Misc Monday: Top Eight Most Annoying Traits in a Hero

Romance month has ended, but I would be remiss if I didn't even out the gender bias created by the last Misc. Monday. So, without further ado, the most annoying traits among book heroes.

#8 He's Afraid of Love

One of the most tired and boring tropes in romance is that moment when the hero realizes he has feelings--like, real emotion-y things for the heroine--and he responds to it with pants pissing terror. He copes by being a jackass or finding an excuse for a third-act breakup. Sometimes his feelings are excusable or justified, but mostly they're just annoying. Falling in love is scary, but it's also exhilarating and joyful. Most people are happy to be in love, at least initially. Most people want to make a connection like that with another person. The number of romance heroes who shun their feelings so readily is irritating and disturbing. 

 

#7 He's Slept With Approximately All of the Women

It's disturbing to me that romance novels have some extremely man-whorish heroes, but rarely or never slutty women. Oh, there are virgin heroes and prostitute heroines, but for the most part the men have all of the experience and the women have all of the "virtue". What's even more disturbing is when his dog-like habits are glorified in the text. Yes, sexual experience is a plus, but too much is just gross, in my humble opinion. In reality, men that have slept around that much are far more likely to have a couple kids and an STD or two.Condoms have failure rates, people. 

 

#6: He's The Jealous Type

He get's upset when her ex-boyfriend shows up, he doesn't like her guy friends, he wants all of her attention. He's jealous and possessive--he basically thinks he owns her. I don't know why authors seem to think this behavior is sexy. In the real world, overdeveloped jealousy is a huge red flag in any relationship. It smacks of insecurity in himself and a lack of trust in her. Ultimately, jealous behavior is a relationship killer, so I never trust the possessive hero to make the happy ending work in the long term. 

#5: He Has No Communication Skills

Yeah, we all know that guys are not as good at expressing their feelings as women. Nothing wrong with showing that in a romance novel. However, the when the hero's total lack of ability to express his feelings leads to the much dreaded Big Mis. Any conflict that could be easily avoided with a simple five minute conversation is maddening, and has no reasonable place in my books.

 

#4: He's Controlling

There's a fine line between stubborn and total asshat. The hero that's forceful and pushy can be a great challenge to a heroine, and if the heroine is strong willed and pushes back--no problem. The problem is when the hero is, in reality, a complete control freak. When the hero feels the need to dominate every aspect of the heroine's life, often "for her own good", to a point where she totally loses herself to the relationship. I hate seeing the heroine sacrifice her freedom and personal goals in favor of a hero that wants to keep her safe at home. 

#3: He Has Unresolved Addiction Issues

More and more romance authors have been trying to tackle the issue of ongoing battles with addiction. For some reason, they lean toward letting the male have an addiction problem. No author that I have yet encountered has handled the subject to my satisfaction. The problem is, addiction is a consuming condition. In reality, an addict recovers only when they decide for themselves that they want to change, and they have to work hard to make it happen. In romance land, addiction is healed by the power of love, with the hero changing as a result of the heroine's influence, or because he wants to keep her. The magic healing is actually pretty insulting in it's ignorance. 

#2: He's Sexist

Another one of my least favorite tropes is  the hero the doesn't believe a woman can do a particular job/activity--contracting, firefighting, cycling, whatever. The heroine's job is to prove him wrong. This plot line exhausts me, because I find it depressing that the heroine has to earn the hero's respect in a given field, while he receives respect implicitly. I feel like we should have moved past this sort of thing by now. While gender bias definitely does exist in certain fields, I would prefer that it not be used as the hero's entire character arc.
 
#1: He's a Dumb-ass Enabler

The only thing more annoying than a too-stupid-to-live heroine is the hero that constantly enables her stupidity. He plays the night in shining armor to her perpetual damsel in distress act. She jumps into shark infested water, and he fishes her out. She can't decide between two jobs or two men or two slices of pie, and he just patiently waits out her slow as hell thought process. His love makes him totally oblivious to the fact that his new honey-buns is honestly completely useless. The dumbass enabler is annoying because he fails to empower the heroine, to allow her some character development, to let her stand on her own. Quite the contrary, he does everything, to the point that she might as well be a cardboard cut-out. And, as I said last Monday, there is nothing worse that a flat heroine.

Misc. Monday: Top Eight Most Annoying Traits in a Romance Heroine

Throughout the month I've talked a lot about the positive aspects of romance--why we read it, what makes it fantastic, and who does it the best. But those of us who love it know that it has it's negative quirks too. Yeah, there are some awesome heroines out there--beautiful, brilliant, awesome women that we relate to and admire. But then, there are the ditzes, the bitches, the whiny little babies that challenge our faith in humanity and ruin perfectly good books. So let's take today to make fun of them, shall we?

#8: She Doesn't Believe In Love

The nonbeliever can be found at her very important and all consuming high intensity job, or in her one bedroom apartment with her TV and her cat. I put her low on the list because, in some cases, the non-believer heroine can be a good trope. In most cases, though, it's a tired out concept. She's stubbornly jaded and refuses to believe in the possibility of an emotional connection with another person. This is fine early in a story, but makes her come off as a bitch if she's still clinging to her disbelief after the hero displays obvious feelings for her. Even at that point, there are still ways that a good author can make the story work, but most of the time this conflict feels forced.

#7: She's a Martyred Virgin

The martyred virgin can be found hiding in the stacks at her local library, and she'll be identifiable by her ultra conservative clothes and her awkwardness around me. I'm not making fun of virgin heroines in general, just the ones who make it a freaking plot point. The one's for whom it defines them and sits at the center of all insecurities. "Woe is me, I will never experience sexual fulfillment or true love. Woe!" What frustrates me about the martyred virgin is her belief that all of her problems will be fixed if she can just fin a man to pop her cherry, and worse, when that encounter actually does fix everything for her. A couple orgasms and suddenly she's happy, confident, more sure of herself. Insecure virgin turned wanton love machine is a trope that makes me laugh every time, and so it's impossible for me to find it sexy.

#6: She's a Paragon of Virtue

She can be found at all of the charity events and all of the fundraisers and all of bedsides of all of the dieing people. She's a pediatrician who's hobby is rescuing stray kittens and building homes for poor people. She's kind to everyone, and everyone likes her, and if she has any flaw at all it's being too damn nice. She always says and does the right thing. My God, she is boring. She is boring and she is irritating and she is impossible to relate to. Normal people have flaws and make mistakes, especially when they're falling in love. Flaws and mistakes are what make heroines accessible to the reader. A sexy dark side never hurts.

#5: She's Insecure

She can be found peering into a mirror and describing herself in her head, using adjectives like "mousey" and "plain". She doesn't know she's beautiful! Our culture apparently finds a certain degree of modesty in women to be an attractive quality, while vanity of any kind is vilified. So it's no surprise that authors like the heroine who can't see her own beauty, and maybe even thinks she's ugly. Her character arc usually involves seeing herself in a new light through the hero's eyes, because of course he sees her as beautiful. Sometimes (God help me) she gets  makeover. I'm sure some readers love a makeover story, and I'm sure some readers love the insecure heroine in general. For me, though, this character arc is as shallow as it is warn out, and I don't care for it.

#4: She's a Doormat

She can be found laying passively on the ground while the villain, or in some cases the hero, sucks the life out of her--either literally or figuratively. Or both. She's not just submissive, she's passive to the point of being useless. While her spinelessness can sometimes be mistaken for self-sacrifice, she actually just lacks enough personality to find a hands-on way to deal with her problems. She sets feminism back a hundred years every time she let's the other characters dictate what happens in her life, and that generally pisses off readers such as myself. The only good thing is that the doormat redeemed stories, in which our passive heroine grows a spine throughout the course of the story, are surprisingly empowering when written correctly.

#3 She's Indecisive

She can be found in between two hot guys, who both mysteriously want her, and she's secretly enjoying the hell out of it, and not in the sexy erotic threesome sense. The indecisive heroine doesn't know what she wants or who she wants, and she's going to make everyone miserable because of it. She doesn't know if she wants to live in the country or the city, if she wants a high-powered job or a quiet life at home, if she likes cats or dogs, if she prefers chocolate or vanilla....The indecisive heroine is irritating because she has know idea who she is, and she's all caught up in the drama of deciding, and that drama is one long "mefest" for her. The indecisive heroine can only be redeemed if she comes to her senses and apologizes for her self focus, but she almost never does.

#2 She's Dumb as Shit

She can be found in dark alley ways running after the villain without a weapon. She leaps to stupid conclusions and causes many a Big Mis with her shoddy communication skills. The dumb heroine lacks perception and foresight, and in the worst cases she lacks basic common sense. Stupidity among heroines is intolerable, because it's almost impossible to like and relate to someone that can't see what's right in front of them. It's one of the worst devises that authors use to make conflicts, and it almost always kills the story for me.

#1 She's Not Actually a Character

She can be found doing whatever authors think the everyday woman would like to do, and she does it with such an astounding lack of personality  that we forget she's even there. The Blank Slate Heroine kind of deserves her own post, because her existence is a literal epidemic, especially in the YA world. She tops the list because she's not just an affront to heroines, she's an insult to the reader. The idea that we just want to project ourselves into an avatar and live out a fantasy implies that we are mindless escapists. It implies that we are unable to empathize with heroines that are not just like us, and so the heroine can't have a pronounce personality, or readers won't like her and therefor won't like the book. Authors, I beg you, give the reader more credit than that. Give your heroine a life of her own. Give her opinions, give her needs, give her imperfection. Take some risks when you create your heroines. Because no trait--dumb, insecure, naive--is as irritating as a heroine entirely without traits.