What do you expect from a story when it comes specifically to its male characters?

[WeShallUnclench]

women IRL are attracted to "bad guys" because of their badness but because of their apparent confidence and the excitement that happens around them. When a really good guy has the same confidence and causes as much excitement, many more women find him intensely attractive. That's less interesting for stories, probably, but true in life.

A somewhat biting commentary I have read recently, is that many boys grew up with "assholes that everyone and all the women especially fawn over" -protagonist archetypes. The brooding detective or doctor or super soldier who calls everyone an idiot and annoys all the other characters and yet they all inevitably fall in love with him.
And, so the hypothesis goes, quite a few boys took away the wrong message, that the "being mean" part was the operating part to emulate. The result being that they aim to be mean without also aiming for any of the other characteristics. Or alternatively, they withdraw to the martyrdom of "I COULD get laid if I was mean like SuperGuy, but my tragedy is that I'm a good person".
It makes sense, of course. One can modulate their morality and nicety much easier than their charisma and competence.
Being either nice or mean is easy. Being sexy is hard.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I agree but I'd add something about confidence or at least composure as being part of the aphrodisiac. There's the "niceness" of weakness, the "too scared not to be nice" niceness, and the niceness of someone who's genuinely kind. I feel like it should be common knowledge by now that not very women IRL are attracted to "bad guys" because of their badness but because of their apparent confidence and the excitement that happens around them. When a really good guy has the same confidence and causes as much excitement, many more women find him intensely attractive. That's less interesting for stories, probably, but true in life.

However, I might be entirely wrong about this. For most of my youth, I was a nice but very timid guy, and in retrospect I realize that beautiful girls/women were attracted to me and even came on to me and I was just too timid/stupid/confused to know what to do. Later, when I got more confident, perhaps what changed wasn't how attractive I was to women but just my ability to do something about their attraction. So I don't know. But I do know that I never would've landed my wife - and if you knew her you'd have a much higher opinion of me, everyone who meets her does, literally no one has ever wondered how she landed me LOL - if I hadn't become confident enough to persist through a bit of rejection.

Quiet confidence - aka feeling comfortable in your own skin is attractive. Brash confidence isn’t. But shy awkwardness can be kinda cute too.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

Quiet confidence - aka feeling comfortable in your own skin is attractive. Brash confidence isn’t. But shy awkwardness can be kinda cute too.

Well here's some brash confidence just for you. I find myself in agreement with about 98% of the things you say here. I can only assume you're an extraordinarily insightful person. There is that remaining 2% but nobody's perfect. I don't even mind saying so.

The idea of course is that were I perfect, I'd agree with you somewhere between 0% and 2% more often. This is the shy awkward part of the post.

 

[Ianus4]

Quiet confidence - aka feeling comfortable in your own skin is attractive. Brash confidence isn’t. But shy awkwardness can be kinda cute too.

Well, brash confidence has been one of the most popular characters in romantic bestsellers since Mr. Darcy. Of course, in novels, it always turns out that behind the gruff exterior lies a sensitive heart.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

Well, brash confidence has been one of the most popular characters in romantic bestsellers since Mr. Darcy. Of course, in novels, it always turns out that behind the gruff exterior lies a sensitive heart.

Mr. Darcy is brash and confident, sure, but he's not the one that comes to mind when I think of that phrase. Gaston from Beauty and the Beast is more what I think of, and no one could think that dipshit is sexy.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Well, brash confidence has been one of the most popular characters in romantic bestsellers since Mr. Darcy. Of course, in novels, it always turns out that behind the gruff exterior lies a sensitive heart.

I was talking about IRL. There are all sorts of tropes in entertainment media.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

Quiet confidence - aka feeling comfortable in your own skin is attractive. Brash confidence isn’t. But shy awkwardness can be kinda cute too.

Brash awkwardness of course is also an exquisite flavour