#anyways honestly gavin king was the main fridged character of war games. he had absolutely no agency in his death.

[scintillyyy]

yea so the thing with steph's death is that i'm genuinely of two minds here actually:

on one hand it *does* fall under the traditional complaints of fridging being that it was a senseless, violent death of a female comics character whose death is used largely to cause bruce & tim pain ergo she was fridged

on the other hand, unlike a lot of female characters who have been fridged through the years (babs being the big one, shondra kinsolving being another huge one), steph's death and the lead up to it, despite dripping in misogyny, actually do lend her a ton of agency and personal narrative growth specific to *her* that other senseless female deaths and maiming aren't usually afforded. the fact that her death has an entire narrative arc leading up to her death (misogynistic as it may be) about her learning and deciding for *herself* what being a hero truly means to her, her fortitude despite black mask's torture and her pushing through to get herself to leslie's clinic to still try and help despite the horrors she just underwent is there to further *her specific* heroic narrative leading up to her death, not necessarily just to cause bruce pain. even her death--which has a lot of very problematic aspects to it, don't get me wrong--is focused on whether she finally achieved her goals of being a good hero, what she always wanted to be. it's horrific and misogynistic, but the entire event of war games leading to steph's death revolving and stemming from steph's mistakes -> steph's redemption->steph's death is fundamentally about her and her agency leading into her death. it's not until war crimes when it comes out she was actually killed specifically to character assassinate another female character in bruce's life & cause him anguish about leslie's betrayal that makes it more of a fridging than her actual death and the events leading up to it.

#does this make sense idk #the thing about fridging being that. it does need to only be about the man & the man's response #but a character's death is almost always inherently there to further another character's motivations #so a character death at its core isn't necessarily fridging even if it's in the service of another character's story #because death means things to people & if a death carries the appropriate amount of narrative weight #then it's just a part of the story being told #anyways honestly gavin king was the main fridged character of war games. he had absolutely no agency in his death.