Those who Have a Type in Literature.
- An Abundance of Katherines: Colin has a very specific type: girls named Katherine. He's dated 19 Katherines. All spelled exactly like that; no Catherines or Kathryns or anything other than, exactly, Katherine.
- Captive Prince: Damen is known for liking blond hair and blue eyes and is a sucker for an Ice Queen. This leaves him finding Prince Laurent, initially his hated enemy, frustratingly attractive.
- Ciaphas Cain, THE HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, prefers blondes (as he explains to the dark-haired cultist he shoots after Jurgen prevents her from mind controlling and sacrificing him).
- In Wen Spencer's Elfhome, Tinker sees the elf Windwolf had asked to marry him before her, and realizes that his type is short and brown.
- Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey has a type: shortish, dark-haired young women with light eyes. Apparently they remind him of his late mother. Ana fits this profile perfectly. This isn't a question of interpretation, either. Grey tells Ana this outright in Fifty Shades Darker:"...I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore—my birth mother. I'm sure you can guess why."
- Girls Don't Hit: Joss likes lean, athletic women, and admits not only Echo has this look but also her. She thinks it's probably the case that most people find versions of themselves attractive.
- Girls Kingdom: Mei only likes girls that stand at 4'9" at the most, and since her Mistress, who is decidedly under that height, let her do the recruiting for the Paradise Palace, well, there's a reason it's nicknamed the Petite Palace...
- Gor: The author John Norman loves submissive sluts, and it tends to show in his work. As for characters...
- In Vagabonds of Gor, Marcus has a type he's "almost insanely" attracted to: slim, exquisite, very lightly complexioned, dark-haired, dark-eyed.
- In Kur of Gor, Tarl is imprisoned with a woman whom the Priest-Kings have selected as being a perfect match to his desires, and he to her; but he can't do anything about it because she is a free woman and his Codes forbid acting upon those desires. This, Tarl presumes, is intended as torture. Of course once she becomes a slave he is no longer forbidden from acting.
- Harry Potter:
- When you look at the guys she's shown any romantic interest in throughout the franchise, it's clear that Hermione Granger likes her guys tall and somewhat goofy, with a tendency towards glory-seeking acts and achievements (as opposed to actual heroics). This makes the Dance of Despair-slash-Dance of Romance she has with Harry (in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) stand out all the more, as the Broken Ace with Chronic Hero Syndrome Harry (who only wants to have a quiet life out of the spotlight) is definitely off-type for her as a love interest.
- Mentioned in-universe during Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Hermione mentions going to Slughorn's party with Cormac Maclaggen, a Quidditch player who replaced Ron on the Gryffindor team. Parvati and Lavender (who was busy deep-frenching Ron) immediately point out that she seems to have a thing for Quidditch players (referring to her going to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum three years prior). Hermione smiles sweetly and specifies that she has a thing for really good Quidditch players. Hermione leaves, Parvati and Lavender immediately compare notes on everything Hermione ever said or did regarding relationships, Ron stares blankly into space, and Harry...
Harry was left to contemplate in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.- While two is a small sample size, “really good Quidditch players” is actually the main trait the only girls Harry is seriously interested in have in common.
- In Heart of Steel, the reader eventually learns that Alistair has fallen in love exactly twice, both times to women who were both blonde and intelligent. Considering that the first time was in college and the second time was after a psychotic break and ten years of solitude, this may be due to a small reference pool.
- Hive Mind (2016):
- Lucas realizes that Megan is irresistibly attracted to dominant, risk-taking men. Her teen level boyfriend was so involved with teen games that she reached the rank of Colonel in two of them, she was married to a member of Keith's strike team within two months of her Lottery, and after her husband's death, her Belligerent Sexual Tension with Adika starts up almost immediately after he arrives at Hive Futura.
- Sapphire's Strike Team consists entirely of tall, blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned men with determined chins. Rumor is that about half of the strike team dyes their hair to fit the description.
- Journey to Chaos: Dosh says that both his older brother and his father have a "weakness for tsundere". Nolien is kinda-sorta in a relationship with Tiza so he can't argue the point.
- In the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, Vanyel likes to tease his Companion Yfandes about the kinds of Companion stallions she prefers, claiming they're all athletic and dim, while she protests that they're not stupid.
- In Les Misérables, Éponine is secretly in love with Marius, a handsome young man with lush dark hair and gentlemanly manners. She's also implied to sometimes sleep with Montparnasse, a handsome young knife-wielding criminal who also has striking dark hair and pretensions of dignity.
- In Little Women, Amy says while she being courted by a wealthy man that she's always known that she's going to marry a man who's rich.
- In Loyal Enemies, Shelena can't stop swearing that Tall, Dark, and Handsome (that is, in a pinch, her so-called mortal enemy monster hunter Veres) is MOST CERTAINLY NOT her type. The light, strong and manly kind is, supposedly. Guess who becomes the Official Couple by the end of the book.
- Mind Games: James is so into Catgirls that the System gives the girl he likes the ability to change into one. Of course, she's just as into geeky men, and it's not like she doesn't get anything out of the ability.
- Vin of Mistborn: The Original Trilogy just happens to be so exactly Elend's type (dark-haired, mysterious, and scandalously lowborn) that his friends suspect she's been planted to spy on him.
- In Northanger Abbey, Isabella and Catherine discuss and compare their tastes in men: Isabella claims a preference for blonds, while Catherine, when pressed, confesses to admire darker eyes and hair (which just happens to describe her Love Interest Henry Tilney).
- The first chapter of River of Teeth establishes that while Houndstooth may not care about the gender of whoever he's sleeping with, he is known for going for expressive eyes, preferably green or brown ones, though blue will do as well.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Arya Stark seems to demonstrate close connection with illegitimate children in this series, having a close relationship with her half-brother Jon, the highborn illegitimate son of Ned Stark, and a Ship Tease with her friend Gendry, who is the unknown illegitimate son of King Robert Baratheon who grows up as an unacknowledged bastard child.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation Relaunch novel Losing the Peace suggests that Worf's type is "tall, dark-haired, sharp-witted females", tying his then-current relationship with Jasminder Choudhury to his past ones with K'Ehleyr, Deanna Troi, and Jadzia Dax.
- Swan's Braid & Other Tales of Terizan: In "Swan's Braid" Terizan watches Swan and notes that she only takes slender, brunette women to bed. It turns out to be subverted as Swan was tracking down a woman of that description who tipped off the bandits she went after, she's not into those women specifically.
- Tales of the Pack: While she's attracted to other more feminine women as well, Lexie's love interests in the series, Archer and then Randy, are both butch lesbians, implying she's into them particularly.
- These Words Are True and Faithful devotes considerable attention to the various characters' types."What's the new guy look like?" "What do you think he looks like? He looks like the one type Ernie would ever date." "Younger blond twink?" "Ding ding ding ding ding, we have a winner here, folks."
- Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Magdelene is attracted to young, muscular men, and especially musicians.
- In David Brin's second Uplift trilogy, Gillian Baskin is reluctant to send Dwer back to shore because it presents a risk to her ship and crew if he's captured, but also because, partly, he's the first person she's been attracted to since she lost her husband.Gillian: [thinking] Naturally. I've always been a sucker for hero types.
- Not only is Dwer driven by duty, very physically capable and quite intelligent, but also like her missing husband Thom, Dwer is a psi-gifted empath (unknown to Gillian).
- However, in Gillian's defense, Dwer is also the only living human mel she's seen in a year.
- Miles Vorkosigan of Vorkosigan Saga seems to appreciate tall, slim, aggressive, brunette women, to the point that his cousin nicknames his former girlfriends "the harrowing harem" because he finds them all completely terrifying. It's worth nothing two things, though — one is that to Miles, any woman even of average height is taller than him. The other is that the "aggressive" portion might have less to do with Miles' preference and more with only said women having the guts to date a sawn-off hyperactive lunatic. It also distinguishes him from his clone-brother, Mark, who prefers curvy blondes with gentle and accepting natures.
- In Ward, Victoria notices Vista eyeing another superhero and teases that she has a thing for "unobtainable big guys in armor". Vista protests at first, then thinks about it for a second and says "Oh God, I think you might be right!"
- In Wild Orchid, Penny's boyfriends have all been extremely similar. They have dark hair and big lips, wear golf shirts, polyester pants, dark socks, and loafers, are about Penny's height or slightly taller, smell like aftershave, have annoying Character Tics and nasally voices, laugh a lot, and own sets of matching golf clubs. Taylor wonders why Penny even bothers switching boyfriends.
- In The Witchlands: Safi is, by her own admission, prone to "mistakes of the strong-jawed, snide-tongued variety". Even Iseult is aware of this, noting that a golden-haired Pretty Boy she runs into in Bloodwitch is just the kind of guy Safi would fall head over heels for.
