#and amelia's story is handled with care that gives her agency; plus traits outside her husband-centric trauma.

[anistarrose]

The thing about the "fridged" trope is that obviously you can't have a female love interest dying as a defining moment for a male character because that's not feminist, but you also can't have a male love interest dying as a defining moment for a female character because then she's just going to have an arc revolving around her relationship with a man and that's also not feminist, and you also can't kill off a love interest from a gay relationship or a relationship involving a nonbinary person because that's burying your queers, which is at least as bad as misogyny if not even worse, and now suddenly you can't kill off romantic partners at all in stories because no matter the demographics, it's going to be problematic somehow, which is... a pretty ridiculous limitation to impose on storytelling.

And, like, it would be satisfying to have a solution other than "it depends on context if not straight-up vibes, and it's usually very reasonable for audience members to have a range of opinions on the execution of one specific instance," but. Yeah, you do kind of have to just vibe check it in a deeply subjective manner sometimes.