I have a problem with vampires in fiction (romance fiction especially) and though it's only one of my many beefs with Twilight the thought makes my eyes twitch. As a youth worker and future therapist to the young and twisted I take serious issue with age difference. A few years is ok, especially after the formulative early twenties and past this time excesses of five to ten years is alright provided each partner is on some sort of equal mental footing. I don't care how 'mature' you were as an eighteen year old you were still hoped up on hormones and the first addictive tap of freedom so you're decisions are often, if not usually, circumspect.
I know that I was an absolute moron my eighteenth year and many have commented that even then I was exceptionally well grounded for my age.
What does this have to do with vampires, you may ask, lips pursed, bosoms heaving.... Sorry, got into the romance writer mode there....
Imagine all of the life lessons and learning you experienced in you're first eighteen years, and then throughout you're twenties. People of every age report learning more, growing more and just being better people as they age. They have time and the mistakes of youth to fall back on when decisions must be made and though the world as changed they general learn to change with it. ( Or not, but that's an entirely new speal, kids.) In the case of Bella and Edward it's obvious. She is an emotional stunted teenager and he is a man. Let me repeat this: their relationship borders on the pedophilic in that Edward is so obviously superior to Bella i life experience and his apparent fascination with her beauty. Which, he in Midnight Sun, repeatedly comments on as being 'delicate' or 'fragile'.
Their relationship is about power and possession and barring the fact that we as a reader are shown nothing in the way of actual companionship, the co-dependent coupling would be doomed from the start were Edward a haggard middle aged professional and Bella still in her late teens. (The socia-plotical comments concerning the Cullens wealth and apparent power not withstanding but, yet again,that's a discussion for another day.)
Ah, but I don't mean to rant about Twilight, only make it the pathetically cliche' example of vampire fiction that it is. Rather, I want to say that the older man meets drastically younger heroine trope is done to death and I'm not touching it with a ten foot wooden stake.
Age begets experience, experience begets success and success equals power. The relationship that develops in these pairings is usually some sort of 'teacher/student' dichotomy with the female half delegated into the subservient role. Some may argue that she in fact teaches, that her freshness, her youth, and the love she inspires in the anciently brooding vampire is a lesson in and of itself. That she impacts him as much as he guides her. This is not satisfactory as she is made a passive object, not through her tenacious tact or intelligence does she affect the plot but by virtue of being there, of being something that he could find in any number of spunk 'modern' women.
Which leads me to, why does he love her? I'm all for swooning passion and sex that joins souls as well as genitals but I want connection deeper than beauty, and a relationship that is not so overtly one sided as to border on some sick S&M
So what am I getting at? Yeah, I had a character concept hidden away here...
Evan Hunt is twenty six years old. No, he doesn't look it, he is it. Last year he fell into more trouble than he could talk his way out of and a beautiful woman lacking nothing but a pulse made a decision for him. He was too 'pretty' to waste, so he woke up, stone dead on a slab with a hunger he couldn't describe.
He's recently wrangled in the blood lust but it still bites him in the ass and sucker punches him when he least expects it. He's still trying to come to grips with his new undead life and he is still full of the kind of righteous that started an inquisition or two.
...brief. Yeah, I know but it's a start. What do you guys think?
...Read more
1 comment:
The character note at the end is intriguing. I like it a lot. I think it will draw readers in for a struggle. So...if he is our hero, who is our heroine? A mortal girl or an older female vampire?
A note on Edward Cullen: I honestly don't see him as the haggard middle-aged professional. To me, he's a teenager frozen in time, like a teen soldier, exposed to the horrors of humanity and multiple wars, but he's never really acted like an adult. Several times he goes to college, yes, but he never makes it to the mortal realm of an adult in all his years of pretending. He's stunted emotionally as well, and I think that's why he and Bella work with each other. What gives him the sense of domineering and other horrible things is that he comes from a patriarchal era and he's physically superior.
LJ Smith - whom I love and pimp every chance I get - tackled the physically superior issue in "Daughters of Darkness", but as for age, most of her vampires are the same age as their love interests.
But the older man and younger woman is highly overdone. As much as I'd love to see a role reversal (and dammit, but Robert Pattinson was going to play human boy fodder for female vampire before Twilight came along) with older female vampire and sweet mortal boy, it would work even less, because boys mature emotionally more slowly than girls do.
I like Evan Hunt so far. Especially his name. Only...um...it reminds me of the name of the dude from Mission Impossible for some reason.
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