On Paranormal Romance Heroes, aka Nancy-Lad Vampires
One of my livejournal friends, clowe , discussed in his blog some angsty feelings about what he termed (and I love this moniker) ‘Nancy-lad’ vampires.
Here are my two cents about said vampires and their stories (which I will attempt to make minimally offensive). To begin with, I should say: at some level, most women are suckers. Pun intended. But seriously. I am one of them.
I've tried reading 'regular' romance before, and felt my intelligence was completely assaulted. A human man that perfect, who by his very presence feeds my (and understand that part of the draw for a romance reader is that she gets to pretend she is the heroin of the novel) deepest emotional needs, who comes in a super-humanly good looking package, cannot possibly exist. Men in reality (i.e. in the world I live, and work, and attend classes in), like women in reality, have flaws. Flaws other than poetically packaged things like propensities for melancholy or brash tempers. So, mortal heroes in romance completely bypass my willing suspension of disbelief for lack of verisimilitude.
On the other hand, I am a fantasy reader. Ergo, I will set aside a vast number of presuppositions about almost anything for a well built world so long as the author makes it clear from the get-go that they’re creating a world in some way distinct from the one I live in. It’s part of my contract as a reader with the author.
Hence my delight in Paranormal Romance. Now, in all honesty, I’ve only read these sorts of books by two authors, and one of them leans more heavily toward fantasy than toward romance. But, paranormal romance, in large part because of the nancy-lad heroes, let me have my cake and eat it too.
In a paranormal romance, the whole part where a ‘human’ man, in ‘reality,’ cannot be ‘that perfect’ all evaporates. If the hero is (for example) poetic, gracious, and unequivocally sympathetic to the heroin’s crying bouts, but he’s also a vampire who has been around for well more than one human life span because he’s immortal or nearly so, I can believe it because he’s had ample time to learn all of those things which just wouldn’t concern most of the men who are my peers.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a mysandric gripe about the evanescence of chivalry in modern America. It makes total sense to me that my guy friends are perplexed by crying jags. Crying jags often perplex me too. But I (note the first person here, this doesn’t even apply to all women) am both culturally conditioned and naturally bent toward patient sympathy. My ‘real’ male peers most generally are not.
Then there is the issue of physical form. Now, the specifics of this probably vary rather widely, and I’m not completely sure which books C was referring to (and I’ve not seen Blood and Chocolate). However, my gripe with ‘normal’ romantic heroes about being unrealistically attractive is also a non-issue in PN. In the Twilight series, for example, the vampire hero and his vampire family are all extremely, exquisitely beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that the human heroin takes part of her cue that the hero is not human from his physique. But here’s the great part: the part of my intelligence which would normally be offended by non-farcical comparisons of a protagonist to Adonis has already decided to believe anything the author tells me about said protagonist, because I know that this hero is NOT human! He can be as beautiful as the author wants to make him. I’ve already turned down my ‘realistic description’ radar, and would accept equally that the hero was green or had gills or walked on three legs or all three, because this hero doesn’t exist in a ‘reality’ which is intended to replicate my own.
Now, to C’s particular complaint (and, C, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to really get to this) that these vampire heroes are ‘nancy’ and/or ‘emo.’ This, first of all, is a taste thing. Not all women are all that into skinny, brooding boys. In a vampire however, because they’re already superhuman, a hero can fit the skinny-boy physique and not lose any prowess in most female reader’s minds because we believe he’s strong and speedy because he’s a vampire, not because he’s put in all the hard work it takes to be brawny or fast in ‘reality.’
So that’s why I like Nancy-lad vampire stories. Does it bother me that the plots are formulaic? After a while, it probably would. I’ve not read that many. But with enough clever variation, I imagine I could read quite a few even knowing some of the basic elements about how things would eventually work out. Because, as I said to start with, I am a sucker.
Here are my two cents about said vampires and their stories (which I will attempt to make minimally offensive). To begin with, I should say: at some level, most women are suckers. Pun intended. But seriously. I am one of them.
I've tried reading 'regular' romance before, and felt my intelligence was completely assaulted. A human man that perfect, who by his very presence feeds my (and understand that part of the draw for a romance reader is that she gets to pretend she is the heroin of the novel) deepest emotional needs, who comes in a super-humanly good looking package, cannot possibly exist. Men in reality (i.e. in the world I live, and work, and attend classes in), like women in reality, have flaws. Flaws other than poetically packaged things like propensities for melancholy or brash tempers. So, mortal heroes in romance completely bypass my willing suspension of disbelief for lack of verisimilitude.
On the other hand, I am a fantasy reader. Ergo, I will set aside a vast number of presuppositions about almost anything for a well built world so long as the author makes it clear from the get-go that they’re creating a world in some way distinct from the one I live in. It’s part of my contract as a reader with the author.
Hence my delight in Paranormal Romance. Now, in all honesty, I’ve only read these sorts of books by two authors, and one of them leans more heavily toward fantasy than toward romance. But, paranormal romance, in large part because of the nancy-lad heroes, let me have my cake and eat it too.
In a paranormal romance, the whole part where a ‘human’ man, in ‘reality,’ cannot be ‘that perfect’ all evaporates. If the hero is (for example) poetic, gracious, and unequivocally sympathetic to the heroin’s crying bouts, but he’s also a vampire who has been around for well more than one human life span because he’s immortal or nearly so, I can believe it because he’s had ample time to learn all of those things which just wouldn’t concern most of the men who are my peers.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a mysandric gripe about the evanescence of chivalry in modern America. It makes total sense to me that my guy friends are perplexed by crying jags. Crying jags often perplex me too. But I (note the first person here, this doesn’t even apply to all women) am both culturally conditioned and naturally bent toward patient sympathy. My ‘real’ male peers most generally are not.
Then there is the issue of physical form. Now, the specifics of this probably vary rather widely, and I’m not completely sure which books C was referring to (and I’ve not seen Blood and Chocolate). However, my gripe with ‘normal’ romantic heroes about being unrealistically attractive is also a non-issue in PN. In the Twilight series, for example, the vampire hero and his vampire family are all extremely, exquisitely beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that the human heroin takes part of her cue that the hero is not human from his physique. But here’s the great part: the part of my intelligence which would normally be offended by non-farcical comparisons of a protagonist to Adonis has already decided to believe anything the author tells me about said protagonist, because I know that this hero is NOT human! He can be as beautiful as the author wants to make him. I’ve already turned down my ‘realistic description’ radar, and would accept equally that the hero was green or had gills or walked on three legs or all three, because this hero doesn’t exist in a ‘reality’ which is intended to replicate my own.
Now, to C’s particular complaint (and, C, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to really get to this) that these vampire heroes are ‘nancy’ and/or ‘emo.’ This, first of all, is a taste thing. Not all women are all that into skinny, brooding boys. In a vampire however, because they’re already superhuman, a hero can fit the skinny-boy physique and not lose any prowess in most female reader’s minds because we believe he’s strong and speedy because he’s a vampire, not because he’s put in all the hard work it takes to be brawny or fast in ‘reality.’
So that’s why I like Nancy-lad vampire stories. Does it bother me that the plots are formulaic? After a while, it probably would. I’ve not read that many. But with enough clever variation, I imagine I could read quite a few even knowing some of the basic elements about how things would eventually work out. Because, as I said to start with, I am a sucker.