It's no secret that I love The Big Bang Theory, even though in reality it has as much to do with science as Friends had to do with ... well, science. But there's one aspect of the show that drives me quietly insane, and that's the dynamic between Leonard and Penny.

It's become a well-used trope: Beauty and the Geek. It's the same dynamic that linked Ross and Rachel in Friends. And it's wrong, all wrong.

We want these couples to get together. We root for them. The girl is presented as being out of the guy's league, and so we cheer when he finally gets her. But why? Why do we accept the fact that she's out of his league and not the other way around? Why do looks trump intelligence? And why, oh why, do we still believe that a relationship in which both parties are convinced that one of them is way cooler (and, in fact, hotter) than the other can possibly be healthy in the long term?

It's patronising and stereotypical to portray men as being solely interested in looks. Yet as far as I can see, that's the main thing that attracts Leonard to Penny or Ross to Rachel. Instead of going for the girl they'd actually be able to have an interesting conversation with at dinner, these guys are choosing to obsess over the dumb blonde.* They're perpetuating a kind of eighteenth-century mindset that tells us men don't need their women to offer them lively discussion or a sharing of intellectual ideas, because they can always go down to their club and seek out rational company in the form of another man. Both Leonard and Ross are pursuing an adult relationship based on nothing more than an adolescent-level crush. And we're meant to feel as if they've achieved something when they finally snag the cheerleader.

Of course, a good old double standard is in operation here. For instance, there's a vague sense in Big Bang that Bernadette has married beneath her. She earns a lot more money than Howard; she wears the trousers in the relationship. Yet there's no such feeling about the Leonard/Penny pairing, even though Leonard is equally more successful than Penny. Why is this? Why are we invited to laugh at a couple who are intellectual equals and where the woman just happens to be the high flyer**, while there's no problem with a couple in the more traditional (read: stereotypical) 'man as breadwinner' configuration who have nothing at all in common except that she's hot and he likes hot girls? Is it the lingering and unpleasant assumption that a man who contributes less financially than his partner is somehow risible? Or is it the equally pernicious assumption that it doesn't matter what else a woman brings to a relationship, as long as she's attractive? If Leonard and Penny were Leonie and Peter, would we still be asked to admire Leonie's luck in finally convincing pretty-but-dumb Peter to date her? I suspect not. Women who go after inferiors in intellect/superiors in looks are mocked. Men who do the same are applauded.

So what message does this send to the geeky, smart, fascinated-with-science young women out there? That it doesn't matter how switched-on and sparky and passionate about academia they are. The guys with whom they might make an equal connection are more concerned with pursuing the hot girls who think learning is boring and intellectual curiosity is for losers. Forget being able to hold an interesting conversation, girls. If you want the boys to like you, you'd better learn to apply your makeup right.

As I said, I love Big Bang. I love the characters, and I believe it means well as a show about geeks, for geeks – even if it missteps sometimes. But I really wish we could rid ourselves, once and for all, of the idea that Geek is bad and Beauty is good. That no matter how intelligent and interesting a man is, he's still somehow inferior to a pretty woman – and that the same man won't care about a woman's brain, only about her appearance. I would have thought, in the 21st century, we'd be beyond that by now.



* I'm not actually saying that either Penny or Rachel is stupid, by the way. Just that both Leonard and Ross are presented to us as being interested in the girls primarily because of their appearance, and despite the fact that they don't have a great deal in common.

** Yes, I know Howard's an astronaut. Don't take it so literally.

I haven't done one of these in a while, so here's a never-before-seen extract from Dawn Rising. Woo hoo!

In this scene, Luthian is about to take the final step on his path to becoming a mage. (You may find it useful to know that the people of Endarion are each born with a unique birthstone at their throat; it is the removal of the birthstone that allows someone to access the power in blood, both theirs and others'.)

As always, if you have any thoughts (positive or negative) then hit me in the comments section.

Welcome to Barren Island Books, an interview show in no way related to a popular music-based radio programme. Every Thursday, I will be exiling my latest guest to a remote island with only five books for company, selected from the categories I give them. It’s up to them to make sure they choose wisely, because they’re going to be stuck with these books for a long, long time …

My interviewee this week is Sharon Van Orman, author of the Sophia Katsaros Series (the first of which is Lykaia). When she's not being banished to a desert island, Sharon can be found at nondeplumeblog.blogspot.co.uk, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Sharon-Van-Orman/104637372952495.

There are certain things which, added to the blurb on the back of a book, instantly make that book seem twice as awesome to its intended audience.

For a small boy, it's dinosaurs. Or maybe pirates. (I was particularly amused by an ad in the back of one of Baby Smith's books for Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, a title that reads as if someone grabbed everything boys like off the Shelf of Ideas and mixed it up in a big bowl.*)

For a romance reader, it appears to be a man with a dark past. (Slightly off-white pasts don't cut it in the romance world; you wouldn't get far as a romantic hero if the worst secret you're concealing in the agonised depths of your soul is that you once nearly ran over a squirrel.)

For a sports fan, it's … *tries and fails to dig up any knowledge of sport whatsoever* … er, something to do with balls?

And for fantasy lovers, it has to be dragons.

Which is why you may find it a little odd that one of my works-in-progress used to have dragons in it, and I decided to take them out. If every fantasy tale is that much better with an added pinch of dragon, why deliberately make my novel less awesome? I mean, next thing you know I'll be taking out all the swordfights and making people duel with wooden spoons instead (for health and safety reasons, obviously).

The truth is, you're right. I could have kept my dragons, and they would indeed have been awesome. But I was swayed by that most dreaded of all forces when it comes to writing: Other People's Opinions. I'd read too many blogs and articles and critical reviews that said people were fed up with dragons. Dragons are such a cliché. If I see one more dragon in a fantasy novel I'll scream. Do something more original. And so my beloved dragons got the chop.**

Which was my mistake.

Because the fact is, People With Opinions are sometimes out of step with the opinion of the people. After all, if you went by everything that's written online, you'd deduce that the whole world hated Twilight – when actually, it's a small but vociferous minority. What critics and full-time reviewers and other writers feel about any given aspect of a book isn't necessarily what most readers feel. So, straight-up battle between good and evil? Still popular (Harry Potter, anyone?). Vast epic in which the end of the book is by no means the end of the story? Still popular (A Song of Ice and Fire isn't exactly failing). And dragons? Yep, still popular.

Trying to chase critical opinion is a futile exercise. You'll always be behind the cutting edge (no doubt soon the opinion-makers will be moaning about the prevalence of gritty violence in fantasy, just when everyone's decided that's the only possible way to get noticed), and you won't necessarily be giving your audience what they want anyway. The most important thing is to do what works for your own book, whether it's considered a cliché or not. If the story is good enough then nothing else matters.

So, maybe I'll reinstate my dragons and maybe I won't. But if I don't, it won't be because fantasy is so over dragons. Because if there's one thing I realise now, it's that – no matter what a few people would have us believe – fantasy will never be over dragons, any more than small boys will ever stop loving dinosaurs and pirates.

Hmm. Pirate dragons. Now there's an idea.



* I bet the sequel is Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Mission to Outer Space. Or possibly Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Football Robot Mayhem.

** Obviously not literally. If I were in a film about dragonslayers, I'd be the one who got sent ahead as an edible decoy.