What does "dead dove don't eat" mean? I'd Google it but I'm afraid of getting graphic images of deceased birds in the results.
Itâs a meme from an old episode of Arrested Development. Youâve seen it here on tumblr, but not always with the original context.Â
The character sees a paper bag in the fridge labelled âDead Dove Do Not Eat.â He takes the bag out of the fridge, opens it up, makes a disgusted face, and then the famous âI donât know what I expected.â
There really was a dead dove in the bag.
When you see a fic tagged with âdead dove do not eatâ it basically means, âthis fic is clearly labelled (tagged) indicating content that some people will not want to read. If you read it anyway, itâs your own fault. I warned you.â
It can also be interpreted as âSee those tags and warnings? Iâm not joking around. Pay attention to them.â
The way I understand it then, itâs basically just a more amusing way of saying âdonât like donât readâ?
I would say itâs best understood as an intensifier to Donât Like Donât Read.
Just for example, say a series has some implied cannibalism in it.Â
A given fic for this series might tag with âcannibalism warningâ just because itâs in the canon and the fic acknowledges or discusses it. Some people might be okay with discussing it in the abstract, even if they donât want to see it represented explicitly. Others might be uncomfortable with just the concept, and the author might add âdonât like donât readâ to remind those people that they may not want to engage with the fic at all.
But if you see both âcannibalismâ and âdead dove do not eatâ the author is telling you that in the course of this fic, a character is going to straight up chow down on some dead bodies, onscreen.
To refine on that âintensifierâ concept slightly, I interpret âdead dove: do not eatâ as an intensity modifier. The presence of a tag itself doesnât necessarily tell me exactly how that content is going to be handled (which is not to say itâs not useful, just that itâs incomplete information). âDead dove: do not eatâ suggests to me that itâs going to on the darker, more serious end of the spectrum, and I shouldnât read it if Iâm not prepared for what may be a psychologically intense or harrowing treatment of the tagged material.
You know what! This conversation has gotten me thinking about the concept of âintensity modifiersâ all this morning, and I think itâs actually a fascinating subject we should talk more about!
Because I started off by thinking âDDDNE serves as an indication of subject intensity, which is an important purpose and itâs a shame that we donât have other things like thatâ but then I realized, we do! Theyâre just slightly less formalized than other kinds of tagging systems modern fandom tends to work with.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of intensity scales in common use in modern fandom.
The first is the violence/sex intensity scale, which tends overall to be conflated with or used as a shorthand for the intensity/maturity rating of the fic itself. And people have talked in detail about the difference between an M and an E rating, in terms of how explicitly the sex act or violence act is described.Â
But sex and violence are not the only topics that warrant an intensity scale. There are plenty of topics that people (myself included) are okay with when talking about in an abstract or general way, but if the narrative starts to dig down into the real nitty gritty of the topic I might only want to read it if Iâm in the right headspace, or not at all.Â
And though there isnât an official G to E scale, fandom has implicitly recognized this need and filled it with canonical tags â such as Implied/Referenced X, Canon-Typical X, or Dead Dove Do Not Eat.Â
1. Implied/Referenced X tells the reader that topic X is going to be discussed, but not shown explicitly on-screen. Unless the whole broad topic is a trigger for a reader, itâs probably okay for them to read.
2. Next step up from that is Canon-Typical X, which can generally be understood as the base or standard level of intensity for topic X in fandom Y. Exactly what level of intensity that is varies from fandom to fandom â âcanon-typical violenceâ for The Avengers is probably going to be a different level of intensity than âcanon-typical violenceâ for The Witcher, just to name two offhand. But it is generally understood that if youâre reading fic for fandom Y in the first place, the level of X present in the work is probably not going to be too much for you.
3. And then at the far end of the intensity modifier scale is Dead Dove Do Not Eat, where a topic is explored in such detail and intensity that even fans of Fandom Y will have to decide whether theyâre okay to read this today, or maybe at all.
see this is the kind of quality content that keeps me coming around here on tumbler dot com.
