Stop Fridging Your Characters, A Polite Request
Readers, we need to discuss my least favorite cliche. But first off, this post contains spoilers for Pacific Rim: Uprising. If you haven't seen it and don't want it spoiled, turn back now.
You see, readers, CT and I recently watched the sequel to Pacific Rim and while it had so many things we love (giant robots, female scientist characters, John Boyega) it also fridged our beloved Mako Mori.
For those who doen't know what we mean by the term "Fridging" or "Being Stuffed into the Fridge" it comes from writer Gail Simone who noticed a trend in comics of killing off female characters for no reason other than to motivate a guy. It comes from a Green Lantern comic where the hero's girlfriend was literally stuffed in a refrigerator and left for the hero to find. Since then it has popped up over and over in every medium and I am beyond over it. It's a lazy and frequently misogynistic way of getting a character from point A to point B.
Let's be honest, CT and I love torturing our characters. One of the best parts of being a writer is seeing how far you can push someone within a story. And yes, at times it becomes necessary to kill off a character and then deal with the emotions that the other characters go through while they deal with the loss. But there is a difference between killing a character because the story needs it and killing a character because the sight of their dead body gives another character an extra push. Think of Goldfinger. James Bond is obviously going to have to face off with Evil Villain (tm) Goldfinger. The man was planning to steal all of the gold in Fort Knox. But just to give Bond a little extra motivation, Goldfinger kills his girlfriend, Jill Masterson, and leaves her body for Bond to find in a hotel room. Did the girlfriend really have to die? No. Bond was going to stop the bad guy either way. But we got to see Sean Connery give a little extra angst and... that was it really. The female characters in Bond are historically only there to be objects.
But compare that death to, for instance, Mufasa's death in Lion King. Yes, his death is the motivating force for his son. But there's not a way to get Simba out in the middle of nowhere for however long it takes for a lion cub to turn into a fully grown lion if his father is still around; Scar never takes over and Simba never has to challenge him. Mufasa's death has a huge amount of meaning attached to it.
So as writers, we make sure to check ourselves when we decide to kill a character. We make sure that the death itself is called for, and then we make sure that we aren't using it to motivate a single character. I hope more writers are starting to do the same.
Mako Mori deserved better.
Little C
You see, readers, CT and I recently watched the sequel to Pacific Rim and while it had so many things we love (giant robots, female scientist characters, John Boyega) it also fridged our beloved Mako Mori.
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For those who doen't know what we mean by the term "Fridging" or "Being Stuffed into the Fridge" it comes from writer Gail Simone who noticed a trend in comics of killing off female characters for no reason other than to motivate a guy. It comes from a Green Lantern comic where the hero's girlfriend was literally stuffed in a refrigerator and left for the hero to find. Since then it has popped up over and over in every medium and I am beyond over it. It's a lazy and frequently misogynistic way of getting a character from point A to point B.
Let's be honest, CT and I love torturing our characters. One of the best parts of being a writer is seeing how far you can push someone within a story. And yes, at times it becomes necessary to kill off a character and then deal with the emotions that the other characters go through while they deal with the loss. But there is a difference between killing a character because the story needs it and killing a character because the sight of their dead body gives another character an extra push. Think of Goldfinger. James Bond is obviously going to have to face off with Evil Villain (tm) Goldfinger. The man was planning to steal all of the gold in Fort Knox. But just to give Bond a little extra motivation, Goldfinger kills his girlfriend, Jill Masterson, and leaves her body for Bond to find in a hotel room. Did the girlfriend really have to die? No. Bond was going to stop the bad guy either way. But we got to see Sean Connery give a little extra angst and... that was it really. The female characters in Bond are historically only there to be objects.
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| source |
But compare that death to, for instance, Mufasa's death in Lion King. Yes, his death is the motivating force for his son. But there's not a way to get Simba out in the middle of nowhere for however long it takes for a lion cub to turn into a fully grown lion if his father is still around; Scar never takes over and Simba never has to challenge him. Mufasa's death has a huge amount of meaning attached to it.
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| source |
So as writers, we make sure to check ourselves when we decide to kill a character. We make sure that the death itself is called for, and then we make sure that we aren't using it to motivate a single character. I hope more writers are starting to do the same.
Mako Mori deserved better.
Little C
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