WIR? (Spoilers)
If someone says there's an issue, there might be an issue. If a bunch of people say there's an issue, then there's an issue.
Fun number you pulled out of the air there, but we won't belabor that point. Instead, let's just focus on 'shock value.' That's interesting because it's true - but because it ties into gender norms and the expected gender of comics readers. Specifically, by fridging a character, comics writers are trying to get a cheap shock from reactions like those of UberGuy, who I will quote here: Now, back to BrandX: That's another problematic issue with comics - especially when you consider that, while male superheroes can have non-superhero significant others, the reverse is much less common (yes, there are exceptions, I know. Don't say I said never.) And, really, that's where you get into the matter of superheroines getting fridged as well. Comics are male-driven, male-dominated, and rarely are questions asked about how gender roles and norms are presented in comics. But that's an entirely different thread. I think Samuel Tow started it a couple of weeks ago. Statesman didn't need anyone to die to get him all riled up. It's the Superman question - you need to have a way for him to fail, because he's virtually impossible to kill. And it should be possible to rile him up by setting him up for failure. Killing someone close to him is lazy writing. And it's not just about the relationship - it's about how she went out. She used to be a superhero. She shows up in the first mission, cowers, and is killed without even so much as a defiant holding her head high, or dying declaration. It's also about how it is done. Bucky didn't go out cowering and begging for his life, either. Nor was he a non-combatant, and he went out as a result of HYDRA supersoldiers on a train - who he got to fight against. If Bucky had been female, it wouldn't have been a fridging. Again, it's an un-self-critical male-dominated industry where the questions never get asked. That's the sort of environment where unconscious sexism thrives. |
She's a nameless character that happened to have had a name.
She wasn't a signature character. She was a background character.
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The difference between your approach and mine is that -- though you may not intend any personal offense -- when you characterize someone's writing as misogynistic you've passed right past the let's-talk-like-rational-adults-about-your-work phase and gone straight into if-you-disagree-you're-morally-bankrupt territory. If you wish to discuss things with your friends in those terms, or to use those terms in your own self-reflections, then more power to you -- but when you toss the sexism label around in public you are chilling the free exchange of ideas rather than provoking it.
You seem to be very sensitive about how certain story elements can be interpreted; I'm just telling you my interpretation of the sort of criticism bandied about in this thread. Better to start with, and heavily emphasize, the idea that the story in question is poorly written, rather than painting it in terms that are emotionally charged.
But hey, we're just a couple of random dudes (or dudettes) on the intarwebz. Disagreement is nothing new; the only thing remarkable about this disagreement is the piquant interaction of self-important rhetoric with the spectacular unimportance of the conversation.
Well, as the TVTropes page points out, both MacGyver and Walker, Texas Ranger would stuff an "old friend" character into the fridge just about every episode. I doubt they were all women. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Nikita also apparently had men stuffed in fridges. 300 has a whole village, the Godfather had both a woman and a horse, Tombstone has a male dying this way, and Roadhouse has a couple of other dudes dying this way. Maximus's family in Gladiator. The villain in Punisher's (the movie) motivation is his son's fridging.
I'm just going up and down the page randomly picking these out. It's very clear to me that fridging is hardly exclusive to females. |
And Kirks son died! That motivated him as well!
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The BrandX Collection
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Boy howdy, I'm surprised that wasn't even on the TVTropes page. That was definite fridging. He was introduced just to die in a very chumpy way and motivate Kirk.
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If we had to list every time one character died to motivate another, that page would be overloaded just from episodes of Murder, She Wrote. I also see notice no one bothered to list horror movies, war movies, disaster movies, murder mysteries, thrillers, or any kind of movie where the entire premise is that one or more characters get introduced specifically to die.
IMO the trope site is kind of fun. But one of my main objections to criticism-by-trope is that grouping things into tropes and genres is the equivalent of skimming. I am very skeptical of criticism that says details don't matter, context doesn't matter, stories are not individual, what matters is overarching themes, and in particular themes that can be retrofitted to semi-conscious social evils. Analysis that is unconcerned with detail is inherently problematic.
Deconstruction is a similarly fun but potentially dangerous tool. When critics become more concerned with secret social messages than with the literal content of a work there is a risk of losing the work altogether. Deconstruction can be useful, but it can also be the equivalent of self congratulatory babble, no better than a Freudian psychoanalysis that reads the current century's prevailing moral code into innocuous or at least ambiguous text. At its worst, deconstruction is pseudo-scholarship and a system of distributing labels, not far removed from in its pursuit of truth from an Internet snark site like somethingawful.com.
IMO a total disregard of truth is not helpful, especially when it is potentially destructive for the author. Personally, I am a left-leaning, pro-feminist, gay, sometime-vegetarian atheist. But I demand truth in my scholarship. If we're going to label a piece of fiction as socially destructive, I think the standard of evidence needs to be rigorous.
Since we've been in a quoting mood, I'll conclude with what Noam Chomsky had to say about some of the lead proponents of deconstruction.
"Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I've met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible --- he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven't met, because I am very remote from from these circles, by choice, preferring quite different and far broader ones --- the kinds where I give talks, have interviews, take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I've dipped into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned: what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish." |
I think it might be to wonder why men like me are less bothered (even if certainly bothered) by the idea of the murder of their fellow males.
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What would you rather lose: Your competition or what you´re competing for?
Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Nikita also apparently had men stuffed in fridges.
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@Redcap
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ANARCHY = A Society that does not need government
114. Ahrouns do not appreciate my particular brand of humour, so I should stop bleaching bulls-eyes in their fur.
What would you rather lose: Your competition or what you´re competing for?
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I personally think there is often more to it than that. IMO in a large number of cases where the wife or girlfriend is a target it's because she is the person closest to the lead character. If you killed the best friend instead, the reaction might not be "Why are you upset" but "Men shouldn't grieve men, get over it." The alternative to the wife or girlfriend is a child or young person in the lead character's care. Kidnapping/torturing/brain washing children is also extremely common--especially if the authors can offload these scenes on a character who is now of age and show them as "flashbacks."
Anyway, playing the deconstruction game, I could say that maybe WiR really is a common phenomenon, but its actual implication is that men's conflicts and irrationality leads to violence against innocent people who are at their heart morally superior. I feel this reading is somewhat dishonest, but no less so than the alternative ones proposed as the "true" answer. The text is wide open to interpretation. The mere fact that you observe a trend (real or not) doesn't provide you a definitive interpretation of what it actually means.
I should add that I think it is really weird to talk about women in refrigerators in general fiction without talking about the most obvious genre where discarding characters is the entire point: horror. You could fill the internet listing examples and counter examples of conflict.
The mere fact that you observe a trend (real or not) doesn't provide you a definitive interpretation of what it actually means.
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This is the main objection to the thesis of the OP and its defenders. Personally, I accept the "WiR (Syndrome)" as a trope, where a trope is a deconstruction of any given story to find elements in it that fit a storyline template. What I don't accept is that finding a place where that template can be applied tells us something definitive about the message given by that story, or indeed even that the prevalence of the trope itself tells us anything definitive.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I think it's more that like any trope or story element; putting a woman in a refrigerator is just fine when it makes a good story better, not when it makes a bad story memorable.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Personally, I accept the "WiR (Syndrome)" as a trope, where a trope is a deconstruction of any given story to find elements in it that fit a storyline template. |
Deconstruction is a similarly fun but potentially dangerous tool. |
Boy howdy, I'm surprised that wasn't even on the TVTropes page. That was definite fridging. He was introduced just to die in a very chumpy way and motivate Kirk. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Comics writer Gail Simone put a name to the trend she observed, and her industry colleagues, including such veterans Marv Wolfman, Mark Waid, and Steve Englehart, have agreed by and large with her thesis, particularly since they'd seen it for themselves or wound up contributing to it. Clear criteria for qualification have been outlined, and numerous examples have been provided (far more than comparable lists for male characters).
I should add that I think it is really weird to talk about women in refrigerators in general fiction without talking about the most obvious genre where discarding characters is the entire point: horror. |
when you toss the sexism label around in public you are chilling the free exchange of ideas rather than provoking it.
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Its hard to tell because most men try to avoid misogyny, really they do, in this world we live in today. {...} But I dont know. Theres been lots of things, the sexism in DC because its mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say were taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. |
The problem with fridging is that it's bad writing, period: Treating a female character's death worse than if she were male, the essence of WIR Syndrome, is never going to make a good story better, only poorer.
The problem with fridging is that it's bad writing, period: Treating a female character's death worse than if she were male, the essence of WIR Syndrome, is never going to make a good story better, only poorer.
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In many cases, killing off a recently-introduced loved one of the protagonist is a sign of a story that has run out of compelling ways to motivate a character. More egregiously, it's often wasted: the death of the loved one does not truly change the character and ends up maybe adding a little impetus to the eventual fist-in-the-face scene. However, all of this applies regardless of the sex of the characters involved.
In stories where the death of a female loved one is specifically treated as worse than the similar death of a male loved one, it might be bad writing. However, perhaps a specific point is being made about a characters' relationship, sexism/chivalry, or other qualities. This can make the story better by giving us more understanding of the character.
For instance, it might make more sense for Steve Rogers/Captain America to become more determined to defeat a bad guy because he is threatening a woman than it does for Wonder Woman. The fact that Rogers is holding to certain 1940s attitudes despite his time in the modern era can give depth to his character. Sure, the same can be done in other ways, but this way is equally legitimate.
What I object to when I see what I call fridging is when I am robbed of a chance to feel something for a character because the character is killed off-screen/while helpless/suddenly in a manner meant to shock you with the aftermath of the loss, rather than with a proper dramatic buildup and denouement.
Gale Simone's own point behind the entire Women In Refrigerators site is simply stated: Simone maintained that her, "... simple point (had) always been: if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won't read comics. That's it!"[5]
Miss Liberty's death is a fridging, but it is not a poor death scene because it is a fridging. It is a poor death scene that happens to also be a fridging. Fridging is not a practice to be avoided at all costs, but it should be done with care, because female heroic characters are at a premium, and 'permanent' deaths of those characters are more consequential by simple demographics than the similar death of a male character.
It may be sexist, but it is also true.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Gale Simone's own point behind the entire Women In Refrigerators site is simply stated: Simone maintained that her, "... simple point (had) always been: if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won't read comics. That's it!"[5]
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So, really for my own edification and with malice towards none, I started making a list of the superchicks who had gone down in one of those ways (ignoring for the moment the wives/girlfriends of superheroes - a whole 'nother problem). {...} When I realized that it was actually harder to list major female heroes who HADN'T been sliced up somehow, I felt that I might be on to something a bit ... well, creepy.{...} {M}ale superheroes ALSO get beat up, cut up, and killed up-an undeniable truth, I say. However, it's my feeling that a) the percentages are off. If there are only 50 major female superheroes, and 40 of them get killed/maimed/depowered, then that's more significant numerically than if 40 male characters get killed, since there are many times more of them total. And b) I can't quite shake the feeling that male characters tend to die differently than female ones. The male characters seem to die nobly, as heroes, most often, whereas it's not uncommon, as in Katma Tui's case, for a male character to just come home and find her butchered in the kitchen. There are exceptions for both sexes, of course, but shock value seems to be a major motivator in the superchick deaths more often than not. It got me to wondering, honestly, why it was OK, or even encouraged somewhat, to kill women, more than men, statistically. |
YMMV, but:
In many cases, killing off a recently-introduced loved one of the protagonist is a sign of a story that has run out of compelling ways to motivate a character. More egregiously, it's often wasted: the death of the loved one does not truly change the character and ends up maybe adding a little impetus to the eventual fist-in-the-face scene. However, all of this applies regardless of the sex of the characters involved. In stories where the death of a female loved one is specifically treated as worse than the similar death of a male loved one, it might be bad writing. However, perhaps a specific point is being made about a characters' relationship, sexism/chivalry, or other qualities. This can make the story better by giving us more understanding of the character. For instance, it might make more sense for Steve Rogers/Captain America to become more determined to defeat a bad guy because he is threatening a woman than it does for Wonder Woman. The fact that Rogers is holding to certain 1940s attitudes despite his time in the modern era can give depth to his character. Sure, the same can be done in other ways, but this way is equally legitimate. What I object to when I see what I call fridging is when I am robbed of a chance to feel something for a character because the character is killed off-screen/while helpless/suddenly in a manner meant to shock you with the aftermath of the loss, rather than with a proper dramatic buildup and denouement. Gale Simone's own point behind the entire Women In Refrigerators site is simply stated: Simone maintained that her, "... simple point (had) always been: if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won't read comics. That's it!"[5] Miss Liberty's death is a fridging, but it is not a poor death scene because it is a fridging. It is a poor death scene that happens to also be a fridging. Fridging is not a practice to be avoided at all costs, but it should be done with care, because female heroic characters are at a premium, and 'permanent' deaths of those characters are more consequential by simple demographics than the similar death of a male character. It may be sexist, but it is also true. |
Remember, aging in comics worked differently. Even for characters like Cap who likely has a slower aging process.
And the problem with all that, is sexist is sexist.
Also with that line of thought, where is the proof of it all? I'm more inclined to think it's socety itself that keeps females from reading comics, the same way it is for grown men to look at comics and go "that's for kids".
It's the same with cartoons. At one point, society didn't think cartoons were just for kids, it has sense become that way.
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The BrandX Collection
EDIT: She's not exaggerating about the pressure to kill female characters. Marv Wolfman recounts, "Kole was, in retrospect, a mistake which I did because other writers complained we weren't killing off any of my characters in Crisis, and if I wanted their characters to die I had to kill one of mine." And Mark Waid apologizes, "I'm responsible for the death of Ice. My call, my worst mistake in comics, my biggest regret. I remember hearing myself ask the editor, 'Who's the JLAer whose death would evoke the most fierce gut reaction from readers?' What a dope. Mea culpa."
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I mean really, "We're killing off our characters, we have to kill yours"? I would have asked how that made any sense.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
Your examples are interesting.
Kole was apparently created as a red shirt so that Marv Wolfman could kill someone off. My thoughts:
- Cheater! No fair getting around complaints that you are killing off others' characters by creating a character specifically to be killed. Bad Wolfman, no doggie biscuit.
- Why was it his instinct to create a female character for this purpose? A die roll, or a specific intent to make readers 'more sad' than otherwise?
- Was Cole's death handled well as a story? Apparently not; her death was apparently offscreen, her body, along with that of Robin and Huntress, was never even found.
Ice was killed specifically to evoke a reaction from readers. But that in itself is asexual: Waid asked what character would evoke the biggest reaction, and presumably would have killed off Booster Gold or Martian Manhunter if the editor had named them.
This begs the question as to what extent Ice's sex was integral to her popularity, and whether she should have gotten a 'pass' because of it.
I actually don't think that in Western Comics there is enough permadeath. When I read a manga, and a character I like is in peril, I am afraid to turn the page; manga writers are perfectly willing to kill off major characters at the drop of a hat. However, this (in general, IMHO) irrespective of the gender or age of the characters and seem usually dictated by the logic of the story, even when it is done specifically to motivate the hero (or heroine). In Western Comics, death is relegated to nearly a running gag.
However, each death (with the possible exceptions of express mooks/redshirts should be treated as important. It irritates me when writers try to have it both ways and introduce the Most Important Person in someone's life ever and kill them off practically before (or entirely before) they make it onto the set.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Actually I'm pretty sure that the decision to kill off Kirk's son came well after TWoK was made. The movies were largely written by different people, so I don't think we can say David was introduced to be killed.
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Miss Liberty, I highly doubt, was created to be killed off.
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BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
Perhaps, but Booster Gold and Martin Manhunter are more popular heroes and less likely to be killed unless it's a big deal.
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Really?
In any case, are you saying Ice would have been the target regardless of what the editor said? Are there any male JLA members from that era that would have been better choices?
If the situation was "I am going to write a story about the death of a superheroine, Ice, and the impact on the rest of the JLA. I am going to have the Overmaster perform the deed. Any objections?" I could respect that.
This description sounds more like, "I am going to write a story where Overmaster kills off a member of the JLA. Who should it be?"
Of course, it would have been even better if Ice had died pulling a heroic sacrifice, or a mutual destruction with Overmaster, or something rather than "I fry you with a single bolt! Wait, why didn't I try that on Batman?"
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Booster Gold?
Really? In any case, are you saying Ice would have been the target regardless of what the editor said? Are there any male JLA members from that era that would have been better choices? If the situation was "I am going to write a story about the death of a superheroine, Ice, and the impact on the rest of the JLA. I am going to have the Overmaster perform the deed. Any objections?" I could respect that. This description sounds more like, "I am going to write a story where Overmaster kills off a member of the JLA. Who should it be?" Of course, it would have been even better if Ice had died pulling a heroic sacrifice, or a mutual destruction with Overmaster, or something rather than "I fry you with a single bolt! Wait, why didn't I try that on Batman?" |
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BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
Of course, it would have been even better if Ice had died pulling a heroic sacrifice, or a mutual destruction with Overmaster, or something rather than "I fry you with a single bolt! Wait, why didn't I try that on Batman?"
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Since there have been so many WIR cases in this thread, here are some counter-examples:
- Supergirl: Died fighting Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths, sacrificing herself and forcing the supervillain to withdraw.
- Elektra: Killed by Bullseye, against whom she's evenly matched, in one of Frank Miller's old-school martial arts duels.
- Elasti-Girl: Died with her fellow Doom Patrol members in an explosion in order to save a town rather than give in to the supervillain General Zahl.
- Phoenix (Jean Grey): After beating back the Shi'ar Imperial Guard on her own, sacrifices herself rather than let her identity be consumed by the Dark Phoenix power.
Deconstructionism is reading a work in such a way as to "prove" it means something other than the author's intent; usually but not always the opposite of that intent. If you have to deconstruct a work to claim it's using a trope, you're wrong.
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Tropes are nothing but story element or character type templates. Because of this, recognizing these tropes within a story involves lifting details from the story and fitting them into a category in a way that is able to ignore all details of the story not relevant to the trope. This is, by definition, a deconstruction of the story into independently recognizable, constituent parts.
In that context, I find your assertion about tropes and deconstruction to be without merit. That may be, though, because it was not clear that this was the meaning of "deconstruction" I was referring to.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
The horror genre isn't germane to CoH, but if you want to explore that on your own, there's a ton of interesting criticism. The Final Girl phenomenon is a good place to start. Horror tropes don't have anything to do with Miss Liberty or the Who Will Die? arc (unless Statesman winds up stabbed to death in the shower by Lord Recluse dressed as his dead sister).
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I disagree. Bodies placed in food storage units for others to find is ripped straight from a horror movie. There is also a trope name for it (isn't there always): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...PeekABooCorpse.
And no I don't think the horror genre has much to do with the WWD arc, but thats because I don't think WWD is an example of conscious or unconscious sexism.
The problem with fridging is that it's bad writing, period: Treating a female character's death worse than if she were male, the essence of WIR Syndrome, is never going to make a good story better, only poorer.
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I have no objection to the notion that this idea of a woman's death being worse can be used poorly. Relying on it solely to engage an audience, either intentionally or subconsciously, is not the mark of a strong author. However, as someone subject to the notion, I disagree that it cannot ever be used well, or could not enhance how engaged I am in a story or a character.
Among other things, your assertion suggests that my own view on whether its worse for a woman to die is wrong, something which I don't accept. Examples of what would be wrong would be for that view to lead to other things such men treating women in patronizing ways since men have to protect them, or not letting them do certain dangerous things because they need to be protected. Viewing harm to women as worse than harm to men is necessary but not sufficient for those kinds of negative outcomes to result.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I'm just going up and down the page randomly picking these out. It's very clear to me that fridging is hardly exclusive to females.