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I'm getting sick of 'love at first sight' crap where the girl is so devastatingly beautiful that the man is absolutely lost. Now in some cases the guy plays it cool and builds a foundation with the girl, like Brooke Burgess or Mr. Rochester, but for others like Romeo or Marius the man is just absolutely lost and is proposing marriage based solely on the fact that the girl has a rather fine visage. Call me a pessimist or a realist, but all that is crap. Anyway, in case you don't believe me, here's a smattering of famous "I loved you from the first moment I saw you" situations.
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Aladin
Cinderella
The Little Mermaid
Brooke Burgess with Dolly (from He Knew He Was Right)
Mr. Stanbury with Nora (from He Knew He Was Right)
Every Bollywood movie ever (specifically Om Shanti Om, Swades, Saawariya)
Colonel Brandon with Marianne (from Sense and Sensibility)
Romeo and Juliet
Cosette and Marius (from Les Mis)
Tamino and Pamina (from The Magic Flute)
Rhett Butler with Scarlett O'Hara (from Gone with the Wind)
Mr. Rochester with Jane Eyre (from Jane Eyre)
Tristan with Isolde
Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn (from Henry VIII)
Henry Tilney with Catherine (from Northanger Abbey--debatable, but come on, she's a moron, it had to be love at first sight or else he would have been completely turned off once she opened her mouth)
And then there's the whole, "Even though I tried to marry someone else, I'm sure I've loved you my whole life" line that men also feed women in literature, probably most notably from the examples below:
Little Dorrit (Oh I'm so glad my being a complete airhead didn't in any way deter you from loving me)
Mansfield Park (That Miss Crawford was just a fling, I REALLY loved you Fanny, my WHOLE life)
Emma (I realized I loved you since you were 12 when Frank Churchill almost stole you away!)
I'm not saying that I don't enjoy some of the above pairings, I just almost roll my eyes out of my head when I get to the "She's so beautiful, it must be love!" parts of these stories, but what are you going to do?
More realistic stories:
You've Got Mail
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
While You Were Sleeping