Book 3 | That Painful Moment When We Saw Zuko And Katara Reach For The Other From Their POV *sob*

hi!! i keep seeing posts/tiktoks about the fact that katara and azula are narrative foils and that katara is the sister that zuko never had, and that’s why zutara shouldn’t be shipped. I don’t know if this makes sense but like…I know it’s wrong (the premise isn’t but the conclusion is) I just can’t put it into words why it is. Does anyone have any metas about it? lmao

the funeral (a grotesque display of two queens’ grief, forced on them against their will) being interjected by images of aegon beating blood into a bloody ruin says something about how women’s grief is exploited and paraded around as a virtue while male grief is only allowed to exist in conjunction with violence.

female sorrow is expected to be public, dignified, and even noble, it serves as a symbol of quiet strength and resilience. otto uses it as a tool to gain sympathy for their cause. notice how he forced alicent and helaena into it, while he allowed aegon not to participate. wouldn‘t the king being at the funeral send a powerful message? yes, it would. but otto looks at aegon with contempt, the other councilmen and alicent do not know what to do with his tears. the realm cannot be allowed to see the king grieve. not like this.

male grief is denied its own space and validity unless it manifests in aggressive or destructive acts. aegon realizes this to some degree too— he lashes out publicly by killing the rat catchers. he shows his grief by being violent, by spilling blood.

the toxicity of it all is very effectively shown at the end when aegon is crying by himself. did he retreat there to be alone and finally let it all out? his mother is either letting him have that moment alone or she’s deeply uncomfortable with it and chooses to leave. no matter what motivated alicent in acting the way she did— the moment still reveals how male vulnerability is something people fear. it shows that even the most human expressions of pain are not acceptable for some.

What does the dead dove tag mean?

Wonderful question!

“Dead Dove” comes from this scene in Arrested Development wherein the character Michel Bluth opens a brown paper bag that reads: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. He looks inside and sees what is in fact, a dead dove. The then says: “Well, I don’t know what I expected.”

In fandom, the tag has come to mean: “pay extra attention to the tags!” And/or “this fic is what it says on the tin!”.

So if, for example, a fic includes the tags: Body Horror, Gore, and Violence along with the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat tag, the author is saying “Hey I’m not joking about these tags! Read at your own discretion!”

The tag acts as an honest intensifier to whatever tags are already in the work, as the author using it wants to give a double warning for their content, that it may be triggering and that the reader should proceed with caution.

One fic tagged with Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, also includes the tags: Seriously, this fic deals with some serious and disturbing content matter, mind the tags

Thanks for asking and happy reading!

noncon friendship

My personal favourite

I know satoru had flashbacks all the time

The grief I feel for both rhaenyra and healana is soul shattering. They both lost their babies. Luke was so pure and he deserved better. Healana should’ve married Jace. He would’ve looked at her spiders :(

THIS.