Stop In the Name of Love!

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j2theld

New member
Since Valentine's Day is nearing, I noticed that like I said in my Smart vs Dumb Main Characters topic that another well known archetype in cartoons today is the love interest which seems to have one popular flavor these days: Crazy Pyscho Love! (Or CPL as I call it)

I say this because it's been a rather increasing trend. For a few examples:

Panini (Chowder)
Isabella Garcia-Shapiro (Phineas and Ferb) (Well...she's not exactly pyshco but she did say something about having grandkids with Phineas...)
Tootie (Fairly Odd Parents)
ETC.

So I was wondering how you guys feel about these types of characters? Love, like , indifferent or hate 'em? Do you feel that these characters can be fleshed out more without being 100% focused on the crush?
 
I’ve always had a soft spot for these types of characters. I just prefer them when they have actual substance to go along with their boundless affection. Panini on Chowder is the perfect example of how this archetype can be handled all sorts of wrong. I thought that the character was downright adorable in her first episode and she quickly became my favorite character, but in each episode, she proved to be a one-trick pony and they never bothered to give her much of a personality. What have we really learned about Panini over the course of these many episodes? Nothing – or at least very little.

I find Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes to be a great example of this archetype being played right. Yes – she is madly in love with Jimmy and has a massive shrine dedicated to him and all sorts of other things that cross the line – but she is also his friend and she has her own life to attend to. She’s not constantly fawning over him every time the two of them are on screen, but the times in which she does fawn over him are more poignant than they would be if expressed during every waking moment. They make it obvious that he is the only thing in the world who could bring her genuine joy – aside from harming others – but they don’t have to bring it up in every single episode.
 
What you said right there. In general, I can't really appreciate the stalker type characters, but adding in a personality beyond their love-crazed emotions tends to rank higher then those who don't. Another example besides Panini (which I have to take for granted; I don't watch Chowder) is Sheldon from My Life as a Teenage Robot; an absolutely shallow portrayal of romance for Jenny whose entire life focuses directly into his obsessive crush on her and...well, pretty much nothing else. I don't even think the series ever justified that Sheldon liked her anything but because she's a robot. If she were human, would she have been in his radar?

This is why characters such as Helga in Hey, Arnold! succeeds so well for me. Yes, she's rude, crude, and downright mean to the football-shaped kid, but it helps balance her feverish love for him and gives it that nice irony that contrasts off her duel personality. Not to mention the series took a grand ol' time exploring her equally demented family life and how frustrated she is with them. True, it's an easy story device that was meant to humanize her so she doesn't come off as some demon, but I personally found it effective.
 
*Points to avatar*

Granted, Whitney's not as... exaggerated as the likes of Helga or Panini are, she's played a bit more straight than comedy shows tend to, but she does shadow/stalk Tony around a lot. Though like other people have mentioned, I can only like that archetype if there's more to them than a stalker joke. While she's shown to really like him, but will brush him off and ignore him if he does something she doesn't like, so she's not some devoted fangirl and has a mind of her own. Plus her liking of him stems from him being the only friend she had growing up in her dad's workplace, and her character development throughout the series reflects that, especially her relationship with her father and her mental breakdown in the end. I like girls who are a love interest, but being the love-interest isn't their defining trait as a character.
 
I have a chance to mention CL, and I'm taking it. :p

Yep, Sissi Delmas from Code Lyoko. Keeps on going after Ulrich after multiple rejections, though it's not really as bad as say, Tootie from FOP. I'd say the most major she's done would be trying to sabotage Ulrich and Yumi, and attempting to seduce Ulrich.
 
The Simpsons have a couple of characters with borderline "stalker with a crush"-elements to them, namely Milhouse (whose object of affection is Lisa) and Moe (whose object of affection is Marge), and i think both of them are usually handled pretty well in those roles.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and then there is of course Smithers with his masive, hidden crush on Burns, which, in it's best moments, can be one of the greatest sources of humor on the entire show.
 
I wonder if the followign characters from Total Drama Island/Action/The Musical could fit in this category:
-Harold? who got a crush on Leshawna although he's not a stalker, writed lots of haiku for Leshawna.
-Cody? who had crush on Gwen,
however in Total Drama Musical, Sierra a new character who might have a crush on Cody, according to the trailer, seems to be closer to this category
 
Sometimes when handled right, I like these characters. :)

I agree with The Huntsman about Panini, she's cute, but she's kind of bland.

One I personally like is Shampoo from Ranma 1/2. She constantly tries to seduce Ranma into marrying her, and she goes as far as trying to kill her 'enemies'. (Love rivals) She's hilarious because of her antics and dialect, which makes her an awesome character. :cool:
 
Like many people, it depends on what is done with the character.

Tootie and Panini are two characters I don't care for. There's just nothing else to them other than obsessively going after their targets of affection. It gets old fast.

Sheldon is a different story. He started like the two above, but during season three there were a few episodes where he was just hanging out with Jenny and Brad with his crush only being mentioned. I started liking him much better during this time.

Cody, as you might have gathered from my avatar, is a character I like. He starts off like the examples above, but backed off when he realized Gwen could be happier with Trent. Heloise, too, is good because her crush creates a bit of a crisis for her. She's evil, but she can't be evil and have Jimmy. It creates a great conflict. And Isabella...well, she's not subtle about it, but she shows her love through loyalty, not clinginess.

So yeah...a big crush is great when it's played right, not when it's the sole focus of someone's character.
 
The Peanuts gang is probably the BEST example of this topic

Charlie Brown wanted the Redhead Girl
Peppermint Patty and Marcie wanted Charlie Brown
Lucy wanted Schroder
Sally wanted Linus
 
Carl from Jimmy Neutron is in love with Judy Neutron/Jimmy's Mom.

Jacobo has a strange love for both Tasumi and Karen Jane Mildred Daring/Agent K from the Replacements.

Daria Morgendorffer is secretly in love with her best friend's brother, but dated her boyfriend.

Princess Clara fell in love with both Foxxy Love and Spanky Ham in Drawn Together.

Meg Griffin fell in love with Joe's son, then the Nudist's son. The Nudist family appeared in the DTV movie at the end, but never appeared again.

Frosta and Castaspella had a crush on He-Man in two She-Ra episodes.

Batman had many loves in his career, including Catwoman and Talia Al Gul. Even Harley Quinn kissed the Dark Knight in Harley's Holiday.
 
To Lord Pumpkin: We're not talking about characters in love with other characters. We're talking about "Crazy Psycho Love" characters. Essistanlly characters who have a crazy psycho crush on another character and would usually do anything to try and get that other character to feel the same way they feel.

For example, there was an episode of Fairly Oddparents where Timmy wished that he and Trixie were the only people in the world so he would have a chance with her. Trixie ended up developing a massive psychotic crush on him (even worse then Tootie) making Timmy have to unwish the wish. Yeah FOP is notoriously bad for those kind of things. Sad part is that every character in the show has been known to have it to some degree. Tootie is just the most obvious example.
 
Bill from King of the Hill can get pretty psycho when he develops a crush on someone. There was the time he dug a hole into the road, just so a jogger he liked could fall in and he would help her up. Then there was the time he never took down his Christmas decorations or took off his Santa suit because a woman was moved that he was making kids happy. Of course, these actions always scare the women away :sweat:
 
To be honest, there was once a time where I placed Tootie on the same level as Helga. I considered the both of them to be dangerous stalkers. (I wasn't shouting from the rooftops, 'Timmy/Trixie forever!', but I wasn't too fond of her.)

Then, it hit me: in spite of how she goes about it, Tootie truly cares about Timmy.

It's weird that people shoot down 'Timmy/Tootie' on the grounds that she's this weirdo stalker. What, Timmy is suddenly this perfect guy who deserves perfection and that he shouldn't dirty his hands with some obsessed girl? He's a jerk and an idiot. He even referred to Tootie as an arch-villain. A girl is willing to throw herself at him (and his innumerable personality flaws) and he shoots her down? That putz better get down on his knees and thank every God there is that a girl like Tootie exists in his life.

On the other hand, I've never liked Helga. Even today, I can't believe that people want to see her with Arnold. She's the pioneer of one of the most annoying of today's cartoon tropes: 'I love you, but not when anyone's looking'. She never received the psychiatric help she so desperately needed. (No, Dr. Bliss does not count; she basically tells Helga, "As long as you're not hurting anyone, I think it's a good way to express yourself." Helga's not hurting herself in any emotional way? Yeah, what cereal box did she fish her psychiatry degree out of?) "Hey Arnold!" had a rich assortment of supporting characters to spin stories about, yet they all fell by the wayside to indulge this utterly annoying subplot. Remarkable. Two more things: a) "You got that right: whatever I say." was the moment I officially lost sympathy for Helga and b) "Married" is fourth-rate fanfiction pathetically masquerading as an episode.

(Forgive the rambling nature of this post. I was thinking about this for a while today and I wanted to get it out while it was still fresh.)
 
Another character who could fit in this category might be Maurecia in Wayside mainly in the episode "Todd falls in love" where she try to get Todd's attention by posting a big Todd and Maurecia poster in the hall or even menaged to get Principal Kidswatter to read one of her cards, however Maurecia show her love to Todd by punching him often.

Edit: I wonder if Inuyasha could be a kind of stalker? In the beginning of the series, he spied sometimes on Kagome like when she works at her homeworks at home....until Kagome brings him his 2 feet back on earth when she yelled "Sit!"
 
Wendy from "South Park" has a crush on Stan.
Then, of course, there is Quagmire from "Family Guy", who is always on the prowl for a woman.
 
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