History Main / LoverAndBeloved

[[folder:Light Novels]]

* Seigi and Richard, of ''LightNovel/TheCaseFilesOfJewelerRichard.'' Richard, eight years older, a wealthy and succesfuly business man, is college student Seigi's mentor in not only gemstones, but in life, culture, and definitely queerness. They call each other "partners" by the end of volume ten, but Seigi is also still serving as Richard's secretary.

[[/folder]]

** Note that all the in canon references to this are nasty rumors being spread about the main characters, all of which are unfounded. Specifically Kouryuu and Koumyou's relationship is explicitly NOT like that despite the talkers. One of the things that makes the scene where a newly-crowned Sanzo leaves the temple and is nearly raped by bandits so poignant is his realization of how much his foster father had sheltered him from such things. Sanzo and Goku, were probably intended to be a lot closer to this trope so the fangirls could squee, while not being quite as squicky as the pre-pubescent Kouryuu and middle aged Koumyou. [[spoiler:[[DepravedBisexual Ukoku]] and Kami, the unfortunate slave boy he takes in as an experiment to see what Koumyou sees in Kouryuu, probably play this trope a lot [[IncrediblyLamePun straighter]], if about fifty times more disturbingly.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TopTen'', DaChief Steve Traynor and his partner Wulf have been a couple for about 30 years, but the prequel graphic novel ''The 49ers'' revealed that their relationship started when Steve was still a teenager and Wulf was over ten years older. It attempts to avoid the more dubious elements of this trope by having Steve actively pursue Wulf, and Wulf at one point explicitly challenge Steve about whether he's emotionally mature enough for a relationship.

* Gender-swapped in ''Film/MadchenInUniform'' (''Girls in Uniform'') (1931), based on Christa Winsloe's play ''Gestern and Heute'', which itself is based on her novel ''Das Kind Manuela'', in turn based on Winsloe's experiences at school. The school in the film is, like Winsloe's, a [[OneGenderSchool single-sex]] BoardingSchool for the daughters of the upper classes, and is run on very strict lines. The young Scripture teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg, is the only adult there who shows the girls any kindness or affection, and as a result many of them fall for her. Sensitive, motherless Manuela von Meinhardis, fourteen and a half years old, falls particularly hard, and Fräulein von Bernburg seems to have feelings for Manuela in return, though, as she explains to Manuela, she can't play favorites. When Manuela accidentally gets drunk and proclaims her love in front of the entire school and the headmistress, the horrified headmistress comes down hard on her, and she [[spoiler:nearly kills herself. In the novel and the play, she does kill herself.]] The film was a big hit on the lesbian scene in Berlin, which at that point was quite active and open. The Nazis, irked less by the film's homosexual content than by its portrayal of the schoolgirls collectively rising up against authority, tried to destroy all copies of it, but fortunately failed. The United States government attempted to ban the film, but Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded them not to.

* ''Montreal Main'' (1974), a highly autobiographical film by Frank Vitale. A photographer in his late 20s, also named Frank, ostensibly straight, lives with a bunch of gay hippy types and his HeterosexualLifePartner of five years, who is a straight man of the same age, nicknamed Bozo. Frank and Bozo experiment with mutual masturbation together, but it's not much fun. Then Bozo starts a relationship with a young woman. Frank strikes up a friendship with a 12-year-old boy, Johnny. The nature of the friendship is ambiguous; according to the filmmaker, Frank isn't sure what he wants from Johnny. Frank's gay friends object, not because of the potentially sexual aspects of the relationship -- one of them at least has had sex with younger guys -- but because of the emotional intensity, which they say could be damaging to a young kid. Johnny's father forbids Frank to see Johnny again, but the boy comes round declaring he wants to live with Frank, who [[spoiler:is too scared to go through with it, declaring that he's not ready to be be Johnny's father.]] There's also a scene in which a man eyes up two boys, Johnny and a pal, playing an arcade game, and is chased off by one of the gay friends.

** It's also one of the subplots of ''Family Album'', where a young man is seduced by an older acto and they have a blissful relationship for several months.

* ''Series/{{Rome}}'' has a rare female example with Servilla, in her late forties to early fifties, teaching a teenage Octavia about the joys of sapphic love. It doesn't last long, though, as Servilla is very clearly manipulating Octavia for political purposes.

* In ''FanFic/SithAcademy'', a parody of ''Franchise/StarWars'' with Darth Maul as the VillainProtagonist, that this is pretty much standard for Jedi Masters and their Padawans, with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi's relationship being [[TastesLikeDiabetes sickeningly saccharine]] at times. A number of stories mention former male Padawans of Mace Windu, and even Yoda gets into the act with his students. It's hinted that {{Teacher Student Romance}}s are equally common for Jedi partnerships where both are female, or when one is male and the other female, but no couples of these sorts appear in the stories. Curiously, Sidious homosexual and Maul is bisexual, it's explicitly mentioned that relationships are forbidden between a Sith Master and apprentice because they would either be too competitive with each other, or else tend to mellow out and lose their edge. This doesn't stop either of them from having WarShip trysts with the Jedi, however.

* Sex advice column Dan Savage, author of ''Literature/SavageLove'', has a "campsite rule" about having sex with younger people: the older one has a responsibility to leave the other in better shape than he found him, physically, emotionally, and sexually.
** He ''also'' put an {{inver|tedTrope}}se to this, called the ''Tea And Sympathy'' rule. If one's elder lover follows the campsite rule and treats the younger with respect, the younger is to not get their lover in trouble (with society, their job, the law) or disparage them unfairly.

All but a ForgottenTrope nowadays, especially since some of these relationships involve [[Squick underage teens.]] It may, however, show up in TheTwink's ComingOutStory, and the social circle the older partner leads the younger into is likely to be [[WhereEverybodyKnowsYourFlame the gay community]].

* In John Schlesinger's ''Sunday, Bloody Sunday'' (1971), a doctor in his fifties is having an affair with a 25-year-old male artist, who's [[BiTheWay also]] having [[{{Polyamory}} an affair]] with a woman. Both partners are a bit [[GreenEyedMonster jealous]] over their younger lover. We also see another man in his 20s whom it's implied the doctor has had sex with before, perhaps [[TheOldestProfession paying him for it]]. Originally, the age difference wasn't intended to be so large: Schlesinger had wanted Alan Bates, then in his mid-thirties, for the part of the doctor, but Bates couldn't do it so Peter Finch, mid-fifties, played the role instead. Schlesinger got the idea for the film from a relationship he himself had had with a much younger man. They'd broken up but remained on amicable terms. Incidentally, Alan Bates also had relationships with younger men.

* André Téchiné's ''Les Temoins'' (''The Witnesses'') (2007) is about the early days of AIDS in France. Middle-aged doctor Adrien meets 18-year-old Manu, newly arrived in Paris, in a cruising spot in the park. He falls in love with the youth and takes him under his wing, though they don't have sex. Manu then has an affair with a 30-something [[BiTheWay married]] cop with a baby daughter. Then [[spoiler:Manu contracts HIV and is soon dying. Adrien becomes involved in medical research to combat the virus.]] After [[spoiler:Manu's death]], Adrien has a brief affair, sex included, with a young man on a visit from the US. Also, when [[GreenEyedMonster heartbroken]] over Manu's affair with the cop, Adrien tries to pick up a young male {{Streetwalker}}, but can't go through with it.

* Technically, this fits for Ianto (early to mid 20s) and Jack [[OlderThanTheyLook (around 170 when they first meet)]] on ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. It's implied that, even though he wasn't a complete ingenue, Ianto [[BiTheWay never had a boyfriend before Jack]]. And he does expand his skills and grow quite a lot as a person while working for Jack. Jack for his part seems to have hired Ianto mainly for his good looks and good coffee. Subverted a bit in that Ianto set out to seduce Jack first, and only after Jack found out [[LoveMakesYouEvil why]] and [[EasilyForgiven forgave him for it]] did they start having anything approaching a real relationship.

All but a ForgottenTrope nowadays. It may, however, show up in TheTwink's ComingOutStory, and the social circle the older partner leads the younger into is likely to be [[WhereEverybodyKnowsYourFlame the gay community]].

* Since during early medieval Europe it was usually only men of the Church who were literate, it was they who wrote the[[PedophilePriest pederastic literature]] of the time period, along with writing everything else. Marbod, Bishop of Rennes and before that master of the Cathedral school at Rennes, wrote a poem about a beautiful boy, referencing an ode of Horace's, and warning the boy addressed not to scorn his suitors, because his beauty would soon be gone as he grew up. Hildebert of Lavardin, successively Bishop of Mans and Archbishop of Tours, wrote a poem about Jove and Ganymede; Hilary of England, a student of Abelard's, wrote poems to pretty boys, also referencing Jove and Ganymede. Later the social climate turned against sodomy and poems were written fulminating against homosexual practices. Some wag appended to one such attack a verse which compared Ganymede favourably to Venus and said, doubtless correctly, that many people who publicly condemned sex with boys were having it themselves on the sly.

->''"The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man...It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.''

This dynamic applies to a gay couple (or simply an {{ambiguous|ly gay}} one) in which one partner is much older and acts as a {{mentor}} to another. In this dynamic, Charles is most often powerful and successful, and Bob is most often attractive in [[PrettyBoy one way]] or [[MrFanservice another]].

* Frits Bernard's two 1960 novellae. ''Costa Brava'' is about the love between a Venezuelan man and a twelve-year-old refugee boy during the Spanish Civil War. The man succeeds in reuniting the boy with his family; they lie to him, telling him the man has died, but years later the two meet again by chance and affirm their love for one another.''Vervolgde Minderheid'' (''Persecuted Minority'') is about a fifteen-year-old boy's love affair with his male [[TeacherStudentRomance teacher]]; the man is imprisoned for the relationship and makes up his mind that on his release he will emigrate to get away from the Netherlands' legal and social condemnation of pederasty. Bernard was a psychologist and sexologist who campaigned for the acceptance of homosexuality and particularly pederasty.

* In Alexander Chee's ''Edinburgh'', a 12-year-old boy, Fee, joins the Pine State Boys' Choir as a first soprano. He falls in unrequited love with Peter, his best friend in the choir. Turns out that the choir director sexually mistreats the boys, going so far as to drug them in order to do so. He is eventually caught, but the emotional fallout for the boys is heavy, and Peter and another boy later kill themselves. When in his middle teens, Fee is hit on by an older man, and he thinks about "how I could kill him". He also has a summer job working as a research assistant to an older man, who is a mentor for him and never lays a finger on him. At the man's funeral, he sees grown men of varying ages, and realises that the man has had a series of adolescent boys work for him. Fee has a lot of gay sex during college but keeps on falling in love with straight blond boys who remind him of Peter. At thirty, he is in a stable, [[HappilyMarried happy]] relationship with a somewhat younger man, whom he's married in a commitment ceremony. He then meets a blond 17-year-old boy, hitherto straight, who, in a subversion of the Lover/Beloved trope, falls in love with Fee and pursues him. Fee is attracted to the boy and they eventually meet for clandestine sex.

** He ''also'' put an [[InvertedTrope inverse]] to this, called the ''Tea And Sympathy'' rule. If one's elder lover follows the campsite rule and treats the younger with respect, the younger is to not get their lover in trouble (with society, their job, the law) or disparage them unfairly.

--->'''Jack:''' Wish I'd never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward. *kisses him goodbye*

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' has Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell; [[AmbiguouslyGay although never said outright]], they were possibly in this relationship during Loras' time as Renly's squire.

* Achilles and Patroclus, arguably. Complicated/inverted by the fact that while Patroclus is older, Achilles is the leader and teacher in their relationship. They start [[AnachronismStew falling into this trope]] in the [[AncientGreece 5th century]] when erastes and eromenos was the social norm.

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[Music/ThePolice You consider me a young apprentice / Caught between Scylla and Charibdes]]'']]

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' has Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell; [[AmbiguouslyGay although never said outright]], they most likely had this relationship during Loras' time as Renly's squire.

* ''Film/GodsAndMonsters'' (1998), a fictionalised depiction of the last days of James Whale. Whale is famous both for directing ''Film/Frankenstein1931'' and ''Film/BrideOfFrankenstein'' and for being openly gay in 1950s Hollywood. The film portrays him becoming attracted to his new gardener, a handsome young ex-Marine. The gardener is straight but Whale assures him that he has no sexual intentions. This turns out not to be the case, and the gardener freaks out.

This trope originates in ancient Greece, with their custom of pederasty. The Greek words for this trope are "erastes" (lover) and "eromenos" (beloved). A very similar system developed independently in Japan, where the partners are the ''nenja'' ("man who loves") and his ''wakashu'' ("young person")[[note]]''wakashu'' technically covers any boy between early childhood and adulthood, and was also used outside of relationship contexts, but by the end of the Edo period it pretty much meant "{{uke}}"[[/note]]. High-ranking Chinese courtiers and Buddhist monks also took younger male lovers fairly often, but in a less formal system than in Greece and Japan.

* Ancient Greece and Rome produced much pederastic poetry. Particularly well-known authors in this vein were Anacreon, Theognis of Megara, Theocritus, Meleager of Gadara, and Straton/Strato of Sardis (ancient Greece), and Horace, Martial and Creator/{{Catullus}} (ancient Rome). Their poems range from idealistic, to humorous, to heartbroken, to scurrilous. There were many more such poets than these; the Fourth Book of the Greek Anthology is the one to consult for Greek pederastic poems. Creator/{{Virgil}}'s ''Second Eclogue'' also features this theme, as does a fragment of poetry from Solon, the preeminent statesman and lawmaker of archaic Athens. Interestingly, under one of Solon's laws any man who entered a schoolroom ([[OneGenderSchool schools were only for boys]]) without good reason could be sentenced to death; this penalty was never applied, however. The celebrated Greek poet Pindar, for whom pederasty was a natural part of an aristocratic male's education, wrote about his eromenos Theoxenos, in whose arms he is said to have died. The Roman poet Ovid wrote about the pederastic couples of myth. There was also a popular Athenian drinking song, of anonymous authorship, about the pederastic couple Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The pair were credited with killing the tyrant Hippias out of a love of liberty. In fact, they had killed his brother Hipparchus for making unwanted passes at the young Harmodius and, when Harmodius refused him, publicly humiliating Harmodius' family by claiming Harmodius' sister was not a virgin. Some of the Greek pederastic poems compare the beauty of women unfavourably with that of boys, and complain about women generally: the nagging, the makeup.
* Crown Prince Xiao Gang of the Chinese Liang Dynasty was a distinguished poet as a young man and wrote a love poem to a boy. Later in life he had numerous children. Long after this, between 1630 and 1640, a series of homosexual-themed short stories appeared in China. In one, a twenty-year-old academic pursues a fifteen-year-old fellow scholar and a group of adolescent valets. In another, a soldier with two warrior wives is seduced by a younger male friend.
* Since during early medieval Europe it was usually only men of the Church who were literate, it was they who wrote the pederastic literature of the time period, along with writing everything else. Marbod, Bishop of Rennes and before that master of the Cathedral school at Rennes, wrote a poem about a beautiful boy, referencing an ode of Horace's, and warning the boy addressed not to scorn his suitors, because his beauty would soon be gone as he grew up. Hildebert of Lavardin, successively Bishop of Mans and Archbishop of Tours, wrote a poem about Jove and Ganymede; Hilary of England, a student of Abelard's, wrote poems to pretty boys, also referencing Jove and Ganymede. Later the social climate turned against the 'sin' of sodomy and poems were written fulminating against homosexual practices. Some wag appended to one such attack a verse which compared Ganymede favourably to Venus and said, doubtless correctly, that many people who publicly condemned sex with boys were having it themselves on the sly.
* Medieval Middle Eastern writers independently evolved their own traditions of pederastic poetry, dealing with boy cup-bearers, dancing boys and the like. 'Gazelle' was the term poets of this tradition used for a beautiful adolescent boy. The celebrated Persian poet Hafiz wrote prolifically about boys, as well as about women. So did Abu Nuwas, who had an Arab father and a Persian mother, lived in Baghdad, wrote mostly in Arabic and occasionally in Persian, and is considered one of the greatest of classical Arabic poets. His poems celebrate wine and boys and mock lesbianism, male sexual passivity and female sexual intemperance. They also objectify women and boys, and he even wrote about raping a boy. He liked to shock people by writing about things Islam forbade, and may have been the first Arabic poet to write about masturbation.

* ''Alcibiade fanciullo a scola'' (''Alcibiades the Schoolboy''), apparently published in early 1651 in Venice, probably written by Antonio Rocco. It has the form of a Platonic dialogue and is set in ancient Athens, where a teacher, Philotemes, modelled on Socrates, is longing to sleep with one of his [[OneGenderSchool students]], a boy named Alcibiades. The boy permits his teacher to caress him, but when Philotomes prepares to have anal sex with him, Alcibiades, angry, asks him how he can "defile the purity" of the boys whom he has been trusted to educate. Philotomes spends the rest of the book arguing elaborately in defence of homosexual sodomy. Finally, he claims that the semen of a noble man will travel up from a boy's anus to his brain, warming and purifying the brain and helping it to develop, whereupon Alcibiades, pleased, permits sex to go ahead.

* Celebrated and influential Eton teacher William Johnson Cory wrote two books of poems which show a romantic pederastic sensibility. The first, ''Ionica'', published in 1858, is dedicated to a "pretty-faced" favourite pupil of Cory's. The second, ''Ionica II'', was printed privately and created quite a stir at Oxford. Following in Cory's footsteps, a group of poets calling themselves the Uranians wrote a whole lot of pederastic poetry up until about 1930. Among these poets were the Reverend E. E. Bradford, Fabian S. Woodley MC, John Leslie Barford, and Francis Edwin Murray. Their books, often printed privately in limited editions, included such titles as ''Rondeaux of Boyhood'', ''Love in Earnest'' and ''A Garland of Ladslove''. Murray's ''Rondeaux'' are frequently humorous; Woodley's poems are sentimental; Bradford's demonstrate his fondness for working-class boys, defend homosexuality and say that boys are more beautiful than women, though their beauty does not last as long. Barford's include a poem on the classic theme of "beloveds and lovers" at a [[OneGenderSchool boys']] BoardingSchool, one narrated by a playing field at that school about its love of the boys who played sports on it, one about the painting ''The Blue Boy'', which sexologist Krafft-Ebing observed was often hung in pederasts' houses, and one imagining Christ and St John as a pederastic couple. Barford seems to have sublimated his sexuality and been anxious to protect the boys he fell for from the knowledge of his feelings; Bradford, however, seems to have been sexually active with plenty of boys, and wrote a poem on how he chatted up boys who were swimming naked, naked male swimming being a common practice at the time. Arthur Lyon Raile wrote a poem about a boy drifting away from him into heterosexuality as the boy grew up, and a follow-up poem in which he said that heterosexual love was no better nor worse than pederastic love. The theme of losing the boy as he grew up was a common one for these poets. A couple of Uranians wrote poems about thinking of ancient Greece as they watched beautiful boys.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/23098943_127465997951131_8722092354900590592_n.jpg]]

This dynamic applies to a gay couple (or simply an [[HoYay ambiguous]] one) in which one partner is much older and acts as a {{mentor}} to another. In this dynamic, Charles is most often powerful and successful, and Bob is most often attractive in [[PrettyBoy one way]] or [[MrFanservice another]].

* ''Literature/{{Lolita}}'' is, of course, chiefly about a man sexually attracted to girls 9-14 years old and his passion for his 12-year-old stepdaughter, whose life he ruins. The homosexual version crops up with a minor character, a French expatriate named Gaston Godin, who becomes friends with Humbert Humbert, the protagonist. Godin is a professor of French at the local college. He and Humbert play TabletopGame/{{chess}} together (Godin is a terrible chess player) and Godin kindly gives Humbert various presents, surpluses from gifts given to him by the neighbourhood ladies -- he's popular in the neighbourhood. He also has a liking for young boys, which nobody seems to have noticed except Humbert. He keeps, and shows to Humbert, an album of snapshots of the local lads; in his basement he has pistols and tiger-skins and other things likely to appeal to the boys, whom he invites round. Once, he and Humbert go to the theatre together, Humbert taking Lolita and Gaston taking a local boy, whose father is away that night. Humbert says that Godin eventually got involved in a ''sale histoire'', "in Naples of all places", and got into trouble.

See also {{Seme}}, {{Uke}}, SenpaiKohai, OneeSama, TeacherStudentRomance, SexyMentor, MentorShip and Myth/ClassicalMythology.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Religion & Mythology]]

* ''Zéro de conduite'' (Zero for Conduct), a 1933 film by Creator/JeanVigo, the story of a rebellion at a [[OneGenderSchool boys']] BoardingSchool. An older and a younger boy have a homoerotic friendship, while the science teacher seems keen on patting the head and hands of the long-haired, 'sissy' younger boy.

* Possibly implied in ''All Over Me'' (1997). A gay 16-year-old boy meets a gay man in his twenties who offers support and dating advice. They seem to flirt a little with one another. We don't get to see where things end up because [[spoiler:the man is murdered.]]

** Note that all the in canon references to this are nasty rumors being spread about the main characters, all of which are unfounded. Specifically Kouryuu and Koumyou's relationship is explicitly NOT like that despite the talkers. One of the things that makes the scene where a newly-crowned Sanzo leaves the temple and is nearly raped by bandits so poignant is his realization of how much his foster father had sheltered him from such things. Sanzo and Goku, were probably intended to be a lot closer to this trope so the fangirls could squee, while not being quite as squicky as the pre-pubescent Kouryuu and middle aged Koumyou. [[spoiler: [[DepravedBisexual Ukoku]] and Kami, the unfortunate slave boy he takes in as an experiment to see what Koumyou sees in Kouryuu, probably play this trope a lot [[IncrediblyLamePun straighter]], if about fifty times more disturbingly.]]

* Gender-swapped in ''Film/MadchenInUniform'' (''Girls in Uniform'') (1931), based on Christa Winsloe's play ''Gestern and Heute'', which itself is based on her novel ''Das Kind Manuela'', in turn based on Winsloe's experiences at school. The school in the film is, like Winsloe's, a [[OneGenderSchool single-sex]] BoardingSchool for the daughters of the upper classes, and is run on very strict lines. The young Scripture teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg, is the only adult there who shows the girls any kindness or affection, and as a result many of them fall for her. Sensitive, motherless Manuela von Meinhardis, fourteen and a half years old, falls particularly hard, and Fräulein von Bernburg seems to have feelings for Manuela in return, though, as she explains to Manuela, she can't play favorites. When Manuela accidentally gets drunk and proclaims her love in front of the entire school and the headmistress, the horrified headmistress comes down hard on her, and she [[spoiler: nearly kills herself. In the novel and the play, she does kill herself.]] The film was a big hit on the lesbian scene in Berlin, which at that point was quite active and open. The Nazis, irked less by the film's homosexual content than by its portrayal of the schoolgirls collectively rising up against authority, tried to destroy all copies of it, but fortunately failed. The United States government attempted to ban the film, but Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded them not to.

* ''Montreal Main'' (1974), a highly autobiographical film by Frank Vitale. A photographer in his late 20s, also named Frank, ostensibly straight, lives with a bunch of gay hippy types and his HeterosexualLifePartner of five years, who is a straight man of the same age, nicknamed Bozo. Frank and Bozo experiment with mutual masturbation together, but it's not much fun. Then Bozo starts a relationship with a young woman. Frank strikes up a friendship with a 12-year-old boy, Johnny. The nature of the friendship is ambiguous; according to the filmmaker, Frank isn't sure what he wants from Johnny. Frank's gay friends object, not because of the potentially sexual aspects of the relationship -- one of them at least has had sex with younger guys -- but because of the emotional intensity, which they say could be damaging to a young kid. Johnny's father forbids Frank to see Johnny again, but the boy comes round declaring he wants to live with Frank, who [[spoiler: is too scared to go through with it, declaring that he's not ready to be be Johnny's father.]] There's also a scene in which a man eyes up two boys, Johnny and a pal, playing an arcade game, and is chased off by one of the gay friends.

* ''Die Konsequenz'' (''The Consequence'') (1977), based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by Alexander Ziegler. Martin, an actor of about 30, is, like Ziegler was, sent to prison for sex with his 15-year-old boyfriend -- who now has a girlfriend. Martin meets Thomas, the 16-year-old gay son of the prison warder, and the two fall in love and, at Thomas' instigation, have sex. When Martin gets out of prison he finds that Thomas' parents and boss reject Thomas because of his homosexuality, so he and Thomas leave town together, get an apartment and plan for Thomas to go back to school. However, Thomas is taken away by social services and sent to a very unpleasant home for delinquent boys. Martin breaks him out, but Thomas ends up with an older man who says he'll help him but instead blackmails him into becoming his boyfriend. Then the older man throws Thomas out and Thomas becomes a [[TheOldestProfession prostitute]] and finally, having nowhere else to go, returns to the boys' home. At 21 he is released and he and Martin, who in the meantime has had a casual boyfriend nearer his own age, reunite, but [[spoiler: Thomas seems irretrievably damaged. He attempts suicide and then runs away from hospital, and there the film ends.]]

* Arguably, ''Une histoire sans importance'' (''A Story of No Importance'') (1980), which is about the homoerotic friendship between two teenaged boys. Though there's only about a year's difference in their ages, they conform to most of the classic elements of this trope. Philippe, the elder, is gay and falls deeply in love with Claude, the younger. Claude, on the other hand, is basically straight, and sees flirting with Philippe as a game. During an argument, Claude says, "I was a kid back then. You taught me things." Philippe is frustrated that Claude is not a deep thinker and they can't talk about ideas together. When they eventually have sex, it consists of Philippe masturbating Claude. [[spoiler: Eventually, Claude turns to girls, leaving Philippe broken-hearted.]] These are all things you can find in many lover/beloved tales with a wide age gap between the pair. At one point, Claude is eyed up on the street by a grown man. It's a brief moment but full of implication, given the ending of the film, in which [[spoiler: Claude has sex with Philippe [[TheOldestProfession for money]].]]

* In ''Abuse'' (1983) by Arthur Bressan, who spent most of his career making gay porn films, a 31-year-old gay film student is making a documentary about child abuse. He meets Thomas, a somewhat effeminate 14-year-old whose parents have brutally physically mistreated him for the past six years, and Thomas becomes the centrepiece of the documentary. Thomas is also gay and becomes interested in the filmmaker. They have a relationship, and eventually [[spoiler: run away together so that Thomas can escape from his awful parents.]] Bressan says this was based on his own experiences with a real boy like Thomas; they became "friends, then lovers, then finally ex-lovers", although, as in the film, Bressan's friends disapproved of Bressan's being involved with such a young boy. This film was praised by Vito Russo, author of Film/TheCelluloidCloset.
* ''Il sapore del grano'' (''The Flavour of Corn'' / ''The Taste of Wheat'') (1986). Lorenzo, a university student doing a year's teaching in a rural area, develops a romantic friendship with twelve-year-old Duilio, one of the boys in his class. The lover/beloved dynamic is played with. Lorenzo brings Duilio an encyclopedia as a present; Duilio teaches Lorenzo to drive a tractor and identify trees and offers him the simple affection which Lorenzo, who lacks a family and whose (rather vigorous) sexual relationships with women are emotionally unsatisfying, needs. When Lorenzo's girlfriend, seeing a postcard from Duilio, asks if he's one of Lorenzo's pupils, Lorenzo says, "No, he's the one who taught me everything I know." Lorenzo is made uneasy by his sexual attraction to Duilio, particularly when Duilio's family, with whom he has also become friends, grow uneasy too -- the stepmother because she thinks, mistakenly, that Lorenzo has done something sexual with Duilio, the father because he sees that Duilio loves Lorenzo more than Duilio loves him, the father. Eventually, though the family decide they like Lorenzo again, [[spoiler: Lorenzo leaves the village, even though Duilio longs for him to stay.]]

* Possibly implied in ''All Over Me'' (1997). A gay 16-year-old boy meets a gay man in his twenties who offers support and dating advice. They seem to flirt a little with one another. We don't get to see where things end up because [[spoiler: the man is murdered.]]

* ''F. est un salaud'' (''Fögi Is a Bastard'') (1998), based on a novel of the same name by Martin Frank, set during the 1970s. 16-year-old Beni is a big fan of 26-year-old rock star Fögi. They meet and start a relationship; Beni leaves home to be with Fögi and Fögi breaks off his relationship with a male band member his own age. Initially, the relationship is happy, but Fögi has a lot of emotional problems, particularly a terrible fear of ageing, and things [[DestructiveRomance go downhill]]: Fögi persuades Beni to have sex with older men [[TheOldestProfession for money]], Beni ends up being in [[TheTwink porn photos]] and a [[UsefulNotes/{{BDSM}} D/s]] element enters his and Fögi's relationship. Beni goes along with everything because he is very deeply in love with Fögi. Eventually [[spoiler: Fögi persuades a reluctant Beni to commit suicide with him. Fögi dies, Beni lives.]]

* ''Krámpack'' (''Nico and Dani'') (2000). Two sixteen-year-old boys, friends since grade school, are vacationing by the sea. One, Dani, is falling in love with the other, Nico, but though Nico is well up for a spot of sex with Dani he can't reciprocate his friend's affections, since he [[IncompatibleOrientation only likes girls]]. Dani goes to a dinner party with Julian, a thirty-something gay writer, who knows Dani's father because Dani's father was his teacher at university. Dani wants to be a writer too, so he and Julian have something in common, and Julian is clearly attracted to him. Julian's friends are made uneasy by Dani's youth and try to warn Julian off -- his straight female friend, who gives Dani private English lessons, reminds Julian that Dani is a minor and that she could report Julian or talk to Dani's father. However, Julian and Dani do end up alone together, and [[spoiler: Dani makes an advance to Julian, who, initially hesitant, agrees to have sex with him after Dani tells him it's not his first time -- but then Dani walks out and goes home.]]

* ''Eban and Charley'' (2000). 29-year-old Eban meets Charley, just turned 15, and they fall in love. Somewhat subverted in that Charley initiates the sex. The filmmaker said this was based on a true story he knew of: a teenaged boy, mature for his age, had an older boyfriend; the man's friends disapproved of the relationship because of the age gap and the man broke up with the boy, who was devastated. [[spoiler: In the film the lovers get a happy ending: they run away together.]]
* ''L.I.E.'' (2001) Big John, a 55-year-old ex-Marine, respected local figure and pederast, lives with a 19-year-old boy and also buys the services of teenaged male [[TheOldestProfession prostitutes]]. He tries to use his regular, callous seduction moves on 15-year-old Howie, but instead finds himself falling in love with Howie and sublimates his sexual desires to be the father stand-in Howie desperately needs. Howie becomes aware of his power over John and flirts with him, eventually [[spoiler: making an advance which John, very unusually for him, turns down.]]
* ''Return to Innocence'' (2001), of which the screenplay was adapted by Gary M. Frazier from his novel of the same name. 13-year-old Tommy has been mistreated by his mother for years; among other things, she prostituted him, and made pornographic videos of him to put on the internet. When this is discovered Tommy is sent to [[BoardingSchool a group home]] [[OneGenderSchool for mistreated boys]]. The head of staff there is Glen Erskine, a married father, and a respected expert on male adolescent sexuality. Tommy has a relationship, including sex, with his counselor, another middle-aged married man with kids. The relationship is discovered and shortly thereafter [[spoiler: the man dies in a car accident.]] Tommy, believing Erskine is responsible, lashes out at Erskine, falsely accusing him, and Erskine ends up on trial for sex with a minor.

* Played with in ''Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros'' (''The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros'') (2005). Maxi is an effeminate gay 12-year-old boy from a family of petty criminals in the slums of Manila. He falls in love with a young rookie policeman, Victor, when Victor rescues him from an assault. Maxi seeks out Victor's company and the two become friends, Victor advising Maxi to go to school, get a good job and stay away from crime. The other policemen tease Victor about being Maxi's boyfriend, but Victor turns down Maxi's romantic overtures, leaving Maxi heartbroken. At one point, however, Victor calls Maxi pretty and strokes his hair, which is probably just chaste affection but carries a possibly hint of HoYay. At the end of the film [[spoiler: Victor waits to speak to Maxi but Maxi walks by him -- just possibly an UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo.]] Filipino audiences may read the film quite differently to Western ones, however.

* ''The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green'' (2005). The 26-year-old protagonist has a couple of relationships with guys his age but also one with a 19-year-old, who in a subversion [[spoiler: decides that his older lover is not mature enough for him!]]

* André Téchiné's ''Les Temoins'' (''The Witnesses'') (2007) is about the early days of AIDS in France. Middle-aged doctor Adrien meets 18-year-old Manu, newly arrived in Paris, in a cruising spot in the park. He falls in love with the youth and takes him under his wing, though they don't have sex. Manu then has an affair with a 30-something [[BiTheWay married]] cop with a baby daughter. Then [[spoiler: Manu contracts HIV and is soon dying. Adrien becomes involved in medical research to combat the virus.]] After [[spoiler: Manu's death]], Adrien has a brief affair, sex included, with a young man on a visit from the US. Also, when [[GreenEyedMonster heartbroken]] over Manu's affair with the cop, Adrien tries to pick up a young male {{Streetwalker}}, but can't go through with it.

* ''James'' (2008). A boy of 15 or 16, [[OlderThanTheyLook looking younger than his age]], gay, friendless and bullied, goes to a local public toilet where men meet for sex. A middle-aged man with a suit and a nice car approaches him in the toilet, promising "We won't do anything you don't want to do", but he leaves. On another day, [[spoiler: he comes back, sees the man outside the toilet, gets in his car and says, "Do you know somewhere we could go?" The car starts, the film ends.]]

* John Henry Mackay, individualist anarchist, born in Scotland and raised in Germany, wrote various political works and also, from 1905 to 1913, a series of works dedicated to the emancipation of pederasty: ''Die Bücher der namenlosen Liebe'' (''Books of the Nameless Love''). In these books, the boys loved by men are 13 to 18 years old. One book, ''Fenny Skaller'', is a thinly fictionalised account of Mackay's own life and his attraction to and romantic love for boys of 14-17, and particularly those of 15-16. The title character finds that some of the boys willing to sleep with him sponge off him; others are only after thrills; others disappear from his life without warning. Another book in the series, ''Am Rande des Lebens'' (''On the Margin of Life'') is a collection of Mackay's poems: about unrequited love for boys, about quick casual sex with boys, about sentimental longing for boys only seen once or twice, about judges who condemn men who like boys. Mackay also wrote the pederastic novel ''Der Puppenjunge'' (''The Hustler''). In the novel, a 15-year-old boy, Gunther, comes to Berlin from the countryside and becomes a hustler. Hermann, a young man working for a publisher, falls head over heels in love with Gunther, who at first doesn't care, and leaves him for a wealthy count who simply likes to watch Gunther lying naked on a bearskin. Gunther grows bored and returns to Hermann, who is deliriously happy, but then Gunther is picked up on the street and taken into care by the authorities. He escapes and comes back to Hermann, whom he grows to love in return. [[spoiler: Then they are discovered, Hermann is imprisoned for 'gross indecency', and Gunther is sent away to be a butcher's apprentice.]] Christopher Isherwood praised this book's realistic portrayal of the Berlin homosexual world.

* Forrest Reid was an Irish novelist, literary critic and translator with connections to the significant literary figures of his day, including the Bloomsbury Group. He wrote one of the best critical studies of W. B. Yeats and the definitive work on the English woodcut artists of the 1860s. He also wrote about the fiction of his friend Walter de la Mare, produced two volumes of autobiography and translated poems from the Greek Anthology. His special subject was boyhood and his novels carry an undercurrent of his interest in teenage boys. His 'Tom' trilogy, reprinted by the Gay Men's Press, follows a boy's growing up. ''Young Tom, or Very Mixed Company'' won the 1944 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In ''The Garden God'', a 1905 novel, two sixteen-year-old boys fall in love. The novel contains lush descriptions of aristocratic adolescent male beauty and copious references to ancient Greece. It is implied that one of the boys has previously had sex with other boys at their [[OneGenderSchool single-sex]] BoardingSchool, but he 'redeems' himself by [[spoiler: dying to save his innocent friend]], whereupon the friend, who has had Greek-inspired pagan tendencies, turns back to Christianity. Reid dedicated the novel to his idol Henry James, who never spoke to him again. Nowadays the book seems much less shocking; Michael Matthew Kaylor, in his introduction to the reedition, writes, "If there can be such a thing as a puritanical pederast, Forrest Reid was that person." Reid has been called "the first Ulster novelist of European stature".

* ''Le visiteur de hasard'' (''Chance Visitor'') by Patrick Drevet. A high school teacher, hitherto heterosexual, married, loving father to a son, becomes passionately obsessed with one of his students, a not particularly remarkable lad of seventeen or eighteen. In the end [[spoiler: they have sex.]]

* In Creator/StephenFry's ''The Liar'', the main character writes a play with a Victorian setting, in which a man rescues a 14-year-old boy from prostitution but then, to his horror, kind of accidentally sleeps with him. Said main character is in love with a slightly younger boy at his [[OneGenderSchool boys']] [[BoardingSchool school]] and also spends a while [[spoiler: ...or does he?]] as a prostitute working Piccadilly Circus, picked up by older men. He's in his later teens at this point; some of the other boy prostitutes are as young as 11.

* ''Return to Innocence'', which the author later adapted into a movie. 13-year-old Tommy has been mistreated by his mother for years; among other things, she prostituted him, and made pornographic videos of him to put on the internet. When this is discovered Tommy is sent to [[BoardingSchool a group home]] [[OneGenderSchool for mistreated boys]]. The head of staff there is Glen Erskine, a married father, and a respected expert on male adolescent sexuality. Tommy has a relationship, including sex, with his counselor, another middle-aged married man with kids. The relationship is discovered and shortly thereafter [[spoiler: the man dies in a car accident.]] Tommy, believing Erskine is responsible, lashes out at Erskine, falsely accusing him, and Erskine ends up on trial for sex with a minor.
* In ''The Lantern Bearers'' by Ronald Frame, young, brilliant composer Euan Bone lives with a somewhat older man who runs his life and is protective of him. Bone, in turn, is revealed to have been [[spoiler: sexually involved with a young teen boy.]] Fourteen-year-old boy soprano Neil Pritchard falls for Bone while staying in Bone's house so as to sing a piece Bone is writing.
* In ''At Swim, Two Boys'', the three main characters are a young man in his twenties with a liking for teenaged boys ("half-girl faces on man-sized bodies") and two sixteen-year-old boys who fall in love with each other. The man, [=MacMurrough=], buys the sexual services of the poorer and more experienced sixteen-year-old, Doyler. He then gets to know Doyler's innocent boyfriend, Jim, while Doyler is away. The realisation of Jim's innocence and deep love for Doyler shakes shallow, promiscuous [=MacMurrough=] to the bone, and he falls in love with Jim and refrains from making advances to him, though Jim flirts sometimes. Instead, [=MacMurrough=] teaches Jim to swim so that Jim can keep a pact with Doyler, and encourages his relationship with Doyler in other ways. He does this even though it hurts him to see Jim with somebody else, so much that he decides to leave the country, though [[spoiler: war eventually intervenes.]]

* ''Literature/DragonBones'' has the relationship between the rather old (he is mentioned to have grey hair) high king Jakoven and the thirty year old Garranon. It started when Garranon was fifteen. [[spoiler: It is later revealed that Garranon secretly detests Jakoven, who exploited Garranon's vulnerable position as a child whose parents had just been killed by Jakoven's soldiers. ]]

* ''Literature/TheseWordsAreTrueAndFaithful'' initially plays this straight with Ernie and Sam, who, over the course of the book, are 39-41 and 26-28, respectively. However, it is later deconstructed, as Ernie lacks the emotional stability to continue in the role that he has adopted, and [[spoiler: Sam eventually has to assume the role of teacher]].

*** The finale has [[spoiler: Jack]] become Leslie's new "associate" for purely financial motives (until a gust of wind carries the tiny man off a balcony and he inherits his fortune)

--> '''Jack:''' Wish I'd never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward. *kisses him goodbye*

* Joe Orton's ''Entertaining Mr Sloane''. A sister and brother in their thirties both have the hots for a young man of eighteen or nineteen. [[spoiler: They end up sharing him.]]

* In ''VideoGame/AtelierSophieTheAlchemistOfTheMysteriousBook'', Plachta is Sophie's ReallySevenHundredYearsOld alchemy teacher. Their relationship is extremely romantic in tone, especially after [[spoiler: Sophie uses her alchemy to give Plachta a humanoid body]]. By the end of the game, they're "looking forward to spending more time with each other." In the next game they're travelling to the Examination together, though by that time their relationship is one of equals, as Sophie has become a master alchemist in her own right.

* ''Liberature/TheseWordsAreTrueAndFaithful'' initially plays this straight with Ernie and Sam, who, over the course of the book, are 39-41 and 26-28, respectively. However, it is later deconstructed, as Ernie lacks the emotional stability to continue in the role that he has adopted, and [[spoiler: Sam eventually has to assume the role of teacher]].