Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

"In fairness, he's writing a out-of-continuity story with no validity in the main universe."

Ye-no, that means absolutely nothing. We're not criticizing how this affects the main universe, we're criticizing what's happening in this one.

I don't really think most male writers are aware of or care about Women In Refrigerators. Seeing as it keeps happening.

I get the feeling most writers probably don't think about the implications of killing the character off until the backlash occurs.

Plus death seems pretty cheap in Marvel and DC. Unless your Uncle Ben or Batman's parents.

Which makes me wonder, when is the death a case of Stuffed in the Fridge and when is it "legitimate" (not narrowing down the character to the mere fact that they died)?

I'm asking because if you have a character dies, you obviously want other characters to react to it (unless you want to establish the other character/s completely lack emotion, negative or positive)...

Gail Simone said that Women in Refrigerators did actually result in quite a lot of women who'd been maimed, depowered, killed, or forgotten coming back. She says that the difference is stark because, "Now people actually do question whether or not to have X character murdered horribly and how."

She also added that beforehand, rape was commonly considered as a plot element for female characters (though almost never used).

Apparently the culture was that toxic beforehand that they NEVER gave any thought to female characters and consequences.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 21st 2019 at 10:16:41 AM

If they have agency in their deaths, for example it involved something they chose to do (e.g. performing a Heroic Sacrifice, dying in battle, certain kinds of suicide), doing so in a way that makes sense for their character especially if it caps off a character development arc of some kind. It also preferably shouldn't be used with the primary goal of cheaply making a male character sad (so female Red Shirts dying is not necessarily this).

It's for this reason I don't consider Black Widow's death in Endgame an example of Stuffed in the Fridge, odious of a choice as it is. Nor do I consider Steve Rogers diving into the ice while Peggy is left to mourn as a brilliant Gender Flip subversion of the trope as some have proclaimed, because he had the kind of agency and purpose true examples lack.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 21st 2019 at 1:21:28 PM

Also, killing chararter to other feel bad abput it s a very old trope and dont think it wont be gone in a very long time(like never actually).

I honestly think that, aside from Gail Simone’s website, the best analysis of women in refrigerators is actually Spider-Gwen by Latour and Rodriguez. The whole series picks apart Gwen Stacy’s death by showing a world where Peter died instead, and actually has her meet the version of herself who will be thrown off of a bridge and killed.

By the end of the series a version of Gwen Stacy has committed herself to traveling to other universes and saving her own life, so that she can get a chance to live and be her own person, not defined by her death. The Gwens even meet for brunch sometimes.

May sound rude but you know what we're talking about, right? We're not talking about just "characters". This trend tends to crop up when it comes to female characters.

Edited by fredhot16 on Oct 21st 2019 at 11:32:54 AM

The last person I remember using it was Ryan Reynolds, apologizing for fridging Deadpool's girlfriend Vanessa - a fan-favorite female character killed off to make Wade feel some feels for five minutes in one of the most flagrant and textbook fridgings of the decade - in Deadpool 2.

Ah, that's who it was. Thanks.

I didn't watch it, how blatant was it?

Pretty much starting the damn movie, we see Wade being sad, we see a flashback to what happen were Wade is fighting some guys and one bullet hit and killing her....cut to the opeing of the movie.

Edited by unknowing on Oct 21st 2019 at 3:40:27 PM

Is this true, anybody else who saw this?

Now that is rude but yes, more or less that happen, in fact the title of the opening saw something like "wait, you did it?" lampshading the whole thing.

And to be fair(a little bit of fair, no much), her death is pretty much wade main motivation in doing stuff for the whole movie as he try to help a kid call russell who have powers.

Yeah, that little "to be fair" is the problem we're talking about here. You are saying her death is the reason that he starts doing stuff, right? To be sure?

Edited by fredhot16 on Oct 21st 2019 at 12:48:25 PM

Oh that was to tobias saying it make him feel fore five minutes, he dosent forget about it which is pretty little consolation step all things considered.

It's the catalyst for the events of the movie. He attempts to commit suicide and then she pushes him telling him he still has important things to do with his life, which kicks off the plot to help Russell, and then he meets Cable whose time travel allows him to thankfully go back and undo her death. Five minutes is exaggerating because if anything it goes in the opposite direction of periodically cutting into the middle of the madcap hijinks to milk her tragic death as a plot device for Wade's Mangst and character development.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 21st 2019 at 4:08:19 AM

There's a few scenes where Vanessa shows up in Wade's mind-space or whatever in a role that's kinda/sorta like Death's role from the comics if you turn your head and squint a bit.

But that's about it. Once Wade meets Russell and Cable, Vanessa's death ceases to have any impact on the plot whatsoever - save for a brick joke at the end, where he uses Cable's time machine to undo it.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 21st 2019 at 2:26:36 AM

To return to the world of Spider-Man for a bit.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, Mary-Jane had to deal with a rich man named Jonathan Caesar who was stalking her and was not used to being told "no". While he was eventually arrested, he had just enough pull from behind bars to mess with MJ's life by having her and Peter evicted from their building and torpedoing her fashion career. When he got out of prison he tried to kill MJ only to be killed by Hal Goldman, another stalker who was obsessed with her.

There were certain fans who decried this story as being "melodramatic" and that it was "trying to make us feel sorry for a hot super model". I wonder how they feel now in light of everything the Me Too movement has revealed.

Probably about the same. The kind of person who would whine about "trying to make us sympathize with a hot supermodel" is the same kind of person that would whine about "False rape accusations ruin innocent men's lives!"

So basically the people who would become incels or incel sympathizers. The people who hate attractive women for not putting out for them.

Edited by M84 on Oct 22nd 2019 at 1:29:28 AM

Interestingly, in the 2nd Season of GLOW, the main character ends up in a room with her boss and is clearly expected to sleep with him before she rushes out after she realizes what has been done. When she goes to her female co-worker (after the show is moved to a dead time slot because of it), said female co-worker goes ballistic at her—for ruining their chances. GLOW being set in the 80s, she basically says that she should have used a bunch of excuses to not "emasculate" him or flat out have slept with him because that is how things got done.

It was a pretty powerful moment, albeit made people hate Deborah who had normalized the behavior in her career as a soap opera star (and been implied to have been in the same position many times).

"trying to make us feel sorry for a hot super model"

What? Why is this a complaint?

Some people feels that once you reach certain status, then it means that you can't be harmed and all harm to you is minor.

Add sexism and it becomes even worse.