I'm traveling (writing this from the airport, actually) and can't really take the time to write the detailed comment this deserves! Aargh. But I wanted to drop a quick comment that I found this a really interesting, thought-provoking read, and it ties into a lot of stuff that I've been thinking about lately regarding narrative equality and the superficial way it's often handled in both fandom and pro fic. Basically I agree with most of what you're saying here (although I also think that "motivational" deaths can very easily be used as sloppy shorthand for character development, and at the very least, having the "fridging" concept out there gives us some vocabulary for talking about it, and about the trend of women dying to motivate men in particular).
The question I see being brought up frequently is, why not tell the rape victim's/brain damaged person's/cancer patient's story? Why use it to motivate someone else? Well, my thinking is, those are different stories. Both types of stories can and should be told. Yes, the story of the
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I think we definitely need both kinds of stories. There is a general tendency for media to depict the privileged position at the expense of the other side of it [...] but the answer isn't necessarily less of the one kind of story, but more of the other kind.
YES! That was EXACTLY what I was trying to say. You said it even better! :-D
. . . at the very least, having the "fridging" concept out there gives us some vocabulary for talking about it, and about the trend of women dying to motivate men in particular).
Yes, I agree, I actually really like the terminology! Which is why it annoys me when I feel like it starts to get diluted.
... well, and also, I think that half the time the narrative problems with all of these tropes, from refrigerated women to disabled/PoC/queer characters who only exist to teach a Special Lesson, are due to the author not having adequate sympathy with the character on the less-privileged end of the scale. In other words, the character is a plot device rather than a character. I don't know if you've read
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"... wait, the problem isn't killing characters, the problem is treating characters as disposable rather than proper people in their own right, who sometimes die."
Yes, yes yes yes!!!!
I love character death. Love it. I revel in the sadness and the pain as I think everyone who has spent five minutes on my flist knows. LOL But I love the meaningful character death, not the treatment of characters as disposable. There's such a huge difference, and that's why most of the character death on SPN, say, ceased to be effective for me years ago until you get to Ellen's death or Bobby's--those characters were well developed and I cared about them and their deaths were meaningful to the larger narrative and to me personally.
I mean. Ahem. That makes me sound really, uh, like I should be on some watchlist or something. *g* (My sister gave me the nickname "heartless murderer" because in the first fantasy trilogy I wrote (which will probably forever remain unpublished, too many problems with it), out of 12 main characters, half died during the main narrative, and all but 3 were dead or dying before the end of the epilogue. And it wasn't even a tragedy!)
But, like you, I want meaningful character death. I hate it when (1) characters are just background and are killed to show how Very High the stakes are for the main characters, who all remain safe, or, even worse, (2) a beloved character is killed and it feels like it's only for the sake of DRAMA because the writers were going, "Hey, it's about time to kill someone to keep the fans on their toes; who cares if there's no good story reason for it!" (which incidentally seems to happen to women and characters of color way, way too much, and is the kind of fridging I ABSOLUTELY
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So after you mentioned it, I sort of casually bumped Redshirts to the top of my To Read pile, as, you know, it was in there anyway. And then this happened (which I call, "In Which I Invite the Internets to Fall on my Head by Criticizing John Scalzi's Treatment of Race" and I'm not sure was a very good idea, but, well. Anyway, that's off-topic, though somewhat meta-y in its own right, I guess).
But I did keep thinking about this discussion here, and you're right -- it's so easy not to give characters who die quickly any backstory or lives, but the more they do have a whole three-dimensional existence outside of dying, the more it seems . . . all right that they die, I guess? Or at least it feels like the character wasn't so shortchanged? Particularly striking to me in Redshirts was Jenkins' character, who (spoilers for Redshirts) was a "stand in the back and look sad" guy on one side and a man with a whole huge LIFE and love on the other. Thinking about it makes me want to flesh out every bit character who bites it in my own
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I just read your meta and I think it's very insightful and excellent -- I really hope the Internet doesn't dump on you for it! And now I feel bad for reccing the book to you, and I do apologize, especially since this is an aspect of the book that I hadn't even noticed when I was reading it. (Which, you know, privilege all over the place there.) I'm sorry for leading you into an unpleasant and ragemaking reading experience. And I think you have a good point about the book.
Having said that, yeah, what you said in the rest of your comment -- exactly. (Which isn't really my own insight at all; it's explicitly stated in Redshirts at some point.) The idea of the background characters having these entire lives that only intersect the narrative briefly -- I think that's what most good writers already do, actually, and it's one of the reasons why some writers are able to take characters in small walk-on parts and make them so memorable and vivid that readers clamor to see them again
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I just read your meta and I think it's very insightful and excellent -- I really hope the Internet doesn't dump on you for it!
Oh, thank you so much! Honestly, I think it's unlikely I'll see too much fallout, as I'm not a popular enough blogger yet, but I'd rather people read it and think about it than not, even if it means I have to deal with, well, rude commenters. :) And hearing you say you read it and liked it and that it made you think has oddly made my mild-but-obsessive depression about Redshirts this week feel quite a bit better -- I didn't realize that it would mean something to me emotionally to know that someone else read what I wrote and got something out of it, but it turns out it does. I think part of the reason I've been spending more brain cycles than I should be being upset about the book is that I keep wondering if I'm the only person who *noticed* this and how that can possibly be, because nobody else anywhere seems to be mentioning it, and it feels rather isolating!
But PLEASE don't feel bad for recommending the
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If you're interested and have a minute, John Scalzi actually responded to me. (I'm . . . floored that he took the time, actually, and that combined with his thoughtful response gave me a lot of respect for him.) It turned out that he deleted all the diversity intentionally because he was trying to make a commentary on how bad the show in the book was (and wanted to make it lose even the good parts of what Star Trek did). I . . . still don't think it worked, particularly because a lot of people I've talked to (not just you) didn't even notice that he did it, and he didn't make a point of it within the novel itself, which means that his deletion of characters of color for the purpose of making a point lacked the "point" part of it. But . . . at least he had a reason for erasing the minority characters? Which feels SO MUCH like what we were just talking about with *killing* minority characters, oh my gosh, circling back to the original topic again IN A REALLY META WAY!
The question I see being brought up frequently is, why not tell the rape victim's/brain damaged person's/cancer patient's story? Why use it to motivate someone else? Well, my thinking is, those are different stories. Both types of stories can and should be told. Yes, the story of the ( ... )
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YES! That was EXACTLY what I was trying to say. You said it even better! :-D
. . . at the very least, having the "fridging" concept out there gives us some vocabulary for talking about it, and about the trend of women dying to motivate men in particular).
Yes, I agree, I actually really like the terminology! Which is why it annoys me when I feel like it starts to get diluted.
... well, and also, I think that half the time the narrative problems with all of these tropes, from refrigerated women to disabled/PoC/queer characters who only exist to teach a Special Lesson, are due to the author not having adequate sympathy with the character on the less-privileged end of the scale. In other words, the character is a plot device rather than a character. I don't know if you've read ( ... )
Reply
Yes, yes yes yes!!!!
I love character death. Love it. I revel in the sadness and the pain as I think everyone who has spent five minutes on my flist knows. LOL But I love the meaningful character death, not the treatment of characters as disposable. There's such a huge difference, and that's why most of the character death on SPN, say, ceased to be effective for me years ago until you get to Ellen's death or Bobby's--those characters were well developed and I cared about them and their deaths were meaningful to the larger narrative and to me personally.
Reply
I mean. Ahem. That makes me sound really, uh, like I should be on some watchlist or something. *g* (My sister gave me the nickname "heartless murderer" because in the first fantasy trilogy I wrote (which will probably forever remain unpublished, too many problems with it), out of 12 main characters, half died during the main narrative, and all but 3 were dead or dying before the end of the epilogue. And it wasn't even a tragedy!)
But, like you, I want meaningful character death. I hate it when (1) characters are just background and are killed to show how Very High the stakes are for the main characters, who all remain safe, or, even worse, (2) a beloved character is killed and it feels like it's only for the sake of DRAMA because the writers were going, "Hey, it's about time to kill someone to keep the fans on their toes; who cares if there's no good story reason for it!" (which incidentally seems to happen to women and characters of color way, way too much, and is the kind of fridging I ABSOLUTELY ( ... )
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But I did keep thinking about this discussion here, and you're right -- it's so easy not to give characters who die quickly any backstory or lives, but the more they do have a whole three-dimensional existence outside of dying, the more it seems . . . all right that they die, I guess? Or at least it feels like the character wasn't so shortchanged? Particularly striking to me in Redshirts was Jenkins' character, who (spoilers for Redshirts) was a "stand in the back and look sad" guy on one side and a man with a whole huge LIFE and love on the other. Thinking about it makes me want to flesh out every bit character who bites it in my own ( ... )
Reply
Having said that, yeah, what you said in the rest of your comment -- exactly. (Which isn't really my own insight at all; it's explicitly stated in Redshirts at some point.) The idea of the background characters having these entire lives that only intersect the narrative briefly -- I think that's what most good writers already do, actually, and it's one of the reasons why some writers are able to take characters in small walk-on parts and make them so memorable and vivid that readers clamor to see them again ( ... )
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Oh, thank you so much! Honestly, I think it's unlikely I'll see too much fallout, as I'm not a popular enough blogger yet, but I'd rather people read it and think about it than not, even if it means I have to deal with, well, rude commenters. :) And hearing you say you read it and liked it and that it made you think has oddly made my mild-but-obsessive depression about Redshirts this week feel quite a bit better -- I didn't realize that it would mean something to me emotionally to know that someone else read what I wrote and got something out of it, but it turns out it does. I think part of the reason I've been spending more brain cycles than I should be being upset about the book is that I keep wondering if I'm the only person who *noticed* this and how that can possibly be, because nobody else anywhere seems to be mentioning it, and it feels rather isolating!
But PLEASE don't feel bad for recommending the ( ... )
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