Café de Nuit

I just finished reading Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift, which owes more to Beauty and the Beast than any werewolf story, and I realized that female authors have entered the field of Horror, but have invariably written Romantic Fantasies with Horror trappings.
When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, or The Undead, he did include sex-well, as close to sex as the Victorians were able to discuss outside of a medical journal, but sex was bait used to ensnare Dracula's victims into the living hell of vampirism. Similarly, Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey used sex to seduce, entrap, and destroy his victims.
So I am not saying there isn't a place for sex in Gothic Horror, but rather asking why female writers have determined that the monster should be an object of desire, often a sex symbol, and further, a bestower of pure love.
Some writers are worse than others-even Meredith Gentry, who can at least claim that sex and reproduction were always part of faerie lore, is pretty much smut, but even genteel writers like Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro seem to regard their monstrous protagonists as loverboys rather than homicidal fiends. Any theories on the evolution of the monster? Is it only women, as I've noted, or are men as bad? Why is this paradigm emerging?

Deleted because OP didn't understand the post.

HMB pretty much nailed everything. That said, monsters do have a certain sex appeal that has not gone unnoticed almost since the beginning of time. The incubus is the most blatant example. Vampires represent the forbidden, the risky (and risque), and the thrill of breaking taboo as much as they represent disease, parasitism, and perversion of the cycle of life and death. Werewolves are primal beings beholden to no mores, just plain animal lust that is uncomfortable even for men to express. Demons can be some of the most sexually appealing creatures in mythology and, again, there's that element of the taboo that just makes it more enticing.

People don't seem to appreciate erotic horror's complexities. As an amateur writer of eroticism and erotic horror in particular (none of that stuff will make to these boards; I'd sooner not be banned) I can say that it requires a much deeper understanding of the human mind than most other forms of writing. Why a character is attracted to a monster has no simple answers. It would be an exercise in behavioral psychology to go into detail. Suffice to say something about such and such a monster attracts them, and that something can be simplicity itself or too complex for mere words to capture. Further the "romanticization" of monsters in the Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries is a result of an increasingly educated and jaded public who can't remember why monsters are monsters to begin with. Take away the horror and what's left can be seen as exotic--and erotic, in some cases.

Dr. Drew himself said he would be shocked if sex and sexuality were not applied to virtually every aspect of life. It's the subject that's always lurking in the back of our minds, always finding new and sometimes strange outlets, and nothing can stop it from creeping in. It's as much a part of humanity as eating and breathing. Other than removing the very organs that produce the hormone testosterone (which is found in women, too) the only way to truly be rid of it is to literally rewire the brain. And current medicine can't do that without causing severe brain damage.

Obligatory link:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/12

(warning, mildly NSFW language)

HMB has me wondering if he even read the OP, so I'm going to restate this. I have noticed the current vogue in horror is female writers portraying monsters as devoted paragons of romance. Male writers still stand by the older tropes-monsters have to feign humanity to get a human in the sack, and the human feels horrible he slept with a monster. Women not only desire monsters, but come to regard them as preferable.
I'm just wondering why.
(And as far as the cartoon goes, I've read serious zombie love stories)

Deleted: sorry for wasting your time.

Sareau wrote:HMB has me wondering if he even read the OP, so I'm going to restate this. I have noticed the current vogue in horror is female writers portraying monsters as devoted paragons of romance. Male writers still stand by the older tropes-monsters have to feign humanity to get a human in the sack, and the human feels horrible he slept with a monster. Women not only desire monsters, but come to regard them as preferable.
I'm just wondering why.
(And as far as the cartoon goes, I've read serious zombie love stories)

I'll put this as simply as I can: because it is fantasy. Why go for the tired old tropes when there's all new dimensions to be had with supernatural and/or monstrous lovers? And that statement about men and women writing differently about "encounters" with the supernatural is a blanket one. Many men have embraced the monstrous lover archetype and as many women still stick with the older ideas of monstrous lovers as horrific when the truth is revealed. It's just that women get more attention for such "deviations" than men do.

Actually, while these are "blanket statements", it's because I cannot address every single author or authoress without greatly expanding the size of my posts to where no one would want to read the whole thing. Women DO prefer sex with monsters, and not just as a fantasy trope. Convicted killers and rapists are inundated with letters, gifts, money, and marriage proposals, while Lizzie Borden died an old maid and Lorraina Bobbett still can't get a date.
This is a female trait, not male-no male author to my knowledge has ever written of a character jumping into bed with a known monster, save as a lure or to act as bait. Guys don't do this-it's a chick thing.

Sareau wrote:Actually, while these are "blanket statements", it's because I cannot address every single author or authoress without greatly expanding the size of my posts to where no one would want to read the whole thing. Women DO prefer sex with monsters, and not just as a fantasy trope. Convicted killers and rapists are inundated with letters, gifts, money, and marriage proposals, while Lizzie Borden died an old maid and Lorraina Bobbett still can't get a date.
This is a female trait, not male-no male author to my knowledge has ever written of a character jumping into bed with a known monster, save as a lure or to act as bait. Guys don't do this-it's a chick thing.

Wow. There's just so much casual, unquestioning sexism here I don't even know where to begin.



No wonder my first (deleted) post confused you. It proceeded off a presumption that institutional misogyny was a relic of the distant past.

Alright everyone, settle down or I'll turn this car right around and head home.. Let's try to keep it at a low simmer, shall we?

I cannot satisfy the moderator's request.

Accordingly, I'm out.

Good luck to everybody else.

Guys don't jump into bed with a known monster? Vampires? <.< i've seen it go both ways along with werewolves. Hell most of the old legends is a beutiful girl luring males to their deaths all the time.

Siren's, Succubi, Mermaids, among others.

As for a lure or bait, for guys looking pretty is enough for quite a bit of men. That’s how regular non monster women do it. Same with girls, they can fall for a pretty face/body without anything supernatural about it.

What you’re talking about is more of a human thing, not just a specific gender. Most of the examples your giving I’d say have a lure or bait as well. Maybe if you were a bit more specific in your examples of what a girl has done but a guy has never done?

Zilfer wrote:Guys don't jump into bed with a known monster? Vampires? <.< i've seen it go both ways along with werewolves. Hell most of the old legends is a beutiful girl luring males to their deaths all the time.

Siren's, Succubi, Mermaids, among others.

As for a lure or bait, for guys looking pretty is enough for quite a bit of men. That’s how regular non monster women do it. Same with girls, they can fall for a pretty face/body without anything supernatural about it.

What you’re talking about is more of a human thing, not just a specific gender. Most of the examples your giving I’d say have a lure or bait as well. Maybe if you were a bit more specific in your examples of what a girl has done but a guy has never done?

As you stated, when a guy (or male authors, in general) jumps in bed with a known monster-the guy DOESN'T know it's a monster, and thus gets eaten, possessed, etc. The monster and the audience know who the monster is, but the guy in question doesn't. Female writers, particularly during the recent years (I'd say from the 1990s on) have portrayed female characters as willingly and knowingly enter into romantic relations with "men" they KNOW to be werewolves, vampires, etc. Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake, Vampire/Monster Hunter" series is the most graphic example, but Charlaine Harris and most of the modern crop of female horror writers are equally guilty of this trope.

I just finished reading "Fifty Shades of Grey", featuring 'monsters' of a different sort. The female lead character was well aware of the unusual interests of the lead male character, but became a willing participant following her progressive seduction by his overwhelming charisma, power, and wealth as well as her own dark unfulfilled desire to submit to his domination.

What about Captain Kirk, and all the alien ladies he slept with? They might not all be monstrous, but is an alien different than a monster?