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alt title(s): Edward Cullen Syndrome; Stalking Is The New Romance; Stalk In The Name Of Love 
And if she calls the cops instead, it only means she really likes it
"A hot girl who follows you around and shows up at your door is a friend. An ugly girl who follows you around and shows up at your door is a stalker. A hot guy who gives you flowers is a romantic. An ugly guy who gives you flowers is a stalker."
"I was hiding under your porch because I love you."
Say you have a Stalker with a Crush. He relentlessly pursues his love interest, watching her as she sleeps, resorting to superfluous and often very disturbing lengths to protect her if he feels the need. Everything you need for a Dogged Nice Guy, right?
Wrong.
Instead of outright rejecting this guy's advances on the first go, the object of these advances isn't irritated. She's completely dazzled and views them as romantic, completely overlooking the stalkerish implications of what he's doing.
Most characters of this type are intended to be sympathetic; the lengths the fella goes to is supposed to show just how much he loves his beloved. (Or she hers - this can happen to characters of any gender.) But characters like this can be very unnerving to readers and audiences who realize just how far things have gone; others will find it particularly arousing.
See also Rape Is Love, Truffaut Was Right.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Mirai Nikki just loves playing ping-pong with this trope. The current status of it seems to be, "Stalking is love, but only because you're as crazy as her now."
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, although Tsuna is sort of creeped out by Gokudera's Stalker With A Crush tendencies, the show depicts him as being a very loyal and wonderful friend, writing off his desire to kill off anyone who gets close to Tsuna as being comedy.
- In Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke is assigned a mission in which he must follow Kaname around and protect her from terrorists, all the while not letting her know. Although his actions are way overboard by any normal standards and could easily be constructed as stalking, Kaname seems to view it with a mixture of curiosity, annoyance, attraction, and a bit of amusement. The reasons are probably a mix of the factors that Sousuke's actions are extremely outlandish even by stalking standards, he appears to have as much grasp of romance and sexuality as her hamster, and of course that he is extremely attractive. This disappears when she finds Sousuke on her balcony with a pair of her panties in his hand, at which point she attempts to beat him to death with a baseball bat and completely refuses to trust or talk to him until he reveals the truth behind his actions.
- Spoofed by Hayate The Combat Butler, of course. Nishizawa's brother gets a crush on Nagi (God help him)
Nagi: Hey you, stop stalking me.
Nishizawa's brother: I'm not stalking you, I'm just secretly following you!
Nagi: ....that's called stalking!
- Although it's straight in that he's portrayed positively.
- In Strawberry Panic, Tamao is watching Nagisa while she sleeps, in the very first scene we meet her in. She continues this behavior on and off throughout the series, although it doesn't seem to deter fans.
- Ponyo features possibly the cutest, most innocent application of this trope you'll ever find, combined with the most cataclysmic consequences.
- Your Mileage May Vary. Ponyo has her own mind and doesn't seem obsessed with every detail of Sousuke's life. She just likes hanging out with him a lot. And let's not forget that he initiated contact.
- Nonetheless, she did kinda sorta cause a temporary apocalypse trying to find him and follow him home.
- His efforts are clumsy, and easily turned away, and he does not insist on being and knowing her entire existence. But Yuuji Kagura from Tona Gura still falls under this for his efforts at extreme affection toward Kazuki Arisaka, despite being mostly a Chivalrous Pervert. Repeated beatings at her hands and the bullets of his little sister's guns do not seem capable of dissuading him from grabbing at her and raising her skirt, or trying to bear-hug her in a state of undress.
- Mizore of Rosario To Vampire is an odd example. While she starts out as a full-on Stalker With A Crush and tries to kill everyone just so she can be with Tsukune, she continues stalking him after her Heel Face Turn and is portrayed sympathetically. Then again, Tsukune is regularly creeped out by her behavior, so this is probably a subversion.
- And lampshaded with her statement that she only keeps "stalking" him "because it's fun." And further in more than a few scenes where she turns up unexpectedly in flat out ridiculous places: The top shelf of a closet, standing outside the window — on the second floor, etc.
- Matoi and Kafuka in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei certainly believe this. Of course, Nozomu kindly informs her that mutual suicide is true love. And then unfortunately informs her that he'd be happy to kill himself with her at any time, so she took up stalking him while her previous stalking victim started stalking her.
- Despite many of the girls in the class believing this, they are off-put by an expression by a (clearly perverted and weird) Buddhist Monk of this philosophy in one episode. The episode deals with different things in life being "previews" for later things, and the Monk claims that standing outside of your beloved's home is a preview for a date. His audience protests that this is just stalking.
- Arguably, the series (if only for Rule Of Funny) shows the philosophy validated. After a while, Itoshki seems completely used to Matoi following him everywhere, even into the bathroom, and is quite comfortable in one episode with her living in his home, and is also comfortable with Kiri Komori living in his closet, and she also followed him into the bathroom at least once.
- In Ask Dr Rin, this is Meirin, full stop. Maybe justified by the fact that she and Asuka are childhood friends, but that angle just makes it look even more awkward.
Comic Books
- Siryn, from Marvel Comics, specifically said she liked the part where Deadpool was just a romantic admirer. Considering the dangerous life she does lead, a super-powered bodyguard was kinda nice. It did help. Sadly, Deadpool swiftly slid from 'Awkward romantic' into 'looney tunes whackjob' and it took a beating or seven before he got it in his brain to leave her alone.
- Speedball does not mind Squirrel Girl's disturbing stalking towards him. In fact, he finds it very cute. And it doesn't hurt that he likes hazelnut.
Film
- Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything. Standing outside her window holding up a boombox playing "In Your Eyes"? Come on!
- Considering that by that point, they had made love in the back of her car, and she'd never dated before at all and was ultra-confused with everything happening in her life at that point, that was less 'stalker', more 'I'm showing you how much I love you, so why did you dump me?' Bit of a different, possibly strange way to show it, but he was at least bothering to make the effort.
- Did Not Do Research. Many stalker victims are people who the stalker has been involved with in the past. Just because they slept together doesn't give him they right to play music outside her window in the middle of the night when she clearly stated she wasn't interested.
- That scene takes place during the day, not the middle of the night.
- The Cary Grant movie Every Girl Should Be Married features a rare female-stalking-male example.
- The Romantic Comedy Management was completely undermined by the fact that Steve Zahn and Jennifer Aniston's otherwise sweetly quirky relationship consisted of him stalking her across the country.
- The protagonist of Diva stalks an opera star, then finally meets her ... and she sleeps with him.
- Messily averted in Inglourious Basterds, in which Zoller comes across as a dogged nice guy in his pursuit of Shoshanna. No matter how many times she tells him no, he keeps coming back for more... Until he gets violent and she shoots him. And then he shoots her. Ain't romance beautiful?
- American Beauty
- The 2004 film Closer
Anna: Because you stalk me outside my studio.
Dan: I don't stalk, I lurk, and when I'm not there you look for me.
Anna: How would you know I look for you if you're not there?
Dan: Because I am there, lurking from a distance.
Literature
- The Phantom Of The Opera, making this trope Older Than Radio. To this day, Misaimed Fandom continues to consider Erik's kidnappings, death threats, jealous attacks, actual murders and entire verses about owning Christine as the romantic murmurs of a vulnerable genius trying to find true love. Christine thought so too, but like a smart girl she wised up when heads started rolling.
- It doesn't help that most people know the story via the musical which framed Erik in a *FAR* more sympathetic light and kind of glossed over the majority of the really nasty stuff he did. It also changed the ending to make him less repellent. And he's always played by really handsome men too. What's up with that?
- It's especially sad considering that in the book Erik realizes that he's a sick, psychopathic, horrible stalker, but can't stop himself, eventually choosing suicide as the solution. He may be The Woobie, but the kind of Woobie who doesn't mind killing hundreds of people to get the attention of his love-interest.
- In Twilight, Edward Cullen starts out by flat-out stalking Bella and watching her as she sleeps. Does she mind? No. Even as he tells her how dangerous he is, she still finds him attractive. He
gives up trying to keep her human eventually takes Bella away from her human friends (that she never really liked on the first place) and her old life (that she hated) and she practically forces him goes along willingly the whole way.
- In the Kate Daniels novel Magic Strikes, Kate learns that Curran has been breaking into her apartment to watch her sleep (and eat her snacks). While she calls him a stalker to his face and threatens to call the cops on him, the shapeshifters consider this normal courtship behavior.
Live Action TV
- West, toward Claire, from Heroes. He flew around outside her window (gee, can't imagine why). She is at first irritated, but accepts him a little too easily. Then again, Claire has a lot of issues.
- Arguably Matt is like this with Daphne.
- Matt seemed overly persistent, but never went into stalker territory. He just had problems accepting 'no', and all the information he was from a prophesy, not by being a creepy stalker. The only reason Daphne rejected him is because Matt has almost no tact at all when it comes to women.
- Too many Soap Opera examples to list.
- Parodied in this
 Saturday Night Live sketch. Also, this spoof of Mad Men.
- In Oz, Ryan O'Reily gets his brother to murder Dr. Nathan's husband, forces kisses on her, kills her rapist to avenge her, and out-and-out stalks her. It works. She ends up falling in love with him. Though the show lampshades this as not being a very healthy relationship.
- The whole initial basis behind the relationship of Buffy/Angel in Buffy The Vampire Slayer has Angel stalking Buffy in the very first episode. He goes into full blown dangerous stalking when he loses his soul and becomes Angelus. He often watched her sleep, and drew very realistic pictures of her and left them for her. This wasn't shown as anything but creepy, and Angelus is unapologetically evil.
- Angel's case is justified. His stalking of Buffy isn't motivated by attraction. Instead, he's ordered by the Powers That Be to follow and watch over Buffy in order to protect the Slayer. When he realizes that he loves her, he stops stalking her and starts interacting with her normally.
- Spike fits this trope in season five, as he apparently waits outside her house long enough to get through what seems to be a pack of cigarettes. He also makes some sort of strange doll, as well as the Buffybot. A robot that looks just like Buffy, built for the sole purpose of having sex with him. Buffy is understandably disgusted by this. Spike does eventually get better in time, stops waiting outside her house, and even become disgusted with the Buffybot when it continues to flirt with him.
- Jake upon his first(?) appearance on Hannah Montana.
- In Pushing Daisies Ned impersonates someone from a temp agency so he can get a job at the same place as his girlfriend Chuck. She says it's sweet. Emerson, watching them says "He's stalking you."
- Stephen Colbert's character on The Colbert Report thinks this way about his cousin Charlene, as best exhibited in his song on the subject: I'm right behind you now, Charlene, waiting, watching, oh so close...
Music
- The song "White Flag" by Dido is a good representation of this idea.
- Your Mileage May Vary on that interpretation. Even if you ignore the gentle melody and Dido's sweet voice, the lyrics aren't so much about stalking as just refusing to give up on an unrequited love- the lyric "I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder/Or return to where we were" makes it seem fairly harmless.
- "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. The artists think the song is clearly about a creepy stalker, but most people assume it to be a beautiful, sweet, romantic love song. Fan Dumb indeed.
- Good lord. I mentioned to my roommate that I always thought this song was about a stalker and she was like WTF? It's clearly about someone looking out for you from heaven.
- "Possession" by Sarah Mc Lachlan is subject to similar Fan Dumb.
- "I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab For Cutie has shades of this. Is it romantic or just creepy?
- The music video for "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne. The dude doesn't even try to defend his girlfriend most of the time.
- "I Want To Marry My Stalker" by Goldfinger. Just look at the title.
- The music video for "Obsessed With You" by The Orion Experience plays this trope for laughs. The entire band constantly follows a girl around, the lead singers even get into bed with her. She eventually kicks them out, but gets lonely and invites them back in, happily singing along at the end of the video.
- Subverted by Weird Al's "Do I Creep You Out?"[1]. A guy who looks disturbingly like Al is shown stalking the local coffee shop girl, who eventually becomes so disturbed by his behavior she calls the police. The song ends at a prison talent show.
- Hello? Clay Aiken?? If I was invisible/Then I could just watch you in your room...
Newspaper Comics
- After years, and years, and YEARS of near-stalking, clumsy come-ons, and a few cases that almost crossed the line into sexual harassment, Jon Arbuckle finally managed to get Liz the vet to become his girlfriend in Garfield.
- I don't think Jon ever outright "stalked" Liz. He just flirted with her (poorly) whenever he had to take Garfield or Odie to the vet.
Real Life
- Parodied by The Onion in "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested". That shows how much this trope reflects Real Life.
- On the other hand, there are quite a few real-life people who do buy into this trope... it does not generally end well.
- Lampshading this trope has been a staple of stand-up comedy for years. Usually with a reference to a restraining order as the punchline.
- Wal-Mart once sold a men's shirt with "Some call it stalking, I call it 'love'" printed on it. In a red font. That looked like dripping blood. Cute.
Video Games
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the artificially intelligent computer, TEC-XX, expresses to Princess Peach (at the time, TEC's master's captive) that he has been overcome by strange feelings that compel him to continuously observe and eavesdrop on Peach. Peach's logical conclusion is that TEC is in love.
Western Animation
- The Pepe Le Pew cartoons in the original Looney Tunes series are the freakin' textbook definition of this trope (though some shorts subvert this).
- Despite giving a page quote, Up is actually an aversion. Dug chases after Carl, even when Carl makes it clear he doesn't want him around (though he eventually warms up to him). So why is this an aversion? Because Dug is a talking dog, and is only stalking Carl in the "he followed me home" sense that dogs are so fond of, not the other sense. This is hammered home in the end credits when Dug has several puppies with another dog.
- Considering that Dug joined Carl because of a Help Face Turn, his behavior is justified. Most of the film is set in a flipping jungle, so he really had nowhere else to go after he defected.
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