Love, Actually: Childhood Sweethearts & The Gal or Guy Next Door

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Last month I kicked off a new Supernatural Underground post series, looking at different aspects of romantic love, including examples from my own fiction where appropriate.

I started with that universal crowd pleaser, "star-crossed love" and "might have been's." This month, I'm checking out "childhood sweethearts" and "the gal, or guy, next door."

When it comes to the gal and guy next door, it's hard to go past Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson and Adam Hauptmann, where motor mechanic Mercy likes to pull cars to bits and leave the result on her back field 'where it was clearly visible from Adam’s bedroom window.'
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 Another fictional gal from next door, or at least just across the fields, is Rosie Cotton, the focus of Sam Gamgee's long unspoken admiration in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:

Rosie & Sam

'But as he started off, Rosie ran down the steps. "I think you look fine, Sam," she said. "Go on now! But take care of yourself, and come straight back as soon as you have settled the ruffians!"'

A speculative fiction couple who tick both the "childhood sweethearts" and "the gal/guy next door" boxes are David Strorm and Rosalind Morton from John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic classic, The Chrysalids. 

'Quite when it was that we had known we were going to marry one another, neither of us had been able to remember. It was one of those things that seemed ordained, in such proper accord with the law of nature and our own desires, that we felt we had always known it.
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Anne & Gil

When it comes to fictional childhood sweethearts, it's hard to go past Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blyth. Because despite Anne's long-held grudge against Gil, you somehow know that they're going to grow up and be together.

In The Gathering Of The Lost, the herald pair, Jehane Mor and Tarathan of Ar, also turn out to have been together since their cradles:

'Another, clearer vision slipped through...of a youthful warrior, his hair a twisting of chestnut braids, on his knees before a white-clad girl with his face buried in her lap. ... Her hands turned his face up to meet her gaze. “I have always trusted your true judgment and truer heart.” Her expression grew resolute. “And if there is a price to be paid, we will pay it together.”

“You see us as we were long ago.” Tarathan spoke quietly...'

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But what about you? Do you have a favorite pair of fictional childhood sweethearts, or a gal or boy next door that you particularly 'heart'?


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Supernatural Underground regular, Helen Lowe, is a novelist, poet and interviewer whose work has been published, broadcast and anthologized internationally. Her first novel, Thornspell, was published to critical praise in 2008, and her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Helen posts regularly on her Helen Lowe on Anything, Really blog, occasionally on SF Signal, and is also active on Twitter: @helenl0we

Love, Actually..."Might Have Been's' and "Star-Crossed"

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For my January and February posts I featured a short story, Bird Of Passage.

Now, any story is what it is, but one important aspect of Bird Of Passage is that it's a tale of love that "might-have-been."

Another story I posted on my own blog during March, Ithaca, features enduring love and also mother love.

Both stories got me thinking about how many different kinds of love there are, in fiction as in real life — so I thought I'd take a closer look at romantic love in particular over the new few months, including examples from my own fiction.

Starting today with "might-have-been's" first cousin, Star-Crossed Love.

Literature's most famous example would have to be the original star-crossed pair, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;"

One of the lesser themes of The Gathering Of The Lost is another star-crossed pair, Ghiselaine of Ormond and Audin Sondargent. Descended from states that (not unlike the Montagues and Capulets) have only recently declared peace after generations of war, they may fall in love but not marry:

"Yet after a few miles ... Audin dropped back to ride beside Ghiselaine. At first they did not look at each other, until Audin reached across and covered Ghiselaine's hand with his own. She did turn her head, then, and Carick looked away from what he saw in her expression..."

Perhaps the ultimate star-crossed couple of recent times is Buffy and Angel, from the television series Buffy. Vampire Slayer, Buffy, and reformed vampire, Angel, fall deeply in love but can never be together because Angel is cursed: if he knows a moment of true happiness he will revert to his former evil ways.

So how about you? Do you have a favorite star-crossed pair in literature or on the silver screen?

Warm Bodies

Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich
in Warm Bodies Feb 2013

Why I thought zombies made rotten lovers . . .

Lao Tzu said character is destiny and it holds true in fiction as well as ‘real’ life. How characters think, what informed their past, what hopes excite them, as well as their physicality, combine to create the next twist or turn in the story. So how can a mindless, flesh eating zombie EVER be a love interest? Paranomal hero can, but zombies NO!

That's what I used to think. I said in interviews that it was impossible to write a ‘zombie romance’. I even stated something along the lines of  You’ll never see a zombie romance! It could never work.

Why?

No matter how brilliant the plot or true the love, characters have to have a potency of their own, and it's got to be driving, charismatic. They must grow, change, exhibit emotions (or repress them), have likes and dislikes, flaws and attributes. Basically, they have to be ‘real’ people that the reader, or the viewer, can relate to. If they don’t feel alive they might as well be, you guessed it, zombies, and that’s not going to make anyone’s’ heart throb, or so I thought.

Then I picked up Warm Bodies.

How in the world does one bring a zombie to life? Isaac Marion has the answer. You give them heart, or at least, a vestige of one. Once that awakens, a whole new world unfolds, where even a zombie can fall in love. Warm Bodies, a paranormal romance/horror/thriller, is the living proof. zombies don’t always make rotten lovers.

Warm Bodies by
Isaac Marion

It might also be proof of a shift in our collective unconscious. I've talked before about vampires and other paranormal ‘monsters’ as 'expression of the collective shadow', and how our shifting relationship to these ‘demons’ in film and literature reflects a shift in our consciousness as we form a new relationship to that ‘shadow.’  (see Evolution of the Vampire Revisited) Falling for a zombie is definitely taking up a lot of new file space in my research. This thesis just keeps expanding! Bottom line, as a species, we are opening up, connecting with our dark side and transforming it through love.

Whether this book and film are new trend in paranormal romance, (is that possible?) or a statement about evolving human consciousness, Warm Bodies is a fun read! It’s a story about R, a young man in a state of existential crisis because he’s not alive, and not really dead. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic USA where R has no memories, until he eats someone's. His growth arc is huge!

When the memories in one of his victim’s brains affect him, he finds himself attracted to, rescuing, befriending and eventually falling in love with the dead boy’s still living-girlfriend. Julie (Australia’s own Teresa Palmer) is a blast of colour in the dreary and grey landscape that is the “life” of the un-living. Their tense, awkward and strangely sweet relationship develops into something that will not only transform R, but his fellow zombies . . .  Warm Bodies the film 2013



It appears love is infectious after all!


Has anyone seen the film? Read the book? Let’s compare notes!


Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at kimfalconer.com or on The 11th House Blog. She posts here at the SuperntrlUnderg on the 16th of every month. Her latest release is Supernatural Underground: Vampires Gone Wild.