Sorry that I didn’t get this one posted yesterday, I was running around volunteering and finishing up the first chapter of my collaborative project! Yay progress!

[In no particular order, except for number one because that’s my #1]

Note: This piece will be written using gender neutral pronouns (ze instead of he/she and hir instead of she/he and him/her) in order to make this non-heteronormative

20) You are in Danger/You are Cannon Fodder

Every day you face untold opportunities for injury, trauma, and death, and that is just as a normal, every day person walking the streets of your town/city. When you date a superhero(ine) your chances of being maimed, killed, or irreparably mentally scarred skyrocket. Because, let’s face it, the love interest is always in peril or dead.

What better way to motivate the main character than to murder hir beloved in a highly traumatic and horrific way? Most people who are knowledgeable about the comic book world have heard of Women in Refrigerators the phenomenon/trope of all the women “injured, killed, or depowered as a plot device within various superhero comic books” – it started with Green Lantern coming home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed in their fridge. We can continue on to Wolverine’s wife being killed in his origin movie and him not even being cognizant of the importance of her death. I would say all of Oliver Queen’s girlfriends, but they all seem to come back to life eventually. Batman. Here is the Women In Refrigerator’s list: http://www.lby3.com/wir/women.html

This will be revisited again in the post about arch-enemies and nemeses, but until then, ruminate on all the horrible ways you could be murdered, injured, sexually assaulted, etc just for dating a superhero(ine).