When the hero isn’t a nice guy.
Some of my favorite romance heroes cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered nice guys.
(notice I say my favorites so you won’t think I’m dissing yours)
Arrogant? Yes.
Hot stuff? Absolutely.
Testosterone laden? Positively oozing from every pore.
Protective and possessive of those they care about? Without question.
Nice guys? Probably not.
This is on my mind for two reasons - reason one: the hero of the book I just finished (oops! Finished Reading!) is a nice guy. He’s a flat out nice guy and he’s sensitive. When I describe him as sensitive, I mean sometimes, well pretty much all the time, he acts, talks and thinks (vis-a-vis internal dialogue) like a woman. In other words, I read him as a female character. From my perspective, at best he’d be a really good guy friend or a brother. Except he’s less protective than a brother because this character is so sensitive. He spends an inordinate amount of time nursing hurt feelings and he keeps giving the heroine space whereas a not so nice guy would think to himself, she doesn’t need space, she needs me. ME. ME. ME. Depending upon the quality of the writing, I’d probably agree. I liked the character, but I sure as hell wouldn’t fantasize about him because that would be exactly like fantasizing about my brother…if I had brother…ewww.
Hey…there is nothing wrong with fantasizing. I don’t only fantasize about romance, I fantasize about hero stories and mythology and scifi - have since I was a little kid. Don’t knock internal fantasy. I think it is the mother/father of creativity, the crucible in which our stories are mixed and melded.
Reason two: I just watched Predators last night - the updated Predator. I really liked it. Nobody is a nice guy. Yet there is a hero, an alpha male who stands head and shoulders above the rest. He’s competent. He’s a survivor. He’s arrogant and has little use for human frailty. He does not suffer pangs of conscience, but neither is he sadistic or cruel. In the end, he does what every romance hero/alpha male does - the right thing, the good thing. At first I thought Adrien Brody was miscast as an unlikeable, not nice, alpha male hero, because I can’t help but remember him in his genius role as Wladyslaw Szpilman in the movie, The Pianist. But he filled some big alpha shoes, and he did it convincingly.
Tomorrow - Why Predators provides a perfect vehicle for the archetype of an Alpha Male, and a few other not-so-nice Alpha Males in romance literature.
