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/Altayrmcneto Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

It can be polemic, but “Women which are Mean, but Competent Bosses”, precisely the ones like Miranda Priestly, which was stronger last decade.

Why? Because they appear to be progressive, but it only reinforces the patriarchal structure by giving for some women key positions from where they can absorve most of the criticism while doing the same like men in her position.

The system is bad? No, the boss that is mean, but look how cool is to have such empowered woman as leadership!

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u/Scott_Liberation Sep 06 '26

This reminds me of a Korean TV show I watched years ago that subverted this trope and I thought it was awesome.

This guy freaks out because he gets a new woman boss who has a reputation around the company as being a terrible tyrant. Then it turns out she just has that reputation because she doesn't put up with bullshit plus sexism.

I think when I watched it, it was on Amazon and called My Horrible Boss or something like that, but then months or years later when browsing a streaming site, I saw the name localized to something completely different.

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u/patentsarebroken Sep 07 '26

Similarly I liked Cat Grant in the Supergirl TV show and enjoyed her episode her statement of a male CEO can throw a chair at an employee and I'll still be the mean one for raising my voice.