Deadpool 2 did such a great thing with Vanessa, Wade’s soon-to-be baby mama!
Wait. I think it did? Maybe it didn’t. Hang on, I’m confused…
[Spoilers for Deadpool 2]
Ah, the action narrative. The superhero conundrum. The “fridging” thing. How do you solve a problem like the frequent death of female characters for the sake of catalyzing male action? How do we talk about this constructively? Deadpool 2 tried, fascinatingly enough. It made an attempt to have a conversation about the murder of fictional women, and its use as a plot device, and what it means when more than one genre of movie has been built on this foundation like there’s nothing remotely lazy or regressive or depressing as hell about it.
So to begin, Deadpool 2 did the worst thing it could think of: It fridged Vanessa Carlysle, Wade’s fiancée.
It’s telegraphed to high heaven, so you know it’s coming, which makes it worse. Some bad people follow Wade back to their apartment, she dies in Wade’s arms and it’s very emotional, and then Wade tries to kill himself and that’s very emotional, and then Wade proceeds to go on a long journey to give his life meaning again and it’s so emotional that by the end he’s got a family of super friends to form his new X-Force cadre. After all the fireworks fizzle out, Wade takes Cable’s dead time-travel device, gets it juiced up by Negasonic Teenage Warhead and her girlfriend Yukio, and does the unthinkable in the film’s mid-credits scene—
—he travels back in time and saves Vanessa.
Two things about this:
- It’s wonderful
- It’s a copout
Let’s start with number one.
Deadpool is a canny enough property to know they have to engage with the choice to murder Vanessa. (Or at least, it really should be, but it turns out that the writers have never even heard of fridging as a trope before. Great.) Never mind the number of superheroes with origins that approximate this; Deadpool’s close cousins the X-Men are always pulling this card. Magneto loses a wife and daughter who suddenly appear for the sake of this trope in X-Men: Apocalypse. It happens to Wolverine three. damn. times. over the course of these movies and to Cyclops as well (X2, Wolverine: Origins, The Wolverine). With the exception of Jean Grey (because she doesn’t actually die in X2), all of these instances are poorly written schlock that exist for a single reason—to make men feel. To give them sob-worthy emotions that can drive a revenge spree or an origin or a journey toward enlightenment. Sometimes these women are written as people who have their own lives to get on with before their untimely deaths, but more often they’re not. They exist to facilitate men’s stories.
This is not new. The website Women in Refrigerators exists for a reason. We talk about this tired trope all the time, and the ubiquity of its use. Cat Valente wrote a book of monologues for these women to finally give them their due. We’re sick of it. It’s boring and it’s sad and it means that women spend most of their time identifying with men and male pain because the person who they want to relate to is dead within the first half hour of any given movie.
So Deadpool 2 didn’t try to get away with it. Instead, it went the opposite route and roundly chastised every narrative that lives by this device. The point isn’t just that Wade saves Vanessa—the point is that saving her was easy. It was so easy, they tossed it away in a mid-credits sequence. Oh look. There she is. Screw that initial choice. How dare you make these deaths permanent in worlds full of time travel and heroism and magic? Snap your fingers and freaking fix it. You have infinite power and no excuses and we shouldn’t have to have this conversation one more time.
And it makes no sense whatsoever, don’t forget. Time travel paradox? What are those? How does Cable’s sliding device work? Uh… who cares? Does this mean the whole movie actually occurred differently, because when you change history it—blahblahblah leave it alone, friends. Again, the commentary isn’t about narrative soundness or plot cohesion. It’s about the fact that this is a stupid thing to do to women, and about how all these ridiculous power fantasy narratives could do right by them if they actually cared. It’s about saying Stop. Killing. Women. For No. Damn. Reason.
Yes. Thank you.
But that, unfortunately, brings me to part two.
Because, you know, this is still bullshit. It’s great that Vanessa makes it, and that they decided to undo a bad choice and stick it to every hero’s story that builds itself on the death of brilliant, bright, fierce human beings. And yet….
See, in making this choice, Deadpool 2 highlighted the second biggest problem with these stories: That they simply have no fucking clue what to do with their Vanessas in the first place.
Think about it. Over two films, what do we actually know about Wade’s fiancée? The broad stokes, the major pieces of her character. I can think of maybe three things? Four? Here they are in order:
- She adores Wade and wants to have a baby with him
- She had a shitty, abusive childhood
- Before she started dating Wade, she was a sex worker
- She likes Star Wars?
That’s it. That is all we know about Vanessa Carlysle. Not a word about how she got from here to there, her goals or interests, or anything that she feels aside from her love for Wade. And love is great! Love is wonderful. But it’s never the entirety of a person. And if someone only exists to be the love interest in an action movie, that’s basically the same as being a set piece or a costume or a really cool location, albeit one that can act well. (Then again, sometimes set pieces and costumes and locations also do a fair bit of acting, so it’s not that different after all.)
Wade’s entire arc in Deadpool 2 could have still happened without killing Vanessa off. The two are thinking about starting a family, and Deadpool showing up while Colossus and Negasonic are trying to calm down Russell at the Mutant Rehabilitation Center would still push all the same buttons—a kid is being abused and he’s in trouble, and Wade has been thinking a lot about kids lately and how he wants his own kid to have a better childhood than he had. Now another child needs him, and he tries to defend Russell against the X-Men’s wishes. Same end result. He could also be going through X-Men training, if they wanted to leave that bit. There are countless made up reasons why Deadpool would want to try it out for a while, if they still wanted that to be part of the narrative.
Here’s the problem: If Vanessa doesn’t die, the movie has to decide what she’s doing for the duration. It has to decide if she’s angry that Wade got himself sent to the Icebox to protect Russell, or if she’s proud of him. It has to decide if she tries to bust him out of that mutant prison and who she would go to for help. It has to decide how well she knows each of his friends, from Blind Al to Colossus. It has to decide if she wants to become a member of X-Force when they’re recruiting the team. It has to decide how Wade feels if she puts herself in danger to help him. It has to decide how she feels when Wade sacrifices himself to save Russell at the expense of their future together. It has to make a lot of big choices around a character who is really just meant to be the equivalent of a cool locale or a set piece.
What I am saying is that Deadpool 2 fridged Vanessa—however briefly—because it was easier to do that than it was to invest in her humanity and build her character. It was easier to kill a woman than to show her thinking and trying and moving and living.
And that should really give us pause.
So while it’s great that the film didn’t let her death last, it also shines a blinding spotlight on a much larger problem. Not murdering a woman shouldn’t be reason for applause because that’s literally the least you can do after decades of the same. It’s telling that Deadpool 2 is willing to call out lazy writing with meta commentary when it pertains to convenient narrative workarounds, but their laziest piece of writing was nowhere on their radar.
Please. For all our sakes. Just let women exist.
Emmet Asher-Perrin would have loved it if Vanessa had gone on a rescue mission to the Icebox. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
They should just have something Comic Book-y happen to awaken her Copycat powers (say she has a dormant X-gene or the like).
I gotta say, fridging a loved one to give a male protagonist motivation to play out the story, doesn’t bother me in the least.
Why would any woman be involved with Deadpool? She loves him for his humor?
@@@@@#3
They fell in love before he was deadpool.
While I agree that “fridging” is lazy and treats women as plot devices instead of characters, I find articles like this exhausting. The makers of Deadpool 2 made the movie they made, and I don’t really care to hear your fantasy rewrite of it.
I didn’t care for the way Vanessa was ‘fridged’, although they were probably correct in realizing that she didn’t serve any narrative purpose after the first movie. Yes, she is a ‘damsel’ in the first movie, but they needed something to humanize Deadpool and give him a purpose, or else he is just Ace Ventura with powers. By the end of this movie I think they accomplished the job of making him work without needing that kind of anchor anymore: he fits into his universe.
Onto the good: somehow Deadpool 2 ended up being a more moral and philosophical film than Infinity War. Wade Wilson is fucked up and so is his moral code, but he has a clearer sense of right and wrong, and of his own actions, than the characters of the MCU have demonstrated in Infniity War (or Civil War.) And the movie at least does us the courtesy of acknowledging that killing Vanessa was just yanking our chains.
A huge AMEN to this essay, especially the second half.
And of all the wonderful actresses to waste. Geez.
@@.-@, Okay. That makes sense.
@1, I honestly thought we would get Copycat this time. Vanessa already had the stress induced in DP1 at the end fight with the glass tube and such. Her latent mutant powers should have begin manifesting in DP2.
Sidenote: with how little we saw of Vanessa in the trailers, I honestly entertained the idea that Peter was Vanessa infiltrating X-Force without DP’s knowledge. How cool would that have been?
This is the main reason why this movie fell flat for me, well this and the fact that to me it just felt like the movie was trying too hard, but that is an essay for a different thread. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was still funny as fuck, but I just couldn’t get past the fridging of Vanessa. And the fact that they brought her back in one of the post credit scenes doesn’t fully fix it for me. The other post credit scenes were some of the best bits of the movie by the way, but again that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
To take a line from Deadpool himself, “That’s just lazy writing.”
I was talking to a co-worker about the movie last night at work and he asked me what I thought of it. I told him I was disappointed and he asked why. I said “I can’t believe they fridged Vanessa before the opening title sequence, it’s such a tired trope!” His next two questions were “What is fridging?” and “What’s a trope?” This is a guy who sees almost as many movies as I do and I go to the movies just about every weekend!
And then to find out that the writers of DP2 have never even heard of fridging, what the fuck! These guys write scripts for a living and they aren’t even aware of the trope? Jesus! Fucking! Christ!
Anyways, I agree with everything you just stated in this article.
Oh yeah, one last thing before I go, Domino was the absolute best part of this movie. Hands down the best. Again, I know, something to talk about in a different thread.
@10, Did you send your friend to TVTropes? Or would that be considered cruel and unusual punishment?
The weirdest thing about this is that they throw in another shout-out to Gail Simone—creator of Women in Refrigerators—moments before they fridge Vanessa. And then they steal a bunch of Simone’s contributions to Deadpool lore.
I’m not sure about this as a gendered argument: grief is a readily understandable catalyst for triggering a major life change and grieving for a romantic interest is especially dramatic.
If we’re seeing a disproportionate number of female partners being fridged it’s probably because the protagonists and writers are mostly heterosexual men. It might look like a gendered trope, but I suspect it’s actually a gendered production model.
I wish I could think of any examples of female writers doing this to female protagonists but the only one that comes to mind right now is Molly Weasely going into a beserker killing rage… but there must be other examples.
@11: And even then, Molly was more driven to save another one of her children from suffering the same faith (Ginny) as opposed to Fred’s death driving her narrative (of which there was little much left anyway as said death happened in the last part of the last book in the series).
Avenging a loved one is a perfectly reasonable motivation. The problem is it’s been overused and badly done.
@Thomasine (13): I think you’re right to a degree. The production model is predominantly heterosexual cis males in the writing department, so that will lead to more heterosexual cis male characters losing women as a trope, but as princessroxana says above, “it’s been overused and badly done” (though, I’ve never seen why “Avenging a loved one” always requires said loved-one’s death anyway). The trend does seem to be migrating slightly, because fridging is also increasingly common in homosexual characters now too, and as a way to get rid of awkward characters that nobody knows what to do with anymore.
I haven’t seen DP2 yet (feel free to spoiler away: not a problem to me) and I know I’ll enjoy the film regardless, even with fridging (IMHO) the character with most story potential from DP1. I’m kinda glad Shatterstar is literally a throw-away joke (despite that it is part of what is little more than a fridging spree, from the sounds of it) and I’m overjoyed to FINALLY see a real LGBTQ+ superhero on film: even it’s still so rare as to feel token at this point: I mean, it would feel less token if this wasn’t something relegated to an R-rated movie.
Butt! And while RR has a pretty great one… I am so Godsdam annoyed that the writers fridged Vanessa AT-ALL, even if we do get her point-and-click deus-ex-machina’d back to life during the credits. And to be a writer for a Deadpool movie and not know of a trope as flimsy and degrading as fridging? That’s either a grave case of incompetence or a downright lie. I know which of those I’m erring to.
Here’s hoping DP3 will give us the Vanessa storyline we deserve… and some real casting and character diversity in the rest of the greater MCU.
Well, let’s see.
For those of us who have lost loved ones maybe it matters to see someone surviving terrible grief and being able to redefine family besides something that’s biological.
I’ve lost people and seeing Deadpool survive and find that he could go on and not turn into a dark gloomy avenger, that life is worth living —matters. Unlike other stories of this ilk, Deadpool wakes up and keeps living and in doing so winds up with many forms of family. I suppose, however, it’s better to pretend that death or grief are simply too unspeakable to be discussed or portrayed.
For people who have survived having a loved one “fridged”—I’m sorry, die—like me—this story mattered. I’m not the same after losing someone.
Thanks for using a meaningful story that you can’t relate to as another lazy,shoehorned in example to prop up a decades-old, creaky argument and ignoring any other value in the story.
Agreed and agreed on the OP’s two points.
It makes me think of how RDJ’s Sherlock Holmes handled Mary. There is NO NEED to kill the spouse/significant other! She was given side plot to participate in, she was supportive, and she trusted her husband and his friend’s skills to keep them alive and to do good. Movies/TV have a ton of side plots and minor characters. It is NOT difficult to give a girl some good things to do. It’s even BETTER when you make them a supporting character.
Deadpool had a sea of characters, and Ness is clearly smarter than most (all) of them, with witty dialogue and great presence. You can actually have more than one sassy, capable female on a team. Look at Black Panther.
@17 Deadpool’s first reaction to her death was committing suicide, which he could not physically do. It also took Collosus picking up the pieces of Wade, literally, to help get him going again. If it wasn’t for his invulnerability Deadpool would not have moved beyond the first part of the film.
Anyway, it’s about analyzing a trope that’s rather skewed regarding the characters typically targeted by it. The movie was enjoyable, just not perfect. It’s worth analyzing these sorts of patterns in storytelling anyway.
One thing to consider is, modern superhero comics have become such a bland, endless parade of killing characters off for shock value that I think the pointless deaths (and unavoidable subsequent just as pointless resurrections) of male and female, heroic and villainous and supporting characters alike have just melded together into a single huge blur of meh to me.
For each Elektra being stabbed by Bullseye there’s a Robin being pummeled and blown up by the Joker, and so on. Hell, if we want to get technical, the roots of fridging as a heroic motivation go as far as Captain America and the quite male Bucky, and that’s without even going into origin triggers like Uncle Ben, or the Waynes…
I think the genre by now just reduces life loss in general to a gut reaction cheap inducer, regardless of genders.
Besides, if someone doesn’t think sticking around a superpowered assassin for hire in a world full of superpowered people, while having no powers yourself, is a major logical death flag on yourself, whatever your gender is… then I don’t know what to tell that person.
But I guess once someone decides they wanted to get offended about something and raising a ruckus about it, then there’s no helping it.
I think this is a generally fair criticism, but not killing Vanessa would have a very important effect beyond requiring the writers to give her something to do: it would prevent Deadpool from having a death wish, which is important a number of times including in the climax of the story. He’s not going to immediately give up upon being sent to the Ice Box, and he’s not going to put on the collar during the ending face off.
The ‘death of a loved one inspiring the hero’ meme is a long-running one in literature. When the ‘Women in Refrigerators’ update came about after Kyle Raynor found his girlfriend quite literally in a ‘fridge’ and inspired so much discussion among the distaff side of fandom, in an online discussion I asked Ms Simone, a major talent I really respect, if any of the times Diana of Themiscara’s rage was sparked by one of the several deaths of Steve Trevor counted as ‘fridging’.
Never got an answer from Gayle, but good lord did the women in the group call me some names.
Oh, hey, It’s sort of implied Steve died in the Wonder Woman movie… isn’t it? Wa he Fridged?
@22 Your sarcasm has been noted. The difference is that Steve had agency, and a role. He wasn’t just a convenient paperdoll to set on fire at the beginning of the movie. Now, if Steve died on Themiscara at the start of the movie after Diana fell in love with him, then maybe that might count *a little*.
So no, Steve isn’t anything at all like a fridged girlfriend.
The movie was two hours long. Add in a bunch of Vanessa stuff and it’s about 2h15m. Add more for Cable’s family and it’s 2h25m. How much longer do you want to hold your pee??
@17 why do you assume the author has not experienced the loss of a loved one? humans are mortal beings – statistically isn’t it far more likely that the author (or any other person!) has lost someone close to them?
@20 where does the author say or imply she’s offended? how is this critical examination of a plot device used in a movie “raising a ruckus”?
the comments on this article are as good evidence as any that the author’s critical examination of the fridging plot device / trope in this movie is still very much needed. so thank you for the article, Emily… and maybe follow the golden rule of the internet and don’t read the comments ;)
I can safely say this is the first time I’ve ever been griefsplained.
Perhaps in the future it may be worth considering that plot points, whether one cares for them or not, can have multiple readings—including extremely personal ones that a commentator can’t understand and ones that it’s not kind to try to get the person to justify— for viewers or readers. Because one is on a good intentioned, progressive side doesn’t make putting someone’s interpretation down progressive, compassionate or even humane, especially when that person is on the same side.
I haven’t changed my feelings on Deadpool 2’s plot or what it means to me. However, I’m not going to say I’m not really disappointed in the response. Thanks for your time.
I wanted them to go the Winter’s Tale route.
We see Vanessa bleeding. We don’t see her actually die.
We see Wade running after the final assassin, rather than, oh, trying to get Vanessa to the hospital or staying with her while she dies.
I would have believed “well, she didn’t die, but she left me after that, and I’m bummed”.
I would have believed “well, Wade thought she was dead” and some explanation for why she wasn’t.
Either would still have had issues, but would have been more interesting — and wouldn’t have taken up extra screen time.
I was fairly sure they’d bring her back.
I find it weird that everyone’s harping on the *term* rather than the technique. I also am not familiar with the term though I’ve watched all of Anita Sarkeesian’s videos, read thought pieces about this and other inequities in pop culture, and tilted with many a GamerGater online and off—as well as enjoying the hell out of comics and comics-based movies. The point is not whether they knew the catchy slang that all the cool kids use, but whether they know it’s lazy, old-fashioned, and usually shallow. And the answer, from that linked article, seems to be that they are clueless hacks following a formula.
@23 Are you claiming the Trope Namer, Alexandra DeWitt had no agency? Her character was instrumental in Kyle Rayner learning to use his ring. And she died.
Are you claiming Megara had no agency? Her death (at his mind-controlled hands) drove his entire hero’s journey.
Vannessa drove the Deadpool movie origin story (the comics, not so much). She has at least as much agency as the many versions of Steve Trevor we’ve seen over the decades.
I can understand your confusion if the movie Trevor is the only version you know, but he was, even in the flick, little more than a classic damsel in distress.
This is a fascinating discussion–I never heard the term “fridging” or thought much about the plot device until now. Something to ponder. However, wasn’t the entire point/plot of DB2 to parody all the tropes in all the superhero movies (especially Avengers), of which fridging was just one on a long list? My favorite thing about Deadpool is the lack of fodder for deep introspection. Who cares who shot first–it’s fridging hilarious!
@30 Clell, your examples perfectly demonstrate what’s wrong with fridging, and why movie-Steve-Trevor isn’t a case of it.
“Are you claiming the Trope Namer, Alexandra DeWitt had no agency? Her character was instrumental in Kyle Rayner learning to use his ring. And she died.”
YES. That’s exactly what lack of agency looks like. She was instrumental in someone else’s story. She teaches someone else to use his powers. She doesn’t, in fact, have a story of her own. Outside of her effect on Kyle, she basically doesn’t exist.
You pick an even worse example with:
“Are you claiming Megara had no agency? Her death (at his mind-controlled hands) drove his entire hero’s journey.”
Good grief, man, now you’re just trolling. This is the definition of fridging. She doesn’t matter in herself; she’s just there to drive someone else’s hero’s journey. Apart from dying, what exactly does she get to contribute?
Fridging isn’t a problem because women die to give revenge motives to men – although that’s a bad enough trend in itself.
Fridging is a problem because women exist solely to die to give revenge motives to men. They don’t get plot arcs of their own, they don’t contribute to their own fates – they just get barely-enough-personality for you to believe the man cares when they die, before the revenge trigger wipes them out of the story. They don’t, themselves, change the outcome of the story – some man has to do that for them.
–
This is why movie-Steve-Trevor’s death isn’t fridging. It’s a classic heroic sacrifice – he makes his own choice to accomplish something risky, and achieves it at a cost. If you remove Wonder Woman from the scene entirely, he’d still have done the same thing and mattered in the same way. He stops the bomber full of poison gas – his goal – in his own right, by his own actions; he doesn’t just motivate Wonder Woman to go stop it for him.
(I can’t comment on the comics; I haven’t read any of his deaths. But I’m betting they’re rarely as lacking in agency as the deaths of Gwen Stacy, or Spoiler, or Sue Dibny, or any of dozens of others…)
I can understand and empathize with the anti-fridging movement—I agree that it is a cheap cliche that is rarely more than a spark to get the action going and can also see how that disproportionately portraying female characters as the victims can be seen as a symptom of how women are marginalized by society—but I’m sorry to say I feel that just simply calling out each instance of fridging and going no further is an ineffective plan of action. I’m not trying to defend this trope but I also recognize that it is not going anywhere, particularly in a superhero adventure series with a single protagonist such as Green Lantern, Spider-Man, Deadpool, etc. particularly as the death of a loved one is a logical fallout of the activities of the protagonist. However, because the trope in and of itself is not a gender dependent construct (the violent death of a loved one can be equally motivating to women as well as men), the only solution I see is to continue to call for the increased diversity of protagonists in adventure series. I believe that when equality is achieved in this regard, equality will be achieved with this trope, which will lessen its toxicity (though not necessarily erased). For good or ill, this is the only solution I see ever having a chance to come about.
Anyone else thinking about Oathbringer for an arguably good subversion of the trope?
I
I agree with just about everything in this article, but one thing about it that really stuck out to me is the comment about someone being fridged in The Wolverine. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that film, but I can’t remember anyone being fridged. Both Yukio and Mariko not only survive the events of the film, but they also display agency and assist in defeating the bad guy. It’s Mariko’s knife-throwing skills with Logan’s severed claws that enable him to get the better of the Silver Samurai in the first place. Am I forgetting something about that movie?
@35: I figured she was talking about his nightmares of Jean Grey, which are basically “Hey, remember the time that you killed me?”
@3
Deadpool, for all his Deadpool-ness is a deeply caring, protective person, especially for those that he loves. He had a fucked up childhood, and is broken from it. But, he is sweet in his own way. You get to see glimpses of it, which are always nice. And he likes to look at for the “little guy”. Wade Wilson would have defended an abused child and tried to kill the people abusing him without the catalyst of a dead girlfriend. In fact, Wade Wilson would have reacted to an abused kid in the same manner even before he was given superpowers, because of his own childhood. The character is known to have a soft spot for abused and mistreated people in the comics. They even show this in the first movie, he takes care of the teen girl’s stalker pro bono. So, no, they didn’t need to kill Vanessa for that part of the storyline, and there were probably ways to write around him wanting to die/putting on the collar at the end.
I just figured they were taking her out of the movie to avoid having to write around everything she said and did in preparation for the big DP3 Copycat reveal. Not sure exactly how, but some form of “it’s all been a lie!”
@Matt (#24): For DP, I’d hold the pee till it kills me!
*Edit: Oh, dear Gods! That sounds terrible, but it’s so Deadpool I can’t make myself change it.
Would be happy to sit in the theatre for 5, 6, 8 hours even, with no breaks.
@Dave (#33): I think you’re probably right in many respects, but this is still a problem. There are other ways to give that motivation than just killing off a character introduced for that purpose and I think the big complaint here is that they aren’t taken. Hell, even giving the ‘fridged’ character the agency that causes their death would be a start. Speaking for myself, I’d like to see both happen, but with emphasis on the latter. Diversification of the relationships used for fridging, and lets give the subjects some agency.
For its many flaws, Star Trek 2009 does this right: George Kirk is killed off to motivate James Kirk’s decisions later in the film, but it isn’t fridging, because George is given agency. He has a choice: to try and evacuate with everybody else, or he could stay aboard and command the Kelvin to cover the crew’s retreat. He’s shown in the brief time we see him to be compassionate and honourable and selfless. His wife not being pregnant with his son, or not being present at all, would not likely have changed his decisions in any way, so he isn’t fridged. And yet, his death motivates James for the rest of the film in exactly the same way it would have, were George not given that agency.
@39 Speaking of such a thing how about that but such a death gives agency to AT LEAST two characters one male one female? And the both handle the loss in different ways. I’m talking about the Death of Phyrra in RWBY. FOr those who don’t know in RWBY the Death of Pyhrra Nikos affected both her Teammate and group leader Jaune Arc and series protagonist Ruby Rose. I don’t have time to do a whole essay on it (even though I would love to I doubt it’s welcome hear but I f someone tells me otherwise I will go ahead and write this essay) especially since many on the fandom don’t seem to understand the subtle character portrayal in Ruby Roses character portrayal. But essentially Phyrhaas death in the fall of Beacon has them both broken but in different ways. While Jaune now has a more cynical world-weary view that he expresses openly and will even snap at people when he gets angry and even looses his temper on occasion it is none the less backed up by heart of gold that ultimately wants to protect people first and foremost and still has some hope on the inside. Ruby on the other hand has a mask of cheeriness, optimism and politeness in order to drive people forwards, but in the show you often see signs of the mask cracking when the trauma builds and it gets to be to much for her to uphold the facade, such as when she is in danger of loosing another friend.
I could go on and on about the character work in this show but that would require SEVERAL essays. Heck don’t even get me started on Weiss.