#they got to die with agency and dignity and with peace of mind

[parkwatcher]

“i like old. old means we’re still here”

[facelessfrey]

I woke up mad and have been mad all day so let’s discuss the disrespectful absurdity that was Bellamy’s death on the 100 some more. 

JRoth’s tweet really pissed me off a lot. Ultimately, he’s not wrong when he says the 100 has always been a dark show about hard choices and what people would do to survive. It’s just that I don’t think any of that played into Bellamy’s death at all. I’ve been thinking about all of the other major character deaths across the seasons and how, even the ones I hated and have massive issues with, still somehow seem more respectful to the characters than what he did to Bellamy. Keep reading for the rant:

Season 1 - Wells (and to an extent Charlotte)

Wells - Wells is a bit of a tricky one since it happened so fast and I know there are people still upset about it. But it set the tone for the show, the tone that JRoth is so proud of and referencing for Bellamy’s death. But I think you can get away with a shock value death in season one to kick things off. They also set up the situation fairly well, playing up just how harsh things are on the ark, that most of their parents had been floated. I can understand how Charlotte, who is just a child, reached that conclusion, especially with Bellamy’s maybe misguided advice (although that’s clearly not what he meant). I also don’t know that there was really a place for another presumably male lead in season one alongside Bellamy and Finn. So I get it. But also, Wells still had a chance to repair things with Clarke before he was killed. She discovered the truth and knew that he lied to protect her. He didn’t die with her hating him. It was a truncated arc, but it was something. 

Charlotte - And arguably, Charlotte’s death kind of needed to happen. There wasn’t really any way for her to continue on with them after what she’d done and at least it was her choice, however tragic it all was. 

Season 2 - Finn and Maya

Finn - As with Wells, Finn’s death is something I think you can get away with and can be viewed as edgy in an early season. It’s upping the stakes and reminding you that this is a show that will put these characters in impossible situations. And they still had a male lead left in Bellamy, plus Murphy and Jasper and even a character like Miller were rising in the ranks and there to fill in the gaps. Plus a whole host of new characters. Killing Finn was a gutsy move but one I could respect. They took him down a dark path and instead of absolving him for it because he was a main character, they made him pay for it. But unlike Bellamy, Finn realized what he did was wrong. He couldn’t live with the guilt. He couldn’t live with the way Clarke was looking at him. He knew the truce with the Grounders was important and he knew he was the key. He made the choice to give himself up. He had agency. He got to have one last escape attempt with his friends, say his goodbyes to everyone. And even still, they let him die with some amount of dignity rather than being tortured to death. And Clarke killing him worked in a way her killing Bellamy doesn’t. What he did was directly tied to her. Only she could forgive him in those final moments. There were multiple episodes of build up to this death, it was the story of the whole episode it happened in. It was expected but also a bold move for the show. 

Maya - This was a death about hard choices and survival. The audience had grown to like Maya throughout the season, seeing her stand up for what was right and going against her own people. She didn’t deserve the end she got. But Clarke and Bellamy and Monty were put in an impossible situation and it was either the lives of all their friends and family or death in a very inhumane way because the mountain never would have stopped. And the way it was set up, with us and them watching Raven and Abby being drilled into, the choice was painful but clear. And it had been building to this moment for an entire season. 

Season 3 - Lexa and Lincoln

Lexa - Lexa had arguably one of the most controversial deaths on the show. And I know there were behind the scenes reasons for it with the actress having another show to film. I don’t know how much availability she would have had. I don’t know how necessary it was to remove her from the narrative. I don’t want to get into it I will just assume for these purposes, that she had to be killed off. And I’ve always said with respect to Lexa, that I didn’t mind that they killed her off, it was how they did it. But compared to Bellamy’s death, even her controversial one feels less disrespectful to the character. It may be worse due to lesbian death tropes and that’s a larger issue, but in terms of the show story, I don’t think it was as bad. First of all, she was only a character for a season and a half. Second, her death directly affected the plot that had been hinted at all season and carried out in a major way through the rest of it. Now I hate that she died immediately after having sex by a stray bullet from a guy who should not have been holding a gun in the first place. I hate it. I would have much rather she went down fighting or stepping in front of a bullet for Clarke or something. But at least she got to finally resolve things with Clarke. They reconciled. They said they loved each other. She knew was was going to die at the end and she got to have her final moments with Clarke. Clarke got to do the whole may we meet again speech. Despite the issues, it was a beautiful moment. 

Lincoln - This death has always been the one that pissed me off the most. Again I know there were behind the scenes issues and he also had another show. Again I don’t know how much filming availability he would have or how necessary his death was. Again, let’s assume it was because people can’t just go off somewhere else for a new start on this show. But I still always hated how he went out, being executed in the mud. He should have gone down fighting at the very least. However, even more at the very least, because that’s what we’re getting into here, Lincoln did die because he was defending his people. That’s the bare minimum here but at least he had that. He was true to himself. I hated that he didn’t really get a final moment with Octavia, but hey, at least she was present. Extremely low bar but still, better than Bellamy’s death from a writing perspective. 

Season 4 - Jasper (Roan, Illian, Luna)

Jasper - Jasper’s is a sad tale. He spent two seasons basically completely depressed after the events of season two. There really wasn’t anywhere else to take his character at that point, so I understood and was ready for him to go. It made sense as an end for his character and he got to go out on his own terms and not take the spot in the bunker of someone who truly wanted to live. He got to have his final moments with Monty. It was a good end for him. 

Roan, Illian and Luna - I wouldn’t call them major characters per say, perhaps Roan and Luna but we got to know all of them fairly well. They were expendable characters for the most part but they at least got to die fighting for their people and that’s a respectable way to go out. 

Season 5 - Jaha, Monty and Harper

Jaha - Jaha was a character who did go down a sort of cult path. It probably would have been easy to kill him off in season 3 as a result of that. And if it had been a high stakes, last resort, have to kill Jaha to get to ALIE to save everyone, I could have respected that. But they didn’t. They let him survive that. They let him see the error of his ways. He spent season four determined to save his people from what he helped to unleash. He didn’t do it in the right way but even then, finally, in season 5, he was redeemed a bit, helping to maintain the peace in the bunker and helping Octavia gain control. And he had Octavia and Marcus and Abby there at his end. It was fitting. He got to say his goodbyes. 

Monty and Harper - I was very sad to say goodbye to them but they went out on their own terms. They got probably the happiest ending out of anyone on this show. They got to live their lives how they chose and be together and having a son. And they did all of that while finding a way to give their friends, their family, their people a fresh start. And they got to say goodbye, albeit through video, but it was touching and lovely. 

Season 6 - Shaw, Kane and Abby

Shaw - Shaw was another one that was killed off because he had another show, which is fine. It sucked for Raven and it was sad the character only got one season. Although considering the seasons that followed, I think he should count himself lucky really. But again, he died helping out his friends and Raven. It was a sacrifice and he knew what he was doing. 

Kane - Again, another person who had other commitments. And they did some weird body swap stuff to extend his time a little longer. But I loved that they had actual Kane there at the end anyway to say goodbye to Abby even if it wasn’t really him that she was seeing. It was a nice touch, and a better way to say goodbye to the character. He also chose to let go. It was on his terms and he got his goodbye with Abby. And there were good parallels to floating both men she loved. 

Abby - I’m not fond of the way they killed off Abby since she was basically dead once they took over her body. So that was unfortunate. But at least prior to the body swapping, she did have that last scene with Clarke where they kind of reconciled. And if I recall, she had some last moments with Jackson and Raven too. And those matter. 

Season 7 - Diyoza and Bellamy

Diyoza - By season seven, I’m honestly kind of over major character deaths. I don’t really want them. I just want to see these characters that I love survive all of the trauma of the show and find peace, but I understand that I’m never going to get that. It’s fine. I was sad to see Diyoza go, but her sacrificing herself for her daughter, for the people who became her family, kind of “for all mankind�� to use a phrase I hate now, was a fitting way for her to go out since she was introduced to us as a terrorist. And she got to say her goodbyes. This is clearly an important theme for me. 

Bellamy - And then we circle back to my rage. Bellamy kind of took the path of Finn in a way, or perhaps his season 3 arc, which he didn’t really pay for so much. Not the way Finn did anyway because all of a sudden Blood must not have Blood. Plus, Pike was the rightful scapegoat for all of that. But this season saw Bellamy get caught up in yet another man’s bullshit idea of what was right. That was frustrating enough, but I guess it was somewhat in character. It’s just all the more frustrating because the Second Dawn/Shepherd nonsense is just that, nonsense. His sudden anti grounder status in season 3 were motivations that made at least some sense. He’d been fighting them since day one basically. They betrayed them at Mount Weather, which meant they had to kill everyone there, which meant he lost Clarke. And then Echo’s betrayal killed his three episode girlfriend, Gina. Plus Pike was a man he’d respected on the arc. The motivations always felt fairly thin to me since Gina was so minor, but overall, they make sense. 

This season has been all over the place. The storylines have been mostly nonsensical. The nature of the different timelines meant that there were many episodes where we had to backtrack to fill in gaps, which meant the story was basically at a standstill for the whole middle of the season. We have zero sympathy for Bill and his cult followers. They’re not interesting. The Mount Weather people were brutal and doing terrible things, but I understood their need to survive. These Second Dawn people don’t have that same motivation. They’re fine. And so much of it is driven by the flame, which Bill wants for selfish reasons along with the stupid key code. He wants to know if there’s any of his daughter in there, which goes against all his teachings and what he’s trying to suck Bellamy into. And all of that is really just to set up a spinoff no one is going to want to watch at this point anyway after all of this. It’s kind of insulting. 

And we see all of this Bellamy development in one episode late in the season and then he just betrays all his friends and family. He only shows the slightest hint of questioning. He just flat out tells Echo she doesn’t matter more than the cult. He doesn’t even have a scene with just his sister. He gets one good scene with Clarke but then is like “eh torture her it’s fine”. And then we get to this episode, where he barely interacts with his friends that he’s with. They spend most of the episode rolling their eyes at him and mocking his clothing choices. They set up the stupid sketchbook in a rushed little scene with Madi and Clarke just so in the last thirty seconds Sheidheda, who my god should be dead now (Indra I’m looking at you), can say “hey check out that book”. And Bellamy picks up this book that we’ve seen like once or twice earlier in the season that was fairly inconsequential then. We don’t even fully understand what’s in it that’s so crucial that Bellamy can’t show Bill. And that’s what Clark shoots him for? Really? And shoots to kill? Which was highly unnecessary to get her hands on that book. And then she didn’t even take the stupid book in the first place. 

So Bellamy Blake, main male lead of the series, hero and leader to his people, gets murdered by his closest most trusted friend, his person, without getting to realize that the cult stuff was bullshit, without getting any chance to redeem himself, for a book that really doesn’t even seem to matter. And he dies alone. None of his family or friends are around. No one is reciting the may we meet again speech. He never got a final scene to reconcile with his sister. He never had any real final moments with anyone else. He just disappeared in the first five minutes of the premier, showed up eleven episodes later, a brainwashed cult follower and that’s how he died. That’s frankly bullshit. And a massive disservice to his character, to Clarke’s character, to the show. And the fact that they barely had Clarke try and shake him out of his brainwashing. The fact that his friends just mocked him instead of trying to help him. It’s just not what this show was built on. It’s not. It’s one absurdity after another. It’s insulting. 

And the fact that every other character I’ve listed here at least got something, some kind of minor positive to their passing but Bellamy got none of those things?! Not fighting for a cause or a people the audience is rooting for or siding with. And no final goodbyes with the people he loves. Even Clarke only did her crying once she went through the stupid portal. I’m just mad. I should feel devastated by his death, but at least feel like he died for something. He died for nothing and that’s the saddest part of it all.  

[suiciderealestate]

Midnight - June 15, 2020

What a strange time and what a wonderful thing to be alive to see it. What started as something so incredibly dark is now transforming into a cleansing fire. I’m only disappointed that I’m not in New York to be more a part of it. Still, being home has been oddly good for me. I dreaded coming back to Nashville and being inexorably bored, but that hasn’t really happened. I find lately that it has been difficult to be bored when there are so many things to be done. Even when I am doing nothing, knowing that my world is suffused with things to be done has deprived me of the possibility of boredom. To be home again with my friends and family who understand me, to be able to do work in things I enjoy or at least aspire to enjoy, all of it has allowed me to get closer to my center. And yet, I still feel that lingering sensation of missing out. It always feels like the most important things are happening somewhere else, and I’ve never quite been able to shake that. But then I suppose it’s just what goes along with being human, being this atomized lump of agency and desire in a swirling universe of invisible singularity.

Everything is so uncertain right now, but it feels like there is a reckoning. It feels like the conservative forces that have left me feeling less than human all my life are finally being seen for what they are. I admit that I have internalized some of it, that there are biases within me as a southern white male that feel contradictory sometimes. But this racial revolution is so much more than just a demand for actual freedom for black people. It is a demand that we all be seen as human beings, that we are all treated with the dignity and respect owed to everyone. Sure, “All Lives Matter” may be another tone-deaf rightwing trope, but I think it’s the real meaning in “Black Lives Matter.” We are fighting for equality for black people now because we are fighting for equality for us all, and we must start with those who are most vulnerable. Yesterday in New York City there was a peaceful demonstration of solidarity with black trans women, who have proven to be one of the most vulnerable populations in our country. Around 15,000 people were there. All of my friends in New York were there. It feels like something good may yet come of all of this.

When Donald Trump was elected, I remember being vaguely disappointed but slightly amused. I never wanted Trump to win, but the fact that he did win meant something big was going to happening, and I hoped it would be the destruction of the Republican Party as we know it. I still hope for that. His entire presidency was like a game of chicken. Something big would happen and you’d think he would finally be held accountable, and then he wouldn’t be. Against all odds, he won the presidency against Hillary Clinton, even after the “grab ‘em by the pussy” comment and all the nasty, incendiary behavior that kept him and his rallies in the headlines. I mean it was really such a catastrophic political upset that you just knew the wheels of history were about to go into overdrive. Trump survived all the damning books written about him. Trump survived impeachment. Things even began to assume a sense of eerie normalcy for a moment, the feeling that a Trump presidency was a one-way train and that there would be no going back for our country.

When the pandemic landed in the U.S., it just felt like the disastrous culmination we all knew was coming. We floated through Trump’s term with much political turmoil but much less unrest than I would have anticipated. Sure, the news headlines were never-ending until things that were once surprising became mundane, but we didn’t have a 9/11 or a new war, which is the thing I was the most afraid of. No nuclear disaster. No economic collapse. Just a lot of quiet social regression and the unavoidable feeling that now more than ever we are a nation divided. When the pandemic came, that’s when it really happened though. That’s when we knew why a president like Trump is so dangerous, and it’s because he just lives in his own world, the same way that many of us do, but in a way that the president of the United States cannot afford to do. It was a loss for diplomacy. It was a loss for the sanctity and decorum of the office. It was a loss for our national pride, or at least half of the country’s national pride.

When the virus hit I was so afraid. I felt like things really were just going to fall apart. Trump didn’t care about the virus. His response strategy was and still is, effectively, to ignore it, to refuse to wear a mask, to project not strength but the delusion of invincibility. He was so confident the virus would go away, it was almost like he knew something about it that we didn’t. Cases are spiking in Tennessee and several other states where people just don’t care about safety, but it’s mostly poor people of color that are being affected. A factory of minorities falls ill in a factory outbreak and it’s business as usual. Nursing homes all over the country become easy bake morgues and it’s business as usual. And to be quite honest, that kind of apathy easily rubs off.

As the rallies and demonstrations protesting the routine racial violence began to grow and spread like wildfire all over the country, we began to experience a kind of political paradox. The Trumpers are following their messiah’s lead by ignoring the virus, celebrating national holidays en masse, grilling out and thronging together in celebration of summer. At first the liberals criticized the behavior, but now even people on the left seem comfortable to travel in crowds during protests, as long as they wear a mask. To them, that seems to be the distinctive difference, but not every protestor I’ve seen has worn a mask. Neither side agrees with the reason the other side is going outside, and yet are all going outside. When I got home, my friend and I were spraying the ATM with disinfectant. Every trip to the grocer store felt like a dangerous foray into enemy territory. The news coverage of the destruction being caused by the pandemic was constant, and the reports, voices and opinions of the reporters and pundits were always in the back of my mind. Everyone on Instagram was urging people to stay indoors. Proper quarantine etiquette became an online rhetorical trend. But when the riots started and the political fabric of our populous seemed to be ripping apart, the headlines shifted and the attention shifted away with them. Right now in Nashville there are more cases of the virus than there have ever been, and it only promises to keep getting worse. I think it was just yesterday that I saw a picture of a girl’s lung infected by coronavirus that had been taken out during a transplant. It looked like a piece of rotting corned beef covered in pus. The lung belonged to a girl supposedly with no history of smoking.  And yet I am strangely at peace. Still, it’s the same kind of peace I felt when Mary Jane’s car got t-boned and was spinning out of control. I thought I was about to die, and in that moment I was prepared to die. But I didn’t. I can’t help but wonder if this newfound tranquility is just a false sense of security, or anticipation of an inevitable sort of death. All I can really do is hope that fate will smile upon me, and if it doesn’t then I just hope to have the strength to let go of whatever tragedy comes. We are all ready to get back to our lives. We are all ready to return to a world in which this pandemic didn’t exist, but wishful thinking isn’t enough to make this chaos go away. Here we are, a nation on the edge, and we are embroiled in perhaps the most controversial presidency in American history, a deadly global pandemic, and now a revolution. When George Floyd died I was numb.

But it wasn’t because of people like me that the world is changing. To be honest, I am well aware of my complicity in a system that has more or less afforded me a great deal of comfort. Within the context of everything happening, watching black people lose their lives for no reason over and over again to the officers who are sworn to protect us all reminds me that circumstance has not been entirely cruel to me. I am thankful that something is happening. I am thankful that the protests are ongoing. I am thankful that finally our country is being forced to stand still, that the wheels of capitalism are slowing down for just a moment, so that we can evaluate who we actually are, to make necessary changes, and to proceed forward to a higher consciousness of freedom. But I know that there is a greater battle ahead of us. The opposition is rallying its forces, and though I am confident that the worst elements of our nation are their own kind of minority that can be overcome, I know it will not be without a fight.

History is happening every day, and I want to be there to document it. I want to be there to take part in it. If I am going to continue my life as a voyeur then I want to be an active voyeur. I want to tell stories that will result in meaningful change. But these are dangerous times, and I don’t only risk my own life when I attend the demonstrations. Living with my parents has given me a needed sense of comfort, but I know that being here and continuing to live my life more or less is putting them in danger, and if I wasn’t here they wouldn’t be in danger. It would be nice to stay in Nashville for awhile and save some money, to spend some time with my friends and reacquaint myself with the city I was born in as I head out of my youth and into my 30s. I don’t feel as old as I am. At twenty-nine I still feel a lot like a kid. I’ve often said that I got stuck in the mind of a 19-year-old when I did acid on Halloween in 2010. That night has remained the most impactful night of my life, and yet I have always been at a loss regarding what to do with the experience I had. I want to begin my life as an adult, to continue or at least approach with more vigor the essence of what will be my life’s work. I’ve been searching for it, and to be honest I just don’t know if I’ve found what it is.

I’ve become mostly accustomed to a life in which my major depression has left me unmotivated by most everything. I’ve been looking for that motivation everywhere. I searched for it in Kansas. I looked high and low for it in New York. I expected that New York would give me everything I needed to find that buoy of inspiration we assume every great artist has, but if anything New York just confronted me with the hard realities of our vapid, money-driven world. But as everything is dismantled and falls apart, I’ve become more hopeful than ever for a better future for all of us. We might not be able to fix the money-driven part of things just yet, but I really do believe we are taking steps in the right direction toward building a more free world. If this is just the calm before the storm, then let chaos reign. 

[woozapooza]

On male and female deaths on Lost

(I’m sure somewhere in the fandom the following has been pointed out already, but I haven’t seen any posts about it, so I’m writing my own. Keep in mind that I’ve only just started my first-ever rewatch. I checked Lostpedia whenever I was unsure about something, but there could be mistakes in here, although I’m confident that I’m right about the overall pattern I’m observing. This is a critical post, but rest assured Lost is still one of my favorite shows. Sometimes you gotta complain about something you adore. Also, I’m excluding Nikki and Paolo from this post, lol.)

It’s been pointed out that Lost repeatedly uses the “women in refrigerators” trope: with Shannon, with Libby, with Charlotte, and with Juliet. (You could also make an argument for other characters, including Nadia and, if non-love interests count, Alex, but I’m going to focus on members of the main cast.) While thinking about Lost’s many main-cast deaths, another gendered pattern occurred to me: female characters’ deaths tend to be accidents, whereas male characters have more agency over their own deaths. I think this trope (which probably has a name but I don’t know what it is) is very closely connected to women in refrigerators, but I’ll get to the connection at the end. Let’s go through each of the main-cast characters who died and see how they died. Ladies first:

Shannon dies while chasing after Walt’s image. Ana Lucia hears her coming at shoots her out of fear. Ana Lucia could just as well have shot Sayid, who was running after Shannon and calling to her, but she didn’t.

Ana Lucia and Libby both die at Michael’s hand in his quest to save Walt. Ana Lucia dies because she happens to be guarding Ben and Libby dies because she stumbles upon the scene of the crime. If it had been a man guarding Ben, Michael would have shot him, but it wasn’t, and if Hurley had gone back for the blankets instead of Libby, Michael would have shot him, but he didn’t.

Charlotte dies as a complication of time travel, which could just have easily happened to Daniel or Miles, but it didn’t.

Juliet dies because she gets caught in a chain and falls down the shaft that became the Hatch. The chain could just as easily have pulled Sawyer to his death, but it didn’t.

Ilana dies because she mishandles dynamite. This could have happened to any of the men who handled dynamite, but it didn’t (not counting Arzt because he wasn’t a main character).

Finally, Sun dies because the explosion in the submarine caused her to be trapped behind a heavy...I don’t know what it was but the point is she couldn’t get free so she drowned.

Out of the seven main female characters who die, not one of them chooses their death, and only two (Juliet and Sun) have a chance to confront what’s about to happen to them. Both of them use their last moments to tell their men that they love them. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing in itself—after all, Jin also uses his last moments to tell Sun that he loves her—but the point is that there are no women who get cool death speeches about anything else like some of the men do.

Now the gentlemen:

I’m going to break chronological order for a second to start with Jin, as the difference between his and Sun’s deaths illustrates the pattern I’m talking about. It could just as easily have been him who got stuck behind the heavy thingy, leaving Sun to make the choice to die with him, but it wasn’t. Sun’s death is an accident; Jin’s death is a choice that gives the audience our final impression of him.

Going back to season one, Boone could be seen as an exception to the pattern. He dies because Locke told him to check out the plane. He’s “the sacrifice the island demanded” or whatever, but he doesn’t willingly sacrifice himself. Still, he chooses death in the sense that he explicitly absolves Jack of the responsibility to try to keep him alive.

Eko dies facing the smoke monster head-on. He gives ones of the coolest speeches in the show, making peace with his past and bringing his character arc to a close.

Charlie knows well ahead of time that he’s going to die. Desmond offers to go down to the Looking Glass in Charlie’s place, but Charlie takes responsibility for the task. He drowns intentionally, bravely, and at peace with himself, having done something heroic.

Michael dies as a deliberate act of redemption when the bomb explodes on the freighter. He stays behind to die so that Jin, Desmond, and the Oceanic Six can survive.

Locke, as a murder victim, is another possible exception in that he has no agency over his death. It’s never 100% clear why Ben killed Locke as far as I know, but it seems to be at least partly out of jealousy. Locke’s death is definitely anything but accidental or random.

Daniel is shot by Eloise for threatening Richard. This in itself is already pretty far from random. Then there’s the fact that Eloise had spent Daniel’s whole life bringing this moment about. True, it’s a very sudden death, not a death Daniel was able to choose or to face on his own terms. He dies feeling like a pawn. On the other hand, it’s not random or accidental and it explains a lot about Daniel’s life.

Sayid, my darling, beautiful, brave Sayid, dies, like Charlie and Michael, as an act of self-sacrifice and redemption. Before he carries the bomb away from his friends, he makes sure Jack is prepared to be the hero the island needs. Sayid’s death is meaningful on both an external level and an internal level. Not only does he save Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley, but by doing so he overcomes the “sickness” that had brought out the worst in him, and thus he proves that he was at heart a good man. I have to take a timeout from this post to cry.

Okay, I’m back. Finally, Jack dies of his wounds after fighting the Man in Black and restoring the cork at the center of the island. He willingly sacrifices himself to make sure good triumphs over evil and to make sure the passengers on the Ajira plane make it off the island alive. He dies at peace, with a smile on his face, having fulfilled his destiny. I have to go cry again.

Okay, I’m back again. So, out of nine men who die, only three—Boone, Locke, and Daniel—can really be seen as victims. Of those “victims,” only’s Boone’s death is really random, and he gives the audience closure with a cool death speech. The remaining six know that they have to die in advance, and they face death with great dignity and courage.

So, what have we learned, and how does this connect to the four women in refrigerators? Well, tropes aren’t an exact science, so your mileage may vary on what I’m about to say, but in my opinion, a character is usually only “fridged” when their death isn’t really about them at all. If Libby had died bravely, standing up to Michael and defending Ana-Lucia, and if in doing so she had reached the culmination of previously established character arc, then I wouldn’t consider that an instance of fridging—at least, not when evaluated on its own as opposed to as part of a pattern of women dying and men being sad. Fridging basically means turning a character into a prop that moves the story forward, rather than letting that character embody a story in their own right. Not that none of the women who died had interesting stories. But their deaths weren’t part of those stories; instead, they interrupted those stories. Take Shannon, for instance. She might be the woman whose death comes closest to meaning something other than sadness for a man. After all, she initially comes off as pretty self-centered, but by going after Walt she shows concern for someone else. But her growth just gets cut short when she gets shot. That didn’t have to happen. She could have said some last words to Sayid about how she hoped the rest of the gang would rescue Walt. Or something like “make sure Vincent is taken care of.” But because she doesn’t get to choose her death OR say anything before dying, her significance as a character vanishes and what’s left is a plot development for Sayid (and, to be fair, to a lesser extent Ana-Lucia) to react to. The men’s deaths are about the men one way or another: either they’re targeted by someone else for who they are or for a choice they’ve made (Eko, Locke, Daniel), or they choose death (Boone, Charlie, Michael, Sayid, Jin, Jack). Not one of the women’s deaths is about that woman in either of these ways. In other words, when a man dies, it’s part of his story, and when a woman dies, it terminates her story. In other other words, men are the protagonists of their own deaths and women aren’t. I’m not saying every one of the women’s deaths was objectively bad writing or that every one of the men’s deaths was objectively good writing. I’m just saying the pattern seems glaringly obvious now that I’ve noticed it.

Finally, some statistics: Out of nine women whose actresses had main-cast billing, only two—Kate and Claire—were alive at the end of the show. Out of seventeen men whose actors had main-cast billing, eight—Hurley, Ben, Sawyer, Walt, Miles, Richard, Frank, and Desmond—were alive at the end of the show. So while more individual men (nine, or ten if you count Paolo) than women (seven, or eight if you count Nikki) die, a much larger chunk of the female cast is killed off than the male cast. Women have a 22% survival rate and men have a 47% survival rate. This suggests that the writers are simply more interested in keeping men’s stories going than women’s. Hopefully this is obvious, but I’m not accusing the writers of having some nefarious woman-hating agenda. I doubt they realized what they were doing. I think it stems from subconscious assumptions about men and women that manifest in all sorts of media. It doesn’t make that media irredeemably misogynistic, let alone flat-out irredeemable. It’s just unfortunate.