How is the death of a love interest supposed to be handled?

How is the death of a love interest supposed to be handled?

By this I mean how do comic readers want the death of a love interest to be handled such that they don't scream "STUFFED IN A FRIDGE" as soon as it happens?

you know what, this was a great creative death. no one knows anything about the killer or the victim Alex does she have short hair? long hair? what color is it?, what issue this took place, but the second you say Green Lantern's girlfriend you immediately think. "oh yeah she was stuffed in a fridge".

deaths in general should have meaning and purpose within the story
If you kill off a love interest for the sake of drama or just to throw a curveball at your readers, then that's just plain bad writing

The backlash against this wasn't just about the cause of death. It was considered an extreme example of the general trend that female characters in comics (especially up to that point) tended to be love interests who, whether they lived or died, mainly existed to motivate a male hero.

Dont all side-characters serve to motivate and challenge the main character

Was it the stuffing that had killed her or was she dead before that?

Last panel I thought he had dicks for fingers.

Major Force strangled her to death before shoving her body in a fridge.

Kyle Rayner's entire relationship history is example after example of "how can we exploit this female character in order to move forward Kyle as a character?"

Love interests do not require equal billing, attention or characterization.

They are fictional tools that drive the story in a secondary role.

Way to casual.

Let me fix that:

> (OP)
>Kyle Rayner's entire relationship history is example after example of "how can we use this female character in order to show the flaws within Kyle as a character?"

He never moved forward after Alex. He was too aloof and immature for Donna, too inattentive and hands off for Jen, too hung up in Jen for Soranik, Carol was travesty though.

He is basically a shit boyfriend. Its great. It makes the fact that he lost his gf even better, he's not a great catch that lost his girl, he is just some flawed dude who lost his girl because of his job.

>the significant other of the main character is allowed to be a flat and shallow person

user, if the person attached to the main character has no character, then the main character's relationship is not believable and they have less avenue for growth on an emotional spectrum.

don't use the death of a character to power up a shitty hero. It's an even shittier source of drama when the lover only fell in love in recently.

>They are fictional tools that drive the story in a secondary role.
If you're a hack.

who decides what 'meaning/purpose' is? Everything has meaning and purpose. Even shocking the audience is a purpose. Can you be more specific? What purposes do you personally approve of?

Alex was killed. Jade became an adulterer. Soranik became a damsel in distress. Carol became a cradle robber and her relationship with Hal hasn't recovered and maybe never will. All this in order to make Kyle look great or experience anguish so we can empathize with his "suffering".

Donna Troy was his only decent relationship that felt like a two-way street. So much so that them breaking up felt retarded and forced. That whole deal with the model was ridiculous.

The character can be fleshed out.

Let me just write the nine word that mattered and you missed

>EQUAL

See above.

I did say that the problem was that *too many female characters* were supporting players, in addition to the fact that they were often love interests.

And even besides that the original "Women in Refridgerators" website ended up a very long list of female characters, some of whom had their own books at one point, who were depowered or killed off.

If you don't fuck your girl, someone will. Sorry if that didnt sink in.

You are reaching with Soranik and with the craddle robber thing just shit the bed.

Soranik had a life beside Kyle and an integral role within the corps.

Kyle is an adult.

Simply because you didn't like it, it desnt mean you may construe it how you like.

People forget that this was like the first six issues of Kyle's run. It's his Uncle Ben, to make him take shit more seriously, and force him through some character growth because he fucked up.

If your gonna kill of a main player in a book,get your audience invested first,no one likes characters just being shafted because there entire existence was get shafted in the first place,too make an example compare Rhodeys death in civil war 2 to Gwen Stacey,Gwen was a well developed character,her and Peters relationship started of great but got bitter after George's death,when she died it affected Peter and the reader.Rhodey after 2 years of being absent gets one page kissing Carol,one page hanging with stark then BAM,dead.Its cheap,easy and just full character writing,I feel like the fridge thing existed just because introducing a girl and then killing her for shock value rather than genuine storytelling was becoming a bit of a cliche after the 80s,although it can happen to both male characters as well(hawkeye in house of M,Scott Lang etc)

The impact of Rhodeys death upon the reader was not determined by his standing relationship with Danvers.

If anything, that was the less influential thing.

It failed because of the story structure.

It was sudden, but the timing was off, the pace of that scene should have been much quicker so that you get the feeling of death being around every second in a battle...but I can't remember who the writer was.....

This. His relationships are also incredibly boring. I mean how do you make a relationship involving Soranik boring? Easy, just add Kyle. And lo and behold it's trash that only becomes interesting when something extreme happens to the detriment of the female half of the relationship (when she was kidnapped and when they saw their true loves and Sora loved Kyle but Kyle loved Jade).

>If you don't fuck your girl, someone will. Sorry if that didnt sink in.

Lmao only a Kylefag would try to defend Jade's cheating in order to deny the exploitation of the women in his life.

>woman owns her sexuality and doesn't wait for her lover like she's trapped in a tower

>that's exploitation


Cool.

>Characterfagging so hard you'll defend having an affair

What is it about self-insert characters that inspires such loyalty?

The only solution is to get rid of all female characters. Then there's no way to complain about how they're treated.

Lack of screen time is a complainable way of treatment

>Gwen Stacy
>Well developed

They killed her off because she was boring, user. The only reason people remember it is because back then, killing off a major supporting character was unheard of back then.

Then at least all the complaints would be focused on one totally ignorable thing.

Let me see if I got this right:

>Character's defining moment is dying
"Stuffed in a Fridge"

>Character has moments and meaning to the story before they died
"Well-Written Death"

Wasn't the Brightest Day bullshit basically like,

>"It's Kyle's fault he didn't talk to Soranik about Jade who had been dead for years and cheated on him"

Yeah, I get it, Soranik has trust issues b/c Sinestro. Who cares? Is he supposed to tell the bitch "I still have feelings for this dead, unfaithful cunt"? That is a lose/lose situation...

... suddenly I realize that may have been the point.

For Kyle, Soranik was just some attractive wet hole to fuck. For Soranik, though, Kyle was amazing and perfect and the love of her life (though we curiously didn't see any of that develop on page).

>For Kyle, Soranik was just some attractive wet hole to fuck. For Soranik, though, Kyle was amazing and perfect and the love of her life (though we curiously didn't see any of that develop on page).

Ah, the Superman/Wonder Woman syndrome.

Since this thread exists anyway I figure I might as well ask here: I'm writing a story about two characters on an adventure who end up falling in love. Now, throughout the story there are hints that one of them, the female, will die at the end of the story, leaving the male heartbroken. In actuality, it's the MALE who dies and the female is left heartbroken.

My question is this: if I structure the aforementioned hints to be relatively vague enough that they could apply to either character and have the implication females death solely on the assumptions of the audience (basically banking on people going "aww, this is cute but I've read stories like this before and I can tell the girls going to die"), is this a good way to unexpectedly hit the audience in the heart or would it just be a shallow subversion that ruins the foreshadowing?

Basically, would this make for a decent ending for the story?

>Love interests do not require equal billing, attention or characterization.

I bet you think all a love interest has to do is kiss the lead for you to know they're in love. Here's the problem with that logic: If they have to kiss for you to know they're in love, you're not writing a romance right.

Characterisation is key to writing an actual romantic relationship between two characters, even if one is only supposed to be a supporting character. A love interest character still needs to feel like an actual character instead of a cardboard cutout that exists only to be "destroyed" so as to create unearned pathos for the main character.

Eh, at least Kyle needing to sow his oats is a believable motivation. Superbro started it up with Wondy because of their mutual "lonely demigod" attitude, which Supes seems to only have under hack writers

Fridging always involve killing off the love interest in a shitty way. The best way to avoid the fridge comparison is to make the character die heroically. Have the love interest die saving the hero or beating a villain.

It's something that just keep happening with the two. New 52 isn't a isolated case. See Injustice, Kingdom Come and such.

You've Superman still hung up about a dead Lois or feeling lonely because Lois doesn't give him attention and only seeing Wonder Woman as someone he has to get with because he's all out of fucking options, while Wonder Woman loved him instantly at first sight and finally has the chance to be in his life even if as a distant second best which she's mostly fine with.

This is actually usually pretty common. See Batman and his mission (which is pretty much his version of Lois) and Catwoman.

EQUAL

I know this is Sup Forums and you guys are more into books with pictures, but reading is cool too.

Pretty much, yeah.

A character's death should lend meaning to a story. It should not happen just to create pain for the main character.

Yeah but then they went and did it 12 more times so it became a fucking meme. In one issue a girl smiled at him on a sidewalk and she was found dead 10 pages later.

>A character's death should lend meaning to a story.
>It should not happen just to create pain for the main character.

How do you define meaning such that it doesn't include the grief and pain a main character goes through at the death of a loved one?

>People forget that this was like the first six issues of Kyle's run.

What, and that's supposed to excuse the shittiness of the whole thing? Fuck that.

I don't remember Diana being head over heels for Clark in the Kingdom Come stuff. I just read their relationship as her being "that naggy know it all friend who thinks she has your best interests at heart and won't shut the fuck up about it"

Which kinda makes it worse because it makes the whole baby thing seem tacked on. like they needed some kind of objectively happy ending after the climax

These bits - the first from the Fanlore wiki entry on "Women in Refrigerators", the second from the TV Tropes entry "Stuffed into the Fridge" - are a good start:

>The term "women in refrigerators" was coined by comic-book author Gail Simone in 1999 to describe a plot device that she noticed as being particularly common in superhero comics. This plot device uses the victimization of a female character in order to advance the dramatic arc of a male character. The female character may be raped, killed, de-powered or otherwise injured; the male character then takes over the story and uses her tragedy as motivation, usually for broody manpain, violent revenge, or simply to become the best hero he can be.

>While it is strictly true that Tropes Are Not Bad, this one, especially as a catchphrase, is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing—using the death of a character as "cheap anger" for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst.

>instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst.

NTR?

There's a very simple way to kill a love interest. Make sure no one likes the character. Make the girlfriend cuck the hero several times before killing her off. Keep ruining her until killing her is an event to celebrate for a large segment of the fans like the death of Jason Todd.

Pay attention to the narrative after the female character dies.

Is the story going "poor guy, his girlfriend died" or "poor girl, she died"? If it's the first, it's already cliché. Scrap what you've written and do over.

It depends on how its written but given that you're asking advice from Sup Forums im going to guess that you're not a good enough writer to pull something like that off

This is stupid. Just in the first paragraph
>the male character takes over the story
It's more often than not already the guy's story.
>broody manpain
Bullshit non-word, because she can't just say "sad and angry" which is the normal fucking response when someone murders your loves ones.

Bullshit piece from bullshit site.

Sounds fun, just do it, user

Well, the ending really seemed extremely tacked because up to that point Superman and her would seemed extremely ambivalent toward each other and all their interactions consisted of disagreements, but the excuse the comic gave was that her temperamental and aggressive behavior towards him was dude to her "passion" for him, just like her wanting to kill the fuck out of the enemies was somehow due to her "passion" for peace.

The ending there seemed more of an excuse to give Superman a sort of happy ending by having Wonder Woman as his trophy wife replacing his dead waifu but not really.

Turn the tables. Make the fridge stuff you right back.

...

>This is actually usually pretty common. See Batman and his mission (which is pretty much his version of Lois) and Catwoman.

I fail to see the comparison.

Basically the idea that female characters in the relationship are usually shown to be super invested in the relationship while the male character's to be 50/50 about it because he has other things to worry about: the mission, the enemy, regrets from the past, another woman, etc. So you've the cliche which portrays the female as emotionally fragile and/or supportive and the male as stoic and/or distant.

>So you've the cliche which portrays the female as emotionally fragile and/or supportive

That doesn't sound like Catwoman at all.

That happens when the female character is the main hero too, though. Except the powerless male often won't throw himself at the heroine because that will come off as creepy

The outrage isn't about mishandled death, it's that the character only ever existed to die and be the impetus for whatever the protagonist does. The cries of sexism comes from the fact that most heroes are male, therefore most love interests that are just murdered plot devices are women

>The outrage isn't about mishandled death, it's that the character only ever existed to die and be the impetus for whatever the protagonist does.

Like Uncle Ben...or Jor El and Lara...or the Waynes...or Hal Jordan's dad...hell, didn't Kyle's mom suffer some tragedy too?

Daredevil had his dad originally and then they moved on to different love interests, but even then, they were characters beside motivation.

She got killed by that virus Yellow Lantern IIRC.

The reason Gwen was killed off was because Mary-Jane was more popular among writers (ha) and readers.

>we see their relationship grow over the course of six issues as alex is more of his partner than a damsel, like Inza Nelson or Dian Belmont
>her death subsequently has impact on the reader because we have a reason to like her as a character, as opposed to if she was killed off in the first issue like any origin story character
>somehow this is considered "sexist"

Parents and mentors may die but they are continually reference in the story and their role usually extends that just cheap pathos.

Just don't even show a woman being weak or in a compromising position EVER.

>alex is more of his partner
Then why kill her? She's a better character alive than dead. The sexism comes from women not being seeing as characters and more like support structures.

People die in real life

Interesting people die all the time, that's life.

>the waynes, the Els
>not cheap pathos

I'll give you Uncle Ben, but it's not a coincidence that Flashpoint was the most writers had really done with Thomas and Martha. And there's no question that Superman favors his human parentage over his Kryptonian blood

Ah so you mean like Jarella?

Does Barbra's rape and crippling from the Joker count as Fridge-ing

Everyone who's not the main character of the book IS a support structure, male or female doesn't matter.

Supporting cast members have a purpose, they are tools to flesh out the protagonist.

I wasn't around for that particular shit storm. It looked like fans were just pissed because the writers screwed over happiness again. It makes me wonder why they didn't feel the same way after Planet Hulk and the start of WWH.

I brought her up as she died saving a kid.

If the writer is to be believed he actually had a subplot where she was supposed to come back and her death was actually some kind of metamorphosis but he never got around to doing it before leaving the title so she stayed dead.

Now that I think about it, all 3 of Hulk's wives got the short end of the stick.

The best stories are the ones were it isn't obvious.

There are plenty of comics where Catwoman wants to sex Batman up and he throws some lame excuse about how they can't or that they've a mission at hand to worry about and some shit.

And that's emotionally fragile and/or supportive how, exactly?

Well, let's be fair. After what happened to Alex it's kind of a fucking miracle Kyle can work up the nerve to date at all.

Judging by the writer's intent, the death must have been sudden and abrupt enough to frustrate fans of Hulk who wanted to see Hulk happy for once in his life. Still, her dying a heroic death probably helped make it less reviled than some of the later deaths like Betty dying from radiation. Everyone talks about the death of Gwen Stacy but no one really cares about Captain George Stacy who saved a kid in the process.

Because she's shown to be more into him than he's at the time into her and because she's usually super emotional during those moments while he's keeping his head on the game. I can remember 4 moments like this from New 52 alone. Like when in BRE she asked if they were friends as a pass and he kept his mouth shout basically telling her to drop her advances.

Seriously, it seemed that New 52 writers disliked Catwoman somewhat. They'd show her more as an annoying fuckbuddy than anything else.

That would have been reversed if Peter was dating George.

Betty is a ass though, Jarella best wife.

What are some love-interest deaths that were done correctly and don't count as stuffed in the fridge

>Because she's shown to be more into him than he's at the time into her

Not really true. Batman just represses his sexual urges while Catwoman embraces them. As far back as Batman #1 Bruce has been shown to be incredibly smitten with Selina.

>Like when in BRE she asked if they were friends as a pass and he kept his mouth shout basically telling her to drop her advances.

That specific example was just Batman being written stoic and moody, and Catwoman playful and seductive. It was supposed to be funny, a play on their dichotomy. Even then, New 52 was hardly an era of great Catwoman writing. Next you'll point me towards examples from Winick's or Nocenti's runs, which were also hot garbage.

The two barely had any serious rapport post-Flashpoint until Valentine's run. Very rarely does she get "super emotional" and when she does it's usually returned in kind.

...

>How to create character growth by killing off someone.
>Do they have parents? Kill them.
>If not, do they have a lover? Kill them.
>If not, do they have a child? Kill them.
>If not, do they have a sibling or close relative? Kill them.
>If not, do they have a best friend? Kill them.
>If not, do they have a mentor? Kill them.
>If not, do they have an acquaintance? Kill them.
>If they have none of these, then have them fail to save a child's life.

There you go, you are now ready to make your character better.

you forgot one:
>Are they female? Rape them.

>Even then, New 52 was hardly an era of great Catwoman writing. Next you'll point me towards examples from Winick's or Nocenti's runs, which were also hot garbage.

You can't just say that i'm pointing to bad runs and ignore them as examples when my point is precisely that this cliche that do the female characters no good are something that are played sometimes by shitty writers. It happened several times. That's the whole point.

Why shippers always think we're attacking the characters or their ships when we talk about bad writing?I'm not saying that the characters don't love each other or that Catwoman's a bad character. I'm saying that she has been victim of this cliche.

the black canary route

"Hey honey I've got to save the universe I'll be gone for like a week"
"God I NEED some DICK and I JUST CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG"
Jade was an unfaithful cunt and there's no defending her, but Kyle was a bitch for taking it the way he did. Those last five issues of Kyle's run did nobody any favors and everybody involved came out of the experience looking like a moron

What if the character is a sociopath with no regards for those around him?

They get a dog and regain their sense of humanity. Then kill the dog.

>Can't fulfill a woman's needs
>Surprised when she gets other men to do what you can't