and working at the same time, if you have MO2.

 

Nexus = a very large website that has most of the mods for Skyrim, both LE and SE.  The website also has mods for other games, which I don't play so I don't care.  It has a better search engine than LoversLab, but much less sex/NSFW content.
Nexus tried to shoot itself in the foot back in July and August of 2021, but I don't feel like explaining it now.

 

NFF = Nether's Follower Framework.  A multiple follower mod, still in development (somewhat, as of early 2022) that allows ten followers at one time, and allows you to keep a roster of... uh, I think 250?

 

NMM = Nexus Mod Manager.  Don't use this; it's old software.  If you want to argue with me, then you've probably used it for a long time and don't need this glossary.

 

O[any word] = refers to something using the OStim and OSex frameworks, which are newer than SexLabs.  ORomance, OProstitution, OBody, OAroused, OAhegao, OJazz...
I have heard that one can install both O[stuff] and SexLabs at the same time, but they don't talk to each other at all; and I believe OSex does not support creature sex.  I don't have the ESP slots available to run both.

 

PAH = Paradise Halls (Enhanced).  Despite the happy name, this is not a lovely player home to relax in; it's a mod about slavery, mostly of other people.  You can knock people down and enslave them and then either keep them or sell them.  There's lots else involved, and I think either it or add-on mods for it are in active development. I found it to be too uncertain to use during adventuring - not in a programming sense, but in a gameplay sense - because the NPCs you capture and try to enslave understandably don't want to be enslaved and run away when you're not looking and similar things.  If you actually want to go through the mechanics of enslaving and training others - and I am so not judging, except that your level of patience is greater than mine - then this is seriously the mod for you.  I think it's still in development.

 

plugin = see ESP above.  A plugin is not the same as a mod: some but not all mods include a plugin; and some mods may be nothing but a plugin.

 

PSQ = Player Succubus Quest.  

 

saveset = I don't know if anyone else uses this term, but what I mean is, a number of save with one particular  character and starting with a particular set of mods.  It's in-game shown as the character's name, then a list of numbered files at the next window.  You can have more than one saveset; it's a good way to 'fork' a character along two divergent storylines, and a good way to test a mod without ruining a long-running character IF YOU TAKE NOTES and are prepared to throw away everything you do after installing the new mod(s).

 

SD or SD+ = Sanguine's Debauchery.  This is a mod maintained and expanded by @DeepBlueFrog, dealing with a daedra (see above) prince named Sanguine, who in this mod trades your death for eternal... sexual abuse, I guess.  I think about using this mod, then read the description again, note that it includes random NPCs raping the PC 'for no reason', and decide I have other things to do in game.

 

SKSE = stands for "Skyrim Script Extender" (which doesn't acronymize to SKSE) is basically an essential mod, used as a basis for many many others mods out there.  You need this for Skyrim.  It installs a little differently than other mods; read the instructions. 

 

SL = as a prefix, usually indicates "SexLab Framework".  It's usually hosted on Lovers Lab, which I think might've been started as a SexLab support forum; it should be no surprise that most of the mods on Lovers Lab support SexLab. I don't like the way it randomly picks a sex animation, and doesn't apparently obey tags like (Lesbian), because it very often ignores its own tags and does it ALL WRONG.  But I don't yet know how to change its behavior.
The newer alternative to this is OSex (see above), but I haven't used that.

 

SLIF = SexLabs Inflation Framework.  Supposed to take all the other mods that dynamically change the PC's body (usually breasts) and combine their effects, so the PC doesn't flip back and forth as various mod scripts run and make this or that change independently.  More powerful than I know how to use, and not well documented that I can find.

 

SLP = SexLabs Parasites (Kyne's Blessing).  A mod that integrates Skyrim, parasitical monsters (far bigger than fleas or leeches), a story/questline, and sex.  I have no explanation why I, or anyone, finds this interesting enough to make a sex-based mod about it.  People are strange.  Regardless, this is a well-written and currently-in-development (as of early 2022) mod by @DeepBlueFrog.  If you also have Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul (CACO, see above), you need to place SLP's plugin below/higher-priority than CACO's plugin.

 

SLSL

SLTR = may be Submissive Lola: The Resubmission (and I guess called 'SLSL' because everything hosted here is prefaced with 'SL')  This is a mod, currently (as of early 2022) in active development by @HexBolt8, that involves a very long commitment to the player voluntarily submitting to a (player-picked) NPC.

 

SMP = Skinned Mesh Physics.  From the mod page, "an skse plugin allowing more advanced physics interactions to be applied to actors via configuration files".  Irrevocably intertwined with HDT (see above).

 

SOS = Schlongs Of Skyrim.  'Schlong' is a slang term for penis; this mod adds penises to Skyrim.  Not entirely sex related, as it's disconcerting to see a naked male without a penis.  It's even more disconcerting when something goes wrong and there's a hole in the body texture where a penis ought to be.
It seems to be a popular acronym for other mods as well; more than any other, SOS or SoS might refer to another mod entirely.

 

SSedit or SSEedit - see xEdit below

 

TAWOBA = The Amazing World Of Bikini Armor(s).

 

TBD = Touched By Dibella.  Another body, not compatible (I think) with UUNP or CBBE/3BBB/3BA, so it just adds to the confusion of profusion (man, that's a cool phrase... feel free to use it).

 

TDM = True Directional Movement.  A recent mod that allows... guess what it allows.  It also includes a lock-on-to-target function that I haven't used yet.

 

texture = the graphical element of a thing visible in the game world.  This is not the mesh, which is the PHYSICS element of a thing visible (and interact-able-with) in game; this is purely visual.  It sort of wraps around the mesh.  Also see 'missing texture' above.
Actually there's more than one texture: http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/What_are_all_these_texture_files%3F is a good reference for Skyrim.

 

T-Pose = what you get when you add animations for FNIS (see above) or Nemesis (see above) and don't run the respective programs.  

It looks like this:

If all the humanoids look like this and don't move their bodies AT ALL, then you need to either run GenerateFNISforUsers or the Nemesis equivalent.

If you are loading a save, and everyone KIND OF looks like this, except their eyes move, and they flash in between this pose and actually animating... then you have DAR (see above) installed and it's starting up.  Be patient, and nothing needs to be done.

 

UNP

 

USSEP = Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.  Made by Arthmoor, this corrects a lot of flaws in Skyrim, and is required for an astonishing number of mods.  The author Arthmoor is criticized for instantly removing older versions of this when he releases a newer one - such as when he removed the non-Anniversocalypse version as he posted the post-Anniversocalypse version, thus screwing anyone who didn't already have - or had lost - the last version of USSEP but didn't want to upgrade Skyrim to AE (and break a lot of existing mods) - and for making non-bugfix changes to Skyrim that are hidden in this mod.  I have also read that he or his associates are extremely aggressive in forcing alternatives to be taken down (probably through DMCA takedown threats); if true, I find this reprehensible.  If you get this, save the installation archive (.zip, .7z, or .rar) just in case.

 

VFS = Virtual File System.  This term I actually knew decades ago, but who cares.  This is how Mod Organizer 2 deals with all those mods.  Every time you run a program - game or not - using MO2 as a launcher, MO2 sets up a 'fake' file system (whether on disk or in memory I don't know), and THEN loads each and every (active) mod, one at a time, into that file system.  When it has finished, it then runs Skyrim and tells Skyrim (or another program), "Oh, HERE's your Skyrim\Data folder!" and hands Skyrim (or another program) the VFS it just finished creating.  Skyrim (or the other program) runs happily using the VFS instead of the actual on-disk Skyrim\Data folder, never once suspecting that IT'S NOT REALLY THERE.  The advantage is, each mod is actually stored in the correct structure within the bowels of MO2, entirely separated from the original game files and other mods, and they never permanently overwrite anything like Skyrim's originals or each other.  This makes it trivial to change or remove any single mod (or a whole bunch of them), and to find out what changes what, and to change which mod 'wins'.  However, fiddling with load order, removing mods, or installing some mods, may break existing saves.  It is conventional wisdom to get all the mods settled and fixed before one starts a long playthrough; which is why people sometimes say they are playing Mod Organizer: Skyrim Edition - they spend so much time setting up (then finding new mods and having to start over to incorporate those) that they never actually PLAY (beyond very limited playtesting).  You've been warned.

 

Vortex = a mod manager.  I believe this is a rewritten successor to Nexus Mod Manager.  I've heard it works well enough, but I don't use it.  Usually people are very partisan about MO2 vs. Vortex (with NMM, Wrye Bash as a mod manager, and manual-installers all out in the lunatic fringes or the wastelands of 2012).  User @Mertz mentions that developers of many tools use Wrye Bash (I suppose as a mod manager), {humor follows} which supports my point, as most creative programmers will admit to some degree of lunacy. {/humor}

 

Wabbajack = a website and piece of software that allows one person to publish a mod list, and others to download the mods and patches for that modlist, without violating anyone's copyright.  If you are nervous about modding or 'just want to play a modded game' without having to learn more than the absolute minimum, get Wabbajack and install one of its mod lists.  Last time I checked there were at least two sexually-oriented (or 'sexually active') modlists available.  Definitely an option.

 

WACCF = Weapons Armor Clothing and Clutter Fixes.  Written by kryptopr, and criticized for changing more than it perhaps should.  There's a recurring theme here...

 

xEdit = a program (NOT a mod!) written by a person who goes by Elminster.  This is very powerful, and easier to use than Creation Kit.  It's used for cleaning mods (including Bethesda's own DLC), examining mods, and making custom patches.  It's not all happy and friendly like people expect Mac or Windows programs to be; it's powerful instead.

 

XPMSSE = XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended, a new skeleton for humans, that animations animate.  Don't whine at me that "XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended" should have another acronym; I didn't name the damned thing.  It's not exactly 'new' but it's better than Skyrim original.  This really needs to be lower down (and thus higher priority) in your load order; Things Go Bad if another mod overwrites the XPMSSE skeleton.  Still being bugfixed as of early 2022; I don't know if it is changing significantly or not.

 

ZaP = ZaZ Animation Pack.  I don't know what ZaZ stands for.  It's mostly bondage things not on the player, like racks and whipping stations. And animations for those bondage things.  It also has its own handcuffs and other bondage-on-the-player gear.  
It also has a VERY NICE debugging section in its MCM.  I have used this a lot to correct the behavior of other mods or just (certain) general bugginess.

 

zEdit= a program (not a mod!) that allows you to change various values in a mod, without having to use Creation Kit.  It's more powerful than I know how to use.  I use it to merge plugins.  Go watch GamerPoet's video.