Smersh

I have never claimed that all female deaths are fridging.

Please quote where it appears I said that, because that's certainly not what I intended to say.

"The black guy always dies first" is also a trope.

Not all tropes are value-neutral. Some are so problematic that they need to be retired.

No, he just doesn't respect them as anything other than sexual objects. Women exist for him to pursue and attain. He certainly refuses to treat them as actual people, or to consider for even a second their thoughts on the matter.

That's also misogyny, in my book. It's treating women as lesser beings. And I'll give you three guesses as to what his reaction to rejection by women would look like. The first two don't count.

I'll take the opportunity to point out that I hated the First Ward as well. The Praetorian Seer network is an industrial-scale refrigerator. The 'hilarious' Master Midnight is so misogynistic that I would have rather chosen sides against him, even if the result would have been becoming an unwilling member of the Carnival of Vengeance. Sorceress Serene's cabal is stuffed in a fridge as a part of her backstory. We get to put Katie Douglass back into her refrigerator.

Compared to the RWZ arcs, where Sefu Tendaji's death would not have been a fridging if his and Captain Dietrich's genders had been flipped, I would have to say that someone on the writing team has a big obsession with refrigerators. I can't say I care for it.

Because it doesn't have to be a pattern. Each individual work can be considered.

It doesn't matter if you put a woman in a fridge once or a hundred times, it's still a refrigerator.

Wrong.

From the ur-example that coined the term: Alexandra DeWitt, a character who existed mostly to die in service of character development for the hero.

There are levels of WIR. I consider the characters who exist to be stuffed into refrigerators the worst case of WIR. They are not the only cases of WIR.

Consider also Max Payne's wife. Fridged, exists to be fridged, to make Max an angsty anti-hero. Contrast with Gwen Stacy (a borderline fridge case), who was an actual character who happened to be put in the fridge. Much less egregious, and why Gwen Stacy as WIR is up for debate, whereas Alex DeWitt is not.

To be perfectly fair, I cast the WIR problem as wider than other people do. As pointed out earlier in the thread, I count Gwen Stacy as being 'fridged,' because her death was primarily put in (in my opinion) to drive Peter Parker's character growth. I will grant that Gwen Stacy is a debatable example.

I consider the examples especially egregious when the character being fridged is defined primarily by their relationship to our (usually male) protagonist. If you describe Peter Parker in one sentence, you would probably say something about how he's Spiderman. If I asked you to describe Gwen Stacy in one sentence, that sentence would most likely be about her being Peter Parker's girlfriend.

In terms of your Wikipedia definition, I tend to focus much more on the first sentence than the second. I also am known to talk about refrigerators in genres other than comic books.

Definition one: the use of the death or injury of a female comic book character as a plot device in a story starring a male comic book character.

Definition two: the depowerment or elimination of a female comic book character within a comic book universe.

Amazingly, here, in the SSA - Alexis Cole-Duncan fits BOTH categories. And, in the villain-side version of the arc (which I ran this morning), your character has the opportunity to put her in the fridge yourself, with explicit dialogue from Malaise pointing out how the two of you were going to hang out to see Manticore's expression when you open the fridge door for him yourselves.

Why must Alexis Cole-Duncan die? To screw with Statesman and Manticore. No other reason. Not to mention that she's a depowered former superhero who can't fight back and spends the entire arc cowering.

Compare and contrast: Alexis Cole-Duncan, Lt. Sefu Tendaji.

It's not about the gruesomeness of the death - Gwen Stacy counts as stuffed in a fridge.

It's about the author doing these things so that the hero has something to angst about and have character development over.

In general, it's about having horrible things happen to female characters so that male characters can react to it.

The WIR hypothesis is not that women get killed.

The WIR hypothesis is that women get killed specifically to provide motivation to the protagonists.

Miss Liberty was not killed because she was fighting for justice. She was not killed because she had a McGuffin. She wasn't established as a character in her own right, but pretty much solely by her relationship to other characters (daughter of States, mom of Ms. Liberty).

Yes, I'm aware she shows up once in the one villain Ouro arc - with the exact same powers as her daughter. That's not an independent character, that's a continuity nod.

To have her show up a second time with no fanfare, and to be killed solely to provide motivation to our signature heroes? Yeah, that's stuffing her in a refrigerator.

Had the negotiations with Marshall Blitz and Miss Liberty been a B plot withing the SSAs, had the character any sort of presence in the game... there were ways that could have avoided WIR. As it is, she shows up in the game once to be established and once to die providing pathos and motivation to our protagonists (which are not our player characters mind, but the signature heroes.)

It's pretty much the definition of WIR.

Oh, don't worry about that, comrade. It is something of a running joke, da?

Not everyone knows their blood-type. Lori, presumably, knows that she can't donate.

If you're not sure about blood types, it's really bad to transfuse. And I don't find it surprising that a veterinarian doesn't have the equipment on hand to test for blood types.

Dog Soldiers.

"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

Not looking at the build at the moment, but Werner's probably got DA double-stacked.

Ice/KM stacks -damage very nicely. The crystal option for Stone Melee can look somewhat like ice if you color it correctly.