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Romanticized Abuse
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Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_3'); })Readers who would never enjoy the sight of horrors committed against real people can often enjoy the suffering of fictional individuals. Many authors, aware of this, will happily give the readers what they want: Romanticized Abuse, or Abuse Fanservice. This can happen on four levels: Civilization: A Planet of Hats, grim Fetish-Fuel Future or just a Crapsack World. Organization: A religious cult, criminal network or whatever fills the role. Couple: A husband and wife or other couple may be sweet and respectful towards each other, sharing their mutual hobby of torturing someone else or each other if they are more sympathetic. Individual: This level is covered by the gendered subtropes Bastard Girlfriend and Bastard Boyfriend. Putting individual characters as example in the supertrope should only be done if the character is of unknown gender or a genderless shapeshifter/alien/whatever. A character that give Kick the Dog, Moral Event Horizon (or even Shoot the Dog) to another character (especially if they making the character into a woobie) also works. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_2'); })The husband and wife of a Romanticized Abuse couple should normally only be mentioned here in the supertrope—it's redundant to also mention them in the gendered subtropes, unless they also have individual adventures where they are effectively single or in another relationship with a different dynamic. For individuals who represent a civilization or an organization, it's a matter of whether they act as individuals, as representatives, or both. When combined with Evil Is Sexy, or any other of the Evil Tropes, Romanticized Abuse is likely to lead to Draco in Leather Pants. However, Draco in Leather Pants may be justified if the group or person whose abusive behavior is romanticized is not necessarily portrayed as evil at all. A subtrope of Fanservice: Sexual abuse not designed to be sexy & appealing is not this trope. Compare and contrast Casual Kink as well as Safe, Sane, and Consensual, for characters who live out BDSM fantasies and show the kind of ethical restraint needed in Real Life. Note that abuse played for fetish appeal is rarely played only for fetish appeal. It is often a mix of fetish appeal, Nightmare Fuel, Fetish Retardant and so on, and the fetish appeal component is sometimes calculated to maximize the horror value depending on what the creators are going for. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_1'); })A stock trait of Horny Devils. Compare Friendly Tickle Torture for the PG version. Contrast Idealized Sex, since the Romanticized Abuse is clearly abusive—however, as the stories progress, Romanticized Abuse has a tendency to shift over into becoming Idealized Sex instead. There can also be some overlap regarding physical safety and such. Contrast Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny. Compare and contrast Destructive Romance. Examples |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_1463a028 | type |
Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_1463a028 | comment |
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit sometimes go for having their cake and eat it too, denouncing the horrors of sexual abuse by displaying it in almost pornographic details. One episode, named "Slaves", revels in the details on how a young Romanian woman has been imprisoned, brainwashed and used as a sex toy by an American couple. Lots of neatly presented details about the horrors she endured makes for a strange mix of fetish appeal and Nausea Fuel. Surprisingly, the detectives let the wife off the hook in exchange for selling out her husband, in spite of the fact that she murdered the girl's aunt without even informing her husband about it afterward. Another episode, named "Spectacle", runs on the principle that no one can resist watching a good rape. The episode starts with a video broadcast of a woman getting raped by a masked man popping up on the intranet of a university campus. It turns out that the guy who had the woman kidnapped and raped lost his little brother a long time ago. The brother was kidnapped, and the police gave up searching after a little while. After this cold case is solved, the unsurprising reveal is made that they were simply playing make-believe rape as a little Activist Fundamentalist Antics plot to get the police's attention. |
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Bernkastel and Lambdadelta in Umineko: When They Cry take this trope Up to Eleven. Being all-powerful witches who will do anything to avoid boredom, a regular "punishment game" for them will involve things like locking each other up at the bottom of a hollow tower, turning all the stars in the sky into diamonds and dropping them, one by one, onto the other one until they are crushed into a pulp. Considering the end of Episode 6, Battler and Beatrice seem to be heading in this direction. Back when Beatrice was pretending to be a Card-Carrying Villain, they definitely were. |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_2b82b95f | comment |
iCarly has Freddie and Sam. Even though the abuse between them is For Laughs, fans started shipping them after the first episode aired.The romanticized abuse becomes more evident when Sam starts beating up Freddie later in the series. The writers even have Sam say that she started developing feelings for him after he was ran over by a biker and was lying on the ground, bleeding from his ear. Yikes. | |
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Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_39a1676b | comment |
In Fifty Shades of Grey, there's the treatment of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which is portrayed as a straight romance between Tess and Alec, although this is Completely Missing the Point—Tess Of The d'Urbervilles is actually about how Victorian double standards and the Defiled Forever trope mean that Alec's rape of Tess ruins Tess's life, despite it not being her fault. Alec is less Byronic Hero and more Dastardly Whiplash. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_4f57b33a | comment |
Ichigo/Kish in Tokyo Mew Mew is much more popular than the Official Couple Ichigo/Masaya. Throughout the series, Kish kisses Ichigo against her will, gets in her face more than she wants him to, and threatens to kill her and Masaya if she doesn't give into his advances. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_54d9bd76 | comment |
Passengers (2016): One of the main criticisms against the film. Jim for all intents and purposes stalks Aurora and then he wakes her up, telling her that her pod malfunctioned and romancing her under that pretense, which from an ethical standpoint makes their sexual relationship akin to rape—no different than if he had kidnapped her while hiding his true identity and then proceeded to woo her without her knowing he was her kidnapper. She understandably calls his action murder after finding out. However, it never portrays Jim as having been right in doing this, and he himself says this was wrong. Aurora reacts realistically and nearly kills him over this. It's only after they save the ship together that she finally forgives him. Even so Jim is meant to be the hero and we are meant to root for him and the relationship is supposed to be a story of true love. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_606e56fc | comment |
Geist: The Sin-Eaters supplement Book Of The Dead is about realms of the dead. One of them is a very friendly place called Oppia, which offers an abundance of food and Sex Slaves. Of course, it's very easy to break a rule and get enslaved yourself. Some of the slaves chose to remain slaves after they have served the term of their punishment. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_6276800c | comment |
The Nostalgia Critic has this as a character trait thanks to his past. One good example of it just being in-character is the Starchaser review, where Critic's only complaint about the robot turned into a Sex Bot is that it's unsuitable for kids, but Doug in commentary complains about how sexist it is. | |
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In the Vampire: The Masquerade supplement Ghouls: Fatal Addiction, the Camarilla was played straight as this kind of organization. The theme of playing the social structure between Vampires and Ghouls as Romanticized Abuse is hinted in the core rulebook as well as many other supplements, but it's much more blatant in "Ghouls". (In this setting, a "ghoul" is a human who drinks vampire blood. The blood makes them superhumanly strong, makes them stop aging, lets them heal faster and increases their sexual urges, but it also enslaves them under the Vampire's will.) The Vampire: The Requiem supplement Ghouls continues the tradition. |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_71a2d83d | comment |
The Vampire Diaries features many dark relationships among supernaturals. Katherine compelled, had sex with, and fed on human Stefan in the past. Fans ship Damon and Caroline, even though he raped her in the beginning of the series. Damon has physically assaulted Elena and murdered her brother after he tried to force himself on her. It is the most popular relationship on the show. Klaus tried to kill Caroline many times. Despite her rejection of his advances, it is one of the biggest pairings. |
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Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_993bfbca | comment |
1934 film Smarty is Romanticized Abuse: The Movie, with Vicki needling her husband into striking her and, after they break up, saying "If he'd loved me he would have hit me long ago." The film ends with Tony tearing Vicki's dress off, slapping her in the face (which causes her to light up with glee), and throwing her on the couch. Vicki gives Tony the "bedroom eyes" look, and as the Sexy Discretion Shot pans behind the couch, the last line of dialogue is: | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_a643c4ee | type |
Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_a643c4ee | comment |
The Sheik is a textbook example. Young, rebellious heroine is captured and repeatedly raped by a cringing racial stereotype until the (unintentional) Stockholm Syndrome kicks in and she falls in love with him. What makes it worse is that the psychological trauma the rapes inflict on her is not glossed over; they're quite close to an accurate portrayal of PTSD. It makes her "change of heart" all the more jarring, and we're meant to root for a relationship between a rapist and his mentally broken victim. | |
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Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_bb834769 | comment |
The musical Carousel and the play it's based on, Liliom, feature a character asking her mother if it's possible for "a man to hit you ... hit you real hard ... and have it feel like a kiss." (In both, the mother answers "yes", because that's exactly the relationship she had with the girl's father.) | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_bcadd7cb | type |
Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_bcadd7cb | comment |
The Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 take this to its logical extreme: they literally survive on the pain and suffering of others. Other races tend to inflict a great deal of abuse on their captives. The Dark Eldar eroticize it. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_c43df4d8 | comment |
In Doctor Who, Peri, a companion added as Parent Service, spent her tenure being molested by virtually every single villain, bullied in a vaguely sexualised way by the Doctor and eventually given a Traumatic Haircut and a Mind Rape by a sadistic slug monster before marrying a nasty warrior king at the last minute. Between the attractiveness and portrayal of the actress and the fact that the audience was meant to think the new, Darker and Edgier Doctor was totally cool, it ended up coming across as titillation. (In a children's show, no less.) Doctor Who had long been known for sexy companions and putting pretty characters in danger for the audience's amusement, but Peri's treatment still stood out as much more extreme than anything that had come before and is one of the more controversial elements of that era. | |
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Todd in the Shadows frequently complains about songs that sound like this. In addition to the above mentioned "E.T.", there's "Tonight (I'm Fucking You)", "Give Me Everything" ("Grab somebody sexy, tell 'em hey \ Give me everything tonight!") "Blurred Lines", "Gorilla"... | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_c7f5679d | comment |
A lot of people claim that Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey do this. Edward and Bella is less aggressive (stalking, obsession and abandonment are a thing but still), but Anastasia and Christian is noticeably more abusive (ranging from outright raping to the incorrect use of the BDSM). In Fifty Shades of Grey, there's the treatment of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which is portrayed as a straight romance between Tess and Alec, although this is Completely Missing the Point—Tess Of The d'Urbervilles is actually about how Victorian double standards and the Defiled Forever trope mean that Alec's rape of Tess ruins Tess's life, despite it not being her fault. Alec is less Byronic Hero and more Dastardly Whiplash. |
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Romanticized Abuse | |
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The "four marks" in the Anita Blake stories enable a vampire to turn a person into a "human servant", whether the person wants to be or not. In addition, these marks force the person to fall in love (and in the Anita Blake universe, Sex Equals Love) with the vampire who has, effectively, mind raped them. There's no way to break the bond without killing the person, either. So vampires can turn human beings into sex slaves. And they do it with no one punishing them for it. On the contrary, such permanent sex slavery is seen as a good thing. | |
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Romanticized Abuse | |
| Romanticized Abuse / int_ed433313 | comment |
Basically everyone in Metal Gear has weird sexual issues about war and violence. Of course, this is played for horror/drama as well as for fanservice, but at the end of the day sexualising violence is mostly about making all the people really attractive, putting them in ridiculously tight suits, having lots of close-ups on the crotches and butts, inserting gratuitous Ho Yay, and playing enemyship as if it was heart-shatteringly romantic melodrama. | |
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| Romanticized Abuse / int_f00d733b | comment |
The New World of Darkness book Inferno, covering demons, is based on the seven deadly sins, and the "lust" part is designed for creating characters (of either gender) who fit this trope. | |
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Most civilizations on Gor seem to be built with this as one of their basic premises. | |
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The Vampire: The Requiem supplement Ghouls continues the tradition. | |
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