Decided to make a separate post for this, rather than lumping it into the other links post, because I found it really interesting and wanted to talk a little more about it:
this post by Ilona Andrews on the "alphahole" trope in romance (i.e. alpha jerk heroes). It is, I believe, inspired by
this post at Book Smugglers on "why alphaholes are terrible", but the Andrews post is 1000% more interesting to me because it talks about what's appealing about the trope, and why people like it.
What I particularly liked about the Andrews post is this part:
The modern definition of alphahole has evolved, but it does retain some of its primary characteristics. Modern alphahole is generally aware he isn’t a good guy. He is, before all else, competent. He excels at his chosen profession, whether it is making billions, being a Duke, or running a ragtag crew of immortal werewolves trying to guard the world from horrible evil. By extension, alphahole is often rich, because he manages his money well. Alphahole delivers. If he invites you to dinner, you can bet your life that he has made a reservation; if your car breaks down, he will either fix it himself (points for additional competence) or make a mechanic appear nearly instantly out of thin air; if a monster is demolishing downtown, alphahole will run toward it; and if a sick child requires rare medicine that isn’t available at any pharmacy nearby, alphahole will find it. Alphahole has no chill and takes no crap.
... which was food for thought for me, because I think it nailed why I tend to like characters with alpha traits, as long as they have some basic decency to go along with it. I don't usually like characters who are irredeemable bastards and have
no decency or niceness to them -- I like the ones who tend to do the decent thing, most of the time, even if they won't admit that they want to -- and the amount of assholishness I can tolerate is often in direct proportion to the narrative's willingness to acknowledge that the character
is an asshole and deal with that. And there are many characters I adore who are basically just nice. But I have a huuuuge competence kink, and competent and assertive snarky jerks are definitely a type I go for.
Key emphasis on the
competent, though. Just a jerk? No. Snarky jerk who's really good at what s/he does?
Yes please. (Not specifically as a male-character thing, but there are a lot fewer female than male characters who really nail the specific elements that get me -- the Luideag in Seanan McGuire's October Daye books is a good example of one who does, or
SL Huang's Cas Russell.)
Actually, "competent and smart" might be the one big, overriding thing that makes me fall for a character. It's not just competent jerks; I also adore the ones who are super competent but are so quiet about it that nobody tends to notice until they're backed against a wall, or the ones who are competent but play the fool so no one realizes until Sudden Surprise Competence happens.
ALL THE COMPETENCE, BASICALLY. ;D
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}