Was Therkla fridged by the story? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

understatement

2020-12-11, 07:12 PM

Before I get the backlash that I probably deserve, I’d like to explain the question a little. It’s mainly broken down into 2 parts:

a) Therkla herself, and

b) what “fridging” means in the context of the story.

Being “stuffed in the fridge” is a neologism that’s derived from Gail Simone’s website “Women in Refrigerators”; specifically, on a superhero’s girlfriend being gruesomely killed by the villain and left in the fridge for him to find. The definition originally focused on the act of leaving the corpse in view so that the protagonist could be motivated or feel tremendous guilt/revenge towards the villain.

The definition’s not set in stone, but it broadens to scenarios where the villain specifically targets a hero’s loved one/friend/family member and does something terrible to them, whether it’s murder, torture, or other cruel actions. Narratively, this serves to push the hero further on their track, and the character that suffers rarely gets to be examined in the limelight. Think of almost every Bond girl ever, or Stephanie Brown in War Games, or Shmi in Attack of the Clones. In short, it functions as a plot device, and one with very uncomfortable connotations.

Therkla herself:

Therkla is a half-orc, half-Azurite ninja under Kubota’s employ during the “Assassinate Hinjo” arc. She is introduced as his top and most lethal enforcer who falls in love with Elan, and ends up dying in his arms after being fatally attacked by Kubota for her betrayal.

Therkla appears in exactly 21 comic strips. In 20 of them, it either concerns Elan or significantly references him. So, 95.2% of her appearances in the comic is in junction with Elan. Conversely, Elan appears in 585 strips, and so 3% of his appearances in the comic concern Therkla (and I’m overshooting it, since several are when she’s stalking him from a distance instead of direct interaction).

Now, statistics isn’t the make-or-break; hell, we even know that there’s going to an important ally that’s only appeared on one page so far. Eric Greenhilt has only directly appeared in 4 strips, but his impact on Roy’s character is long-lasting. Durkon’s dad has only appeared in 2 strips, yet it is his connection with Sigdi that shapes the latter’s ideas of selflessness, which becomes instrumental for Durkon to defeat Greg. Less appearances in the comic does not necessarily mean that the character has a smaller impact. The Dark One has much less appearances than Jirix, for example, but only one of them is subject to crazy cosmic theories, and it’s not the latter.

With that in mind, outside of Therkla’s portion in the story (so past the graveyard scene), this is how many times she is mentioned:

#647, with Elan describing to Haley why he chose Neutralize Poison (a spell that is later used once and never again as of #1221).
#672, with Elan telling of her to Haley.
#750, with Elan telling of her to Tarquin

That’s it.

She doesn’t even appear in Elan’s happy ending.

You can argue that Therkla’s purpose in the story was to make Elan realize the enormousness of his mistakes — but that’s my point. She explicitly serves to make him feel guilty. Not only that, the narrative has her specifically refuse resurrection (in a setting where Death is very much reversible, and especially so in her case) so that Elan can be appropriately furious at Kubota. Therkla is permanently removed from the narrative through her death, just to drive in the point for Elan that being a hero is hard.

That’s…a very weird implication being given off here. It is true that Therkla is a side character, so she is not expected to go through some dynamic arc alongside the Order. It’s strange, however, that she must die to have Elan realize the seriousness of the situation.

A couple of quotes from the DtSP commentary that may provide credence:

“Therkla herself came about as a way to highlight Elan’s physical estrangement from Haley. As the romantic couple of the party, I thought it enhanced the sense of separation to have Haley and Elan in different groups. I also thought it would help emphasize Elan’s loyalty to Haley to have a new love interest throw herself at him. Which is not to say that this was a true love triangle; Elan was never going to cheat on Haley, period. But I thought if I could show him resisting the charms of a girl who was very much his type (athletic, sneaky, morally shady with a ponytail...sound like anyone?), it would help strengthen the fledgling relationship between him and Haley even as they were far apart.”

“The death of Therkla also catalyzed the break-up of the party by giving Elan something to which he was emotionally attached, and about which Vaarsuvius felt nothing.”

I’m simply questioning the idea that why Therkla had to die in the narrative in order to achieve this. Couldn’t she live as a war criminal and be hauled off? Couldn’t she leave the fleet to chase her own dreams, once she realizes that Elan doesn’t return her feelings? Couldn’t she have faced Kubota on her own terms, and if she gets killed as a result, it would be from her own decisions and not Kubota explicitly forcing Elan to “make a choice?” Therkla is not a one-note character. She is given some degree of depth (suffering prejudice as a half-orc, conflicted loyalties between Good and Evil, a whole ninja backstory) enough that when her death comes, her impact should not be as small as it was. Yes, Elan learns to be a better hero. This point becomes somewhat moot when the entire next book focuses on him anyways.

Several months ago, a theory had arisen from the forums on the possibility that Minrah would be killed by Redcloak and that Durkon would escape, to underscore the imminent threat of Team Evil and of the Order’s burden on reaching a negotiation. That’s…a very typical example of fridging, especially in regards to a female character, and several forumers had pointed that out as well. The scenario is a little bit different here, with Therkla choosing not to be resurrected (which opens up another can of worms, but I’m not going to delve into that here), but I can’t help thinking that the connotations and “feel” of fridging are very much applicable to Therkla here.

Anyways, these are only my opinions, and I’m not speaking on anyone’s behalf. I know it’s not an interpretation that most people would share (I can’t exactly know, either), but this was a question that I have been thinking about for a considerable amount of time, especially on multiple rereads of the comic. I don’t think I’m out of line, however, when I say that Therkla was probably fridged by the narrative, and that the overall emotional impact of her death was much smaller than Eric’s, or Tenrin’s, despite having a proportionally larger prominence within the main comic.

Thoughts?

dancrilis

2020-12-11, 10:26 PM

Was Therkla fridged by the story?

Yes.

That is not inherently a bad thing.
In many stories someone has to die to drive forward someone elses story, in this element of story that was Therkla for Elan other examples include Haley's Mom for Haley's Dad (and to an extent Haley herself), Eugene for Roy, Durkon for Belkar - and not everyone's role in the story is major enough to justify dwelling on it. Elan specifically is also not a dweller he is a happy guy who accepts things and moves on (and he barely knew her).

Further Therkla effectively had nothing to live for - not really - she had broken with her master, was a criminal (and likely have a string of serious crimes) in the eyes of the remnants of Azure City and the guy that she had thrown it away for was firmly in the 'lets be friends' camp, she had a life in front of her as either a prisoner or on the run or a death in front of her where her crimes were effectively wiped clean and she could explore the afterlife.

Sure she could have gotten a into the Qualified Fugitive Assistance Program in the Empire of Blood and then eventually joined up with Haley's fathers crew and had a grand old time of it using her ninja skills to overthrow a LE Tyrant rather then seek to install a LE Tyrant (or perhaps she could have become Mrs. Tarquin an Elan like character who might have appreciated her a bit more) - but she likely didn't know that was an option and also would have been a fairly odd path for her to follow.

I had for a while kindof regarded her choice to remain dead (not worth living without you) as the equivalent of suicide which never sat well with me (something that I don't particularly like about Romeo and Juliet either - and I do accept that there are stories to be told about people accepting death from heartbreak even if my and large they are not for me) - but in terms of DnD it is actually much closer to retirement, this was not her throwing her soul into a rift this was her taking a trip to a different plane of reality.

She was fleshed out more in 'Spoiler Alert' but for the purpose of your topic that does not be relevant.

In brief her continued life would have as Tarquin might put it cluttered up the narrative for the time on the boats and (unless the Giant intends to bring her back) serves no* new function now.

*I will admit while I think Nale might be the vassel for the IFCC, I could see some other more minor characters acting in that role including Therkla.

Emanick

2020-12-11, 10:35 PM

You may be right about Therkla being "fridged." Unfortunately, it's a common trope in part because it sort of works. At no other time in the story is Elan as angry as he is when Kubota kills Therkla, then cynically surrenders after his cold-blooded murder. It's striking to see him lose control, just once, just a bit. Without going through that experience, I don't think he would have been as prepared for the Tarquin arc. And I don't think there was a way to accomplish this without a meaningful, permanent loss. Therkla herself wasn't developed as well as she could have been, I think, but the effect she had on Elan was written pretty well, IMO. There's a reason why she doesn't keep getting mentioned every few dozen strips - she wasn't part of Elan's life long enough to have been a huge part of it - but the experience of having to deal with a woman with an unrequited crush on him dying because she wouldn't betray him definitely shaped the guy.

So no, I don't think the impact on Elan would have been the same if Therkla had been, say, hauled off in chains, or if she had left the fleet on her own terms. Frankly, I did interpret the scene where Kubota murders her as a scene where she was facing him on her own terms, and where her death stemmed directly from her own decisions (which is not to say that it was her fault, obviously, merely that her choices led to her death in the same way that Roy's leap onto Xykon's dragon led to his). You can criticize her for lacking maturity, or you can criticize The Giant for not writing her as well as he's written some other characters, but I do think she had agency, and was treated as a character whose decisions led to her death.

I was going to link a related quote from The Giant, but I got sidetracked by reading old quotes from the Index and spent the last 90 minutes reading old threads instead, and so I might as well just end this post here, even though there was probably something else I forgot to say. :smalltongue:

nolongeralurker

2020-12-11, 11:05 PM

Hmm, interesting analysis. I'm about to go to sleep, but seeing as no one else has replied yet, I'll throw out a few semi-coherent thoughts:

-The Giant has that quote about the deaths of characters being a result of their actions/choices (or something like that, I forget. If someone can link it that'd be great). Since Therkla chose to remain dead, I guess that quote applies.

-I don't think Therkla's situation is comparable to Eric's or Tenrin's. Eric and Tenrin were both immediate family members of members of the Order, whereas Therkla wasn't, so it's understandable that their deaths hit the characters and readers harder. Eric was Roy's little brother who died young in a tragic, horrific manner that was kinda their father's fault but which Roy also may have felt somewhat guilty about and the whole thing affected how his parents treated his sister and probably made his relationship with his father worse than it otherwise would've been. Tenrin was Durkon's father who he never got to meet and Sigdi's decision not to resurrect him affected a lot of Durkon's life. Therkla wasn't someone who Elan spent a lot of his life having complicated emotional baggage over (for him, that'd be his own father).

-Therkla doesn't get a lot of POV strips, sure, and she doesn't pass the Bechdel test (in the main comic anyway), but I'm not sure she needs to. Since she's a side character, the story isn't committed to giving her a character arc for her own sake like it is for the six (OG) members of the Order, so we don't need to see her POV unless it's adding to the main plot or a side plot. In this case, the side plot she was there for was about Elan, so it's unsurprising that most of her strips mention him.

-Have you read Spoiler Alert? I think you would like it since it's a story focused on Therkla for her own sake. It definitely ups the percentage of pages she has that don't talk about Elan, but if you're just analyzing the main story by itself than it doesn't effect that I guess.

In conclusion, I don't know. I guess I would say that it *is* fridging, but kind of a weird case since she herself chose to stay dead because she was in love with Elan when she could've chosen to be raised if she was willing to only be friends with him. The whole "guy in distress" thing and the fact that Therkla didn't want to have to choose sides were both clearly playing with tropes, so I think when Therkla died but chose not to come back it's a little hard to tell if we're supposed to take that moment 100% seriously and feel sad like Elan or go, "haha, another trope being made fun of." I guess that's why that moment didn't hit me as hard as it might've (aside from the fact that I didn't care that much about Therkla). So I guess, if it *is* fridging, it's kinda hard to tell if it's played straight or not? Which I guess than affects if it seems like an okay thing to do? Like is it okay to ever play that trope straight, if you have a bunch of other (well-rounded) women characters in your story who aren't fridged? I don't know.

(ETA: Looks like a couple other responses came in while I was writing this. Don't have time to read them right now, unfortunately, but I will tomorrow.)

Rogar Demonblud

2020-12-12, 02:26 AM

-The Giant has that quote about the deaths of characters being a result of their actions/choices (or something like that, I forget. If someone can link it that'd be great). Since Therkla chose to remain dead, I guess that quote applies.

That wasn't the choice that mattered. Therkla's dilemma was that she was caught between two opposed forces (Kubota and Elan) and she dithered on making a decision until she was crushed between them. As the song says, when you refuse to make a choice you've still made a choice.

Therkla choosing death is, as Rich said, really just moving to some place else so you don't bump into your ex that often.

Throknor

2020-12-12, 03:19 AM

She got her own story. Buy it; it's pretty good. Nale doesn't even have that.

Ruck

2020-12-12, 04:13 AM

That wasn't the choice that mattered. Therkla's dilemma was that she was caught between two opposed forces (Kubota and Elan) and she dithered on making a decision until she was crushed between them.

Yeah, that's right.

I was under the impression "fridging" implied a wife/girlfriend character with no agency who existed only to be killed to motivate the hero. Therkla did have agency in her own story, and as you said, she dithered on choosing a side until it was too late.

hroþila

2020-12-12, 05:35 AM

This is an interesting analysis, and it's great to read this kind of thing in the forum. However, I don't think I agree with the premise. Therkla being a side character can't just be brushed aside in this context. She got more depth and agency than most characters with comparable screentime. And her not being Elan's girlfriend (or someone of comparable importance to Elan) is also relevant here, I think - Elan's actual girlfriend doesn't exist just to further Elan's character, which is usually the purpose of side characters. Therkla's death made Elan take things more seriously, and that either foreshadowed or was made redundant (depending on your point of view) the ending of the next book. But it also made the confrontation with Darth V go the way it went.

I dunno. I guess those girlfriends/significant others in those instances of traditional fridging were also side characters in their own stories, so maybe there really isn't any difference. But then you may wonder why those characters were not more important in those stories.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-12, 08:23 AM

Therkla was not Elan's girlfriend. The two barely knew each other. It makes sense that the death of someone you have meet for a few minutes doesn't affects you like the death of your father, your little brother, or your actual girlfriend.

Therkla was a character with her own agency. She was the one who chose to project her love desires in Elan before even talking with him, the one who chose to start disobeying orders from Kubota, the one who chose to betray his master, and the one who chose to refuse to be raised unless Elan agreed to be her boyfriend.

There are a lot in her character beyond the fact that her actions in the story also served, according to The Giant, for Elan to show his commitment to Haley (a purpose I didn't notice until The Giant commented on it).

Tenrin is much closer to that "fridging" thing than Therkla. He is a character whose whole point was to be sacrificed so the author could show the emotional scars on Sidgi and the consequences of an absent father on Durkon.

Vinyadan

2020-12-12, 10:31 AM

The definition’s not set in stone, but it broadens to scenarios where the villain specifically targets a hero’s loved one/friend/family member and does something terrible to them, whether it’s murder, torture, or other cruel actions. Narratively, this serves to push the hero further on their track, and the character that suffers rarely gets to be examined in the limelight. Think of almost every Bond girl ever, or Stephanie Brown in War Games, or Shmi in Attack of the Clones. In short, it functions as a plot device, and one with very uncomfortable connotations.

Does Therkla meet this description?

Therkla is really an associate of the villain, rather than Elan's. And she isn't killed to hurt Elan. She is killed because she chose to have Kubota thrown in jail. Kubota explicitly says "this is the sort of preparations one makes when your highest-paid ninja defects to the enemy" (not verbatim).

Elan doesn't love her. She isn't part of his family. She is fundamentally a victim of Elan's good looks, and Elan is human enough to feel moved and sad for the fact that he makes her suffer, because he doesn't requite her love. Plus, he thinks she's cool and capable (as a superhero), which makes it even sadder that she goes into an emotional tailspin because of him. Elan is answering to his ability to make waves inside her in a very responsible manner, but is that friendship?

Narratively, the purpose, as you pointed out (but then not followed?), is to act as a catalyst for the breakup of the Order: Elan is so disgusted by how V talks about Therkla, that he escalates into outright insulting V, then he threatens to expose him to Hinjo, to which V replies with a death threat. V leaves, with massive consequences. It also has the necessary effect of making Elan keener on curing; but is that a narrative purpose, or simply a necessary effect to maintain a believable character?

Did she not get examined in the limelight? We get important panels about her life (her family, her graduation, and a look at her in Kubota's household). She develops a well-explained set of objectives, which evolve over time in accordance to the situation. She is a quick thinker, as shown when talking to Kubota and when taking Elan to the ship, and assumes a leadership role twice (there and with the secret passage).

So, overall, I'd say no.

brian 333

2020-12-12, 11:00 AM

If Therkla had been Elan's 'friend' from Bard Camp, I might incline to agree. But this is another trope entirely.

The blond woman in The Incredibles and every Bond villain's female henchman.

The enemy hireling who is overwhelmed by the hero's charm and thus betrays her master is the correct trope.

understatement

2020-12-12, 12:47 PM

Thank you for the replies. I wish I could reply to all of them in a massive post, but that would be a huge, if insightful, mess.

In many stories someone has to die to drive forward someone elses story, in this element of story that was Therkla for Elan other examples include Haley's Mom for Haley's Dad (and to an extent Haley herself), Eugene for Roy, Durkon for Belkar - and not everyone's role in the story is major enough to justify dwelling on it. Elan specifically is also not a dweller he is a happy guy who accepts things and moves on (and he barely knew her).

[snipped respectfully]

*I will admit while I think Nale might be the vassel for the IFCC, I could see some other more minor characters acting in that role including Therkla.

"Fridging" does not mean a character death to drive the story. I don't think there's any set definition of it, since even in its original context it has changed to exclude/accomodate more narrative situations; however, the core part of it centers around the villain targeting a hero's supporting cast member in order for the hero to take action, with the added "bonus" of the limelight focusing more on the hero instead of the victim.

Posthumous characters are a different story. Yes, their death drives the plot, but their death is already a key part of their character introduction. Furthermore, most of the examples you mentioned don't involve the villain -- Haley's mother is posthumous, already killed by an unknown. Eugene dies of old age (and he continues to play a huge role in the story, so he is not narratively dead). Durkon is killed in combat, by a villain that couldn't care less about the Order, and has an entire book centered around him. Eric and Tenrin are both killed by accidents and already are introduced as posthumous.

Therkla coming back would be neat, though.

Yeah, that's right.

I was under the impression "fridging" implied a wife/girlfriend character with no agency who existed only to be killed to motivate the hero. Therkla did have agency in her own story, and as you said, she dithered on choosing a side until it was too late.

Fridging doesn't really have a definition set in stone, since it's relatively new (and controversial). It doesn't have to be romantic (friends and family can work as well) and there's not exactly a threshold of how much character development/focus they must have.

I'm very much open to Therkla not being fridged in the strictest sense of the definition, but the connotation/general feeling of her death (she dies in Elan's arms, Elan becomes enraged and chases down Kubota, Elan buries her but his monologue mostly focuses on himself, he really doesn't ever mention her again and she doesn't even appear in his dream world) is very, very similiar.

Does Therkla meet this description?

Therkla is really an associate of the villain, rather than Elan's. And she isn't killed to hurt Elan. She is killed because she chose to have Kubota thrown in jail. Kubota explicitly says "this is the sort of preparations one makes when your highest-paid ninja defects to the enemy" (not verbatim).

Elan doesn't love her. She isn't part of his family. She is fundamentally a victim of Elan's good looks, and Elan is human enough to feel moved and sad for the fact that he makes her suffer, because he doesn't requite her love. Plus, he thinks she's cool and capable (as a superhero), which makes it even sadder that she goes into an emotional tailspin because of him. Elan is answering to his ability to make waves inside her in a very responsible manner, but is that friendship?

Narratively, the purpose, as you pointed out (but then not followed?), is to act as a catalyst for the breakup of the Order: Elan is so disgusted by how V talks about Therkla, that he escalates into outright insulting V, then he threatens to expose him to Hinjo, to which V replies with a death threat. V leaves, with massive consequences. It also has the necessary effect of making Elan keener on curing; but is that a narrative purpose, or simply a necessary effect to maintain a believable character?

Did she not get examined in the limelight? We get important panels about her life (her family, her graduation, and a look at her in Kubota's household). She develops a well-explained set of objectives, which evolve over time in accordance to the situation. She is a quick thinker, as shown when talking to Kubota and when taking Elan to the ship, and assumes a leadership role twice (there and with the secret passage).

So, overall, I'd say no.

I'd agree on that Kubota was solely killing Therkla out of self-defense, but the way it's framed (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0593.html) makes it clear that narratively, it's about forcing Elan to make a choice. It all comes down to Elan. The way Kubota gloats about that choice pushes it closer to "villain targets character to spite Elan."

Again, narratively (I do think fridging is very much of a meta-sense type of trope) Therkla is Elan's ally by this point of the story. She's already made her choice to side with him. She dies as a consequence of choosing Elan over Kubota. And I don't know if it's better or worse that Therkla really didn't mean much to Elan (barely even friends?) yet still has to die in order for Elan to feel bad.

I'm questioning on why Therkla has to be permanently removed from the narrative, unable to ever affect it again (we will never follow her afterlife travels, she won't come back as a ghost, she doesn't even come back as a memory/dream) in order for this catalyst of the breakup to happen. Having her be exiled, for one, would serve the same purpose - Elan would never see her again and would feel tremendous guilt/loss for forcing her to move away from her "home." This both takes her out of the narrative, if the issue is character cluttering, and yet doesn't simply cut off her paths just because.

As for panels of the limelight...not really? Still mostly focused on Elan. She is explaining to Kubota why they shouldn't kill Elan; she daydreams of him and muses on his good looks, she's saving him and his friends through the magical power of Banjo, she's struggling to make a choice between a stranger that only knew her name on the night she'd die and her evil master. Her objectives only change because of Elan. Having character traits doesn't make one fleshed out; it only means that they're fundamentally a character.

Thanks for your two cents. I'm really glad I have the chance to read through these.

dancrilis

2020-12-12, 02:06 PM

"Fridging" does not mean a character death to drive the story. I don't think there's any set definition of it, since even in its original context it has changed to exclude/accomodate more narrative situations; however, the core part of it centers around the villain targeting a hero's supporting cast member in order for the hero to take action, with the added "bonus" of the limelight focusing more on the hero instead of the victim.

Posthumous characters are a different story. Yes, their death drives the plot, but their death is already a key part of their character introduction. Furthermore, most of the examples you mentioned don't involve the villain -- Haley's mother is posthumous, already killed by an unknown. Eugene dies of old age (and he continues to play a huge role in the story, so he is not narratively dead). Durkon is killed in combat, by a villain that couldn't care less about the Order, and has an entire book centered around him. Eric and Tenrin are both killed by accidents and already are introduced as posthumous.

Therkla coming back would be neat, though.

I was using those more as examples of death to drive narrative rather then overt fridging (although as you mention that term is somewhat loose).

I think the question might be how would you see the story improved if she had remained alive?
Her death to me seems fairly pivotal in the plot as otherwise Elan would likely not have sought to avenge her, Qarr would likely not have went after Vaarsuvius, the IFCC would not have came into play, Xykon and Redcloak would still be in Gobbotopia and the Draketooths would be guarding their gate.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-12, 02:23 PM

Saint-Just

2020-12-12, 02:37 PM

Under that definition, Julia Greenhilt is the sole character in this webcomic that comes close to fill that bill.

I am reasonably sure that the usage implies "gets killed or at least suffers significant and lasting harm". Merely being taken as a hostage, or targeted but unsuccessfully is an incredibly wider idea (and it has been played with numerous times in OotS, including the Elan's "I didn't know *I* was gonna be the girl" with Therkla being the hero). People who want to focus on overrepresentaion of female characters in that role would probably call it Damsel in Distress, and I also under impression it's not seen exactly as bad as fridging - it's one thing to maker a character helpless, another to make their life (and death) serve the purpose of a (presumably male) character's personal growth.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-12, 03:04 PM

I am reasonably sure that the usage implies "gets killed or at least suffers significant and lasting harm". Merely being taken as a hostage, or targeted but unsuccessfully is an incredibly wider idea (and it has been played with numerous times in OotS, including the Elan's "I didn't know *I* was gonna be the girl" with Therkla being the hero). People who want to focus on overrepresentaion of female characters in that role would probably call it Damsel in Distress, and I also under impression it's not seen exactly as bad as fridging - it's one thing to maker a character helpless, another to make their life (and death) serve the purpose of a (presumably male) character's personal growth.

This is why I said she comes close, as she was unharmed by the end.

(She was tortured, though. Just being forced to hang around all those losers was really taxing for her spirit).

EDIT: Inkiryus and the two children come even closer to the definition given by the OP.

Ionathus

2020-12-12, 03:25 PM

I'm also in the "yes, but not as obscenely as some fridgings" camp.

I think she was given a lot more respect than most instances. Remember that the showdown with Kubota revolved around her own desire to "have it both ways" and try to negotiate between Good (Elan) and Evil (Kubota). She worked some good arguments and take-downs into that scene, and I really appreciated her Neutral outlook even though it resulted in her death by betrayal.

Therkla appears in exactly 21 comic strips. In 20 of them, it either concerns Elan or significantly references him. So, 95.2% of her appearances in the comic is in junction with Elan. Conversely, Elan appears in 585 strips, and so 3% of his appearances in the comic concern Therkla (and I’m overshooting it, since several are when she’s stalking him from a distance instead of direct interaction).
**further calculations follow**

I don't think math is the way to analyze this. While it's a good point that she discusses Elan in 20/21 strips, that's more of a Bechdel Test measurement than a Fridging one. Also, since Elan & Therkla didn't come from the same world, I think it's unrealistic to measure every appearance of Elan against her individual arc. A more fair metric would be to measure every appearance of Elan during Therkla's arc to see if those panels don't connect to Therkla. The ratio remains in his favor nonetheless, but it's a more accurate way to measure what you're talking about.

I’m simply questioning the idea that why Therkla had to die in the narrative in order to achieve this. Couldn’t she live as a war criminal and be hauled off?

Yeah, but it's cleaner to have her die. It's an obvious consequence, it prevents speculation that she'll return even though her story is done, and it's suitably dramatic. It's effective: that's why people use it so much that it became cliche. Tropes are Tools (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools)after all: they only become a problem when people use them thoughtlessly and form a pattern that devalues female stories to amplify male ones.

the overall emotional impact of her death was much smaller than Eric’s, or Tenrin’s, despite having a proportionally larger prominence within the main comic.

Speak for yourself. I mourned her. She was totally rad.

In short, I think Therkla deserved more agency in her story arc. Did she deserve more character motivation than "has a crush on Main Character Man"? Yes. Even so, I'm not too upset about how things played out. Remember that a lot of Women in Refrigerators are just killed off-screen and left as corpses for the hero to find. In contrast with some of the more sickening examples, which make me question the author's & illustrator's morals and views about women, Rich instead wrote Therkla with plenty of respect, agency, and badassery.

I had for a while kindof regarded her choice to remain dead (not worth living without you) as the equivalent of suicide which never sat well with me (something that I don't particularly like about Romeo and Juliet either - and I do accept that there are stories to be told about people accepting death from heartbreak even if my and large they are not for me) - but in terms of DnD it is actually much closer to retirement, this was not her throwing her soul into a rift this was her taking a trip to a different plane of reality.

She was fleshed out more in 'Spoiler Alert' but for the purpose of your topic that does not be relevant.

I've never read Romeo & Juliet as romantic. The early parts, of course, but by the end it's very clearly a tragedy about how divisions can drive people to atrocities, and how stupid young lovers are. It's always felt like a cautionary tale, rather than a beautiful thing, to me. Their deaths are not supposed to be beautiful. They're supposed to be hard.

I agree that Therkla's 'Spoiler Alert' story is great, and everyone should read it if they get a chance.

That wasn't the choice that mattered. Therkla's dilemma was that she was caught between two opposed forces (Kubota and Elan) and she dithered on making a decision until she was crushed between them. As the song says, when you refuse to make a choice you've still made a choice.

Therkla choosing death is, as Rich said, really just moving to some place else so you don't bump into your ex that often.

Yes, exactly. The boat scene, where Kubota poisons her, has always felt like Therkla's story first and Elan's second. Even if he's the one who carries it forward, Therkla was the one who took focus in the scene as she tried to make everyone get along. That was a cool moment, and I appreciated her effort. You can look at her subsequent failure, poisoning, and death as a way to shift focus back onto Elan as a Main Character so he can propel the story along in her name.

Maybe that's a stretch. But I do think Therkla's dilemma (not Elan's) was the center of that scene. She got a heckuva lotta agency. Still probably a fridging in the grand scheme of things, but not an egregious one by any means.

EDIT:

This is why I said she comes close, as she was unharmed by the end.

(She was tortured, though. Just being forced to hang around all those losers was really taxing for her spirit).

Inkiryus and the two children come even closer to the definition given by the OP.

My personal definition has always required the character to either die or completely lose their agency (total body/mind paralysis, curse, soul-stolen, mind permanently broken by torture). If the character and their personality are still in the story, in a recognizable form, it doesn't seem like Fridging to me - just garden variety kidnapping and/or torture.

Peelee

2020-12-12, 03:30 PM

I don't think math is the way to analyze this.

Math is absolutely the way to analyze this. We're just using a wrong transformation.

Ionathus

2020-12-12, 03:33 PM

Math is absolutely the way to analyze this. We're just using a wrong transformation.

But...Bards & Ninjas don't get polymorph??

Peelee

2020-12-12, 03:33 PM

But...Bards & Ninjas don't get polymorph??

Because Bard College focuses on liberal arts.

Emanick

2020-12-12, 03:48 PM

Under that definition, Julia Greenhilt is the sole character in this webcomic that comes close to fill that bill.

Tarquin would argue that Roy Greenhilt also comes close to fitting the bill. :smallamused:

hroþila

2020-12-12, 04:02 PM

To be honest, while I think Therkla dying was good from a storytelling point of view, I wasn't happy that she chose to remain dead for the reason she gave. That was a bit too much for my personal taste, like it stretched the "melodramatic infatuated teen" thing beyond the breaking point. It made her sound silly. I would have preferred if she had been raised, or if she had given a different reason to refuse to be raised, or if Kubota had killed her in a way that made raising her impossible. Hell, I'd even have preferred if Elan just hadn't thought of raising her at all.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-12, 04:02 PM

Peelee

2020-12-12, 04:06 PM

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-12, 04:09 PM

Really? It completely sold the "melodramatic infatuated teen" thing for me. My take is similar to hroþila's: from the moment she entered the story and began to swoon over Elan (who has to be cute/good looking, if we go back to Haley's obvious attraction to him from waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back, and her desire to see what an 18 Charisma looks like under the hood) I got way too much "teenage drama nonsense" vibe from Therkla from the get go.

Tastes will differ on that, I understand.

Peelee

2020-12-12, 04:14 PM

My take is similar to hroþila's: from the moment she entered the story and began to swoon over Elan (who has to be cute/good looking, if we go back to Haley's obvious attraction to him from waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back, and her desire to see what an 18 Charisma looks like under the hood) I got way too much "teenage drama nonsense" vibe from Therkla from the get go.

Tastes will differ on that, I understand.

You know what the funny thing is? I really hate Romeo and Juliet.

Morty

2020-12-12, 04:23 PM

Precure

2020-12-12, 04:37 PM

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, by Simone's definition. She's killed just so Elan can feel bad about it.

hungrycrow

2020-12-12, 05:31 PM

Nale also revolved his entire life around the opinion of Elan and a father figure, and was also killed in order to affect Elan. Would we call that fridging?

Using the death of one character to affect another isn't a bad thing. The problem with fridging is that it sacrifices the story of a female character for another character. That didn't happen with Therkla. She got a complete, though tragic, story.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-12, 05:55 PM

But the way Therkla's death revolved around Elan... is still somewhat unfortunate. I suspect that Greyview would have something pithy to say about it.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, by Simone's definition. She's killed just so Elan can feel bad about it. No sale.

She died mostly because she betrayed her evil boss/master/mentor, the man / character for whom she killed others, which meant that he had no further use for her and, as a variety of evil characters will do, disposed of her in a manner convenient to him.

That's what's in the narrative. Whatever meta baggage you are adding to that is yours to keep.

dancrilis

2020-12-12, 06:13 PM

I suspect that Greyview would have something pithy to say about it.

All deaths revolve around Elan, and all are somewhat unfortunate.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-12, 06:22 PM

"Fridged" wouldn't be the word I'd use, since it generally means characters whose sole purpose is to unceremoniously die to serve as another character's (usually a man's) motivation. But the way Therkla's death revolved around Elan... is still somewhat unfortunate.

Elan is mostly meaningless in Therkla's mental process. Substitute Elan by any other handsome dashing action hero, and Therkla would have behaved in a similar way. Her mind was poisoned by too much romantic "literature". (1)

She was a person suffering from a lack of validation. She was a social outcast, she grew up being either ignored or looked down by those around her. Her loyalty to Kubota was founded mostly in the fact that Kubota was perhaps the first person with social relevance who paid attention to her and gave her a position and a sense of self-worth. (2)

When she meet a handsome dashing action hero, she began inmediatley projecting on him, way before she even crossed words with the chosen object of her love. When Elan made clear he didn't share Therkla's feelings, she felt unworthy, she felt she was not good enough to deserve her ideal man, and prefered to quit the game and remain dead, because she felt she was defective beyond any chance of fixing. (3)

Her tragic story is powerful because that happens to a lot of people in real life, in some cases with similar sad outcomes.

That's how I read her character. I think there was a lot more about her than just being a catalyst to show Elan's commitment to Haley. Any easy-going good-looking girl could have played the role of temptress for the hero, but only a character like Therkla could have played a deep and meaningful tragic role like hers.

(1) Her backstory in GDGU showns her fondness in that kind of genre.
(2) Sangwaan mentions in GDGU that being loyal to the patron that supported her while others would have sunned her, was a common trait Therkla shared with her. There are also evidences of Therkla being side-lined and looked down by others for being a low-class half-breed, and mentions to her lack of social life or dating prospects.
(3) Therkla did identify herself and Sangwaan as "damaged goods" in GDGU. Despite being a perfectly physicaly fit girl, she perceived herself on the same terms as a blind girl with a terminal condition.

Edited to add the footnotes

Peelee

2020-12-12, 07:41 PM

Emanick

2020-12-12, 07:58 PM

I hadn't thought about it like that, and I really like that analysis.

I do, too. It's the best take on Therkla I can remember reading.

Throknor

2020-12-12, 08:17 PM

I suspect that Greyview would have something pithy to say about it.
No sale.

She died mostly because she betrayed her evil boss/master/mentor, the man / character for whom she killed others, which meant that he had no further use for her and, as a variety of evil characters will do, disposed of her in a manner convenient to him.

That's what's in the narrative. Whatever meta baggage you are adding to that is yours to keep.
I'd go further to say she died because she tried for a neutral resolution. If she had committed to turning on Kubota she would have captured or killed him when getting to the ship and he couldn't have killed her (at least not then). If she had stuck with her given job she would have left the island without Elan (perhaps after killing him) and would have either helped kill the Katos or simply returned to her ship. Not realizing Kubota would rather kill her than lose was what killed her.

As for not coming back, why would she? She lives in a world that knows there is an afterlife. She couldn't go back to he life she knew and she was likely facing prison if not execution as far as she knew.

KillianHawkeye

2020-12-12, 11:29 PM

Vinyadan

2020-12-13, 04:55 AM

Elan is mostly meaningless in Therkla's mental process. Substitute Elan by any other handsome dashing action hero, and Therkla would have behaved in a similar way. Her mind was poisoned by too much romantic "literature". (1)

She was a person suffering from a lack of validation. She was a social outcast, she grew up being either ignored or looked down by those around her. Her loyalty to Kubota was founded mostly in the fact that Kubota was perhaps the first person with social relevance that paid attention to her and gave her a position and a sense of self-worth. (2)

When she meet a handsome dashing action hero, she began inmediatley projecting on him, way before she even crossed words with the chosen object of her love. When Elan made clear he didn't share Therkla's feelings, she felt unworthy, she felt she was not good enough to deserve her ideal man, and prefered to quit the game and remain dead, because she felt she was defective beyond any chance of fixing. (3)

Her tragic story is powerful because that happens to a lot of people in real life, in some cases with similar sad outcomes.

That's how I read her character. I think there was a lot more about her than just being a catalyst to show Elan's commitment to Haley. Any easy-going good-looking girl could have played the role of temptress for the hero, but only a character like Therkla could have played a deep and meaningful tragic story like hers.

(1) Her backstory in GDGU showns her fondness in that kind of genre.
(2) Sangwaan mentions in GDGU that being loyal to the patron that supported her while others would have sunned her, was a common trait Therkla shared with her. There are also evidences of Therkla being side-lined and looked down by others for being a low-class half-breed, and mentions to her lack of social life or dating prospects.
(3) Therkla did identify herself and Sangwaan as "damaged goods" in GDGU.

Edited to add the footnotes:
Sounds a lot like a character by Pushkin, "she had read a lot of novels, and therefore was in love..."

Metastachydium

2020-12-13, 06:36 AM

The Dark One has much less appearances than Jirix, for example, but only one of them is subject to crazy cosmic theories, and it’s not the latter.

(You sure about that?)

danielxcutter

2020-12-13, 08:29 AM

Thirding Pilgrim’s analysis. I haven’t read the side books(though I have been spoiled heavily for what it’s worth), but that sounds just about what she is.

woweedd

2020-12-13, 09:08 AM

I suspect that Greyview would have something pithy to say about it.
No sale.

She died mostly because she betrayed her evil boss/master/mentor, the man / character for whom she killed others, which meant that he had no further use for her and, as a variety of evil characters will do, disposed of her in a manner convenient to him.

That's what's in the narrative. Whatever meta baggage you are adding to that is yours to keep.
Ya know, there's this guy who once said fantasy only matters for how it relates to the real world and anything other then that is petty escapism. A certain...Rich Burlew? My point is, meta-analysis should be applied, because how a text relates to the world that, ya know, exists, is pretty important.

Anyway: So the definition of "Fridging": When a (usually female) supporting character is killed off in service of a (usually male) hero's development. And, yeah, Therkla is that. She's certainly that. That's not inherently a bad thing, per say: I mean, The Death of Gwen Stacy was a fridging, indeed, the first fridging (before it wa called fridging, it was called Gwen Stacy Syndrome), and it's considered one of the best single-issues ever written. I think OOTS does some good work making Therkla's death genuinely heart-breaking, but...Yeah, she is a female character who is killed off in service of Elan's character arc progressing. She is a major catalyst for Elan's maturation, living proof of the consequences his immaturity can have. It's kinda textbook. It's not very problematic, as these things go, but...Yeah, it's there.

Ionathus

2020-12-13, 09:47 AM

I mean, The Death of Gwen Stacy was a fridging, indeed, the first fridging (before it wa called fridging, it was called Gwen Stacy Syndrome), and it's considered one of the best single-issues ever written.

It's actually its own, separate trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ILetGwenStacyDie)...and in fact, fits much better with Therkla's story! The definition for Fridging on TVTropes seems to explicitly require "corpse left for hero to find", but I don't have many complaints about the term being used more broadly.

I think OOTS does some good work making Therkla's death genuinely heart-breaking, but...Yeah, she is a female character who is killed off in service of Elan's character arc progressing. She is a major catalyst for Elan's maturation, living proof of the consequences his immaturity can have. It's kinda textbook. It's not very problematic, as these things go, but...Yeah, it's there.

I'm with you on this. Therkla was absolutely introduced and then killed to advance Elan's story. Was she still a kickass character, who got to direct her own actions and exercise her own agency? Yes!

I wouldn't go so far as to say she was done dirty by the story. But I do think, even though the events were a consequence of her actions, you can still look at the big picture and call it a fridging as well. Doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

Metastachydium

2020-12-13, 10:09 AM

It's actually its own, separate trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ILetGwenStacyDie)...and in fact, fits much better with Therkla's story! The definition for Fridging on TVTropes seems to explicitly require "corpse left for hero to find", but I don't have many complaints about the term being used more broadly.

I'm with you on this. Therkla was absolutely introduced and then killed to advance Elan's story. Was she still a kickass character, who got to direct her own actions and exercise her own agency? Yes!

I wouldn't go so far as to say she was done dirty by the story. But I do think, even though the events were a consequence of her actions, you can still look at the big picture and call it a fridging as well. Doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

Dunno. Doesn't the term imply it's bad and carries unfortunate implications? I'd say „it's all right” and „it's fridging” are mutually exclusive.

Saint-Just

2020-12-13, 10:53 AM

Dunno. Doesn't the term imply it's bad and carries unfortunate implications? I'd say „it's all right” and „it's fridging” are mutually exclusive.

Usage (memeplex, paradigm, discourse) is changing. Merely four or five years ago people who was pointing out a problematic nature of those tropes usually added disclaimers such as "any single example is not necessary problematic, but a huge proportion of works with those tropes indicates a problem with the industry". Behdel test has intentionally set a low bar to indicate something that should in reality happen all the time very rarely happens in certain works of fiction. Nowadays I see critics actually talking about fridging as a black mark (not necessary immediately damning but still a strict negative) against the work, applying Behdel test to individual characters etc.

Ionathus

2020-12-13, 11:41 AM

Exactly. Plenty of feminist works "fail" the Bechdel test, while something like Twilight passes it. The individual work can be good and still contain these elements.

Peelee

2020-12-13, 11:46 AM

Exactly. Plenty of feminist works "fail" the Bechdel test, while something like Twilight passes it. The individual work can be good and still contain these elements.

It's not about whether a work is good or not, though, it's about representation and the value of the character in the narrative. Now, admittedly, I still think it's not a great test regarding those (the "if your female character can be replaced with a sexy lamp, you need to rewrite the character" is more on-the-mark, frankly), but it also wasn't originally designed as anything other than a pointed joke, per the author.

brian 333

2020-12-13, 11:49 AM

Modern readers of Shakespear tend to read his stories straight, but try to imagine you live in the 1600s and are watching from the balcony of The Globe. You would be in a crowd of smelly, unwashed people who had to pass by rows of produce vendors selling rotten vegetables to get in, and to the majority of the audience, a two-by-four to the head would have been hilarhous.

Now, the opening scene:
"I thumb my nose, sir!"
"Do you thumb your nose at me?"
"Wait, let me check with my lawyer..."

Had it been written today, Romeo and Juliet would have been a dark comedy. Back then?

By the end the audience would have been rolling in the aisles!

"She's dead!" he faints.
"I'm not dead, it was Sominex. Oh! He's dead!" she kills herself.
"I'm not dead, I was powernapping. Ah crap, she's dead-dead now!" he kills himself too.

Back to the comic:
Samantha only existed to advance Elan's character growth. Her story ends when she is helpless and under the control of a male character. Was this an example of fridging?
Was this an example of sexism?

One must be careful when judging art to judge it for its content and to avoid inserting one's personal baggage into it.

Let's go that direction a bit. Suppose Therkla had been a gay male. The story could have played out exactly the same, but instead of fridging we'd be discusring the Tragic Gay trope.

I do not believe Therkla was Fridged. For that she would have had to be someone with whom Elan was emotionally engaged.

I also do not believe Therkla's unrequited crush had much of an impact on Elan's subsequent actions. He would have reacted exactly the same if Therkla had been a straight male who was murdered right in front of him. The only difference would have been a few lines of dialogue.

Again, the correct trope is Bond Girl.

Peelee

2020-12-13, 12:16 PM

understatement

2020-12-13, 12:26 PM

I'm going to agree with those saying that Therkla's death doesn't count as a "fridging".

Yes, her death pushed the story forward. But really, that's true of any character's death who isn't just an extra or collateral damage. But I disagree that her murder was designed to motivate the hero. It was the natural end of her story arc as an inherently tragic character, and it only motivated Elan for a few short panels until Kubota surrendered and defused the situation. Kubota, ever the manipulative bastard, of course tried to leverage it against Elan as best he could, but his motive to kill her was entirely because she betrayed him rather than anything directly relating to Elan.

The real outcome of Therkla's death was the resulting death of Kubota, which directly led to V leaving Durkon and Elan to go it alone and get baited into her confrontation with the dragon and subsequent soul splicing shenanigans.

Elan being Elan of course tries to learn some lesson from this tragedy and tries to be a better healer and a more useful party member going forward, but I see that as pretty much normal character growth. He had already been on a path of self-improvement since training with Julio and getting illusion tips from V.

OK, yeah, I've mentioned upthread before that I wouldn't strictly classify it as fridging because Kubota did attack her out of self-defense.

I'm just not too on board with the fact that Therkla has to die in order for Elan to feel bad.

(You sure about that?)

Never.

Thirding PilgrimÂ’s analysis. I havenÂ’t read the side books(though I have been spoiled heavily for what itÂ’s worth), but that sounds just about what she is.

The side book about Therkla is great. It's probably one of my favorite stories. Not gonna bring up alignment stuff here, but I think GDGU Therkla fits True Neutral much more than the comic version, and is just a better developed character all-around.

Back to the comic:
Samantha only existed to advance Elan's character growth. Her story ends when she is helpless and under the control of a male character. Was this an example of fridging?
Was this an example of sexism?

One must be careful when judging art to judge it for its content and to avoid inserting one's personal baggage into it.

Let's go that direction a bit. Suppose Therkla had been a gay male. The story could have played out exactly the same, but instead of fridging we'd be discusring the Tragic Gay trope.

I do not believe Therkla was Fridged. For that she would have had to be someone with whom Elan was emotionally engaged.

I also do not believe Therkla's unrequited crush had much of an impact on Elan's subsequent actions. He would have reacted exactly the same if Therkla had been a straight male who was murdered right in front of him. The only difference would have been a few lines of dialogue.

Again, the correct trope is Bond Girl.

Okay, I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to claim, so I'll comb through it.

First and foremost, you would be right about Samantha's scene...if you completely took it out of context, focused on one panel, and cut off everything else to fit your definition. So no, Samantha's scene is most decidedly not fridging, and trying to draw comparisons between them is like comparing apples to monster truck tires. Samantha was killed by Miko. Her dad followed soon after. Elan is not a deal here.

Elan is emotionally engaged with Therkla. He wouldn't have been half as mad as Kubota if he wasn't. He considers her a friend, even if Therkla's narrative role is as an unrequited love interest.

The Tragic Gay trope can absolutely falls under fridging. Fridging can apply to any sexuality, any race, gender, religion, background. The fact that Therkla is female and a love interest is more immediately noticeable because many previous examples of fridging share these traits as well, but if she was a gay male explicitly killed by the villain to make Elan feel bad it would very much still be fridging. Sexism implications is not my directive here. Pointing out Therkla's narrative role is.

And, uh...since many Bond Girls are the classic film example of fridging, that example is probably not the best.

brian 333

2020-12-13, 01:26 PM

Actually, most Bond Girls survive to achieve their dream.

The example with Samantha was exactly what you made of it: something distorted from its original intent until it fit the trope. Well done, you understand exactly what I meant. The question before you now is, how much distorting is required to make Therkla fit the trope?

Vinyadan

2020-12-13, 01:53 PM

Ya know, there's this guy who once said fantasy only matters for how it relates to the real world and anything other then that is petty escapism. A certain...Rich Burlew? My point is, meta-analysis should be applied, because how a text relates to the world that, ya know, exists, is pretty important.

Anyway: So the definition of "Fridging": When a (usually female) supporting character is killed off in service of a (usually male) hero's development. And, yeah, Therkla is that. She's certainly that. That's not inherently a bad thing, per say: I mean, The Death of Gwen Stacy was a fridging, indeed, the first fridging (before it wa called fridging, it was called Gwen Stacy Syndrome), and it's considered one of the best single-issues ever written. I think OOTS does some good work making Therkla's death genuinely heart-breaking, but...Yeah, she is a female character who is killed off in service of Elan's character arc progressing. She is a major catalyst for Elan's maturation, living proof of the consequences his immaturity can have. It's kinda textbook. It's not very problematic, as these things go, but...Yeah, it's there.
That's actually something I wondered. Gwen is famous, while the girl in the fridge is, to me, a very obscure character from a story I honestly never heard about otherwise. So I assumed that there was a key difference that wasn't just in writing quality, because the girlfriend in the fridge gets a bad rap that Gwen doesn't. And why call it fridging, when you have a much more famous case? (also, in 1999 Gwen wasn't yet preggers with Norman's babies).

understatement

2020-12-13, 02:04 PM

The example with Samantha was exactly what you made of it: something distorted from its original intent until it fit the trope. Well done, you understand exactly what I meant. The question before you now is, how much distorting is required to make Therkla fit the trope?

Is it now? You didn't address the question. You only pointed out Therkla's own traits (straight, female), focused on the "what-ifs" even though fridging has little to do with it on a technical level, lobbed a few condescending comments that could be done without, and then...that's pretty much it. And maybe some bonus Shakespeare.

I don't think I distorted the scene (at least, not intentionally). I included the scenarios in my post, with author quotes; I'm focusing on both the story content and the meta-narrative intentions. I'm perfectly fine with discussing if the term pertains to the situation, but that comes more from different perspectives and less of purposeful exclusion of information, as you're stating here.

So if you want an answer to your rhetorical question, please consider reading through the thread before jumping to assumptions.

That's actually something I wondered. Gwen is famous, while the girl in the fridge is, to me, a very obscure character from a story I honestly never heard about otherwise. So I assumed that there was a key difference that wasn't just in writing quality, because the girlfriend in the fridge gets a bad rap that Gwen doesn't. And why call it fridging, when you have a much more famous case? (also, in 1999 Gwen wasn't yet preggers with Norman's babies).

I think it's the fact that Gwen continues to have a lasting impression on Peter and had a long run, while Kyle Rayner's girlfriend (who, as you mention, is pretty obscure) is introduced and killed off briefly, on top of having an excessively cruel death, and Kyle moves on relatively quickly.

Schroeswald

2020-12-13, 02:45 PM

That's actually something I wondered. Gwen is famous, while the girl in the fridge is, to me, a very obscure character from a story I honestly never heard about otherwise. So I assumed that there was a key difference that wasn't just in writing quality, because the girlfriend in the fridge gets a bad rap that Gwen doesn't. And why call it fridging, when you have a much more famous case? (also, in 1999 Gwen wasn't yet preggers with Norman's babies).

In addition to what understatement said, part of the difference is how much they appeared. Kyle's girlfriend died seven months after her first appearance, and Gwen Stacy died 8 years after her first appearance. If Gwen Stacy had disappeared around the time of her death and was never mentioned again she would still be somewhat significant to the history of Spider-Men, and Kyle's girlfriend isn't actually important to the history of Green Lantern even after naming a frequently discussed trope.

Ionathus

2020-12-13, 03:42 PM

It's not about whether a work is good or not, though, it's about representation and the value of the character in the narrative. Now, admittedly, I still think it's not a great test regarding those (the "if your female character can be replaced with a sexy lamp, you need to rewrite the character" is more on-the-mark, frankly), but it also wasn't originally designed as anything other than a pointed joke, per the author.

I was responding specifically to Meta's suggestion that they had to be mutually exclusive. I argue that no example of a trope HAS to be bad. For example: LGBTQ* folks can die without it being objectively bad storytelling, but the frequency with which they do die in fiction has led to Bury Your Gays (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays) becoming an accusation of poor storytelling.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-13, 05:16 PM

I'd go further to say she died because she tried for a neutral resolution. Fair point.

Ya know, there's this guy who once said fantasy only matters for how it relates to the real world And either that guy is overstating the case _ I find that general statement to be a load of ballox _ or, you perhaps are overstating his case? Trying to shoehorn 'fridging' into this story arc seems to me like "trying too hard to fit a different foot into a shoe made already" - sort of like the problem that the wicked step sisters had to deal with in re an infamous glass slipper.

I understand that tastes will differ on that, and the level to which one wishes to spoil a story by dragging meta into it also varies with tastes. I find also Shippey's observation in re "examining the bones of the ox" as concerns an infamous author of faerie stories to be cautionary, and worthwhile, advice.

Anyway: So the definition of "Fridging" Is irrelevant to our conversation, since I believe that a case of shoehorning is going on in this thread. Trying too hard for a bad fit.

No sale. (Mind you, the habit of trying to reduce an element of a story like that -with an offhand pigeon hole - offends me as a writer (granted, not one of Rich's accomplishments)).

woweedd

2020-12-13, 06:12 PM

Fair point.
And either that guy is overstating the case _ I find that general statement to be a load of ballox _ or, you perhaps are overstating his case? Trying to shoehorn 'fridging' into this story arc seems to me like "trying too hard to fit a different foot into a shoe made already" - sort of like the problem that the wicked step sisters had to deal with in re an infamous glass slipper.

I understand that tastes will differ on that, and the level to which one wishes to spoil a story by dragging meta into it also varies with tastes. I find also Shippey's observation in re "examining the bones of the ox" as concerns an infamous author of faerie stories to be cautionary, and worthwhile, advice.
Is irrelevant to our conversation, since I believe that a case of shoehorning is going on in this thread. Trying too hard for a bad fit.

No sale. (Mind you, the habit of trying to reduce an element of a story like that -with an offhand pigeon hole - offends me as a writer (granted, not one of Rich's accomplishments)).
I gave the defintion so I could judge wheter it fits the defitnion, and, thus, wheter it's shoehorning. That's relevant, wheter or not it is. A for Rich's case:

Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-13, 06:18 PM

Ruck

2020-12-13, 06:22 PM

Peelee

2020-12-13, 06:26 PM

The Bechdel test was intended to point out the broader trend of just how few works pass it, and not a benchmark for individual works, as I understand it.

That would make sense, because it's fantastic for that.

Ruck

2020-12-13, 06:27 PM

That would make sense, because it's fantastic for that.

Yeah; the point wasn't "A story that doesn't pass is bad"; it's "We need more stories about women who exist outside of their relationships to men."

Finagle

2020-12-13, 06:34 PM

The "metanarrative" was to write a neutral character who was neither good nor evil, and who went along with whatever seemed best at the time. Which is why she swooned for Elan so hard, blowing with the wind is how she ran her whole life. As befits a neutral character. Which is why she ended up working with Kubota, his political savvy enabled him to spot a diamond in the rough.

And she didn't want a Raise Dead cast on her because that's a cheap and easy way to get out of death in D&D, so the author had to back-engineer some kind of way where that wouldn't happen. Every time the spell comes up it's a huge deal (it took an entire book once!) instead of the "duh obviously we cast it and the recipient accepts because my friend spent ages developing his character" that D&D expects to happen. Heck, that's why it was a spell in the first place.

Someone nerdier than me can catalog all of the times Raise Dead has been mentioned in the comic and why it was shot down as a remedy. It's one of the author's big themes, right along with "evil villain NPCs aren't one-track minds that want to slay everything they see" that D&D also expects to happen.

understatement

2020-12-13, 06:44 PM

"Fridging" is a Trope that involves a character specially meaningful for another character, that gets gruesomely killed to provoke a cheap emotional reaction on the latter.

That definition doesn't applies to Therkla, as:
- She was not specially meaningful for Elan.

She was most definitely meaningful to Elan, at least in the independent arc, considering he personally buries her, almost kills Kubota for it, and absolutely becomes enraged at V for their verbal attacks.

- Was not gruesomely killed.

Being poisoned and dying slowly in someone else's arms seems kind of painful.

- Was not killed by Kubota to provoke an emotional reaction on Elan, but to cover his own escape and get rid of a turncoat and a witness.

I'll concede to that, although the way Kubota gloats over it is not out of pure pragmatism either. Still, yes, I'll agree with this.

The OP seems to understand "fridging" as "a female character that got killed and whose death had an impact on a male character". That definition is so board that it can be applied to practically every female character ever killed in a work of fiction. And it's a fundamentally wrong definition, as "fridging" doesn't requires the victim to be female, neither the protagonist to be male.

Nope. Not what I said at all. I addressed this in my reply to brian 333's post as well:

Fridging can apply to any sexuality, any race, gender, religion, background. The fact that Therkla is female and a love interest is more immediately noticeable because many previous examples of fridging share these traits as well, but if she was a gay male explicitly killed by the villain to make Elan feel bad it would very much still be fridging.

So I don't know where you got this from.

dancrilis

2020-12-13, 07:23 PM

Nope. Not what I said at all.

As someone who agrees that this qualifies as a fridging (subject to defination which I will give below) it seems that you have merely made your defination broader here:

The Pilgrim said:

The OP seems to understand "fridging" as "a female character that got killed and whose death had an impact on a male character". That definition is so board that it can be applied to practically every female character ever killed in a work of fiction.

You said 'nope'.

Fridging can apply to any sexuality, any race, gender, religion, background.

Which kindof reads like The Pilgrim was being overly narrow in what they were writing where you would have had, fridging: "a character that got killed and whose death had an impact on a different character".

I don't think that is what you mean but it is how this reads (at least to me).

As for my own pseudo-defination:
Fridging: A character is introduced to the story to fill a certain role focused entirely on a different character and is either designed to be killed as part of that role or is killed as soon as that role is complete as the plot has no more use for them.

As mentioned it is not necessarily a bad thing and I fully understand that other people would disagree with even this as a pseudo-defination.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-13, 07:26 PM

Nope. Not what I said at all. I addressed this in my reply to brian 333's post as well:

So I don't know where you got this from.

Ok. My apologies for putting words in your mouth.

Then let's get to the definition you gave earlier in the thread:

"Fridging" does not mean a character death to drive the story. I don't think there's any set definition of it, since even in its original context it has changed to exclude/accomodate more narrative situations; however, the core part of it centers around the villain targeting a hero's supporting cast member in order for the hero to take action, with the added "bonus" of the limelight focusing more on the hero instead of the victim.

I wrote that Kubota did not kill Therkla to provoke a reaction in Elan, but to cover his escape, get rid of a traitor and remove a witness. After re-reading the scene (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0595.html), I must add that he also kills Therkla to produce a scapegoat and pin the blame for his crimes on her.

As you agreed to my statement, we must conclude that Therkla was, thus, not "fridged".

Also, I belive she gets the spotlight on her death scene (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0593.html). She isn't slaughtered off-screen, we get to watch her die, and we get to hear her feelings and thoughts. Yeah, it's stupid that she refuses the chance of getting raised because Elan will not be with her, but that goes in line with her characterization and is the tragic side effect of getting a mix of low self-steem and a mind full of romantic idealizations (see my earlier post about that).

danielxcutter

2020-12-13, 07:30 PM

I don't think fridged is the right term, yeah. There might be a few other points that you could use to criticize her death, but that particular one doesn't seem to fit.

understatement

2020-12-13, 07:46 PM

Fridging: A character is introduced to the story to fill a certain role focused entirely on a different character and is either designed to be killed as part of that role or is killed as soon as that role is complete as the plot has no more use for them.

As mentioned it is not necessarily a bad thing and I fully understand that other people would disagree with even this as a pseudo-defination.

Whether it fits Therkla is probably the talk button on the thread, but it's really not a great trope to have in a story. There's plenty of ways of taking a character out of a narrative without permanent death.

Also, there are a lot of varying definitions, but it technically does involve the villain/antagonist concerned intentionally killing the particular character. Someone drunkenly falling off the bridge after their plot part is over doesn't really fit.

As you agreed to my statement, we must conclude that Therkla was, thus, not "fridged".

Also, I belive she gets the spotlight on her death scene (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0593.html). She isn't slaughtered off-screen, we get to watch her die, and we get to hear her feelings and thoughts. Yeah, it's stupid that she refuses the chance of getting raised because Elan will not be with her, but that goes in line with her characterization and is the tragic side effect of getting a mix of low self-steem and a mind full of romantic idealizations (see my earlier post about that).

Conceded. Ish.

I dunno, I guess...it just feels like the same effect? Something to push Elan to a rage that he normally wouldn't, as well as split up the Order irreparably (until other narrative events come along), then afterwards, pretty much forgotten. But that's genuinely my own take, so...yeah.

I don't think fridged is the right term, yeah. There might be a few other points that you could use to criticize her death, but that particular one doesn't seem to fit.

Fair. Fridging is a strong word with a weird implication, and my intention wasn't to point fingers or such. I will totally be on board that within the scene it wasn't, simply that its effects do feel awfully like it. But that's YMMV.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-13, 08:20 PM

A for Rich's case: Opinions are like navels. We each have one. Rich is not an authority, he's a writer with an opinion. As are many writers, good, bad and indifferent.

As for me, I am glad that he pursues his muse ... this does not require me to worship at the altar of his opinion. :smalltongue:

Ruck

2020-12-13, 08:32 PM

I guess I'd be repeating myself, but I always thought "fridging" had a negative connotation as though the character literally only existed for the hero to discover her (usually her) body stuffed in the fridge by the villain. (Which, I think, the term comes from a case where that actually happened.)

I think whatever you can say about how Therkla's death motivated Elan, she got a lot more time and development than that, and had her own story and tragic arc, brought about in part by her own choices. It was pick-a-side time and she still didn't pick a side.

The MunchKING

2020-12-14, 01:37 AM

I gave the defintion so I could judge wheter it fits the defitnion, and, thus, wheter it's shoehorning. That's relevant, wheter or not it is. A for Rich's case:

He says that like escapism isn't worthwhile. :smallsmile:

EDIT:

Opinions are like navels. We each have one.

Opinions are like noses. Everyone has one and most of them smell. :smalltongue:

ebarde

2020-12-14, 02:45 AM

I do think Therkla was a bit too much of a satellite character to Elan. I get that she had a Juliet theme going on, but the whole choosing to not get rez'd because she wouldn't stay with Elan felt a bit too handwavy ig?

I guess that book had a lot of stuff going on, but I still wish it developed the character a bit more to justify her going through so much just for Elan. She was a fun character and her solo story was pretty good though, Never Split the Party just didn't had a lot of breathing room with all the stuff that was going on at the same time and the switching back and forth between sub-plots.

snowblizz

2020-12-14, 05:25 AM

While Therkla acts a lot like a damsel that's just an act. And she's not entirely there for the benefit of Elan.

Therkla also provides a reason to examine one Neutral viewpoint in the context of the Good/Evil dichtonomy. Her ultimate tragedy isn't just "I can't get Elan" that's just the way she formulates it based on her own limited experiences and overindulgence in YA lit.

The problem is she tries to take a Neutral position between the immovable viewpoints of Good and Evil, and cannot see how neither of them can accept her rational (to Neutrla Therkla) compromise. Ultimately she cannot choose one side so goes with neither. She wants to have both things and can't see the consequences.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-14, 07:21 AM

Opinions are like noses. Everyone has one and most of them smell. :smalltongue: Except in OoTS land, where apparently only Nale and Thog have them (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0339.html). :smallbiggrin:

elros

2020-12-14, 09:35 AM

Everyone has made a lot of good points, but I think Therkla was actually one of the most meaningful minor characters. I say that for two reasons:
1) Therkla was a flushed out character, and not a disposable woman (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman),
2) Therkla demonstrated agency, and then killed because Kubota is evil. Kubota did not kill her to motivate Elan, but to save himself. And Kubota did not in any way stuff her in a fridge (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge).

I understand that people are sensitive about how women are minimized in stories (and in life), but I don't think this is good example of it.

dancrilis

2020-12-14, 10:23 AM

There's plenty of ways of taking a character out of a narrative without permanent death.

There are but few generate the same emotional weight.

For instance, Therkla's death inspired Elan to jump onto a boat with the intention of killing an unarmed (and fairly defenceless) man - you don't get that without her dying.

Ionathus

2020-12-14, 11:13 AM

No sale. (Mind you, the habit of trying to reduce an element of a story like that -with an offhand pigeon hole - offends me as a writer (granted, not one of Rich's accomplishments)).

I still don't think it has to be a case of pigeonholing. An arc can be complex and well-written and redemptive and respectful of the female character, and still qualify as fridging. That doesn't diminish the story -- it's more like an optional demographics question on a survey. You don't use the information to judge the work...you use it to judge whether or not there are certain patterns across many works. Hence the comparison to the Bechdel test.

I don't think fridged is the right term, yeah. There might be a few other points that you could use to criticize her death, but that particular one doesn't seem to fit.

It's a slippery definition, to be sure. The TVTropes page seems to insist the character must actually be killed and left to be found by the hero, as a corpse. By that metric, Therkla is objectively not. But does she fall into "I Let Gwen Stacy Die"? More likely.

Here's a snippet from the front page of Gail Simone's original website:

These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. I know I missed a bunch. Some have been revived, even improved -- although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place.
...
I realized one day that most of my favorite female comics characters had met untimely and often icky ends. The history of the idea and this site are listed here, and the responses from various comics professionals are listed here.
...
An important point: This isn't about assessing blame about an individual story or the treatment of an individual character and it's certainly not about personal attacks on the creators who kindly shared their thoughts on this phenomenon. It's about the trend, its meaning and relevance, if any. Plus, it's just fun to talk about refrigerators with dead people in them. I don't know why.

Note the Bechdel test language at the end, there.

You could argue that the original definition doesn't even include "to motivate a male hero's story" -- it was just a list of women in comics who have met untimely ends. I doubt many people would accept that definition now, though. My personal definition is probably something like "when the death of a female character matters more to another (male) character's story than it does to her own." That feels like a trickier judgment call for Therkla's death, but I'd probably still argue that it qualifies, even though it doesn't diminish her story.

I wrote that Kubota did not kill Therkla to provoke a reaction in Elan, but to cover his escape, get rid of a traitor and remove a witness. After re-reading the scene (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0595.html), I must add that he also kills Therkla to produce a scapegoat and pin the blame for his crimes on her.

But that's all in-universe. It's not a question of whether the villain is trying to motivate the hero with her death: it's a question of whether the story is trying to motivate the hero with her death. In Star Trek: TNG, Duras kills K'Ehleyr for self-serving political reasons. But the effect it has on Worf (and the way her death happens off-screen) absolutely qualifies it as fridging by even the strictest metrics. It doesn't matter what the villain wants: it matters what the story wants.

Also, I belive she gets the spotlight on her death scene (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0593.html). She isn't slaughtered off-screen, we get to watch her die, and we get to hear her feelings and thoughts. Yeah, it's stupid that she refuses the chance of getting raised because Elan will not be with her, but that goes in line with her characterization and is the tragic side effect of getting a mix of low self-steem and a mind full of romantic idealizations (see my earlier post about that).

I'm with you on this. I wish we'd gotten more of Therkla without her infatuation with Elan, and her reason for not wanting to be raised was kind of silly if you push on it too hard. But it was still a really good scene and her death wasn't *only* to motivate Elan. That's why I'm essentially trying to have my cake (classify this as Fridging) and eat it too (argue that Therkla still got treated well by the narrative, for the most part).

Metastachydium

2020-12-14, 11:41 AM

I'm essentially trying to have my cake (classify this as Fridging) and eat it too (argue that Therkla still got treated well by the narrative, for the most part).

Still not convinced the term fridging can be used without a negative connotation. It was coined to criticise a tendency, after all, and not simply to describe it.
How about „it is a structurally similat scenario which nevertheless stops short of scrict sense fridging”?

Fish

2020-12-14, 11:48 AM

I think there's something missing from the definition, some essential element of the original, without which the definition becomes so broad as to be useless. "Something that happens to a side character to forward the story of a main character" describes nearly every side character in fiction. That's what side characters are for, to a greater or lesser degree. Some side characters die (like the veteran cop who's about to retire); some are raped (like Becky in the song "Coward of the County"); some are kidnapped (too many to name). Sometimes good things happen to side characters in order to push the plot. Pushing plot is what side characters do.

What's missing, in my opinion?*
a) "Fridging" portrays a tragedy with echoes of real-world events that actually happen to real people, and reframes that tragic narrative to be around someone other than the victim.
b) "Fridging," when applied widely as a story technique, normalizes and minimizes similar tragedies against some group, and perpetuates a narrative of victimhood for that group.

*Yes, I realize that TV Tropes probably doesn't define the trope this way, but I don't care what that website says.

The problem with the "dead girlfriend in the refrigerator" trope isn't one of agency, or the villain's purpose, or whether it forwards the story of the MC. The problem is that it takes violence against a (so-called) minority group and turns it into just something that happens to white dudes. In other words, girlfriends sometimes end up dead in refrigerators, and that's just something a guy has to deal with. I don't have to explain how problematic that is.

Therkla doesn't count as fridging in my book, because:
a) Although her tragedy motivates Elan, it is still her story. The characters in the story (Kubota, the imp, Elan) relate to her, not so much to Elan himself; and
b) Kubota killed Therkla not because she was a handy victim, but because she was a threat. She had power to affect him. This is not a victim narrative — and this is made especially clear because Therkla chooses not to remain on Earth where she will be unhappy.

Metastachydium

2020-12-14, 12:49 PM

Also, Therkla wasn't the damsel when she died. Elan was. She was the more competent of the two and the one who (as Fish pointed out) posed a realistic threat to his mentor, in short: the hero, as acknowledged by Kubota himself. When Kubota poisoned the hero, he offered the damsel the choice to play hero (killing the actual hero in the process) or stay the damsel who tends to the wounded hero as the villain he cannot stop alone escapes. Further, Kubota didn't know he will kill Therkla. He told Elan he'd better let him escape and save the ninja. Neutralize Poison is a bard spell, after all, and Therkla was surprised that Elan does not have it.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Nale's treatment is more problematic than Therkla's. He's a fairly flat and static character. Everything (we know) he's ever done was done to harm his brother (and his companions) or to spite his father (with a side of harming/spiting his companions), and he failed almost every single time. He was an impotent satellite orbiting two better developed characters, and then he was killed by his own father so that Elan can grow and turn against Tarquin.

Saint-Just

2020-12-14, 12:55 PM

What's missing, in my opinion?*
a) "Fridging" portrays a tragedy with echoes of real-world events that actually happen to real people, and reframes that tragic narrative to be around someone other than the victim.

I do not think that it is necessary to make every tragedy in fiction about the victim(s). Sometimes for example author wants to follow one character only, and if that character is not presented when tragedy occurs (quite often in fact) and if the further contact with victims is impossible (because they are dead, because they are alive but on the other side of the world, because the hero needs to stop the villain before they can contact victims) making it about the victims would be practically impossible. There are many other reasons beside being confined to a single viewpoint. And a lot of classic tropes rely on that - say, the hero swearing an oath to destroy the villain who have hurt people dear to them. Trying to avoid any of that in your fiction is akin to writing a book without using a symbol for "e" - you can do it, but it is hard, and constrains your writing in ways which would not always do any good for it. I am hardly managing to string symbols for two blocks (a block which grammar says should start with a big first symbol and a dot should finish it) without using a dictionary for synonyms.

b) "Fridging," when applied widely as a story technique, normalizes and minimizes similar tragedies against some group, and perpetuates a narrative of victimhood for that group.

*Yes, I realize that TV Tropes probably doesn't define the trope this way, but I don't care what that website says.

The problem with the "dead girlfriend in the refrigerator" trope isn't one of agency, or the villain's purpose, or whether it forwards the story of the MC. The problem is that it takes violence against a (so-called) minority group and turns it into just something that happens to white dudes. In other words, girlfriends sometimes end up dead in refrigerators, and that's just something a guy has to deal with. I don't have to explain how problematic that is.

Again, a lot of people (including the OP, judging by "Fridging can apply to any sexuality, any race, gender, religion, background.") disagree with that definition. So we have a narrow definition which with possible rare exceptions indeed points out significant problems with the work, and a wide definition, which would apply to a significant chunk, maybe even over 50% of actual action stories in which characters with talking roles die. And while you and the OP may use the term "fridging" 100% self-consistently and apply a proper amount of negative weight to it (very significant for you, less significant for the OP), in the end "fridging" ends up being a term with vague but always negative connotations and vague definition. Which doesn't make it easy to have a meaningful discussion.

And while in theory everyone can read your definition, I do not think that ignoring the most popular source from which that definition has spread far and wide is a good tactic either.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-14, 01:29 PM

You could argue that the original definition doesn't even include "to motivate a male hero's story" -- it was just a list of women in comics who have met untimely ends. I doubt many people would accept that definition now, though. My personal definition is probably something like "when the death of a female character matters more to another (male) character's story than it does to her own." That feels like a trickier judgment call for Therkla's death, but I'd probably still argue that it qualifies, even though it doesn't diminish her story.

(...)

But that's all in-universe. It's not a question of whether the villain is trying to motivate the hero with her death: it's a question of whether the story is trying to motivate the hero with her death. In Star Trek: TNG, Duras kills K'Ehleyr for self-serving political reasons. But the effect it has on Worf (and the way her death happens off-screen) absolutely qualifies it as fridging by even the strictest metrics. It doesn't matter what the villain wants: it matters what the story wants.

I think we are drifting into a different ground, here.

Death is one of the main plot devices for a writer. And the death of a female carries more weight than the death of a male, as female lives are perceived as being more valuable than male lives. In fiction works, male deaths are much more numerous and frequent than female, but when an author wants a particular death to be significative, it's usualy female.

When the Villain snuffs a man, it's often inconsequential and can even be played for laughts. When a Villain snuffs a woman, it's always a Kick the Dog moment. It always means that the Villain crosses the Moral Event Horizon.

TV Tropes explains it better:
Men are the Expendable Gender (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender)

My point is, there is a difference between:

1) A writer killing a character for story reasons, and having that character be female because it carries a lot more emotional weight.

And

2) A writter dumping a character into the fridge to get a cheap shot.

I'm with you on this. I wish we'd gotten more of Therkla without her infatuation with Elan, and her reason for not wanting to be raised was kind of silly if you push on it too hard. But it was still a really good scene and her death wasn't *only* to motivate Elan. That's why I'm essentially trying to have my cake (classify this as Fridging) and eat it too (argue that Therkla still got treated well by the narrative, for the most part).

Therkla's reason to refuse a raising is stupid, but far from silly.

In her backstory at GDGU, she is stablished as a person that, due to her low-class half-blood status, grew up being sidelined and looked down. Her lack of social life and dating prospects is mentioned. Her fondness on young adult books is a way for her to sublimate her lack of a love life. As a result, at her age she carries a lot less emotional bagagge regarding love relationships than the average person.

When she bonds with Sangwaan, she labels them both as "damaged goods". While it's obvious why she would regard a blind girl with a terminal condition as "damaged", it's less apparent why would Therkla label herself, a perfectly physically fit girl, as such. Sangwaan's physical condition is a reflection on Therkla's inner condition. She perceives herself as someone deeply flawed, inherently defective.

When Therkla meets Elan, she begins to project on him immediately. Elan is friendly towards her, a new situation for Therkla, as socially successful people have always ignored her. She perceives Elan as her way to get fixed. When that castle in the sky gets blown, it provokes a sense of failure in her. She feels she's defective beyond chance of repair. Unfortunately, that moment happens at the same time she's dying, and thus chooses to remain dead.

Stablishing Therkla's character as lovesick and with a low self-perception was the key to make her decission to remain dead a believable one, and her backstory in GDGU does a good job at completing that characterization.

Vinyadan

2020-12-14, 02:16 PM

The Bechdel test was intended to point out the broader trend of just how few works pass it, and not a benchmark for individual works, as I understand it.
Is it an impression, or Episode VIII deliberately failed the test by having two women only talk once to say how much they liked Poe, whom they had just beat into submission? I don't remember other all-female dialogues from that movie.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-14, 02:40 PM

Therkla doesn't count as fridging in my book, because:
a) Although her tragedy motivates Elan, it is still her story. The characters in the story (Kubota, the imp, Elan) relate to her, not so much to Elan himself; and
b) Kubota killed Therkla not because she was a handy victim, but because she was a threat. She had power to affect him. This is not a victim narrative — and this is made especially clear because Therkla chooses not to remain on Earth where she will be unhappy. You captured a lot of what I was thinking a lot more clearly than I did. Thank you.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-14, 03:24 PM

Is it an impression, or Episode VIII deliberately failed the test by having two women only talk once to say how much they liked Poe, whom they had just beat into submission? I don't remember other all-female dialogues from that movie.

Two females talking about a man still fails the Bedchel test.

The punchile of the original joke was that Aliens was the only movie of the time that passed it.

Ionathus

2020-12-14, 03:26 PM

I think we are drifting into a different ground, here.
...
Men are the Expendable Gender (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender)

Yeah, I think so, too. But that's what happens when you look closely at different tropes: there's a LOT of cross-pollination.

For instance, is the trope Men Are The Expendable Gender influenced by the phenomenon that Most Writers Are Male (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale)? If a writer only writes men by default, so that female characters become the exception (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple), then within that world Men are, indeed, expendable. Meanwhile, women are a precious commodity, since there are so few of them and they only appear when it's significant. In that context, of course a woman's death would be more significant.

Meanwhile, Women in Refrigerators would seem to imply the opposite. That women are expendable, because their only use is to be killed to motivate others. But I can definitely see your point as well.

To me, a lot of these unconscious biases can be solved by literally just striving for equal representation (where viable). It's one of the reasons I love A Monster for Every Season so much: Rich includes a lot of female guards, bandits, villains, and monsters, and usually has a 50/50 split for the "Legion Sheets" as well. And in the more recent arcs (especially BRitF and Utterly Dwarfed), I've noticed a significant increase in female characters. That's not news to any of us, of course, but it's astonishing what a work of fiction looks like when it actually reflects the real-world gender split. Suddenly a bunch of people dying is gut-wrenching all by itself (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0448.html), rather than it needing to be "women and children" that exclusively get our tears.

Therkla's reason to refuse a raising is stupid, but far from silly.

I disagree with some of your points about her reasons here, but I agree "silly" is the wrong word. I over-use "stupid" and "dumb" as adjectives and was trying to pick something more evocative. "Misguided"? "Unbelievable"? Surely there's something that works.

Is it an impression, or Episode VIII deliberately failed the test by having two women only talk once to say how much they liked Poe, whom they had just beat into submission? I don't remember other all-female dialogues from that movie.

Although it's up for debate, I'm pretty sure Leia and Holdo have a non-man conversation in Episode VIII (https://bechdeltest.com/view/7946/star_wars:_the_last_jedi/).

Fish

2020-12-14, 03:38 PM

I do not think that it is necessary to make every tragedy in fiction about the victim(s).
You are absolutely correct, otherwise there would be no such thing as a detective story. I am hardly suggesting the extreme slippery-slope version you're talking about, wherein all victims must always tell their own story, in all fiction, forevermore, so mote it be. I said no such thing.

To restate my point, the problem with "fridging" as a technique is that it is a kind of narrative appropriation. The tragedy doesn't belong to the MC except by association. In its own way, it's like The Green Book (where a white man grows as a character after seeing racism happen to someone else). It is framing the Awful Thing through the viewpoint of a character who does not experience the Awful Thing personally. This has the effect of minimizing the suffering of the actual victim, because the suffering isn't real except inasmuch as it affects the MC.

Again, a lot of people (including the OP, judging by "Fridging can apply to any sexuality, any race, gender, religion, background") disagree with that definition.
Forgive me if I allow people to disagree with their own voices, rather than through yours. I was talking about the element of appropriation in context of the original instance. I never said this was the only permissible context. Other examples of appropriation could easily be imagined to represent other minority groups: the gay character who is killed off to increase the MC's sympathy toward gays; the disabled character who is killed off to increase the MC's awareness of disability issues, and so on.

Saint-Just

2020-12-14, 03:45 PM

I disagree with some of your points about her reasons here, but I agree "silly" is the wrong word. I over-use "stupid" and "dumb" as adjectives and was trying to pick something more evocative. "Misguided"? "Unbelievable"? Surely there's something that works.

Misguided. Ill-thought. Ill-adjusted (can a decision be ill-adjusted, or should it be "showing an ill-adjusted personality"?).

Yet 100% believable. People in the circumstances depicted sometime even take more active part in their own demise than saying "Do Not Resuscitate Raise"

Vinyadan

2020-12-14, 03:51 PM

Although it's up for debate, I'm pretty sure Leia and Holdo have a non-man conversation in Episode VIII (https://bechdeltest.com/view/7946/star_wars:_the_last_jedi/).

It's the one I was referring to... unfortunately I can't find the clip, but the first thing they say after they meet is that they like Poe; according to a transcript, they then say farewell to each other, and Holdo gives a veiled hint to what she's about to do. Is that enough to pass the test? I didn't really notice the second part of the conversation the first time around, because it isn't very easy to understand until Holdo crashes.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-14, 04:06 PM

For instance, is the trope Men Are The Expendable Gender influenced by the phenomenon that Most Writers Are Male (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale)? What?
If you look at what is being advertised these days, in terms of published writing, most writers these days are females.
What if TV tropes is wrong?

Ionathus

2020-12-14, 05:20 PM

It's the one I was referring to... unfortunately I can't find the clip, but the first thing they say after they meet is that they like Poe; according to a transcript, they then say farewell to each other, and Holdo gives a veiled hint to what she's about to do. Is that enough to pass the test? I didn't really notice the second part of the conversation the first time around, because it isn't very easy to understand until Holdo crashes.

I remember clicking through the big index of all movies on the Bechdel Test website and seeing the discussions people were having about whether or not something counted -- how long is a "conversation"? One back-and-forth? A full 30 seconds of dialogue? If they mention a man early on, but then change the subject, does that count?

Ultimately I don't think it matters. The fact that we're even debating whether or not a single 15-second conversation qualifies, but could instantly name an example of two men talking in the same movie, is the point. But it is fun to debate minutiae.

What?
If you look at what is being advertised these days, in terms of published writing, most writers these days are females.
What if TV tropes is wrong?

Among the top 250 highest-grossing films of 2019, only 19% of screenwriters were female. (https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf) That's just for film: I believe the numbers are at least similar for TV.

Actual written fiction is harder to quantify. Do we mean published novels on sale at Barnes & Noble? Or does it include self-published works? Do we go by best-sellers only? In that category, men definitely have the legacy advantage (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/573568/most-popular-novels-are-written-by-men).

Ruck

2020-12-14, 06:00 PM

Is it an impression, or Episode VIII deliberately failed the test by having two women only talk once to say how much they liked Poe, whom they had just beat into submission? I don't remember other all-female dialogues from that movie.

You'll have to ask someone familiar with the movies. I'm not sure where you might find someone like that around here.

Still not convinced the term fridging can be used without a negative connotation. It was coined to criticise a tendency, after all, and not simply to describe it.

Yeah, that's my point when saying this doesn't really qualify-- it has an inherently negative connotation based in how the character killed is treated by the narrative, and I don't think Therkla qualifies.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-14, 08:10 PM

Yeah, I think so, too. But that's what happens when you look closely at different tropes: there's a LOT of cross-pollination.

For instance, is the trope Men Are The Expendable Gender influenced by the phenomenon that Most Writers Are Male (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale)? If a writer only writes men by default, so that female characters become the exception (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple), then within that world Men are, indeed, expendable. Meanwhile, women are a precious commodity, since there are so few of them and they only appear when it's significant. In that context, of course a woman's death would be more significant.

Perhaps. Anyway, the point I wanted to stress is that "fridging" is a cheap death trope, and choosing specifically a female for enhanced shock value is an additional device that can go paired with any death trope. Like the frosting over an already bad cake recipe.

Mmmh, that analogy made me hungry. Let's see what I have in the fridge... hopefully not a girl.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-14, 10:16 PM

In that category, men definitely have the legacy advantage (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/573568/most-popular-novels-are-written-by-men). Good grief, not this bollocks.
The year is 2020. College students have been majority female for two decades. Your "legacy" argument is a dishonest rhetorical device.

Screenwriters? That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to published authors. But, with that said, I do believe the disparity among screenwriters, if that's the narrow definition of "writer" that you want to hang your hat on. Hollywood culture has its own issues.

Emanick

2020-12-15, 12:32 AM

Do we go by best-sellers only? In that category, men definitely have the legacy advantage (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/573568/most-popular-novels-are-written-by-men).

The legacy advantage? Unsurprisingly, yes, since old books were written mostly by men. But in terms of contemporary bestsellers, female authors are responsible for about as many books as male authors. (https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/)

Vinyadan

2020-12-15, 01:05 AM

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale

There's a funny thing about that "males made heroic journey" quote in the link: telling myths, fairytales, and heroic stories in the evening was seen as a thing for old women, at least from the time of ancient Greece, and it seemed to keep going until the fifties.

So women definitely had a role in it, although it was oral tradition, and it certainly had a huge effect on written literature and, later on, tv.

ebarde

2020-12-15, 09:36 AM

the thing with the Hero's Journey is that the term sorta was coined by one dude that sorta tried to bundle a bunch of stories that had vastly different messages and cultural backgrounds into one monomyth. So I think any critique of storytelling in general that takes that as basis will be a bit flawed, because it fails to account that the theory itself is already a huge generalization and I'd even say that it was based around a lot of cherry picking.

Ionathus

2020-12-15, 10:40 AM

Perhaps. Anyway, the point I wanted to stress is that "fridging" is a cheap death trope, and choosing specifically a female for enhanced shock value is an additional device that can go paired with any death trope. Like the frosting over an already bad cake recipe.

In this, we agree and are friends. Even to this day, I see media treat female and male deaths very obviously differently, for extremely questionable reasons.

Good grief, not this bollocks.
The year is 2020. College students have been majority female for two decades. Your "legacy" argument is a dishonest rhetorical device.

I'm not trying to be snippy, just asking honestly: did you visit the page I hyperlinked? It had nothing to do with college students: I was pointing out that the majority of our bestsellers and "classic" novels were written by men. Things like The Great Gatsby and 1984, Lord of the Rings, even going all the way back to Don Quixote (some people call it the first modern novel) and, even further back, Shakespeare*. The silver lining is that Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was #1 by popularity, so it's not like women have never succeeded as writers. But until more modern times, a successful female author was the exception, not the rule (hence why many women used male pen names).

This isn't a controversial or dishonest point. Men have written the majority of the top "influential" novels in the world, until (arguably) recently. Those influential novels have, well, influenced our popular discourse and our literary references and all of today's writers. We all read at least some of the classics in school.

Screenwriters? That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to published authors. But, with that said, I do believe the disparity among screenwriters, if that's the narrow definition of "writer" that you want to hang your hat on. Hollywood culture has its own issues.

Eh, novels aren't the end-all, be-all for loads of people. I definitely watch way more TV than I read books every year (working to change this in 2021). Same with movies. And all of those stories also have writers. I'm pointing out that writers exist across multiple forms of media, including comic books, television, published fiction, film, video game dialogue (yes it counts), board games...everything where somebody writes a character in an ongoing story. In that sense, I think your definition of "writer" is the narrower one.

The legacy advantage? Unsurprisingly, yes, since old books were written mostly by men. But in terms of contemporary bestsellers, female authors are responsible for about as many books as male authors. (https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/)

Which is great! As I said above though, that legacy advantage still creeps into lots of media today, including what people read. Even if we're about even nowadays, people are always going to read "the classics" and I think it's important to be aware of the way that slightly skews the stories to be male-focused.

There's a funny thing about that "males made heroic journey" quote in the link: telling myths, fairytales, and heroic stories in the evening was seen as a thing for old women, at least from the time of ancient Greece, and it seemed to keep going until the fifties.

So women definitely had a role in it, although it was oral tradition, and it certainly had a huge effect on written literature and, later on, tv.

I'd believe that, anecdotally at least! Though I wouldn't want to respond to it unless there's research backing it up -- weren't the Iliad and the Odyssey epic poems recited orally for ages before someone wrote them down? Scholars seem fairly certain that those were "written" by Homer.

*I know, they're plays. But schools often assign them for reading as if they were novels -- even though it's 1000x easier to understand what's going on when you act Shakespeare out!

ebarde

2020-12-15, 10:54 AM

Nobody knows who Homer is, but the most common theory is that it wasn't a single person

Ionathus

2020-12-15, 11:02 AM

Nobody knows who Homer is, but the most common theory is that it wasn't a single person

Interesting, I'd never really questioned that Homer was a real person until now but it looks like you're right! I'll edit my post.

theNater

2020-12-15, 11:55 AM

I was referring to published authors.
Well, according to the article Emanick links here:

The legacy advantage? Unsurprisingly, yes, since old books were written mostly by men. But in terms of contemporary bestsellers, female authors are responsible for about as many books as male authors. (https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/)
...many publishing houses have around 30% or less of their published books written by women, and reviews of books written by women are less than 30% of the reviews in several major literary journalism outfits.

Would you like to share any data more recent or more relevant?

Vinyadan

2020-12-15, 12:41 PM

I'd believe that, anecdotally at least! Though I wouldn't want to respond to it unless there's research backing it up -- weren't the Iliad and the Odyssey epic poems recited orally for ages before someone wrote them down? Scholars seem fairly certain that those were "written" by Homer.

Women's Work: Female Transmission of Mythical Narrative on JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41289736?seq=1) (I am not sure you have access to it, but, since you asked... it's not the work I was basing my post on, but it looks very complete.)

Concerning Homer, you can look up the Homeric Question, the first matter normally taught in Greek literature courses. It's pretty much a bunch of every possible question concerning the authorship of the Homeric Works, starting with whether Iliad and Odyssey were even the work of the same person. Then you have the history of the single works, how many hands might have worked on them and which stages, the when, the where, linguistic arguments due to them containing forms from many different Greek dialects...

understatement

2020-12-15, 12:52 PM

This isn't a controversial or dishonest point. Men have written the majority of the top "influential" novels in the world, until (arguably) recently. Those influential novels have, well, influenced our popular discourse and our literary references and all of today's writers. We all read at least some of the classics in school.

This reminds me of my prof's analysis on Frankenstein. True, it was one of the first science-fiction novels written by a woman (and probably one of the first scifi novels ever) but the work is decidedly full of weird undertones. Elizabeth's death is as typical of fridging as it can get, minus the fridge.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-15, 01:33 PM

Eh, novels aren't the end-all, be-all for loads of people. I definitely watch way more TV than I read books every year (working to change this in 2021). And there in lies the problem. We aren't even talking about the same thing - I guess you are talking about "TV writing" and to me writing is a much broader thing with TV writing being a minor subset of that much larger pursuit. So maybe I was just wandering off topic here, with the word "writing" being the trigger.

Mea Culpa.

I do not find TVTropes to be worth much (and I seem to recall that Giant doesn't care for that site either, someone has a quip about that in their sig). Beyond that, I didn't grow up watching TV (unlike a lot of my contemporaries) since my parents more or less banned anything that wasn't educational TV, or sometimes sports if Dad had a game on we'd watch it with him.
So books - novels, short stories, novellas, and lots of anthologies - that is where my perspective on writers comes from. Likewise magazines, such comic books as I could get my hands on (parents were not keen on them either) and of course our favorite: the comics pages in the newspapers.
TV? Mostly garbage. (Sturgeons Law applies, squared, to TV's output).
Even as an adult, I have rarely found a TV series worth watching more than "every so often" or "since it happens to be on and I am with someone who likes it." Now and again something like Breaking Bad shows up, but most TV is still crap. (I realize that tastes differ).

Would you like to share any data more recent or more relevant? Thirty to forty years of being inundated with ads to buy books in the various periodicals I read - that list is long and distinguished - and in the never ending suggestions I get from Amazon via email in the past five to ten years, since I still order books. (an eclectic mix of fiction and non fiction as topic draw my interest)
Emanick covered the state of play currently.

As I noted in the intro, it looks like you were discussing TV stuff, and I was thinking "writing" so I took this in an off topic direction.

Ionathus

2020-12-15, 01:39 PM

This reminds me of my prof's analysis on Frankenstein. True, it was one of the first science-fiction novels written by a woman (and probably one of the first scifi novels ever) but the work is decidedly full of weird undertones. Elizabeth's death is as typical of fridging as it can get, minus the fridge.

Oh, definitely! Frankenstein is weird. And good point about Elizabeth. It makes sense since the story is about Frankenstein and the monster, but it's still unfortunate. Women can definitely write "unfair" portrayals of female characters, too.

I hope my prior statements didn't imply otherwise -- or imply that every male author is automatically worse at female representation than a female author would be. More that people tend to write what they know, so an overwhelming majority of male authors could cause unforeseen or unintentional trends in storytelling when it comes to writing women.

Discussions like this are why I still think we should talk about Fridging like we talk about the Bechdel test -- not a "good or bad" judgment on individual works, but a symptom of a wider issue.

EDIT: ninja'd

And there in lies the problem. We aren't even talking about the same thing - I guess you are talking about "TV writing" and to me writing is a much broader thing with TV writing being a minor subset of that much larger pursuit. So maybe I was just wandering off topic here, with the word "writing" being the trigger.

Mea Culpa.

Yes, I definitely agree that (fiction) writing is broader than one form of media! That's what I was trying to clarify before: it goes beyond "TV writing" or "published books" to encompass every fictional story anyone consumes, each day.

I do not find TVTropes to be worth much (and I seem to recall that Giant doesn't care for that site either, someone has a quip about that in their sig).

I don't think he's actually criticized it, hasn't he just said he doesn't read/consult it? I don't consider it an authority or a work of art by any means, but it's useful for what it started as: a reference guide to the patterns that emerge in fiction. Articles might have a quality problem but I think you can easily judge the collected references on their own merits.

Beyond that, I didn't grow up watching TV (unlike a lot of my contemporaries) since my parents more or less banned anything that wasn't educational TV, or sometimes sports if Dad had a game on we'd watch it with him.
So books - novels, short stories, novellas, and lots of anthologies - that is where my perspective on writers comes from. Likewise magazines, such comic books as I could get my hands on (parents were not keen on them either) and of course our favorite: the comics pages in the newspapers.
TV? Mostly garbage. (Sturgeons Law applies, squared, to TV's output).
Even as an adult, I have rarely found a TV series worth watching more than "every so often" or "since it happens to be on and I am with someone who likes it." Now and again something like Breaking Bad shows up, but most TV is still crap. (I realize that tastes differ).
Thirty to forty years of being inundated with ads to buy books in the various periodicals I read - that list is long and distinguished - and in the never ending suggestions I get from Amazon via email in the past five to ten years, since I still order books. (an eclectic mix of fiction and non fiction as topic draw my interest)
Emanick covered the state of play currently.

As I noted in the intro, it looks like you were discussing TV stuff, and I was thinking "writing" so I took this in an off topic direction.

Regardless of our feelings about TV's quality (and I think that we do disagree), it can't really be dismissed as irrelevant. Over 100 million people watched the finale of M*A*S*H. It was incredibly important in its time. The writing in that show clearly had an effect on those 100 million people, so the decisions that those TV show writers made deserve to be studied & discussed. That's why I'm arguing we should consider everything.

On the note of novel writing: Did you have a response to my point about the influence of bestsellers? Even if bestselling writers today are closer to even (and, judging from Emanick's own link, women are still consistently trailing that 50% metric, even though they frequently come close), I don't feel like we can completely ignore the influence of "the classics" being male-dominated.

I sincerely mean none of this as combative. I'm not trying to say "Most Writers are Men" also means "Most Writers are Sexist." I was just musing about its effects on other tropes. But I will stand by my statement that men have had a much stronger influence on fiction writing (across all its forms -- published, TV, film, videogames, spoken word) than women have, and despite more equality these days, that influence remains in our culture.

Jason

2020-12-15, 02:20 PM

Ya know, there's this guy who once said fantasy only matters for how it relates to the real world and anything other then that is petty escapism. A certain...Rich Burlew?
I was thinking J.R.R. Tolkien, but this Burlew fellow has probably said it too.

Is it only fridging if it's a woman dying to motivate a man? Because just about every war movie out there has men who exist only to die to motivate other men in a similar fashion.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-15, 02:35 PM

Is it only fridging if it's a woman dying to motivate a man? Because just about every war movie out there has men who exist only to die to motivate other men in a similar fashion. I note the lack of outrage over the disposable male trope, but maybe that's a topic for a different thread.

As to Tolkien, I think his buzzword was "applicability" ...

@Ionathus: yes, we will not be able to agree on the value of TV. Perspectives differ on that. I saw quite a bit of MASH off and on over the years, though certainly not all of it. Tripped over some re-runs over the years in various late nights when I couldn't sleep ...

1. The movie was a better story - the theme song you hear on TV had words to it in the movie.
2. By the last two seasons, it was getting preachy (which some people liked, and some people didn't)
3. I tip my cap to the team who realized "I think we are about done here" and who found a way to end it.
4. They made a bundle. :smallcool:

Crusher

2020-12-15, 02:44 PM

Math is absolutely the way to analyze this. We're just using a wrong transformation.

The only flaw is you don't take this far enough. Math is correct way to analyze everything.

"What do you feel like having for dinner?"

"Good question! Lets bust out Excel and crunch the numbers."

Peelee

2020-12-15, 02:56 PM

The only flaw is you don't take this far enough. Math is correct way to analyze everything.

"What do you feel like having for dinner?"

"Good question! Lets bust out Excel and crunch the numbers."

I very seriously nearly did, but chickened out at the end.

Ionathus

2020-12-15, 03:25 PM

I note the lack of outrage over the disposable male trope, but maybe that's a topic for a different thread.

Emphasis mine -- yes, exactly. Since this is a thread about a female character's potential fridging, I didn't want to dive into Oppression Olympics. Male characters also get done dirty by narrative conventions all the time, for many of the same (and some entirely unique) reasons. I wouldn't invalidate one situation by claiming another group has it worse, but Women in Refrigerators was the original topic and I didn't want to derail.

I very seriously nearly did, but chickened out at the end.

Go hog wild with the spreadsheets, I say. Recipes are all just formulas anyway, right?

Fish

2020-12-15, 03:32 PM

Screenwriters? That's not what I was referring to. ... But, with that said, I do believe the disparity among screenwriters, if that's the narrow definition of "writer" that you want to hang your hat on. Hollywood culture has its own issues.
Not the least of which is that in order to be in the union (such as the Writer's Guild of America West) you have to earn a certain number of units for screenplay work sold (or work you are hired to do) over a certain period of time. A list of screenwriters doesn't tell you how many screenwriters exist, only how many get work. In order to claim "more [screen]writers are men," you have to unpack the hiring bias first.

elros

2020-12-15, 03:53 PM

I was thinking J.R.R. Tolkien, but this Burlew fellow has probably said it too.

Is it only fridging if it's a woman dying to motivate a man? Because just about every war movie out there has men who exist only to die to motivate other men in a similar fashion.
There are several (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mooks) different (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FacelessGoons) tropes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CannonFodder) for that (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedShirt) (including my favorite (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonsterMunch)).

BTW, this (https://xkcd.com/609/) is so true...

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-15, 04:01 PM

Emphasis mine -- yes, exactly. Yeah, save the off topic drifts for Star Wars. :smallcool:

Not the least of which is that in order to be in the union (such as the Writer's Guild of America West) you have to earn a certain number of units for screenplay work sold (or work you are hired to do) over a certain period of time. A list of screenwriters doesn't tell you how many screenwriters exist, only how many get work. In order to claim "more [screen]writers are men," you have to unpack the hiring bias first. I realize that I am guessing here, but I was (for some reason) under the impression that most were freelance. (Though I guess 'hired' has a lot of different nuances ...) And that guess may be wrong anyway.

Jason

2020-12-15, 04:22 PM

Yeah, save the off topic drifts for Star Wars. :smallcool:
Was Aunt Beru fridged? How about Biggs?

The Pilgrim

2020-12-15, 04:22 PM

Oh, definitely! Frankenstein is weird. And good point about Elizabeth. It makes sense since the story is about Frankenstein and the monster, but it's still unfortunate. Women can definitely write "unfair" portrayals of female characters, too.

The thing is, good authors need to write taking into account their audience's expectations.

Mary Shelley has to kill a character as a plot point. And she chooses a child, because killing a child carries out more emotional value than killing an adult. And she chooses a female, because killing a female carries out more emotional value than killing a male. Female child = Double bonus!

Does that means that Mary Shelley was prejudiced by gender (and age)? Perhaps. But probably in her thought process the important issue was how would the reader react to the scene, and she knew a female child would do the trick better than anything else.

And the same happens with all good writers.

Ionathus

2020-12-15, 04:29 PM

Was Aunt Beru fridged? How about Biggs?

Okay, I'll bite.

Yes, Luke's aunt & uncle are an obvious example. Biggs isn't really a fridging -- since both he and Luke were actively engaged in a deadly mission to protect the freedom & safety of the galaxy. He really just got killed in the line of duty.

You were probably joking but whoops, I like answering questions

The thing is, good authors need to write taking into account their audience's expectations.

Mary Shelley has to kill a character as a plot point. And she chooses a child, because killing a child carries out more emotional value than killing an adult. And she chooses a female, because killing a female carries out more emotional value than killing a male. Female child = Double bonus!

Does that means that Mary Shelley was prejudiced by gender (and age)? Perhaps. But probably in her thought process the important issue was how would the reader react to the scene, and she knew a female child would do the trick better than anything else.

And the same happens with all good writers.

Does the monster also kill a child? I've forgotten, sorry. Elizabeth is Frankenstein's newlywed wife, whom he finds strangled to death in their bed shortly after. The Monster did it deliberately to make Frankenstein feel bad.

understatement

2020-12-15, 04:36 PM

Oh, definitely! Frankenstein is weird. And good point about Elizabeth. It makes sense since the story is about Frankenstein and the monster, but it's still unfortunate. Women can definitely write "unfair" portrayals of female characters, too.

I hope my prior statements didn't imply otherwise -- or imply that every male author is automatically worse at female representation than a female author would be. More that people tend to write what they know, so an overwhelming majority of male authors could cause unforeseen or unintentional trends in storytelling when it comes to writing women.

Discussions like this are why I still think we should talk about Fridging like we talk about the Bechdel test -- not a "good or bad" judgment on individual works, but a symptom of a wider issue.

Nope! your statements were not at all. It was part of an irony analysis - Mary Shelley is an iconic author that pioneers the scifi genre, but Frankenstein is not exactly the step forward in terms of representation. My professor had a hell of a time tearing it apart (either that, or he just disliked the book in general).

I was thinking J.R.R. Tolkien, but this Burlew fellow has probably said it too.

Is it only fridging if it's a woman dying to motivate a man? Because just about every war movie out there has men who exist only to die to motivate other men in a similar fashion.

Fridging has 3 parties: hero, villain, and the murdered one (or tortured, severely brainwashed - basically, removing their agency in a way that serves to motivate the hero). It also serves the narrative purpose of "pushing" the character into action.

I don't know about war movies. The most recent one I watched is Dunkirk, so I'd say not exactly - war is already set up as a premise, and the mass of soldiers, while antagonistic, aren't exactly a focused villain either.

There's plenty of male examples, and in retrospect I wish I had included them in my examples as well. Off the top of my head is

Clerval from the aforementioned Frankenstein, Jason Todd from A Death in the Family, and Professor X from Logan.

hamishspence

2020-12-15, 04:41 PM

Mary Shelley has to kill a character as a plot point. And she chooses a child, because killing a child carries out more emotional value than killing an adult. And she chooses a female, because killing a female carries out more emotional value than killing a male. Female child = Double bonus!

Does the monster also kill a child? I've forgotten, sorry. Elizabeth is Frankenstein's newlywed wife, whom he finds strangled to death in their bed shortly after. The Monster did it deliberately to make Frankenstein feel bad.

In the novel, the Creature's first murder is of Victor's younger brother William - who is a child - specifically to hurt Victor.

In the 1931 movie - the Creature's first killing is of a small girl unrelated to Victor - and it's unintentional rather than deliberate.

The Pilgrim

2020-12-15, 05:26 PM

Looks like I've confused the movie with the book, then. The scene with the corpse of the small girl is very iconic. But the Universal feature bears little resemblance to the novel, actually.

ebarde

2020-12-16, 01:43 AM

I think all the child murder is meant to mirror the creature which in many ways is sorta like a newborn

Soup du Jour

2020-12-16, 01:13 PM

Therkla's reason to refuse a raising is stupid, but far from silly.

In her backstory at GDGU, she is stablished as a person that, due to her low-class half-blood status, grew up being sidelined and looked down. Her lack of social life and dating prospects is mentioned. Her fondness on young adult books is a way for her to sublimate her lack of a love life. As a result, at her age she carries a lot less emotional bagagge regarding love relationships than the average person.

When she bonds with Sangwaan, she labels them both as "damaged goods". While it's obvious why she would regard a blind girl with a terminal condition as "damaged", it's less apparent why would Therkla label herself, a perfectly physically fit girl, as such. Sangwaan's physical condition is a reflection on Therkla's inner condition. She perceives herself as someone deeply flawed, inherently defective.

When Therkla meets Elan, she begins to project on him immediately. Elan is friendly towards her, a new situation for Therkla, as socially successful people have always ignored her. She perceives Elan as her way to get fixed. When that castle in the sky gets blown, it provokes a sense of failure in her. She feels she's defective beyond chance of repair. Unfortunately, that moment happens at the same time she's dying, and thus chooses to remain dead.

Stablishing Therkla's character as lovesick and with a low self-perception was the key to make her decission to remain dead a believable one, and her backstory in GDGU does a good job at completing that characterization.

I think there's been a lot of pretty compelling back-and-forth on the topic and I don't want to get too far into the weeds here, but I have to object to not just looking at Therkla's initial arc here. It's all well and good that GDGU expands out Therkla's backstory and gives her more of a lovesick romantic feel, but this is a story published a decade after Therkla's initial arc and as long as we're talking tropes feels very much like an Author's Saving Throw. It's not the first time Rich has done things like this (Vaarsuvius was not intended to be genderqueer for starters) and I feel like "ah yes, but a decade after Therkla died we found out she was always a moony romantic so she was always going to die like this, ipso facto not fridging" is trying to wriggle out of a difficult topic.

Personally, I think it's clear that the exact term "fridging" is pretty contentious but I do think it's pretty incontrovertible that Therkla could have been handled better in some way. I'm not an author, I'm not going to pretend I can do this better, but as it stands Therkla mostly existed to raise tensions between V and Elan and then explicitly chose permanent death over not getting with a guy she had no chance with (not in-universe or even in the eyes of fans). That she had any characterization outside that is a testament to Rich's skills as a writer, but that doesn't change the fact that her biggest impact on the story has been "Elan has a poison cure spell now". With some tweaks I think she could have been a good starting point for Elan growing out of his story-centric worldview, though.

hroþila

2020-12-16, 02:58 PM

I would argue that Therkla's characterization as a romantic was very much in the text from the very beginning.

Precure

2020-12-17, 06:58 AM

Frankenstein is a tragedy, everyone dies, most because of the monster. I'm not sure how true is is to comparing it to fridging.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-17, 08:39 AM

I do think it's pretty incontrovertible that Therkla could have been handled better in some way. It was hard (in my view, based on my own tastes in stories) for Therkla to be a very credible character when her introduction was this '*swoon*, I am falling for the guy my boss wants me to assassinate since he's cute' premise. I realize that OoTS is funny as well as dramatic; this stab at humor *sitcom awkward style* didn't land as well as most of Rich's humorous bits do. That was not for lack of effort; the underlying sub theme of Therkla being a regular person, with feelings and dreams, who is caught up in the Azurite political power play and is frustated about having little power to change that was (for my money) well represented. Maybe I am bringing some of my own baggage to my read of Therkla, but the message of the Azurites being in trouble and yet the nobles, specifically Kubota, going on because they are so self absorbed in their petty power games struck me as having applicability along the lines of "While Rome Burned, Nero Fiddled," and the bickering among the various groups during a scene in Fellowship of the Ring ... it's in a lot of stories. We see it revisited again, gently, during the dwarf clan chief meeting a few hundred strips later.

To be fair in re my criticism of the Therkla sub arc, Rich's growth as a writer is like the growth of many other writers - it doesn't happen overnight. We got to see one of those messy teenage growing pains things happen. I still love the strip where Elan buries her next to the 'turned to stone' big demon and leaves a nice epitaph ... that was nicely done.

Ionathus

2020-12-17, 11:42 AM

I would argue that Therkla's characterization as a romantic was very much in the text from the very beginning.

Agreed, she was already envisioning Elan as a Robin-esque sidekick long before GDGU was written, so that was always part of her character.

Frankenstein is a tragedy, everyone dies, most because of the monster. I'm not sure how true is is to comparing it to fridging.

Specifically for Dr. Frankenstein's wife: "The night following their wedding...the Creature strangles Elizabeth to death. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse"

Feels pretty fridgy to me. I agree the other deaths are debatable.

Emanick

2020-12-17, 11:49 AM

Agreed, she was already envisioning Elan as a Robin-esque sidekick long before GDGU was written, so that was always part of her character.

Specifically for Dr. Frankenstein's wife: "The night following their wedding...the Creature strangles Elizabeth to death. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse"

Feels pretty fridgy to me. I agree the other deaths are debatable.

I've always hated Frankenstein; it's a cringey read with very little going for it IMO. But I will say that it's a pretty equal-opportunity offender. Everyone important to Victor Frankenstein dies at the hand of the monster, not just his new bride. It would be pretty inconsistent for the Creature to kill Clerval but not Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's death might be fridging by the letter, but in spirit I don't think it really counts.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-17, 02:01 PM

Elizabeth's death might be fridging by the letter, but in spirit I don't think it really counts. Maybe the problem is getting tied to fridging as though it's a concept with value. As Deming might offer, that's a zero value added factor.

Dion

2020-12-17, 02:45 PM

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-17, 03:26 PM

The Wikipedia definition of fridging is:
Irrelevent... and not the point of my post. It is an exercise in reductionism.

Dion

2020-12-17, 04:32 PM

Irrelevent... and not the point of my post. It is an exercise in reductionism.

Well, I have to admit that I don’t understand what reductionism is. And I wasn’t really replying to your post.

But in reference to the point i think you’re trying to make: I disagree.

I fully agree I that a *single* instance of a female character who exists only to enhance a story about a man isn’t a big deal. One grain of sand on the sea of story. So what?

But it’s not a single instance. It’s thousands. And the idea that women exist in stories primarily for the benefit of the stories that men tell about other men is an ugly part of our culture.

It’s not a single grain of sand, it’s a sandbar, and if we were responsible to ourselves we would admit that it exists, and that plenty of stories capsize on it.

Ionathus

2020-12-17, 05:08 PM

I've always hated Frankenstein; it's a cringey read with very little going for it IMO. But I will say that it's a pretty equal-opportunity offender. Everyone important to Victor Frankenstein dies at the hand of the monster, not just his new bride. It would be pretty inconsistent for the Creature to kill Clerval but not Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's death might be fridging by the letter, but in spirit I don't think it really counts.

Correct me if I'm wrong (as I said earlier, it's been awhile) but I was pretty sure Elizabeth's death was special. She was killed, by the Creature, specifically to make Victor feel as alone as the Creature did (after he refused to build the Creature a bride of its own).

She was killed simply to elicit a response, whereas the other deaths had different motivations (IIRC). I think that qualifies her death for the trope, even among a bunch of other tragic deaths in the book.

I agree on the cringe, though. Jekyll and Hyde, Sherlock Holmes, and everything by Charles Dickens is a snoozefest too. Some classics either influenced storytelling so much that everything innovative feels bland now (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny), or they weren't that great in the first place and are only still taught for cultural value.

Irrelevent... and not the point of my post. It is an exercise in reductionism.

How is offering a definition of the term irrelevant to the conversation? Just labeling it "reductionism" is vague and doesn't really say anything.

I fully agree I that a *single* instance of a female character who exists only to enhance a story about a man isn’t a big deal. One grain of sand on the sea of story. So what?

But it’s not a single instance. It’s thousands. And the idea that women exist in stories primarily for the benefit of the stories that men tell about other men is an ugly part of our culture.

It’s not a single grain of sand, it’s a sandbar, and if we were responsible to ourselves we would admit that it exists, and that plenty of stories capsize on it.

My thoughts exactly. It's not a judgment of this story...it's a trend we should pay attention to and watch for across all stories.

Precure

2020-12-17, 05:18 PM

Jason

2020-12-17, 05:26 PM

Frankenstein is a tragedy, everyone dies, most because of the monster. I'm not sure how true is is to comparing it to fridging.

Everybody dies because Victor Frankenstein decided to try to create life through non-traditional means and then was unprepared to be a parent. The monster is a victim too. A malicious victim in the end, but a victim.

I'm not sure I understand why the term "fridging" specifies a female dying to forward a male character's story, when having any character exist only to die or suffer just to forward a main character's story would seem to me to be just as bad regardless of what genders are involved. Having a special term for this particular gender combo would seem to imply that its not as bad with another set of genders involved (male dying to motivate female, or male dying to motivate male, or female dying to motivate female).

Saint-Just

2020-12-17, 05:26 PM

Well, I have to admit that I donÂ’t understand what reductionism is. And I wasnÂ’t really replying to your post.

But in reference to the point i think youÂ’re trying to make: I disagree.

I fully agree I that a *single* instance of a female character who exists only to enhance a story about a man isnÂ’t a big deal. One grain of sand on the sea of story. So what?

But itÂ’s not a single instance. ItÂ’s thousands. And the idea that women exist in stories primarily for the benefit of the stories that men tell about other men is an ugly part of our culture.

ItÂ’s not a single grain of sand, itÂ’s a sandbar, and if we were responsible to ourselves we would admit that it exists, and that plenty of stories capsize on it.

Except in a story, unless it's something absurdly lengthy you will have one issue of "fridging", two tops. The "sandbar" exists out of story. Same with passing Behdel test etc. I do not think that any story is able to capsize on any of aforementioned "sandbars" by itself.

I'll extend the analogy with much less contentious dead horse, namely Deus Ex Machina. If you have only seen the stories which resolve by themselves (some very reasonably, others by ridiculous contrivance, but never by an action of an outside force which was doing nothing right before the ending), and then you have suddenly seen DeM I think at the worst you'd end up with "love it or hate it" work, and maybe with something hailed as a fresh breath in the stagnant <genre>. Except the ancients have made this route thoroughly unnavigable well before any of us was born.

It is not a sandbar. It is ships which tried to take this route and ran aground and thus have made that route harder for future ships to navigate. And it is not in the story but in public perception (if I want to make this metaphor extra ridiculous I probably should say something about perception raising or lowering the sea bottom, which results in ships which had successfully passed that route (being well-liked and well-regarded when they were released) retroactively sinking (being regarded as bad by the modern standards) and causing a chain reaction sinking more ships and making the route suddenly difficult which results in a work which would have no problems passing (being successful) two or four or six years before sinking instantly).

My point? Even if you are looking specifically at representation within a work (and not too long ago proponents of proper representation was talking about representation in the genre/industry, but now it's specifically held against each individual work) you are not making good points by using formal criterions. Look at the ridiculous things which film industry sometimes uses to lower (or contrariwise intentionally raise) the age rating. If you are just want to spend five minutes to ask a question "should I read that", fine, use all the aforementioned tests which are inaccurate (as all rules of thumb), but useful (as most rules of thumb). But if you are spending many hours of your time on a forum specifically dedicated to this work, using formal criterions, especially pass/fail criterions is unproductive.

understatement

2020-12-17, 06:06 PM

Everybody dies because Victor Frankenstein decided to try to create life through non-traditional means and then was unprepared to be a parent. The monster is a victim too. A malicious victim in the end, but a victim.

I'm not sure I understand why the term "fridginfg" specifies a female dying to forward a male character's story, when having any character exist only to die or suffer just to forward a main character's story would seem to me to be just as bad regardless of what genders are involved. Having a special term for this particular gender combo would seem to imply that its not as bad with another set of genders involved (male dying to motivate female, or male dying to motivate male, or female dying to motivate female).

It's not. Fridging, ambiguous as the definition is, can absolutely encompass any character of any background. The term simply happens to originate to female characters dying (often in a cruel fashion) for male heroes to feel bad because that was the trope being observed in comics at the time.

It's a villain-hero-victim triangular dynamic, and it can have several connotations associated with it.

Ruck

2020-12-17, 06:08 PM

The Wikipedia definition of fridging is:

fictional female characters who had been "killed, maimed or depowered", in particular in ways that treated the female character as merely a device to move a male character's story arc forward, rather than as a fully developed character in her own right.

I would argue that it does apply to Therkla.

(Probably to Elizabeth in Frankenstein too, but that book is such a hot mess in so many ways.)

Are you arguing that? Because multiple people, including myself, have made the case that

treated the female character as merely a device to move a male character's story arc forward, rather than as a fully developed character in her own right.

does not apply here.

How is offering a definition of the term irrelevant to the conversation? Just labeling it "reductionism" is vague and doesn't really say anything.

Yeah, I don't understand that either.

Dion

2020-12-17, 06:24 PM

I'll extend the analogy with much less contentious dead horse, namely Deus Ex Machina.

Terribly sorry. The Indiana Jones argument is in the Macguffin thread.

But seriously, I mostly agree with what I think you’re saying. Saying Therkla was fridged / not fridged probably isn’t a helpful metric on which to judge OotS.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t let that stop us from arguing!

Are you arguing that?

Oh heavens no. That seems like hard work!

But seriously? It’s a comic about D&D. Literally hundreds of characters have died to further the character arc of the main characters.

My only real complaint is that most of the characters we argue about most are female, and I honestly don’t know why that’s the case. Does it say more about us the author or the readers?

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-17, 06:25 PM

Well, I have to admit that I don’t understand what reductionism is. And I wasn’t really replying to your post. Sorry, I misread your post.

How is offering a definition of the term irrelevant to the conversation? The irony of your "vague" complaint amuses me. Pay close attention to what our OP for this thread has observed/admitted to:

Fridging, ambiguous as the definition is
I think you missed the part where I made the "zero value added" assessment of an over-worshipped term.

In short, no sale.

Quite frankly, I find it insulting to the author (whatever imperfections the Therkla sub arc may have had) to apply this dismissive and reductionist descriptive to that character. I begin to appreciate why the author rarely reads/responds to forum posts anymore.

understatement

2020-12-17, 06:57 PM

Sorry, I misread your post.
The irony of your "vague" complaint amuses me. Pay close attention to what our OP for this thread has observed/admitted to:

I think you missed the part where I made the "zero value added" assessment of an over-worshipped term.

In short, no sale.

Quite frankly, I find it insulting to the author (whatever imperfections the Therkla sub arc may have had) to apply this dismissive and reductionist descriptive to that character. I begin to appreciate why the author rarely reads/responds to forum posts anymore.

I know fridging has the "knee-jerk" reaction of being ugly, but it's not necessarily so. Some of the most iconic and well-written deaths in media would fall under the umbrella.

In fact, several posts here have even said that even if it was fridging, it's still a well-written death. I think it's valid to take a look at a work from over 10 years ago and analyze it. OOTS is still an ongoing, dynamic work; a lot has changed, both in-story and out of it.

One of the points of the term "fridging" is that it doesn't really have a set definition, because it's not a genuine word, and I think it's interesting to see how something coined rather recently can still apply to a lot of works in different types of media, and if there's a common definition to be found or not. It's not my intention to be dismissive/reductive, and I don't think anyone on this thread was purposely trying to restrict it either, so much as find a foundation to build off analyses.

Ionathus

2020-12-17, 07:07 PM

What do you think was different about the creature's motivations to murder Victor's little brother and best friend? Frankenstein was always his actual target.

Like I said, I didn't remember their deaths. If they were killed specifically to hurt Victor, they count as well!

Everybody dies because Victor Frankenstein decided to try to create life through non-traditional means and then was unprepared to be a parent. The monster is a victim too. A malicious victim in the end, but a victim.

I'm not sure I understand why the term "fridging" specifies a female dying to forward a male character's story, when having any character exist only to die or suffer just to forward a main character's story would seem to me to be just as bad regardless of what genders are involved. Having a special term for this particular gender combo would seem to imply that its not as bad with another set of genders involved (male dying to motivate female, or male dying to motivate male, or female dying to motivate female).

Many (most?) people don't believe the victim has to be female, myself among them. The term just emerged because a female writer noticed a pattern that happened to women in comic books.

Goblin_Priest

2020-12-17, 07:28 PM

I'll admit I didn't read your whole argument, but I would say, no.

She isn't Elan's love interest, Haley is, and had been for some time at that point. Though he appeared to grow to care for her, he was still loyal to Haley.

Her death also isn't what fuels Elan's quest. He was already in conflict with her boss before they grew a relationship. Which itself was just a minor subplot in his quest against Xykon. And he's not even the one that resolves that arc, V is, in 595, with desintegrate.

"Women in fridges", imo, is about presenting a character solely so her death (or capture, perhaps, to some extent) can serve as a driving factor for the companion protagonist.

If you want to fit all "women with ties to a protagonist that dies" into this trope, you end up making it overly broad.

Ruck

2020-12-17, 07:29 PM

I know fridging has the "knee-jerk" reaction of being ugly, but it's not necessarily so. Some of the most iconic and well-written deaths in media would fall under the umbrella.

See, I've been operating under the assumption that "fridging" necessarily has a negative connotation, else its definition is too broad to offer meaningful critique of the trope.

Goblin_Priest

2020-12-17, 08:01 PM

See, I've been operating under the assumption that "fridging" necessarily has a negative connotation, else its definition is too broad to offer meaningful critique of the trope.

I dunno, sometimes something can be neutral by itself, but a trend can be negative.

There's nothing wrong with *one* X character being Y.

There's something sketchy about *every* X character being Y.

X being whatever gender, ethnic, religious, or other such group, while Y being a trait or a treatment.

As such, there's nothing wrong with killing or maiming a character as a way to motivate another in the story. It gets a little tired if everyone redoes the same thing. Kind of how one Death Star was great, a second death star was kinda meh, a third was pretty lame, and a whole fleet of them was just ridiculous.

While an author isn't responsible for others' narrative choices, he can and should be aware of the context he writes in, and of the trends he's participating in.

All that said, the trope was born from superhero comics, which targets a mostly heterosexual male audience, and since a romantic interest's lost is the easiest motivator, it's kind of normal that women tend to get the shafted in these stories. It's not just women, though, you get uncles, friends, fathers, and the like that also die to motivate the protagonists, but girlfriend will just tend to come back often because of how easy it is. And, I mean, if the bad guy wants to hurt the protagonist, why /wouldn't/ he target his girlfriend?

Emanick

2020-12-17, 08:26 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong (as I said earlier, it's been awhile) but I was pretty sure Elizabeth's death was special. She was killed, by the Creature, specifically to make Victor feel as alone as the Creature did (after he refused to build the Creature a bride of its own).

She was killed simply to elicit a response, whereas the other deaths had different motivations (IIRC). I think that qualifies her death for the trope, even among a bunch of other tragic deaths in the book.

I agree on the cringe, though. Jekyll and Hyde, Sherlock Holmes, and everything by Charles Dickens is a snoozefest too. Some classics either influenced storytelling so much that everything innovative feels bland now (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny), or they weren't that great in the first place and are only still taught for cultural value.

While I'm aware that such value judgments are somewhat subjective, I'd put Frankenstein in a very different category from your other examples. I've read "Jekyll and Hyde," the complete Sherlock Holmes canon, and about half a dozen Dickens novels. All of them were interesting and dynamic books/short stories that I found thoroughly enjoyable (well, Great Expectations was a downer, still a good book though), and while some of them had elements of cringe (no surprise given the time period they come from), they were overall good reads. Frankenstein is different; it moves at a glacial pace and is terribly plotted, with no sense of momentum and little taking place between the few significant events in the narrative. It is melodramatic, lacks interesting and dynamic characters, and has a predictable, repetitive plot with little tension. Its only redeeming points are the fact that it has an excellent, original premise and succeeds at establishing an immersive, sustained atmosphere.

Basically, it's a typical "author's first novel attempt" that should have been completely rewritten before being published, but the author was extremely well-connected and the publishing industry was quite different 200 years ago, so it got published in its original form.

What separates it from other plodding (by today's standards) 19th century classics is a predictable, utterly un-dynamic plot and a complete lack of interesting characterization (you can tell that all of the characters were written by an overwrought, underexposed teenager when you notice that all three narrators sound exactly the same). It's important because it helped establish a new genre, not because it's a good book in itself. It's more Castle of Otranto than Tom Jones.

...Sorry, I got a little carried away there. To bring this back to ladies in outsized household appliances, I saw someone argue upthread that Therkla's death doesn't make a meaningful impact on the narrative beyond causing Elan to learn Neutralize Poison. I disagree. It's an important step in helping him to become a more serious character who can get invested in the lives of people outside of their "story purpose," thus setting him up for the Tarquin arc. Elan's speech to Vaarsuvius about how Therkla is a *person* with hopes and dreams, not just a means to an end, helps to contrast him with his father, who has a similarly story-centric worldview but who, unlike Elan, is unable to see past it to value people as individuals.

Jason

2020-12-17, 08:36 PM

Its only redeeming points are the fact that it has an excellent, original premise and succeeds at establishing an immersive, sustained atmosphere.
Sometimes all a novel needs to be a success, have uncountable adaptations, and college courses dedicated to studying it 200 years later is "an excellent, original premise" and the ability "to sustain an atmosphere."

Emanick

2020-12-17, 08:43 PM

Sometimes all a novel needs to be a success, have uncountable adaptations, and college courses dedicated to studying it 200 years later is "an excellent, original premise" and the ability "to sustain an atmosphere."

To my lasting sorrow, this indeed appears to be the case.

KorvinStarmast

2020-12-17, 11:00 PM

Elan's speech to Vaarsuvius about how Therkla is a *person* with hopes and dreams, not just a means to an end, helps to contrast him with his father, who has a similarly story-centric worldview but who, unlike Elan, is unable to see past it to value people as individuals.
Indeed. Rich didn't fridge her, even if some people in this thread want to. Maybe they need to write their own stories.

@Jason: yeah, and it helps to be connected to a publishing house to get that book into print. :smallwink: Sometimes, in real life, it's more "who you know" than "what you know."

Goblin_Priest

2020-12-17, 11:09 PM

...Sorry, I got a little carried away there. To bring this back to ladies in outsized household appliances, I saw someone argue upthread that Therkla's death doesn't make a meaningful impact on the narrative beyond causing Elan to learn Neutralize Poison. I disagree. It's an important step in helping him to become a more serious character who can get invested in the lives of people outside of their "story purpose," thus setting him up for the Tarquin arc. Elan's speech to Vaarsuvius about how Therkla is a *person* with hopes and dreams, not just a means to an end, helps to contrast him with his father, who has a similarly story-centric worldview but who, unlike Elan, is unable to see past it to value people as individuals.

I'm not really convinced. Elan was already a good character, who wanted to do the good thing, and help others out. I don't really see a contrast between "before Therkla" and "after Therkla", as far as Elan is concerned, whereas WiF is usually about a male having a "content peaceful" before and a "driven by a need for justice" after. Elan just buries her and she's barely ever brought up again.

Honestly, that whole sub-plot was more V's arc than Elan's.

ebarde

2020-12-18, 12:46 AM

I mean, I don't think it was more for V's sake cause that would be a very roundabout way of going about it imo. The intersection of that plotline with V's was way too small for that to be all it was supposed to lead to, and until that moment that whole sub-plot revolved entirely around Elan. Also Blood Runs in the Family was the book right after this one, which was a book all about Elan that also dealt with the dangers of using stories to escape from reality.

hungrycrow

2020-12-18, 02:12 AM

I'm not really convinced. Elan was already a good character, who wanted to do the good thing, and help others out. I don't really see a contrast between "before Therkla" and "after Therkla", as far as Elan is concerned, whereas WiF is usually about a male having a "content peaceful" before and a "driven by a need for justice" after. Elan just buries her and she's barely ever brought up again.

Honestly, that whole sub-plot was more V's arc than Elan's.

It's not that Elan wasn't a good character, its that he wasn't serious. He was a guy that would stay captured in an escapable net, or push a self-destruct button, because that's what heroes are supposed to do. He was just playing good guys and bad guys, expecting narrative convention to make things work out in the end. This is the first time he gets confronted with the fact that people can still get hurt and die when he just goes along with the rules of drama. An idea that gets explored more in BRitF.

Also, Elan barely remembered that he was a spellcaster earlier in the story. Him putting serious thought into his spell selection is a pretty big change.

Emanick

2020-12-18, 02:28 AM

It's not that Elan wasn't a good character, its that he wasn't serious. He was a guy that would stay captured in an escapable net, or push a self-destruct button, because that's what heroes are supposed to do. He was just playing good guys and bad guys, expecting narrative convention to make things work out in the end. This is the first time he gets confronted with the fact that people can still get hurt and die when he just goes along with the rules of drama. An idea that gets explored more in BRitF.

Also, Elan barely remembered that he was a spellcaster earlier in the story. Him putting serious thought into his spell selection is a pretty big change.

Yes, exactly this. Thank you for putting it better than I did.

Without this growth, Elan arguably wouldn't have been prepared for all the growing up he was forced to do during BRitF. The Therkla arc is a bridge between his more immature, carefree persona and the more mature and capable character he has become since Book 5.

Also, I don't really understand the argument I've been seeing that "Therkla is barely mentioned in future arcs, therefore she was a disposable character and her arc didn't matter" (apologies if I paraphrased something to the point of strawmanning it; that's not my intent here). Most things that happened in previous books are rarely mentioned explicitly later on. That doesn't mean they didn't matter; it just means that the story has moved on and Rich only has so much panel space, so he's not going to reference an earlier, important event without a good reason (usually a good joke like the one we got here (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1203.html)).

danielxcutter

2020-12-18, 03:05 AM

It’s not like she wasn’t mentioned at all in later strips; when Qarr and Sabine are talking during the ambush scene he indirectly mentions her dying as a result of getting involved with Elan.

Goblin_Priest

2020-12-18, 08:38 AM

I didn't say she was pointless filler. I said she wasn't a driving force for any character or the story itself.

She did contribute to the story, the world setting, and to character growth. But if you take her out completely, then the story wouldn't have a huge gap in it either.

Uncle Ben in Spider Man, and Bruce's parents in Batman are far better examples of "women in refrigerators", even if not all actual women. They are characters whose main purpose is to get killed in order to motivate the main character, which makes them do a complete 180 on their agendas.

Therkla doesn't provoke a 180 in anyone. Just just adds a minor touch of complexity and growth to existing characters. That's not what the fridge trope is about.

And while Elan's book comes next, this is still V's. Way more than setting up Elan's interactions with his father, it sets up V's interactions with the IFCC. It showcases V's immoral descent. It also ironically showcases the Order growing as a team, with V embracing Elan's narrative rhetoric even before Roy does.

Therkla is a woman, and Therkla died. But that does not make her fit the "women in refrigerator" trope, else the trope becomes too broad and meaningless. V's family are way more "women in refrigerators" than Therkla is.

Ionathus

2020-12-18, 10:42 AM

I dunno, sometimes something can be neutral by itself, but a trend can be negative.

There's nothing wrong with *one* X character being Y.

There's something sketchy about *every* X character being Y.

It gets a little tired if everyone redoes the same thing. Kind of how one Death Star was great, a second death star was kinda meh, a third was pretty lame, and a whole fleet of them was just ridiculous.

Thank you for putting this so succinctly! While I don't have an overt problem with Therkla's death, I think it's valuable to notice the correlation to others. We just happen to have a name for this trend, but applying it doesn't mean we're dismissing the work or calling it bad. Again, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Sometimes all a novel needs to be a success, have uncountable adaptations, and college courses dedicated to studying it 200 years later is "an excellent, original premise" and the ability "to sustain an atmosphere."

To my lasting sorrow, this indeed appears to be the case.

You and me both, but it's not always a bad thing.

I'm not sure how others feel, but I was annoyed by Ready Player One the entire way through. A cool premise but endless author mistakes and self-indulgence. The plot was cliched as hell and the characters were completely flat. From a writing perspective, it introduced absolutely nothing new. I still read it to the end and, on some level, enjoyed it: it was unique and still held my interest. Junk food can be okay in moderation.

It's not that Elan wasn't a good character, its that he wasn't serious. He was a guy that would stay captured in an escapable net, or push a self-destruct button, because that's what heroes are supposed to do. He was just playing good guys and bad guys, expecting narrative convention to make things work out in the end. This is the first time he gets confronted with the fact that people can still get hurt and die when he just goes along with the rules of drama. An idea that gets explored more in BRitF.

Also, Elan barely remembered that he was a spellcaster earlier in the story. Him putting serious thought into his spell selection is a pretty big change.

I like this take! I'd never thought about this arc "preparing" him for BRitF, and while I don't agree with it 100% I can definitely see the connections.

Uncle Ben in Spider Man, and Bruce's parents in Batman are far better examples of "women in refrigerators", even if not all actual women. They are characters whose main purpose is to get killed in order to motivate the main character, which makes them do a complete 180 on their agendas.

Therkla doesn't provoke a 180 in anyone. Just just adds a minor touch of complexity and growth to existing characters.

Seems we have a difference of definition: some people argue fridging is about the entire character, while others (myself included) think fridging is specifically about their death. I believe that a character can have a strong arc and be a complex, self-motivated character, and still die a death that qualifies as fridging. To me, that isn't a judgment passed on the entire character: just on the circumstances of their death.

And I don't think fridging requires the change/motivation to be a total "180". Sometimes the impact is more nuanced. I'll reference K'heylr in Star Trek: TNG again: Worf's reaction is 100% within his character, but she was still fridged and it still motivates him.

And while Elan's book comes next, this is still V's. Way more than setting up Elan's interactions with his father, it sets up V's interactions with the IFCC. It showcases V's immoral descent. It also ironically showcases the Order growing as a team, with V embracing Elan's narrative rhetoric even before Roy does.

I disagree. A book doesn't have to just be about 1 character. The Azure Fleet arc was absolutely about both Vaarsuvius and Elan, even if BRitF gave Elan even more focus.

I'd argue the only PC that doesn't get a ton of growth in DStP is Durkon (and maybe Roy, who gets lots of panel time but doesn't change while on Mount Celestia).