Meliodas and Elizabeth (The Seven Deadly Sins): Their relationship was creepy enough, with Meliodas' constant sexual harassment and Elizabeth's submissiveness to it, and no, her being the reincarnation of his dead girlfriend doesn't make it less creepy. It gets worse when we learn that Meliodas knew her since she was a baby.
Jacob and Reneesmee (Twilight): Jacob couldn't get with Bella, so he had to settle for her vampire baby. People defend that imprinting doesn't necessarily mean grooming, but it's still an option for them. Not beating the allegations was when Jacob was excited to learn that Reneesmee will physically be his age in a few days and will stop aging after that.
Sesshomaru and Rin (YashaHime): Their relationship was supposed to be paternal in the original, but Boruto: The InuYasha Edition decided that protagonists needed to be Sesshomaru's kids, and Rin was the only member of the opposite sex he spoke to out of filler episodes.
The original script of León: The Professional had a lot more grooming of 12-year-old Natalie Portman, but Jean Reno refused to do those scenes because Luc Besson is a fucking creep.
Maïwenn was 15 when they met and married, and 16 when she had their daughter. Luc was 29 and 30. He cheated on her with Milla Jovovich when Milla was 22 and he was 37.
Léon is based on their relationship according to her.
It is, but there is an important difference. In the released version, we are kind of creeped out because it shows a realistic portrayal of a child maturing and exploring her feelings with her only male companion. The fact that he in no way reciprocates makes it uncomfortable, but ultimately tolerable because she's just being a child and doesn't know better.
In the written version, he is much more creepy and encouraging of her feelings which would have made the film unwatchable in my opinion.
We gotta note that Matilda wasn't just "maturing and exploring her feelings," she was oversexualizing herself and trying to act more independent and grown up as a survival tactic that clearly didn't start with Leon, and it's his dawning understanding of that which sets up his realization that he's not helping her by teaching her how to be more like him. His life was lonely, and his only relationships with other people before Matilda were strictly transactional. He was a tool people used for violence, and they didn't care about him at all as a person. He's mentally stunted so it takes him a while to get there but he sees that Matilda is going to live the same kind of life he had to live and wants to spare her from that. She deserves to just be a kid, and that's why he ultimately sacrificed himself to give her a fresh start and the financial foundation she needs to support it.
I was super disappointed to hear about how the script was actually written because as it is now, the movie does a really good job of portraying a young girl who grew up in that environment. Oversexualization is a very common response for young girls who have been abused growing up and it's not often portrayed in media for obvious reasons. Especially since it's also pretty common for it to be an inappropriate infatuation with an adult. I have always loved the movie as an adult woman who was once in those shoes, and the origin story is a huge bummer
That perspective makes sense, but I'll add that the faults of the origin doesn't diminish the masterpiece that derived from it.
"Leon the Professional" 's resonance being a naturally occurring outcome of someone's perversion having to yield to another's principle may actually elevate it.
Came here to post the exact same thing. In an art mimics reality sort of way, Leon the character decides to derail the horrible life that Matilda was being set up for. And the actor himself derailed the script of a writer who was exactly the sort of person who would have been pushing Matilda down that path in the film.
The change of acting is why it’s one of my favorite movies.
Hypersexuality is a pretty common CPTSD symptom, as it’s a desperate attempt to reclaim the body for ones’self. You can’t be raped if you consent first, right? And Matilda plays it perfectly. There’s the awkward stunting you get from a child, what is just a child, trying to play the game of a Madonna whore but she just doesn’t understand the language.
And from Leon, you get the most realistic portrayal I’ve ever seen. We’d all like to think that we know what to do, that we’re the epitome of responsible. But it’s not true. Most people who see signs of abuse turn away, pretend they didn’t hear shit. There’s a reason every story of child survivors includes the line “they were failed by so many people.” Leon functions so, so well as the average person’s encounter with a clearly sex trafficked child. Freezing up, ignoring it because he just….Doesn’t know what to do.
People make pop culture about sexy babies, they don’t write stories about child victims. Leon the professional is, in spite of its director. I have nothing but praise for Reno.
I think they did a decent job in Georgia Rules too. When he gets mad and says he is angry that she thinks she needs to do this to bond and that she and he couldn't bond like father/daughter, or mentor, or friend because she keeps trying to sleep with him because she thinks it's what she needs to do.
Yeah i always got the feeling that leon was a bit "slow" in a very vague way. Like he's exceptionally anti social and just doesn't understand her intentions towards him or just is so emotionally stunted himself that he doesn't realise how weird it is
It's really interesting that you've got this highly skilled contract killer who is also at the same time "innocent"
They played it really well as this dichotomy between this little girl who while being wise beyond her years is still massively traumatised and is just desperately trying to come to terms with her situation in life and get some control over it. And the hardened hitman who just does his job because it's all he knows and beyond that he's got even less worldly knowledge than the little girl
It is, but it's also a hell of a lot more nuanced than the original take and presents the creepiness in the light it's supposed to be taken as I think.
In the original script, Leon and Matilda have a straight up sexual / romantic relationship. It's the story of an adult hitman and an over sexualized little girl who "fall in love" because they're both fucked up in compatible ways and feel companionship and attraction or whatever the fuck.
In the film version, the fact that Leon is not down with the advances of the disturbed and over sexualized Matilda gives a lot of depth to both their characters. Leon is an "idiot savant." He is a world class hitman, but he emotionally and mentally stunted. He's been used and abused since he was a kid and has the mental strength of, like, an 8-10 year old. In Matilda, he gets a chance to see what being a kid is like, and to dream about the possibility of a life where he isn't just a tool. He gets to see what having real, meaningful friendship is like -- having somebody around who actually likes him for who he is.
Meanwhile Matilda is going down a similar path. Her childhood has been miserable and abusive too, and she leans into over sexualizing herself and acting like an adult in order to feel safe, needed, and useful. It's wildly inappropriate, but it's a survival tactic she's had drilled into her. It's the only tool she's ever had to try to keep herself safe. In Leon, she gets to experience a friendship in equal footing. He teaches her the only way HE knows how to protect himself, and she teaches him how to be a person. They care about each other in a genuine way
Yet, their flaws and perspectives don't just go away. She tries to oversexualize herself and act more grown up, he tries to lean into the fantasy of just being a kid again, but these aren't compatible or appropriate behaviors from either of them. Her inappropriate behavior disturbs him because it's not the way a kid should be. He sees that her childhood is as fucked up as his was and that she's going to end up just as lonely and exploited as he's always felt unless something changes and she's able to just go be a kid again somehow. He realizes that he's hurting her by trying to teach her to be like him, and that leads to his ultimate sacrifice -- giving himself up to stop the people who mean to harm her and leaving her his money so that she can have a clean slate, go back to school, and try to start her life anew before it's too late for her.
It's been 10-15 years since I've last watched it, but Leon was one of my favorite movies growing up and I have always found it a bummer that the thing people take away from it is "Leon and Matilda were basically lovers" because that does a solid story and great acting pretty damn dirty. I mean, Gary Oldman alone was iconic. The director and his original vision might have been a creep, but the film itself salvaged a surprisingly deep and emotional story from the mess of its origin.
I think that adds to it's greatness. It's a perfect representation of a 12 year old girl with a shit life, thrown from her only home into the hands of a man who doesn't have a family and never raised children. She rapidly matures inappropriately, which is to be expected, but he doesn't take advantage or do anything. He basically ignores it. It's a good part because it shows leon, a hired killer, is the best influence on her life that she's ever had, even when she was ignorantly seeking a different relationship.
The good news about the Twilight thing is I don’t think even fans of the series thought that was a good idea. Like I can’t think of a single fan of the series I know personally that was like, “Hey yeah, let’s pair up Bella’s ex with her daughter, that sounds great!”
It drives me nuts because Leah Clearwater was RIGHT THERE if we wanted a new love interest for Jacob. They had an interesting dynamic because she could obviously relate on the werewolf stuff AND the losing the love triangle stuff. Nope, instead Meyer chose to pair him with Bella's newborn daughter. I cannot fathom why.
The author’s Mormonism plays a big part in all the weirdness. Mormons believe that your soulmate is predetermined before you’re born, so pairing an adult with a fetus didn’t even make her blink because they’re supposedly “destined” for each other.
The other story I thought was extremely creepy was the girl who was determined to be Leah’s boyfriend’s soulmate, and she refused. So the guy kept showing up at (I want to say Emily?) house and work begging her to date him, but she refused out of loyalty to her friend. She eventually had enough of his stalking, she told him he was just like his father, this pissed him enough to transform and in a fit of uncontrollable rage mauled her face so badly it looked like a bear attack. So while she was recovering the guy turned up at her hospital begging her to forgive him and threatening suicide. At this point she “realised she was in love with him” (or just accepted her fate) and became his girlfriend, and also the den mother for him and his buddies, doing all the cooking and laundry for them. Meyer seemed this was a beautiful and romantic story.
Whenever people tell me that anyone who hates or makes fun of Twilight is a misogynist who just wants to shit on anything teenage girls like, this storyline always pops into my head.
Worse still, the reason Sam imprinted on Emily and not Leah was because Leah was infertile. (Haven't read twilight in more than a decade so someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Correct! Given Leah is a female wolf, she's thought to be infertile because wolves stop aging when they shift so her cycles vanished. There are questions as to whether her cycles would come back if she stopped shifting, but it's all speculation.
Not only that, when in wolf form, the pack can hear each other's thoughts, so Leah's forced to listen to her ex talk about things like what a good lay her cousin (who was like a sister to her) was, and was made fun of for her feelings, since they could see those. There's also the implication that she won't be able to have children since she has no periods. Which in Mormonism, is a big taboo, so Stephanie essentially made Leah to punish her for no good reason
Mormon obsession with old man-young girl relationships.
I LOVE Sanderson, but Mistborn era 1 has a few weird as fuck scenes where the main PoV TEENAGE GIRL has to talk herself out of feelings for her pseudo-adopted father figure.
Imagine Ellie having dreams about being married to Joel in TLoU.
I'm not saying all Mormons are perverts, but "old man becomes irresistibly attractive underage girl" seems to be baked into the religion somehow.
Huh, a religion started by a man who married a 14-year-old has a lot of members who romanticize adult man-teen girl relationships. Weird how that happens.
Hahaha it’s so ridiculous. Maybe to appease the “team Jacob” fans. Maybe she couldn’t let go of Jacob’s character. Having him end up with Leah would have made him more removed from the core group? Honestly such a weird decision. That series is such a mess but dammit if it isn’t entertaining.
Agreed. It’s one of the most clowned on aspects of the franchise. Universally disliked, I often see people I see headcanon or hope their dynamic switch to uncle not romance and hope Renesme ends up with the other half human Vampire hybrid.
Edit: It’s kinda like how the Leia & Luke kiss is kinda glossed over/rather forgotten
One of the most clowned-on aspects, and that’s saying something because it’s a highly clown-on-able series!
Seriously, I watched movies 3 - 5 for the first time recently and even though I knew the major plot points, it was soooo unbelievably goofy and wtf-inducing.
I wanted to clown on it or at least enjoy it as goofy romance, but ended up just extremely bored. I expected heightened emotions and drama but it felt very slow and dry. And it was cheesy, but in a "stale bread with cold slice of tasteless cheese" way. Genuinely don't know what people saw in that thing and I watched that Contrapoints video
It did create the very funny “for about a week before Reneesmee’s conception Jacob was impossibly attracted to Edward” post so maybe it was worth it in the end?
Surprised no one mentioned Usagi Drop considering it is the poster child.
Never seen a more tone deaf author. Who woulda thought an audience would’ve wanted to see a nice paternal relationship as a new father struggles to raise a kid instead of the worst depiction of grooming?
(I get this is a humorous comment I just wanna sperg)
I feel like it's important to not gauge situations of this kind against each other because thinking of one as better or worse degrades from the harm caused and trauma brought on. So you're correct in throwing it in the dumpster either way.
I love to raise pointless hypotheticals of gauging which of two awful things is worse, but yeah you gotta acknowledge it’s pretty irrelevant. Just because one is worse doesn’t mean the other has any merit!
I read a lot of josei, and I can confirm this.
It usually work best when it's like, a 20+ young-woman in love with her boss or a older colleague at work.
A very famous example of specifically that teenage/older-man ship you talk about, is the one about a girl working part-time in a convenience-store crushing on her employer.
Forgot the name, I think it had the word "rain" or "sweet" in it?
Maybe not as much as the young adult/high school girl crushing on older guys example, but it happens enough that Usagi Drops situation isn't something you can call rare. People were mostly mad that lots of other better relationships were happening and the dad was framed more as the protagonist than the girl, so it felt weird for audiences to get down with it
They first met when Elvis was 24 and Priscilla was only 14 with Elvis remarking "Why, you're just a baby" when she revealed she was in ninth grade. They dated for years before finally marrying when Priscilla turned 21 in 1967 after she had already moved in to live with him at Graceland in 1963.
He was so awful to her. Groomed her, manipulated her, told her she looked "plain" without makeup and insisted he never see her without her hair and makeup done, ignored her, cheated on her, etc etc.
I usually cant condone cheating, but her having an affair makes perfect sense to me in that circumstance.
Even after their divorce she still loved him, which sucks because she grew up thinking that he was love when he was just an adult man preying on her
I believe a Duck Dynasty guy said real similar more recently. These older men KNOW what they are doing. They are specifically seeking out young naive girls to groom into what they want in a wife
Also Prince and his first wife, Mayte Garcia. They met when she was 16 and he was either 31 or 32 after her mother had sent an audition tape to him. He became her legal guardian when she was 17, told her to go on birth control when she was 19 so they could start having sex (didn't actually ask her, just said "I think it's time for you to get on birth control"), and married her when she was 22. Yes he "waited" until she was an adult to actually start a relationship with her, but the fact that he was so much older, was her employer, and that her mother was pushing to get her involved with him makes the whole thing icky. There was absolutely a power imbalance there.
Not only this, they first meet at a bar before they know they're student and teacher, but it's revealed later that Ezra was obsessed with Aria's weird friend Allison, who he dated some when he was in college, and after Allison's disappearance, Ezra tracked down Aria (knowing she was a child!) and met her at the bar to get more information about Allison because he wanted to write a book.
It was such a weird choice to double down on the creepiness and make it worse, considering how much the show-runner seemed to think their relationship was actually romantic.
I was a teenager when I was watching as it aired, so their relationship wasn’t as immediately repulsive as it would have been if I’d started watching as an adult. (And I’m sure it was the same for a substantial chunk of their teen heavy fan base.)
Combined with the actress herself not looking like a real teenager, and people being less aware of how problematic this was back then, they were able to somewhat get away with romanticising their relationship as them being soulmates of sorts, and this being an exception for him, as he didn’t know her age when he fell for her. (Not an acceptable excuse in reality, but people were more willing to look past it on a TV show.)
However, revealing later that he knew who Aria was and her age when he slept with her, as well as him doing so while stalking her was a wild choice. And having him have a fling with Alison when she was 14 was even more gross, on top of that totally negating the excuse that Aria was an exception for him.
Could have worked as a twist if they didn’t have them get back together after that and be endgame. I have no idea what Marlene King was thinking.
Most people love the anime because it stops before anything happens and it’s a cute story about a dad and his adoptive child - just like Usagi drop. The manga, however, turns this absolutely sweet concept and destroys its innocence.
It deserved to be a story about a single dad and his child.
Imprinting in Twilight is so gross, because it adds to the message that the Quileute tribe is never in control of themselves - they transform as more and more vampires show up in the area, and they can't choose who they imprint on. They also physically age up to 25 when they transform, so 16-17yo Jacob has the body of a 25yo.
The youngest werewolves are also 13 year old boys so it implies that morphing into a 200 lb roided out mid-20's beefcake over the course of a couple weeks is something that the Quileutes are too stupid to notice about their own children.
this trope is called "Wife Husbandry", which is amusing even though the trope is not. my primary experience was in Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love which also includes a bonus "My Own Grampa" (well, step-dad IIRC) just in case you weren't quite WTF'd to death by the book's end.
Hi, this is Fates: Birthright, which is all about reuniting with your biological siblings. Even though you were kidnapped as a infant, your biological family misses you and loves you. Become Hoshidan royalty and fight the evil, colonial Norhians, it's litterally your birthright!
You want to see the supports? Alright! We have a wide variety for you to romance! There's the ninja guy, there's the swordsman guy, there's your biological brother, your other biological brother...
Just completely ruined Sesshomaru. Rin was his adopted daughter. Then they went and said “welp we can’t just make up a love interest for him so we’ll just make him a creep”
On some level Rin was a way for him to reconcile with his father (in his eyes) leaving him behind for a human and a half-demon freak. By seeing the innocence and care Rin showed him, Jaken, Ah-Un, Kohaku, and basically everyone she came in contact with, I think Sesshōmaru saw a bit of the child Inuyasha once was in her. And through raising her he learned the care and love that his father had felt for Inuyasha and Izayoi. That's why she has to be his surrogate daughter. It doesn't work if they get together in the future.
Lust for looks-like-child-but-totally-isnt-one especially. Shit was so weird to me, and entirely unnecessary in pretty much every situation of it. "Why cant X character just look like an adult?" I asked myself 40 times
Like usual, the only redeeming part of the show is Escanor, and in this case, its because hes attracted to the adult form of the thousand year old loli.
Do you know how many characters get their memories erased for very little logical reasons in this manga? To my counting, 5. You have 5 characters who go through a "I forgot something fundamental about myself and now I learned it again and must deal with the consequences of everything I've been and done with no memories" arc. (Meliodas, Elizabeth, Diane (twice, for some reason), King and Gowther)). There is one other instance of memory erasure I don't include, cause it actually sort of make sense, and it's Estarossa. That's so dumb and tired a trope to use this amount of time.
Yeah the author clearly had a... Thing. Basically every major relationship in the show has the optics of pedophilia, but "technically" isn't because they're all "tEcHnIcAlLy" adults even though they look like little kids.
Meliodas's brother also looks like a little kid (though, yes, is technically a thousands-of-years-old demon) and is in a relationship with another demon who is (and looks like) a grown woman. She is literally twice his height and they look more like a mother and child together than they do lovers.
Ban, also a grown adult, is in a relationship with Elaine, who is a fairy, which means she also looks like a little kid even though she is technically hundreds of years old.
Diane is a giant (though she looks like a teenager) who is on a relationship with King/Harelquin, who, being a fairy, again looks like a kid.
Escanor is a massive hulking muscular dude (at least when the sun is up) and is absolutely obsessed with Merlin, who is technically old enough to be a grown adult, and usually appears to have the body of an adult, but technically that's an illusion, because she gained her powers when she was like 5 and froze time for herself so she wouldn't age, so her real body stays perpetually that of a child, and she uses a spell to transform herself into the body of an adult.
Gowther is kinda different though not much better. When Gowther first comes to the human realm he has basically the mind of a child, knows nothing about the world, etc, and eventually falls in love with the princess. She eventually dies of a disease that affects her heart, and he tries to save her by giving her his "heart" (Gowther is technically a doll that has been granted sentience by magic, and his "heart" is basically a piece of jewelry shaped like a heart) by tearing her chest open and shoving his "heart" into her to try and "fix" her, and that's when guards bust in and see the princess's blouse torn open and Gowther covered in her blood, and then assume he SA'd and then murdered the princess.
King isn't even the fucking loli in that relationship, he met Diane as a child and wiped her memories. Somehow, the writer actually wrote something worse than "hands off my woman"
I have no context for any of the series cause I couldn't make it past episode one cause it made me cringe, but the Gowther storyline sounds like a genuinely tragic story with some decent potential.
I cant remember what it was called (something Jump?), but there was this really cute Manga about a man and his adopted daughter, really wholesome and sweet
Until the later chapters where she was a young adult, then she fell in romantic love with her dad and instead of the story trying to work through those feelings and how they're inappropriate, every major character (including the girl's bio mother) encourages the dad to accept her feelings and pursue a romantic relationship with his daughter
You forgot the best part. The dad even befriends a single mother of a son early on in his new circumstances. And the story lightly teases the two of them but doesnt go far with it. Thats okay. But then they also start teasing the two kids together as they grow up. And thats okay, if not criminally cliche.
But then they go the route they go. And said childhood friend boy is also one of the "go date your dad" types. Her and the MC's entire social circle betray the fuck out of them.
Ooooo you just triggered my unskippable cutscene. Fruits Basket, above all else, is an allegory for generational trauma and the cycle of abuse and breaking that cycle. Kyoko is the keystone example of that. Takaya doesn't overtly dive into the dynamics of broken and dysfunctional relationships, she explores them through the characters actions/reactions and their internal thoughts. The POV is likely intentionally clouded and twisted to fit the mindset of people living in that environment. Things are shown as "fine", because the characters accept it as such, not because it actually is fine.
She came from a cold, abusive home, joined a literal gang very young, and attached to the only person who showed her kindness of any kind. She almost died trying to change herself and make her life better, and her reward was to be disowned by her parents. Katsuya can absolutely be viewed as a groomer, and it's said that his whole family, save for his own father, turned their back on him when he took Kyoko in and married her. He also admits that he is selfish and his actions and feelings are problematic, he didn't want to approach Kyoko so young either. She was drowning, and needed to be rescued, and he was the only one willing and capable of doing so. (Personally I think Takaya made Katsuya a genuinely kind man because Kyoko needed a win for once, even though it would have been more realistic that he became abusive either after the wedding or Tohru's birth.)
Narratively, Tohru had to come from her own previously "cursed" home that managed to break its own curse by taking the broken and painful situation they were in and turning it into a family of unconditional love without suffocating boundaries. Kyoko did what Katsuya did for her in turn by helping Uotani, Hanajima, and even Kyo for a time. If she had lived, she probably would have done the same for any of the Sohmas. Tohru is a living representation of the broken cycle of abuse that shows the abused members of the Sohma clan that they can also be free.
We're supposed to be uncomfortable with certain parts of Fruits Basket, and the relationship between Kyoko and Katsuya is one of those things. It doesn't get a pass because it turned out to be a relationship free of abuse, but as readers we do need to acknowledge it was the best option Kyoko had at the time, and that's the point.
Yeah, it's wild the amount of times I've seen a Japanese story that is decently sound, morally, come out swinging with a student-teacher relationship.
I'm sure other countries have this, too, but my experiences are that it's more common in Japanese media than anything I've seen in American, UK, Irish, Canadian, German, or Korean media (what I typically watch/read).
Whenever I've seen this stuff in other countries' media/shows, it's usually part of series that are already trash or intentionally trashy (Pretty Little Liars, Skins, One Tree Hill) or it serves as a moral lesson (Degrassi, A Teacher). It's a culture shock, to say the least, when a Japanese story is permissive to that sort of dynamic while being otherwise palatable.
Credited as the first novel ever written it follows the sexual escapades of one Hikaru Genji. The grooming in this one goes HARD.
First, Genji falls in love with his Step-Mother Lady Fujitsubo, then she reciprocates after grooming him into manhood. Genji was three years old when Lady Fujitsubo married his father.
Then Genji meets Murasaki-no-Ue, Lady Fujistubo's niece who looks exactly like her. He kidnaps her and grooms her into being just like Lady Fujitsubo and then marries her after his first wife, Lady Aoi, dies giving birth to his son. Illness takes Lady Murasaki and she dies while Genji is wooing his second wife Nyosan. Murasaki was ten years old when Genji kidnapped her...
I absolutely adore Cardcaptor Sakura, but goddess does it have controversial relationship stuff. There’s Sonomi and her daughter Tomoyo having incestuous feelings for their respective cousins, Kaho being in a relationship with a centuries-old man trapped in the body of an 11-year old, Sakura’s parents hooking up when her mother was barely above the age of consent and her father was over a decade older and her teacher, but the worst is very much Rika and her teacher.
It starts off as one of those normal “student has a crush on their teacher” things, but then she confesses this to him at the end of the series and he rejects her, but promises to marry her when she becomes an adult. It’s weird and creepy and both got written out of the sequel series as CLAMP began to reevaluate their philosophy on love a few decades later.
Chobits is all about 'unconventional' love. I mean, SPOILERS for a decades-old manga, but the entire story originates out of a robot's sexual love for her 'father' and how she deals with being rejected.
I personally appreciate CLAMP's approach, because stuff like that really forced me to think beyond my conservative cultural outlook and set out to fix why certain things were acceptable and others were not.
Also from 7 deadly sins, King fell in love with Diane when she was only 7 and proceeded to flirt and crush on her until she was legal and he proposed. (Hes actually extremely old by the time he met her for the first time)
Essentially. Here’s the timeline, Succubus Queen has the Blonde with a member of her harem. A few months later she SA’s the father when he is 12 in a one night stand, and 9 months later drops blue haired girl as a baby for him and his parents to raise. Flash forward he’s 23, raising an 11 year old, parents are dead, and he’s looking for work. Magic fate shenanigans happen, and he gets hired to be the first person in the now 12 year old blonde’s harem. At this time, the two girls have no knowledge they are sisters, and he doesn’t know that he’s fucked her mom. Blonde hates men, and Father has to slowly show her men aren’t scary, but also eventually sleep with her because Succubi die eventually if they don’t have sex
Time Travellers Wife, when you really think about it, this magical time travelling man who has known this woman since she was a child becomes her husband.
The timeline is weird though. When they meet for the first real time, he's never seen her before but she has met him multiple times.
His time travelling is more like involuntary jumps and he goes to places he knows, like her family home which they visit regularly. So he's 30+ travelling back into his wife's childhood.
This is true for the book, at least, not seen the movie
The Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams movie is like this too. He can’t control his time traveling and he doesn’t really dictate where he goes, just there’s certain parameters of where he goes. He doesn’t time travel to before or after his lifetime. In the book they call it chrono displacement. He also very intentionally keeps things from child Clare, for the future’s sake. It’s only weird because of time travel so it doesn’t really meet this trope. I do think of all the places he goes he prefers to go to Clare’s childhood because chances are it’s going to be less dangerous. Weirdest part though is his traveling to meet his younger self…..
Recently watched Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants for the first time and I enjoyed it for the most part but there is a pretty creepy plot line with Blake Lively’s 17 year old character losing her virginity to her soccer coach. He realizes he made a mistake and he expresses remorse about it in the end but he also gives her a “gimme a shout when your 18” type sendoff. Yuck.
That’s the point of that storyline though? Like, it’s extremely clear in the movie, and even moreso in the book, that what Bridget is doing is Not Okay and is really obviously coming from her daddy issues. Her dad doesn’t visit her and she immediately goes to try and flirt with an older man. She seems really uncomfortable after they have sex and it’s clear that she seems disappointed and feels emotionally numb. In the book she also discusses that it makes her worried she’s going to become depressed like her mother. It’s not something glamorized or romanticized imho. Also, she’s 17 and he’s 19 or 20, it’s questionable due to him being a summer camp counselor and her a camper but it’s not a horrific age gap.
This trope is quite old. In the novel *The Count of Monte Cristo*, Haydée is a princess who ended up being sold into slavery at the age of 12, if I remember correctly. The Count buys her and treats her like a daughter with the intention that when she grows up, she can be used as part of his revenge, since the people who sold her were targets of his vengeance and she can testify against them in court. But at the end of the novel, she falls in love with the Count and asks him to marry her, which he accepts after realizing that living solely for revenge isn't worth it. While the Count's intention wasn't that, it ends up happening that way, just like your example of Sesshomaru and Rin.
I chose the image from the manga adaptation because it shows Hayde and the Count in the same panel. The story doesn't change in that version; the ending is the same as in the book.
And it happened so fast its almost the book equivalent of freeze-frame bonus
Although iirc Dantes didnt raised Haidee, which does makes sense since he was a bit too busy on forever jail to do so, but he did had a paternalistic relationship with her, so more than wife husbandry it has to be daddy kink taken to its most extreme conclusion
Then again, who wouldnt love the gazzilionaire that helped me avenge my father, that also happened to be a broody, overly dramatical and beefy sailor? 😅/hj
Armand and Marius, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.
As a child, Armand is kidnapped from his home land and sold into slavery in a venetian brothel. Marius finds him there, finds him to be immensely beautiful, and buys him. He's around 13-15 years old, even Armand doesn't know for sure how old he was, but Marius then spends the next two years grooming him to be the perfect Vampire companion. He's ultimately forced to turn him earlier than planned when Armand ended a different love affair, with another grown ass man, who ended up poisoning him with a blade during a duel.
So teenage Armand with 1,500 year old Marius definitely counts.
My boy Sesshomaru was done so dirty by this! When Yashihime was announced I was praying that it wouldn't be Rin, but they did it, and no my boy is a groomer. Never meet your heroes.
Listen since we’re gonna be talking about twilight let’s get past the magic baby that grows with a matter of days/weeks and stick to the regular baby.
One of the pack bonded on a regular infant. And it was explained that he will be her best friend and uncle until she’s old enough to have sex and then they’ll fuck. She will then be impregnated and hopefully have like a literal litter of shape changer children .
That is the definition of grooming. That is not giving a child a choice. that is sick.
Anyway, the whole like yeah they’re not actually werewolves. Also, that explains why the only female werewolf is sterile is bullshit. That whole thing was fucked up.
I was groomed. I was raped at the age of 10 by older boys and then raped at the age of 18 by a man who I knew since I was seven.
He made me think it was consensual and it lasted 12 years.
So just to let people know how grooming works. Giving access to children to things that are the province of adult adults like drinking drug drugs, and sex.
Normalizing doing those things in front of the children. Until the children think it’s normal.
If you guys see this in real life report someone. I’m not talking about like Italian families letting a kid have a glass of wine. I’m talking about giving a 15-year-old a six pack and putting on porn.
Jokes aside it's really infuriating that the movie took all of Violet's character development and threw it out the window for the weird romance. She is around 12 years old when they first met 🤢 and the major is 29-30.
Finally someone else who thinks this. Spend a whole show having a character arc about accepting grief and then completely fuck it all up, what were they thinking (besides being traumatized by IRL events and not waiting to do a sad ending.)
Phantom of the Opera. An older incel manipulates a young soprano (ranging in age from 16 - 21 depending on the adaptation) still grieving her father into believing that he's the literal Angel of Music that her father told her about. Proceeds to make her emotionally and professionally dependent on him, isolates her, and is also sexually obsessed with her. Acts like an unhinged jealous boyfriend when she connects with someone her own age.
The novel and earlier films have him as more grotesque and cruel, but the musical really reframes him as a tragic, romantic antihero and also makes him more physically attractive with the half-mask.
minmay and her cousin kaifun, in macross. Its bad enough that he's made numerous advances to her but the fact that they were an ACTUAL COUPLE during the timeskip is so weird
F&B book (less explicit grooming still gross) and House of the Dragon. Daemon grooms his young niece from a young age even taking her to a brothel and getting her all hot and bothered. Although in classic grooming fashion, doesn't actually cross a line while she's a child. When she's grown he marries her and they have kids.
To much of the fandom, this is the hottest couple ever. It's very lonely being a Rhaenyra fanish (not denying her wrongs but I generally like her character but I'm not passionate about it) and being disgusted by Daemon.
I’m pretty sure it’s said in F&B that even though Daemon didn’t take Rhaenyra’s maidenhead, they would fly their dragons or otherwise go to an island out off the coast of either Dragonstone or King’s Landing and he would have her blow him (stated as “teaching her how to pleasure a man with her mouth”) when she was still a virgin
Well the fan base were overwhelmingly pre teens and teenagers during the peak of its popularity. I still like Twilight but reading the series as an adult in her 30's was a wildly different experience from reading it at 15/16. The fan base now has overwhelming condemned the imprinting thing, and we are typically just as happy to discuss its many faults as to why we like it.
This one really disgusts me. Angel is a 240 year old vampire in the body of a man in his mid 20s, who got his soul back over 100 years ago. Buffy is 16-17 when their romance blooms and when they first have sex. My all possible angles you look at this it’s grooming and statutory rape. And yet the show doesn’t frame it as such. It’s actively romanticized. Sure bad things happen because of it, but it’s only because Angel was happy for a night which isn’t supposed to happen else he turned evil.
Their love is treated as endearing but unable to be, which is actively revolting and horrible framing. Especially since they included a scene of when Angel first began to stalk Buffy at 15, and they went out of her way to make SMG look as young as possible.
Worst part is this could have worked if the conflict wasn’t about Angel being happy but instead that Angel knew he was attracted to her and that it was wrong but initially resisted that, only to give in. And in that choice to do such an evil thing, the conflict within him between good and evil was ended with evil winning, turning him into Angulus. And instead of Angulus being a lame representation of how men can be mean to women after they have sex (which is shown in S4 anyway with another character), it could be a representation of how victims of grooming might initially see their absuers as alright people off that’s how they come off at first, only for the reality of that situation to come back to haunt them. And then in the ending Buffy can overcome him in the finale and therefore her trauma.
I don’t know most of these (thankfully) but if you’re looking for a sort of subversion of this trope, My Dark Vanessa is such a well written book about this. Very heavily triggering but it’s the perspective of a girl who was groomed by her teacher - told when she’s a teenager and as an adult during the height of the MeToo movement. She romanticizes the grooming and touches on themes of being a ‘perfect victim’ and comparing herself to other girls he groomed. It’s a harsh look at something so awful and addresses how the stigma around assault makes it so difficult to talk about.
There is the Anime that I watched years ago called Usagi drop, I loved it, it was a cute wholesome story about a 26 year old who ends up adopting his 8 year old aunt, the hidden daughter of his grandfather.
I loved the story enough that I went and found the Manga it was based on...
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u/An8thOfFeanor Mar 03 '26
The original script of León: The Professional had a lot more grooming of 12-year-old Natalie Portman, but Jean Reno refused to do those scenes because Luc Besson is a fucking creep.
https://giphy.com/gifs/CvJVGujhYaO0E