The Trope of the Day is Women in Refrigerators
Welcome to the wasted women tournament, a tournament to figure out what was the worst female character death!
If you don't know, women in refrigerators is a trope originally coined by comic writer Gail Simone in the 90s in response to the death of Alexandra DeWitt in the Green Lantern comics. She had been the Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's girlfriend who had been killed by the villain Major Force and her body stuffed into the refrigerator for Kyle to find. Since then, "fridged" has become a verb to refer to female characters who are senselessly killed in order to the male protagonists sad or angry without much regard to the woman herself. While originally referring specifically to comic books, the terminology has started to spread to any media.
There are typically two ways that women tend to be fridged:
A female character is written specifically to be fridged. The loving mother/older sister or the disposable love interests are both examples of this trope. These characters typically have very little agency or inner-world outside of the male protagonist— their relationship with the male character is essentially their whole role in the story.
A female character who is a character in their own right— they DO have their own inner-world— but then is killed off to affect the male characters or for plot convenience.
With all of that said, here are the rules for for submissions. Please make sure you read them all before you submit.
The submitted character has be a woman. ABSOLUTELY, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, DO MALE CHARACTERS COUNT.
(Women in refrigerators is a trope about the senseless killing of female characters because they are thought of as more disposable by nature of being female. While some male characters are killed off for problematic reasons—see bury your gays or the black guy dies first tropes—this blog isn't about them. However, feel free to combine tropes by submitting queer women or women of color, as they are often killed off at higher rates than cishet or white women.)
For the most part, no resurrected characters. By that I mean no characters who die but later come back to life. However, if you think your character should still count despite their resurrection, feel free to make your case to me in the ask box. If you convince me, I will count them.
No characters who are injured or incapacitated but do not die. However, just like above, you can make your case to me in the ask box and if you convince me, I will count them.
Trans women are women, so feel free to submit trans characters. ABSOLUTELY NO TERFS ALLOWED ON THE BLOG— YOU WILL BE BLOCKED ON SIGHT. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.
No nonbinary characters unless they also identify with being a woman. Nonbinary people ≠ women. There aren't many nonbinary characters in media in general so I do not think this will be much of a problem but I wanted to specify just in case.
If the woman was killed off for a reason other than making male character(s) sad or plot convenience, then it does not count. This trope is not just any woman who died—there are plenty of ways to kill off a female character in a well-written way!— it's specifically unnecessary or gratuitous killing of female characters in a badly-written way.
I reserve the right to reject a character if I do not think they were actually fridged.
I reserve the right to reject a character if I am not comfortable including them.
I think this goes without saying but no real people.
No unofficial or small media (ex. fan media, OCs, a comic on someone's Tumblr, etc.) as I feel like that could encourage bullying on individual people. Stick to comics, TV, movies, anime, etc. etc. etc. Even if they are smaller but "official" in some way it can be included.
Submissions will be open until December 1st, but if I get a lot of submissions early on I will close them early.
SUBMIT HERE
