What does the ao3 tag dead dove: do not eat mean?
Hi anon,
Essentially it’s a generic darkfic warning.
The name comes from a scene in Arrested Development where a character finds a package in a refrigerator labelled, “DEAD DOVE: Do Not Eat!”
Curious, he opens the package anyway and discovers it contains exactly what the label says: a dead dove. The character then says to himself, “I don’t know what I expected.”
“I don’t know what I expected” became a meme in and of itself, used in situations where people choose to look at things that are probably going to be unpleasant, and find out that they are, indeed, unpleasant.
The use of “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” as a tag for fanfiction was suggested by @mostlyvalid as a way to tell readers that, seriously, this fic contains something unpleasant – you have been warned. If you choose to ignore that warning and open the fic, then get upset by the unpleasant content, well, we don’t know what you expected.
It’s also a great way to find darkfic, if that’s your pleasure on a given day.
And I have done some fandom stats about the tag, if you want a few quantitative insights about the tag and its common themes.
