The Truth About Supernatural Girls and Boys: Death Tally

[deanish_ness]

Spoilers for every episode of the first five seasons below. Nothing too specific -- nothing you wouldn't already know if you spend much time on LJ, I think -- but spoilers, nonetheless. You've been warned. NO SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6 AT ALL

Comments

[ratherastory]

How about the percentage of each group? I'd like to know the percentage of women characters that actually survived the show. In that sense, I think your math isn't quite accurate. If you take the group of women as a whole and the group of men as a whole, and calculate the percentages that way, how do the deaths compare?

How about recurring women characters? Which ones get a get-out-of-death-free card the way some recurring male characters do? (Sam and Dean are the heroes, so they get to be resurrected, but Bobby and Cas have also been brought back, whereas no woman I can think of has).

Don't get me wrong. There are compelling plot and character reasons for show to kill off women the Winchesters get close to. The Winchesters are modern-day cowboys, and it's sort of a Law o' the West thing: protect your wimminfolk and all that. Guilt is a powerful motivator, after all. ;)

It also happens that there *aren't* any recurring female characters who haven't died. I'm reserving judgment on season 6, because it looks like there might be two now (Lisa and Gwen, but I'm not holding out hope for Gwen, frankly). Rufus has come back, for instance, but what about Tamara?

Anyway, these are just thoughts. Show has never been so blatantly misogynistic as to drive me away. I just think that, at some point, it would be nice to have a strong female character who doesn't end up a victim or as motivation for the Winchesters to keep hunting. ;)

[deanish_ness]

Yeah. Like I said in my ... I guess disclaimers after the tally ... I know this isn't the whole story, but I don't have the wherewithal to try and count up the total number of female characters on the show and the total number of male characters. But if someone else does that, I will certainly bow to whatever they find out. This was the best I could reasonably do.

About the recurring female characters ... are there recurring male characters who haven't died at this point? I can't think of any off the top of my head. There was Bobby, but not as of the season 5 finale. (OK, came back to add that there is Crowley. We'll see what happens to him.)

And yeah, it's all men who have been brought back (well, unless you count the demons who got a new body), but I would say that's because it's all men who are main characters on the show. And I would say that's all on fandom, not the creators. Every time they try and add a woman, the whole group throws back their heads and howls. It's not really fair to blame Kripke for that.

Edited to add: Sorry if this comes across as argumentative. I don't mean it to be that way. I don't usually like to get into debates in print. But I figured that if I was going to post this at all, I should be prepared to discuss it as required.