Frost and Fire and Ice

everyone needs to watch this movie

I think the discussion that made time loops my brand was entirely confined to Twitter, so since this website has gone all in on time loops of late, here, have the story:

Several years ago, I suggested to my wife that we have an agreement that if either one of us ever came to the other and said that we were in a time loop, we just accept that it's real and get on with things, thereby eliminating the frustration of the looping partner having to convince the other one every day.

She REFUSED. Because "time loops aren't real."

Well, we had this debate on and off for several years, and finally, she got tired of me bringing it up and agreed. So now we have a deal: We'll believe each other, but if I ever do it as a joke, the deal's off.

It turns out that the reason that my wife has been refusing to make this agreement is less that time loops aren't real, and more that she's concerned I would come to her one day, claim to be in a time loop, and then the next day declare the time loop had finally broken. And since that is, of course, exactly what it would look like to her if I really was in a time loop, she'd have no way of proving it.

I explained to her that she's completely right, that would be incredibly funny, but I'd never do it because there's a part of me that is legitimately nervous that I will actually end up in a time loop one day, and I need her to believe me.

A few lines from Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts by Blake Scott Ball.

The more things change…

The censorship happening in school libraries now is nothing new.

“ yOu wAnt a PieCE of ME?” “YES!” *bites a bitch*

Elmo commits murder

Elmo off the shits

Teachers are held to such high standards. Lawmakers could never compete if ever held to similar standards.

I asked an ornithologist about this today and he said that they can't remember the nineties. "They're dumb," he said.

No really nothing ever changes.

The way I understand it then, it’s basically just a more amusing way of saying “don’t like don’t read”?

I would say it’s best understood as an intensifier  to Don’t Like Don’t Read.

Just for example, say a series has some implied cannibalism in it. 

A given fic for this series might tag with “cannibalism warning” just because it’s in the canon and the fic acknowledges or discusses  it. Some people might be okay with discussing it in the abstract, even if they don’t want to see it represented explicitly.  Others might be uncomfortable with just the concept, and the author might add “don’t like don’t read” to remind those people that they may not want to engage with the fic at all.

But if you see both “cannibalism” and “dead dove do not eat” 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 “intensifier” concept slightly, I interpret “dead dove: do not eat” as an intensity modifier. The presence of a tag itself doesn’t necessarily tell me exactly how that content is going to be handled (which is not to say it’s not useful, just that it’s incomplete information). “Dead dove: do not eat” suggests to me that it’s going to on the darker, more serious end of the spectrum, and I shouldn’t read it if I’m 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 “intensity modifiers” all this morning, and I think it’s actually a fascinating subject we should talk more about!

Because I started off by thinking “DDDNE serves as an indication of subject intensity, which is an important purpose and it’s a shame that we don’t have other things like that” but then I realized, we do! They’re 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. 

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 I’m in the right headspace, or not at all. 

And though there isn’t an official G to E scale, fandom has implicitly recognized this need and filled it with canonical tags – such as Implied/Referenced X, Canon-Typical X, or Dead Dove Do Not Eat. 

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, it’s 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 – ‘canon-typical violence’ for The Avengers is probably going to be a different level of intensity than ‘canon-typical violence’ for The Witcher, just to name two offhand. But it is generally understood that if you’re 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 they’re 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.

Love me some good fandom midrash

Selene.

New limited edition prints now available, while supplies last.

when you’ve honed the fine art of perfectly-timed reblogging of something aimed at one specific mutual and they immediately like it

I really feel this.

Or maybe...

What kind of insane fucking treasure hunt am I expected to go on to figure out what you’re talking about with tags like these

"The left wants to destroy the nuclear family." Yeah maybe a little bit. I mean having 5 moms does sound pretty sweet.

Splitting my nuclear family of 92 Fathers, 92 mothers, and 146 children to create a nuclear family fission chain that wipes out everything in a 12 mile radius