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 Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:28 am
[This was not written by me all credit goes to mrs. giggles my fav. romance blogger]
This is a celebration of bad boys in romance. No, I'm not talking about those wimps - you know, those whitewashed fake rakes whose problems can be blamed on their mothers or fathers. In fact, I will probably go off-topic and talk about bad boys on TV as well, but this is all about the bad boys. But if you're the kind of readers who insist that your characters be "moral" and "virtuous" like a moral textbook, you are probably a fan of that wimp Spike on Buffy (you know, the one with a chip and now has a soul so let's forget he's a vampire, he's Buffy's soulmate so now let's give him a free pass on all his previous sins, no better still, let's rewrite his past and turns him into Angel Part II!) and you will probably never get what I'm saying.
Anyway, yes, this is a celebration of bad boys. Let's start a definition for bad boys, a manifesto if you will, so that we can separate the fake female-cats (Spike, Angel, and 8 out of 10 rakes in romance heroes) from the pure gold.
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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:30 am
The Bad Boy Manifesto
1. Bad boys have an unhealthy obsession around the heroine. The attraction can be physical, visceral, Oedipal, or a combination of all three, but the heroine is the catalyst to our hero's redemption.
2. Bad boys do not evade responsibilities for their actions. Their sins may be as black as the deepest reaches in a black hole, but in the end they face up to their sins, admit their culpability, and feel remorse. Bad boys don't blame their parents, exes, or genetics for their flaws. They embody their flaws, heck, they are flawed.
3. Bad boys do not instantly become redeemed by the end. They will probably never be redeemed completely (Spike, are you listening, you wimp?) but they are better people because of love. Any instantly redeemed bad boys are fakes and deserve to be put down immediately for being a pain in the butt.
4. Bad boys do not hesitate to sacrifice all or kill or hurt or injure or steal for their heroines. They may get annoying pangs of conscience, but they will never let those annoying morals get in the way of true love. That's why they are obsessed, bad, mad boys. Accept no less, any less is poor imitation and again should be shot down at sight. (Spike, die!)
5. Bad boys do not follow rules, they bend the rules for the heroine. But for the heroine, they will try to follow the rules. By God, they'll try - until she is threatened and they go all territorial and possessive and superheroic, that is.
6. Bad boys may feel sorry for themselves, but they will never let this consume their life. They don't whine that they are misunderstood, because they are real men who have the balls to own up to their sins.
7. Bad boys are intelligent men. They have dark, self-effacing wit and a macabre sense of humor. Some can even laugh at their own sterile void of a life. They do not do stupid things like consorting with evil mistresses only to fall for bluestockings, claiming only to seduce non-virgins (men like these are fake misogynist morons and should be sacrificed to Pele), or jump into hasty conclusions and big misunderstandings.
8. Bad boys generally feel unworthy of the heroine's love. But while they may hesitate to make the first move, once the heroine has shown signs of reciprocating, by God they will not let go of their chance of redemption. They want her love so badly that they will break down the Pearly Gates and knock down St Peters himself to have her love. Bad boys don't act like a jerk to drive her away conveniently after the love scene or whine that they are unworthy, misunderstood guilt-ridden idiots. If they feel guilty, they keep it to themselves instead of telling the whole world.
9. Bad boys can be possessive, territorial, and stalker-ish, but this is the golden rule: they will never harm the heroine, and they will prove this by gesture and words. The threat on the heroine's life is nonexistent because bad boys know that she is the center of their pathetic existence and hurting her will be tantamount to destroying the only good and worthy person in their lives. Bad boys will cut off their own heads before even saying anything hurtful to the heroine.
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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:32 am
Some Reasons For Readers To Love A Bad Boy
1. Power trip: like I said above, what's sexier than having a lethal, dangerous man emotionally dependent and devoted to you? Note that I'm not talking about turning him into an outright zombie. Bad boys in love can still think for themselves (remember, they are intelligent), but now that they are in love, they put her on equal priority with his own self. He will kill or die for her, and he will change his own ways and world to accommodate hers. Now that's heady victory.
2. The illusion of irrevocable fidelity: If he's so obsessed about her that he changes all his life for her, chances are he won't wake up one day and realize that her boobs are sagging. He won't fall for that twenty-year old secretary at his office. Because a bad boy falls for her inside, ie he sees something so beautiful inside her that he is drawn to it so badly, chances are he will remain devoted to the bitter end. See also: Power trip.
3. The beast inside: Your mother told you to stay away from them. Your grandmother related cautionary tales of unwed mothers dying on the street because they lifted their skirts for such men. Your father swore he would disown you if you even look at them. How nice to see that they are wrong, at least in romance novels. Besides, bad boys are vicarious ways for us to break the rules. We become Bonnie to their Clyde. In one glorious moment, we raise our middle finger to society, their bloody rules that favor the privileged and keep the hoi palloi down, in that moment, we were true heroes in our own mind. In that moment, we aren't living a bloody Mary Balogh novel where we women demurely lower our eyes and turn down pretty dresses even when we are living in abject poverty because oh, it is not "independent, feminine, virtuous", etc, no, we are instead wearing glittering diamonds bought from the drug money we happened to stumble across one dark evening, we break into the bank that has laid us off early this morning, take all the money, and live like glitteratis in New Mexico. Because hell, we really are independent and feminine that way, and he loves us more for that.
Readers who love bad boys are not looking for codependent, abusive relationships in real life. We know how to separate reality from fiction, and while we live moral lives, we are sensible enough to indulge our darker viscera without any insecurity-tinged hang-ups. We know that it's all about power: having a bad boy devoted to us is the ultimate triumph of the battle of the sexes, and no, we readers have dated and slept with and broken up with our share of creeps so we know these bad boys probably don't exist in real life. If they are, we are not looking. Thanks for worrying about our morals, now bug off. Go back to petitioning for the banning of Harry Potter books and leave us be.
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Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:34 pm
I think the bad boy description you gave is too harsh on the Spikes of this world. If he didn't have that stupid chip he would have eaten Buffy a long time ago. Here again personal preferences on who would be a bad boy. Everyone sees things differently from each other. Otherwise what is the point of debate.
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Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:54 pm
The Dark hunters are the badest of the bad!!!!!
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Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:29 pm
Fallen BOV The Dark hunters are the badest of the bad!!!!! dark hunters are the definition of a bad boy ^^. Have you thought about reading the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward?
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Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:32 pm
No didn't know about it. Dark hunters still rule.
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 8:48 pm
I do love the those dark hunters
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