Misused: Fatal Attraction

To-do list:

• Consensus was to rename Fatal Attraction to Criminally Attractive and expand its definition to include relationships other than ones between detectives and a criminal they're investigating, with the revised definition including relationships between government officials and law enforcement officers other than detectives, as well as relationships between criminals and their victims. Examples that fit the revised definition need to be moved to the new name, and examples that don't need to be removed.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 2nd 2022 at 3:31:29 AM

Opened. It looks like some of the confusion (including the Laconic, which is a Bowdlerization of the phrase "Never stick your dick in crazy", which means to avoid having sex with a crazy person) stems from the identically named movie Fatal Attraction, which involves a yandere and not this trope, considering the amount of examples that involve a murderous love interest. (This trope isn't even listed in the film's example section.)

"Fatal attraction" appears to be a preexisting term unrelated to the movie, but we appear to be misusing it because our definition is absurdly narrow due to the focus on detective stories. The concept behind the original term appears to be simple enough that the introduction to Wikipedia's article is one sentence long (though admittedly, the entire article is short): "In interpersonal relationships a fatal attraction is when the very qualities that draw one to someone eventually contribute to relational breakup."

It seems like examples involving doomed relationships are closer to the original definition than the examples related to detective stories, even if the term specifically refers to a relationship being doomed due to the factors that end it overlapping with the ones that started it.

To be honest, due to the wick count already being low, I think one option would be to Yard the definition used by Wikipedia (or send it back to TLP if someone here is willing) and also the misuse you're proposing to expand this to include (possibly under a new name) and cut this due to the low amount of correct examples and the rest of the misuse's overlap with other tropes involving villainous love interests. The detective trope the page is supposed to be for might be Too Rare to Trope (or at least not distinct enough from other tropes) based on the fact that there are only nine wicks.

Also, I'd like to point out that some of the examples in the "Other Dangerous or Doomed Relationships" folder (such as the second one) look like they belong in the "Trope Wick instead of Movie Wick" folder, or at least could fit in both.

Edit: If we expand the trope to fit some of the misuse (as you've already pointed out, expanding it to fit all misuse would be a bad idea), I think giving it a new name would be ideal.

Another edit: Maybe an alternative to sending this back to TLP and cutting if we rename and expand to include misuse would be to have an example drive on TLP without cutting the page, similarly to what has been done with some other recent TRS threads.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2022 at 12:31:58 PM

Since it's a pre-existing term (Wikipedia having that short of a description makes me question the credibility), I'd like to expand/redefine the trope to "ironic breakup" (technically, a detective realizing they've been romancing the criminal they're after may count) and TLP/Yard to gather new examples.

Current examples may easily fit Fatal Attractor, Femme Fatale or Dating Catwoman, regardless if the trope is rescued.

Maybe this page can be disambiguated between the tropes listed ?

Can be an option if people want.

Edited by Amonimus on Jul 21st 2022 at 10:37:43 PM

The Wikipedia article for "fatal attraction" at least cites more sources than the overwhelming exception article, and the former is also a bit longer. The poor shape of the latter was what led me to argue against "overwhelming exception" being a preexisting term when I voted in favor of renaming Overwhelming Exception (which is now called Everything Except Most Things).

Edit: Also, if we rename the trope (with or without expanding it), the old name can become a disambiguation page either way (between the above-mentioned tropes and Film.Fatal Attraction), but disambiguating without moving the page to a new name (with or without Yarding the concepts mentioned in this thread) is an option as well.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 21st 2022 at 2:37:28 PM

x5 Yeah, I admit some of those wicks were hard to sort due to the pothole issue. One more reason to rename if it doesn't end up strictly disambiguated. Though I am also in favor of a TLP drive for example gathering if we hammer out a new definition.

x4 I'd want to shy away from using the term "ironic" or "irony" because of how misused that concept already is.

I think Yarding the Wikipedia version is the best option

We can run a crowner with renaming and expanding the definition as options, but I need to know what kind of misuse we'd include in the expanded definition before holding a vote for it, since the original proposal only involved including some misuse and not all of it.

Expanding to include love interests on opposing sides and expanding to include criminals and their victims were mentioned, and I'm assuming that the former would include the latter. Any other types of examples to possibly include in an expanded definition?

Yarding is a free action, so I don't think it needs to be included.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 22nd 2022 at 1:13:49 PM

Hmmm, I realize now that expanding to all opposing sides relationships will probably turn this into a duplicate of Dating Catwoman, or, at the least, a very similar concept.

Taking into account what Amonious said earlier, maybe we can tweak this trope into some sort of Red Flag Attraction knid of thing? That is going off of offsite definition of the trope, which won't even matter should this be renamed.

I haven't voted on anything yet.

I'm pretty sure that option would make it a supertrope to Dating Catwoman. Dating Catwoman is specifically for when the protagonist falls in love with one of their enemies, while expanding Fatal Attraction (which will probably be renamed) to include anyone on opposing sides would not only allow heroic characters other than the main character falling in love with a villain, but also examples where the two sides oppose each other in ways other than heroes opposing villains (including, but not limited to, opposing sides with Grey-and-Gray Morality, or even opposing sides who are both heroic, but oppose each other for some reason).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 23rd 2022 at 6:12:29 AM

If we expand to include would-be enemies and rename, how does Opponents Attract (a play on Opposites Attract) sound as a name?

So the expand definition is basically Foe Romance Subtext that is actually text?

I suppose that is one way to look at it.

Foe Romance Subtext identifies Dating Catwoman as the appropriate trope for when the subtext becomes text, and I'm not sure there's a point in restricting it to a relationship between the protagonist and a villain. (There are already examples on the page involving supporting characters.)

The description of Dating Catwoman makes it sound like it doesn't include supporting characters, though it's possible that the description just needs some work from the Trope Description Improvement Drive.

Expanding any of the previously mentioned instead of this one sounds like a better choice, but I'm not sure if those would need own threads and if it's rather late to bring it up.

I voted yes to Rename (and Disambiguate previous title) and yes to Expand to include attraction between criminals and victims.

I don't think the psychological definition of "fatal attraction" used by Wikipedia is useful here here, where readers are more likely to understand pop cultural references.

I think we can call since it's been 3 days.

One that I had in my OP was expanding to any government/criminal. So instead of just detective/criminal or criminal/victim it would be any LEO.

Also, keeping the seduction/manipulation requirement. Yay or nay?

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of "Expand the definition to include any government official or law enforcement official (rather than just detectives) being in a relationship with a criminal". I didn't upvote or downvote the other option, because I'm not sure if it'd be mutually exclusive with the first one.