Team Jacob Won

Don’t get the wrong idea about me. I was not on Team Edward. I wasn’t on Team Twilight. I’m not sure what team I’m on.

It’s so confusing for me because I’m a romance novelist. I write all kinds of romances and yet… I wildly do not understand the werewolf romance craze.

I read three of the Twilight books and I remember thinking that the author had bungled it quite badly because I didn’t think the picture she painted of living like a vampire sounded appealing. So…

- You’re cold.

- You’re sparkly.

- You have to go out into the forests to hunt cougars or bears or whatever to eat.

- You can’t sleep.

That’s where the list stops because not being able to sleep is a deal breaker for me.

Yet, even though the life of a shiny vampire didn’t sound appealing to me, the life of a werewolf sounded much worse. But the list of cons ends quickly before we find a deal breaker.

- You turn into a wolf.

That sounds terrible to me. You know what else sounds terrible to me (though not a significant part of the Twilight world)? The whole system that supports an alpha male. If one dude is the alpha, then what are all the other dudes? It sounds like a system that turns on women who want to be better than other people and they need a trophy man to give that to them.

I have a friend who writes werewolf romances and I asked her about this. She says it’s not about being better than other people. It’s about having what you need to survive and be comfortable.

As an aside, do you know what would make me comfortable? Not being a dog.

Still, no matter what she says, the word ‘alpha’ does not suggest merely the acquisition of comfort. It suggests a hierarchy where someone is the top dog and, if there’s a top dog, there must be a lot of smaller dogs.

It’s too bad I’m not a dog person at all.

However, it is also clear that part of the appeal of the werewolf system is something like being part of a pack (part of a family). So, the people you’re better than if you’re the alpha male are all your relatives.

I’ve got to also say that this kind of hierarchy among brothers tastes really sour to me. I have a lot of brothers and the idea of them fighting over which one is the best and should be the leader makes me want to shove myself off a cliff and be eaten by wolves.

That gives us a lone wolf trope. There’s a lot of being expelled from the pack in werewolf romances. That’s when the heroine gets picked up by an alpha male from an even bigger pack.

Gah! I wish I liked this stuff. If I could be entertained by a werewolf romance, I would be able to read something enjoyable with every second left of my available lifespan. There are a LOT of werewolf romance novels out there.

This is where we go back to vampires because somewhere in the dark recesses of my life, there was a time when I loved a good old vampire romance. Twilight doesn’t figure into this because Twilight does not understand the heart of a vampire obsession. Twilight’s main reason for loving a vampire seems to have everything to do with loving eternal beauty, but it neglects the cost of that beauty by making the vampire protagonists feed and interact with the world in a way that is not offensive to the average reader.

For old me, the beauty of a vampire romance was that it could never be realized. If you’re a vampire and you fall in love with a human, you’ll kill them by drinking their blood too hard. Then, the romance is over. This also means that I am wildly opposed to the idea of vampires having sex. They’re dead, so there’s no sex. When you’re a vampire, eating and having sex are the same thing. So, you can never have enduring love because that is in direct opposition to your nature.

The whole vampire system is incredibly appealing to those suffering from unrequited love who need to find beauty in something that can never be.

Now, at the time, almost all the little girls reading Twilight were on Team Edward, but I rarely see a vampire romance now. It’s all about the werewolf romance thing. There are whole reading platforms that basically dedicate themselves to reading about werewolves and the moon and shifting from being a human to a wolf with racy transformation sequences.

And that's why Team Jacob won.

I sit there and scratch my head. I really miss reading. I miss reading garbage books where I could just get lost in a story about two people falling in love and there are wall slams, tense moments, jealousy, and money thrown around like there was no tomorrow.

Now, I’m like, “I’ll write you a romance novel, but you probably won’t like it because it will be based in reality. The guy will be an ordinary guy. He will not be a billionaire. He will not grow fangs for any reason. He will not drain your blood unless he’s taking a blood sample to be added to a centrifuge. He will be… normal.”

I’m just kidding. I do not write werewolf romances or vampire romances, but the main men in my books have had:

- Excessive amounts of charm.

- Fangs.

- Knives up his sleeves.

- Intense good looks that do not fade with the passage of time.

- Romantic notions.

- A twisted crown that ruins his life.

- Godlike powers.

- Abs that make grown women weep.

- A way of holding a cigarette between his fingers.

- Muscles so beautiful, he looks good no matter what he’s wearing.

- Piloting skills.

- Horrendous reputations.

- Tons of money.

- Big trucks.

- Wrecking skills.

- Organizational skills.

- Practice killing.

- Patience of a saint.

I would like to take this moment to say also that I have written 29 novels to completion, so not all these traits are in one dude. Each one of these lines represents a different hero in a different book.

I just can't get into the whole 'he turns into a dog' thing. If you scroll to the top of this article, there is a gorgeous picture of a white wolf. However, I'm not remotely turned on by it. If I could get into the idea, I'm pretty sure my life would be fifty percent better.