Bittercon: Are We Not Men - Human Women and Beast-Men in Paranormal Romance

[attackfish]

Paranormal romance is a world in which human women and girls are entranced and overcome by the charms of supernatural, inhuman men. Vampires, werewolves, faeries, demons, and others populate the romantic field for the women of these novels, and seldom does it flow the other way with a human man and a supernatural woman.

The story of a supernatural woman romancing mortal men, as told by male writers portraying women as the other is a venerable and often retold one. But the idea that a woman is othered by men, that she is some sort of strange and unknowable creature tells women that men must be so very different from them, and therefore as hard for them to understand. Therefore, since the beginning of women's writings, women have portrayed men as the strange unknowable.

But is this the only reason the female protagonist of a paranormal romance rarely begins as a supernatural creature? Romance writers presumably expect women and girl readers to identify with the female protagonist, so it must be her male love interest (m/m and f/f romance having different dynamics all together) who is inhuman and serves to introduce her into the magical world he inhabits, a world the reader gets to visit until the story is over, so it's very useful to have an othered male.

One of the largest subsets of paranormal romance is Young Adult or Teen paranormal romance, where entering a supernatural world serves as an obvious metaphor for the first steps into the dating world. Dating is so confusing, so overwhelming, that most of us on some level wish we had a guide. Along with introducing her to the supernatural world, the supernatural boyfriend in a paranormal romance serves as that guide, taking away insecurity, potential pain, and the fear of making a mistake. The fact that if he is a vampire, faerie, demon, angel, etc. he is likely to be much much much older than the heroine (though still appealingly young and sexy) makes for a fairly dubious cultural narrative of an older man who guides and protects a young girl.

It has been discussed elsewhere that fathers and father figures in paranormal romances and urban fantasies tend to be very very good fathers, and mothers are in some way either neglectful or monstrous. The only woman a heroine can rely on is herself. How does this play into the idea of the othered male? Is the genre also othering women from it's female readers, proclaiming them each exceptional women, far above other women, and therefore worthy of their own magical boyfriend?

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I've tended to avoid writing these sort of pairings. Sure, the naive protagonist gives plenty of chances to explain what's going on, but they're too much of a tabula rasa.

At least people have made an active choice to publish my stuff.^[1] Maybe you could put it on par with a good fan-fic. But I look at what I do with my characters, and how I use them, and they're people with a history. They might be in an unanticipated situation, having to do something they're not prepared for, but they're not going to do anything stupid.

At least, not if they can see an alternative.

There are paranormal romances which do some of that. But there's a heck of a risk of turning into a Mary-Sue.


^[1]A character with history can be so interesting. (http://spontoon.rootoon.com/SPwBeL03.html)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's possible to have a not at all naive, and already well developed character being introduced to a magical world, and I'd think they would be more fun, but the tabula rasa effect is probably a feature, not a bug for a lot of readers. They can make her anything they want.

I'm a YA kind of girl, which does mean that there are certain kinds of lack of experience that are expected of heroes and heroines in those works. And sometimes they act stupid, because even smart people sometimes do. What gets me, is why the same pattern persists in a genre doesn't require that pattern.

[marycatelli]

The less naive she is, the more the world will knock her off her feet by showing things are not what they seem.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is true, but also why I think it's less fun. Why can't we take someone who has very rigid worldviews and then shatter them?

It's a useful writing device, I know.