littlepersonparadox Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Like I said in the thread about QPRs, Warehouse 13. It was so gross when they forced the two cishet main characters into romance. And I totally agree with The Hobbit, it was completely unnecessary and pathetic. Warehouse 13 was really good it was one of my favorite TV shows. Also yes the romance was a little last minute shoved in but at least they saved it for the end. Besides i think they were trying to build it up all series they just didn't do a good job of it since the relationship was more of a honorary brother sister relationship. They gave us a lot of closure the all the characters story arcs. I think doing the last scene with claudia is confeirmd as the new wearhouse cartaker was not needed. I liked that they were entertaining the idea that you are in control of you're own destiny even if someone says you're destined to do this one job. Guardians of the Galaxy was a super fun film - mildly spoiled for me by having romance crammed in there for no discernible reason. Half the time I can't tell if I'm irritated because, ew, romance, or because, oh, look the ONLY female character just /has/ to pair up in heterosexual romantic relationship, we can't have her just stay single or be 'just friends' with the male lead. Ugggghh. What romance was in Guardians of the Galaxy? He doesn't get the girl at the end and she dosen't get him. All the 'romance' scenes was all "Screw this were going to poke fun the romance sub-plot archetype." Avengers 2 did have a huge unnecessary romance plot in it though. Black widow was more cool than they think all on her own. Link to post Share on other sites
Calamity Jim Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Guardians of the Galaxy was a super fun film - mildly spoiled for me by having romance crammed in there for no discernible reason. Half the time I can't tell if I'm irritated because, ew, romance, or because, oh, look the ONLY female character just /has/ to pair up in heterosexual romantic relationship, we can't have her just stay single or be 'just friends' with the male lead. Ugggghh. What romance was in Guardians of the Galaxy? He doesn't get the girl at the end and she dosen't get him. All the 'romance' scenes was all "Screw this were going to poke fun the romance sub-plot archetype." Avengers 2 did have a huge unnecessary romance plot in it though. Black widow was more cool than they think all on her own. In Guardians the weird romantic subplot causes Gamora to be all soft edged and schmoopy. Basically, Quil's awful attempts and wooing and being a dude bro trying to get into her pants teaches her to love. Even if it is being played for humour. It's pretty ridiculous. Link to post Share on other sites
Vega91 Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Guardians of the Galaxy was a super fun film - mildly spoiled for me by having romance crammed in there for no discernible reason. Half the time I can't tell if I'm irritated because, ew, romance, or because, oh, look the ONLY female character just /has/ to pair up in heterosexual romantic relationship, we can't have her just stay single or be 'just friends' with the male lead. Ugggghh. What romance was in Guardians of the Galaxy? He doesn't get the girl at the end and she dosen't get him. All the 'romance' scenes was all "Screw this were going to poke fun the romance sub-plot archetype." Avengers 2 did have a huge unnecessary romance plot in it though. Black widow was more cool than they think all on her own. In Guardians the weird romantic subplot causes Gamora to be all soft edged and schmoopy. Basically, Quil's awful attempts and wooing and being a dude bro trying to get into her pants teaches her to love. Even if it is being played for humour. It's pretty ridiculous. I think the fact that it seemed to be such an action movie cliche relationship didn't help either. At least I would've enjoyed the movie a lot more if he wasn't constantly saving her from something. If it is mocking romantic stereotypes,then they really should have made that a lot clearer, since to a lot of people it seemed like they were playing it very straight. Link to post Share on other sites
AceInhibitor Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 *cough* Age of Ultron *cough* *cough* *cough*I may need to get that seen to. Link to post Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314 Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 I feel like we need a word for this sort of thing. I hereby propose the term "romo-jacking" for whenever a story gets abruptly hijacked by romance. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, alternate suggestions are welcome. Link to post Share on other sites
Star Inkbright Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I feel like we need a word for this sort of thing. I hereby propose the term "romo-jacking" for whenever a story gets abruptly hijacked by romance. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, alternate suggestions are welcome. Aye! That's a great word. :) Link to post Share on other sites
DigitalBookDust Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Aye! Good term! Link to post Share on other sites
*a*rteest Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 METALOCALYPSE: DOOMSTAR REQUIEM and GUNDAM:8th MS Team SPOILERS ABOUND. Proceed with caution.I just finished watching all 4 seasons of Metalocalypse on Hulu, which I loved to bits. Got to Doomstar Requiem (a rock opera...season 4 ep. 13), the last Metalocalypse show made before Cartoon Network refused a new season, and it just took all that awesome, fascinating character development through the seasons and turned the band members into a bunch of sociopaths. One of the band members and female lead ends up prisoners in the pits of hell and the other bandmembers ignore the fact that he exists and go on partying and forget the female lead's name? That's not comedy. That's sociopathy. Sociopathy is NOT funny. I can understand how a bunch of dumb idiot guys sometimes can have a bit of trouble seeing over their beer bottles but This. Is. So. Bad.Female lead ends up with lead singer despite have no, absolutely NO good reason to beside being the "damsel in distress". It would have been a lot better if Small had just written her out. Additionally, I could think of at least one other person she could have ended up with that canonically would have been absolutely hilarious. Everything cool that was actually in the series got totally ignored. And I mean that. Totally ignored. It was so awful I couldn't even get through the whole thing...I don't know what was going on in Brendon Small's head doing this. The music is really horrible, too. it's worse than Disney. Take an axe and a blowtorch to the master....it's awful. Bad music, bad writing, predictable plot, (like the bubble-gum epilogue in Harry Potter), throwing away four seasons of so much good story material.Please don't go through all four seasons and then watch that monstrosity. And thanks for your pateince while i go on about this....that last episode just broke my heart. If they make a season 5 and completely ignore Doomstar Requiem ever happened, I'll be Ok...but I refuse to support a Season 5 if the canonical writing is going to be based on something THAT atrocious.ALSO: It just occurred to me...in the Gundam universe, 8th MS Team has this same "only female character ends up with the male lead" tired plot, too...and I despised that anime, too, but couldn't ever put my finger on why, but it's this same exact reason. Now thanks to AVEN it's crystal clear to me why. Link to post Share on other sites
DigitalBookDust Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 I feel like we need a word for this sort of thing. I hereby propose the term "romo-jacking" for whenever a story gets abruptly hijacked by romance. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, alternate suggestions are welcome. I used this term last night to describe a book to fellow librarian (allosexual but celibate) and he got it immediately! It made sense to him. Thanks again! Link to post Share on other sites
Rean Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 While I'm not against the idea of a romantic relationship between Spock and Uhura per se, I always thought of that scene as being there to show the viewers that Spock just isn't that keen on beautiful women. I always thought of both that and the singing scene in Charlie X as just Uhura goofing around with Spock in a friendly manner. Since these both happen in early season 1 and nothing similar happens later on, I've always thought that any evidence for a romantic relationship between them in TOS is pretty slim. --- The only thing I take issue with is "Spock isn't keen on beautiful women". He is not a pure Vulcan; he's half-Vulcan. And even the Vulcan race certainly has the ability to feel emotions, they are simply *repressed*. There is a huge difference between repression and compete absence. Yeah, that was probably a bad choice of expression. It might be better to say that it could be there to show that Spock won't jump at every opportunity to interact with a beautiful woman. (Though personally I have always interpreted that Spock really isn't keen on beautiful women. I didn't come to think of this earlier, but regarding romance in general it sometimes annoys me simply because I can't see it coming. During the last couple of years I've just started to expect that romance will pop out at some point or another. I don't know if people really are supposed to take that for granted or if I'm just really bad at seeing the hints into that direction, but over the years I've time and time again been dissappointed when I've for example read a book with a cool man and a cool woman doing something together and been delighted that there isn't any romance between them, only to have then end up sleeping together in the very next chapter. Link to post Share on other sites
Valja Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 The movie "Hook" where Robin Williams interpreted Peter Pan was fun, but it completely ruined my childhood seeing that Peter fell in love with Wendy's daughter and remained in London, no and no, he wasn't meant to grow up :(. Link to post Share on other sites
lucie Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Idk if anyone mentioned this one yet but I thought of it when I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince a couple months ago. I had never noticed it before when watching or reading it but all the romantic issues just took up too much screen time from the actual interesting story. Actually now that I think about it I vaguely remember being annoyed with all of the romantic subplots in the Harry Potter movies when I first watched them all in 8th grade. Link to post Share on other sites
Another One Posted June 19, 2015 Share Posted June 19, 2015 The movie "Hook" where Robin Williams interpreted Peter Pan was fun, but it completely ruined my childhood seeing that Peter fell in love with Wendy's daughter and remained in London, no and no, he wasn't meant to grow up :(. That's what I felt about it, too. Link to post Share on other sites
Ancient Ooze Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 I'm currently rewatching that nerdy Eureka series and I realized that basically every major event involves relationships between main characters. Even worse, you could totally detach almost every bit of romance without breaking concept or execution that made it great in the first place. Not cool, not cool. Link to post Share on other sites
EggplantWitch Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 It's a few topics back but: If you haven't watched Agent Carter because you have hang-ups about possible romance, don't be. Peggy is still mourning Captain America's 'death' (which sounds more pathetic than it actually is; I actually found the way the writers handled it really touching, it even made me tear up a little) so she isn't interested in other men, and there aren't really other men interested in her either. It's a great show! I enjoyed it whole-heartedly. And in regards to shovelled-in romance... it's even more infuriating when the writers get it right with one pairing and wrong with another. One example I can think of is the Kid Flash/Artemis and Superboy/Miss Martian romances in Young Justice. The former is sweet, slow, and comes about based on mutual respect and admiration for one another's talents. The latter is immediate, hasty, and comes about based on attraction to physical appearances rather than personality, and felt very 'fan servicey'. Still a good show, however. Link to post Share on other sites
LeftyGreenMario Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 At this point, it's pretty much a given fact, but I don't really like how Nintendo focuses the romance between Mario and Peach. Yeah, the Mario games are never really story-driven or brimming with complex A-grade personalities, but they have a much more interesting relationship they can explore, which is the twin relationship between Mario and Luigi. Yes, the Mario Bros. are twins! Yet, most people probably don't know this simply because Nintendo portray them as nontwin brothers. They need to be even closer together and, I don't know, act more like twins. At least fraternal twins. It ticks me off when there was one fan who proposed a Mario movie that's srs bizniz and emphasized on the Mario/Peach relationships to the point where it's overly dramatic and sounded so ridiculous. No, it's not my aromantic me scoffing, a lot of other users were laughing at his attempt at a plot. Let's see, I think the Hunger Games can do without the romance too. The plot is interesting enough, the romance just makes it ridiculous and forced, but still boring. Link to post Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314 Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Einstein's Bridge, by John Cramer. Caution: here there be spoilers. First of all, I'd just like to say that this is an absolutely fantastic book. Clever as all get out, just scientifically plausible enough so that I'm not constantly aggravated at the mechanics of how everything supposedly works, way more interesting than you'd think a description of working at a major particle physics facility could be unless you're already really into that kind of thing like I am. That being said, I have a couple of major issues with Alice, the female lead. She's not there for the science originally, she's there on incredibly dubious press credentials that are actually just a cover for her crappy mutant insect thriller research. Moreover, she's the only really major character who's not scientifically inclined, and just happens to be female. Coincidence? I think not. She's the typical ditzy writer type because we couldn't have an actual competent female scientist. But that rant is in another castle. Anyway, she gets to be reasonably good friends with George, one of the main physicists on the project who just happens to see a really odd collision event, they do some data analysis, meet up with some colleagues at a bar to talk about it (colleagues who have already been set up by his boss, I might add), everyone leaves after one of said colleague gets a huge headache because...it's a long story involving the girl he got set up with, of course...and then in the next scene, BAM they're sleeping together. Wait, what? Excuse me? Can. You. Not. :evil: And she has the absolute most anticlimactic death scene I've ever read in my life. I mean, really? The guy couldn't even be bothered to care enough about her to write more than "she was almost to the elevator when the drones caught her"? Or even to have anybody (especially George because, you know, they're a thing) react with more than a couple of words of disbelief that are tossed out almost as a throwaway before moving on to the next matter at hand? I understand that you're trying to escape through a time vortex here, but aren't you at least a little bit sad??? I haven't even finished the book yet, but I just wanted to rant about that. Link to post Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314 Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Double post that I somehow didn't catch. Link to post Share on other sites
Kuebiko Posted September 26, 2015 Share Posted September 26, 2015 One movie: Avengers: Age of Ultron One fandom: Sherlock (BBC) The Natasha/Bruce subplot came out of NOWHERE. And while it was great to see Bruce get another friend and Natasha being more open, romance? Really? And Johnlock. 'Nuff said. I don't hate the fandom tho, I just spend a lot more time off it because I seem to be bombarded with Johnlock luuurve every time I wander into that territory. Link to post Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314 Posted October 2, 2015 Share Posted October 2, 2015 One movie: Avengers: Age of Ultron The Natasha/Bruce subplot came out of NOWHERE. And while it was great to see Bruce get another friend and Natasha being more open, romance? Really? Hello, and welcome to the Aro/Aces Angry at Joss Whedon Over Age of Ultron support thread. Take a seat and have some cake to get rid of the taste of mediocre movie theater popcorn and mediocre attempts to make characters "relatable" or "more human" through amatonormativity. Link to post Share on other sites
Grace Barton Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 I can't think of any movies at present that probably haven't already been mentioned, but one book I can think of is 'Graceling' by Kristen Cashore. I know it's in the YA genre, but I didn't know that at the time and was just looking for a cool fantasy novel to read and it had an interesting concept. I found the main female character really interesting. She was strong and fiercely independent, determined to rely on her skills to survive and never let anyone control her. ...Then they introduced the 'love interest'. The moment she acknowledged her feelings, her personality started to do a complete U-turn and she suddenly lost all of the character that had made me like her. I stopped giving a damn about her and eventually gave up reading it as I no longer cared about the story and what might happen next. The introduction of the 'love interest' destroyed her character for me. I wouldn't have cared about having a love interest if her character hadn't changed. Just because you start falling for someone doesn't mean you change who you are as a result. /rant Link to post Share on other sites
aventura Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 I don't really mind romance, but I mind it when it completely undermines the rest of the story, which unfortunately is what it does to most plots, like nothing else in the story line mattered and everything remained unexplained as long as the main character gets her/his romantic happy ending. The one instance that I can remember that this bothered me A LOT was in the book 1Q84 by Murakami. The ending was ridiculous, everything that was awesome throughout the book was never really explained. I felt like Murakami was saying "it's just the way it is, but at least they're together!" I was so disappointed with the ending. I enjoyed the book so much that I still love it, but that end makes me cringe and it is the reason I will not recommend the book. The lack of romance in the movie Big Hero 6 is one of the things that made me love it so much. I realize that there is a whole lot of people very unhappy with the whitewashing of the characters, but (I hate to say this) when you ignore that fact, there are so many amazing lessons from that movie and it's so touching. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. It's all about love, yet there is no romance in it at all! IT'S AMAZING. I want to cry every time I watch it, and I have watched it many times. Link to post Share on other sites
aventura Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 As far as music goes, somehow, my brain always turns romantic love songs into non-romantic love songs, only to a certain extent, of course, so I don't have a problem with the music industry. The amount of romance and sex in the popular music industry was the reason that I used to hate it. I've grown out of that hate, however, and I will listen to any Nicki Minaj song about "planking on me" without a problem. I'll even sing along to it and enjoy it. My brain will automatically be like "NOPE NOPE them panties ain't coming off to no one" but I'll enjoy it. is that weird? Link to post Share on other sites
emma-can Posted October 7, 2015 Share Posted October 7, 2015 Did you mean: every young adult novel ever? Also, this is probably the #1 reason I don't participate in fandoms anymore. Too much fucking shipping. Link to post Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314 Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 I can't think of any movies at present that probably haven't already been mentioned, but one book I can think of is 'Graceling' by Kristen Cashore. I know it's in the YA genre, but I didn't know that at the time and was just looking for a cool fantasy novel to read and it had an interesting concept. I found the main female character really interesting. She was strong and fiercely independent, determined to rely on her skills to survive and never let anyone control her. ...Then they introduced the 'love interest'. The moment she acknowledged her feelings, her personality started to do a complete U-turn and she suddenly lost all of the character that had made me like her. I stopped giving a damn about her and eventually gave up reading it as I no longer cared about the story and what might happen next. The introduction of the 'love interest' destroyed her character for me. I wouldn't have cared about having a love interest if her character hadn't changed. Just because you start falling for someone doesn't mean you change who you are as a result. /rant Aaargh, I couldn't even finish Graceling because of this, which is disappointing because I'd heard a lot of good things about it from a lot of people who generally had similar taste in literature to mine (at least as of 8th grade, which is when my abortive attempt to read it happened). And they had to be so blatant about the romantic intentions too...that one particular scene with the two of them (making out? Implied sex??? I don't even know because I couldn't finish it) was where I just couldn't bear to read it anymore because I was of the opinion that nothing that could happen later in the book could redeem it after that. Link to post Share on other sites
Grace Barton Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 I can't think of any movies at present that probably haven't already been mentioned, but one book I can think of is 'Graceling' by Kristen Cashore. I know it's in the YA genre, but I didn't know that at the time and was just looking for a cool fantasy novel to read and it had an interesting concept. I found the main female character really interesting. She was strong and fiercely independent, determined to rely on her skills to survive and never let anyone control her. ...Then they introduced the 'love interest'. The moment she acknowledged her feelings, her personality started to do a complete U-turn and she suddenly lost all of the character that had made me like her. I stopped giving a damn about her and eventually gave up reading it as I no longer cared about the story and what might happen next. The introduction of the 'love interest' destroyed her character for me. I wouldn't have cared about having a love interest if her character hadn't changed. Just because you start falling for someone doesn't mean you change who you are as a result. /rant Aaargh, I couldn't even finish Graceling because of this, which is disappointing because I'd heard a lot of good things about it from a lot of people who generally had similar taste in literature to mine (at least as of 8th grade, which is when my abortive attempt to read it happened). And they had to be so blatant about the romantic intentions too...that one particular scene with the two of them (making out? Implied sex??? I don't even know because I couldn't finish it) was where I just couldn't bear to read it anymore because I was of the opinion that nothing that could happen later in the book could redeem it after that. Funnily enough I think that's the point where I gave up as well. Link to post Share on other sites
marauders Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 It's not a movie, but I used to be really into CSI (Las Vegas) when it first came on. One of the things I really liked about it was that aside from a few sub-plots here and there (and Sara lusting after Grissom for the first few seasons), it focused primarily on the cases and the platonic friendships/work relationships in the lab. That really appealed to me, even when I was twelve and thirteen, and had no idea how I felt about anything. Then they decided to make Sara/Grissom an actual thing, and they shoved it down our throats in later seasons. That was when I gave up on the show and stopped watching; adding the romance had taken away what I had enjoyed so much about it originally. Link to post Share on other sites
Zorc Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 The latest Avengers movie. I love Widow, but why did we need to see her fawn over a guy. It was so uncharacteristic of her. You'd think the "I used to be a KGB agent who killed innocent people" angle would be enough of an interesting personality trait without wasting screen time with romance. Actually, pretty much any action movie since it seems like in 99% of those films, female characters are added just for T&A, and to motivate the male characters. If we talk about movies - then definitely The Hobbit. I still can understand taking a book with no women at all and add a few into the movie, but romance????? And even worse, some of the dwarves look like dwarves, but three of them were made to look like attractive human males. Hell, if you force a female Elf to love a dwarf, let's see you making him look like a dwarf, you're trying to hint love is not about appearance, aren't you??? This, so much. Though I do appreciate that the dwarves were made to look distinctive, the book didn't do much in that regard. But there was finally a strong heroine with more than 1 scene, why did they have to give her some pointless love story. Couldn't she just decide to help the dwarves because she wanted to help other people? Even my Mum hated the whole Nat/Bruce shit they had going on in that movie, and she gets soppy over bloody Twilight! Actually, one good thing did come out of that... I did like how the guy was the one who got to say no and walk away in the end. In my society it's a perfectly acceptable thing for a woman to do, but if a man does it? There must be something wrong with him. I can also relate somewhat to Bruce's whole moment of 'Wait... What? That was flirting...??' I really hated Pitch Perfect 2 though, for the sole reason that they made Fat Amy change her mind about Bumper... When she first turned him down, I felt what most people seem to feel during wedding scenes in movies. My heart skipped a beat when I first saw it and I was completely transfixed, was this going to be a movie that actually had representation of aromantic sexuals without trying to make them seem like total dicks...? But no, they just had to ruin it by making her change her mind at the last minute in a move that was totally out of character... Bravo assholes! Link to post Share on other sites
Zorc Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 Yeah, the whole Tauriel/Kili thing in the Hobbit. I can accept that romance sells, even if an elf/dwarf romance makes no sense to me. What really bugged me though was Fili and Kili's death scenes. In the book the brothers died fighting together in battle. In the movie, Fili dies alone and Kili dies defending Tauriel. Why is romantic love more important than the brotherly love that was stressed in the book, and the movies up to this point? I thought it would've been better to keep the book version, but have Tauriel find Kili's body after the battle or something. Kind of off topic a bit but the movies veered more and more into fanfic, IMO. Including the bizarre romances (dwarf + elf?!). I'll admit that when I first saw the 2nd movie my thoughts on Tauriel at the end of it were basically along the lines of 'What fangirl started working there and put her self-insert OC into this...?' Link to post Share on other sites
Vega91 Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 Yeah, the whole Tauriel/Kili thing in the Hobbit. I can accept that romance sells, even if an elf/dwarf romance makes no sense to me. What really bugged me though was Fili and Kili's death scenes. In the book the brothers died fighting together in battle. In the movie, Fili dies alone and Kili dies defending Tauriel. Why is romantic love more important than the brotherly love that was stressed in the book, and the movies up to this point? I thought it would've been better to keep the book version, but have Tauriel find Kili's body after the battle or something. Kind of off topic a bit but the movies veered more and more into fanfic, IMO. Including the bizarre romances (dwarf + elf?!). I'll admit that when I first saw the 2nd movie my thoughts on Tauriel at the end of it were basically along the lines of 'What fangirl started working there and put her self-insert OC into this...?' Yeah. Especially since I liked the idea of having a female character who kicked ass and who generally did more than sit around and look pretty. Link to post Share on other sites
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