Thinks Like a Romance Novel

"You don't want to be in love...you want to be in love in a movie."

— Becky, Sleepless in Seattle

At its core, this trope transpires when a character's logic and train of thought run on Romance Novel conventions.

In its most severe cases, one character is totally in love with another and the idea of confessing his/her feelings sends said character directly into full-blown delusions of grandeur about returned affections. The character tends to think of romance in completely idealized terms, and their train of thought plays out like the summary of a category romance novel.

More innocuously, the inverse thoughts can lead to Oblivious to Love, because the Love Interest does not conform to the romance novel standard, it wasn't Love at First Sight, or any other failure.

Marks of this in animation include an Art Shift, a misty border if not a misty filter over the entire frame, symbolic surroundings (color background, roses, fireworks, etc), and a liberal coating of Bishie Sparkle for the characters to stare at one another adoringly through. Arguably it is much more fun to see characters thinking like romance novels in animation than anywhere else if for no other reason than these overblown delusions.

In live-action works or literature, it is more common for the mental image to be implied while the character rambles soliloquizes about how the love scene will turn out, or for the other characters' actions to reveal their Romance Novel idealism.

Subtrope of Wrong Genre Savvy. See also Daydream Surprise for the delusion itself. Often overlaps with In Love with Love. Compare to Imagine Spot, Dream Sequence, and Gilligan Cut.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Jun of The Anthem of the Heart thought of the world as a fairytale when she was younger. This only set her up for psychological trauma when her parents got divorced.
• Asobi Asobase: Chisato Higuchi, the main characters' teacher and club supervisor, still hasn't grown out of her love of romantic shoujo manga. She goes so far as referring to Please Save My Earth as her "bible", and she says that her type include handsome engineers from the moon.
• Black Butler has Grelle Sutcliffe, who thinks like this about Sebastian. This has gone to the extent of Grelle yelling that she wants to have Sebastian's babies, complete with roses and sparkles (and a disgusted Sebastian). It's even used to get assistance from Grelle by promising her things such as an entire day to do whatever she likes with Sebastian, or an opportunity to take pictures of Sebastian in sexy poses.
• In Bloom Into You, Yuu tends to think about love along these lines, having gotten much of her understanding of it from love songs and shoujo manga. She imagines love to be some kind of overwhelming feeling, so when she doesn't feel anything after a guy confesses he has a crush on her, she ultimately decides to reject it. She does appear to be falling in love with her crush, Touko, but because her feelings don't match up with what she thinks love is, it takes her a while to realize it. While Yuu is genuinely brokenhearted after Touko seemingly rejects her Anguished Declaration of Love, Yuu wonders if she ever truly loved Touko, since she doesn't feel as overtly upset as her friend Akari was after Akari faced something similar.
• Marika from Bokura no Hentai thinks like she is in an idealistic 70s shoujo manga. Unlucky for her she is not. For example, when Ryousuke grabs her hand and pulls her to a secluded area of the school she thinks it's romantic at first. This is until he threatens to kill her if she tells anyone his secret.
• Hanano from Chihayafuru Thinks Like A Shoujo Manga, initially seeing herself as the Hollywood Homely romantic heroine, Taichi as her popular guy love interest, and Chihaya as the Rich Bitch rival. Unfortunately, this makes her Wrong Genre Savvy, as Chihayafuru is actually a Josei Game Manga, and Chihaya is the heroine.
• In Comic Girls, the Shōjo artist Koyume has this mindset, to the point that her peers call her the "walking shojo manga."
• Literature Girl from Daily Lives of High School Boys seems to think this way concerning her crush Hidenori — in fact, her crush with him is out of her desire to re-enact her love novel. Hidenori, meanwhile, doesn't want anything to do with her — in one skit he prefers Potty Failure to being seen by her!
• Misa Amane of Death Note falls victim to this, and it's rarely Played for Laughs after she manages to fall for the handsome, charming, clever Light Yagami... who is, in actuality, the Serial Killer Villain Protagonist in this Psychological Thriller, and who treats her like crap because he firmly believes Love Makes You Stupid and women are useless.
• Chiyo Yumehara from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. has this mentality, trying to set up a Meet Cute with Saiki (and later Kaido).
• A Durarara!! April Fools' Day story reveals that Erika's inner narrative, when it comes to the subject of Shizuo and Izaya, is written entirely in Mills and Boon Prose.
• May Chang of Fullmetal Alchemist does this in regards to her incredibly exaggerated idea of what Edward Elric looks like. After she meets Ed in person and learns how obnoxious he can be, she shifts her affections (and imagination) to Al after hearing a slightly exaggerated description of his human body. When they meet again up north, Hilarity Ensues, especially when she meets Winry.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Iino dreams of a man - a prince - who is always looking after her, understands how she feels, and comes to her rescue when she is in distress. Both Fujiwara and Shirogane point out that the man Iino is looking for only exists in her dreams. The Dramatic Irony is that there already is such a person in her life that fits her ideals, and has the same idea of justice and altruistic love that she has. She just doesn't see the kindness Ishigami has shown to her. When she starts to see, she doesn't realize that she's starting to love him.
  • Sweet Today temporarily turns people that read it into shoujo romance caricatures of themselves, complete with Art Shift. The only character who has proven to be immune to it is Karen, and that's only because she's already in that mindset 24/7.
  • While not as bad as Karen, Hayasaka has some very strong views on how romance should be. She records (logistically impossible) fantasies of her own ideal dates in a notebook and rejected Kaguya's heartfelt "I love you, please go out with me" practice confession on the grounds that it was "too boring".
• The yuri pastiche The Lady Is a Romcom Protagonist! has the main character become this, but she uses shonen manga for her fantasies instead of the typical shoujo. As a result, everyday encounters at her One-Gender School become wrought with made-up scenarios straight out of the Ecchi and Harem Genre playbook.
• Malon has this viewpoint in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999). She sees herself as a tragic maiden who needs a prince to whisk her away from her life as a farmgirl. Malon initially declines Link's rescue attempts until she realizes he's grown up a lot in seven years.
• Midori Days: Ayase is very influenced by the shoujo manga she reads, to the point where whenever she imagines her romantic moments with Seiji, he's suddenly a Bishonen and harpsichord music plays.
• A flashback in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid featured a bandit who mentioned that her dream was to become a maid and hopefully fall in love with her master.
• Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun:
  • Wakamatsu often uses tactics only seen in romance manga in order to solve his problems with Seo. Since he's in a manga parodying the genre instead of playing it straight, they tend to backfire (for example, writing a challenge letter that turns out more like a love confession). He's also not trying to romance Seo which further makes his preferred sources rather illogical.
    Wakamatsu: Senpai...where did I go wrong...?
    Nozaki: ...Probably from the moment you started using shoujo manga.
  • This trope is Rei's central gimmick. Having attended a girl's only Elevator School her entire life, her knowledge of inter-gender relationships comes entirely from shoujo manga. As a result, she interprets any male-female interaction as a melodramatic romantic moment... unless it involves Nozaki (at first because she mistook him for an adult groundskeeper, then after finding out his identity as her favorite mangaka) or Sakura (because she looks too much like a child to be safely shipped with anyone). Though "romance" might not necessarily be her genre of choice, as any fantasy she's allowed to continue for longer than a few seconds quickly degrades in to filth.
• Rumi Asai of Mousou Shoujo Otakukei is in fact in a love story, but her only knowledge is from the wrong sub-genre: Boys' Love. So however much Abe says he loves her, she continues to believe that his real love is his best friend Chiba (and seeing them together, it can certainly look that way) and all his protestations of love to a girl are the phase before he accepts his homosexuality. Even when an actually gay boy becomes involved, he is very different from what Rumi imagines.
• Invoked in chapter 2 of Musashi-kun to Murayama-san wa Tsukiatte Mita. When she starts dating Musashi, Murayama tries reading through her collection of romance manga to figure out how romantic couples are supposed to act. Unfortunately, all the stories end with the confession, so she has no idea what comes next.
• In one episode of My Wife is a High School Girl, Asami simply walks into a store and has a marriage proposal a few minutes later. The shopkeeper certainly saw her in a favorable light—slightly blurry, with sparkles and roses all around.
• One Piece: Sanji does this at all times. Notably, during the Water 7 arc, he imagines he and Robin dancing in a fairy tale-esque setting.
• Ouran High School Host Club:
  • The hosts act the way they do because they know this is the way their clients think. Though, Tamaki seems rarely to think in a manner that isn't straight out of some category of Romance Novel.
  • On a related note, Renge seems to have trouble at first in grasping that the world doesn't act like a Dating Sim-Game.
• Sayaka Miki from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. She uses her wish to heal Kyosuke's arm, but it backfires - instead of the two of them getting together, Kyosuke goes back to devoting his attention to his music, and the more she learns about what she's let herself in for as a magical girl the less she feels able to pursue her feelings for him even when Hitomi delivers an ultimatum meant to urge Sayaka to make a love confession. It doesn't end well.
• Ranma ½: Rumiko Takahashi not only loves giving her characters overblown romantic fantasies but also idealized visions of victory, etc.
  • During the Gambling King arc, Ukyō makes a bet with Ranma that if he lost against the Big Bad, he would become her partner in a business venture... in the Siberian Tundra... where he would inevitably have a Love Epiphany, and midst the desolation of the landscape their love would blossom. If that's not a Category Romance fantasy, we don't know what is.
  • Tatewaki Kunō has these fantasies a lot... usually with two women throwing themselves at him (which, according to his Self-Serving Memory, puts his fantasies in the genre of Nonfiction).
  • Hikaru Gosunkugi tends to daydream along the lines of Romance Sitcoms whenever he thinks about Akane.
  • Despite being a "Chinese Amazon", Shampoo has also fallen for this trope. She has multiple fantasies about Ranma in a "white knight" or other romantic film/novel protagonist role with her and has even gone so far as to set herself up as a Deliberately Distressed Damsel twice in hopes of enjoying Ranma being her strong protector for once.
• In Sailor Moon, the eponymous character has a number of these fantasies about Tuxedo Mask, sometimes involving the arcade guy or the Moonlight Knight for good measure. She seems to slip into these fantasies at least once every couple of episodes in the first couple of seasons.
• Kyouko from Skip Beat! lives and breathes this trope. She thinks straight out of classic fairy tales, though. Though there might be some overlap.
• Spy X Family: Becky is in her first year of school and has no romantic experience. Her TV dramas influence how she imagines a romance with Loid, and are how she approaches trying to "seduce" him (the narration notes that she's detached from reality).
• If her daydreams are any indication, Himespetchi from Tamagotchi has got quite a romantic and passionate idea of how she would probably interact with Mametchi if she weren't too shy to actually do so. She'll take just about any scenario whenever he appears and translate it into some kind of romantic fantasy (such as imagining she's making some breakfast for him, or that she's playing a romantic game of volleyball on the beach with him, or something similar).
• One episode of Tenchi Muyo! has Ryoko and Ayeka literally taking advice on how to attract Tenchi's interest through romance stories. Some of their attempts fail before they even get to Tenchi, such as Ayeka's attempt to make him a gift revealing that she can't knit, and Ryoko's attempt to make him dinner revealing that she can't cook.
• Tanaka of Wasteful Days of High School Girls comes up with extremely off-the-wall scenarios where she conquers boys and men, which show her complete lack of experience with the opposite sex. Every interaction ends up with the man uttering the same phrase about her:
  -What an interesting woman!
• In Yu-Gi-Oh (Season 0) and the manga, Tristan Taylor goes into this in spades regarding Miho Nosaka. He goes off on a fantasy/rant about them together almost every time he talks about/to her.
• Yuugai Shitei Doukyuusei: In Reika's case, she thinks like a porn movie. She was disappointed when a talent scout turned out to be legitimate and not a Model Scam.

Comic Books

• Harley Quinn exhibits this constantly, idealizing and thinking of her abusive, co-dependent relationship with The Joker as a storybook romance.
• A bit character (the old lady parishioner) in the Immortal Hulk's 3rd issue has this affliction, so her parts of the story Art Shift into a romance comic colored fully pastel, with the villain as a Pretty Boy sparkles included, random flowers, and dramatic posing.
• The Teen Titans character Flamebird appears to think this way: Themed Weapons + Costume + Vigilantism = Instant Relationship with Superhero Crush!
• Primaat in Trinity (2008) is constantly talking as though she's a romantic heroine, and the male heroes she's fighting are dashing potential love interests if they can just get past this misunderstanding. Primaat is a full-sized gorilla in a pink and white corset.

Fan Works

• Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl offers a variant: most of what Cerea believes about the human word comes from the stories she's read. Not only is her concept of "properly knightly behavior" rooted more in Arthurian legends than actual history, it's all but outright stated that her advance study on Japan consisted primarily of reading several light novels, making her rather Wrong Genre Savvy.
• Goin' KABOOM!: Katie is convinced that her relationship with Danny could come straight out of your standard romance novel, blissfully unaware that he doesn't feel the same way about her. When he reads part of her diary and realizes just how strongly she believes this, he's more than a little horrified at how deep the delusions go.
• Danganronpa School Mode Storage Room Of Love: Toko's fantasy scenario revolves around her insecurities; she's convinced that she'll inevitably be abandoned for some other, 'better' girl. Makoto realizes that in order to sustain the dream, he needs to act like he's one of the characters in her novels. During the epilogue, the real Toko chews him out for this.
• Danny Phantom: Lost Episodes Series: In Royal Pain, Aragon kidnaps Paulina with the intent of making her marry him. Paulina gets a little too into the notion that she's really the princess in some fairy tale romance, making the "ghost boy" who rescues her a Knight in Shining Armor who must marry her. Danny only manages to avoid being roped into it by convincing her that it was All Just a Dream.
• In the High School AU Light In The Darkness, Anna assumes that Beauty Equals Goodness, making Hans the best boyfriend material in school since he's the most popular and handsome guy there, just like the love interests in all of her favorite books and movies. This blinds her to how he's a Big Jerk on Campus and Psychopathic Manchild who only cares about himself.
• Fate/Black Dawn: Of all people, Morgan le Faye suffered from this. As far as she's concerned, her Fatal Flaw is that she falls in love easily, holds her partners to an impossible standard, and then lashes out when they fail to live up to it. It says something that the only person she considers to have lived up to her standards is King Arthur. Of course, she also hates the King with a burning passion for "stealing" the throne; Morgan is complicated. By the time Shirou shows up, she's mostly moved past this and has no trouble viewing him objectively instead of holding him to an impossible ideal... and then he lives up to that ideal anyway.
• A Nuisance Though Thou Art has a murder mystery novel variant, when Sibenar learns about Maia's guardian suddenly dying and immediately starts to spout guesses about suspects and killing motives. His sister has to yell at him for making him stop.
• Second Bite of the Cherry:
  • Justified with Wei Ying as she lists "symptoms" indicating you fell in love with someone, since she's rather sheltered and has no other basis to understand Lan Wangji's feelings.
  • Meng Shi has convinced herself that Jin Guangshan will be arriving at anytime to rescue her from the brothel and teach cultivation to Meng Yao. Wei Ying tries to gently explain her the reality.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: This seems to be endemic amongst all the girls attending Hogwarts, as they expect their lives to conform to what they've seen in romance novels. Even Hermione falls into this initially, though she grows out of it.
• In Sanctuary, Malon tends to think like a fairy-tale. However, once she finally realizes that Sheik is actually a disguised Princess Zelda, she mentions that "the storybook ended" and she has to face reality. Later, this gets Subverted when Zelda defies her expectations and comes back to her.
• In For His Own Sake, Mutsumi firmly believes that Keitaro's Childhood Marriage Promise to his 'Promise Girl' is binding, and is deeply alarmed when he breaks up with Naru over her self-centered, All Take and No Give attitude and constant abuse. She frantically attempts to 'help' the two get back together, despite how neither one is interested.
• The Karma of Lies: Adrien believes that the world runs on Protagonist-Centered Morality, and that he's The Chosen One whom everything revolves around, meaning that everything he does is right by default and that he and Ladybug are destined to be together. Once Marinette's Secret Identity is exposed in the Final Battle with Hawkmoth, he naturally expects her to fall into his arms... despite her rejecting him as both Chat Noir and Adrien.
• One of Adrien's biggest issues in Leave for Mendeleiev is that he's so convinced that he and Ladybug are meant to be that he sincerely thinks they don't have to put any effort into building a relationship with each other. Even when Ladybug tells Chat Noir outright that real relationships take time and effort, he blithely declares that he's glad they're 'already there'.
• Both Adrien and Alya have this problem in The One to Make It Stay:
  • Adrien sees himself as a Dogged Nice Guy who absolutely deserves to date Ladybug. They're meant to be partners, after all! Never mind how he constantly ignores her asking him to stop joking and flirting around so much and take their duties more seriously, or how she keeps insisting that she doesn't feel the same way about him... so far as he's concerned, she's just being stubborn and unreasonable, and needs to get with the program already.
  • Alya, meanwhile, is a dedicated supporter of Marinette/Adrien and Ladybug/Chat Noir. She's so convinced that she understands Mari's heart better than her BFF does that she keeps strong-arming her into Zany Schemes to try and win Adrien, and when Marinette tells her flat-out that she's given up on him and is dating Luka? She promptly accuses her of only doing so to make Adrien jealous, failing to understand why that outrages her so much. Then there's the the stunt she pulls with the Oblivio footage... and her decision to attempt an Operation: Jealousy of her own by having Lila date Adrien, without clearing that with Lila first. Assuming that Lila wouldn't mind getting together with Adrien for the sole purpose of helping Alya hook him up with Marinette later.
• What Goes Around Comes Around:
  • Adrien sincerely believes that it's normal for somebody to fully devote themselves to pleasing their loved ones. To this end, once Marinette's Secret Identity as Ladybug is exposed, he fully expects her to dump her boyfriend Luka and hook up with him the moment she learns that he's Chat Noir, and to help him get his father off the hook for his supervillainy purely because that would make him happy.
  • Alya also suffers from this to a lesser extent, being so intent on seeing her ships sail that she openly dismisses Luka as Marinette's 'runner-up prize', refusing to accept the notion that she might be sincerely happy with him. She also doesn't think twice about expressing this idea right in front of Juleka, Luka's sister, and is incredibly shocked when she takes offense.
  • Truth & Journalism shows how this also applies to Andre the Ice-Cream Guy, who combines it with Small Name, Big Ego. He's deeply offended by Marinette daring to date Luka because her boyfriend doesn't match the profile he came up with for his 'Sweetheart Ice Cream'; when the happy couple visits his cart, he outright refuses to serve the pair, insisting that she should "listen to her heart" and let his ice cream dictate who she dates.
• Pinkie Pie in About Last Night and its sequel, in her usual No Fourth Wall antics:
  • Needing to Pair the Spares:
    "M-Miss Pinkie?"
    "Look at this!" she chirped, showing the gossip section of the paper.
    "Miss Rarity?" he said, genuinely surprised. "She's dating a prince?"
    "Do you know what this means?" she said, lowering the paper and staring him in the eyes.
    "N-no..."
    "We have to pair the spares!"
    "...Wha?"
    "I'm the last member of the Mane Six without a coltfriend!"
  • Spike being in a Harem Genre:
    "See, now they're at the relationship building part of the story, where they all become good friends and Spike sees something good in each of them so the final choice will be that much more difficult!"
    ...
    "Pinkie, life isn't a romance movie," Rainbow Dash said in a flat tone.
    "It's sure looking like one lately," Pinkie said.
  • Realising she's being Wrong Genre Savvy:
    "Can it wait?" the Pegasus asked. "Pinkie's acting weird... well, weirder."
    Pinkie was scribbling on a chalkboard. "This isn't right! They were supposed to have a falling-out by now! Then they can repeat the process and fall in love all over again, at least until the next sequel!"
    "Pinkie... look, you need to stop this. Life isn't a romance movie!"
    "You're right, it's something far worse than that! It's... an actual relationship piece!"
• In Flash Fog, Rarity inadvertently starts a Love Dodecahedron because of her efforts to try and get Fluttershy to respond to Pencil Pusher's crush. She even complains when Applejack, upon taking one look at the situation, drags all four mares involved into a private room and spells out what the situation is for everyone to be cleared up. Applejack deconstructs this trope and explains why it's a bad thing to act this way by pointing out that romance novels deliberately present unrealistically "dramatic" stories of love because more realistic stories tend to be shorter and more boring, so anyone trying to follow the "rules" for a romance novel in real life is setting themselves up for a lot of heartbreak and disappointment.
• Post Traumatic: Rarity firmly believes that her first real kiss with Spike must be nothing less than True Love's Kiss, due to her love of romantic novels. This results in her being deeply mortified when her sheer relief at making it back safely to Ponyville results in her nearly showering him with kisses anywhere but his lips before she registers what she's doing.
• In Absolute Anonymous's Shipping Goggles, Rarity constantly interprets her friends' most minor actions as signals that they are deeply in love with each other, much to their chagrin. She's right about Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, though.
• In The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine, Rarity strongly believes that Dusk is her Prince Charming and that they're destined to be together. Pinkie Pie, meanwhile, thinks that being the first girl Dusk met when he arrived in Ponyville gives her a natural advantage.
• In The Twilight Prince, Rarity was an inadvertent deconstruction of this, to the extent that she came across as "legitimately mentally handicapped" (and a severe violation of suspension of disbelief, even for the author, one of the reasons a rewrite was needed).
• The Weedverse: Played With in Princess Cadance's Lonely Hearts Club Land, as all of Crop Duster's knowledge of "marital relations" come from bad saddle-rippers. She's aware that this isn't the best source of information about such things, but finds that it's still hard to shake.
• Catarina Claes MUST DIE!: This comes in handy when Catarina has to explain the concept of "otome games" while revealing her Past-Life Memories. When she describes otome games as a kind of romantic fiction where the player attempts to win the heart of a character, her audience is initially mystified... save for the romance-loving Sophia, who takes over and further simplifies it as "a romance novel where you make the story yourself".
• Space to Breathe: The main problem Sakura has with Naruto is that he's thoroughly convinced himself that he and Sasuke are competing for her as part of their ongoing rivalry, having completely failed to notice that Sasuke isn't remotely interested in pursuing her. As she puts it when calling him out on it, he expects his life to work out just like a storybook, to the point of outright ignoring any evidence to the contrary or when people don't conform to the roles he's cast them in.
• Justified in A Teacher's Glory: Ino uses experience with romance novels to judge whether Tamaki is just a retainer, or on the way to becoming mistress of the manor. Judging by the lack of jewelry and gifts, Ino correctly deduces that Tamaki and Sasuke, the Uchiha Head are not sleeping together.
• In Finding Your Wings, Kuina's able to convince her boss on Amber Island to let her terminate her contract early by convincing them that she wants to go chasing after "her true love". They're more than happy to oblige, caught up in the romance of it all.
• One Piece Queen Heart: When Luffy tells Chimney that she wants to become the Pirate Queen, Chimney assumes that means she's searching for a king to marry her. Upon hearing this, Sanji fantasizes about marrying Luffy while she's wearing a white Fairytale Wedding Dress, something Zoro snarks about.
• Another Road: Dawn's Buneary initially makes Pikachu deeply uncomfortable by projecting her idealized fantasies about what their relationship should be onto him, to the point of turning a "date" their trainers arranged between them into an utter disaster. However, Buneary actually learns from that incident and grows more mindful of his feelings; while still a bit impatient, she learns how to respect his boundaries and lets him take his time.
• Lost Together: Ranko's friend Lychee is waiting and hoping for a Prince Charming to come sweep her off her feet and away from her life. This becomes Be Careful What You Wish For when she meets Prince Kirin due to his agents deciding to abduct her in an attempt to get to Ranko.
• Ghosts and Dreams:
  • Sansa's tendency to think this way exasperates all of the ghosts, along with Jaehaerys. In particular, Elia fears that Sansa's naivete when it comes to the matter of romance will eventually bring disaster to the Starks if they involve themselves in the Game of Thrones.
  • Catelyn also falls into this to some extent, mostly in that she encourages Sansa's "silly notions" about love and romance without realizing how much this might damage her children's claim to the North.
• In Luminosity, Bella deduces that attraction between two vampires is always symmetrical, mutual, and exclusive because vampirism has the odd quirk of conferring the hallmarks of romantic fiction to anyone afflicted by it. She realizes that if she chooses to become immortal then she will also be choosing to be inescapably in love with someone she doesn't even know or like.

Films — Animation

• Rayna and Rayla from Barbie: Mariposa. They want to marry the Prince and think his being locked away is romantic.
• Princess Anna from Frozen thinks in conventions very similar to most early Disney Princesses: hitting it off with one person after a single night is enough to convince her that they're soulmates. Prince Hans, the guy in question, is anything BUT a good prince, and manipulates this way of thinking for all it's worth in a bid to get his hands on the throne of Arendelle for himself.
• The Princess and the Frog: Charlotte has wanted to fall in love with a prince and become a princess since she was a little girl. As an adult, she not only dreams of it but is convinced that it will happen. When she finds out that a prince is visiting her city, she immediately starts referring to him as "my prince" before she even meets him.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Bowser's romantic advances are based around treating Peach's love like an achievement that's earned through accumulation of power and conquest. At no point does he consider getting to know her as a person.

Films — Live-Action

• Tom in (500) Days of Summer, who insists on imagining Summer as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl against all evidence to the contrary, and gets his heart broken as a result.
• Giselle in Enchanted thinks like a Disney fairy tale romance is the most natural thing in the world. But then, she's literally from an animated fairy tale universe and has to spend most of the film adjusting to life in the cynical reality of New York. Said cynical reality is still part of a greater Disney fairy tale, though, so it manages to work out.
• Hellboy appears to be a big ol' softie for a romantic storyline with his girlfriend like any Romance Novel addict. Arguably, since in the second movie she essentially condemned the world to save Hellboy, Liz Sherman has Romance Novel ideals in the form of "Love at any cost."
• In High School Musical, Zeke appears to have something like this train of thought — he was true to himself, so of course the girl he likes will return his affections! If not, there's always other ways...
• Chet Keefer, in the film The Marrying Kind is annoyed by his wife's view on love and marriage, and thinks she is too influenced by romantic films.
• In The Princess Diaries, Mia mentions that the perfect kiss should involve Foot Popping, like in the movies.
• In Sky High (2005), the main character has one of these moments when he first sees the Student Council President, that song plays and everything faces away. True love, no doubt about it.
• Played with in Sleepless in Seattle. It was lampshaded with Rosie O'Donnell's line "You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie." However, little did she know, Sleepless In Seattle is itself a romantic comedy, so it turns out Meg Ryan's character was actually Right Genre Savvy.

Literature

• Anne of Green Gables: Anne, especially as a teenager. She has an overactive imagination as it is, but add in a hopeless romantic streak and one too many romance novels, and you get some of the funniest moments in the series. As she gets older, however, her idealized notions of who she wants as a partner and what being in love is supposed to feel like start working against her. She is oblivious not only to Gilbert's feelings for her but of her own growing feelings for him. She suffers a painful reality check near the end of Anne of the Island when she realizes she isn't in love with the man who fits her ideals and is in love with the man she rejected for not fitting her ideals—the same man she might lose forever.
• Artemis Fowl: Artemis's alter ego, Orion seems to believe he's the hero of a Romance Novel.
• Caroline B. Cooney has a books series that begins with Both Sides Of Time. It is about a girl from our century named Annie Lockwood who dreams of finding romance in a past century when women wore gowns and danced with handsome gentlemen at balls. She gets her wish and transports back to the Victorian era, though there is drama to be had.
• Discworld:
  • In the novel Mort by Terry Pratchett, there is Ysabel, who goes into the room with the books of life writing themselves to read all the real-life stories of tragic love that there are, and these stories form the basis of her understanding of romance.
  • While a lot of Pratchett's younger female characters have this problem, it's subverted in Unseen Academicals: Glenda secretly reads pulp romance novels as her only known form of recreation, but she's not convinced and ultimately doesn't let them mislead her in her own life or her advice to others. In fact, it's the opposite; she eventually decides she's being too practical and hard-headed, especially in her advice to Juliet. She's still not convinced, but she's willing to meet romance tropes halfway.
  • Subverted in Wintersmith: The Nac Mac Feegle provide Tiffany with a romance novel to help her with the wintersmith... and she thinks all the characters should just be more sensible.
  • The Gordon family in Snuff who are a parody of the Bennetts, except Jane, who is an homage to Austen herself. Their understanding of how the world works is upended by Sam Vimes, leading to the other daughters getting jobs instead of hanging around waiting for a man who'll accept their meagre dowries, and Jane deciding to write crime thrillers instead.
• Jane Austen's Emma is perhaps literature's best example, though her Romance Novel thoughts typically center around the people she's playing matchmaker for. Considering that the novel was a satire of thinking like a Romance Novel, it only makes sense.
• Tomoya of How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend is easily moved to tears by romance stories, but Oblivious to Love in real life. After a "fateful encounter" with a girl in his class, he is convinced that she would make an ideal love interest and ropes her into joining a team to create a Visual Novel with her as the heroine. He soon becomes frustrated that Megumi is a subdued and boring girl compared to the fictional characters he's used to, or even to the other girls on the development team, and the story goes through multiple revisions as he struggles to express why despite being boring, he still considers her his "ideal heroine". Naturally, Tomoya is the last person to figure out that it's because he's genuinely in love with her.
• From Inkheart, Farrid, who's literally a fictional character brought to life in-universe, thinks this way about Meggie, even to the point of after their first kiss proclaiming they will get married. It doesn't work out. Really, Meggie?
• One father in Judge Dee blames his daughter's reading of great love stories for her behavior, refusing to take a husband who isn't "just right."
• Michael from the Knight and Rogue Series manages to do this while also being able to use normal logic (or as much of that as he usually could.) He thinks that his love for Rosamund will overcome the barriers between them, but when she falls for another traveler he decides to help her, figuring that when she sees what it's like outside her pampered home life she'll give up on him.
• Madame Bovary's title character is another classic example. She loved a sentimental novel even before going to a convent in her early teens, and while at the convent, romance novels were passed around by the girls, and she believes love can only exist in the grandiose, sentimental way. She ruins her marriage (and life) for this.
• In My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Sophia's fondest desire is to live out a romance like the ones she reads about in books. This is especially the case with Catarina; in a false world created to grant her heart's desire, she pins Catarina to the wall and confesses her love. At a slumber party, when asked what she would want to do with a potential lover, she lists everything she's ever read in books (including things that are clearly impossible, such as saving the world from an evil mage).
• The Count in Pan Tadeusz wishes his "enemy" (it's largely in his head) had a beautiful daughter or wife for the Count to be Star-Crossed Lovers with. He's an artist. It's a thing.
• In the book version of The Princess Diaries, Mia has tendencies toward this (and later writes romance novels herself) but a lot of it comes from being friends with Tina Hakim Baba, who is explicitly stated to think this way throughout the series.
  Tina: I don’t know. But I do know that Michael loves you, and that’s all that matters!!!!!!!
  Mia: (narrating) Everything is so simple in Tinaland. I so wish I lived there instead of here.
• Deconstructed in A Song of Ice and Fire when Sheltered Aristocrat Sansa Stark is betrothed to Prince Joffrey. She expects everything to play out like a courtly romance but then suffers a horrible Trauma Conga Line partly because of her idealism. She grows out of it.
  Petyr Baelish: Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.
• One R.L. Stine novel involves a heroine with perhaps a tenuous grasp on reality, as she typically has fantasies about being more assertive and attractive than she is, and stealing her love interest away from his Rich Bitch girlfriend.
• In Twilight, Bella always compares her situation to romance novels or theater, varying from book to book (Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights).
• Rufus from The Wolf Den Trilogy has an idealistic worldview stemming from his love of theatre. He sees himself as the chivalrous hero, saving the beautiful, virtuous, wrongly-enslaved prostitute from the brothel. In practice, it leads him to feel entitled to Amara's eternal gratitude and affection.
• Ulysses does this in the infamous "Nausicaa" chapter. The first half is narrated by a simple young woman named Gertie MacDowell as she spends a carefree day at the beach with her girlfriends and contemplates a mysterious stranger gazing at her from the far end of the beach; her narration is written in a sappy, florid style that parodies romance novels of the 1920s. Then in the second half, it's revealed that the mysterious stranger is actually the protagonist Leopold Bloom, and the writing style completely changes as it switches back to the perspective of a world-weary adult man. Subverted, though, in that it's left ambiguous whether the first part was actually from her perspective, or just Leopold trying to imagine the thoughts of a young woman.^note  James Joyce supposedly claimed the latter.

Live-Action TV

• The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. has a Historical Romance Novel right in the middle of the plot basically any time the eponymous Brisco interacts with his Love Interest Dixie Cousins. Whether this was the writers or characters thinking like romance novel plots is debatable.
• From Babylon 5 we have Marcus Cole, who out of idealism for love refused sex, and then fell in love with Susan Ivanova. Unfortunately, his Heroic Sacrifice and her bad timing is one of the reasons why All Love Is Unrequited.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • For a short period near the end of Season 6, Spike seems to believe that his relationship to Buffy is the plot of a Gothic Romance Novel. That whole attempted rape thing really puts a damper on their relationship at the beginning of Season 7.
  • And in Season 5 Spike follows the conventions of Courtly Love; justified given his past as a Victorian-era wannabe romantic poet.
  • And sixteen-year-old Buffy with Angel.
    Angel: I'm just tryin' to protect you. This could get outta control.
    Buffy: Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?
    Angel: This isn't some fairy tale. When I kiss you, you don't wake up from a deep sleep and live happily ever after.
    Buffy: No. When you kiss me I want to die.
• Cheers: One of the many, many, many problems between Sam and Diane is that Diane thinks like this, hoping their relationship will be a tale for the ages, ending with them dying in one another's arms, while Sam generally doesn't. Diane doesn't tend to take it well.
• In Community, Annie sometimes acts like she's in a coming-of-age Rom Com around Jeff, a sarcastic cynic with commitment issues, with whom she has long-running romantic tension with. Eventually, she admits that she's just in love with the idea of being loved, "and if [she] can get someone like Jeff to do it, [she]'ll never be unloved."
• The point of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is how Rachel sees her life as a grand romance novel or film, not quite getting how incredibly crazy she comes off as her "romance" of her ex is just stalking. Justified as it turns out in season three that Rachel has borderline personality disorder.
• On Gossip Girl Blair Waldorf Thinks Like A Romantic Movie, or more specifically romantic films of the golden age Hollywood variety. To the point where her ex-boyfriend thinks the most romantic thing he can do to win her back is giving her an ultimatum a la An Affair to Remember.
• Subverted on Hot in Cleveland. In the first season, Melanie's ex-husband shows up and they go out for part of the episode. He decides to go back to his ex (whom he left Melanie for), and Melanie runs to the airport to catch him. An airport employee even lets her through and there's a lot of talk about the trope. She then proceeds to tell him off. Melanie, never swears.
• In The Magnificent Seven TV series, the character Casey Wells is introduced as an injection of estrogen and love interest for upstart-youth J.D. Dunne. Her crush and idealism are so strong that she enlists the aid of Buck Wilmington, the group womanizer, for a Beautiful All Along gambit.
• In The Office (US), this is one of the main culprits of Michael's personal failures. He consistently tries to live up romantic tropes but ultimately this is doomed because This Is Reality. Until he marries Holly, anyway!
• Lorna Morello of Orange Is the New Black is obsessed with West Side Story, Twilight, and gossip magazines, and spends most of her time in prison planning her perfect wedding with her perfect fiance, Christopher. In reality, they went on one coffee date before he broke things off, and she's a delusional Stalker with a Crush who's in prison for threatening him and his actual girlfriend.
• In Roswell, Liz had more than a few elaborate fantasies about her Love Interest Max coming on to her. They were very nice strawberries...
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?" the eponymous Adonais has everything lined up to be the Marty Stu hero of his own Romance Novel, pretty little Yeoman and all. It doesn't work out.
• Ugly Betty: A dental assistant in "East Side Story" is obsessed with romance movies and encourages Betty to Race for Your Love to the airport and win Henry back.
• In the reboot V, it would seem that the heroine's son who's unknowingly dating Cthulhu's daughter seems to think that he's just in some cross-cultural successful love story.
• Neal Caffrey from White Collar may be charming, intelligent, and sly, but he's also somewhat of a hopeless, diehard romantic. After all, this is the man that committed increasingly elaborate crimes to catch the attention of the woman he loved, went to prison because he walked straight into a trap to see her again, broke out of prison with three months left on his sentence to go after her, and countless other things, both for Kate and the women after her.
• The entire push of You is how Joe sees himself as the main character of a loveable nice guy just looking for love and getting into rom-com situations. The audience is able to see the truth: that Joe is a sociopathic stalker whose beliefs push him to murderous actions but keeps seeing himself as the hero.

Music

• The music of HIM is all about love, so it's natural this attitude may crop up from time to time in their lyrics. That being said, there are songs that are really just commentaries on this way of thinking (e.g. "Soul on Fire"), or deliberately insert lovesick narrators who do think this way into situations where things obviously aren't working that way (e.g. "The Face of God", which appears to be about a Love Martyr).
• Gordon Lightfoot references this trope in 1970 Break Up Song "If You Could Read My Mind":
  If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts would tell
  Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drug stores sell
  When you reach the part where the heartache come, the hero would be me.
  Heroes often fail
  You won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take.
• Psychostick's "It's Just A Movie, Stupid" features its lead singer discouraging his audience from following this line of thought in the bluntest, most vulgar way possible. It also acknowledges the typical gendered scenarios for the men and women who hope to invoke this trope in their love lives.

Roleplay

• Harriet from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, rather surprisingly given her personality, has been greatly influenced by Visual Novels when it comes to her ideas of romance. Before he mysteriously disappeared, she was more than happy to ignore David's obvious faults and instead see him as the sort of handsome, aloof character that would whisk her away from her worries.

Tabletop Games

• The villain Tenderheart from Dark Champions believes in the delusion that life works like a romance novel and her criminal career is based around the idea that a superhero will fall in love with her.

Theater

Video Games

• Ace Attorney: Pearl has a tendency to see things this way, spending most of the original trilogy believing Phoenix was her cousin Maya's "special someone". Played for Drama in that she thinks this way because she grew up in a village with a ridiculously high divorce rate - it's implied she's never seen a relationship that worked, leading her to romanticize romance.
• Tsubaki Yayoi in BlazBlue, which makes the circumstances of her More than Mind Control and Mind Rape induced Face–Heel Turn all the more tragic. This is clearest (and funniest) in Bang Shishigami's joke ending, when she ends up "helping" him propose to Litchi... via trying to stage a Shotgun Wedding, which makes Bang himself go all "WTF?!"
• Contract Demon: It's downplayed, although Eleni was hoping for a romance between her and the demon she summoned, she didn't genuinely expect to develop a crush on Kamilla.
• Galaxy Angel: Ranpha Franboise loves romance movies, and sometimes she gets a bit too carried away by them. In her route in the second game, watching a romance movie where the protagonist pulled an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy and her wrong assumptions about the recently joined Chitose lead her to temporarily break up with Tact to try and pair them together, thinking that Chitose deserved him more.
• Granblue Fantasy: Korwa is obsessed with the idea of happy endings, and often tries to orchestrate melodramatic or cliched scenes into happening. This does have a more positive angle as well, however; she's the one, alongside Tweyen, who gently encourages Carren to get in touch with her parents and try to understand their position because she knows that Carren permanently falling out of contact with her parents can only lead to regret later in Carren's life.
• Elphelt Valentine in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- never changes out of her stylized wedding gown and frequently launches into lengthy tirades about how wondrous married life with her defeated opponents (or their friends) would be.
• Like a Dragon: Kazuma Kiryu, though using a more classical definition of "romance". He believes in a heavily romanticized version of the Yakuza, and tries to embody this ideal of an honorable enforcer who does what is just even when the law disagrees. However, the games portray Yakuza activities much like reality: thugs and strongmen for organized crime, with just enough standards that the law leaves them alone more often than not. A good deal of drama is wrung from Kiryu's worldview being completely incompatible with the reality around him.
• Lunar: Eternal Blue:
  Bar Wench: Right now, I'm just a lousy, stinking bar wench, but one day my knight in shining armor will ride through those doors and sweep me off to a new life with shimmering palaces and dazzling wealth...
  Ruby: Uh, I think you'd better lay off the romance novels for a while, sister... Fabio ain't comin' for ya, I'm sorry to say...
• In the Mass Effect franchise:
  • Tali, perhaps not surprisingly, has moments of this if you romance her. She deliberately plays up the Rescue Romance trope since Shepard's saved her life so many times, saying that she can't imagine why a sweet young woman would fall for the dashing space captain who rescued her. In the third game's Citadel DLC, it's further revealed that her favorite movie is an Interspecies Romance love story... and she's been stealing romantic dialogue from it in order to woo you. It's played mostly for awkwardness, and if you tease her about it, she notes that "You're not complaining."
  • Garrus shows signs of this on his romance path. In his case, it's less that he has an idealized version of love and more that he has no idea how human relationships work and is implied to have been watching romance vids for pointers. This is especially obvious in the Citadel DLC, where he and Shepard decide to have a pretend first date, and he reveals that he's been taking very real dance lessons in order to impress her. Like Tali, this is mostly intended to make him endearing.
• One stage in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 has Christine Kamogawa, an actual romance novelist who draws inspiration from her wild Imagine Spots.
• In Rune Factory 4, Porcoline is like this towards the Player Character. He has a massive crush on them regardless of their gender, and is convinced that they're madly in love with him as well and that they're going to sweep him off his feet. If you make a Platonic Declaration of Love towards him, he even interprets it as a marriage proposal and tries to carry them off to get married right that second. Since he's not an actual Love Interest for the PC, however, he's never successful.
• In Stardew Valley, this is Elliot's shtick. He's a dreamy, romantic writer with a romanticized vision of just about everything, he constantly talks in a flowery and overwrought way, and if you decide to romance him, he constantly uses poetry and glittery metaphors in order to describe his affections for the player character and even takes them on an Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date. He can even potentially even write a romance novel dedicated to the PC, whether or not they decide to date him.

Web Animation

• Cancer from AstroLOLogy is obsessed with romantic media and often finds herself engulfed in her own fantasies about dating a guy, only to be disappointed when the expected soap opera or romance cliché doesn't play out like she intended when she tries to get that to happen in real life.
• Helluva Boss: When Stolas learns that Blitzo broke into his chambers while he was at a party downstairs, he quickly interpreted it as the dashing imp come to ravish him in the cover of night, rather than the more obvious motive of trying to rob him while he wasn't there. Blitzo leans into this in order to seduce Stolas and get the grimoire.
• Manga Soprano: In "Girl with revealing outfit scared of boys staring at her→ boy points out her outfit has holes", it's revealed the reason Shiori put on a "weak girl" facade to attract guys was that she read in love mangas that "weak little girls[sic] are popular with the boys". As her gimmick falls apart when Kairi and the other guys got tired of her shtick, Puni remarks her lack of common sense.
  Puni: Both you and the manga are wrong, puni.

Web Comics

• Cursed Princess Club:
  • The princesses of the Pastel Kingdom were raised by a stifling dad who rarely let them leave the palace or interact with boys. Thus, their views on romance are heavily colored by the fairy tales they've read. This makes them unusually eager to rush into the Arranged Marriages that King Jack set up between them and the princes of the Plaid Kingdom. While the two older sisters get along well with their fiancés upon first meeting, Gwendolyn is shocked and heartbroken to overhear her fiancé Frederick calling her ugly. She had assumed, based on the stories she was familiar with, that all princesses were inherently beautiful and would always fall into Love at First Sight with a Prince Charming. It takes meeting the eponymous club for her to learn to develop a more nuanced perspective on romance.
  • Frederick himself developed a perspective heavily influenced by his obsession with one particular fairy tale. As a kid at a military boarding school, he was relentlessly bullied and friendless over his cheerful obsession with books. In response, he would double down on his book obsession as a form of escapism. He became especially enamored with a fairy tale about a man stuck in a deep hole who was rescued by a beautiful "Angel of Fortune" and became a respected hero with her by his side. A big reason he reacted so negatively to getting betrothed to Gwendolyn is because she looked nothing like the blonde Angelic Beauty from the story. As Frederick gets to know her better, however, he starts to notice her surprising similarities to the Angel of Fortune — the first of which being when Gwen saves him from a cliffside tumble in a manner similar to the man from the story getting pulled up from the hole.
• Ensign Sue Must Die: This trope fuels nearly everything Ensign Sue does. She freely imagines everyone she chooses is in love with her, and that she will have a relationship with them that will conform to her expectations. She also happens to be a Yaoi Fangirl, and wants to get Kirk and Spock into a torrid gay romance with each other (once she's "taught them", of course).
• Jareth in Girls Next Door thinks like a shipping fic when it comes to his relationship with Sarah. So yes. He genuinely expects things like a fight with her ending in an anger-fueled make-out session. Sarah's opinion about this is pretty much: "Eurgh. Whatever you've been reading, you shouldn't be."
• Girls with Slingshots: Tucker is confused when his love life does not follow the trajectory of a movie. After realizing that repeatedly asking did not cause his crush to change her mind about dating him, his reaction is "But that's how it works in romantic comedies."
• Kimchi Cuddles: Amalthea's idea of telling her ex she still has feelings for him involves bookmarking a poem with a piece of ribbon torn from her dress, and leaving it out in a bookshop in the hope that he'll notice. Kimchi explains to her that that doesn't count as "talking to him".
• Not So Shoujo Love Story: Rei is obsessed with shoujo manga and actively tries to make her life mirror the stories she's read. She develops an obsession with having a romance with Hansum simply because he's the most popular boy in school despite him barely being aware of her existence. She deliberately tries to invoke tropes of the genre in her everyday life, usually to cringeworthy and comedic outcomes. And she aggressively tries to deny the fact that Hanna, who she believes should be her rival in this Love Triangle she's constructed in her own head, is actually her best friend who has a crush on her.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Tsukiko has this mixed with two other tropes — Wrong Genre Savvy and Insane Troll Logic. First, she thinks that because Living Are Bastards, then the Undead, as the antithesis of life, must actually be good and just misunderstood. This makes her act like she lives in a romance novel with strong Twilight overtones, not in a fantasy setting based on Dungeons & Dragons. Because of that, she considers Xykon to be this perfect man who will finally fall in love with her and sees Redcloak as nothing more than his cowardly loser sidekick who gets between them and who she can humiliate without consequences. Finally, Redcloak decides to prove to her that a) she is wrong about the undead and b) underestimating him is a very bad idea.
  • Therkla, Kubota's assassin, falls in love with Elan at first sight, writes about it in her journal, and is willing to betray her master if Elan will become her boyfriend. Her prequel story shows that she is an avid reader of trashy romance novels, even though her job rarely gives her time to read them before someone else spoils her.
• Ms. Intimidating Cow Monster in Rhapsodies seems to think a relationship can fix a man's problems.
• In Weak Hero, Lily's got it in her head that her beautiful, aloof classmate Gray is a pitiable soul in dire need of protecting from all of the cram school's bullies, and that it's up to her to be his protector. The truth is quite the opposite. He's a Bully Hunter who instills fear in anyone who crosses him.

Web Original

• The Onion has an article about a man who repeatedly tries out romantic-comedy ideas to win someone over. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.

Web Videos

• Jester in Critical Role does this, especially after she found Tusk Love. She has even taken to referring to Fjord as Oskar, the name of the hero of the story.
• Even the cynical, broken down Nostalgia Chick can think like this, admitting that she's compared every modern man to the Duke of Albany in Kate & Leopold and found none of them could measure up.

Western Animation

• Played With in Adventure Time when Lumpy Space Princess was living with wolves she tried to analyze pack dynamics like it was a teen drama, with the wolves "cheating" on their significant others whenever they licked somebody else.
• Jinora from The Legend of Korra is this way, as her idea of a perfect romance is based on the historical fiction she reads. Considering the sort of universe she lives in, and that she's only 10, stories involving genocidal dragon battles and suicide by volcano qualify as historical romance. Korra, while recognising that this is neither a desirable nor realistic approach for her to use with the object of her affections, still swoons and sighs in exactly the same way Jinora does when romance is discussed, and her attempts to put those into practice go about as well as you'd expect for someone who has trained exhaustively in bending since childhood but has virtually zero social experience.
• Western Animation's champion of this would have to be Looney Tunes' Pépé Le Pew, who is convinced he is the hero of a Love at First Sight story and he will win the fair lady's heart through persistence while she is just playing hard-to-get. In-universe, his big obstacle to winning the heart of whichever non-skunk has caught his eye in that episode is that he is also the champion of the Smelly Skunk trope. Out-of-universe the Values Dissonance of him continuously stalking, harassing, and engaging in unwanted touching and kissing despite her extremely obvious and repeated rejections means his shorts have aged very poorly.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "The Ticket Master", Rarity is certain that going to the Grand Galloping Gala will play out just like a fairy tale, with her introduction to the country's most eligible stallion (the princess' nephew) who instantly falls in love with her and marries her after a whirlwind romance.
    • When she actually meets the Prince in "Best Night Ever", she tries to make the fantasy a reality. It... doesn't really work out, mainly because the prince in question is a self-centered jerk. In fact, when the mane cast are forced to flee the chaos they've caused at the gala, Rarity loses her glass slipper, and when Pinkie Pie lampshades the obvious trope, Rarity freaks out and stomps the slipper into pieces before continuing. Not that it really matters.
• The Owl House: Luz Noceda's obsession with magic and fairy tales occasionally brushes with this trope. In general, she thinks of her adventures in the Boiling Isles like a young adult fantasy novel, complete with romantic subplot. Her ideas of being The Chosen One and having a greater destiny get her in trouble a few times with characters like Adeghast using illusions to lure her into a trap that resembles her storybook dreams. Her falling in love with Amity in many ways feels like a fulfillment of a number of Luz's romantic fantasies and she even admits to wanting to take them on a Slice of Life style date when the conflict settles.
• In Teen Titans (2003), Starfire feels this way about her True Companions, enough to recite novel-length poetry with a brightly-colored floral background.

Real Life

• An experiment in which one group of participants watched a romantic comedy and another group watched a drama found that the group watching a romantic comedy became more idealistic about love and romance.
• A similar study by a University of Michigan doctoral student found that viewing such movies also distorted people's views on stalking behavior, given how frequently such behavior is portrayed as sexy and romantic.
• Very few Romance Novel heroines actually think this way, as it would sort of defeat the black moment of the three-act structure. Their authors, however, are literally paid to invoke this trope but only as part of the writing process. Many, if you sit down and talk to them, have similar ideas about love as most people who don't read romance novels. It's all about selling the fantasy. They're very aware of what they're doing. Just because someone can enjoy a romance novel doesn't mean they can't tell the difference between it and reality. Reality has way fewer single billionaires running around waiting to fall in love with the plain girl who doesn't bother with her appearance, but still has great hair and skin.

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