WIR? (Spoilers)

That's preposterous. A character is only that. All characters that are not protagonists within all stories exist to set tone and context. Many, many characters are introduced into stories only so that they can die, setting tone and context. Labeling their death "misogynist" solely because they were both an example of this and a female character is an extremist interpretation of what constitutes misogyny. What determines whether something is misogynistic is how it depicts the events that befall a female character, and, perhaps more importantly, how it depicts the thoughts and actions of the male characters around these events. Simply killing off a female character because she's the significant other of a male hero is not misogyny. Depicting the killing in gruesome detail, and/or portraying the killer's approach and/or motiviations as clearly misogynistic (I'm trying to stay in the game's rating here) would make it misogynistic.

Giving a Caucasian lead character an East-Asian or African supporting character who exists solely to die is not intrinsically racist. It all depends on how it's handled in the story.

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.

That's precisely WHY it's exploitative. They introduced this woman into the game proper, did what they could to make her sympathetic, all with the sole reason of killing her off as a shock (or obvious, as the case may be) death. This is not good storytelling. It's little more than emotional blackmail. It strikes with me a similar cord to the young children in Soldier being forced to watch I think it was dogs beaten to death for no reason other than because it was gruesome and likely to sock them, which was something they were intended to become desensitised to.

Actually, scratch that. Alexis' death strikes me more as similar to Lian Harper's death from Cry for Justice or the Wasp's death from Ultimatum - pointless, aimless shock deaths superficially intended to outrage their loved ones but practically intended to outrage ME as the audience. It's emotional blackmail because you have a character built up as good, yet this character's sole reason to exist in the story is to die horribly so as to torture others.

I never approved of the "Yay! We are going to kill an established character! Ratings!" mentality behind the SSAs, but at least I figured that something bad like this would make for a stronger story, like the death of Lt. Sefu Tendaji. Nope. We're diving head first into malicious comic book tropes of murdering, maining and ****** people (not yet, but soon, I have no doubt) for the sake of audience shock. Pass.

I didn't have to pay for these stories, and I'm glad for it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Clearly, you rail against this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, appreciate it. Things like this make me hate villains. I like hating the villain, and I enjoy it more when they get their *** kicked if I hate them. The worst thing a story can do is make me not feel the antagonist is very villainous, in which case I will care less if they are defeated, and ultimately be less invested in a story which revolves around that goal.

I don't mind this element missing if the story is about something else. I don't need a monster that I want to hate in every story. But if the story is about a confrontation with a villain, I want to hate the villain, and not just their goals.

I'm not saying the SSA was a good story, or that it achieved what I'm talking about in a meaningful way. I'm just saying that I find it interesting that you would rail against it so for even trying, when I would appreciate if it did so successfully.

That's an intrinsically mechanistic view of how characters work in a narrative. Charles Dickens was famous for determining in his novels' outlines which of his characters he'd kill off tragically but would always ensure that they (a) made a significant impression on his audience and (b) had a death scene that would move his readers as well as his protagonist. Typically with the WIR Syndrome, part a is underdone, and part b is overplayed for shock value.

Which I have not done. In fact, I've made a special effort to note examples in this thread of when female characters' deaths are handled well and thus avoid the WIR Syndrome.

That doesn't quite distinguish her from Peter Parker's other girlfriends, however. Whatever may be said about Stan Lee's soap operatic cheesiness, he had a talent for creating recognizable characters. With that in mind, the simplified dynamic is that Gwen Stacy was Peter's "nice" girlfriend, the way Liz Allen was his "bitchy" one, Betty Brant his "independent" one, and Mary Jane his "wild" one. Gwen had figured as such a prominent character in the comic for over seven years, going through numerous ups and downs in her relationship with Peter and the other characters, that her death was a shock, even though Marvel had it in mind for some time. In the scheme of horror flicks, Gwen would have been the Final Girl, with MJ killed off early on. It's to Marvel's credit that they upended a cliche before it had even settled in. (Points are deducted, though, for Marvel's continued problem with its characters maturing, which arguably was also behind the editorial motivation behind Gwen's death.)

Miss Liberty's presence in CoH, in contrast, has been so limited that most players would be hard pressed to come up with any particular adjective to describe her.

The irony is that although the WIR Syndrome is a cliche won't die off in contemporary comics, thanks in part to fanboy blinders, MMORPGs are notable in the video game industry for appealing widely to both males and females. The devs should consider their audience as much as their genre when coming up with plot twists.

The problem I have with this line of thought is that if it is true then the inverse has to also be accepted as true. If a male character exists only to be killed then is the writer guilty of misandry?

Having characters introduced solely for the purpose of being killed of is just poor story telling. The gender of the character is largely immaterial to it, women tend to be more common in this role because males are more common as protagonists but that is a separate issue. The real solution is to have more female protagonists in fiction as a whole.

I'd disagree (obviously). The problem is that this is why we have the Girls Need Role Models trope. Having characters exist solely to be killed off should be considered poor form regardless of their gender.

Jacques Derrida. Michel Focault.

Agreed -- but Alexis' death is still just a cheap shock tactic.

A couple of points.

1. I WAS that villain in this story. It's kind of hard to play a game in which I hate the character I made. That's why I've always rallied against requests for "more villainy" that comes down to GTA/Saint's Row random violence against innocent people. Ultimately, I still have to play through this game, and I won't if I'm disgusted.

2. If a story is too unpleasant, I won't get to its end. Period. I have a hard time hating villains, because the approach most authors take to making villains I'm supposed to hate makes me hate the authors more than the villains. And indeed, I am no longer interested in the SSA. If I could, I'd trade the Paragon Points these would have cost for something else, instead.

3. I, personally, have never been interested in villains I'm supposed to hate. They come off as two-dimensional cartoon characters, and it feels like the author is beating me over the head with what I'm supposed to feel. Once I realise that a villain is evil and he's supposed to fall, the story is essentially over. Unless the finale is right there, right then (and for the SSAs, that won't be for another five months), I'm no longer interested. Everything is clear, everything is decided, there is nothing more for the story to deliver but to repeat itself and to try to gross me out more.

When it comes to a good "hero vs. villain" story, I'm interested in complex, interesting characters on BOTH sides. I want a hero I can root for openly, and I want a villain I can envy secretly. I want a hero whose cause is justifiable, but whose motivation is still personal. I want a villain whose cause is wrong and reprehensible, but who's nevertheless so cool that I can't help wanting to see more of. I don't like one-sided narrative that tells me who I'm supposed to hate and who I'm supposed to like. I want a narrative that's fair to everybody, such that I want all of these guys - good and bad - to make it to the end and have an epic brawl right up to the credits. When a story makes me wish a character would just die RIGHT NOW in the middle of it, that's story is essentially over for me, and any length of time thereafter is simply unpleasant.

Building good stories through unpleasant plot twists is not something I'm interested. If a plot twist is unpleasant, the whole story becomes unpleasant, and if I'm expected to sit through it and hope for a resolution which never comes (and it won't, if someone HAS to die because the gods of the Final Destination movies will make it happen), that simply won't happen. When a comic book has a nasty plot twist, I flip ahead to see if it's resolved within the same issue. If a story is unpleasant, I skip ahead to see if it becomes less so. If a movie hurts me, I fast forward to see if it gets better. And if the result is either "no" or "not for a very long while" (as in Naruto, not for another five years and not for another 350+ episodes), then I find something better to do with my time that doesn't leave me walking away from my computer disgusted and depressed.

I don't need fiction to depress me. I actually do have a life outside this game, and that's plenty good enough to depress me and to give me people I hate. I don't know why Paragon Stuidos writing has been in the emo mode gutter since Going Rogue, but I'm simply not interested, and I never will be. That's not dramatic, it's just mean. So much for new content.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sure, maybe. Perhaps you could furnish some examples of female writers in mainstream superhero comics doing this? I'd be willing to wager that the list will be shorter than the one on the WIR website.

Is it even a debate that there's an overall problem with male writers in contemporary superhero comics creating well defined female characters with plausible motivations?

I just don't buy into the idea that how their deaths are handled is a part of the meme. I believe the meme describes any case where a female character is killed to trigger a developmental shift in a male character. How well it's handled simply doesn't apply. You can have a case of WiR that's well written into the story, a case where it's not, and everything in between.

Similarly, while I believe the "movement" (such as it might be) behind this meme are concerned that the prevalence of this meme may indicate misogyny, I believe whether it's handled in a misogynistic way is also separate from the meme itself, particularly in cases of supporting characters, like those we've been focusing on. What's done to lead female characters, independent of their relationship to a male character, is perhaps worthy of separate debate. (This from the Wikipedia quote about the meme applying to "depowering" or eliminating female characters.)

Yeah those guys. I'm sure they would have said their names are social constructs anyway.

They're doing it because they were asked to. CoV was cartoon villainy. This is dark villainy. Everything is going to lie somewhere on the spectrum. Could they have chosen some other spot in the spectrum? Yeah. Could they give us (more of) a choice? Yeah. To me, that about execution, and less about the goal they were shooting for. I don't think this had great execution. But I think the target was where people have been asking them to shoot for a long time. I get that it might not appeal to you, but I also think that might just be unavoidable.

For what it's worth, I don't play bloodthirsty villains either. I'm far more of a Rogue-centric player. I like the way they portray Rogues. I think this needed a more Rogue-ish story branch option.

What do I think?

I think your definition of the WIR meme is so vaguely defined that it could literally apply to any story that has both males and females in it and one of those females is killed for any reason. A meme only really has meaning when it's used to describe something that's uniquely distinct from some other aspect of a story. If you let it apply to effectively every story imaginable then it fails to serve any purpose as a point of distinction.

I think you do in fact have to consider whether there's at least some element of misogyny involved before you can lump every "female death" story into the realm of the WIR meme. How the death is "handled" is an intrinsic part of the meme. The problem, which this ongoing thread so adequately shows us, is that the degree of how much misogyny is involved in a given story is often a very debatable point.

Frankly I don't know, and don't particularly care (since I don't actually read superhero comics). The view from where I sit is that the devs wrote an arc killing off a a minor character and expect me to care. The gender of the character is largely irrelevant to that, I'm just irritated by them killing someone off and expecting me to care when they've given me no reason to care about the character in question. The emotional impact of the arc is roughly equivalent to Red Shirt #5 dieing in an episode of Star Trek.

That one story or, hell, the whole SSA morbid fascination with brutal killings of beloved characters isn't my gripe, really. If it were JUST that, I'd have seen past it, but it isn't. Everything since Going Rogue has been like this. At one point I thought that... OK, Praetorian Earth is a crapsack world where nothing ever goes right and everyone is always miserable. I guess that could work. But then it started creeping into legacy content. First it was Alignment missions, with villain missions always disgusting and unpleasant. Then we lost the original legacy content, to be replaced with mass graves at Fort Darwin where armour-clad men kick dehumanised women in the ribs repeatedly and with hideous moral ambiguity in the Atlas Park content.

My gripe is that we DON'T have a choice, because all new content for the last year has been depressing. And, yes, you could say "Well, they're just making up for lost ground!" but I don't buy it. It seems to me that this is just what whoever is writing the stories thinks is "edgy" and "dramatic" because if that weren't the case, then maybe we'd have seen SOMETHING less depressing for a change, but we just haven't. In fact, the First Ward was so depressing that I have no interest in replaying it, and the SSAs are right next in line.

People keep telling me how much better the game is becoming and how much more content we have now, yet I see the content I actually want to play has only diminished. And the future looks to bring the same.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's obviously false. It is a death (generally, other bad things might apply) that happens to a female character for the express purpose of providing character development or plot action by a male character. The reason for why something bad happened to the female is expressly because she has a relationship to the male.

That is not vaguely defined, and it does not apply to females killed "for any reason".

No, only how it relates to the development of the story defines whether the meme applies. How the story handles it is a separate question.

Show me a quote from the people who have assembled documentation on the meme showing something to the contrary if you want to debate that. I am taking that as one of two major categories of the meme from online sources about the meme, including the WiR website.

This is pretty much exactly how I felt about this SSA. My feelings of being irked about being forced to care about a character I was barely aware of far outweighed any feelings of concern over whether or not this story was a legitimate example of the WIR meme. *shrugs*

I've only gotten into this discussion because of how people were applying the whole WiR thing. Whether or not I think the meme applies shouldn't be taken as an indication of whether I think the SSA story is well done. I'm laid back about it, but I don't think it was great. The WiR discussion just doesn't factor into that for me.

Edit: It's OT for this thread, but some folks are of the opinion that because the SSAs are "paid for" content, that they should be a step above in fiction. I can't say this view is wrong, but that's not the only mark of something that, in theory, had money "set aside" for its development. Time was clearly invested in these arcs in terms of creating contacts, mission environments, applying unusual mechanics, and yes, writing a story that's (for better or worse) more complex than normal. I think it's completely fair that we should expect that time to be invested well, but the balance is going to be all over the map in what each of us thinks should have gotten most of the investment. Should it be the writing? The mission map tilesets? The critters and their powersets? I am not jumping out of my seat about what we got here, but I don't hate it, and I don't expect great shakes from its fiction. There are things I'd like done differently in the future. Hopefully the creators are reading these threads and will improve them over time. If not, well ... I guess VIPs will probably still play them and gripe, and Premiums won't buy them.

The only reason the WIR meme exists as meme which has been debated for decades at all has been because there has always been an undercurrent of misogyny associated with how it's been applied to various stories. If we were just talking about a meme that had no loaded sexual connotations to it it would not be (rather dramatically) called the "woman in refrigerator" meme. Even the name of the meme itself is full of shock value designed to spur on exactly this kind of dissent and debate.

Your attempt to disassociate the sexual undercurrents from the meme itself is admirable but ultimately futile.

Citation required. I'd like some evidence that this is actually an accepted understanding of it, rather than simply some people's interpretation of it.

Um, I seriously don't see that following logically at all. Without context, the name is actually pretty damn confusing. They picked a particularly striking example of the meme and named it after that. There was nothing sexual about the example, unless you hold that every act of bare-handed violence by a man against a woman is sexual - a notion that I reject. If, lacking context, someone thinks the name of the meme is sexually charged, I think that's because they imagined it meant something it didn't.

Apparently only because you say so. Sorry, not buying into that.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting the SSAs to be great. Nothing told in three missions could, and the disjointed nature in which they come together as a cohesive narrative prevents the whole set from coming off like a single episodic story. At no point did I ever believe those would actually be worth paying for - again, three missions and all that.

But what seems to have come of them is even less than I expected. It's not necessarily "bad," in the sense that these arcs clearly had very high production values, but like Spider-Man 3, they seem to have focused too much on sensationalism in both design and storytelling and too little on making something that we'll remember fondly and, above all else, go back to. We have deaths of established (sometimes) characters, we have large extravagant custom maps, we have unique gimmicks galore, but it all comes off like a shock and awe thrill ride in an amusement part - lots of fanfare, but very little substance.

In essence, the SSAs are trying so hard to shock me, they shocked me out of my desire to play them. At one point I might have accused the writers of not trying hard enough, but now that I've seen them try way too hard... It's actually worse.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.