What's up with the Vampires?

And that's not even the right question. The question is really what's up with the ladies in modern day literature falling in love with them? Or worse, the lady authors who are writing about modern day ladies falling in love with them?

I need to rant for just a sec and then I promise I will go back to crafts and cooking and the whole shebang tomorrow.

I'm hip deep in the novel "A Discovery of Witches" and jeezle pete! It's like Twilight for grown-ups (though, I guess considering the Twilight series's readership, plenty of people thought that was for adults, too). The main differences between it and Twilight is that the characters spend loooooooots of time in libraries, and smelling and tasting wine, and discussing(shallowly) lesser known authors and poets from centuries long past.

But here's the thing that bugs me. The heroine falls in love with a total alpha male who is possessive, controlling, and constantly threatening the potential of violence he "might not be able to control" if she keeps pushing him--and it's all understandable and okay because he's a vampire. She knows he's a vampire. He's an instinctual creature. He is what he is. Blech. Puke. Choke. Cough. Cough.

Holy moly. It's all so insulting. If a teenager in Twilight wants to fall in love with a bad boy at just the perfect age for that kind of stupidity, I get it. But a grown 30+ year old woman with a PhD and tenure track position at Yale who has time off to study at Oxford for the year. The "Discovery of Witches" makes sure that she gets across the notion that having that level of education and working at those institutions makes her character a cut above the rest, but how am I to read the book as saying anything other than "really smart women can be ridiculously stupid too?"

And another thing, I'm half way through the book, and when her aunt's girlfriend/partner hints that it might be hard for them to maintain a relationship with her while she's dating something as dangerous as a vampire, her good aunt steps in and reminds her lover that plenty of people threatened to disown them when they came out and they won't do the same to her niece. Because being a lesbian and falling in love with a woman is totally equivalent to dating a guy who murders people. . . for food.

This vampire thing has got to hurry up, run its course, and then end for poo-sake. It's making us ladies look like victims. . . and willing ones at that.