shadow

in which the author discusses our deepest darkest desires

I’ve complained before about a certain kind of male love interest in modern romantasy. We all know the type - impeccably muscled and not an inch under 6’ 3”; dark-haired, light-eyed, and ethnically-ambiguous; with the jawline of a Greek god and the tortured sensitivities of a Byronic hero; overprotective; bad at communication; sexually aggressive; independently wealthy; and with a suite of magical or supernatural powers that manifest his inner darkness as literal. You know him as Xaden from Fourth Wing, Rhysand from A Court of Thorns and Roses, and the Darkling from Shadow and Bone, where the name of this trope arguably originated from - Shadow Daddy. Even Edward Cullen, possibly the most notorious fictional heartthrob of the 21st century to date, is a prototype.

As much as I’m put off by this kind of character - see the part about being overprotective, bad at communication, and sexually aggressive - there’s no denying the Shadow Daddy has mass appeal. His popularity among female fans is arguably the driving force behind the success of these series; eerily similar fanart of his various iterations proliferate across the web.

these are, theoretically, two different men.

When I asked one of my friends, an avid romantasy reader, what the appeal in this type of character was, she said “wish fulfillment.” She acknowledges that in real life, a Shadow Daddy would be a terrible partner; for her, that’s not the point. The Shadow Daddy allows her to tap into something that would otherwise be unavailable or undesirable.

And that, after all, is one of the appeals of fiction. But I still didn’t see what that thing was. Men like the Shadow Daddy seem all too common in real life, minus the magic powers. Then I read an article that posited that for all his disregard of his female partner’s boundaries and erotic aggressiveness, the Shadow Daddy actually has no sexual preferences of his own beyond “the heroine.” Intrinsically understanding of her desires (even the ones she doesn’t acknowledge to herself) while taking control of the situation so that she has no moral responsibility for it, his sexuality exists only to serve hers.

And that’s when I realized the Shadow Daddy has very little to do with the ideal of a male romantic partner. Instead, he’s an expression of repressed female desires. The Shadow Daddy is not who we want to be in a relationship with —

He’s who we want to be.