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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333

u/Writeloves Sep 06 '26

Ew, he does that in the Notebook? And people find that romantic? What if she said no? He either looks insincere or he chooses to throw a tantrum and severely harms himself like an idiot.

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u/KalzK Sep 06 '26

She says no time and time again and he starts to let go until she gets genuinely scared for him and accepts

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u/Writeloves Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

Yeah, I figured that’s how the movie went. I was speaking to the consequences of attempting that stunt on a less sympathetic woman.

9

u/Sweet_Xocoatl Sep 06 '26

Or a woman that’s with an aggressive guy, like, her date is right next to her and there was nothing stopping him from kicking the dude off the Ferris wheel.

17

u/Cipherpunkblue Sep 06 '26

That is horrible.

8

u/Broken_Moon_Studios Sep 06 '26

He chose to endanger himself? That's on him.

In the words of Ivan Drago:

8

u/c05m05i5 Sep 06 '26

She could just refuse to go on a date anyway, she agreed under duress

6

u/UzzNuff Sep 06 '26

It's even worse. He then maker her scream out "I want to go out with you" so loud everyone hears it.

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u/No_External_539 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 14 '26

The entire movie is a shit show.

It starts off strong with him forcing her into dating him. Then most of their interactions are either really ugly arguments or romantic tension, which is a textbook example of a toxic relationship. And to top it all off, she cheats on her fiancé with the main love interest, then leaves the main love interest to go back to her fiancé, then she goes AGAIN to her weird ass situationship.

Even as a child I have always hated “cheating is romantic” trope, especially since her fiancé was a good man, cause it’s straight up just cruel to the person that did nothing wrong. And now that I’m older, I’ve found MORE reasons to hate this god awful horror story.

18

u/AbroCadabro1010 Sep 06 '26

It sucks because the parts in the future when they're old really are incredibly strong. Those scenes carry this movie and they're so well done, especially with how they want you to know the plot twist with visual cues and think "no... Please no..." before it's finally confirmed. But the flashback scenes are just so insanely awful and problematic and it really ruins the entire mood

19

u/No_External_539 Sep 06 '26

The old couple in the way that they’re presented works if the story of their life was a sweet and loving one, however after seeing how their relationship functioned outside of her having dementia and dying makes you realize there’s nothing wholesome about them.

Just a trauma bond that never died. Do I know what they were like between the end of the flashbacks and them being old? No, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say it sucked. Also I hate seeing shitty people living happily ever after.

7

u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Sep 06 '26

IIRC the book talks a BIT more about how great they were as a couple, but I remember thinking, "man, I'd be so much more convinced if you'd actually shown them functioning well at any other point in the story!"

Also: why is grandpa ONLY focusing on the story of how they got together? Like, they're supposed to have had 50-odd stable years when they were good for each other and a couple of kids, right? But the part of their lives that he wants her to remember is the part where he was unhinged?

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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Sep 06 '26

Eh, as someone who has had several extended family members with dementia, I wouldn't say those parts were strong. They were the hallmark version of what it looks like. Which, I get it's a romance movie and you don't want to be that depressing, but...why include it at all, if you're not going to be accurate?

6

u/Toadsted Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

I'm often reminded of the Arthur mythology, and in particular First Knight ( I think it's the right one ) with Sean Connery and Richard Gere.

It's got the typical trope of Lancelot running away with Guinevere, both young and love / lust at first sight despite being supposedly loyal to their King, respectively.

So after a night of eloping to the woods for rooting, they wake up naked to find Excalibur thrust into the ground in the middle of their donut shaped love nest. 

Immediately they're both stricken with distraught and hysterical crying. The king without his sword, symbolic of a husband without his wife and trusted knight. Having caught them in the act and being subtle AF.

Like, we're supposed to be romanticizing their affair? And then they're all of a sudden upset and worried about this sword being there, like they're genuinely concerned about the king. Now?!

What?

1

u/No_External_539 Sep 06 '26

I can’t be convinced someone who cheats on their partner that they are with willingly is capable of genuinely loving someone else without breaking up and growing a bit first.

You love them soooo much that you continue to stay with your actual partner and never fully commit to either. And Lancelot is just as untrustworthy, cause what asswipe does that to his supposed best friend.

1

u/Toadsted Sep 07 '26

I think you can genuinely love multiple people at once, we do that for family and even material things; polygamy is a thing after all, people don't often just switch off from one person to another, which is usually the problem.

But that's a whole different thing to the cheating aspect, which is a betrayal of ethical / social code. And then you get into things like cheaters rationalizing their behavior, projecting, blaming the other person for "making" them do it, etc. etc.. It's a wild web of both understandable reasoning that is still unethical, and irrational spontaneity.

And when we're talking fantasy, sometimes the entire point of the act is that it's unethical, it's a means for the writer / reader to live vicariously through the imaginary story. Like how we love violence when we can disassociate ourselves from personaly being there involved; movies, video games, comics, novels, etc..

1

u/No_External_539 Sep 07 '26

The point I was making is if you really loved either of them, you wouldn’t be betraying any one of them. 

It’s easy to say you love someone, but it’s harder to ACTUALLY love someone.

2

u/Wiplazh Sep 10 '26

So, is she bouncing between three guys like pinball?

1

u/26pickles Sep 07 '26

& Am I the only one who was extremely put off by the “romantic place” they first slept together being a restored PLANTATION? I always heard about the movie as a kid and when I finally watched it I was like wtf this is a horror movie plot with a romance soundtrack

2

u/Arek_PL Sep 06 '26

severely harming ourselves for love is commonly portrayed as romantic in media

1

u/kookieandacupoftae Sep 09 '26

I liked this movie as a kid but now, remembering all this makes me hate the movie.