between the salt water and the sea strand

Been thinking about "specialness"/supernaturality in romantic geekstuff. This was actually sparked off by my attempts to explain Twilight to my boyfriend - I ended up talking about the fantasy of the supernatural lover/fantasy objects who sweeps off the ordinary girl with whom we all identify. He asked it the gendering ever went the other way around. I've been making lists! Pairings which involve in some way falling in love with the "other," sorted by gender:

( lists! )

I'm sticking to het, specifically because I'm interested in the gendered implications of "otherness" within heterosexual genre romance narratives. From what I can tell - and I guess I'm pretty much reading from a female-oriented mindset here in terms of fantasy and identification - "special" guy pairings seem like they play into a much more predatory, dom/sub kind of thing, and the attraction is located in the idea of being wanted by someone so different and wonderful and strange. “Special” girl pairings are more about a conflation between women as other in patriarchy and women as literally different “other.”

Anything you want to add to the lists? Anything I missed? Implications?