Dating the Monsters
Why It Takes a Vampire or a Wereguy to Win the Heart of the Modern It Girl
L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER
Time was when the Romance section of the bookstore was a safe and cozy retreat from all things unfrivolous. Sure, there might be an occasional gothic or mystery romance with a terrifying moment or two, but one could basically rely on the fact that any book you took off the shelves would be like eating spun sugar. Going to buy a romance novel was like visiting the confectionary section of a bakery.
Not anymore! Where once dwelt only roses and Almack’s, now live vampires, demons, werewolves, Greek gods, and yes, even robots. Though, most of all, it is vampires. And not all these books are sugar sweet, either. It’s like heading down to the confectionary and finding yourself in hot spicy foods instead!
By now, you are probably asking yourself: How did this happen, and what does it have to do with Anita Blake?
Buffy, Anita Blake, and the Paranormal Romance Invasion
It started on television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was Laurell K. Hamilton and Anita Blake who brought stories of girls and monsters to the world of popular books. Though paranormal romance is now a booming business, Anita Blake still leads the way, a giant striding amongst her younger sisters. Anita both kills the monsters and dates them. It’s like having your cake and shooting it, too.
The question naturally arises: Why monsters? What is it about vampires and werewolves—once only the stuff of horror stories—that makes them the ideal modern romantic hero? To find the answer, we must first examine the age-old war between culture and drama.
The Needs of Culture Vs. the Needs of Drama
Throughout history, a tug of war has existed between the desire to use stories to teach and the desire for them to entertain. At times, such as the Middle Ages with its passion plays, teaching has won out completely. Other times, such as Shakespeare’s age, entertainment triumphed. (It is amusing to look back and recall that Shakespeare’s plays, which so many children dread reading in English class today, were written as pure entertainment for the masses!)
The desire to use stories to teach, I shall call for the purpose of this essay “the needs of culture.” Proponents of this idea hope to use the medium of entertainment to lead people to make the choices necessary for a moral, law abiding society. Such societies are great to live in—not fearing that you are going to be carjacked or molested really makes a person’s day. And if we could make our children truthful, upright, and brave through examples in literature, that would be a very gratifying indeed!
The problem is that, most of the time, the more pleasant a culture is to live in, the less interesting it is to read about. A really fine writer can make anything interesting, but few writers achieve this pinnacle of brilliance. It takes a superb writer to make the process of painting a landscape interesting to an outsider. It only takes a writer of ordinary skill to bring excitement to a chase scene with a thief and a company assassin on ski mobiles in the midst of the Winter Olympics.
In our entertainment today, the needs of drama often outweigh the needs of culture. We would like to teach our children to be peaceful and chaste, but violence and sex sell. They draw readers. But this does not keep the guardians of culture from criticizing our entertainment when it falls short of the demands of culture.
So What Are the Needs of Culture?
What are the values those who favor improving the culture wish to put across? Currently, they fall into two categories: traditional cultural values and modern cultural values.
Traditional culture covers the kind of thing listed in the Ten Commandments or the Boy Scouts’ pledge. It wants people to be honest, upright, brave, clean, etc. The needs of traditional culture require that good guys be upright, bad guys always get their comeuppance, and the line between the two remains crisply defined.
Modern culture, too, has needs, things it wants drama to portray as good and to encourage in its audience. This desire is so prevalent in our society that it has its own name: political correctness. Races must get along. All people, regardless of rank or birth, must be treated as equals. The old taboos are to be laid to rest; no one needs them anymore. Nobility and grandeur are to be sneered at, and women must be the equal of men.
What About the Needs of Drama?
The needs of drama are quite different from those of culture. They are ruled by the desire to entertain. Whatever enthralls the audience most, that is what drama requires. Unfortunately for those who would use stories to teach cultural mores, what makes a story entertaining is often directly at odds with what is good or virtuous or politically correct.
Drama is about conflict. It is about breaking taboos, the more shocking the better! Thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics, adulterers—all the things that traditional culture does not wish to glamorize—make for entrancing drama. But it is not just traditional culture that gets trampled by the needs of drama. Bigotry, class struggles, and inequality among the sexes also make for excellent storytelling.
Are the people who fear the effect of drama on society starting at shadows? Perhaps not. Shock value is temporary. The moment you have seen a few stories that violate a particular taboo, that tension becomes old hat. Nobody cares anymore. There is no sense of surprise. People do not care if they see the same thing in another movie. They start thinking of that particular behavior as normal, or at least as a part of reality that must be endured.
So those who wish they could guard culture by controlling drama do have a strong argument on their side. But they cannot change the facts: a story that explores boundaries and breaks taboos is often a better story than one that does not.
Of course, these categories are only generalizations. The same story can serve both forces at different times or support some cultural values while chipping away at others. For the sake of simplicity, however, they will be discussed here as if they are distinct categories.
Love’s Savage Fury
When I was younger, I was too embarrassed to admit that I read romances. I used to hide them under other books or read them only when I was entirely alone. After all, women were the equals of men; that meant we should act like men in all ways, right? Indulging in any feminine behavior was frowned upon, and what was more feminine than reading about Vikings carrying off swooning maidens? No modern woman would allow herself to be treated in such a fashion! So why would she encourage the degradation of her sisters by buying books that glorified such behavior?
As I got older—and learned that a higher percentage of romances are sold each year than any other type of book—I decided I should not be ashamed. I should stand up for what I enjoyed—even if it was curling up by the fire and letting myself be swept away by the trials of love. So I came out of the romance closet (which is pink inside and hung with lace and portraits of Fabio. That alone was motivation to get me out of there. Never really been a Fabio fan. Had I had my way, I would have decorated the place with posters of Adrian Paul.).
But what is romance? What makes a romance reader sigh and snuggle down among the pillows on her love seat or sit hugging a box of tissues as she reads, tears running down her cheeks? Or, more to the point, what is a reader looking for when she stops by for a taste of spun sugar or even hot spice?
First and foremost, she is looking to be swept away, to feel that wonderful tingle of feminine emotion as Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs, as Elizabeth realizes that she loves Darcy, as Buffy falls for Angel, as Anita finally chooses between Richard and Jean-Claude. There is a reason that romances have titles such as Savage Passion and Love’s Savage Fury. That heady tingly-girly feeling that sweeps away the reader requires two things: obstacles that give the couple time to build up sexual tension before being brought together and an exaggeration of the masculine and feminine qualities—the dominant and authoritative vs. the graceful and nurturing.
Or in other words, taboos and inequality between the sexes.
Taboo or Not Taboo
Of all genres, none relies upon taboos as heavily as romance. The romance—a.k.a. the story of girl meets boy, boy chases girl, girl gets boy—requires obstacles to keep our heroine from snagging her man right away. Taboos—cultural reasons why the two should not be together—are among the most compelling.
Commoners cannot marry noblemen. Montagues are forbidden to marry Capulets. Good devout children are forbidden to marry outside their religion, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Hindu. Harem girls cannot fall in love—with anyone! Some of the best romances, and the best novels altogether, are about lovers who cross these boundaries, whose love bridges the taboo gap.
It is here, in the land of taboos, that the needs of modern culture and the needs of romance clash most drastically.
Modern culture does not like old-fashioned taboos. It frowns upon them and removes them from society. The old taboos that kept men and women apart are a thing of the past. Nowadays, nothing except inclination stops partners from jumping directly into bed the first instance they meet.
Socially, there is much to praise about this lack of false obstacles; however, free access to the opposite sex is the death knell of romance— or at least of romantic drama. This is one reason that historical romances are so popular. Romances set in times when taboos governed how men and women could interact, when they could see each other, and whether they could snatch a few moments alone come automatically primed with all the necessary ingredients for tension and conflict.
All Is Fair in Love and War
So, what exactly causes this tingly-girly feeling? What creates a sense of romance? Romance comes from the struggle of two lovers to come together—but not just any struggle with any outcome. There is a set of principles by which the romance world operates. They are the three unspoken promises that draw the story along.
The first is: love conquers all. It does not matter what promises are broken or what sins are committed because the reader knows in her heart that love will set everything aright in the end. The very laws of the universe will rearrange fate to reunite the lovers. Their missteps will turn out to be justified, and all crimes will be excused when love triumphs over all.
The second is: true love pierces all illusions. No matter how wild or unkempt the man, no matter how dowdy the girl, the reader knows that their true love, the one person for whom they are meant, will pierce this false veil and see their true self shining beneath. The heroine can spot the prince where the rest of the world sees only a monster. The hero can see the pearl of great price for which he will, if need be, sell all that he has, where eyes not made perfect by love see merely another pretty face.
The third unspoken promise is: happily ever after. No matter how dire events may seem, we know that, within the pages of these books, all our hopes will come true. By the last page, we will have won our way to the world of happy marriages, where everyone is filled with joy and has bundles and bundles of children.
Fundamentally, romance is about hope.
No Sissy Men Need Apply
The art of writing a good romance is the art of creating in your reader a rush of the most feminine emotions, the ones that make us weep, catch our breath, and clasp our hands with joy. To do this, the story needs to present a feminine character confronting stark masculinity. Merely the ordinary man, the nice man, is not enough. The romantic hero must have exaggerated masculine qualities so as to create the illusion that he is a cut above those around him in some specific and distinctly masculine way.
Arrogance, violence, brusqueness, bull-headedness—all the qualities modern culture abhors—are the qualities that give the impression of masculinity in a story. Why? Because these qualities seem so alien to most women. The very fact that the hero’s behavior is in contrast with the feminine and the ordinary emphasizes his masculinity—so long as he also has definite recognizable virtues to balance them out. The more uncivilized and masculine the hero, the more successful the romance—look at the wild, unruly Rhett Butler as opposed to the gentle, mannerly Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett might love Ashley, but Rhett is the one who captures the reader’s heart! The more the man does not do what society expects, the more he exhibits unbridled masculinity, the sexier he seems on paper.
In romances, this boils down to the two archetypical romantic hero types: the playboy and the recluse. The first, the Rhett Butler type—or maybe we should call it the Jean-Claude type—has had so many women that he is immune to being affected by any particular one, until the right girl comes along and catches his heart. The second, the Darcy type, is immune to feminine appeal all together, living a thoroughly masculine, bachelor existence, until the heroine arrives and shatters his stately world.
Because the premise of all romance is, of course, that beauty tames the beast—that this woman, the one right woman, can rein in those very qualities that make the hero more of a man than those around him. The more exaggerated the hero’s unsociable masculine qualities in the beginning of the story, the more of a victory achieved by the heroine.
Of Lords and Pirate Captains
If going all tingly-girly requires manly heroes, how does romance achieve this manliness? An easy way is to make him literally more powerful than the heroine. Remember, romance is about the drama of romantic love, not a paean to the modern idea of equality among the sexes. Oh, the heroine can be spunky! She can take no gruff from no man. But romance works best if she is the social inferior of the hero, when she is at a disadvantage.
This social inferiority allows her pursuer to put pressure on her, to insist that she yield to his demands, and all those yummy things that make romances romantic. It also makes her final victory all the more noteworthy. If a powerful princess wins the heart of a nobleman, no one is surprised. If the younger daughter of an overlooked squire rises from obscurity to transform the hero and win herself a duchy, her accomplishment is far more triumphant.
In historical romances, it is easy to put the hero in a position of power compared to the girl. Historical romance heroes are nearly always lords, highwaymen (who are usually lords in disguise), pirates (who are sometimes lords in disguise), cowboys, Vikings, or Indian braves (Indian braves, mind you—which illustrates another clash between the needs of modern culture and the needs of drama. No young woman is filled with feminine thrills at the thought of a being carried off by a Native American. But an Indian!).
Even in present day romances, the men are often lawyers, doctors, and businessmen who own the lien on Pa’s farm, or cowboys, artists, and gamblers—all professions that are thought to be either powerful or cool. However, contemporary romances seldom have the sparkle of their historical cousins. In our modern culture, men and women are basically equal, and there are very few taboos keeping them apart. When it comes to modern day, it is a dry desert out there for romance writers!
Behold the Super Girl!
Not all stories that serve the purpose of culture are bad. One of the tenets of our modern world is that women can excel at everything, and this concept can be great fun. What modern woman has not wished she had the power to kick butt like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or fly like Supergirl? Who has not wished to see a female character who overthrows the inequalities of the earlier ages?
As a child, I scoured the books available but could find few examples of competent women with spunk—female characters who had it together, got stuff done, and were not intimidated by life. Lessa of Pern stands out as the single exception. Apparently, I was not alone in this desire, because today’s audiences have welcomed this golden age of butt-kicking heroines with great relish.
Anita Blake is exactly the kind of character I wished to read about when I was in high school. Particularly Anita as she appeared in the early books, when she was chaste and concerned with her integrity. I loved this! So few characters have integrity these days or refuse to sleep around. It was tremendously refreshing. However, like many modern women, Anita was a character who seemed too large—in the “larger than life” sense—for the men of her age. The ordinary humans she worked with were too weak, too slow to keep up with her.
And here finally, we have the fundamental conflict between modern culture and drama. Culture demanded a heroine who is fierce, powerful, and spunky, who lives in a world without taboos where she can do exactly as she pleases. But the needs of drama, the laws that govern what makes a story romantic, require something else entirely: a superior male who lives in a world where taboos separate the heroine from the object of her desire.
Enter the Monster
Enter the paranormal man. He is dark. He is powerful. He is sexy. And he has taboos galore! He is so powerful, he could kill you with a kiss—if he does not hold himself back. As to taboos . . . well, he is supernatural. This opens the way for the author to invent as many taboos as she pleases: he cannot face the sunlight, cannot come out on the full moon, cannot talk to mortals, cannot this, cannot that, and cannot the other!
A paranormal man, a creature with supernatural powers, is automatically the social superior of any ordinary human in the mind of the reader. True, vampires and werewolves are often outcasts in society, but the moment a superhuman is introduced in a story, fans begin to lose interest in the mundane. They want to find out what is going on in the elite supernatural community.
By turning the romantic hero into a supernatural being, one can have both the glories of a competent powerful heroine, and the taboos and inequalities necessary for a satisfying romance.
When paranormal romances first hit the bookshelves, they came in all flavors: Greek gods and robots wooed their maidens beside their darker counterparts. Now, only a few years later, the darker counterparts, the vampire and the werewolf, have proven to be the breakout stars. Every third book in the romance stacks seems to have blood dripping on its roses.
But why are monsters—vampires, werewolves, demons, and the like—so much more popular as romantic heroes than gods, fairies, and—okay, I can see why robots did not really take off—other less horrific creatures?
Because violence is masculine. The more violent the hero, and the more he is ravaged by desires he cannot control—the desire for blood, the uncontrollable compulsion to turn into a wolf under the full moon—the more excuse for the hero to allow his passions to run away with him, and the greater the heroine’s victory when she ultimately tames him!
Anita in Love
Which brings us back to Anita Blake and her many monster loves.
Nearly everyone I know who reads paranormal romances started with Anita Blake. Some of them read the early Anita books and now look elsewhere for stories that are more squarely in the romance genre. Others still enjoy Anita, but have also branched out, looking for similar types of titles in the romance and fantasy sections of their local bookstore.
In the early Anita books, the romance sizzles! All the elements are present for the ultimate feminine thrill: A chaste heroine. A powerful yet sensuous Master of men and monsters who will stop at nothing to get the girl. A gentler, more thoughtful man who has all the qualities a girl should desire and yet lacks the fascination and edge of the first man. And keeping them apart? Taboos galore!
Jean-Claude cannot come out during the day. He cannot be seen as weak in front of his people. Richard cannot let the general community know he is a werewolf if he wishes to keep his teaching job. Meanwhile, the other wolves want to force him to live up to their codes, which include yet more restrictions on how he should act and comport himself.
It’s ideal! Romantic heaven!
A brief word on the difference between the early and later Anita books: One important aspect of traditional romance is the illusion that the heroine has a true love, that she is planning to pick one of her suitors and give the rest of them the boot. Once the character relinquishes this goal and entertains the notion of keeping many men around on a permanent basis, the story becomes something other than a romance. (I’m not sure what that is, but the Japanese have a genre for stories where a guy lives with a huge group of pretty women whom he cannot seem to choose between. They call them “harem anime.”)
The Hero of Culture Vs. the Hero of Drama
The moment when Anita finally chooses one of the two suitors who have been wooing her for a number of books is one of the most satisfying scenes in romancedom. We readers had waited so long! Whether the guy Anita chose was the one we preferred or not, having her make her choice was like leaping into a cold, crashing wave after running along the beach for a long time on a very hot day.
And yet, the question arises, did Anita make the right choice? Could she have chosen the other man? And how do the needs of culture and drama figure into her decision?
Jean-Claude is a perfect example of the dramatic romantic hero. He is the Master of the City, with all manner of minions at his beck and call, deadly as sin, and so sexy that grown women lean languidly against walls and sigh whenever his name is mentioned. (My husband can vouch for having seen the mere mention of Jean-Claude have this effect on any number of women.)
Jean-Claude is the ultimate playboy. He glides through life with his shirt open, surrounded by an aura of sensuality, using everything around him for his own pleasure and being touched by nothing. His status is increased by the fact that he is desired by everything that moves: men, women, dogs (well, wolves). Tricycles would lust after Jean-Claude if they could move of their own accord. And he is monstrous. He is callous. He kills. He drinks blood. He does not obey the dictates of society nor care for the opinions of others.
Nor is he thoroughly immoral—for that would not be romantic. He has his own code he struggles to live up to, related to his position and his responsibility to the people under his protection. This tension between his wickedness and his decent streak makes him all the more appealing.
Richard is a different kind of hero. He epitomizes modern culture’s notion of the ideal man: good-looking, understanding, a good listener. But of course Richard isn’t without an edge, and that’s part of his appeal. He turns into a wolf once a month and pushes other wolf-boys around. That, and the fact that the local wolf pack thinks he belongs to them, creates all kinds of havoc with his dating life.
What more could a girl desire?
Face it, if Anita were our girlfriend in real life, we all know which guy we would be rooting for—the kind, thoughtful, easy-going man who loves children! He is every parent’s dream—well, except for the werewolf thing, but we can see past that. He is the kind of man you want your friend to marry. Someone who will make her happy, and in Anita’s case, keep her human. Sure, he loses it when the moon is full, but hey, in a few years he’ll be able to take something for that, and his furry problem will be a thing of the past.
But Anita does not live in the real world. She lives in the realm of entertainment, and there, the laws of drama rule. The choice that serves the needs of drama is the one that pushes the envelope, that drives the heroine beyond her comfort zone, that requires more of her—mind, body, and soul—if she is to survive and if love is to triumph. So, with apologies to my dear friend who thinks that the junior high teacher with the silky chestnut hair is the hottest number out there:
Richard Zeeman never had a chance.
Beauty and The Beast Revisited
Romance is, fundamentally, the story of Beauty and the Beast, told and retold a hundred thousand ways. Beauty’s love allows her to see through the Beast’s rough exterior and to transform him into the man he is meant to be. In the past, the hero’s beast-like qualities manifested in his behavior. Modern heroes are no different; they have just shed their semblance of humanity and now appear as the untamed beasts they really are—sharp fangs, furry backsides, and all. The result, however, is still the same. By the end of the story, love has turned them into a prince, and they live happily ever after.
And Anita Blake? The romantics among her fans are still holding out for a happy ending: that, when all is said and done, love will conquer, and Anita will get her man. True, she may chose to permanently walk another path. Her happy ending may not include just one true love—but hey . . . a girl can hope!
L. Jagi Lamplighter is the author of the Prospero’s Daughter series, the first book of which, Prospero Lost, is available. She is also an assistant editor on the Bad Ass Faeries Anthology series. When not writing, she switches to her secret identity as wife and stay-home mom in Centreville, Virginia, where she lives with her dashing husband, author John C. Wright, and their four darling children, Orville, Roland Wilbur, Justinian Oberon, and Pingping.
Marella is a member of my writing group, so she knows that in the early days of writing the Anita Blake series I was adamant that Anita would never have sex on paper, and she certainly wouldn’t have sex with Jean-Claude. I believed what I wrote, that you didn’t have sex with dead guys. I mean, a girl’s got to have standards. Lack of pulse should take someone off your list.
Jean-Claude tried to take over my series, and by book three, Circus of the Damned, I’d decided to kill him off to keep him from doing it. When Anita and I couldn’t do the deed I brought on Richard Zeeman, werewolf, junior high science teacher, and good guy, to date and marry Anita. If I couldn’t kill the vampire off, I’d take him out of the game with monogamy. From the moment I tried to push Anita to go with Richard I lost control of the series. The harder I pushed the more the characters pushed back and it just didn’t work out the way I’d planned.
My plan had been to make every caress, every kiss, so amazing we’d never have to have sex on paper. What I ended up doing was writing myself into a corner. When in book six, The Killing Dance, we finally crossed that barrier, I wanted to do that 1940s pan to the sky. I so did not want to show the dirty deed on paper. But for five books I had been unflinching in showing violence on paper. Now, I’d done it because the book plots usually revolved around a murder and that’s usually violent. I showed the level of violence that was necessary to tell the story. The fact that the violence hadn’t bothered me, but the sex did, made me question my priorities. Sex between two people who cared for each other, and had waited books to have sex, made me squirm. What did that say about me as a person? Well, actually, that I was very American. But the moment I realized it bothered me I had to overcome it. I had to push myself to do the best scene I could do. For Anita, for Jean-Claude, for my readers, for myself, it had to kick major ass.
I don’t know if I’ve ever rewritten a single scene so many times. My friend and artist Paty Cockrun was the person I sent it to for the first reading. She’s been a huge Jean-Claude fan through all the books. She always hated Richard. She made me rewrite the scene with Jean-Claude and Anita in the bathtub two more times. But when I sent it to her the next time, she pronounced it good. I have since signed copies of Killing Dance on the pages where the sex takes place. Fans have their favorite parts and some even have me sign in between the lines of their favorite moment.
Since that first sex scene I have written a lot more of them. Whatever hesitation or squeamishness I had in the beginning is pretty much gone. I’ve read the scenes in public, and there’s no embarrassment on my end. Sex between consenting adults who care for each other is never a bad thing.
Marella makes one other very good point. The English language sucks on vocabulary for sex. We have no good words. My favorite word for describing a sex act isn’t one that normally gets used about heterosexual intercourse. Want to hear it? My favorite word for a sexual act in the English language is: sodomy. There is no word as pretty to describe anything a heterosexual couple would do. (Of course, by some definitions sodomy can happen between heterosexual couples. It’s still the same definition, isn’t it? Well, yes, I think so.) I have been trying to find a pretty word for heterosexual intercourse for years, but, alas, there is nothing half so lyrical in English.
—Laurell
