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Love is a powerful emotion. It can completely change the way a character acts and thinks. It can be used to create drama, comedic relief, or suspense. Maybe the writer just wants to tug at the audience's heart in a way he couldn't with the rest of the story. Whatever the reason for introducing it, love is a powerful weapon in storytelling that can also make the audience feel okay with abrupt, arbitrary sex scenes.
However, like most weapons, a love story can be deadly in the wrong hands. Sometimes, a writer gets so caught up in wringing every last drop of blood out of their romantic stone that they forget they have a compelling A-story to tell. This results in a Romantic Plot Tumor: a comparatively weak romantic sub-plot overtakes the potentially more interesting main plot.
At best, it results in a compelling little side-romance between two minor characters that avoids becoming too important in the grand scheme of things. At worst, it becomes a monster unto itself and brings the whole story down with it.
A telltale sign of a Romantic Plot Tumor is that you could edit out the romance thread completely and have the story still make sense (and be a more bearable length). The sad thing is that the creators usually put some thought and effort into crafting the romance; it isn't a Token Romance, but it turns out to be more of a glaring intrusion than a typical Token Romance.
A specific form of Genre Shift or Plot Tumor. Often invokes Strangled By The Red String and They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot. Contrast No Hugging No Kissing.
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Examples:
- The love affair between Yuki and Hitomi in ICE comes out of left field and goes nowhere for the rest of the OVA.
- The anime adaption of Valkyria Chronicles has this shoe-horned in about mid way though, which derails Faldio's, Alicia's and Welkin's characters whilst adding angst for the sake of it. Made particularly grating by virtue of the fact that if the writers wanted to add romantic tension all they had to do was include either Noce or Juno from the game.
- The Love Triangle wouldn't have been that bad, though, if it didn't keep popping up during inopportune moments in ways that makes you question the characters' professional competence.
- Shakugan No Shana introduces an unimportant romantic subplot rather early on. After a few arcs have passed, it's to the point that more time is spent on telling you how the unimportant romantic subplot side-character feels about events than on actually showing the events.
- While Yuuji and Shana's chemistry is actually of some importance to the plot, as it nicely frames Yuuji's decision whether to remain in Misaki City, taking his chances against ever-stronger adversaries, or leave with Shana in order to better protect his family and friends, the love triangle with Kazumi is almost completely superfluous and unnecessary.
- Many fans find the affair between Yasuko and Fumi in Aoi Hana is rather puzzling, especially in light of Fumi's obvious feelings for her childhood friend Akira. The whole thing feels rushed and tacked on and looks more like an elaborate scheme to establish that Fumi is truly a lesbian. It seems like the author realizes the inanity of it all when she decides to have Yasuko put on a bus, but not before spending up to two manga volumes on the relationship.
- The most famous example would probably be Anakin Skywalker's relationship with Padme in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Whether this was George Lucas's writing or the actors' is up for debate; either way, you're left with an almost unwatchable love story that not only takes up a majority of the movie but also takes attention away from the perfectly serviceable assassination plot (although getting in the love story was necessary at some point).
- Aside from the badly done scenes themselves, the storyline went like this: Obi-Wan finds a planet of cloners—Anakin and Padme fall in love next to a river—Obi-Wan learns of a massive clone army—Anakin and Padme fall in love in a field—Obi-Wan confronts Jango Fett—Anakin and Padme fall in love while eating dinner. There was no flow to the romance; as a result, it felt as if they fell in love Because Destiny Says So.
- It also led to complaints that the totally silent LEGO version of the story made for a video game was more subtle and bearable.
- As with so much in the Star Wars prequels, salvaged by Darths And Droids, who make it about the players falling in love, and making a total mess out of acting it out through their PCs.
- From Here to Eternity is a classic love story/character piece set in Hawaii on the eve of the Pearl Harbor raid. It works because it's about the characters facing history, not the history itself. Since then, almost every Pacific theater movie made (Midway, Pearl Harbor (see below), Winds of War), has tried to work in a love story, and all have been the worse for it.
- The film Pearl Harbor is a serious offender. Besides the fact that it's a movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor and really has no need of a love story, the one we get is a ridiculous triangle with a girl and two guys that are completely interchangeable in her life. First one appears to die, so she goes to the other. Then the first guy shows up alive, angst ensues, then the second guy appears to die. Eventually, one of them really does die, but only after knocking her up, of course, leaving it to the runner-up to be the baby's father. By the halfway point of the movie, I simply couldn't pretend to sympathize with the girl anymore - no matter which of her boyfriends died, she'd have a spare.
- One newspaper review at the time summarized the film as: "A girl has to choose between her love for two pilots, when it's not clear how she tells the difference between them."
- The redoubtable Roger Ebert: "Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality."
- Spider-Man 3 is a particularly bad offender, in which not only is the plot time already in danger due to three villains being shoe-horned into a series that had previously focused on one at a time, but the love story subplot, which was pretty much resolved in the second movie, is retreaded all over again with a level of Wangst rivaling Smallville at its worst, and allowed to take up half of the movie's screen-time.
- The 2007 Transformers movie, culminating in the scene in the car where Sam is shocked to discover that his love interest has a delinquent record. Note that at this point in the film, he knew that world was in great danger from extraterrestrial aliens.
- Note, however, that Mikaela calls him out on it immediately, and he wisely never brings it up again (except to blackmail Simmons into wiping her record clean).
- Her calling out does not, however, mention that they have have bigger things to worry about at the time, thus fully preserving the Narmful quality of the scene.
- It Got Worse in Revenge of the Fallen. What would have been an otherwise decent 90 minute movie ended up as 150.
- Flyboys might have been more endurable if it had dropped the love story (between two people who couldn't speak to each other, for goodness sake) and concentrated on The Squad...
- The film adaptation of A Chorus Line is one of the worst cases of stretching out to tedious extent an affair (between Cassie and Zach) which should have been a minor romantic sub-plot - and, indeed, was originally a minor romantic sub-plot. This may have been done to beef up the part of Zach, who doesn't sing, enough to get a name actor to play him (Michael Douglas), since the other roles weren't and likely could not have been filled by name performers. People magazine's critic suspected it may have also been out of fear movie audiences wouldn't relate to the plights of the dancers.
- Enemy At The Gates keeps taking time away from a fascinating and incredibly taut plot centred around a sniper duel in besieged Stalingrad to focus on a tepid and uninteresting love triangle.
- As stated elsewhere: Canon, but the flanderization and Hollywood meddling? Less so. And she was actually pretty 'homely.'
- The love triangle did add a subplot, where you were wondering if he would get the sniper killed so he could have the girl.
- The love story was in the original too — The Illiad. Vasily = Achilles, Danilov = Agamemnon, Tania = Briseis, Sacha = Patroclus, Konig = Hector...
- And Then There Were None: While this is surprisingly averted to a certain extent in Agatha Christie's stage version and the 1945 movie version, one of the biggest complaints from purists about the Harry Alan Towers film adaptations is that they focus much, much too heavily on showing the blossoming relationship of the two survivors rather than focusing on the much more interesting mystery that made up the original story.
- And let's not forget the Love Triangle in the game that wasn't even in the book. Averted in some parts of the game that focus more on solving the mystery than on the love triangle, though that begins to change as the game goes on.
- The Movie version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy features a fairly obvious example of this trope, between Arthur and Trillian. The "original" source materials (book, TV and radio series) all handled their past differently, but agreed that Arthur had been briefly interested in Trillian during a single superficial encounter in the past; when he re-encounters her during the story, he displays jealousy at a few points, but not much more than that. By comparison, the movie version features an Arthur who is desperately pining over Trillian, who could have been his one true love had he not been afraid to pursue her, and he spends most of the movie time thinking about, worrying about or focusing on her. This was deliberately inserted by Douglas Adams when drafting the movie, before his death, to increase studio interest and audience acceptance of the movie.
- Which has never stopped anyone from complaining about how horribly those damn studio execs butchered Adams' Glorious Vision(tm).
- There's also the fourth Hitchhiker's book, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, which neglects most of the usual cast and the plots about the dolphins and God's final message in favor of Arthur and Fenchurch's love story.
- In Romeo Must Die, the romance between Jet Li and Aaliyah took a back seat to the kung fu action, to the point where they seemed more like The Straight Will And Grace. For that matter, Aaliyah served no real purpose in the movie at all besides being sassy and helping Jet Li take out a female goon in an admittedly cool fight scene. Their lack of chemistry made the film suffer, considering that it's based on Romeo And Juliet.
- Think of it this way... the fact that Jet Li is in it makes the "Must Die" part of the movie infinitely more important than the "Romeo" part. Besides, Romeo And Juliet is just a well-written example of this trope anyway, so Romeo Must Die could be considered a subversion.
- The clear difference however, is that Juliet is important in the original. You could edit out Aaliyah's scenes and the movie wouldn't change one bit.
- Jet Li bears some blame for this. He refused to do a kissing scene or any other romantic scene with Aliyah because he felt it would be like cheating on his wife.
- Some James Bond movies are like this when either the Bond Girl is a horrid character (Stacy from A View To A Kill, Dr. Jones from The World Is Not Enough), or she's interesting in her own right, but has no romantic chemistry with Bond at all, and yet the writers have her sleep with him anyway (Kissy from You Only Live Twice, Pam from Licence To Kill, Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies). Quantum Of Solace averts this; Bond and Camille actually don't get together in the end, which also happens in some of the novels).
- The writing of most of these "romances" are awful to the point of Squick. In a few cases, the way Bond forces his "romance" on the girl is practically rape.
- Titanic has a Hatedom all too willing to jump on it for this.
- Although this is really an aversion...without the storylines, it's just a movie about a boat sinking.
- They already made Titanic without the love story. It's called A Night to Remember and is regarded as a film classic.
- The 2008 film The Red Baron was heavily criticized for shoe-horning the fictional character of Nurse Käte and making her love story with Manfred von Richthofen the central plot in the film. Yep, that Red Baron. The Red Baron. They had the freaking Red Baron and they overlooked him.
- So, you're saying They Wasted A Perfectly Good Pilot?
- National Treasure would be a much better movie if Ben and Abigail didn't "fall in love." When will people learn that Nic Cage just cannot portray romance?
- Or can't act at all?
- It's not that he can't, it's just that he's typecast himself. He can be Hardboiled, or he can be Nic Cage. These are your choices at the door, please pick one and try not to mix them up.
- An in-universe example from The Fall: Roy is telling a story to a little girl name Alexandria. To spice it up a little—and possibly showing how he's still upset over his girlfriend leaving him for a man with a better job—a romance plot is suddenly introduced into his story. But because he's so depressed, the romance starts to become very, very bad, and in the end part of the point of his story (with Alexandria taking over the reigns) is the hero giving up on the love interest.
- Down Periscope features Kelsey Grammer as captain of a Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits aboard a diesel-powered submarine during some wargame exercises. It's a fairly decent comedy, except for the romantic subplot featuring Lauren Holly as the dive officer that Kelsey inevitably falls in love with.
- The Departed features a love plot that had practically nothing to do with events in the movie, it then got worse when they worked hard and sacrificed common sense to make it a love triangle. Clearly an example of this trope being forced on to an otherwise excellent film.
- No. Clearly an aversion. It has everything to do with the events of the movie in that it's the main device for illustrating the identity crises of the main characters. To Sullivan, his idyllic-looking life with Madelyn is part of his bid for a golden-boy hero cop image to cover up his corruption. To Costigan, she's one of the only people who know he's really a cop, and she's what he latches onto when he's most vulnerable to the fear that he might disappear entirely into his double life and die there. There's a reason he entrusts her with the information that's the whole reason he's undercover at all, and there's a reason Matt Damon gets that look on his face when he realizes this. It's true, take out the love triangle and you'll have almost nothing but action... plus flat characters and no awesome theme.
- The entire romance plot from Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead can be edited out of the movie with no effect at all on the story. This has, in fact, been done by some file-sharers. They simply removed every scene with the woman in it. The movie is reportedly none the worse for wear.
- Central plot of Slumdog Millionaire is a romantic story which didn't even exist in the novel the movie was based on. Presumably, because producers don't believe that the movie without a romance can sell well.
- Zack and Miri Make a Porno starts as a film about a group of losers trying to make a porno film, but gradually focuses on a romantic subplot to the point where it completely abandons porn plot near the end in favor of romantic comedy of errors. We don't even find out if they ever finished the movie.
- The book Tuck Everlasting is a Coming Of Age Story about a preteen girl getting to know a family of Flying Dutchmen. The Film Of The Book is about a teenage girl falling in love with the younger son of a family of Flying Dutchmen.
- The completely unnecessary addition of a Caspian/Susan subplot in ''The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian". The movie's story is interesting and compelling, and then you have lines like "It would never work out between us. After all, I am 1300 years older than you." The only redeeming scene involving Susan and Caspian together is when Lucy mocks one of the worst lines in the movie "You may need to call me again!".
- Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula isn't after Mina Harker because he's a undead embodiment of evil, a monster seeking to feed on the blood of the innocent. It's because he's in love with her. Awww. And she loves him, because destiny says so. Never mind that none of this was in the book, or that the forced romance between them leaves her acting like a complete and unsympathetic bitch to everyone around her, especially her loving husband.
- It's kind of unfortunate, because seeing how Konami has run with it, it could have been something epic! Perhaps one day, a remake...hopefully directed by Carlo Verdone.
- In the Wheel Of Time books, the author goes on and on about the Faile-Berelain-Perrin triangle, and devotes pointless chapters to Perrin's agonizing over his kidnapped wife while plodding along aimlessly in his search for her, adding tedious bulk to an already horribly bloated series. Really, most of the love stories in The Wheel of Time were Lucasian.
- This accounts for almost the entirety of the Twilight series, with stuff like action and plot seemingly just tacked on as an afterthought.
- Maximum Ride began life as a fairly decent kids' series, full of action and fighting stereotypical Mad Scientists. By book five, the relationship between the two main characters — who are brother and sister — has become the entire focus of the (thin anyway) plot.
- The first book in The House Of Night series had Zoey get a hot boyfriend and try to fend off her ex-boyfriend, but it was still mostly about Zoey becoming familiar with the vampyre world. The second book put more focus on Zoey finding herself having three boyfriends at once, but the vampyre plot still had more attention and importance. The third book is when this trope fully emerges, with Zoey's juggling of her three boyfriends taking up as much space as the much more interesting plot with Aphrodite and Stevie Rae, if not more. It tapers off for a bit after Zoey finds herself boyfriend-less at the end of the third book, but is back with a vengeance in the fifth book with Zoey even getting a new suitor to fill the place of the one she lost. Because what we really want to read is Zoey angsting about her Unwanted Harem when there are things like an impeding war and a potential vampyre conspiracy going on.
- In Red Storm Rising, the Soviet Union attacks NATO, and it shows this war through the eyes of many people. While each branch can be taken as good or bad, one branch almost seems shoehorned in. A First Lieutenant in the USAF escapes after an attack on Iceland along with a small group of Marines. He contacts his base and continues to evade Soviet Forces until they come upon a house where Soviets have raped a girl. This results in a forced romance story in the middle of WORLD WAR III.
Live Action TV
- Smallville. It doesn't help at all that the person whom Clark dedicates so much time fawning over is considered the Creators Pet, or that she's not even his canonical love interest.
- The show seems to be getting better about it in season 8, appearing to be the transition from "Superboy" to "Superman" (a recent trailer for an upcoming episode teases the idea of finally seeing Clark in a Superman suit and Lana is gone so we can all do a happy dance). But if you're a fan of the show, don't worry; Lana should be back for a few guest spots and there is still the Jimmy Olsen/Chloe/Doomsday love triangle which attracts this trope like Meteor freaks to Lana.
- Update: She returned and it was this trope all over again and everything we didn't like about Lana got worse and Clark's growth was completely derailed until she left.
- In the fourth installment of the A&E Horatio Hornblower adaptation (The Wrong War or The Frogs and the Lobsters, depending on what country it was released in), Horatio gets into a brief romantic subplot with a local girl during a mission in France. The story was already dealing with three separate plot threads and the romance with Mariette could have been taken out without changing any major events - and since Mariette's never mentioned after the conclusion of her little story arc, its usefulness as character development for Horatio is questionable. The fact that Mariette isn't terribly popular even among the portion of the fandom that doesn't ship Horatio with his Ensemble Darkhorse best friend doesn't help.
- Rose Tyler and the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. This was particularly jarring, seeing as up until then (with a few exceptions) the Doctor had almost always been portrayed as asexual, yet suddenly he falls head-over-heels for this particularly average, nothing-special character. While it was fine in the first series, the second series became particularly vomit-inducing with the doe-eyed looks every episode, not to mention the uncountable amount of "Rose Tyler, you're brilliant"s. She became so clingy by the end of the fourth series that the Doctor had to dump her in a parallel world with a bloody clone just to get rid of her.
- Even with Nine it was a little much. A massively brilliant 900+ year old non human, falling head over heels with a not-too-bright cutie because...uhm, why? Rose was a decent companion but not a convincing love interest.
- And then there's that woman, Christina or something? from the Easter special. Which was even 'worse' because, well, there wasn't an entire season of set-up. Maybe it's just a Ten thing.
- The two at least had decent banter, though the actual romantic undertone was questionable. Potential equal of opposite sex = attraction I guess. I think Rose just lucked out by being the first companion post-war.
- Ten also had Madame de Pompadour, and also the schoolmarm from the Family of Blood (though he was amnesiac there). On the other hand, approximately his entire species was wiped out, so no surprise if he's lonely and maybe a bit too attached to his first companion thereafter.
- Nothing romantic was ever made explicit, and part of the Doctor's Humans Are Special thing means he will always have good things to say about his main sidekick.
- The romance between Angel and Cordelia Chase? WAY outta left field.
- Made even more unsettling to this troper by the fact that the first couple seasons portrayed their relationship as more of a surrogate Father/Daughter one.
- Wanna complain about Angel and Cordy? At least they were always portrayed as caring a lot about each other and as very close friends... now Connor and Cordelia, that's a whole other story.
- The Jack/Kate/Sawyer love-triangle in the TV series Lost. Especially grating as the series has committed to a definite endpoint, and every second spend on this is one less second that could have been used clearing up the show's numerous mysteries and dangling plot-threads.
- For some, the US version of The Office has this trope in spades with Jim and Pam. Others think that the entirety of season 3 would have worked perfectly fine without Jim and Karen's relationship, and a percentage thinks they're equally cancerous. These tend to split along shipping lines, so YMMV.
- Bill and Sookie... good God, Bill and Sookie! Let me put it this way... if True Blood didn't revolve around them, it could actually be watchable. But since it does, and the writers find a way to shove their "romance" into every.single.scene, the show's mostly glorified crap. When even the freaking Wall Street Journal is writing arcticles on how much Bill sucks, you know there's something wrong.
- If the series follows the books, perhaps things will improve once Sookie dumps Bill and gets a new boyfriend.
- The writers of Robin Hood KNEW that Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood) was leaving at the end of the third season. Why then did they think that it was anything even close to a good idea to have him involve himself with Kate, the team liability? The actors had no chemistry at all, and the "romance" served no purpose whatsoever expect to milk time away from better characters and more interesting plots, secure Kate's position as the most hated character on the show, and make Robin appear impossibly shallow, Kate being his second girlfriend since his wife's horrific death and the woman that his best friend is blatantly interested in. Even more illogically, the writers actually go to the trouble of bringing back Marian for a Together In Death scene, something that should have been a real Tear Jerker, but only comes across as cheap and fake simply because Robin was embracing his rebound girl not two seconds ago.
- Not sure how the fans feel about it, but TV critics seem to have this opinion of the Cameron/Chase romance.
- Actually, a lot of fans loved it. However, that may have been partly because - to date - it's the only happy ending/positive portrayal of love in House.
- Foreman/Thirteen is a plot tumor so debilitating it makes Cameron/Chase look like a mild case of sunburn.
- The Cook/Effy/Freddie love triangle in series 3 of Skins was one of those that looked perfect on paper, but was horrendous on screen; Cook's an unlikeable twat, Freddie can't act and Effy can only get away with being weird and mysterious when she's a side character (like she was in the first two series). The triangle was so all-consuming that it destroyed every other storyline it touched (not for nothing did it become known as the "Triangle Of DOOM"), including most notably the Bromance between Cook, Freddie and JJ. The only storyline to escape unscathed - the Naomi/Emily/Katie triangle - is the most popular of the season, and by some distance.
- It's actually quite revealing to draw out all the significant relationship triangles to see how they interact (they do form a planar graph), because it demonstrates how central the Cook/Effy/Freddie triangle was and how important it was that it was done well. Which it wasn't.
- Anyone Can Whistle has one of the worst-written love plots in musical comedy, involving some Poirot Speak and a whole lot of Wangst.
- The tendency for this kind of behavior in radio soap operas was famously skewered by Stan Freberg in a skit called ''John And Marsha''
 . An entire intelligible narrative made solely out of the two actors saying each others' names in different tones. It actually works pretty well.
- "John!" "Marsha!" "John!" "Marsha!" "JOHN!" "MARSHA!" (ad infinitum)
- Benny Hill did a video version; the camera remains in a tight closeup of their hands the entire time.
- While many adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde add romantic subplots to the point of Lost In Imitation, the musical Jekyll & Hyde really pushes it - it's not just that Jekyll's juggling two women who long for him (aristocratic Emma and prostitute Lucy; the latter also becomes Hyde's prey), but that a bunch of big showstopping songs are trucked out for both of them. Lucy, in particular, gets so much attention that the show's momentum slows to a crawl. It doesn't help that the long wait for the first transformation of Jekyll to Hyde this causes also qualifies it as Twenty Minutes With Jerks.
- The better part of the Backstreet Boys song "Larger than Life" is an oddly refreshing statement about having their lives turned upside-down by an unending swarm of screaming fans and paparazzi. Then, without warning, it turns into a song praising them and wanting to "thank [them] in a different way". Where did that come from?
Video Games
- While the romance between Emil and Marta in Tales Of Symphonia 2 is not nearly as poorly written as many of the other examples on this list, it is ultimately inconsequential to the main plot except as a source of Foreshadowing. Plus, if Marta tried any harder to win Emil, she'd be a Stalker With A Crush, and that's just creepy.
- Raiden and Rose. Let me just say this: GYAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Western Animation
- Daria fans, when thinking of this trope, have one name burned forever into their minds - Tom Sloane. Also inverted in that Tom's Writer On Board-decreed appearance (Word Of God says that Tom was added 'because having Daria date was a normal high-school experience'), but the general fandom belief is that Tom was brought in to quash fandom rumors that Daria and Jane had a thing for each other... which the fans would have most likely have gone along with (if the Fan Fic in that direction is any indication).
- An episode of The Fairly Oddparents had Timmy getting annoyed that the Crimson Chin was spending months focusing on finding a love intrest instead of fighting crime. His Arch Enemy even gets annoyed that he's making things too easy for him.
- The "romance" between Gwen and Kevin of Ben 10 Alien Force is shoved down the audience's throat at every opportunity, some suspect to drown out the Kissing Cousins vibe given off by Ben and Gwen in the original series. It doesn't help that the relationship stops making chronological sense. In "Plumbers Helpers," Gwen switches into He Is Not My Boyfriend mode from the "Why won't you ask me out?" attitude of "All That Glitters," Even though before that, when Kevin was obviously flirting with her, she effectively said she'd never go out with him even "if Ben wasn't here."
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