s/o things in movies/books that would lead to a restraining order in RL

[BB-VA]

I have yet to figure out what is so romantic about vampires in the first place.   Never understood it, not even Dracula. 

And at least he dressed niceley, all formal and everything...can't say that for the modern ones so much.

eta comments about vampire formality.

[Kaora]

I love MaryJanice Davidson, but has anyone read "Love's Prisoner"  in the Wyndham Werewolf series. The start of that is just wrong. The entire book is premised on him raping a woman, her being pregnant and him locking her up to make her marry him.  Only it's told in a "it was destiny and he could not resist her" way 

She writes in a really cutesy way (I love the Queen Betsy series)

I could not get passed the first chapter.

Not read it but it sounds horrible.  I always preferred the attitude Linda Hamilton took in Terminator 2, that there's no fate but what we make.  I hate it when people are pressured into being with someone because there's some destiny that they need to be together. People being together because they want to be, is much more my idea of a romance novel.

I have mixed feelings on a series I read.  It's the Witches series by Maggie Shayne, and while well written with a coherent story, a couple of points now bug me.  In the series, people who die protecting other Witches are reborn immortal in their next life, and suffer a temporary death the next time they die, before recovering.  They also gain some of the typical supernatural traits (better sight and hearing, though speed still is the same.)

At least one major plot point is the guy who died for the immortal Raven, a female lead, and who she waits nearly a half a millennium for, sees him and is convinced that they are meant to be together.

In a way, I give it a pass, because she didn't, to my recent memory, do any stalker things, and it wasn't quite happily ever after (she had to whoo him like anyone else.)  Whether or not this qualifies, I have no idea.

[Piratelvr1121]

Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite movies when I was a young teen and it came out.  Now watching it as an adult, all I see is Stockholm Syndrome.

I see it differently, probably because of the way my parents explained it to me when I was little. Beast is the master of the castle, and has no one to curb him at all. When Belle snaps at him that she had run away because he had frightened her, he looks genuinely shocked, and does not have a come back. He is surprised that he scared her by yelling, because he is so convinced people are only scared of him because of the way he looks. Afterwards, he never raises his voice again. Not once. He roars at Gaston, but he never again yells.

My parents told me that if someone does not know that their behavior is wrong, you make an allowance that one time (unless it's physical violence). You give them a chance to apologize and make amends. Belle let him know his behavior was wrong, Beast apologized, made amends, and turned out to actually be a nice person who did not have good parents to teach him that it is not acceptable to yell when you do not get your way.

Disney's official explanation was that he was literally turning into a beast the longer he spent away from human contact, which they probably could have explained better - that his parents didn't teach him to behave in the first place, and lack of early teaching + curse = yelling and screaming tantrums.

I could see that, as he was spoiled rotten and I believe that's why the curse was placed on him in the first place. 

[JadeAngel]

Here's one from days gone by - so my memory may be inexact.

In the movie Blue Hawaii the character played by Elvis Presley turns a young woman over his knee and *spanks her.* 

Elvis was playing a tour guide in Hawaii, and was shepherding a group of young women around the island.  I think that they might have been high school age.  The person that he later spanked acted very bratty for the first part of the movie, and then I think she tried to commit suicide by throwing herself in the ocean at night.  Elvis fished her out of the surf and spanked her.

Voila!  Her apparently poor mental health was restored to normal.  She turned into a well behaved person and told Elvis that he was the first person who cared enough about her to do that.  Such bizarre logic was not unusual in movies at the time, which was 1961.

I remember that film, and I was thinking of another Elvis film called 'Spinout' where 'confirmed bachelor' Elvis is a singer in a band/part time race car driver and being pursued by three women, the groovy drummer in his band, the spoiled pretty heiress and an author (played by Diane McBain) who spends the entire movie spying on Elvis through binoculars and following him around. At one point she appears in his house half-dressed and bearing a martini and Elvis says 'where did you come from?' instead of 'how did you get into my house you weird creepy woman, also put on your clothes and get out immediately or I'm calling the cops!'

Then at the end he marries all three of them off (to other men) but at the wedding gives each one of them a good smooch before handing them off to their respective husbands. In reality there would have been restraining orders flying in all directions.

[QueenofAllThings]

'Flowers in the Attic', anyone?

[Kaora]

Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite movies when I was a young teen and it came out.  Now watching it as an adult, all I see is Stockholm Syndrome.

I see it differently, probably because of the way my parents explained it to me when I was little. Beast is the master of the castle, and has no one to curb him at all. When Belle snaps at him that she had run away because he had frightened her, he looks genuinely shocked, and does not have a come back. He is surprised that he scared her by yelling, because he is so convinced people are only scared of him because of the way he looks. Afterwards, he never raises his voice again. Not once. He roars at Gaston, but he never again yells.

My parents told me that if someone does not know that their behavior is wrong, you make an allowance that one time (unless it's physical violence). You give them a chance to apologize and make amends. Belle let him know his behavior was wrong, Beast apologized, made amends, and turned out to actually be a nice person who did not have good parents to teach him that it is not acceptable to yell when you do not get your way.

Disney's official explanation was that he was literally turning into a beast the longer he spent away from human contact, which they probably could have explained better - that his parents didn't teach him to behave in the first place, and lack of early teaching + curse = yelling and screaming tantrums.

I could see that, as he was spoiled rotten and I believe that's why the curse was placed on him in the first place.

I like that explanation.  He's just a person deprived of etiquette!  We can help him!

There's also Harem anime, but those seem to enjoy more of exploiting the trope to their humorous ends rather than playing it straight like a Rom-Com or "Romance."

[Slartibartfast]

In case you missed it, the author Jenny Trout (aka Jennifer Armintrout) has a fantastic series of recaps of the "50 Shades" books.  She rants about them with liberal (and accurate) profanity on occasion, but I enjoyed her recaps a lot more than I would have enjoyed slogging through the actual books.

She also is coming out with a new, free serial, The Boss, which is her attempt to do a Twilight/50 Shades style story WITHOUT the abuse and the creepiness.  It is possible to have a non-vanilla relationship be romantic!  I'm really curious to see how she does it - I've loved some of her other books, both as Abigail Barnette and as Jenny Trout/Jennifer Armintrout, so I've got high hopes for this one.

[Jones]

Was anyone else amused when watching "50 First Dates", when Adam Sandler did the same approach on different days and the first time, it worked but the next time, she beat him up?


Regarding Beauty and the Beast, I preferred it to other princess movies because Belle stood up to the beast, yelled back at him and followed her own mind. None of the "I'll do whatever you tell me" of Little Mermaid and pre-destined-can't-fight-it love of Sleeping Beauty. My mom didn't like the movie because she considered Belle a "brat" for rejecting her town and people, so as with all children's stories and their meanings, YMMV.

[Kendo_Bunny]

My mom didn't like the movie because she considered Belle a "brat" for rejecting her town and people, so as with all children's stories and their meanings, YMMV.

Her town full of small-minded bigots who went to murder someone purely because they looked weird, because the handsome man who just tried to blackmail a woman who had already refused him into marriage by threatening to have her father committed told them to? O.o Why wouldn't anyone reject them? The only positive person in the town is the bookseller.

I'm not a big fan of rom coms in general, and my views on Twilight are well-known on this board (and thus, my views on 50 Shades, because it's the same thing). "He broke into my house because he loves me!" Would it be okay if he was ugly and poor? But he's rich and handsome, so it's okay! Yuck.

[Kaora]

Was anyone else amused when watching "50 First Dates", when Adam Sandler did the same approach on different days and the first time, it worked but the next time, she beat him up?

Giggles!

[kherbert05]

Someone has to say it
The "great" General Hospital "Romance" - Luke and Laura. How many times has that been retconed? assult, seduction, assult but we decided we loved each other.


In most of the books I read - the hero often breaks a multitude of laws- but is usually trying to save the world from the bad guy - or a computer virus set loose by a maniac multi-billionaire game designer  (that framed the hero for murder) A little less creepy.

[magicdomino]

All the chases after a loved one in an airport always make me wonder where the security is.

Have you seen Love Actually? Kid chases his crush through an airport, and collects a whole string of security guards, who catch him at the gate.

For my part, I've seen a few rom-coms "heroes" and "heroines" (this doesn't seem to be gender-specific) who acted more like stalkers than secret admirers. Anything that involves following them, bullying their crush's friends into helping him/her, or infiltrating their emails/voicemail/social networking, freaks me out.

I really tend not to watch rom-coms anymore.

I refuse to see romantic comedies on the grounds that they promote violence.  Either I want to smack the heroine upside the head for being an idiot, or I want to smack the guy for being a jerk/stalker/both.   

[Reika]

I refuse to see romantic comedies on the grounds that they promote violence.  Either I want to smack the heroine upside the head for being an idiot, or I want to smack the guy for being a jerk/stalker/both.   

Usually I feel that way about all of the main characters. I never got the appeal of rom-coms, they always set my hinky meter off.

I remember getting trapped into watching You've Got Mail with mom. I wasn't sure who I was more angry at, the people who made the movie, or my mother for tricking me into watching it.

[Kariachi]

Not exactly "restraining order" material, but I got through about half of My Big Fat Greek Wedding before deciding that the much-discussed charm of the movie was nowhere to be found. The girl should have told her father that he was being abusively controlling, gotten married at City Hall, and the old man could like it or not like it, end of story.

I remember feeling the same way when I watched 'The Notebook'. Didn't see the beginning, but I remember that, after the scene where the lead woman's mother admits that she stole the lead man's letters and tossed them, and that she did this knowing how badly it was hurting her daughter, and the woman still listened to her, I immediately stood up, walked downstairs, and announced to my mother that this woman obviously wasn't of our stock as no woman in my family would put up with that mess. It would have been less 'following mother' and more "have you lost your mind? what's wrong with you?! get away from me, I'm grabbing my man and you better pray you ever get to so much as hear about grandchildren!!"

[asb8]

Was anyone else amused when watching "50 First Dates", when Adam Sandler did the same approach on different days and the first time, it worked but the next time, she beat him up?


Regarding Beauty and the Beast, I preferred it to other princess movies because Belle stood up to the beast, yelled back at him and followed her own mind. None of the "I'll do whatever you tell me" of Little Mermaid and pre-destined-can't-fight-it love of Sleeping Beauty. My mom didn't like the movie because she considered Belle a "brat" for rejecting her town and people, so as with all children's stories and their meanings, YMMV.

Beauty and the Beast is one of the few disney princesses I'd be okay with my daughter emulating.  She reads no matter how strange the town thinks she is, she refuses to allow Gaston to bully her into marriage, she doesn't hesitate to run to rescue her father, she stands up to the Beast when he's a jerk and then defends him when the townspeople come to kill him.  Her and Mulan, they are the good ones.