The Allure of the Bad Boy, Part II

Hello readers!

As mentioned previously, I intend to use this week to engage in a cross-blog debate with Karen Gordon—an acquaintance writer of mine. The topic of debate? Bad boys in fiction.

But firstly, you must read my original post on the matter, along with Karen’s response. The former will introduce you to my key arguments; the latter is needed in order to understand Karen’s criticism, and the content of this post.

So without further ado, allow me to address Karen’s points.

Fact versus Fiction

The foundational premise of Karen’s arguments, it seems to me, is her experience in real-life. She is indeed ‘pulling the age card’ (to use that charming American colloquialism). But I believe this is precisely where she errs: for to understand fiction, and in particular the phenomenon of the bad boy, one needs to take a step back from real life.

Of course, bad boys in real life are nearly always ‘drama mamas’ or, to put it more crudely, assholes. They’re narcissists: uncaring, cold, and cruel. They make poor lovers, friends, and husbands; it is a direct consequence of their personalities.

But you see, fiction is stranger than truth. The Impressionists taught us that. Art—of which novels are a form—does not need to be an accurate reflection of reality in order to be, well, good art. And the allure of the bad boy, as I have elucidated, stems from the fact that he is a fantasy of sorts.

In fiction, the bad boy has many redeeming qualities: intelligence, charm, and vulnerability. In fiction, you want to save the bad boy. Of course you do: you’re a romantic. The bad boy’s chief allure, as I say, is in his salvation.

In real life, trying to save a bad boy usually results in heartbreak and tragedy. But in fiction, saving the bad boy lets you find love. You may suffer for it, naturally; but in the end you prevail. Love conquers all.

Of the Reader’s Mind

Another aspect I wish to draw attention to is the fact that the bad boy is undeniably appealing; he wouldn’t sell so many damn books if that weren’t true. And so the question is, why?

Karen is clearly too wearied by life to understand his appeal. But I, a younger soul, can understand it. Yes: when one is old, one does not have time to engage in frivolous and obscenely difficult romantic pursuits. One has children, a house, and a closing lifespan to worry about. A loyal and caring husband is far more attractive.

But when one is young, ah, the calculus is different. Loyalty and care is nice—but rather dull, all in all. A relationship that is fractious, difficult, unpredictable, exciting, sexual; that is a quite different matter.

Practical Argument

One should not misunderstand me in thinking that I extoll the virtues of the bad boy. While I find the bad boy captivating as a trope—a cliché in fiction—and while I indeed value some of his qualities in a lover, at the end of the day I am not suggesting that mistreating and abusing romantic partners is a successful path to go down.

But to return to my initial argument, fiction is not real-life. The circumstances of fiction are exceptional. It is not everyday that one fights a millenia-old war of angels against demons, to use an example. The bad boy is likewise a case of exception: he, unlike his real-life compatriot, can be saved. He is bad... but he is also good.

The Golden Boy

Karen also seems to take an issue with my antonym of the bad boy: the Golden Boy, or the Perfect Boy.

I’m sure we’re familiar with him. He’s the guy the girl wants to fall in love with. He’s sweet, dependable, and handsome. He treats the protagonist with respect; he is clearly a good guy.

Karen argues that male characters are more complex than the bad boy and the Golden Boy. Of course they are. But the bad boy and the Golden Boy are archetypes; they exemplify, in a distilled and exaggerated form, the qualities that are one the one hand adored—such as strength, kindness, and urbane handsomeness—and on the other hand despised: arrogance, subterfuge, malevolent sexuality.

The fact that the bad boy is so loved highlights a contradiction. If we hate his personality traits so much, why are we so attracted to him? And if we love the Golden Boy so much, why do we find him a bore?

There are a number of possible answers to this question. I prefer the explanation that, ultimately, neither of these characters are perfect. Kindness and dependability are great—but we want a little meanness to go with it.

A Different Note

I hope you have found this little dissertation of ours mildly intriguing. I am interested to hear your thoughts.

But on a different note, there’s a lot more going on here in the Magical Realm. I am, for one, writing the Ark; if you’re interested in reading a tale about two boys in a world falling apart—including a bad boy of my own—then do keep an eye out on the Magical Realm. I will soon be releasing a newsletter signup!

Until then, fell free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

A Poem, And Many Things

Hail readers!

For the past week, I have been in the countryside; remote and without Internet, I was unable to keep the Magical Realm stocked with new content. Nevertheless, this is not to say that I have been idle. Quite to the contrary: I have a number of intriguing quests to undertake over the coming days, weeks and months.

Chiefly among these is, of course, the business of finishing the Ark. Presently I am engaged in completing the edits and revisions suggested to me by my editor; this is something I will soon—I hope—have completed. I have already finished revising part one; I am most of the way through part two.

Once I have finished that, the next task is of course to write part three. How long this will take is a question I am as yet unable to answer—I tentatively hope by October, but then I have already missed some of my more optimistic deadlines. Ultimately this will depend on how much free time I have at university; with perseverance and determination, hopefully enough.

But this does lead me onto the third key task. Do you recall me mentioning a company by the name of Publishizer? To recap, I was put into contact with them courtesy of Reedsy—the company I used to commission the editor. I completed their application close to a month ago; about a week ago, one of Publishizer’s representatives arranged a Skype meeting with me.

The exact details of that conversation I will not fully divulge here, for numerous reasons (and not all of them secret). But what I will say is that I was made an interesting offer. The crux of it is this: provided that I manage to get 250 pre-orders of my book by starting a campaign on their website, they will then put me through their accelerator programme.

This programme, according to them, has a high success rate: the large majority of authors who are put through it manage to obtain a contract from a publisher.

But this does, of course, imply getting 250 pre-orders on my own. This is not a trivial task. And it won’t happen straight away: I have yet to finish the book, and the campaign has only a few weeks to get those pre-orders.

However, it does mean that I will be stepping up my efforts to garner attention for the Ark. As part of this, I will be creating a mailing list.

This will likely be a weekly endeavour: if you sign up to it, you will receive an email every week. The email will contain various progress updates, tidbits of information, and samples from the Ark. Interested? Then do keep an eye out on the Magical Realm—I will have some sort of submission form available soon.

There is also another topic that may interest you. Previously, I wrote an article entitled ‘The Allure of the Bad Boy’. I shared this article with my writer friend, Karen; this elicited a strong response. We have therefore decided to stage a debate on our blogs. Soon, Karen will publish her response; both she and I will link to each other’s posts.

I will then, in turn, publish a counter-response. Do tune it.

What of the Poem?

Finally, allow me to address the title of this post. Though I am very involved in numerous undertakings (as you can see), I have somehow managed to compose another poem. It is entitled ‘The Mirror, the Room, and the Dreams’ which is perhaps rather verbose.

In any case, the crux of it is this. The poem is escapist; it is about dreaming of greater things than the cold prison in which the dreamer is immured. It is about beautiful, far away places—and the magic of getting there.

The mirror, of course, is literal (in that it allows the dreamer to dream, and ultimately to escape) but also serves a metaphorical role. If I were of a Freudian persuasion, I would perhaps think it represents my writing. But since I am not Sigmund Freud, I suggest you substitute your own explanations.

With that, I must conclude this post. Keep an eye out for the debate, for the mailing list, and for the many milestones of this long journey.

The Mirror, the Room, and the Dreams

The Allure of the Bad Boy

Hello readers!

Since I am now, unfortunately, back to the countryside and devoid of all the many benefits of civilised life, I have decided to release this post written preemptively. The topic is—as you may be able to guess—about a recurring cliché in romance, and indeed across any genre that includes romance. I am of course talking about the bad boy.

Who is the Bad Boy?

First of all, clarification is in order. The ‘bad boy’ trope is very specific in its definition. We are of course not talking about evil or otherwise unpleasant male characters: rapists, criminals, and the like. We are talking about a boy who is of a particular age (as young as sixteen to perhaps thirty years), who is sexually attractive, charming, and yet behaves poorly in many regards.

Perhaps they are vulgar. Perhaps they have a certain propensity for cruelty—albeit one matched by the ability to feel kindness and empathy. Maybe they are rude to the protagonist, or maybe they have certain personality flaws: narcissism, binge drinking, or—in the case of fantasy—an alliance with the dark powers.

The bad boy trope is specific, but also broad. The bad boy could be all of the above, or they may be a ‘bad boy’ only in the narrative role they play. They could be the guilty pleasure—the forbidden boy; a character the protagonist rationally knows to avoid, but feels deeply emotionally compelled towards.

I myself am rather keen on the bad-boy trope, and have made use of it in the Ark—and to lesser extent, the Necromancer. In both cases the bad-boy was named Jake. I suspect I will turn it into a tradition.

Nevertheless, the bad-boy trope does present some difficult questions. According to my writer buddy, Karen Gordon, the bad-boy trope is explicitly misogynist: he is a man who mistreats women.

I intend to argue that while this perception is not wholly inaccurate, it is nevertheless too simple and not always correct. My argument centres on two premises. Firstly, the portrayal of the bad boy: he is often portrayed unkindly, deliberately in order to further his narrative use, but in doing so it is easy to distort other aspects of him that are more positive. Secondly, I argue that the bad boy trope exists because it is appealing—particularly to women.

Premise I: Portrayal

Let’s face it: bad boys are given the wrong end of the stick. In the vast majority of encounters, they are rude to the (typically female) protagonist. They may insult her, or mock her, or simply be an asshole to her.

Too often readers extrapolate this into: he treats all women like this. Not so. While I am sure there are many bad-boy tropes in fiction that actually are misogynist (and no doubt some of you reading can provide examples), there are also instances when the bad boy character is misunderstood.

For one: writers often don’t show the bad boy interacting with women other than the protagonist. For two, the bad boy’s conflict with the protagonist is often of a personal nature—they may dislike the protagonist’s frequently narcissistic, entitled, or simply annoying attitude. (And yes, this is despite the fact that the bad boy himself is often narcissistic and entitled: such is the nature of a narcissist.)

It is also, I believe, why the protagonist finds the bad boy hard to resist. Narcissists attract, and all that. Where their personalities clash, they also complement. And all this is exaggerated by the portrayal: the writer frequently shows the characters interacting at their most disagreeable, while subtly understating the ways in which they find one another attractive.

Nonetheless, I think there is more to the bad boy trope than simple attraction of personality.

Premise II: The Appeal of the Bad Boy

Let’s face it: bad boys exist in fiction because there is something deeply compelling about them. As do so many other clichés—the boy discovering a hidden power in fantasy, the maiden in need of saving, the romance in the rain—bad boys are a cliché that hold a distinct appeal to much of the audience.

In some ways, examining this appeal is more the purlieu of psychologists than of writers. We writers are creators of art firstly and foremostly, and critics of art only secondly. Nevertheless, being a writer (and inevitably also a profligate reader) gives one a perspective no others possess.

As I understand it, the chief appeal of the bad boy is in his redemption. The bad boy is a man you want to save. He is beautiful; charming; eloquent; intelligent. Who would want him to suffer through meaningless sex and failed relationships? Who would want him to fall foul to a drug habit, or to profligacy, or the forces of darkness?

The bad boy is also dark and mysterious. He is the shadowy figure watching you from across the window. He is the vampire, the sorcerer, the fallen angel. His power arises from his mystery; from the knowledge that he is capable of evil—and yet capable of good, too.

Once conquered, the bad boy gains a strange sort of vulnerability. Suddenly, his feuds with vampire lords or demons or—in the case of romance—his bitter past and paling friendships, now instill a determination in the protagonist. The bad boy needs to be saved. Not from himself, this time, but from others.

You see, the bad boy epitomises strength—money, intelligence, magic, masculinity and confident sexuality—but he is imperfect. He has weaknesses. Somehow, that makes him all the more irresistible.

So we know what makes the bad boy appealing. But why, we might ask? Of course the bad is to some degree universally appealing, but we can’t ignore that the bad boy is hugely popular with female and gay readers in particular.

One obvious explanation for this is sexuality. Let’s face it: the bad boy is as compelling as he is because of sex. He is beautiful, and masculine, and confident, and therefore utterly irresistible.

But perhaps that’s not the only explanation. The bad boy, after all, is not merely sexually attractive. Indeed, many romances centre on a love triangle: the protagonist, the bad boy, and the Perfect Boy. He is usually blond-haired, blue-eyed, dependable, kind, and—yes—sexually attractive in his own right.

So why does the bad boy usually succeed in getting the lucky girl (or guy?) Clearly, attractiveness of the physical sort is by itself insufficient to explain the phenomenon.

Perhaps it as I say: we want to help the wicked. We want to save those who show many wonderful and positive qualifies from being destroyed by their less savoury qualities. In the end, the bad boy is is a cause a much as anything else: he’s someone you fight for.

I would also argue that bad boys are appealing because they’re not PC; they’re frequently non-conformist, or offend the unwritten rules of etiquette and courtship. Perhaps we like bad boys because the Perfect Boys are just a bit, well, boring.

Parting Words

So: these are my thoughts on the bad boy trope. If you have anything to add (comments, additions, disagreements, etc.) feel free to do so in the comments. But for now, I am away and will probably not be able to reply until later on.

Rest assured, however, that I am working most assiduously on the Ark. I plan to release some selected revised chapters and/or scenes in the near future.

Until then, there is plenty more to read here on the Magical Realm. I have written extensively on other literary matters, as well as politics. Do make use of the search bar to the right.