Was Therkla fridged by the story?

[Ionathus]

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).

[Metastachydium]

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.

Everyone (other than the redshirts and mooks that die in droves because someone has to do that too) is somebody's somebody, though, and therefore beyond being sufficiently dramatic, the death of a strong and complex etc. character will as a general rule motivate someone else – heck, if it didn't, that would be both less than realistic and somewhat creepy.

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.

Yup. It also contains some of the most important scenes for Belkar, who does begin to make his own little U-turn in DStP.

[Quartz]

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.

...

Thoughts?

This is a common trope. It's barely different from Obi Wan being killed by Vader in view of Luke.

[Goblin_Priest]

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.



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).

By "180", I didn't mean personality change, just agenda. From passive to motivated.

Of course, all books touch multiple characters, it'd be pretty one-dimensional otherwise.

[Fishman]

I don't think Therkla was "fridged" because she wasn't a character who existed only to be killed to somehow motivate the hero. She had purpose to the narrative beyond simply as a dead character, and her death was not simply the only thing in her existence, but rather, the conclusion of a plot path she chose for herself. And that's another distinction here: She chose her path, a fridged character does not.

[Quartz]

Would you say that Miko's death was subverting the trope? She died a horrible death but was discovered by the enemy.

[hungrycrow]

Would you say that Miko's death was subverting the trope? She died a horrible death but was discovered by the enemy.

There's a difference between subverting a trope and just not using a trope.

[Emanick]

There's a difference between subverting a trope and just not using a trope.

Yeah, this. Miko's death had far more emotional impact on her than on any male character, arguably (disregarding its downstream effects, which were many), so her death really seems to have nothing to do with fridging whatsoever. It was pretty clearly the result of her own agency, anyway.