Marvel Cinematic Universe

The issue of being Stuffed in the Fridge is kind of a universal phenomenon in the same way that the Mary Sue term evolved. Even the most privileged character can fall prey to the trope as a result of bad writing. It's a term that describes how the narrative uses and treats the character, not who or what the character is.

edited 26th May '15 9:44:52 PM by AlleyOop

It's not just that.
Part of it is that Scarlet Witch (who was able to in mere SECONDS of being able to read Ultron's mind was able to realize he was evil, so evil that she would go and join her worst enemies) fell in with and supported HYDRA fully, even defying orders to go and protect a HYDRA base.
Part of it is that she's incredibly weak to rhetoric and seems to slip through leader's based entirely on charisma — from Strucker to Ultron to Captain America — without changing how she actually acts and without much apparent thought (coupled with killing Strucker as soon as she went with Ultron and killing Ultron soon after she moved to support Captain America).
She's also very hypocritical and doesn't seem to actually believe what she claims to believe. To get back at Tony for a shell he wasn't even related to the firing of, she loosed Hulk on an African city; but if Tony Stark was the Tony Stark her narrative of him painted, he wouldn't have went and stopped the Hulk. The Tony Stark of her narrative would have let him burn himself out on the city then collect him when he was back to being Banner. She was sentencing a city to death — it only survived because she judged Tony incorrectly.
Her actions as a 'good guy' barely qualify either. The only not ambiguous "heroic" thing she did was stopping the train from crashing into others, and that was under direct orders from Captain America. Her other actions as a supposed 'hero' were leaving her brother as he died to go and avenge his still breathing corpse and going to defend the Starting Device (which is a bit more heroic, sure, but it's also highly vengeance driven in how she goes about it. She's demonstrated the ability to create shields earlier on and she demonstrates that her magic is able to go through vibranium; given this, had she simply created shields around the Starting Device, everything would have been completely fine. But there's a lot more flaws in that scene then just that, so I guess she shouldn't be judged so harshly for that).
I think Scarlet Witch is a good character who can become a good hero, but she's not a hero right now. She's a villain trying to become a hero, or a scared kid looking for guidance and finding all the wrong options. definitely a fuckup and that should be addressed.

((fixed bad s. pagebreaks always throw me off.

edited 26th May '15 10:07:19 PM by alioth

Well...as long as they don't do it in Civil War. I want the Avengers to be only in the background in this one.

There have been attempts at trying to come up with a more neutral term (For a brief period people were suggesting "Matchboxed" for M/M examples) but I think the fact that it's named for such a high profile incident involving a woman causes people to think of it mostly in those terms.

edited 26th May '15 11:07:38 PM by comicwriter

Like, male characters can be fridged, but that still doesn't make Quicksilver a fridging?

He didn't exist just to die and upset Scarlet Witch.

Eh, often the female characters who are fridged didn't exist just to die. They died to motivate male characters, but previously to that, they had some purpose.

Examples? Oftentimes it is because of a lack of character. The ur-fridging, Gwen Stacy, came about because the writers couldn't think of anything more to do with her.

You know, for a guy who pledged to protect Midgard and even left his cushy space home for Earth, Thor doesn't actually spend a lot of time there.

Loki even lampshaded it in the first Avengers movie.

Yeah, I don't think characters who are fridged need to have no character besides "gets killed." I think the thing that defines fridging is the reason for their death, not their personality.

Which still doesn't make Quicksilver fridged, because I don't think his death was really about motivating Scarlett Witch. It did motivate Scarlett Witch, but she had already joined the good guys. I think he died primarily because Joss Whedon, for all his skill at writing, doesn't know how to keep things tense without killing people.

Looks like Marvel's already holding auditions for Dardevil Season 2

Examples? Oftentimes it is because of a lack of character. The ur-fridging, Gwen Stacy, came about because the writers couldn't think of anything more to do with her.

Gwen Stacy was a character before she was fridged. Just because they didn't know what to do with her didn't mean that her character was erased.

Similarly, Barbara Gordon had a character before she was paralyzed. The only requirement of fridging is that a characters death/maiming/depowering is motivation not for them, but for someone else.

And it wouldn't qualify anyway. Quicksilver had too much agency in his death. It was a direct consequence of his choices rather than Wanda's. Consider the following:

• Superman picks a fight with the mob. In retaliation, a hitman breaks into his apartment, finds Lois there, and murders her.
• Lois decides to bring down the mob. She spends months investigating, gathering information, and reporting names to the police. Many mobsters are arrested. In retaliation, a hitman breaks into Lois's apartment and murders her.

While many of the details are the same - Pissed off hitman, Lois is dead, Superman feels bad - only the first counts as fridging. In the first example, Lois is killed off solely to add drama to Superman's plotline, while the latter is a Downer Ending to Lois's own subplot.

Pietro died in a Heroic Sacrifice. That's about as far from Women In Refrigerators as you can get.

edited 27th May '15 7:14:45 AM by TobiasDrake

Exactly...which is why I count what happened to Gwen in the movie version not as fridging either. The moment the character in question has an own agenda it is just a tragic death.

I think the term 'fridging' in general has probably suffered a little bit from being one of the more commonly heard-of (though frequently misunderstood) 'comic book tropes' amongst a more general audience. The original actual fridging incident and the earlier death of Gwen Stacy have sort of mutated in public awareness until it's become perceived as slang for 'female character death in comics' when it was originally much more specific - and valid, in it's original form. Kind of similar to how 'Mary Sue' has been reduced to 'Bad/disliked character' descriptor of choice - not a very specific TYPE of bad character.

I don't think it really has much to do with the character themself, but rather why, from a Doylist perspective, the character died. What did their death do for the story? If it really wasn't there for more than "motivate another character," it's fridging.

It's less about the circumstances surrounding the death and more how the narrative uses that death.

But this is slowly becoming the kind of "what is a Mary Sue?" debate that I loathe for its banality () so that's all I've got to say about that. Point is, whether Pietro's death was fridging or not, it was kinda lame and unnecessary.

edited 27th May '15 7:39:46 AM by Zarek

Ehh, not really. If Electro killed her, that would be true, but the Goblin was a separate altercation entirely. He literally showed up out of nowhere and went, "Hey, you're Peter Parker! Killing your girlfriend now!"

She had agency in the Electro battle, but her agency ended in his defeat.

edited 27th May '15 7:40:19 AM by TobiasDrake

The Goblin didn't show up out of nowhere. He knew Spidey would be fighting Electro, so he followed the big electricity explosion fight in the middle of the city and found Spider-Man standing next to Gwen. Gwen escaping from being webbed to the car to help with Electro directly led to the Goblin killing her, because otherwise he wouldn't have seen her next to Spider-Man and realized he was Peter.

Heck, Harry was the one who sicced Electro on Spider-Man in the first place.

edited 27th May '15 7:45:36 AM by spashthebandragon

That's not agency. That's the same roundabout chain of logic as saying, "Well, Gwen dating Peter in the first place led to the Goblin killing her originally."

The point is, Gwen had nothing to do with the Goblin. In the conflict with Electro, she was a hero. In the conflict with the Goblin, she was a victim. She had no idea what was even happening. Peter barely had any idea what was even happening. He just showed up and murdered her as his first act of supervillainy.

Gwen never volunteered to fight the Green Goblin. Peter didn't even volunteer to fight the Green Goblin, because until Harry murdered Gwen, nobody had a clue the Green Goblin was a thing that was even happening.

edited 27th May '15 7:49:03 AM by TobiasDrake

These two sentences being adjacent confused me for a second.

Yeah, but Harry and Electro were in cahoots. They were on the same team. For all intents and purposes, Electro just had a friend who Peter and Gwen didn't know about who also wanted them dead. Gwen's death is still a direct result of the fact that she wanted to help save the city from Electro no matter the consequences.

Except in the comics, Gwen had no idea dating Peter could have any life-threatening negative consequences. If she knew he was Spider-Man and decided to date him anyways no matter how many supervillains try to kill her, THEN it would be the same as in ASM 2.

edited 27th May '15 7:52:01 AM by spashthebandragon

I'd be different if Harry came in the middle of the fight to help Electro, and then kill Gwen the second he figured out why he and his partner just lost. Showing up after the fact is the problem.

I don't see how the timing of Harry's arrival is relevant. His actions would've been pretty much the same even if he'd arrived in time to watch Electro get defeated or something.

By being there in the first place, Gwen has something to do with Harry. That's the point being made in support of Gwen having no agency in her death.

But being there was a conscious decision on Gwen's part. Peter had told her not to tag along. If Gwen had had no agency, she would've stayed webbed to that car like her boyfriend told her to.

Well to honest I found her entire contribution to the fight incredibly hokey, "Oh my God these 2 planes no one, not even the main characters, knows about are going to crash into each other so the stakes are arbitrarily raised!", I'm not exactly in the mind to defend anything about Gwen's death.

edited 27th May '15 8:08:33 AM by VeryMelon