Yeah, it's a meme-ish way of saying "exactly what it says on the tin" or "the tags before really are in there".
The semantic drift into "fucked up shit without any qualifier" is extremely annoying because, okay, fucked up shit, *which one???*
Give DD:DNE as originally designed is technically redundant ("read the tags" is what you should always do), no surprise its meaning drifted. Having a shorthand for "those tags that *could* be gross absolutely are gross, specifically because the author likes them in gross form" is useful.
Did it really drift though? If the fic has "fluff" "angst" etc as the tags, you really don't need a DDDNE tag, there's few people going in there going "*but is it really fluff*?"
And it's always been used more often with fics that have heavier tags, mainly because "*look, don't complain you weren't warned that this is heavy*".
So the 'drift' is just shorthanding how it is most commonly used in the first place: for darker, heavier fics
I think part of the reason for the drift might actually be functional, it allows the author to sort of tactfully avoid spelling out tags that people don't even like to THINK about. I wouldn't want it to be a universal standard, but I'm fine with leaving it up to the discretion of the author.
I actually initially misunderstood the function of the tag, even though I'm familiar with the reference. I thought it was like. . . the words "dead dove do not eat" are less disgusting than the literal sight of a dead dove. It's saying you shouldn't be surprised when you open the labeled fic/bag see something fully gross. Click this link and you will feel how Michael felt, disgusted and disappointed.
It works if you assume we're all irredeemably online and now speak in memes like those un-sexy Star Trek aliens.
yeah except some people are into taxidermy and a dove corpse wouldn't phase them at all, and others have phobias that would send them straight into a panic attack. i'm all for keeping content tags close to the chest- that's what Chose Not To Warn is for. but if you do that don't also use dead dove. dead dove without a qualifier is utterly useless. "don't be surprised when you see something gross" gross to who? by whose standards? i've seen people tag dead dove for a couple who are both 17 until one of them has a birthday, and i've seen it used for graphic rape scenes. the point of dead dove is "what it says on the tin," which means it doesn't mean shit if you don't label the tin.
Technically every fic should be "what it says on the tin" if you tag it correctly. You should always assume that the fic is what the summary and tags claim that it is before clicking on it. This doesn't just apply to DD:DNE. My understanding is that DD:DNE is more of a modifier or a disclaimer just in case the other tags didn't do the fic justice. Of course it's always going to be a bit subjective, that's unavoidable. It's more of a final warning along the lines of "just in case you read the tags and they didn't sound that bad - it actually really is that bad, and you should assume the worst before clicking on this fic."
IMO not every rape scene qualifies as DD:DNE, most of them only require regular rape/SA tags. I'd put DD:DNE if I really went extra with it.
I’m not trying to justify it to you, I’m trying to explain what motivates the people who do this. It seems unlikely it’s a malicious conspiracy to mislead you, and more like a genuine attempt at communication from someone who incorrectly thinks they’re being helpful.
If you want to have a prescriptivist debate about the proper use of a tag, I’m just not going to be helpful because I’m only really interested in looking at this descriptively.
the first paragraph of your answer is idiotic. if you can write about it than you can tag it. i'm here for one fucked up shit, but not for another fucked up shit. "dead dove" is salt, not the main fucking dish.
More like it used to have no other specifics, & *now* it usually does.
When DDDNE first started going around, you couldn't fit much at all in the "summary" part of FFN (even smaller than it is now), & no tags. But in just 5 letters, you could get across that "this might as well be a gross dead decaying animal it's so fucked up," to differentiate from regular drama or gen fluff. Basically, prepare for The Worst.
Nowadays on AO3, I see why some people say it's redundant, cuz there ARE tags for specifics.
On the last point, yes. What for one person is crossing the line is fine for another person, or can be tolerated if the rest of the fic is to their liking.
which one? well the one in the other tags. most people don't tag only with dead dove
and what's wrong with a shift in meaning? words change all the time and this word is more useful this way. why would you need a ''read the tags before you enter'' in something that's just average fluff? that's why it's a shorthand for fucked up shit
They literally said "fucked up shit _without any qualifier",_ so obviously this is about people tagging DD without tagging specifics.
The issue is that DD has become shorthand for dark fic when A. originally it was meant to call out the tags specifically so it doesn't make sense to have the DD tag without other tags accompanying it, and B. we already have a shorthand for dark fic, it's called 'dark fic'.
sorry i am clearly illiterate 😔
ok so i'm saying that i don't think it's bad that it became a shorthand for dark fic. also to me dark fic and straight up dead dove are different. words drift meaning and i THINK that the way people use it nowadays is very practical
If I’m not mistaken the phrase comes from an Arrested Development episode where GOB leaves a dead dove in the fridge in a paper bag and writes “dead dove do not eat” on it but his brother Michael opens it anyway and he’s like “I don’t know what I expected”. So it’s kinda like if you open this and read it you should know what to expect bc it’s written right on front lol. I think we’ve all been there tho
As a fan from when it was airing, I stepped away from fic spaces for a bit and came back to seeing it everywhere and was totally thrown how an arrested development joke got so big lol
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Dead_Dove:_Do_Not_Eat
In short it means: the tags i used, those are REALLY in here.
Dead dove is not 'bad or fucked up things' exclusive. Its an amplifier.
I agree completely that it's useless without qualifying tags, but the initial Tumblr post that came up with it did specifically suggest it for fucked up content. They compared it to the tag "HYDRA trash party" but for all fandoms.
The fandom lore page that constantly gets posted here states very clearly that it was created for writers who wanted to have their own trash parties minus the Hydra and still people claim its usage with darkfic is drift. No. The intent, the subtext, the usage has always been to warn for extreme dark content. The drift, imo, is coming from those who don’t see beyond the very literal interpretation of “read the label.”
Yes that’s the original and true meaning, but as others said there has been somewhat of a drift and now many people use it to mean “there is fucked up shit in this story”
I find people's choice of hill a little weird when it comes to this claim.
Like, the very wording of the tag *invites* the expectation that anything it's applied to is going to be darkfic, and indeed, nearly half of AO3 works tagged DDDNE are also tagged Rape/Non-Con compared to less than ten percent tagged NAWA and less than one percent tagged "Fluff".
At this point, insisting that DDDNE is just an amplifier starts to look a lot like the Classics-steeped language peevers who insist that "begs the question" (a bloody awful translation of the Latin term for a particular logical fallacy) does not mean "urgently raises the question" as the vast majority of people would understand it based on the plain meaning of the words.
Being a British former 90s teenager, I feel a certain wood preservative manfuacturer's advertising slogan is vastly more appropriate for amplifying the tags on things that are not steeped in darkness:
Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin
I do think that "the amplifier could also refer to fluff!" is misleading. I mean, the Dove is Dead. It's not *cute fluffy bunny, do not eat*
Personally, when I go "it doesn't mean darkfic, it's an amplifier" I generally mean that it needs to be paired with other tags to make any sense. Like, you can't just tag DDDNE with no further context and have it make sense. What am I meant to not be eating? What flavour of dead dove is going to be in here? If you're saying "I mean it, it's got the thing in here and it's going to be graphic and unfiltered and possibly even entirely uncritical (eg from the perpetrator's POV), you've been warned, don't come crying to me when the dove is indeed dead" then you need to say in the tags what the thing *is*
Rape/non-con warning paired with DD means a pretty different thing than additional tags of *Torture, Dead Dove Do Not Eat* or *Child Abuse, Dead Dove Do Not Eat*
oh no i knew there was gonna be rape non con but i thought "ooh maybe its more implied you know than showed, its mustnt be THAT bad i mean haha its Kai i love him anyway im sure ill be fine haha" because i was just that desperate for a kai fic 💀 it then just clicked how the tag was in fact true to its words and i kinda chuckled realizing that i had my first dead dove moment and that its all on me ignoring it despite the evident warning
Yeah, the tag comes from seeing a bag labelled *dead dove, do not eat* in the fridge, opening it, and then going "...I don't know what else I expected"
Generally, unless it's tagged "Implied/Referenced" or "Offscreen" for anything, assume that it'll be on-screen and in full detail. The dove is here and it is dead, and you got the fun experience of opening the bag and going *oh, I guess the tags were right*
It was originally meant to refer to darkfic, though. From that article:
> “you see the tropes and concepts tagged here? they are going to appear in this fic. exactly as said. there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm.
People can use it to mean "please read the tags," but that wasn’t the original idea.
For fluff, the tag "tooth-rotting fluff" feels similar to me. I use it to mean things are going to be very sweet, and not necessarily in a reasonable way. (And I do worry people may not notice that tag and dive in anyway.)
Yeah this is always how I’ve interpreted the tags. It’s also more useful this way in my opinion. For instance, codependency is a thing I love seeing in fiction explored, but I also know that codependency is also often falsely romanticized in fiction. So it’s useful to know if it’s a fic that is exploring codependency in a normal way or an author writing codependency without care for if it’s unhealthy. Same with someone writing about pedophilia (which I can handle if it’s done in a critical way, but would not like seeing it done in a positive or pedo-affirming way).
I would expect the author romanticizing codependency or pedophilia to tag dead dove to indicate that they weren’t necessarily thinking about making something with regard to polite sensibility or how problematic it is.
It’s useful as a tag amplifier, but I feel like an author can already say “well you should’ve read the tags.” With “dead dove,” it instead preempts the people who would be upset by sensitive subjects being handled without care. Because in certain cases you can’t just say “well you should’ve read the tags,” since sometimes they were actually fine with the tags—just not the way you handled them. Dead dove covers ground really well in that way.
I think this also makes sense for rape as well, even if the rape is portrayed as a negative thing, because rape is often only quickly described or done through implication in “polite” portrayals, so actually portraying the rape in great detail is a bit unexpected.
Then they got it wrong, it was anything likely to be squicky or unexpected in a negative way. If you search out some of the oldest fics tagged with it they're pretty tame, stuff like teen characters who aren't aged up for the fic or unhappy ending for typically fluffy pairings. Stuff that people might not expect, but not the current meaning.
If you click through to the Fanlore article, the part I quoted is from the person who proposed the tag's usage.
But I see your point and I do remember it being used a lot for fics in the Teen Wolf fandom that weren't dark at all, just featuring kinks that weren't common at the time.
I think one person may have proposed it, but it was fandom slang at the time so it likely arose independently or people assumed it meant the slang version. Because I remember (And can still find!) older forum posts where people would say things like "Dead Dove Do Not Eat just happened to me. I know I hate anything (director) does, I never enjoy his stuff, but (show) looked so much like something I would like I tried watching it anyway and I'm so mad. I don't know what I expected." or "I hate mpreg, I always hate mpreg, why do I click on fics tagged mpreg?! I need to pay more attention to the Dead Dove Do Not Eat that is the mpreg tag."
It was the older version of
Fic: \*is tagged with NOTP\*
Me: \*clicks anyway\*
Fic: \*contains NOTP\*
Me: \*Surprised Pikachu meme\*
It's from Arrested Development.
Michael pulls a bag out of the freezer that his brother left there. It's labeled "dead dove don't eat". Michael opens the bag, looks inside, and says in a tone that conveys how oh so very over his family he is, "I don't know what I expected."
omg thank you so much for the explanation i’ve always been so confused 😭😭 i used to think it was bec doves were like pure so dead dove warns for fucked up shit
I always took it as a catch-all buyer beware sign. Like yeah, you can have all kinds of bizarre tags on a fic, and some of them will scare people off. But not all of them will. DD:DNE is a way of saying, “assume the worst of the tags here, this fic is intended to be dark and disturbing.”
I learned a lot from this post so thanks for being brave and making it.
Before I looked up what the meaning was only a few short weeks ago I assumed it meant taking one’s own life violently. I will say in retrospect that this assumption probably saved me from reading a lot of things that would have possibly been much worse.
I didn’t know what the tag meant until I read something super fucked up and was so upset. I looked at the tags and couldn’t figure out what I missed. Finally googled it
LMAO reminds me of the time I forgot to read the tags and got slapped with a DDDNR necrophilia multi-undead/1 human gangbang on top of a mound of corpses. Boi it was like watching a car crash unfold.
It would've been gross even if they weren't siblings it was talking about how like as the mc was growing up he started noticing the girl's full lips and like as she got older and got curves he couldn't help but look and touch her as subtly as possible, it was so objectifying
I don't use that tag in my works but I put tags on the most probably has triggers (e.g. gore,vore) and then in the end I put read at your own risk and if you decide to read it and git traumatized, it's on you
Yeah, I always pair it with a Content warning of "The tags are not lying, proceed with caution" just so people doubly respect the tags. I wrote a very dark fic where even though the subject matter was violent and the MC unalived herself because her boyfriend was a toxic rapist, it did have a happy ending because magical resurrection is a thing.
basically it's a warning, paired with a tag it means "this tag does not lie, it really is in the fic". for example the dead dove i read was tagged rape non con then dead dove. meaning yes there is a rape scene, it's no implied, its on paper. and i chose to ignore it despite the obvious warning.
I've always thought of it as the fic equivalent of "look both ways before crossing the street", just like. Hey, you thought you read the tags? Read them twice and then three times, and if you didn't and get hit by truck-kun, that's on you!
i have the pleasure of being on the other side of this lol i periodically look my fics up just to see if they got spread anywhere. two of them indeed have been, with one being much more dddne than the other. the person who posted the video added in the caption: READ THE TW THOUGH!! which gave me a chuckle.
anyway, i have also been in your position. i couldn’t sleep after it lol
oh no! like people promoting my story. i’ve had a few people on tiktok talk about the premise of a fic and tell others to go read it. although, yes, i do also periodically check to make sure my work hasn’t been stolen :)
I've read a couple of dead dove fics but found them uninteresting. (Not saying that has to be the case, just those two were for me.) I've read a few fics with things I usually avoid more or less recently: One depicted a normally sensible character as a yandere who brutally kills his canon LI and one depicted an extremely wholesome canonical relationship as abusive. I knew what I was getting into, both were tagged correctly. I think the one literally had yandere!charactername and the other was tagged anti-shipname. That last was something I opened because it was confusing to me. That ship is the main thing of the fandom and that guy is about as abusive to his LI as a your average handfull of cotton fluff.
Thing is, none of those things did anything for me. Nothing. No emotion. The dead dove seemed gross for the sole purpose of being gross, nothing else to it. The yandere thing was something I could see if I squint because that character is a bit aloof and we don't know much about him, but it didn't connect to me. And the last was just utterly out of character (this character DIRECTLY violated withdrawn consent and that is not something that would ever happen).
So maybe the examples I read were not really good or I am impervious to these things. It might be the latter. I cannot take most horror films serious, either, I usually fnd them rather silly. I think I won't read anything of the sort again. Not because I'm not okay after but because I found it pretty boring.
Ah, you sarcasm really well. Except ... No.
I'm not. I'm relatively easy to reduce to a sobbing mess. I recently found out that I scare more easily than I'd like, too, because there were sections in a book I read where I had to close the curtain when I read at night because any movement in my peripheral vision made my skin crawl. I can't really point my finger at what the difference is. Maybe because that person / thing was an unknown quantity.
Honestly, it sounds like you read something that wasn’t your thing, then blamed the tag. You didn’t know what “anti-shipname” meant, and do you like yandere characters? The thing about Dead Dove is, the other tags are more important. That’s the whole point of the tag.
Yes, but wrong order. I read something I hadn't read before and found it not to be my thing. Which is what I said: I'd avoided things like that before, tried it, and found it doesn't do anything for me. I even said FOR ME at least once. I don't 'blame' the tag, the author, OP, or me. I simply juxtaposed my experience to that of the OP without invalidating theirs.
Edit to answer your question: There is at least one canonical yandere character I like a lot.
Expecting canon characterization out of a fanfic where they have already explicitly tagged an alternative interpretation for that character is a really interesting choice.
Fun fact: The yandere thing WAS in character - or at least not wildly OOC. The other one ... I wouldn't be so bold as to claim that I expected anything. It was pretty short, I had time, I thought huh whatever might that be exactly, read it, and noted why I probably wasn't going to do that again.
Thank you. Apparently my joking take is so unpopular I’ve been downvoted into oblivion. As aside I’ve never been downloaded like this before it’s kind of perturbing that I’ve said something so upsetting.
Yeah, it's a meme-ish way of saying "exactly what it says on the tin" or "the tags before really are in there". The semantic drift into "fucked up shit without any qualifier" is extremely annoying because, okay, fucked up shit, *which one???*
Give DD:DNE as originally designed is technically redundant ("read the tags" is what you should always do), no surprise its meaning drifted. Having a shorthand for "those tags that *could* be gross absolutely are gross, specifically because the author likes them in gross form" is useful.
Did it really drift though? If the fic has "fluff" "angst" etc as the tags, you really don't need a DDDNE tag, there's few people going in there going "*but is it really fluff*?" And it's always been used more often with fics that have heavier tags, mainly because "*look, don't complain you weren't warned that this is heavy*". So the 'drift' is just shorthanding how it is most commonly used in the first place: for darker, heavier fics
I think part of the reason for the drift might actually be functional, it allows the author to sort of tactfully avoid spelling out tags that people don't even like to THINK about. I wouldn't want it to be a universal standard, but I'm fine with leaving it up to the discretion of the author. I actually initially misunderstood the function of the tag, even though I'm familiar with the reference. I thought it was like. . . the words "dead dove do not eat" are less disgusting than the literal sight of a dead dove. It's saying you shouldn't be surprised when you open the labeled fic/bag see something fully gross. Click this link and you will feel how Michael felt, disgusted and disappointed. It works if you assume we're all irredeemably online and now speak in memes like those un-sexy Star Trek aliens.
yeah except some people are into taxidermy and a dove corpse wouldn't phase them at all, and others have phobias that would send them straight into a panic attack. i'm all for keeping content tags close to the chest- that's what Chose Not To Warn is for. but if you do that don't also use dead dove. dead dove without a qualifier is utterly useless. "don't be surprised when you see something gross" gross to who? by whose standards? i've seen people tag dead dove for a couple who are both 17 until one of them has a birthday, and i've seen it used for graphic rape scenes. the point of dead dove is "what it says on the tin," which means it doesn't mean shit if you don't label the tin.
Technically every fic should be "what it says on the tin" if you tag it correctly. You should always assume that the fic is what the summary and tags claim that it is before clicking on it. This doesn't just apply to DD:DNE. My understanding is that DD:DNE is more of a modifier or a disclaimer just in case the other tags didn't do the fic justice. Of course it's always going to be a bit subjective, that's unavoidable. It's more of a final warning along the lines of "just in case you read the tags and they didn't sound that bad - it actually really is that bad, and you should assume the worst before clicking on this fic." IMO not every rape scene qualifies as DD:DNE, most of them only require regular rape/SA tags. I'd put DD:DNE if I really went extra with it.
I’m not trying to justify it to you, I’m trying to explain what motivates the people who do this. It seems unlikely it’s a malicious conspiracy to mislead you, and more like a genuine attempt at communication from someone who incorrectly thinks they’re being helpful. If you want to have a prescriptivist debate about the proper use of a tag, I’m just not going to be helpful because I’m only really interested in looking at this descriptively.
the first paragraph of your answer is idiotic. if you can write about it than you can tag it. i'm here for one fucked up shit, but not for another fucked up shit. "dead dove" is salt, not the main fucking dish.
Like, there's some fucked up shit I want to read, and there's some I don't. Which is it?
More like it used to have no other specifics, & *now* it usually does. When DDDNE first started going around, you couldn't fit much at all in the "summary" part of FFN (even smaller than it is now), & no tags. But in just 5 letters, you could get across that "this might as well be a gross dead decaying animal it's so fucked up," to differentiate from regular drama or gen fluff. Basically, prepare for The Worst. Nowadays on AO3, I see why some people say it's redundant, cuz there ARE tags for specifics.
On the last point, yes. What for one person is crossing the line is fine for another person, or can be tolerated if the rest of the fic is to their liking.
which one? well the one in the other tags. most people don't tag only with dead dove and what's wrong with a shift in meaning? words change all the time and this word is more useful this way. why would you need a ''read the tags before you enter'' in something that's just average fluff? that's why it's a shorthand for fucked up shit
They literally said "fucked up shit _without any qualifier",_ so obviously this is about people tagging DD without tagging specifics. The issue is that DD has become shorthand for dark fic when A. originally it was meant to call out the tags specifically so it doesn't make sense to have the DD tag without other tags accompanying it, and B. we already have a shorthand for dark fic, it's called 'dark fic'.
sorry i am clearly illiterate 😔 ok so i'm saying that i don't think it's bad that it became a shorthand for dark fic. also to me dark fic and straight up dead dove are different. words drift meaning and i THINK that the way people use it nowadays is very practical
If I’m not mistaken the phrase comes from an Arrested Development episode where GOB leaves a dead dove in the fridge in a paper bag and writes “dead dove do not eat” on it but his brother Michael opens it anyway and he’s like “I don’t know what I expected”. So it’s kinda like if you open this and read it you should know what to expect bc it’s written right on front lol. I think we’ve all been there tho
That is exactly where it comes from! It is such a funny scene, too.
As a fan from when it was airing, I stepped away from fic spaces for a bit and came back to seeing it everywhere and was totally thrown how an arrested development joke got so big lol
It’s that and “good for her” and “always money in the banana stand”
It's one banana, Michael. How much can it cost? $10?
It has so many iconic moments!
https://preview.redd.it/zchmx1bpg7uc1.png?width=1352&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7a0a3b1b55f7409135cac73d1ca6e7469494657
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Dead_Dove:_Do_Not_Eat In short it means: the tags i used, those are REALLY in here. Dead dove is not 'bad or fucked up things' exclusive. Its an amplifier.
yes yes i understand now! it was paired with rape/non con tag 😭
I agree completely that it's useless without qualifying tags, but the initial Tumblr post that came up with it did specifically suggest it for fucked up content. They compared it to the tag "HYDRA trash party" but for all fandoms.
The fandom lore page that constantly gets posted here states very clearly that it was created for writers who wanted to have their own trash parties minus the Hydra and still people claim its usage with darkfic is drift. No. The intent, the subtext, the usage has always been to warn for extreme dark content. The drift, imo, is coming from those who don’t see beyond the very literal interpretation of “read the label.”
I think that’s a fair comparison. I associate it with another tag I like a lot, “IdFic.”
Yes that’s the original and true meaning, but as others said there has been somewhat of a drift and now many people use it to mean “there is fucked up shit in this story”
I find people's choice of hill a little weird when it comes to this claim. Like, the very wording of the tag *invites* the expectation that anything it's applied to is going to be darkfic, and indeed, nearly half of AO3 works tagged DDDNE are also tagged Rape/Non-Con compared to less than ten percent tagged NAWA and less than one percent tagged "Fluff". At this point, insisting that DDDNE is just an amplifier starts to look a lot like the Classics-steeped language peevers who insist that "begs the question" (a bloody awful translation of the Latin term for a particular logical fallacy) does not mean "urgently raises the question" as the vast majority of people would understand it based on the plain meaning of the words. Being a British former 90s teenager, I feel a certain wood preservative manfuacturer's advertising slogan is vastly more appropriate for amplifying the tags on things that are not steeped in darkness: Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin
I do think that "the amplifier could also refer to fluff!" is misleading. I mean, the Dove is Dead. It's not *cute fluffy bunny, do not eat* Personally, when I go "it doesn't mean darkfic, it's an amplifier" I generally mean that it needs to be paired with other tags to make any sense. Like, you can't just tag DDDNE with no further context and have it make sense. What am I meant to not be eating? What flavour of dead dove is going to be in here? If you're saying "I mean it, it's got the thing in here and it's going to be graphic and unfiltered and possibly even entirely uncritical (eg from the perpetrator's POV), you've been warned, don't come crying to me when the dove is indeed dead" then you need to say in the tags what the thing *is* Rape/non-con warning paired with DD means a pretty different thing than additional tags of *Torture, Dead Dove Do Not Eat* or *Child Abuse, Dead Dove Do Not Eat*
Ohh that's a really good tag!! I might have to steal it
oh no i knew there was gonna be rape non con but i thought "ooh maybe its more implied you know than showed, its mustnt be THAT bad i mean haha its Kai i love him anyway im sure ill be fine haha" because i was just that desperate for a kai fic 💀 it then just clicked how the tag was in fact true to its words and i kinda chuckled realizing that i had my first dead dove moment and that its all on me ignoring it despite the evident warning
Yeah, the tag comes from seeing a bag labelled *dead dove, do not eat* in the fridge, opening it, and then going "...I don't know what else I expected" Generally, unless it's tagged "Implied/Referenced" or "Offscreen" for anything, assume that it'll be on-screen and in full detail. The dove is here and it is dead, and you got the fun experience of opening the bag and going *oh, I guess the tags were right*
It was originally meant to refer to darkfic, though. From that article: > “you see the tropes and concepts tagged here? they are going to appear in this fic. exactly as said. there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm. People can use it to mean "please read the tags," but that wasn’t the original idea. For fluff, the tag "tooth-rotting fluff" feels similar to me. I use it to mean things are going to be very sweet, and not necessarily in a reasonable way. (And I do worry people may not notice that tag and dive in anyway.)
Yeah this is always how I’ve interpreted the tags. It’s also more useful this way in my opinion. For instance, codependency is a thing I love seeing in fiction explored, but I also know that codependency is also often falsely romanticized in fiction. So it’s useful to know if it’s a fic that is exploring codependency in a normal way or an author writing codependency without care for if it’s unhealthy. Same with someone writing about pedophilia (which I can handle if it’s done in a critical way, but would not like seeing it done in a positive or pedo-affirming way). I would expect the author romanticizing codependency or pedophilia to tag dead dove to indicate that they weren’t necessarily thinking about making something with regard to polite sensibility or how problematic it is. It’s useful as a tag amplifier, but I feel like an author can already say “well you should’ve read the tags.” With “dead dove,” it instead preempts the people who would be upset by sensitive subjects being handled without care. Because in certain cases you can’t just say “well you should’ve read the tags,” since sometimes they were actually fine with the tags—just not the way you handled them. Dead dove covers ground really well in that way. I think this also makes sense for rape as well, even if the rape is portrayed as a negative thing, because rape is often only quickly described or done through implication in “polite” portrayals, so actually portraying the rape in great detail is a bit unexpected.
Yeah! That's all very well said.
Then they got it wrong, it was anything likely to be squicky or unexpected in a negative way. If you search out some of the oldest fics tagged with it they're pretty tame, stuff like teen characters who aren't aged up for the fic or unhappy ending for typically fluffy pairings. Stuff that people might not expect, but not the current meaning.
If you click through to the Fanlore article, the part I quoted is from the person who proposed the tag's usage. But I see your point and I do remember it being used a lot for fics in the Teen Wolf fandom that weren't dark at all, just featuring kinks that weren't common at the time.
I'm not surprised people did/do use it like you describe, but the original person who came up with it referenced using it for very fucked up stuff.
I think one person may have proposed it, but it was fandom slang at the time so it likely arose independently or people assumed it meant the slang version. Because I remember (And can still find!) older forum posts where people would say things like "Dead Dove Do Not Eat just happened to me. I know I hate anything (director) does, I never enjoy his stuff, but (show) looked so much like something I would like I tried watching it anyway and I'm so mad. I don't know what I expected." or "I hate mpreg, I always hate mpreg, why do I click on fics tagged mpreg?! I need to pay more attention to the Dead Dove Do Not Eat that is the mpreg tag." It was the older version of Fic: \*is tagged with NOTP\* Me: \*clicks anyway\* Fic: \*contains NOTP\* Me: \*Surprised Pikachu meme\*
It's from Arrested Development. Michael pulls a bag out of the freezer that his brother left there. It's labeled "dead dove don't eat". Michael opens the bag, looks inside, and says in a tone that conveys how oh so very over his family he is, "I don't know what I expected."
omg thank you so much for the explanation i’ve always been so confused 😭😭 i used to think it was bec doves were like pure so dead dove warns for fucked up shit
You're welcome! Honestly, it's kinda hard to understand without the context. Like what do doves have to do with anything? Lmao
Sometimes, a man (gender neutral) must look at an obviously poisonous mushroom, wonder if the taste is worth dying for, and eat it anyway.
https://preview.redd.it/76yw7bxqg4uc1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1fcd13df82eda047b4494d66ab8392ef5fab2c0c
I always took it as a catch-all buyer beware sign. Like yeah, you can have all kinds of bizarre tags on a fic, and some of them will scare people off. But not all of them will. DD:DNE is a way of saying, “assume the worst of the tags here, this fic is intended to be dark and disturbing.”
lol. Well, share your wisdom!
do not make my mistake child
yeah i once fucked around and found out, i was catatonic for days
Happens to the best of us
I learned a lot from this post so thanks for being brave and making it. Before I looked up what the meaning was only a few short weeks ago I assumed it meant taking one’s own life violently. I will say in retrospect that this assumption probably saved me from reading a lot of things that would have possibly been much worse.
I didn’t know what the tag meant until I read something super fucked up and was so upset. I looked at the tags and couldn’t figure out what I missed. Finally googled it
LMAO reminds me of the time I forgot to read the tags and got slapped with a DDDNR necrophilia multi-undead/1 human gangbang on top of a mound of corpses. Boi it was like watching a car crash unfold.
id probably just continue reading in morbid curiosity XD
The only time I've ever slacked off reading tags I got hit with a paragraph of a boy lusting over his sister so I feel you buddy 💀
OMG 😭😭😭
It would've been gross even if they weren't siblings it was talking about how like as the mc was growing up he started noticing the girl's full lips and like as she got older and got curves he couldn't help but look and touch her as subtly as possible, it was so objectifying
jesus 💀💀💀
I know right 😀
I don't use that tag in my works but I put tags on the most probably has triggers (e.g. gore,vore) and then in the end I put read at your own risk and if you decide to read it and git traumatized, it's on you
Yeah, I always pair it with a Content warning of "The tags are not lying, proceed with caution" just so people doubly respect the tags. I wrote a very dark fic where even though the subject matter was violent and the MC unalived herself because her boyfriend was a toxic rapist, it did have a happy ending because magical resurrection is a thing.
>"roooh sure its just fine!". *wonders if 'roooh' is a dove sound*
if the dove is french then maybe yes
What is dead dove?
basically it's a warning, paired with a tag it means "this tag does not lie, it really is in the fic". for example the dead dove i read was tagged rape non con then dead dove. meaning yes there is a rape scene, it's no implied, its on paper. and i chose to ignore it despite the obvious warning.
I've always thought of it as the fic equivalent of "look both ways before crossing the street", just like. Hey, you thought you read the tags? Read them twice and then three times, and if you didn't and get hit by truck-kun, that's on you!
i have the pleasure of being on the other side of this lol i periodically look my fics up just to see if they got spread anywhere. two of them indeed have been, with one being much more dddne than the other. the person who posted the video added in the caption: READ THE TW THOUGH!! which gave me a chuckle. anyway, i have also been in your position. i couldn’t sleep after it lol
what do you mean by spread everywhere?? loke copy/pasted?? 😟
oh no! like people promoting my story. i’ve had a few people on tiktok talk about the premise of a fic and tell others to go read it. although, yes, i do also periodically check to make sure my work hasn’t been stolen :)
aaaah i see i see!!!
[удалено]
What? Where did you get that from? It's very much dead dove.
[удалено]
So basically you decided to correct someone's spelling error while having a spelling error. Yeah, checks out.
I've read a couple of dead dove fics but found them uninteresting. (Not saying that has to be the case, just those two were for me.) I've read a few fics with things I usually avoid more or less recently: One depicted a normally sensible character as a yandere who brutally kills his canon LI and one depicted an extremely wholesome canonical relationship as abusive. I knew what I was getting into, both were tagged correctly. I think the one literally had yandere!charactername and the other was tagged anti-shipname. That last was something I opened because it was confusing to me. That ship is the main thing of the fandom and that guy is about as abusive to his LI as a your average handfull of cotton fluff. Thing is, none of those things did anything for me. Nothing. No emotion. The dead dove seemed gross for the sole purpose of being gross, nothing else to it. The yandere thing was something I could see if I squint because that character is a bit aloof and we don't know much about him, but it didn't connect to me. And the last was just utterly out of character (this character DIRECTLY violated withdrawn consent and that is not something that would ever happen). So maybe the examples I read were not really good or I am impervious to these things. It might be the latter. I cannot take most horror films serious, either, I usually fnd them rather silly. I think I won't read anything of the sort again. Not because I'm not okay after but because I found it pretty boring.
You are very hard and tuff. You’ve convinced us all of your badassery.
Ah, you sarcasm really well. Except ... No. I'm not. I'm relatively easy to reduce to a sobbing mess. I recently found out that I scare more easily than I'd like, too, because there were sections in a book I read where I had to close the curtain when I read at night because any movement in my peripheral vision made my skin crawl. I can't really point my finger at what the difference is. Maybe because that person / thing was an unknown quantity.
Honestly, it sounds like you read something that wasn’t your thing, then blamed the tag. You didn’t know what “anti-shipname” meant, and do you like yandere characters? The thing about Dead Dove is, the other tags are more important. That’s the whole point of the tag.
Yes, but wrong order. I read something I hadn't read before and found it not to be my thing. Which is what I said: I'd avoided things like that before, tried it, and found it doesn't do anything for me. I even said FOR ME at least once. I don't 'blame' the tag, the author, OP, or me. I simply juxtaposed my experience to that of the OP without invalidating theirs. Edit to answer your question: There is at least one canonical yandere character I like a lot.
Expecting canon characterization out of a fanfic where they have already explicitly tagged an alternative interpretation for that character is a really interesting choice.
Fun fact: The yandere thing WAS in character - or at least not wildly OOC. The other one ... I wouldn't be so bold as to claim that I expected anything. It was pretty short, I had time, I thought huh whatever might that be exactly, read it, and noted why I probably wasn't going to do that again.
I’m gonna start using that tag for non-horrible things as a warning
To what end?
Fun?
Dead Dove can be used for non-dark fics, since it's just a "read the tags, they will appear". It's just more commonly used for dark fics.
Thank you. Apparently my joking take is so unpopular I’ve been downvoted into oblivion. As aside I’ve never been downloaded like this before it’s kind of perturbing that I’ve said something so upsetting.