Love Letter

"I write this to you — what more can be said?
What more can I add to that one fact?
For now I know it is in your power
To punish me contemptuously for this act.
But you, keeping for my unhappy lot
Even one drop of sympathy
Will not entirely abandon me."

— Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, "Tatiana's Letter to Onegin"

A Love Confession in written form. When characters aren't brave enough to come out and say they like someone, the accepted way around a direct confrontation is a love letter, usually anonymously left in a shoe locker or prominent area, with a request to meet at a predetermined location. The intent is better known than the identity of the person; the letter is often pink, in cute handwriting, and smells like perfume. Bonus with lipstick marks.

Subtropes

• Affair Letters
  Blackmail using letters exchanged by two lovers having an affair.
• Love Letter Lunacy
  The letter is given to the wrong person, or misinterpreted, or the sender decided they shouldn't have sent it after all after the letter is already sent.
• Obsessive Love Letter
  The recipient is creeped out by the letter due to it being obsessive and over the top.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh: When Yukari and Nyamo were in high school, Nyamo got one of these. What exactly happened remains a Noodle Incident, but Yukari can shut down Nyamo's attempts to say anything embarrassing about her just by saying "Love letter~!" within her earshot.
• Megumi in Cheeky Angel gets love letters from both sexes, as well as her True Companions and Instant Fan Club.
• In D.N.Angel's first chapter, Daisuke gives Risa a love letter, but she turns him down.
• Nagisa in Futari wa Pretty Cure gets unwanted love letters from other girls.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Kaguya gets a love letter in chapter 12. She has no intention of actually meeting the person that wrote it, but she pretends to be interested in order to force Shirogane to confess to her. The writer of the letter is never identified. Chapter 3 of We Want to Talk About Kaguya (which takes place concurrently with chapter 12 of the main series) rules out resident Kaguya fangirl Erika... while at the same time revealing that she has a massive box of letters addressed to Kaguya that she's never sent.
  • The light novel's plot is set in motion when Kaguya receives another letter, presumably from the same student. It's not. Hayasaka took care of the original writer months ago and the current one was actually written by Kaguya herself as part of another one of her schemes to get Shirogane to confess.
• In Kaitou Saint Tail the titular protagonist, a stage-magic using Phantom Thief that steals from thieves to give the loot back to the legitimate owners, has the habit of sending rather romantic warnings to her beloved Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist... who doesn't notice they're barely-veiled love letters until a villain, seeing him calling one a "burglary warning", points out it's a love letter and calls him an idiot. Two of these "burglary warnings" were delivered in the form of lunchboxes Saint Tail prepared with her own hands.
• Tomari from Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl gets love letters from other girls. This is very much to her dismay, even though she does fall in love with her old childhood buddy Hazumu after he changed into a girl.
• My Deer Friend Nokotan: The plot of chapter 3 revolves around Koshi finding a love letter in her locker and Nokotan imploring her to go through with it. It's Subverted, because it turns out the letter is from a gang of delinquents challenging Koshi to a duel, and they made it look like a love letter just to fuck with her.
• Naruto:
  • Sakura gets a love letter from a shinobi from the Rock Village. She politely turns him down, saying that her heart is already taken. In reality, she sadly thinks of Sasuke.
  • One of the early Shippuden endings features a High School AU, and there is a scene where Hinata gives Naruto a love letter.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion: At the end of Asuka's first day of school, her shoe locker is entirely filled with love letters. She gets rather angry and steps on them.
• In Nijigahara Holograph, Maki tries to give Kohta one, but he is still distraught over his perceived failure to stop his classmates from harming the girl he liked and he completely blows Maki off.
• A good part of the plot in Revolutionary Girl Utena would've been quite different if Wakaba hadn't sent Saionji a love letter, if he had not put it on display for everyone to read and mock, and if Wakaba's best friend Utena had not challenged Saionji to a duel to punish him, leading her to "win" Anthy's hand as a result.
• In Sailor Moon, Ami Mizuno does not like love letters - to the point that she gets rashes from touching them.
• Washio Sumi Is a Hero:
  • Sonoko gets a love letter from a girl. Gin initially mistakes it for a challenge and Washio thinks it's a curse.
  • Subverted with Washio. She thinks she's received a love letter, but it's actually an anonymous letter telling that she's nitpicky. Washio proceeds to ritually burn the letter.
• Hazumi in Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito receives love letters from one particular girl whose identity she heartbreakingly fails to figure out.
• Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai: Yugami of all people gets one. The problem is the letter puts him off because it overglorifies his personality and he doesn't even remember the girl that sent it to him.

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman (1987): When Cassie goes through her Wonder Girl fan mail nearly half of the letters are variations of love letters. She sets those in a pile that doesn't get answers unlike letters asking for aid or such.

Fan Works

• Exaggerated in By the Book. Apple becomes obsessed with courting Darling "correctly" (as written in a textbook). She sends Darling several thousand copies of a perfumed and enveloped love letter. There are so many that they spill out of Darling's balcony.
• The Ultimate Evil: When Valerie Payne, the target of Shendu's Villainous Crush, tells him that she wants to fall in love before being married, he takes it as a challenge and makes it a habit to send her love letters. While Valerie doesn't want to admit any feelings for the Demon Sorcerer, she doesn't throw any of the letters away. Shendu states that he thought it fitting to use romanticism in letter writing to woo Valerie because it's becoming a lost art in modern times. He puts in the last letter a magical symbol which Valerie can use to call him, and it possibly saves her life when she's nearly mauled to death.
• Warmth: Yukari and Minamo became friends over a love letter. In high school, Minamo put a love letter in a female student's locker but had second thoughts. Before she could get the letter back, some bullies grabbed it and were about to out her, until Yukari saved Minamo by taking the letter herself.

Film

• Erin's Guide to Kissing Girls: Erin writes a letter to Sydni Hunter in preparation for asking her out to the Sadie Hawkins dance.
• Liberal Arts features a scenario that doesn't have this at first despite the two party's clear chemistry. Jesse and Zibby clicked after meeting during the former's visit at his alma mater. They began writing each other during the film's first Time-Passes Montage, but Zibby eventually falls for Jesse and writes her final letter as an Anguished Declaration of Love.
• Love Letters is about, well, love letters, which cause a create deal of grief between three people.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit has Roger writing a love letter to Jessica. The paper turns out to have Marvin Acme's will written in "disappearing, reappearing ink".

Literature

• In Emma, Robert Martin writes a letter with a marriage proposal to Harriet Smith. The actual letter is not a part of the novel, but it's a short but lovely letter, and even Emma admits it is very well-written, especially for a young farmer (of whom Emma snobbishly assumes that he cannot be educated).
• In Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, Tatiana confesses her love to Onegin in a beautiful letter.
• In Now I Rise, Lada opens a letter expecting it to be from her brother, and is shocked to see it is from Mehmed, her former lover. It's a long poem about her beauty, which she finds annoying as he tried to read and write her poetry when they were together and she always rebuffed him. After the poem, there's a short and businesslike proposition concerning diplomacy and armies. It's rather abrupt, and Lada is unsure whether this means he still loves her or not.
• In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth writes a love letter to his Old Flame Anne Elliot saying "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." He actually writes it while she's standing in the same room, about five feet away, which she realizes while she's reading it later.
• Book 6 of Ranger's Apprentice ends with Will getting a letter from Alyss admitting she loves him. He goes right away to tell her he feels the same.

Music

• Confession Executive Committee ~Love Series~ 's Hina Setoguchi sets out to confess her feelings to her upperclassman Koyuki this way. Because he's returning from figuring out his own crush is getting together with someone else, she unfortunately can't give it to him or tell him the contents of it. Hina lets an "I like you" slip out, but nothing comes of the matter, and both leave unsatisfied.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: In "Poetry Mixup", Stretch Snodgrass had been slipping love poems into Harriet Conklin's lunch. Walter Denton tries to write his own poem. However, Walter instead relies on Mr. Boynton's quotation from Cyrano de Bergerac. Walter gives the note to Harriet... the note in Mr. Boynton's handwriting. Soon, the note is mistakenly passed to Miss Brooks and even on to Mr. Conklin. Hilarity Ensues. The episode was later remade for television, with Stretch Snodgrass exchanged for his brother Bones.

Theater

• In The Rivals, Sir Lucius writes a letter expressing his feelings for Lydia, and enlists her maid to deliver it discreetly; it leads to an ongoing correspondence. What he doesn't learn until the end of the play is that the maid played a prank on him and he's actually been corresponding with Lydia's battleaxe of an aunt.
• Done in song form in 1776, which lifted many of the lines of "Yours, Yours, Yours" — the recurring Distant Duet love song between John Adams and his wife Abigail — whole cloth from the letters the historical figures actually wrote to each other. This being John and Abigail Adams, there's a lot of affectionate snark in there, but Abigail writes plainly at one point of her desire for more loving words from her husband:^note As in real life, Adams was careful in what he wrote to Abigail because he was afraid of his letters getting intercepted, though it is still obvious just how much they love each other.
  Write to me with sentimental effusion
  Let me revel in romantic illusion...

Video Games

• Animal Restaurant: In the terrace movie "Pink Breeze", when Student Samoyed confesses her feelings to Dori, she hands him a letter sealed with a heart-shaped sticker.
• Dragon Age: Origins:
  • You can collect these for a sidequest. The quest-giver wants them as blackmail material over their noble authors. (The letters can be read in the codex and most of them are hilarious.)
  • If Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening is played by importing a Warden who romanced either Zevran or Leliana in Origins, they will receive an affectionate letter from their Love Interest during the course of the DLC.
• In Kindergarten, two missions have characters tasking the protagonist with delivering a love letter to another character, one in the original game and one in the sequel.
  • In the first game, Nugget writes a love poem for Lily. Unfortunately, being a kindergartener, Lily can't read, so she asks Ms. Applegate for help. The teacher obliges... by reading the letter out loud to the entire class.
  • Cindy's letter to Felix in the second game is less humiliating, though Felix does at first assume it's from the protagonist himself and awkwardly tries to turn him down before the protagonist clarifies.
• Love Letters appear as part of the bonus items you can pick up in the Metal Slug series. The very first one you get in the entire series always drops from an attack helicopter Mini-Boss in the first game after you blow it up.
• In Persona 4, the protagonist will receive love letters in his shoe box if he does good at tests, usually containing some useful item or other that a secret admirer has made for you. And if you think it's one of your Love Interests who did it, you're in for a shock later... As the Fortune Social Link reveals, Naoto is also plagued by these on a regular basis ("plagued" because the detective prince has better things to do than play around with romance).
• One cutscene in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future shows the title character receiving such a letter from his college sweetheart Claire.
• Used pretty tragically in Rule of Rose, where Meg's love letter for Diana is not well-received, and the protagonist Jennifer gets to suffer ire from both sides after being unwillingly dragged into the mess.
• The Sims:
  • Sims in The Sims 2 Nightlife expansion can receive a love letter if they went on an "okay" date.
  • The Sims 3: The Seasons expansion introduced the option to write a love letter to another sim. Sims in the active household can also receive love letters.
  • The now closed The Sims Social allowed sims to type out a love letter on a typewriter.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Emil writes one to Genevieve, in the form of a poem, and asks Ivy for help with what similes to include. Depending on the player's choices, Genevieve can either accept or reject the letter. This divergence persists even after the time-skip, affecting where you'll find Emil and some of the relevant dialogue.

Web Comics

• In Cucumber Quest, a letter of this nature turns out to be important to the plot later on - Sir Carrot wants to be Princess Parfait's Knight in Shining Armor, but he's too cowardly to protect her or even fight, which leads to Parfait being imprisoned by the villains. He eventually receives a letter from her (thanks to the Nightmare Knight) and learns how much Parfait loves him despite everything, which gives him the confidence and bravery he needs. Realizing he got her letter, Parfait pours her love and faith into her carrot pendant, allowing Carrot to finally level up into a (literal) Knight in Shining Armor with the ability to use magic.

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