You asked "What if males have it just as bad?" That's a hypothetical equivalency which would restructure the entire argument but the problem is the whole "argumentative proof" isn't really mine to put forth. Aquababy would really only suggest that children are also part of fridging. And is only one example.
So it's not really my opinion. It's just not useful because the problem you're proposing doesn't exist. At least with the little you offered up.
The only one's I'd argue you could say were straight up used as fridging motivation were.
-Jill Masterson who Bond had a bit of vendetta against Goldfinger over. This was a good use though because a female character was also motivated by the fridging even though she died herself later. It gave Bond a more personal reason to hate Goldfinger and a reason his superiors gave him pause.
-Aki but she died only really to set up Kissy Suzuki and to get her out of the way. Bond also quickly got revenge.
-Tracy whose death motivated him and added pathos to his character for pretty much the rest of the series until the Craig reboot
-Paris who gave Bond a personal reason to want to kill the Assasin who killed her and really make Bond want to take down Elliot Carver
-Vespar who was Bond's first true love. But that's a mixed bag because she also betrayed him. So it was a fridging but also a way to rock his world view and make him lose the ability to trust.
*I guess technically Felix's wife Della in License to Kill but I think Bond probably cared more about his friend getting dismembered and losing his wife. But she was part of it.
Bond is generally viewed as an example of fridging because
1. So many women die in his films and the fact that he failed to protect so many adds a bit of pathos to his character.
2. His origin is sort of a fridging. In the book series he literally becomes the cold hearted Bond who hates and wants to stick it to the otherside because he was broken by Vespar's betrayal and death. That's what makes Bond different from other heroes. He isn't out to do the right thing or be heroic. Who was deeply hurt and wants to pay it back. He hates the men he's up against.
Last edited by KNIGHT OF THE LAKE; 06-11-2018 at 05:58 PM.
Originally observation that women in comics (and other popular media) are much more likely to be killed, maimed, raped, depowered, or crippled in gruesome ways than men in comics. The primary source is still around.
The notion that it's for motivating the (usually male) hero is one very common way that the trope expresses itself, and the term fridging is often used to imply this. Personally, I prefer to not tie any storytelling motives to the term, but I'm probably in the minority in that.
Well, I'm tired of your sealioning.
I also note that you tie heroism to "muscle mass and to be generally ornery". To me that is a fundamentally limited view of heroism, specifically geared towards that only men can be heroes.
You've misquoted me. I never said "what if males have it just as bad." I questioned the use of the term "subculture exploitation" by stating "there are a sizable quantity of male support-characters killed off for the same reason." The problem with your statement (one I'll bet you won't acknowledge) is that if we're not dealing with a trope confined to women-- who I guess are the "subculture" you're talking about-- then the term "subculture exploitation" doesn't mean anything.
I'm not going to trot a list of male support-characters who have been killed in fiction over the years. You know they exist as much as I. If you want to claim that there are more females so treated, or that their treatment is more violent or whatever, that's a claim that Gail Simone famously made. However, she didn't back it up with any comparable study of "male fridging," so even the Founder of Women in Refrigerators didn't do due diligence.
I will admit that no matter how much argumentative proof one offers, if the other person doesn't agree, he or she will almost dismiss the core arguments out of hand.
So you're saying that your earlier statement was inaccurate.
That, lest ye forget, was what I was responding to when I asserted that mostly "bad girls," rather than girlfriends, were usually the ones getting it in the neck.The villain kills the hero's girl, the hero takes non-lethal revenge, and then we get the next arc and the next and the next, and the hero will get a new girl, and new villains who want to kill her, and of course the original girlfriend-killing villain will be back too because nothing is permanent, except for the death of the girlfriend, usually.
Here's the post in which I extrapolated your point from:
Is it subculture exploitation if a sizable quantity of male support characters killed off for the same reason is a longer way of saying, "Is it the same thing if males are treated the same way?" Basically, is fridging a bad female thing if it happens to males as well? Like I said, to make that argument you're going to need a lot more proof than a few examples (or one example in this case). You'll have to also address the systemic reasoning behind why you feel it's the same thing as opposed to saying, "The outcome is the same, therefore the cause must be the same, therefore there is no actual problem."
It's fine if you don't want to do it, I'm just saying if you want me to seriously consider or address your comment you'll actually need to put in the footwork. It's just I'm not going to do it for you.
EDIT: Changed my first line as it didn't convey what I was reading and sounded more like, "Yeah, but that's not what you said." I think it works better since this says more what I got out of your post and not so much, "Don't change your words now."
Last edited by Skedatz; 06-12-2018 at 04:28 PM.
Obviously, I don't agree that my statement and your paraphrase mean the same thing. My original statement takes into account the *possibility* that there may be a greater quantity of female sacrifices than male ones, though it doesn't state that as a given, the way, say, Gail Simone did. Your paraphrase, and your general logic as well, make it incumbent on me to prove that there are a significant number of male sacrifices, which would I guess meet your standards of proof that the syndrome was not just a "bad female thing." I don't think it matters whether or not there are more female than male sacrifices. There may indeed be more of the former than the latter because there are more male heroes to motivate. But it's obvious that even in the periods when male heroes have been dominant-- say, the Silver and Bronze Ages-- there are still plenty of male sacrifices: Aquababy, Bucky, Menthor, two different versions of Steve Trevor, Alfred (died, but got better), Happy Hogan (never completely killed but often on the edge of death). And that fact keeps it from being a "bad female thing."
That it's something a lot of female readers don't want to see-- that's the only decisive statement one can make. Whether they are right to want authors, even bad authors, to indulge in self-censorship is another ethical question.
Last edited by ouroboros; 06-13-2018 at 01:24 PM.