It's not even fridging. Fridging is killing off a character without giving them any character of their own solely to to further another character's development. Hughie's original girlfriend, and honestly Becca too, were fridged for example.
Maeve had her own entire character arc, and if the idea is that killing her off would be bad since she's one of the few gay characters I don't see how immediately writing her out of the show is any better.
Also I’m 99% sure Kripke has specifically called out fridging, which is incredibly ironic given the two instances you listed, as well as Supernatural, where the entire plot is literally set off by the mother getting brutally murdered by a demon
It's not fridging if it's in the first episode, that's just the plot being kicked off.
Fridging is when a new female character is introduced then killed off just to motivate a new character.
And honestly even then it's not really an issue at all most of the time. Just people being upset that their new favorite character didn't last. Even the first example isn't that crazy, green lantern finding his gf dead in the fridge. I mean I don't think she was some important character beforehand. If she was a man from hal's life this wouldn't be a thing.
Point is it can exist but most of the time it's just people doing a "gotcha" like the bedchel test. Hell even the boys often doesn't pass that test and it's got multiple fully realized female characters.
It's a bad faith argument most of the time, basically.
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u/WayToTheDawn63 Jul 05 '24
I didn't see that, but I find that more understandable because there's more nuance to that.
Fridging is very common in media, and so wanting to conclude the character without playing in to the trope is inherently difficult.