Sadly, not literally...but alas. I am. Spoilers for the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning ahead so if you are reading, plan to read, or just don't want to know...stop now.

So you know the adage "stuck between a rock and a hard place" which is pretty much a reference to the scene in The Odyssey where they find they have to sail between Scylla, a monster on a rock, and Chribdys (too lazy to look up the spelling of that right now), a whirlpool aka a hard place. Well...I find myself in a similar situation. Between Cruce and V'lane. Which is absolutely silly considering they are one in the same. At least, the V'lane we met and knew is. The real V'lane we never knew and cannot judge him as we have no grounds to know what he was like.

You're probably wondering...okay, if they are the same why is she finding herself stuck between the two? Well, I've accepted the fact that what happened happened and all that jazz. I guess the most upsetting to me was that I believed in his goodness so much and then could have dealt with what happened better if it wasn't for his tone change. Once he became Cruce he was so mean and spitting venom and practically twirling an invisible mustache as he carried on. It still shellshocks me to think on it. *sigh*

Anyway, I was in the KMM Zazzle store looking for a new shirt to buy and found myself looking at the Evil Boyfriend designs. There's a V'lane one which is a pretty gold and a Cruce one which is blood red. And that is when I finally had to admit to myself I am torn between them. Either way, I love the character. Despite his tone in the end, who we knew from the very beginning of the story was the same guy. It drives me insane when people say they like him more now than before (mainly because his hair is a different color WTF? Okay, so I have a soft spot for blonds and was a bit thrown when that was taken from him as well, but I can deal. Hair color is hair color. It's the character I fell in love with, not his hair...though that was a plus LOL)

After flipping back and forth between the two designs I eventually picked the Cruce one. I have the V'lane one as a mousepad, got it before Shadowfever came out, joking that I was going to take a sharpie and write nonabove the evil boyfriend part. Guess the joke was on me there... But in the end I realized, that I need to embrace the character that is over the one that was. Despite the fact that it still feels slightly wrong to choose anything over something that has "V'lane" on it.  I feel like I am cheating on my literary crush and he's the same freaking character. This is so weird!

But somehow I find it a little strange. I wonder sometimes if I believed he was so completely good because I have the tendency to fall for the villain in a lot of stories. I am almost appalled at how many "villains" I prefer over other characters.

To name a few:
Spike - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Lothaire - Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series
Layel - Gena Showalter's Atlantis series
Snape - Harry Potter
Julian - LJ Smith's The Forbidden Game
The Phantom - The Phantom of the Opera
Stephen Bonnet - Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series
Jarreth, the Goblin King - Labyrinth
Guy of Gisborne - BBC's Robin Hood

Just to name a few. All of the above had shades of gray despite the bad things they'd done, they had done some good (Bonnet probably being the blackest of the bunch, he did have some good moments..few that they were. He amused the hell out of me though)

And it just occurred to me that at one point I said Julian was a prerequisite for V'lane. LMAO! That statement is soooo ironic right now. Julian was the master of games. Heartbreakingly beautiful, in love with the heroine of the story, and no concept of right and wrong.

Going to bring this post to a close. I felt I needed to write about it, though, as I still feel a bit weird not buying the V'lane merch and going for the Cruce stuff. Let's just hope we get to see more of him (uniced) in the future and get to learn more about him as him. And if most of the characters mentioned above can be so beloved despite the bad deeds they did, I am sure KMM can redeem Cruce. If anyone can, she can.