OK, by now we’ve all seen the opening salvos. There is the obviously superior Peeta Mellark, and then there is that other guy, his name escapes me at the moment and I don’t feel I should devote too much thought towards it, the name may come to me, but it may not. The important thing is that we make it clear who is the WRONG choice for Katniss. I’m pretty sure we all know who that  is.

To fully explore the inferiorities of the competition, I am going to have to warn all those that choose to go forward from this point that SPOILERS will fly, the arena clock will tick, and some folks may even die. It will all be sad, but like the Hunger Games themselves, it can only be endured.

[The odds, and facts, are obviously in Peeta’s favor….]

Any conversation about The Hunger Games invariably leads to a discussion of the love interests. Like almost all other YA out there, there’s a triangle. In this book, young Katniss Everdeen must choose between long-time friend and co-hunter/starving child Gale, and skilled laborer and generally better off, Peeta. I fall in the Peeta camp. But before I can get into the why of it I feel that I should explain the how.

(Warning: Beware of possible SPOILERS for all 3 books in the series.)

I came to The Hunger Games while interning at a Literary Agency that focused on YA. I hadn’t read a ton of YA before, only the ones that managed to make enough noise as to reach me in my lofty tower of SciFi/Fantasy exclusivity. (Oh, how I have branched out since…) So I’m mainly talking Harry Potter (Woot!) and the Twilight Saga (Kill it with fire!).

[It all started in a very love/hate kind of way...]

OK. Broad, sweeping generalizations and grandiose titling aside, I have this idea. It may sound crazy, but stick with me.

To this day, I recall precisely where in my elementary school library Tolkien’s The Hobbit was shelved. It was, and remains, my all-time favorite book. This is the book that I read no matter the situation. Feeling good? Grab The Hobbit. Had a bad day? Bilbo will make it better. When I found out there was a movie coming, and in that movie the Dwarves sing, I kind of squeed. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there it is. Then I found out ol’ Petey Jackson is creating a character for the movie. A female character.

The character will be a Mirkwood elf captain played by Evangeline Lilly. I understand why Jackson would add the character; The Hobbit was written by Tolkien for his sons, all of whom were under the age of 16 at the time, so it was understandably girl-free. What I don’t fully understand is the nerd rage flying around about the addition. Tolkien has plenty of kick-ass heroines. In fact, he was doing Paranormal Romance tropes before they were tropes. Hell, even before a lot of us were either born or old enough to care.  Not only that, I’ll prove it!

[Get comfortable…]

There’s this show that is a total guilty pleasure. I love Spartacus—yes,  the original too, but for the sake of this article I’m referring to the Starz Network TV Show. If you haven’t see it, it’s a bunch of very buff guys stabbing each other and then going to an orgy or two, and nobody does orgies like the Romans did orgies, let me tell you.

You see, I have a big weakness for the action movies of the 1980s and 1990s. Showing Commando at midnight? I’m there. Want to watch all the Conan movies, (two with Arnold and one with Khal Drogo)? Sign me up. Hell, I’ve been known to chain watch anything starring Kevin Sorbo, including Krull. So when I started reading J.R. Ward’s Dark Lover I got that same old action movie/Spartacus feel, and I’ve got to say I liked it. Am I ready to call myself a BDB fan-girl fan-boy? Let’s just say, I’m not ready to call it my new crahck, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

[So no reservations then?...]

Heroes and Heartbreakers has covered everything from triangles involving brothers to cousin lovin’ to twincest, but this may be entering into a whole other level of weird. Welcome to the brother-and-sister love of Dexter and Deborah Morgan.

Sure, Game of Thrones’s Cersei and Jamie are brother and sister, but that series is comfortably set in the dark ages and in a fantasy world. It might skeeve us out, but really it’s OK because it’s not real. But the love between adoptive siblings that have been raised as brother and sister in a contemporary world hits a little too close to home for a lot of viewers.

If you missed it, the recent season finale episodes of Dexter had Deb dreaming of kissing her brother and then admitting that she loves him to a therapist right before finding out a little more about her brother’s hobbies. Needless to say things have not been easy for the Deb/Dex camp since the event. Apparently, the fan outrage has managed to get the network chief to defend the decision.

Honestly? I’m not all that bothered. Mainly because ol’ Dex has said from the beginning that Deb is the only girl he has ever truly loved. And Deb, to borrow a phrase from a certain book, is just fifty shades…OK, maybe they both are, I guess.

What do you think, is Showtime taking the bond between brother and sister too far? Can you think of any other incestuous romances that may have worked? (Only thing I got is Flowers in the Attic and I’m not ready to call that a success.) How far is too far with inter-family romance?

It looks like Natalie Portman’s character in Thor, Jane Foster, is in for some competition. Jaimie Alexander, who played Sif, the warrior woman that battled giants with Thor and the Warriors Three, has hinted at a possible love triangle between Portman, Chris “The Thunder God” Hemsworth, and herself. (And you know how H&H likes its triangle discussions...)

In the comics (and myth) Thor and Sif were always together—well, until Odin wiped his son’s memory and made him mortal, that is. Then he fell for Dr. Jane Foster. Of course, at one point Sif inhabited the body of Jane...er, this could really go on for way too long; we are talking about comics.

I think it would be nice to introduce the triangle. Though I also would love to see more of the Loki/Thor/Sif triangle. I mean, Loki’s jealousy of his brother’s way with the ladies is why Sif is a brunette, after all (whole other weird story involving a midnight haircut). But then, I liked Tom Hiddleston as Loki much better than Hemsworth as Thor, so there’s that.

What do you think about a possible triangle in Thor 2?

I’m not going to throw out a cliché about what a “long strange trip it’s been,” but it has been a trip nonetheless, folks. I started in the comforting arms of Loretta Chase and the incredibly fun Rupert Carsington in the book Mr. Impossible. From there, I took a walk on the dark side of romance and read Meljean Brook’s Demon Moon. Both surprised me.

Where I was initially expecting some sort of bastardization of a Lisa Frank notebook, a Lifetime Movie, and just a dash of sexy-time thrown in, I found interesting stories with equally charming characters and plots that tended to suck me in.  Then I was handed my contemporary romance, and I found yet another layer to Romance.

[What’s the point of stereotypes if they’re always wrong?...]

You know, I thought I was ready for romance. I thought that with my first historical I was ready to take on the Romance world; me against the odds, one man fighting the good fight, and all that. Well, folks, I had relied too strongly upon the talented Miss Chase and the roguish charm of Rupert, the hero in her Mr. Impossible.

There is another part of Romance. Far beyond fun romps in the Victorian Egypt, it’s the dark, seedy alley of Romance. It’s the part of town where upstanding, respectable people tuck their heads down and all but run through. One that is filled with vampires, demons, and various other things that go bump in the night. Oftentimes there is a very adult and sexy reason for the bumping, but there is bumping nonetheless, mark my words. This place is Paranormal Romance, and it changes you, people....

[The night is dark, and full of European vampires…]

I signed up for this whole ordeal not knowing where it would go. Then they handed me my books and things got suddenly real.  An untold amount of preconceptions ran through my head. All ones I’m sure you’ve heard from almost any guy that talks about Romance: “It’ll be nothing but swooning females,” “It’s just porn for women,"  “plot isn’t as important as relationships,” etc. Then I picked up Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible, and my mind was blown.

[Watch as Ms. Chase drops a knowledge bomb…]

The second season of Game of Thrones returns April, 2012. It has really been too long since we all learned just how stupid Ned Stark could be. (I mean, really, man, come on...) and news, rumors, and awards have flown back and forth (huzzah for Tyrion). Anticipating Season 2 also means figuring out who is new, and who is playing whom exactly. It’s not like George R.R. Martin had to include a master list of major players in every volume of the series or anything. Oh, wait...

[He did!...]

There are some of us here at H&H *cough* redline_ *cough* that will talk at length as to the merits of one Adama/Thrace (or Apollo/Starbuck if you are so inclined). But I would like to tell you about a couple that was saving the galaxy only to be tragically torn apart long before Miss Thrace and Adama Jr. set foot in a Viper. I present to you, the born-military Aeryn Sun and the ever so witty and indomitable John Crichton.

The date was the early 2000s and America had just received from Austrailia and The Jim Henson Company a new and exciting SciFi show called Farscape. The show was primarily about John Crichton, an astronaut/physicist specializing in the study of wormholes. During one of his experiments, he finds himself on the other side of the galaxy surrounded by various aliens and no way home.

[And what a long, strange trip it was...]

There is this special connection sometimes between two male characters. You know what I’m talking about; you’ve at least either seen or read The Lord of the Rings and know about the special “friendship” between Frodo and Sam. I mean, Frodo couldn’t have done it without his Sam, after all.

I’m sure each of us could name off at least five of these special man on man friendships, be it full on man love between a hobbit and his gardener or the rather competitive relationship between one Mavrick and Iceman. I feel it is my responsibility to highlight the more memorable and timeless of these relationships, and the first comes that springs to mind comes from the world of comic books.

No, not the ward/waif relationship of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, nor the unrequited love between Lex Luthor and Superman, though you are getting warmer—I’m talking the full-on bromantic love between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr.

[The Master of Magnetism meets an All-Powerful Psychic...]

Back in August, a pretty amazing book came out. That book was Anna Dressed in Blood and you should be reading it right now.  

There have been few books that I have really obsessed over, don’t get me wrong, I have favorites, but I can count on one hand the amount of books that have completely blown me away. Anna Dressed in Blood is one of those books.

You see, this particular story is about a guy and a girl. An almost typical story, that I am sure we have all probably heard before. I may even go so far as to call these two star-crossed. And when I say star-crossed, I don’t mean lamely belonging to two feuding family’s like some fictional Hatfields and McCoys; they are as star-crossed as two folks can be.

[Things aren’t going to go easy for them, are they?...]

EW.com’s Shelf Life has just revealed the new cover for the sequel to Veronica Roth’s awesome debut YA Dystopian, Divergent. Looks like the book will be called Insurgent and, according to Roth, will feature the factions that didn’t get a chance to shine in Divergent. Which means a lot of Candor and Amity. She also promises a lot more background info on Four/Tobias and that we finally get to see what happens when two people, Tris and megalomaniacal Jeanine, decide to overthrow The Man. 

Excited about Insurgent? So are we! Stay tuned to Heroes and Heartbreakers as we count down the days.

Thanks to H&H blogger Tara Gelsomino for the heads-up!

There is a dark, depressing, and emotionally draining cloud over YA. Books like Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games,   Veronica Roth  ’s Divergent, and a growing host of others all but torture their protagonists only to have them succeed by winning mediocrity. The worst of it is that these characters are happy with their reward, even if it makes Oliver Twist’s pleas for more seem like the demands of an insatiable glutton.

The question is, where are all of the dystopian/ brutal romances? Sure there is the occasional Battlestar Galactica or Firefly where we have our cast of battered vagrants fighting against impossible odds with the sole goal being to survive, maybe even find love. However, in one case you have a show that has yet to be successfully replicated and in the other you have a show that was never able to find an audience when it was on the air and now thrives on a cult following and dvd sales.

Given its success in different markets, why hasn’t Romance caught the apocalypse bug? Is it that the genre isn’t built to handle these themes? What do you think?