JanetLetters of Opinionarchetypes / Beauty-and-the-Beast / Dracula / Fifty Shades of Grey / Frankenstein / genre critique / mythology / Transcendence / tropes / Twilight / vampires12 Comments

The idea for this essay started with a question: what is it about Twilight and its derivations, especially Fifty Shades of Grey and Transcendence, that allow these variations to represent “fresh” and “new” in the retelling? I’m not interested in whether these books are good or bad, nor am I ... more >

JanetLetters of OpinionAlpha hero / Anne Bishop / archetypes / beta hero / Dark Fantasy / genre critique / Romance17 Comments

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 ... more >