( continues...) fantasies.

How do you feel about monsters like these? Do you want to see fictional vampires and werewolves and the like with more teeth, or less? What kind of hero couldn’t be redeemed, in your opinion?"

As for the game, there are variations on a theme. The one we played was called "Caboose." It was basically an excuse to kiss as many people as you could, as often as you could. The longer the train, the more kissing! Also, you needed a pretty darn big closet for it, let me tell you.

Amy, I like your article. I think I'm not attracted to romance novels with vampires, etc. because they have to demonster the monster in order for it to work. The only one of those authors I've read is MaryJanice Davidson and I enjoy them for the humor, not necessarily her monsters. I do like fantasy novels where the protagonist (not necessarily hero or anti-hero) is more on the monsterous side. A little side order of romance thrown in is fine, it works there.

Amy, as a column, I think it works. A couple of points, not necessarily re column:

I don't do crit, as I have often and loudly noted, but I do do history. And while late 19th-early 20th century is off my period by a good four hundred years, I've always felt strongly that Stoker's Dracula - which, BTW, I adore - has a large deep element of the Victorian terror of female sexuality. So Mina Harker always hit me as Stoker's faux liberated woman of the time; she knew her train timetables but if you let her get penetrated by someone other than the adoring husband, look out. And Lucy Westenra always struck me as the Little Girl Lost. She - why, holy frickin G-spot, Batman, she LIKED being penetrated! Orgasm terror on the part of the boys - who, understandably after 2000 years of viewing women as deprived because they didn't have cocks, suddenly found themselves confronting vaginas carrying placards and wanting to vote and, worst of all, getting off.

And I look at Angel - especially Buffy and Angel together, since I never bought Buffy-Spike for one second - and there, right there for my own personal delectation, is - what? Why, more of the "sex is bad! Girl have orgasm now!" Victorian anti-feminist ethic. Basically, if he fucks the girl he loves, what happens? He loses his soul, she loses what she loves.

I don't know. I'm rambling here, and depressing myself. But your column spurred me to thinking, and I'd say that means the column does what it's supposed to do.

Juicy thoughts, Deb. I like your brain. That particular Buffy/Angel thing never hit me until you said it, and it is a bit depressing, because you map that whole Victorian sex-is-bad thing onto it perfectly.

And, yeah, as long as the column doesn't read like the ramblings of a cranky, hungry, needing-sleeping woman that makes no sense, it's good. And a second yeah, to it making you think be the purpose, at least partly.

I like it, Amy, and it does sum up neatly why I tend to be "meh" about paranormal romance.

And, yeah, as long as the column doesn't read like the ramblings of a cranky, hungry, needing-sleeping woman that makes no sense, it's good. And a second yeah, to it making you think be the purpose, at least partly.

Then I think you're good to go.

Yay.

And thanks for the reads, everyone.

it does sum up neatly why I tend to be "meh" about paranormal romance

I want them way darker than they ever are. Vampires who don't bite, never have, who are all soul-having and dripping with guilt over something they never even did? Does *not* work for me.

Very good column, Amy, despite the fact that Deb is right. For that matter, the fact that chipped Spike could hurt Buffy would map quite well to the vamp or victim mentality re: women's sexuality.

I like the hero dark, but sometimes I like the heroine dark and those are even harder to find.

those are even harder to find

Well, yeah, because the heroine being dark means she Enjoys Sex and Therefore Must DIE.

She can't possibly be the heroine if she enjoy giving a werewolf the occasional blow job, surely?

That's why it was fun to make Munch a vampire(not intending to pull the conversation completely in the fic ditch, but...) not only was he born into a tradition that's not terribly concerned with an afterlife...he is by profession and politics a very skeptical man. It was interesting to write about somebody losing his soul when he wasn't sure he ever had it. And he got a huge laugh out of anybody's first time being soul-altering. "...and after the third time, it's actually good, instead of just saying it is..."