Alpha, Beta, and Reading Against Type
One of the things I enjoyed most about the essays of Michelle Sagara and Elizabeth Vail on the alpha and beta heroes in Romance was the range of comments and interpretations of both heroic types. How could the same type produce so many different, and often conflicting, ideas of what constitutes an alpha? What is that strange alchemy that produces such different interpretations of the same characters? Is it really that we all have such different definitions of the same types, or is it more that these are artificial categories we fill out with our own expectations and desires?
For genre fiction readers, character types are an important way in which the genre answers reader expectations. Conforming to them is a strength in that they create genre continuity (and therefore formalistic boundaries) and they manage reader expectation around what kind of experience a book will ostensibly deliver. However, character types can also be a weakness, keeping the genre narrowly confined to certain acceptable categories and courting staleness through over-replication.
Also, to what extent do types allow us to be more passive in our experience of certain books. For example, if I “know” what a Linda Howard alpha male hero is, then to what extent will I read any Howard book through the filter of those expectations? And how do those expectations shape my perception of other books that appear to be similar, at least on the surface?
It’s no secret that I’ve been feeling reading malaise with Romance lately, and while I know it’s more me than the genre, that malaise has become self-fulfilling, because I haven’t been open to finding that book that breaks pattern and surprises me. It’s not that the books aren’t out there, but there’s something about the combination of my expectations and the ease with which the genre can mirror those back through “typical” characters, tropes, and conflicts, that I failed to fight through it.
Until, that is, I read Anne Bishop’s Written in Red, the first book in her Others series that is not a Romance, but that has a definite relationship with romantic elements at its center. Almost everything about Written in Red and A Murder of Crows confounded my expectations and preconceived ideas about how cultural and racial difference is constructed in genre fiction, as well as what it means to be alpha or beta within a romantic paradigm, and in the process, made me question my own reading prejudices and preconceptions.
Archetypes are written and re-written in genre fiction to the point at which they become typical – at least in the eyes of readers. We have all sorts of ways of referring to the so-called alpha hero: alphahole, caretaking alpha, warrior alpha, protective alpha, abusive alpha, etc. Similarly, the beta hero is often associated with certain typical qualities: scholarly or bookish, less physically large or imposing, less assertive or aggressive, more emotionally open, etc.
In the abstract, it all seems so simple and so clear. Alpha heroes are aggressive, while betas are more collaborative. Alpha heroes are dark, brooding, and physically imposing, while betas tend to be slimmer, fairer, and less moody. But how many of these character types are uncomplicatedly rendered in actual books?
Anne Bishop’s Others series brought into relief for me the extent to which the clear distinction may be more fiction than fact. For those unfamiliar with (currently two-book) series, it features a young woman named Meg Corbyn, who escapes from a life in which she is ritualistically and involuntarily bled for prophecies purchased by the rich. As a cassandra sangue, she is technically human, but is also something else, something unique enough that she ends up imprisoned and exploited for her “gift.” And yet, her gift comes with dangerous side effects: she is in danger of losing her mind from one too many cuts and prophecies, and the euphoric response she has to speaking her prophecy can become a dangerous addiction (these are both addressed in the second book, A Murder of Crows). Although Meg has been isolated from the world, she knows enough from the images she has been taught to find her way out of the compound and eventually to Lakeside, a community of terra indigene. The community’s leader, Simon Wolfgard, is both enraged and intrigued by Meg, enraged by what he perceives as her weakness and intrigued by the fact that although clearly human, she does not “smell like prey,” which is what most humans potentially are to the terra indigene.
Intrigue wins out, and Simon hires Meg as the human liaison of Lakeside, which means she accepts deliveries and mail from human businesses and sorts and delivers it to the Lakeside residents, ranging from vampires to Elementals to the terra indigene who take on animal forms but are not animals. These different beings reside in a complex and complicated nexus of agreements and relationships, and find solidarity in their opposition to and power over humans, many of whom are represented as selfish, petty, immature, and intolerant.
When I started to read Bishop’s series, I was made aware of those critics who do not believe the books adequately represent cultural and racial diversity, especially in regard to Native Americans. But for me, what stood out about Written in Red, was first how it seemed to elude any sort of one-to-one racial or cultural analogy, and second, how, if I had to pick any analogy, it would have been the pre-American period of the early 18th century, especially in the areas where the Iroquois Confederacy leveraged their power against both the English and the French governments. Because despite the colonial and conversion minded settlers, and the greedy land interests and political double-talk from the Europeans and their colonial governments, there was also much more indigenous diversity and authority than a lot of people realize, especially previous to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.
Looking at cultural and racial differences during that time requires a shift in paradigm, because neither category existed in the way it does today. The Lenape (Delaware), for example were pretty consistently at war with the Iroquois nations, significantly endangering their robust persistence. The complex societies populating what we now refer to as North America were different in language, cultural mythology, and customs, and even when the Europeans arrived, alliances were formed that capitalized on long-existing antagonisms between indigenous societies.
This, for me, is how the Lakeside community reads. The paradigms of race and culture as we use them now don’t really apply. For example, Police Lieutenant Crispin Montgomery is described as having dark skin, but we find that our casually; it is not something anyone specifically comments on in the books. When asked about where he was born, he says, “My father’s family immigrated to Thaisia from Afrikah a few generations ago and settled in Toland. Most of my mother’s family still live in the Storm Islands.” Moreover, Montgomery is one of the few humans Simon Wolfgard and his fellow community leaders trusts and actively works with to keep the peace between humans the Others.
The Thasia reference seems to echo the theory of the Bering Strait Land Bridge. However, if you push the analogies too far in any direction you run into a wall. Café owner Tess, for example, invokes the characteristics of Medusa, while Meg seems to represent both her Cassandra typology and shamanistic practice. Erebus Sanguinati, the head of the vampires, plays the part of the stereotypical gentleman vampire in a decidedly affected and intentional way. And Simon, while most comfortable in his wolf form, is neither human nor wolf. He “mimics” humans but is not human. And he has adopted some of the characteristics of wolves, but is not strictly wolf, either.
Similarly, the relationship between Simon and Meg does not develop in expectedly romantic ways. Although they are both drawn to each other and share a rapid and deep level of emotional intimacy, their attraction is never once defined by how each looks. Not once does Simon think of Meg as pretty, and the one physical characteristic he responds to most strongly is her dyed hair, which smells awful to him. Similarly, in human form Simon is a bookseller with wire-rimmed glasses, which suggests a beta character, even though his true identity as not-wolf-wolf plays with the whole notion of alpha. And despite his decisive leadership of Lakeside, Simon lets his father act as figurehead, and finds himself completely befuddled by his feelings for Meg, frequently taking missteps with her. As for Meg, partly because of her isolation, she has no primary experience with romantic feelings, even though she seems to have a pretty good understanding of sex and how her body has sexual sensations. So while she is innocent in some ways, she is also smart, strong, and courageous, leaving the only home she knows and learning to live in a world that presents myriad dangers to her well-being and her life.
Because of their unique situation, Simon and Meg mostly express their affection through playfulness, especially when Simon is in wolf form. He likes it when she cuddles and kisses his wolf body, and when he is in that form, he is not intimidating to Meg, even though that could be perceived to be a more stereotypically alpha form. At the beginning of Murder of Crows, he is sleeping with Meg as wolf, and when she accidentally pushes him off the bed, be turns human in order to communicate with Meg and then gets back into bed in human form. While Simon did not understand it at the time, that incident adds a level of anxiety in Meg that they spend the entire book trying to work through. And even then, Simon registers Meg’s fear in animal terms, saying, “. . . she acts and smells all bunny-weird about me being there in human form.” They continue to try for friendship, but in some ways the emotional intimacy of that connection is deeper and more dangerous than simple sexual attraction.
In fact, the books are very focused on interpretation, translation, and reading the signs. When Meg experiences a prophecy, it is in words and images that must be translated. When Meg adapts to Lakeside, she is constantly trying to read the living faces of those around her, because she has mostly been educated through pictures. When intentions are inferred without thoughtful examination, disaster can occur – literally. One of Montgomery’s challenges, as a human policeman who wants to work with the terra indigene, is reading between the lines and making himself understood to a community that is inclined to see humans as untrustworthy and dangerous.
And many things in the books simply defy easy explanation and translation. From the characters who only partially exemplify “types” to relationships like that between Simon and Meg, it is tempting to read everything through an existing paradigm, and yet simultaneously impossible. At once point in Murder of Crows, Simon and his grizzly bear friend Henry are trying to comprehend Meg:
“She’s not terra indigene, Simon,” Henry said gently. “She’s not one of us. She’s human.” “She’s not one of us, but she’s not one of them either,” he snapped. “She’s Meg.”
In some ways this is an incredibly comforting exchange, because Meg is being considered as an individual outside of a particular type, with all its preconceptions and judgments. For Meg, Simon is similarly unique in her experience, and thus the reader sees him that way through Meg’s eyes. These are two characters who must be “read” in a different way – both by the reader and by each other — if they are to work as a couple. And yet, the exchange also presents difficulties, because outside of a familiar paradigm, it can be difficult to read signs that can prevent disaster. And that is part of the complexity of the situation in Bishop’s series – if, for example, Meg’s prophecies are misread, death and community devastation is likely. It’s not simply a matter of a simple understanding; the inability to communicate, collaborate, and mutually comprehend one another can easily be fatal. And as for Meg and Simon, how can a wolf who fears becoming more human successfully mate with a female whose uniqueness also inclines her to madness and even death? What seems inevitable between them also seems impossible.
Although the Bishop books push the envelope in many ways, they are a provocative example of how much easier it often is to imagine a “type” in theory than in practice. And for me, the experience of the books actually refreshed my interest in Romance, because they disrupted the expectations I had grown comfortable with in my own genre reading. And once those expectations are disrupted, perhaps I will see certain types differently in books I might otherwise pass on or read through the filter of previous perceptions.
None of this resolves the tension between the reader’s expectations and what the text objectively delivers. However, it does make me wonder how much many of the books that stand out in the genre do so precisely because they can be read through so many different reader filters, and not because they present the same kind of character type to every reader. In other words, is there really such a thing as an alpha or beta hero, or do we, as readers, build these types from individual judgment and expectation?
I’ve been reading romance for nearly 50 years, beginning with Georgette Heyer as a pre-teen, and in the last few years my romance reading has dwindled to the point that of the relatively small number of romances I begin, I finish less than 1 in 10. Most of them, no matter how well written, are so darned predictable. While I’m not really sure that the Written in Blood series falls under the heading of “romance,” I had exactly the experience reading both books that you describe of being constantly jolted out of the rut when I found myself automatically trying to wedge the characters and plot into the well-worn romance formula. I didn’t like everything about the books, and enjoyed the Written in Red more than Murder of Crows, but predictable they are not. Like you, the experience made me really think about reader expectations, and the almost ritualistic way that I had come to approach romance reading. Thank you for writing this, and I’m looking forward to reading the comments in response.
Wow.
When I was reading the alpha/beta threads, I was thinking it probably would have been a clearer discussion if we were in a sort of book club and could be referring to SPECIFIC alphas or betas in the same books, rather than our self-selected versions of the type.
But then I read this and realized that it’s completely possible to read the same book and have totally different interpretations of it anyway!
I found the world-building in Written In Red really troubling. The Iroquois Confederacy stuff is nice, but not enough for me. We have a group in the novel that’s supposed to represent North American First Nations, and this group is literally half-animal, eats humans, and significant numbers of them are too stupid to even speak. I tried hard to read the book without seeing racism, because so many others had read it and not seen it, but… half-animal, eats humans, too stupid to speak. I couldn’t get past that.
And I agree that the relationship with Meg and Simon was atypical, but for me it was because she was such an over-the-top Mary Sue that I think she would have been laughed out of most romance novels. That quote you included about how she’s “not one of us, but she’s not one of them either… She’s Meg,” puts a bow on it, for me. She’s MEG. She’s super-duper. She SMELLS different. Other human women are pathetic, or whores, but Meg is so darn MEGGY!
Okay, I should stop ranting! I agree that Simon is an interesting version of an alpha (as I recall – it’s been a while since I read this and apparently the annoying parts stick out in my brain more than the good parts). But the attraction that went beyond sexuality, to me, was just part of Meg’s MarySue-osity. I mean, was there a creature in the whole enclave that WASN’T mystically drawn to her on first contact? She’s spunky and cute, after all–savage creatures would NEVER eat someone who’s spunky and cute. (Damn, I feel another rant building).
Anyway… I agree that it’d be excellent to see more various relationships in romance. I just can’t agree that it’d be good to see more of what was going on in Written In Red.
@Kate Sherwood: I just want to clarify that I *don’t* think the terra indigene are supposed to represent Native Americans; I brought all that up to say that I read the novel completely differently from those who felt Native Americans were not adequately represented. I think the novels are working with a number of references and echoes and implications, but does not allow the reader to get too comfortable with any of them. Similarly, I never thought of them as “savage,” but rather thought the books were playing with that stereotype and forcing the reader to consider the term and its meaning.
As for Meg being a Mary Sue, I think she has Mary Sue-ish qualities, but again, I think that analogy only goes so far, because Meg is still viewed as property by the Controller and by many people outside Lakseside. Even within the community, she is often misperceived (the fact that Simon sees her as weak because she does not fit within his experience) and looked on with suspicion (e.g. Elliot’s perception of her).
@Aoife: “the almost ritualistic way that I had come to approach romance reading”
Thank you for this – it’s a great way of expressing the sense of reading to expectation that I was trying to get at. It’s sort of a chicken/egg thing, because in some ways books seem to be feeding expectations, and in other ways, our expectations seem to be determining what we decide to read and what we think we “know” about texts. At some point, of course, a whole genre of books like Bishops would create a different kind of predictability, but boy did those books force me out of my comfortable little reading routine.
My attempt at these books left me feeling closer to Kate’s reaction. Either the terra indigene are a horrific take on Native Americans, or Native Americans have been erased entirely and replaced by them. Either way, it was a DNF with a big ol’ helping of NOPE NOPE NOPE!
I enjoyed The Others series and I really liked the fact that the two leads are almost oblivious to the romance that is happening to them. Which seems an odd thing for an avid romance reader to write.
This post made me think about how I categorize characters and even stories when I start reading them. I believe when a great book breaks out of the the category I put it in, it does indeed stand-out in an amazing way to me. However there are times when a when a not so great book breaks those categories and leaves me wanting.
I haven’t read Written in Red, so I can’t speak to it, but I do think that reader expectations are why genre matters and why my own response to the great heroes posts from the past two weeks (it’s not real, it’s marketing) isn’t a good one.
The example that occurred to me is TV show Lost. Fan reaction to the show seemed governed at some level by which genre fans located it in. It seems to me that people who thought the show was a drama were more satisfied by the conclusion that those who thought it was sci-fi (many of whom just wanted to know why the damn polar bears were on the island). Either of these lenses–along with any number of others–is a valid way of viewing Lost, but they shaped evaluative judgements about it.
In terms of alpha/beta/etc. heroes, then, the categories affect what writers, publishers, editors, and readers are doing, but we don’t necessarily all agree on what the categories mean. The deepest and richest texts will yield to a wide range of lenses, but the lenses themselves are unstable.
Finally, I’ve always been particularly interested in texts that manage to be part of the genre but subversive at the same time. Dain from Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels is an alpha, but he suffers from hysterical paralysis for much of the book–which is an interesting psychoanalysis of the problem of the alpha. So maybe what the genre needs is not fewer alphas or more betas but some defamiliarization.
In terms of alpha/beta/etc. heroes, then, the categories affect what writers, publishers, editors, and readers are doing, but we don’t necessarily all agree on what the categories mean.
I think this is so crucial, because all of these influences are created and actualized, but no one really “knows” how other readers are reading these types. I thought about this so much with the Bishop books, because the theme of properly reading and being unable to fully decipher or contextualize anything was so stark that it really forced me to think about how many things I’ve come to take for granted in Romance — things I did not take for granted when I was new to the genre.
I definitely think genre fiction trades in types (archetypes and stereotypes, too), but I think we tend to underestimate the complexity of the individual reading experience.
@Amanda: However there are times when a when a not so great book breaks those categories and leaves me wanting
Yeah, it’s an interesting convergence of reader expectation and execution, I think, that can yield a positive or negative reaction. I’ve sometimes anticipated that a book is leading somewhere exciting and new, only to be dropped off at cliche central. Or sometimes, something comes out of left field or shoots me beyond my comfort zone in a way I am just not on board with.
And then there are some authors – Jo Goodman and Jo Bourne, for example — who I think excel in breathing life into cliched stories in ways that provide a depth that make me see something familiar in a different way. Sometimes that is the most rewarding reading experience for me.
My guess is that we wouldn’t find out what happened to early humans who tried to migrate across a land bridge from Asia until or unless the Bishop series takes us to Canada.
We know that in this fictional world, the Others hold the territory first & they impose strict boundaries on any immigrants. So if people were immigrating from the north, they’d have been expanding from the north & at a controlled rate.
That’s my guess, anyhow.
@Kat Sherwood: I did not get the sense that the Others thought of the human woman as pathetic or whores. It seemed to me that they thought of them as useful or not useful, thus prey. As they got to know the human workers better, the Others started seeing them as something else, something more…better. Much like people in real life, as we get to know those who are different from us, we have a better understanding of them and value them more.
So, I’ve been following these comments and now have whiplash. I read Janet’s summation of Written in Blood and thought, yes please! And then followed the comments and bounced back and forth until–
I’m going to have to check it out for myself. Downloaded the sample.
I do think the theta hero [as described in comments of the previous alpha/beta columns] is being left out of the discussion and I happen to love me a loner who can’t be arsed to be alpha but sure as hell isn’t a beta.
@Mag: It’s been a long time since I read the book, I admit, and I only read the first one, so maybe this was elaborated on in the second book. But why did the Others have to wait until Magical Meg showed up before they could get to know these people who’d been working for them for years? It seemed like they’d had plenty of chances to get to know them, if they’d wanted.
And for the ‘whores’ part, I think that was more of my interpretation to the woman interloper… Asia, right? Meg is practically a child in terms of her sexuality (as I develop), but Asia has desires, and also, surprise! Is evil, but weak! It definitely felt like a Madonna/whore dichotomy to me. But you’re right, it’s not fair to blame that setup on the Others.
I guess I’m not really able to hold up my end here, since it’s been so long since I read the book and there’s no way I’m going to go back and reread! I mostly just wanted to point out that given the challenges of agreeing on the way to see a single book, it’s going to be even more unlikely ever finding agreement on a character-type as sweeping as ‘alpha’ or ‘beta’!
I thought Written in Red shared a lot of the weaknesses of the Dark Jewels books — the Mary Sue heroine, the amoral hero whose combination of vast power and weak self-control leads to horrific bloodshed for which he never truly atones or even accepts responsibility — without having their cracktastic appeal. (I can forgive a lot from an author who not only invents (as far as I know) the concept of a magic cock ring but actually makes it a major plot point. There’s even a book where they figure in the title.) I also don’t think the world-building of Written in Red makes a lot of sense. Among other things, the level of technology the humans are able to achieve while being constantly preyed upon by the terra indigene seems pretty unlikely to me. That said, I don’t think the terra indigene are supposed to be some kind of caricature or “othering” of Native Americans, and I do think writers should be allowed to tell a story based around “what would happen if analog-European/African settlers came to analog-America and found a bunch of incredibly powerful and hostile werewolves and werebears and vampires and elementals already there?” without being accused of some animus against the people who actually were here in the real world.
@etv13: Thanks for putting the issue so succinctly. Between you and Robin I have a better handle on my own dilemma in whether or not to read it, which is obviously distinct from the larger conversation those of you who’ve read it are having.
I completely agree with you when you say
I’m still not sure I could read it and really enjoy it, because I think what would be in the back of my mind is that here we have a bestselling author writing a sure-to-be-popular series about an analog-North America (great term, BTW), and that’s fine, but I want a story that incorporates the real one. That’s not her problem, that’s my problem.
I have this problem when I read books set in India that mostly aren’t about Indians. It’s not that the authors shouldn’t have written the books, or that readers shouldn’t enjoy them. But it’s another book that’s not about the people who are or were there, and I find it depressing.
I realize this book is paranormal/UF and therefore it’s a slightly different issue (and it’s an open question how much it’s a full analog-North America), but they (i.e., what is being written by one person and what isn’t by others) tend to clump together in my mind and I have a hard time separating them.
I don’t want to minimize the problematic aspects of this series (or the worldbuilding issues!) but I do love it, for all the reasons others have described above.
I know it’s been referenced here before, but it can’t hurt to drop in a link to this again: http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things/
@Sunita: Well, frankly I don’t think it’s such a great book that you should expend your psychic energies reading it over your misgivings. (I will probably read the sequel, but I definitely wasn’t willing to pay a hardcover price for it.) If I were going to urge you to do such a thing, it would be for a better book, like Captive Prince, which got to be really fun and Sabatiniesque in its second half. But I am not seriously urging you to read even that; I know you had problems* with it, and I respect that.
If you haven’t experienced the nutty goodness that is Anne Bishop, the Dark Jewels books contain hundreds (and hundreds!) of pages of it in a world that isn’t particularly an analog of anything else. Though you are right that it’s an open question of how much the Written in Red setting is a full analog-North America, and I think in fact that’s one of the weaknesses of the book. It just doesn’t feel very American, which leads me to wonder why Bishop opened this can of worms in the first place, rather than just writing a world with a hemisphere in which humans originated, and another in which the terra indigenes originated, without any references to Afrikah and the like. It’s not just that the terra indigenes have little to nothing in common with Native Americans, but that the humans don’t appear to have much in common with the Europeans and Africans who ended up in America. Their religion is explicitly different from any in our world (and within the story their creation story is something that we’re to take as objectively true), but neither it nor their culture generally is particularly well developed. That’s maybe not surprising given that the heroine has been brought up in isolation, and the hero is not a human — but again, if it’s going to be so unlike America, why invoke America at all?
*I use this term in the sense in which my mother-in-law used it when she said of my atheist husband, “David has a problem with the church.”
This has been in my TBR pile for a while – I’ve skimmed the article and the comments to avoid spoilers but I like the sound of it (and I too am tired of the feeling of deja vu every time I read a book with an alpha hero (although I also appreciate that there are numerous sub-categories of alpha which I also recognise))