may the bridges i burn light the way

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

What makes this story so important (and not fridging) to me is that this isn't some half developed character that only exists to create something for Kattigan to overcome, Kattigan is an alcoholic and a druidic initiate that has been heavily implied to have had a land stewardship relationship with the land he was living with his family on, and it's for these reasons that people assume his missing and murdered wife and daughter are neither missing nor murdered and that has severed his relationship with his druidic magic and connection with the land.

This is important to me because my great great grandfather's murder was ruled accidental without criminal investigations because he was an alcoholic and he was drowned on his indigenous band's historic land which is on an archipelago and the only people who had evidence and were calling for an investigation were indigenous women. The first time anyone outside of the band took it seriously was in around 2014, 40+ years after his death, when a new hire at the cold cases unit saw the case after the TRC investigations, but the murderer that everyone in the community agreed had done it had already died of old age.

The reality that came with that? My great grandfather converted to the LDS and joined the military, getting himself disenfranchised temporarily along the way. I never once heard him speak his indigenous language, not even to say hello, even though I know he grew up speaking it even after his father was disenfranchised for 3 generations and his mother was sent to residential school. His family fell apart when his father was murdered. I've spoken to his five sisters a total of 9 occasions, and not 9 each, there have been 9 occasions I can remember ever where I have seen at least one of them, despite the fact that they are all still alive. One of those occasions was their mother's funeral in 2009 which was the first time I'd ever seen smudging done, and remains the only time I've seen members of my family smudging. 5 years before anyone called. In 2015 he got into a car accident and stopped being able to visit the archipelago safely, so he got one summer up there since having any inkling of justice before he couldn't be on his land anymore. I've been to one pow wow in my entire life and it wasn't with him or any of his other descendants, only one relative from his side of the family was there, one of his sisters, and she was part of the organizing council, it was my other parent's family that came with me, and at that point my dad didn't even know his mother was indigenous because she was adopted in the 60s and her birth certificate has never had her real parents on it or she wouldve been scooped never would've known it either. My dad didn't learn that past the fact that she was adopted until a year and a half later in 2023 when I asked her point blank if she was indigenous after hearing decades of suspicions from my mother's family. My great grandfather died early May of this year.

- Was eventually trialed by governments of the world as a scapegoat and sent to prison

- She somehow BROKE out of said prison and currently commandeers a rogue paramilitary faction of Project Hail Mary loyalists who believe in her over world governments, who presumably are still hunting her down

- She currently is on the run and staying mobile on an ice breaker ship like some kind of james bond villain base (but you know, good) while STILL working on project hail mary the whole time

- Her rogue loyalist faction controlled enough resources they could go to space and collect the beetles Grace had sent. Alternatively, it was the world government that collected the beetles, and Stratt had a whole ass heist movie to steal them, which is why she had the little xenonite figure at the end of the movie. Either ways she was running circles around them.

Sammy becomes her bestie's midnight snack 🩷💚😋

(Sam x Bianca🐺, ocs)