Hey guys, I'm working on my main villain's backstory and motivation and I'm worried it might be leaning into a bad trope. I'd love to get some outside opinions.
So, my villain's whole thing is that he's connected to a big cosmic concept (think like time or order). He was the favorite "child" and right-hand man of this super powerful, generally benevolent Creator Goddess. He saw her as his mom and his mentor, and he's always been a total workaholic in her service.
Then, he fell in love with another one of the Goddess's creations—someone really kind and gentle. She was like the light of his life. But then, the Goddess sent this person on a crazy dangerous, super important mission... and she didn't come back.
My villain was completely destroyed by this. When he turned to the Goddess for help in his grief, she basically brushed him off because some other huge, universe-level crisis was happening and she was totally focused on that. To him, it felt like the one person he trusted most in existence just abandoned him when he needed her most. So he dipped, and now he's gone full dark side.
His goal now is to tear down all of creation and rebuild it. On the surface, it's to get his love back, but really, it's to get revenge on the Goddess. He wants to destroy everything she ever made so she can feel even a fraction of the pain he feels.
I have tried to give him a sad backstory cause I want people to kinda feel bad for him and get why he's so messed up, but obviously his plan (which is basically cosmic genocide) is unforgivable.
My big question is: Does this backstory count as "fridging"? (For anyone who doesn't know, that's when you kill off a character, usually a love interest, just to make the main character sad and give them motivation).("English isn't my first language; I use a grammar checker app.") reposted from an other subreddit
Yes
I would tend towards it being fridging. The love interest, who is also a creation of the Goddess, and should be important in her own right, was only created by you to get the villain off his ass.
The whole idea could really use some refinement. He’s trying to destroy a universal entity because she couldn’t coddle him when bigger things were at stake. That’s not understandable behavior, it’s a whiny baby tantrum. Nothing about this is sympathetic because his lover’s death, and the Goddesses attention were justified. If his lover had died for nothing, and the Goddess actually abandoned him it would be more understandable.
This. It's kind of the joke behind the first John Wick. In so many action movies we have "He was in love. Then she died. So now he kills everyone!" and that is the motive for all the action and we eat popcorn and cheer.
John Wick kind of subverts this by not having it be a wife who is killed but a dog. The dog is a gift from the wife so it kind of fails, but it also kind of points at how shallow that concept can be.
I think, technically, this doesn't count as fridging as Gail Simone made women in refrigerators to point out how violence/consequences befalling female characters was more violent than male characters. I.e. the boyfriend gets shot and killed, the girlfriend gets cut into pieces and stuffed in a fridge.
However, fridging is kind of a sub-part of the larger trope and has kind of taken over for that. And like Sneaky/Clespshydra said, the love interest exists solely to die and give motivation for a villain to do this thing.
So why not remove her entirely - since she adds nothing to the story - and bring up something else that could trigger the same for this god. Maybe he needed help with something in his domain when mother goddess was busy. Without her help he made a mistake, and that mistake caused large amounts of pain.
His mommy issues now stem from blaming her for this problem because he can't handle the guilt of his own actions/decisions. Now he's looking for the cosmic reset switch for revenge and a do-over because if everything is destroyed his failure doesn't matter.
It changes motivation from "I want my GF back, but actually I want revenge" to "I want revenge, but actually I want the absolution of the void" but otherwise you lose very little of the premise and you don't make yet another female character whose sole reason for existing is to be perfect for a man and thus have her loss motivate him to do great/terrible things.
My personal issue with characters on a cosmic scale is comprehension. We’re talking about gods and immensely powerful entities, so to have one of them get mad and essentially throw a cosmic temper tantrum because someone they cared for died in the line of duty completely breaks my immersion.
Was this person he loved sent on this super dangerous mission in order to die or was it the result of circumstance? This villains anger, at least to me, comes across as very contrived and convenient. His reaction to the entire situation comes across as incredibly petty and selfish, so maybe exploring that as opposed to just going full “I want to destroy everything” is a possible angle you could explore.
Just my thoughts, though. I think you should write whatever you enjoy writing. Good luck!
This has been my biggest issue with my story so far. The answer was to simply stay away from it. Keep gods out of the story as much as possible. I’m worried it’s going to break the immersion for book 2 because essentially that’s when god comes down from his perch and says “what the fuck guys, you’re breaking everything.”
The erosion of sanity is an effective kind of lens for villains like this to work, I think. Exploring this character (the villain) within the context of a prequel, before any of the cosmic genocide stuff, would work. Even if you left them as they are, if it was done properly and the circumstances justified his eventual choices, something like a prequel where you get to know the character perhaps before they become the villain (sort of like an Estarossa/Mael situation if you're familiar with those characters) would work in your favor.
I think writing deities is generally quite difficult, because they often necessitate being complex by design, otherwise they'd only be different from any mortal character in name. Personally, so do take it with a grain of salt, I think focusing in on what loss feels like to a deity is the most promising element you have going. These are entities that have likely watched numerous creatures (humans, etc.) die, seen galaxies crushed and stars born, you name it - so the gravitas of something like a god's loss is probably unquantifiable from the perspective of a mortal character.
Again, these are just random thoughts on the spot, so take it as you will. No one will ever be 100% correct when it comes to the complexity of a character or their decisions, because writing a character is effectively creating a person/identity. Do whatever makes you happy; that's all I do.
I personally think the interesting part is looking at it like a cosmic politician. It’s fun to link their strength to worship, because it gives credence as to why they would make godly weapons and give them to mortals (probably the dumbest idea possible). With a god weapon in a hero’s hands, they are essentially campaigning for their god, and their god gets a pretty popularity bump as a return investment.
Sorry, I hit reply before I finished on accident. I edited it over.
But yeah, essentially book one sets up the rules of gods and why they can’t interact with mortals, and book 2 is the followthrough of what happens when they do.
So I’m shooting myself in the immersion foot by doing it this way.
I think the gods not being able to interact with humans angle is nice. Just an idea, so do with it as you will, but what if this deity the villain loved was involved with a human or a group of them, and their dying was a consequence of their nature as mortal(s) vs deity rather than this character dying because they were sent on a mission or whatever. Sets up the villain as "I dislike this particular thing" but are clouded by numerous other things that broadens the scope of their anger, rather than them going on a cosmic rampage because of a contrived loss. I don't know, just thoughts and ideas, but I think you have a lot going on with what you've got.
"My personal issue with characters on a cosmic scale is comprehension. We’re talking about gods and immensely powerful entities, so to have one of them get mad and essentially throw a cosmic temper tantrum because someone they cared for died in the line of duty completely breaks my immersion."
Obviously, this is a personal take, but I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on this, if it won't derail too much. How do you feel about stories with the Greco-Roman pantheon? What you wrote describes basically all of the gods at some point. They are gods in power alone. They have all of the vices and virtues of the mortals they preside over. So many of those stories amount to one of them throwing "a cosmic temper tantrum".
My only interaction and understanding of that pantheon comes from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, and even then what little I read of it didn't reveal much in regards to the deities. Generally though, I actually quite like having opposing pantheons with unique deities and factions.
My issue is the scale less than their individual presence, which is something I probably could have articulated a little better. OP mentions universal level crisis and events, which immediately raises the stakes from swathes of land or planets to unfathomable distance and size. I actually think having a set of deities within a pantheon, each denoting certain concepts, beliefs, etc. works well in regards to a smaller, isolated narrative. When you have characters threatening the universe itself - not planets or stars or galaxies - it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a deity getting mad over someone's death. OP said: "...so she can feel even a fraction of the pain he feels" in regard to their villain's motives, which is, for me at least, an incredibly shallow and contrived drive for something as complex as a deity threatening the universe.
I think this specific setting could work where deities and pantheons are less made up of deities that are "gods in power alone" but rather entities similar to the C'tan from the 40k universe. Personally, whenever I think of characters threatening reality to such a degree, scale becomes difficult to grasp and any characterization is easily squashed without careful preparation. How can I be invested in the protagonist when the villain is a threat to the universe itself? The plot feels contrived because this character can and has threatened reality, but they don't or haven't when dealing with character A or B.
Overall, I do believe, just generally, gods are incredibly difficult to manage without feeling contrived; though that is likely part of their appeal. If you went out and gave immeasurable power to 7 random people you met on the street, the ramifications would probably lead to cosmic temper tantrums. In that sense, I think Sanderson's cosmology works really well (for me personally) because the shards are more a representation of whatever it is they constitute rather than individuals and literal gods.
Massive tangent and I definitely haven't articulated this properly at all, so I can almost guarantee there inconsistencies, etc. in what I've said, but that should be about the gist of it. I personally just prefer entities like the C'tan over more human-like gods, I guess.
Yeah, it could be called fridging in your context. Maybe you should add some extra reason to it. The "killing the lover" always works imo, but should have some more extra reasoning. I find the thing of Gorr (Thor: Love and Thunder) where he loses his daughter and the God he worships doesn't care, fitting your situation here. Maybe give the Goddess a bit more part into the reason for her death and that she actually cares much less about him then he thought. (Am new to writing, so am just speaking my mind here without experience).
Yeah, I can see your pre-villain getting a Big Sad from his love not coming back... but destroying everything because of it? I don't see that.
In my mind, f the one he loved is a part of creation, he wouldn't want to destroy creation—he would want to figure out how to restore destroyed creation. I can see him asking things like:
* Where does creation / a soul go when it dies or is destroyed?
* Can it be brought back?
* Could I find it?
* Could I attain the power to find it?
* Could I attain the power to rebuild a body for it?
I can see the villain becoming obsessed by these questions and losing himself in the pursuit, and that might make him unrecognizable to his love if/when he ever succeeds.
Yes...
but if the Goddess is her own developed character and/or you have other prominent women in the story you can probably get away with the dead wife backstory.
In my opinion, fridging is fine if it feels like there was no other way things could have happened. Your current backstory is too vague and too passive in the villain’s perspective. He hasn’t done anything. It’s just happened to him. That’s bad storytelling.
You need to come up with a convincing reason why the creator of the universe herself has allowed this to happen. That’s not easy to do, at least if you’re not writing some YA narrative where gods are literally teenage personalities.
how about the goddess being directly involved in offing her cause maybe the villain in question started slacking off a bit when his love interest entered the picture, so this led the goddess to off her. And she's confronted she brushes it off maybe because of the crisis you are saying. The villain then investigates and finds his love interest in maybe one of the goddess' chamber but already offed. Thats how i'd approach it
I think if I were to do this, since we're talking about gods and tropes, I'd combine it with elements of the Pygmalion myth. Have the woman who gets fridged be the equivalent of an ivory statue that is brought to life, but I'd change it so that she isn't a true living being. More like an AI girlfriend.
It subverts the fridge tope by 1. involving the villain, not the hero (your idea already subverts the trope, IMO), 2. the fridged woman isn't a real person, even if the villain reacts exactly as he might if she were.
Edit: It would also give you the opportunity to ask questions about the villain's psychology and how strongly he bonded with this non-person, and why, or whether he was just using the event as an excuse, or was in fact sincerely tormented, and so on. It also implicitly questions the nature of love when one party is or is potentially viewed as an "object." And it might explain both why the villain's mother showed much less concern and why the villain was enraged by this.
Just an idea. Play around with it. Combining tropes can be great fun.
I don't think it counts as a violent murder to motivate something, but it does mean you character cracked like someone going off his meds. I think it would be more likely that he would try to find the loved one than destroy creation.
CES
so his plan suck
I think it would be far more likely for him to try to figure out what happened to his lover. That's a different plot than what you have outlined in your original post.
CES
Fridging, like basically everything in writing, is not inherently bad
okay
but is the vilain motivation valid
Hi there! I don’t think this automatically counts as fridging, but I understand why there might be a concern.
Fridging isn’t just about a loved one dying. It’s about how and why they die. The trope usually applies when a character (often a woman) exists only to be killed so the main character can feel pain, and that character has little to no agency, arc, or purpose beyond motivating someone else. In your case, the death isn’t random or casual. It’s tied directly to the moral failure of the Goddess, the power imbalance between creator and creation, and the villain’s eventual break with the cosmic order he once believed in. That already puts it on stronger footing than a classic fridge scenario IMO.
That said, if you want to push it a little further away from fridging and deepen the villain’s motivation, I would add the following: Give the love interest clear agency and purpose. She isn’t just “sent to die” she matters independently and her role in creation has meaning beyond her relationship with the villain.
The Goddess could be more complex and morally gray. Like, she might grow jealous or threatened by her own creation exceeding its original purpose, or by the bond between them (I love this idea). Sending her on a “necessary” but suicidal mission becomes an act of control not necessarily fate.
You can also add tragic restraint on the victim’s side. Maybe she doesn’t tell the villain the truth to protect him knowing he would defy the Goddess or break himself trying to save her (heart breaking). That choice gives her more emotional weight and tragedy of her own.
It comes to mind also, shift the villain’s rage away from loss alone and toward betrayal, systemic cruelty, and abuse of divine authority. His grief becomes the spark, but the fire is fueled by realizing the universe is fundamentally unjust in his POV. I believe at that point the story isn’t “she died so he went bad.” It’s about a being who devoted his existence to order discovering that the system he served was corrupt at its core, and that the Goddess he loved failed her creations when it mattered most. His actions are still unforgivable, but his pain becomes understandable. This kind of tragedy is gold!
And that’s usually where compelling villains live IMO. Not in justified actions, but in emotionally coherent ones.
So no, bottom line, I wouldn’t call this fridging by default. With a little more focus on agency, moral tension, and divine culpability, it reads more like a tragedy born from power, control, and broken trust than a trope driven motivation. Hope this helps!
The short answer is yes. If a character (usually female) only exists to die in order to motivate a focused character (usually male), then it's a textbook example of fridging.
The long answer involves interrogating the trope itself, which some other commenters here have done so I won't worry about relitigating it, except to focus on this point: a lot of what Simone was focused on when she brought attention to Women in Refrigerators was the part where women were being used as plot devices rather than characters. That's treating women as an object both in the literary sense ("my girlfriend has no agency or narrative of her own and only exists to get battered so that I, a man, must act") AND in a literal sense ("my girlfriend-shaped pillow has been cubed and packaged up as a meal-planning exercise, much to my chagrin"). This perpetuates the idea that women are not only incapable of being narrative actors in their own right, it's reinforcing the notion that women (in general) exist ONLY to be preyed upon, defended by and/or avenged by MEN.
So it's bad when ANY character could be replaced by a sexy lamp, but it's especially galling for women to see that put before them as "here's the character you can relate to in this film, she dies five minutes in" and having that be THE WHOLE INVOLVEMENT of women in the story. It reinforces a lack of agency for women In The Real if even the women in our fantasy stories don't get to act in their own right.
With that in mind, consider the following. To review:
Now here's where it gets spicy:
Villain Man wants revenge because he thinks Pretty Creation was betrayed by Goddess, but it was Pretty Creation who actually betrayed Goddess.
So the sad backstory for Villain Man is that from the jump, he thinks Goddess failed her creations. If he learns the truth (Pretty Creation took what was supposed to be Villain Man's Last Job) then he might persist in fighting against Goddess because a) "I cannot go on in this world without Pretty Creation, I seek the absolution of the void" or b) "If Goddess had told me I was supposed to be sacrificed BEFORE then I would have done it, she messed up by keeping it from me, a Goddess that messes up this badly should not control All Creation, so I seek the absolution of the void."
This makes Villain Man sympathetic because a) he's overly attached to Pretty Creation and can't move on, and anyone who has experienced loss can relate to that or b) he's actually RIGHT that Goddess was imperfect and made the wrong call, and anyone who's lost something because of someone else's bad call can relate to that. But the key thing here is that there's space to give Pretty Creation her own sense of agency, even if it's "I loved Sad Villain Man so much I sacrificed myself for him" or "I loved Sad Villain Man so much I tried to fix All Creation for him so we could be together and failed."
It's certainly not the only solution to the problem, and it could still be considered fridging if Pretty Creation's impact on the developing story is ONLY "she died and Villain Man got upset about it" regardless of the rationalizations offered after the fact. But there's a variety of ways to work through the problem if you start from the premise of "Rule #1: Every character has a motivation for what they do." The story you're telling results from the alchemy of those motivations and the character actions that follow those motivations, and how they interact with each other. If a character AND their motivations don't impact that alchemy at all? You should ask yourself if they're really necessary to the story.
whoa thank you
I suppose by definition yes, this would be fridging, but since it's happening off-screen, in the past, and not to the MC, I don't see that as a huge problem
Also tropes exist for a reason and aren't necessarily something to avoid so IMO this is not an issue.
Yes, using fridging for the _villain_ is, itself, a sort of trope subversion because the actual trope is about using the device to develop the hero.
Fridging isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The fact of the matter is some characters are just used to motivate another. It’s not always possible or even practical to make every character in your story feel as important as your main cast.
Two of the most popular/famous characters of all time utilize fridging as part of their backstories. Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben and Batman’s parents.
Neither of these characters typically have a staring role in the stories that feature them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the impact of their lose when they go.
I really like this :) I think it’s neat when gods show human-level emotions, so for me it works!
thank you
If you're worried about it being read in a negative light--and for the record, I don't think you really need to--you can always make it clear that the villain's view of things is skewed. There's a big difference between "haha, I stab you" and "I'm sending a soldier on a risky mission," and this benevolent Goddess presumably wouldn't have forced the lover into such a mission without her consent.
Is "revenge for my dead lover" a bit of a cliche? Sure, but cliches exist because they work.
Without knowing anything else I would say this doesn't feel like that.
The goddess sent the other character on a mission, which means that was a plan or goal set between them. It wasn't about your MC. She died in that quest. He's upset.
In a way it is a "dead loved one" backstory but it's more like being upset if your spouse joins the military and dies. You can blame the government but it's not about you. They still died regardless.
Usually the term fridging is generally understood to be when a female character is killed off specifically to torment a male character, especially a love interest. To motivate him to action.
Your story here could broadly be labeled that way but I think you get around it by having the other person's death be their own situation and not about him.
Is your villain the protagonist? Because if he isn’t, then it isn’t fridging.
Fridging specifically refers to this being done to motivate the protagonist.
no he's not the protagonist