Vampires or weres, or whatever flavor supernatural being. It seems like there are a lot of books and movies where our heroine is in love with the weakest possible vampire.
I decided to see if Twilight was as bad as people say (it was) and for the life of me I can’t figure out what about personality-free Edward was supposed to be so overwhelmingly attractive to Bella. She got hurt because he got her involved in his stuff, and wasn’t capable of protecting her.
And then there’s Bill the Vampire in the Sookie Stackhouse books. Bill okay, but he’s not nearly as powerful as Eric, and Eric seems to me (4.25 books in) to actually like her more than Bill does. Yet she seems to prefer Bill, the moody temperamental, secretive one who has gotten her put into the hospital on his account more than once.
And remember Richard the werewolf from the Anita Blake books? He’s a big, brooding wuss. But Anita loved him to pieces. The vampire wasn’t great either but at least you didn’t imagine emo music in the background during his dialogue. (I liked Edward, the bounty hunter, but clearly I’m in the minority.)
It seems like the protagonists go for the declawed/defanged version of vampires and werewolves on a regular basis. I thought the whole point of them dating one was because of the danger, and mostly these women are in danger of getting hurt when they pick a suitor who puts them into harm’s way and fails to protect them as promised. Any idea why?
Is the Nice Guy/Bad Boy metaphor too obvious? In popular culture (and arguably in real life) women want men who are Bad Boys, but who don’t hurt them too much. To know that you’re so special and wonderful that you’ve tamed the Beast Within and whatnot.
And, yeah, selection bias. It’s not a romance if you get eaten before the second act.
Yeah, I’ll second the Bad Boy Who Doesn’t Hurt You Too Much theory. The wussiest of the monster class is usually still bad enough by normal human standards.
Because they’re pretty. Pick up a Teen Beat-style mag– women, at least younger women, love ‘wussy’-looking guys as much as they love practicing kissing at all-girls’ camp.
I can answer this from my perspective of watching my daughter.
She loves vampires and werewolves…adores the Twilight series etc etc.
However, when I try to introduce her to ‘real’ (i.e more gritty vampires and werewolves) she rejects them.
I think what is going on is she loves the idea of vampires and werewolves that only puts token emphasis on the bad stuff of being a vampire or werewolf. Therefore, she goes for the wimpy hunks that don’t do that bad stuff. Kind of like a safe bad boy.
I find it weird. Vampires and werewolves have really gotten ‘sissified’ over the years.
