[ SECRET POST #2893 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2893 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #413.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: A good test...

[(Anonymous)]

When I say that a female character is "screwed over" though, I mean that the narrative/story focuses on the man's pain to the exclusion of what the loss of the female character means. It frames the loss of her as meaningful only because it hurt the main character's feelings rather than the fact that a person lost their life.

I do agree that a female character being a victim of a tragedy isn't necessarily bad writing, but it seems like so often, the reason it's presented as tragic is due to the male character's grief rather than the fact that she -- a human being with hopes and dreams and goals and emotions -- died.

That's what I object to. Look at how the loss of a father is portrayed rather than the mother/girlfriend/daughter. The loss of the father hurts the main character because he isn't there to love/support/provide guidance, BUT the father is also usually presented as an extraordinary person with great achievements and that the world has lost something with his passing. With female characters, we generally never learn anything about them -- it's just meant to be sad because the male character is mourning.

I do largely agree with your post however and that the pattern is annoying.

Re: A good test...

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, I agree with this comment too. I was mostly thinking about how not everyone who dies was someone important. There are people whose death has no real impact on the world except that a person who loved them is grief-stricken by the loss. That's what I meant by "not fundamentally bad." And then there's some fiction formats -- like old episodic shows without arcs -- don't really have the time to make a character very complex if they want to tell a 45 minute story about a character's death, and I don't think the format restriction should mean they shouldn't tell that story (of course, it's rare that this trope works well in any format, because it's a hard thing to write well.)

But IA 100% with how wives and mothers who die are treated in comparison to fathers who die, and all the other sexist bullshit that goes into this trope.