how to avoid fridging female characters

Some writers jump to "female" issues, like pregnancy or abusive men. Finally, a little lampshading might be useful. Let her stay happy and single. We can't root for a billionaire tech genius in a bat suit without a couple of murdered parents in his backstory, or Kryptonian goodness incarnate without the loss of his entire homeworld. ", How to Avoid Creating Female Character Stereotypes in Your Writing, https://misslunarose.home.blog/2019/05/24/why-readers-like-glitter/, https://misslunarose.home.blog/2020/04/25/mary-sue-test/, Tasha Robinson: We're losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucy is an author, script editor, and award-winning blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Is it better to fridge a protagonists father than their mother? To wrap female characters up in cotton wool and protect them from bad things wouldn't be good representation (or good drama) but fridging is the opposite extreme. If you are writing a story for a mixed-gender audience, your cast should be about 50% female, and the women should get about equal screen time. In terms of further checks, the first thing Id suggest doing is gender-swapping some key chapters and reading them through. Consider a teen classic movie like Mean Girls. Plus, given the frequency with which women have seen female characters (wives, daughters, sisters, mothers) fridged to give male protagonists some motivation, theres a genuine sense of gratitude towards writers who deliberately dont make that choice. First, Ill say that like most considerations of this type, fridging is something writers should be aware of so they can make informed decisions, but its not the death knell for a book. Like any literary convention, fridging has absorbed context with its use, and its now a more complex and potentially damaging device than it might appear. "Fridging Women": How the Comics Industry Flubs Female Characters Deadpool 2 and The amazing spider man 2 are examples but more examples are in the above post.There is even a website about it.Its usually considered a bit sexist. This isn't meant as, for example, a defense of the poor writing of the "come home to find a . You know, to actually end up growing into a kind adult who appreciates the privileges he has. Just try to give her other personality traits besides being boy crazy, like she could be really smart or creative, or a really friendly person. Try to figure out their personality (maybe look into something like Myers Briggs for ideas to keep each person unique and consistent). Unfortunately, it's all beholden in the eye of the audience. Give a leading lady an active role throughout the story, not just one or two moments of usefulness. The Joker shows up at Barbara Gordon's apartment, physically and sexually assaults her, and as a direct result Batman is finally pushed over the edge (or so it seems) to give readers what is considered to be one ofhisgreatest stories. But they can also be as evil, vicious, vindictive, manipulative and destructive as any man also. How could have an affect on the audience however if they form a strong attachment. What kind of event is enough to justify telling a whole story about the reaction? He also attributed "the wholesale slaughter" of female characters being "easier" for writers to do because they are fewer in number, significance and are mostly "cookie-cut outs" of each other. Thanks!". 'Fridging' is an unholy mix of points #2 and #4 on this list. Well, fridging refers to a character (usually female) getting killed off solely to further the story of a (usually male) character. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Deadpool 2 fridging debate was when one of its writers, Rhett Reese, confessed to not . Learning how to avoid female stereotypes and clichs will strengthen your writing and make your work more enjoyable to read. Providing character development for the protagonist is the writer's motivation (not because the writer is a sadist but because they're focused on pushing the protagonist's story forward; in either case fridging the female character is a means to an end). More on our Privacy Policy. Just remember you can be vulnerable, unreliable, uncertain, or even physically weak and still be a strong character. 'Succession' recap, season 4, episode 6, 'Living+' : NPR The simplistic nature of fridging has also led to many identifying it as a sexist trope. Also, whether being nudged out of genre is good or bad is also a personal choice. I would say its not the trope in this case its how you use it that makes it work or not. Men are allowed to need help from women too. He isnt ready to fall in love again, he isnt ready to even sleep with anyone again, but hes moving at his own pace. Mary Sues can also be male. Fridging is trope in fiction where a character (mostly female) is killed to progress the story of the protagonist. I personally can't stand seeing someone slowly tortured. PNP Change of Command Ceremony and Retirement Honors for - Facebook The name Women In Refrigerators, usually shortened to just fridging or fridged, was coined by comics writer Gail Simone in 1999. Thank you for the advice! So, it doesnt necessarily have to lead to the protagonists rage, but its primarily a spur for another characters reaction. 8) Stop 'Fridging' Female Characters Short for 'women in refrigerators' , this trope was named by comics writer Gail Simone. Even when you're aware that it's an issue, it's difficult to make work. 232 - Avoiding the Fridge - Mythcreants Cookies are delicious and ours help make your experience here better. r/movies on Reddit: Why is fridging a character bad? One would think writers would know how to avoid these poor characterizations nowadays, when it's been done a thousand times already. That is, protagonist and antagonists are more interesting and more complex when they stand in the way of each others mutually exclusive goals, but where they have a greater sense of purpose than beating one person. The issue with something like fridging is that it plays off assumptions that are normalized in everyday society most authors who use fridging dont hate women, theyve just absorbed the sense that killing a female character is a perfectly fine way to motivate a male character so reading through with these societal pressures reversed can help things stand out. The more authors overuse fridging, the less versatility it has left for those authors who want to use it in a considered and effective way. Research source, Stereotypes don't have to be related to a character's physical characteristics. Diverse female characters will help you avoid stale tropes. In a way it's hard around that and it is going to depend on their relationship. Generally, fridging refers to killing off a female character not because of anything to do with them, but because of how it will affect other (typically male) characters. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. [3] Someone with different preferences and beliefs. Over time, individual authors treating women as objects to motivate men feeds into a larger societal narrative of men as dominant, active people and women as passive, reactive objects. incredible inborn magical talent, super duper rich) but may have tragic backstories to show how far they've come. The moment works because Mr. Crepsley is an established character there to do more than just die; his death isnt just a loss to the protagonist and a sympathetic cue to the reader, but a loss to the world and a tragedy in its own right. RELATED: 10 Most Overrated Superhero Films From The Last 5 Years. "The steps on how to make my girl characters more interesting, but not perfect, has been very useful. If you only have one major female character, you may be tempted to make her hyper-competent, to show that you believe women can be capable too. Directory 9. Men in adventure stories regularly sacrifice their lives to either save the world, the group or just give the protagonist a head start. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. One is the Disposable Woman -- a female character created solely to be hurt or killed for the purposes of advancing the story. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. Fridging can be an ugly blemish on fan-favorite stories or make lesser ones look even worse. Great fiction is built on authors going against general advice. Use Black Men. Nayanika (Geetanjali Thapa) - the actress and 'kept woman' of felon Bunty Shinde (Jatin Sarna) has to die to . Or if they do, show how this is wrong. Fridging The Women In Sam's Life "Fridging" or "Women In Refrigerators" was a term originally coined by comic book writer Gail Simone. I'm writing a book about a girl who can "jump" into books. Fridging is the practice of killing off or hurting a minor character in order to motivate or torture a main character. As a standalone story,The Killing Joke is textbook fridging. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. "Women in Refrigerators" or "fridging women" is a term coined by Gail Simone , which is used to refer to the disempowerment or maiming of female characters. Last Updated: August 24, 2022 As well as an exhaustive list of heroines on ice, Simone also created a list of responses to the site from industry professionals -- and she snagged some top drawer responders. 1. Utilizing female characters as assets to their male counterparts contributes to the sexism women are subjected to their entire lives. Or am I seriously over-thinking this and should throw gender out of the equation entirely, and just go with what my story-telling gut is saying?? Some responses were neutral and others were positive. But she told him him hes not a killer. A character who subverts that trend would be someone like Junoshe doesn't want to have a baby or get an abortion, so she decides to do the grown-up thing and find a good parent for her child.". Remember, men don't need women to be happy either. Diversity and Inclusion, Help Central If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. In a perfectly mixed-gender story, about 25% of the conversations would be between women, 50% would be between a woman and a man, and 25% would be between men. In a landscape where protagonists and antagonists tend to be male, this creates a situation where a womans suffering becomes an incidental moment in a conflict between men, even if thats not the intention of the author depictions of death, mutilation, and rape accidentally, purposefully, or carelessly position the man as the victim of these acts and the woman as the vessel through which theyre delivered. This act is not meant as a way to spur the MC on a revenge rampage, but as a plot point that leaves the MC with a child, and an aimless future. Therefor, despite being in his twenties back then, they were still able to force him to marry somebody else. My twist, though, is he only thinks she is dead. Thanks to two of the biggest superhero movie releases of 2018,Avengers: Infinity WarandDeadpool 2,using the troublesome trope to hang key plot points on, the term has reentered our conversations about comic book-related media. Its not the sole motivation for the carnage that follows, but its a specific enough act that Wick pursues individual revenge against those who have it, killing multiple people during the opening of John Wick Chapter 2 in a symbolic reclamation. This is specific because this is the SPECIFIC trope that's been used so often it's become a crutch and a problem. If you have no other female characters, this becomes especially noticeable. Just to clarify: is the fridging the inciting event? Attention is often called to the Mary Sue, sometimes at the expense of the plot. Intentional or not, having a woman locked up like an object the male protagonist keeps is a perfect encapsulation of how Nolan often fails his female characters. The term was coined by comic book writer Gail Simone. More characters will not lessen the sting of seeing opportunities missed. As the Women In Refrigerators site proves, women are more likely to be fridged through a combination of the trope's roots in damselling and the aforementioned explanations offered by Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman. I havent seen this misuse of the term myself, but as ever, any artistic term is vulnerable to creeping meaning. 11 common mistakes writing female characters - Kat Clay [11], Several comic book creators indicated that the list caused them to pause and think about the stories they were creating. Also, I think you are really asking how to make it non-cliche (Man upset woman killed so he kills). Darren Shans Killers of the Dawnkills off Larten Crepsley, the protagonists mentor, in an incredibly effective moment that also transitions the hero into a new stage of life. Sure, that's fine. Required fields are marked *. This is more of a side character, but Im still developing his own story. Male characters are more likely to be the beneficiaries of Stuffed Into The Fridge anguish partly because they outnumber female ones, are treated as being less disposable, and because we tend not to automatically empathize with them in the way we do with female ones. In a story for predominantly male audiences, there may be fewer conversations that pass the Bechdel Test. The men in these stories are wholly replaceable and their deaths have to work a lot harder to motivate the protagonists. She stops looking down on people who aren't as smart as her. Not all of these women are poorly written, but it is a red flag. Avengers: Infinity War, the most recent comic book movie prior to Deadpool 2, had fans and critics discussing Gamora's death as an example of fridging, for example. He realizes his errors now, and is trying his best to fix them. The Problem With Gamora's Avengers: Infinity War Storyline, Not Even Time Travel Can Undo Deadpool 2's Fridging Problem, Deadpool 2 Director Responds to Fridging Criticisms, 'The Killing Joke' Revisited: How The Graphic Novel Stands Up 28 Years Later. Photo Credit: Buena Vista Pictures 2. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. In real life you would have to be a narcissist, or for a male, some sort of chauvinist, to believe that the world is spinning around you, but in fiction it's really true. Lucy V. Hay is a Professional Writer based in London, England. The reason the device is treated differently for men and women is that theres a long history of it being used to sideline women and little to no history of it being used to sideline men. Don't just do a cursory scan of TV tropes on fridging and related tropes. The underwear is wrong or non-existent. Arrow - The Disturbing Trend of Fridging Female Characters - Yahoo! Focus more on their wants and desires, their traumas, and their relationships with the other people in the story. Tip: Being a "Mary Sue" isn't about basic details like eye color or sad backstories. Is there an effective way of killing off a female character, with a male protagonist, and it NOT coming off as a little misogynist? In both cases, women are reduced to plot devices and their bodies to objects; either serving as the reward for a job well done or as the brutalized impetus to inspire a man to action. I've seen her work and it's not something you want to aspire to. The name was inspired by a storyline in 1994's Green Lantern #54, in which Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern) arrives home to find the dead body of his girlfriend Alex DeWitt stuffed inside his refrigerator. Would this be considered 'fridging?' What exactly qualifies as fridging Mary Sues tend to have many things handed to them (e.g. Based on what you've said here, I'm not completely sure if this would qualify as fridging, but it seems dangerously close. When I referred to a female character being depicted as a male protagonists property above, it was for a specific reason. My issue with the term fridging is that almost everyone uses it for the death of a female character regardless of how it happened and MOST of the time it is used incorrectly. Thankfully, it was always a blunt instrument, and authors are free to take the opportunity to explore more integrated and expressive forms of motivation for their characters. The name Women In Refrigerators, usually shortened to just fridging or fridged, was coined by comics writer Gail Simone in 1999. Or, as Sarkeesian notes, a digital reward inGod of War III in the form of a PlayStation Trophyfor using a half-naked woman's body as aliteral objectto wedge open a door after liberating her from a sexually violent god. She received a B.A. So, as an author, how do you avoid fridging? You already said it causes him to act. [11] Additionally, arguments on the merits of the list were published on comic-book fan sites in early 1999. She learns to ask for help in coping with her PTSD from her difficult past. Avoid The Clich "Strong Female Character" | BookBaby Blog (The family name is huge, and has this certain business I wont get into as Im not comfortable with sharing all of my ideas. This excessively grim crimeinspired Simone to set up a website under the same name as the trope, dedicated to listing as many examples of fridging as possible. The origin of the term came from the 1994 comic The Green Lantern #54.The hero, Kyle Rayner, returns home to find his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, killed and stuffed in a refrigerator. It refers to female characters that are killed or hurt to move the male's story arc forward. Fridging is a lazy device digging deeper will usually leave you with a stronger story. She did, however, buy him a puppy, and its the puppy who gets fridged by gangsters in order to set Wick on a journey of revenge. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers, and Bang2Write has appeared in the Top 100 round-ups for Writers Digest & The Write Life and is a UK Blog Awards Finalist and Feedspots #1 Screenwriting blog in the UK. Avoiding Stereotypes in Fiction: Female Characters [2][3] Simone and her colleagues then developed a list of fictional female characters who had been "killed, maimed or depowered", in particular in ways that treated the female characters as mere devices to move forward a male character's story arc, rather than as fully developed characters in their own right. So what do you think? Similarly,Earth 2's Lois Lane's death appeared to have been crafted solely to amp her husband up a few gears towards his noble self-sacrifice, but wound up giving her new robotic life as Red Tornado. Give your women different roles, different personalities, and different skills. By using our site, you agree to our. How do I do that without starting or contributing to stereotypes? So, before you start swinging the axe, take a look at these six times you should refrain from killing your darlings, and how and why such deaths should be avoided. the issue with fridging is not that a woman is killed but that she is killed/exists for no reason but to motivate the male character. He isnt even violent at all and never has been. Hence, his parents didnt give him time to at least get therapy before forcing an arranged marriage onto his shoulders. He has also given a lot of her clothing to a person who was a parental figure to his wife in the past, since she was a child. In Harry Potter, Ron's flaw was jealousy. At the risk of saying something unfashionable, the death of a woman to motivate a male protagonist only works because it doesnt work the other way around in the same way that most slasher movie protagonists are females because the reader/viewer cares far more for a womans safety than a mans. Im currently writing a book in which the MCs wife dies 2/3s into the story. In terms of motivating a protagonist, fridging is a blunt tool poorly suited to more complex stories or characters. : How to avoid fridging However, not to mention financial backing, too many clues are missing to revive the once lost whisky. This may happen by relegating her to the less exciting B-fight during the climax. A very simple version would be Character A reading a book, Character B asking if theyre enjoying it, and Character A saying they think the author is going to kill someone off for cheap tension. If a character can be replaced in the narrative by a possession, theyre not a character. They may be murdered, raped, disfigured, beaten up, or forced to suffer through overall horrifying things just so the hero can be sad. Its here that the sexism of fridging (seen more starkly in fiction such as Death Wish) is most apparent; when a role traditionally taken by a woman can be filled by a car or pet, that woman wasnt really being treated as a human (or, at least, her humanity clearly wasnt relevant). Komada Jouryuusho e Youkoso - myanimelist.net Contributor to Digital Spy, The Mary Sue and Anime Feminist. Do you enjoy the simplicity of a quick fridging? Continue with Recommended Cookies. So if you have a cast of 10 characters and 7 are male and 3 are female, if you kill 1 female character is killing a third of all the females in the book! If a protagonist is hurt or wronged, most writers communicate that hurt or wrong as something thats happening to that character. That said, sometimes fridging, in its rawest state giving the protagonist an easy, compelling, sympathetic reason to hate the antagonist is just what a story needs. These cookies do not store any personal information. Her focus, rather, was oncollecting information and insight. The only reasons as to why he doesnt love the woman in the slightest is due to the fact that he was forced to marry. She is colored, headstrong, smart, capable, and distant. It can be handled poorly, and certainly there are reams of instances where it is. Consider family troubles, school/career problems, health issues, relationship troubles, and other areas to explore. As an Amazon Affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases. In the movie John Wick, the premise is simple: the title character is the most capable assassin ever, forced out of retirement to right an unforgivable wrong. Im proud of how I created him. Gendered stereotyping helped pack Alex's corpse in with the meat and chilled vegetables -- a direct invite to the Kyle Rayner pity party. Sure, we may talk about our sons, boyfriends and husbands, but not at the expense of everything else. Why is fridging female characters popular again? (Spoilers) - Page 5 - CBR In most cases, main characters, 'title' characters who support their own books, are male. To make sure this child ends up developing as a person, and out of that buy me this entire mall mindset. So the thing to remember if you want to avoid fridging someone is that every character, no matter how small their role, exists as a unique person. Female authors have become gradually marginalized with the growth in the industry and female fans are attacked and criticized for their opinions. Absolutely its a particular problem when, in a franchise like Bond, it becomes a recurring device thats part of the recipe. I feel that the death is essential and makes sense narratively, but I also don't want it to fall within the category of fridging. In those cases, what can you do? But I feel like I'm missing something. Theres even an argument that Wicks vengeance is his reaction to the larger world killing his wife, though the text of the movie doesnt explicitly go there. Avoiding Mental Health Character Stereotypes. His parents didnt even give him time to breathe after losing the wife he loved. As a small thank you, wed like to offer you a $30 gift card (valid at GoNift.com). I talk about that more in Improve Your Story By Hanging A Lampshade On It, but the basic idea is that you call something out so you can discuss it a little bit with the reader. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. As long as the discussion can also be plot or character relevant, you can justify a few lines detailing this idea how losing a partner really is one of the biggest things that can happen to you, etc. Since protagonists in general fiction (and especially the pulpy, action fiction where fridging is most commonly used,) are so often straight men, women are often the most obvious tool for cheap motivation. Hmm, I know it can't be considered fridging if any female died, especially since I'll have to kill off girl characters too. "Fridging" is a term which is used to describe the death of a female character to further the development of and advance the plot for a male character. The first scene of the series entails Dean and Sam's mother being . But not if she makes a comeback. As with most other tropes. I mean really learn. Write your characters first and then assign gender later. We are entirely reader supported. If they are buddies you would have to make the relationship no different then if she had been a male friend. [12] Marz's reply stated (in part): "To me the real difference is less malefemale than main character supporting character. The term Women In Refrigerators has been part of the critical vocabulary of pop culture for nearly two decades now, but if you're not too familiar with comic book discourse, you'd be forgiven for having never heard of it until recently. This can become painful to read. Over time, the trope has evolved to encompass not only the damage done to a female character, but the consequential effect the damage has on her closest male ally, be it her friend, boyfriend, husband, father, brother or son. In Deadpool 2, Vanessa, Wade's fiancee, didn't have as much . The main character of the film is male, and this act does end up propelling him to exact revenge in the film's . Their Death Serves No Purpose. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 41,659 times. Fridging : r/writing - Reddit The term references an issue of Green Lantern in which the character's girlfriend was killed and stuffed into a refrigerator as a plot device. Contrast Women In Refrigerators with the idea of the Final Girl in Horror movies, a subversively compelling trope that, while inflicting just has much harm as fridging on its unfortunate participants, is also perversely celebratory of female resilience, allowing hard-to-kill heroines likeScream's Sydney Preston andHalloween's Laurie Strode to harness their own pain for self-motivation,notfor the benefit of anyone else. [7], In 2000, several national newspapers ran articles that referenced the site, generating discussion on the topic of sexism in pop culture and the comic-book industry. It's better to have several women, with diverse skill sets, instead of having a single walking talking Swiss Army knife of a female character. If your cast is more male, and you want them to be paired up, try making some of them gay or bisexual. ). Simone also e-mailed many comic book creators directly for their responses to the list. As with racism, the problem isnt merely the one occasion of harm, but how that harm feeds on and into more widely damaging societal norms.
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