r/TopCharacterTropes • • Sep 06 '26

miscellaneous Tropes that became problematic

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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u/NeroCrow Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

Won't lie the persistent suitor has extremely fucked me up. Because I believed that if I kept trying and trying and showing the best sides of myself the person I liked would feel same way for me. All it did was create a gigantic rift in our friendship because I fucked up thinking I could change their mind. People don't just come around to liking you as much you hope and want them to unfortunately

Edit: I'm glad to see I'm not only one alone who got fuck from this trope. But if I learned anything it's that you can't change how an individual feels about you. But you can change yourself to get individuals to like so long as your changing you for you

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u/DraperPenPals Sep 06 '26

Being able to take no for an answer is part of being an adult

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u/pajamakitten Sep 06 '26

The problem there is that the trope is common in media for teens and some of us did not have friends or parents telling you it was creepy.

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u/Wukon69 Sep 06 '26

The tough part is when your parents incentivize it because it "worked" for them