WIR? (Spoilers)

CoH does a good job of doing violence to everyone regardless of race, creed, or gender. That's kinda the point of a Superhero game, really. However, a few people are starting to call 'Women in Refrigerators' on the recent in-game events.

For an in depth look at the phenomenon, visit the above link. However, a brief description is having BAD THINGS happen to female characters in order to move the story along, be it to give major male characters grief to emote against or a reason to strike at their enemies.

Some people simply call 'Misogyny'. However, one of the more common, more reasonable explanations is that since most comic writers are male, it's easier to write for male characters than it is to write for females. They get more mileage out of griefing their male leads by heaping torment upon their female leads than the other way around. Murder, ****, and other kinds of torture are doled out to be reacted to.

Barbara Gordon's crippling and subsequent sexual harassment at the hands of the Joker in 'The Killing Joke' solely as a measure to torment Jim Gordon stands out as the most prominent example in my mind, but there are many, many others.

(CoH spoilers ahead)

Certain in-game deaths in the last few pieces of content released seem to focus more heavily upon female characters than male characters. Praetorian Vanessa's death seems rather heroic rather than pointless. She died for the sake of getting the truth out.

However... Miss Liberty's death (and Manticore's reaction to its possibility) seems rather pointless and plotted solely to grief Statesman and spur him to possibly irrational action in future episodes of 'Who Will Die?'.

I don't know that this is 'Women in Refrigerators', but I think it may be coming close. Is it intentional on the part of the writers, say purposefully reflecting the phenomenon in comics? Is it simply one of many minor characters who are about to tally their bucket lists?

What do you think?

To throw an interesting twist...

Unfortunately, Statesman has no male heirs in-game (that we know of). If Alexis Cole-Duncan were actually, say, Alexander Cole (his son) and everything stayed the same (former hero, father instead of mother to Ms Liberty, now retired, 77-going-on-45-ish look, etc)... would it have the same impact?

Go one worse... Ms. Liberty runs security, rather than Manticore, in an attempt to better her image (and Longbow's) as the loose cannon of the Isles, trying to turn over a new leaf with Warburg... and THIS happens.

Would Statesman ever forgive his granddaughter for failing to prevent the death of her father, his son? Or would we be chewing her out as an example of a woman 'failing to do a "man's job"'?

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Uh, yeah I'm going to call foul, because women are not the only ones dying tragically lately, and in fact it's kind of sexist just to zero in *solely* on the female deaths.

The Ghoul King was murdered by Calvin Scott early in the First Ward arc, a character in the final Crusader arc in Praetoria the players helped elevate back to human intelligence and forge an alliance with the resistance.

Cerulean is a member of the Carnival of Light fighting against the evils in First Ward before breaking off with the Carnival of War to take a more proactive approach and ending with being corrupted by the Talons of Vengeance so he has to be put down by the player.

And there's Master Midnight (Praetorian Percy) who sacrifices himself in the end to stop Diabolique from being consumed by Selene in a last act heroism after doing so much evil.

And that's just First Ward.

As was said, Statesman doesn't have many close male friends/relatives and the point of killing Miss Liberty was to get Statesman and Manticore involved in the encroaching plot web, as explicitly stated in the end of the 2nd SSA. It only feels pointless because due to lack of development we feel little about the specific character, we've only seen her once prior (and that's only in one Ouroboros Flashback Taskforce Villainside) and unless we're well versed in the lore we don't really know much about her. It's tragic for Statesman, which is pretty much the whole point. Definitely not a case of WIR. Which btw people are including Seer Katie in, who has explicitly *not* been killed.

I bet he still has that drawing she stuck in his stuff when he tried to give up being a hero when his wife died.

The problem I have with tropes in general is if you see it happen more than twice... or even more than once... the concept of a trope means you have the right to instantly scream "Hey! It's no longer original so it must be a gimmick!"

The danger of such thinking is that it robs you of the drama of the writing because it turns every thing into a parody or cliche.

Here's the truth about our world: Everything has been done.

There you go... writing today in a nutshell. No matter how original you think your idea is... no matter how artfully you contrive it... it's been done by someone at some other time. You don't have to be Professor Chaos watching Simpsons reruns to understand that.

Here's another way of looking at it... 50% of the population (roughly) is female... don't you think that's a helluva lot of refrigerators?

My honest opinion is that people are looking for a problem to get riled up about. Stuff happens to characters, other characters react to said stuff, and whether or not any of them are female should really be more of an afterthought, if it's even considered at all.

Furthermore, that WIR list is fairly pointless in my book. You can't trot out a highly selective list and say "look at how bad this is" without giving any sort of contrast.

It wasn't exploitative in the least. She's showed up for all of 1 mission which odds are good you haven't done because it's an Oro task force, and that was her in the past. There's literally no emotion to exploit there apart from "someone died".

Now exploitative in the sense of "We killed someone! OH SNAP! This story just got edgy"... Yeah, I guess. This SSA really kind of lost me, to be honest, and not even on plot alone like it tends to be of late.

The problem is mostly a sex relation one. If it were Sister Psyche's uncle we basically wouldn't have this thread.

It's a deep seated issue that's had a lot of debate in comics circles, and a lot of people feel very strongly about it, so I'd read up before you wade in with your opinion, if only to prevent this devolving into a flame war.

(Playing Devil's Advocate)

Are the villains' male enemies (the heroes) somewhat chivalrous/chauvinistic? If so, going after the female proteges of the male enemies might be more tactically sound, to enrage/weaken the judgement of the male enemies. This is quite eeevil, which would make sense.

Also, Eva's suggestion that 'maybe if she had had magic blood, etc.,' - is it possible that there may be more to the reasons for these actions that we have yet to learn? Could it be an onion, rather than an apple?
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All that being said, I agree that I think we've had enough 'fridging', so to speak.

I only have a problem with it if the death was particularly gruesome or humiliating, which as far as I can tell Alexis' was not (Katie on the other hand suffered a fate worse than death, at least for her). To me a WIR is not necessarily how many get killed but how they are killed.

It was sad, and I hate it when anyone dies in the game, but it didn't seem overly violent or gratuitous. I've only done the hero-side and I'm really itching to do the villain side because I have SO many questions left.

First rule of the hero - keep that mask on!

Oh, good. I was worried I wouldn't miss more important plot details by playing the hero version first. I'm glad to see I wasn't let down.

SSA 3 gets worse and worse...

Oh, no, it's still terrible storytelling.

It's just not (potentially) misogynist.