New Year's Resolution: As Wrapped Up in an Angry Emotional Womanly Rant

disappointment
/dɪsəˈpɔɪntm(ə)nt/
noun
sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one's hopes or expectations.

I learned an important lesson in 2019: that I'm a deeply stupid person. I am stupid because I continually let myself get invested in stories that are destined to fail their female characters, people of colour, and LGBT communities.

It's not the worse thing that can happen to a girl: I have a job I enjoy, friends I love and a comfortable place to live. I'm keeping all this in perspective. But 2019 brought into focus a very disturbing trend of how female characters are treated when they're in the hands of male writers.

It's always been there, but the ways in which the stories of women have concluded in three of our biggest franchises, all of which came to their conclusions this year, have helped me find a way to articulate it properly for the first time.

We have a very serious problem with the proliferation of three deeply ugly tropes. TV Tropes calls them Stuffed in the Fridge (women dying so a man can be sad, angry or motivated), Drop Dead Gorgeous (depictions of beautiful dead women) and Interplay of Sex and Violence, the worst of all considering it often combines the first two. They were all over some of the most iconic female characters of the decade, in some of the most popular films and shows that aired this year.