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equinox_exchangeEquinox fandom nominations close tomorrow, Sunday July 7th!
There is still plenty of time to nominate sources at the main tag set or the safety fandom tag set.
Useful info:
- What sources qualify for "After Life?" (More on this below!)
- What qualifies as a safety fandom?
- How to nominate fandoms
*
When we pulled this theme out of past Equinox theme polls and dusted it off, we said to ourselves, "this is a pretty straightforward topic! Shouldn't be difficult to figure out what does or doesn't qualify!" Since then, we've spent a lot of time staring into the void about the nature of mortality, what "ghosts" are, and what qualifies as "resurrection of the dead."
We've done our best to stick to concrete "yes afterlife" / "no afterlife" canon indicators, but there have been a lot of extensively debated judgment calls along the way. For open interpretation sources where deciding "yes afterlife" or "no afterlife" is deliberately left up to the viewer (like Alias Grace), we've mostly erred on the side of approving those into the tag set. For some other kinds of sources, we've had to work out "this qualifies because" / "this doesn't qualify because" rules on the fly, so here are some additional guidelines for After Life sources going into the last day of nominations:
- Time loops don't automatically count. Is the story about the time loop functioning as an afterlife? If yes, it probably qualifies. If the point of the time loop is "time loop as training montage," "time loop as escape room," "time loop as self-improvement life lesson," etc., it probably doesn't qualify.
- Time travel isn't itself an afterlife. Communicating with the future, meeting people from later in your timeline, traveling to a point after you're dead, etc., might encompass events that happen after you're dead, but aren't really the afterlife for our purposes. (If time travel automatically counted as the afterlife, we'd be opening a whole can of worms that this theme isn't really meant to encompass.)
- Stories where the timeline is undone to prevent a death, time is reversed and all of the characters who died are now alive, etc. don't automatically qualify unless there's something more there that fits the theme. Doctor Who is a big one for this, as there are numerous stories where time is rewritten that are in no way stories about the afterlife. (Oh, so the Doctor undid an entire year in which everybody died? Moving on...) Doctor Who (2005) still qualified via Jack Harkness, among other things, but it wouldn't have qualified for timeline erasure alone.
- Cloning only counts if it falls under the Palpatine Rule. If a character is resurrected from the dead into a cloned body ("somehow, Palpatine returned"), it counts. If the function of cloning is duplication, the clones are different characters, etc. (a whole mess of clone troopers vs. one Jango Fett), it doesn't count.
- Stories where a character narrates their own death only qualify if the story is about the character being in the afterlife or a ghost, and the afterlife or the haunting is visually represented in the source. Lots of sources have "this is how I died" narration that doesn't include any hint of the afterlife beyond the fact that the dead character is providing the narration; a visually qualifying element has to be present for it to fit the theme.
- Hallucinations of the dead don't count as hauntings for our purposes. Is there an actual ghost present? It counts. Is Izzie hallucinating Denny because [spoiler redacted]? It doesn't count. If a source feels borderline on this point, ask yourself: is there solid canon support for that dead character being a ghost and not a hallucination? If yes, it probably counts.
- Similarly: is a character possessed by a ghost or is it a traumatic brain injury / a long con / etc.? If there is solid canon support for an actual possession, it probably counts. If the canon answer to "possession or long con?" is a "what do YOU think?", like Alias Grace, we're probably going to wave that in. If the canon answer is definitively "long con," it doesn't count.
*
Some clarifications needed on nominated sources. If you nominated any of these, please reply here or email us at equinoxvids@gmail.com with your clarifications / thoughts on the source(s)!
- Bãhubali movies: We reviewed the plot of these movies and couldn't determine where the theme fits, but we aren't familiar with the source and would like more info before making a decision!
- Doctor Who (1963): Which part of canon are you nominating this for? If it's on regeneration grounds, while discussing Doctor Who (2005) we determined that regeneration itself doesn't count since it's a mechanism that stops the Doctor from dying rather than a true death-and-rebirth cycle. (Time Lords can die, but the Doctor has continuously regenerated prior to dying - feel free to Who canon debate us on this point, but this is the Who canon interpretation we're going with this time around.) If there are other specific parts of canon that you're nominating this for, let us know! We're classic Who fans, but there's a lot of classic Who and the series premise alone doesn't qualify it, so if we can't pinpoint a "this source was nominated because," we're probably going to bounce it.
- Star Wars - All Media Types: There is so much Star Wars canon, and relative to that, extremely little of it qualifies for this theme. This is one time when we would very much prefer that only the parts of the canon that actually qualify for the theme are nominated, so if there are specific parts of Star Wars canon you have in mind, please let us know, and we can break it down into as many tags as needed.
*
Thanks to everyone who has nominated sources so far!
There is still plenty of time to nominate sources at the main tag set or the safety fandom tag set.
Useful info:
- What sources qualify for "After Life?" (More on this below!)
- What qualifies as a safety fandom?
- How to nominate fandoms
*
When we pulled this theme out of past Equinox theme polls and dusted it off, we said to ourselves, "this is a pretty straightforward topic! Shouldn't be difficult to figure out what does or doesn't qualify!" Since then, we've spent a lot of time staring into the void about the nature of mortality, what "ghosts" are, and what qualifies as "resurrection of the dead."
We've done our best to stick to concrete "yes afterlife" / "no afterlife" canon indicators, but there have been a lot of extensively debated judgment calls along the way. For open interpretation sources where deciding "yes afterlife" or "no afterlife" is deliberately left up to the viewer (like Alias Grace), we've mostly erred on the side of approving those into the tag set. For some other kinds of sources, we've had to work out "this qualifies because" / "this doesn't qualify because" rules on the fly, so here are some additional guidelines for After Life sources going into the last day of nominations:
- Time loops don't automatically count. Is the story about the time loop functioning as an afterlife? If yes, it probably qualifies. If the point of the time loop is "time loop as training montage," "time loop as escape room," "time loop as self-improvement life lesson," etc., it probably doesn't qualify.
- Time travel isn't itself an afterlife. Communicating with the future, meeting people from later in your timeline, traveling to a point after you're dead, etc., might encompass events that happen after you're dead, but aren't really the afterlife for our purposes. (If time travel automatically counted as the afterlife, we'd be opening a whole can of worms that this theme isn't really meant to encompass.)
- Stories where the timeline is undone to prevent a death, time is reversed and all of the characters who died are now alive, etc. don't automatically qualify unless there's something more there that fits the theme. Doctor Who is a big one for this, as there are numerous stories where time is rewritten that are in no way stories about the afterlife. (Oh, so the Doctor undid an entire year in which everybody died? Moving on...) Doctor Who (2005) still qualified via Jack Harkness, among other things, but it wouldn't have qualified for timeline erasure alone.
- Cloning only counts if it falls under the Palpatine Rule. If a character is resurrected from the dead into a cloned body ("somehow, Palpatine returned"), it counts. If the function of cloning is duplication, the clones are different characters, etc. (a whole mess of clone troopers vs. one Jango Fett), it doesn't count.
- Stories where a character narrates their own death only qualify if the story is about the character being in the afterlife or a ghost, and the afterlife or the haunting is visually represented in the source. Lots of sources have "this is how I died" narration that doesn't include any hint of the afterlife beyond the fact that the dead character is providing the narration; a visually qualifying element has to be present for it to fit the theme.
- Hallucinations of the dead don't count as hauntings for our purposes. Is there an actual ghost present? It counts. Is Izzie hallucinating Denny because [spoiler redacted]? It doesn't count. If a source feels borderline on this point, ask yourself: is there solid canon support for that dead character being a ghost and not a hallucination? If yes, it probably counts.
- Similarly: is a character possessed by a ghost or is it a traumatic brain injury / a long con / etc.? If there is solid canon support for an actual possession, it probably counts. If the canon answer to "possession or long con?" is a "what do YOU think?", like Alias Grace, we're probably going to wave that in. If the canon answer is definitively "long con," it doesn't count.
*
Some clarifications needed on nominated sources. If you nominated any of these, please reply here or email us at equinoxvids@gmail.com with your clarifications / thoughts on the source(s)!
- Bãhubali movies: We reviewed the plot of these movies and couldn't determine where the theme fits, but we aren't familiar with the source and would like more info before making a decision!
- Doctor Who (1963): Which part of canon are you nominating this for? If it's on regeneration grounds, while discussing Doctor Who (2005) we determined that regeneration itself doesn't count since it's a mechanism that stops the Doctor from dying rather than a true death-and-rebirth cycle. (Time Lords can die, but the Doctor has continuously regenerated prior to dying - feel free to Who canon debate us on this point, but this is the Who canon interpretation we're going with this time around.) If there are other specific parts of canon that you're nominating this for, let us know! We're classic Who fans, but there's a lot of classic Who and the series premise alone doesn't qualify it, so if we can't pinpoint a "this source was nominated because," we're probably going to bounce it.
- Star Wars - All Media Types: There is so much Star Wars canon, and relative to that, extremely little of it qualifies for this theme. This is one time when we would very much prefer that only the parts of the canon that actually qualify for the theme are nominated, so if there are specific parts of Star Wars canon you have in mind, please let us know, and we can break it down into as many tags as needed.
*
Thanks to everyone who has nominated sources so far!
