r/TopCharacterTropes • u/KalzK • Sep 06 '26

miscellaneous Tropes that became problematic

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The Persistent Suitor: A guy who is after the girl and just wont take no for an answer. Nowadays we just call stalking and harassment, but it used to be romantic. Example: The Notebook (2004), Noah asks Allie out while she's on a date with another man. She refuses, but he threatens to let go and fall unless she agrees to go out with him.

Comedic Woman On Man Violence: Mostly seen in anime, recently it has decreased a lot but years back every show had a woman hitting a guy and showed it as funny. Example: Toradora!, where the quintessential tsundere, Taiga, beats up the MC regularly.

Kid Bags Adult Baddie: I remember a few of these, sometimes it was to show how cool and awesome a kid was because an adult woman fell for him, now it's just seen as problematic shit. Example: Blank Check, the woman likes the kid and kisses him telling him to look for her in 10 years.

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265

u/Agitated_Insect3227 Sep 06 '26

The "not if they enjoyed it" trope where the idea is that rape stops being rape if the victim physically enjoys the experience, which is obviously horrible and stupid.

A somewhat similar & equally dumb trope is the "having a female character raped so that she can feel pleasure without guilt and getting her 'used' to sex," which was weirdly popular with some female authors, of all people, during the 1960s and 1970s. I know I sound like a crazy incel mentioning this, but I promise you it was a thing.

This book is one such example. I only knew of its existence because the author is from the U.S. state Louisiana like me and it's apparently a revolutionary book for the historical romance genre.

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u/AlternateJam Sep 06 '26

The historical context of those sorts of books is pretty explanatory for why that's a trope in romance literature as a whole.

Yeah, sure, it certainly sounds bad when you say "oh yeah, the male lead rapes her and then they fall in love" now, but when the sheik came out on 1919 and the main character was able to be freed from the societal expectations of virginity and enjoy sex outside of the confines of marriage probably felt pretty spicy and liberating for housewives of the interwar and postwar periods.

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u/Llayanna Sep 06 '26

Also just because you can enjoy things in fiction, doesn't mean you want it to happen to you in real life.

I enjoy dubcon fiction. Sometimes even noncon, in the right mood. 

Doesn't mean me or any other person writing or reading it wants it to happen in real life.

That's where one needs to divorce fiction and fantasy and intend. 

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u/cherreeblossom Sep 06 '26

i think it's complicated issue that should be treated with nuance; fiction sometimes affects reality (and can even be part of propaganda), but is not the same thing as reality. for example, i've heard people say that the book redeeming love is part of why it took them a long time to leave their abusers, but i also don't like the idea of government censorship, stereotypes about horror movies automatically making people violent, etc.

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u/IamScottGable Sep 07 '26

Okay noncon makes sense on context but what is dubcon?

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u/SurviveYourAdults Sep 07 '26

dubious

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u/IamScottGable Sep 07 '26

That is the word I keep coming up with, it's the right one?

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u/Unusual-Seaweed2060 Sep 06 '26

Check out Heartthrobs by Carol Dyhouse, this trend came much earlier, basically together with women oriented literature. And the book is a great read too.

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u/AlternateJam Sep 06 '26

Neat. I'll give it a look.

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/StarsForget Sep 06 '26

It's a pretty popular trope for girls who grew up in repressive religious environments believing that any sexual desire was wicked. The idea of being stripped of agency is ironically liberating. (Which is also where the "good little girls make some mighty wild women" trope comes from. The church-to-BDSM pipeline is real.)

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u/WhatImKnownAs Sep 06 '26

Unfortunately, this removal of shame played out in real life as well. I've read depictions of teenage courting in mid-1900s, where the girl always has to say No before she could enjoy a new level of intimacy with a date. Without a benevolent author directing the fated lovers, the outcome was often sexual harassment or attempted rape.

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u/bsubtilis Sep 06 '26

Like the song "Baby it's cold outside", which today sounds too rapey but in context of the time and the movie it's from clearly is about socially acceptable excuses to do what they both wanted to do.

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u/KGEOFF89 Sep 06 '26

Revenge of the Nerds

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u/Signal-Island2549 Sep 06 '26

The nerd underdog stuff didn't age so well either.

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u/jawndell Sep 06 '26

They all became evil tech bros in real life. 

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u/LadyMystery Sep 06 '26

Yeah, mom had those books because they were from her teenagerhood and I was like wtf when I read them as a teenager lol

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u/Deep_Department_8942 Sep 06 '26

This is unfortunately very popular in "romance" books atm

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u/ThisVegetable6485 Sep 06 '26

Yeaaah I was gonna comment this. This rape glorification shit is still everywhere. from women writers. I get we all process in our own way. But fantasizing it was okay is regression and avoidance, not processing. Not even to mention the extreme social harm from these stories existing. I wish it would just dissappear already.

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u/Llayanna Sep 06 '26

..are you completely ignoring though that Authours are also allowed to enjoy what they write? What with the audience, who loves it?

It's kink. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's currently mainstream, yes, and too much for my own taste as well, believe you me.

Dark Romances don't try to be healthy though. They are trying to stretch an itch.

Hemce why I think books should have warning lables as much as movies and ratings.

It probably would help a lot if young readers avoid them, before they are ready to know that this is not meant to glorify but to be tittelating.

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u/ThisVegetable6485 Sep 06 '26

Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, my opinion and what I was saying in my comment is that I believe the exact opposite of that. And I was talking about the authors.

I watched this discourse for awhile as someone who has been through therapy for SA. From the writers themselves, many said they write this genre to try to help them process. Readers say the same. That's what I'm talking about.

Regularless, popular culture has impact on society. There are grey areas everywhere, but I firmly believe these pieces of media that glorify or in any form "make okay" abuse, including through genre alone, are overall much more harmful than helpful or harmless. I believe it is just a harmless kink for some. I believe people who say it helped them. But I also believe it's a gateway drug to or ground into escapism, glorification, or otherwise minimizing their own experienced abuse - instead of the much harder reality that it wasn't okay (believe me, MUCH harder reality). Aside from victims themselves, I also believe theyre pepuating abuse through normalization/sexualization/glorification. The old "he only hits me because he loves me". Getting people into this who don't have prior knowledge that this only exists because it isnt okay, why it isn't, and what is okay.

Yeah it can be done well, for good reason, and be harmless to some. That does not mean its always that. And I personally believe it is largely outweighed by harm.

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u/Spirited-Sail3814 Sep 06 '26

Yeah, it's kink. Sexual fantasies about being raped are pretty common (because you're still actually the one in control when it's your fantasy).

Sometimes it's an excuse to enjoy sex without having to admit to wanting it, if you were told that wanting sex was bad. Sometimes it's a fantasy about someone doing all the things you want without you having to ask for them or speak up for yourself. And sometimes it's about someone being so attracted to you that they can't control themselves.

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u/Deep_Department_8942 Sep 06 '26

Right, it's fine reading it but those who defend the characters and actions are actually causing harm to the community. It's fantasy for a reason.

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u/Toadsted Sep 06 '26

For that matter, forcing a kiss on either person. It's used as domineering romantic, when it's really just assault.

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u/No_Professional4867 Sep 06 '26

Something something psychology and kinks being very interlinked together. The problem comes when men write or read this kind of literature and use it to justify rape, rather than it very much being a kink fantasy thing.

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u/Fyrentenemar Sep 06 '26

Ever heard of the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel?

The main character is a Cro Magnon girl who is, in the first book, raised by Neanderthals.

Part of Neanderthal culture, in the series, is that the women basically can't and don't say no to men's sexual advances. Any man can just walk up to any woman, use her, and that's it. Ayla, the MC, gets repeatedly "used" against her will by a Neanderthal that hates her (her adoptive cousin no less) and does it to intentionally cause her pain. He only stops once Ayla gets pregnant.

Later, she meets a Cro Magnon man, Jondalar, that she falls in love with, and he's surprised and turned on by how easily she can take his big dick.

I'm not kidding or exaggerating. This is a very blatant part of the series.

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u/fotomoose Sep 06 '26

There have been a number or films that show rape and the woman starts to enjoy it half way through. Thankfully they did come under a lot of criticism, but it didn't stop the director thinking it was a good idea...

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u/Dyyyyyyyyy Sep 06 '26

Isnt this trope quite common still though?  I do agree it hasnt aged well, but I think it persists. Perhaps its depiction has changed, but it seems to come up here and there. 

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u/CitizenPremier Sep 06 '26

Blade Runner

If you don't know what scene I'm talking about you might be in danger of raping someone, lol

2

u/D6613 Sep 06 '26

Easily the worst scene in one of my favorite movies. I think they weren't trying to make it like that, but they failed horribly.

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u/Stewart_Games Sep 06 '26

Game of Thrones did this to Daenerys.

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u/idontcareyo_ Sep 06 '26

This one gets tricky because it definitely bleeds in puritanism. I'm not saying there aren't weird films/shows doing weird shit, just that people use this to justify villifying two consenting adults for one reason or another