Let's talk about women in refrigerators.

This weekend I discovered a thing that I had no knowledge of that has been around since the late nineties. It's called "Women in Refrigerators," and it was fascinating to read about the phenomenon/trope and how it applies to writing and fiction/comic books and the creative space. Since I just learned about this trope, I'm going to assume that you've never heard of "Women in Refrigerators" and I'm going to define it for you with a little help from Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia: Coined by Gail Simone in 1999, it describes a trend in fiction which involves female characters facing disproportionate harm, such as death, maiming, or assault, to serve as plot devices to motivate male characters. This is now known as "fridging."

Some might say that this trope is just "damsels in distress" but given a new name/branding. For example, "politically correct" is another kind of term that is now old/dated and has been replaced by "woke." But "damsels in distress" and "women in refrigerators" are slightly different. "Women in Refrigerators" takes the pain and suffering of a woman, who should be a whole and complete character in her own right, and turns this on its head by making the story all about the pain and suffering of the man who must now avenge her. In other words, it becomes all about his loss. The story becomes one of the man's survival and how he is so devastated, even though the real crime is that the woman is dead and is unable to speak for herself anymore, and more than likely just brutally slaughtered.

There are countless examples of this trope, many of them in comic books. Examples include the characters of Gwen Stacy, Gamora, and Black Widow on the big screen. The thing I find particularly fascinating about this trope is how it has crept into fictional stories written by older folks (think GenX and Boomers) who play roleplaying games. Most recently, I've been investigating the subreddit for OSR gamers (read this as "Old School Rules" gamers who cling to iterations of Dungeons & Dragons as it appeared in the 70's and 80's. The game has long since moved on from that ruleset, and what got left behind has been a kind of squatter's paradise, with people who refuse to entertain new ideas and double down and dig their heels in for the "things they enjoy." Needless to say, it is mostly a community of men.

It's been interesting to belong to these communities on reddit and watch how they behave, because many of them could be misunderstood as misogynists. Some of the more ambitious ones in the community have launched games of their own based on the old D&D rules from decades ago: things like Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This particular book is filled with misogynistic art, featuring nude women being decapitated or assaulted, one particular and disturbing picture shows an incredibly obese woman giving birth to a demon that is ripping itself out of her while her arms are restrained. Meanwhile, nude women dance around her in an orgiastic frenzy, and above her in the shadows, some thieves are stealing diamonds from a statue (and the diamonds are the nipples on the statue's huge boobs). Okay then. Each has his own kink I guess.

The community on reddit refers to Lamentations in particular by using the words "Edge Lord" and "dark fantasy" and very "edgy." These terms are intriguing uses of those words. But what's really going on (in my opinion) is just a very bold use of "Women in Refrigerators." In other words, they are asking players who make characters for these games to be horrified by all the terrible things happening to all of these women. And it's supposed to motivate you and make it about your pain and your loss so that you can play a heroic man that avenges all of these wrongs that have been visited on women. When I break it down like that, it all sounds so utterly stupid, and I can't help but ask myself: do men really need women to suffer horrible fates in order to feel heroic? The answer (obviously) is no, but I guess it takes a certain kind of creative mind (that may be a rare find) to have the ability to craft a story that escapes this kind of trope. In other words, writing a story of "women in refrigerators" could be considered an extremely low bar, but for some...it is the only bar that they know. Which may also explain the intractability of their minds to move onto different things or to embrace change. Learning one thing is hard enough, but to have to continuously learn throughout your lifetime? That may be asking too much of many people to be able to do.

Anyway, now that I've stumbled across this trope, I want to ask: have any of you who are writing stories ever done a "Women in Refrigerators" storyline?