Whether you’re Team Edward or Team Jacob, Team Angel or Team Spike, there is one thing all of these fans have in common and it is the passion, passion for characters and stories that make up the two most popular contributions to vampire pop culture. in the last 20 years. With that passion, as is often the case, comes debate and controversy.

In 2008, the film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s book. Twilight was launched catapulting the series of books written by Stephanie Meyer off the charts. The Twilight craze had begun and fans across the country gobbled up as many books, movies, soundtracks, and merchandise as possible. The series itself consists of four books, Twilight, new moon, eclipse and sunrise.

There was another group of fans, a slightly older fan base, who reacted with annoyance to fans of the new madness claiming that this was nothing new, the now famous stories bore a striking resemblance to the vampire culture they had known and loved. for over 10 years, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the television series written by Joss Whedon, ran for seven seasons from 1997 to 2003. Gradually, the Buffy community became increasingly irritated by the attention the Twilight series was receiving and the fans. Twilight were equally irritated. stating that the Twilight series was different and superior to the Buffy series.

Twilight

While the Twilight craze began with the release of the movies, there was a large fan base already in place; the books themselves had already generated a large number of devoted followers. I must warn the reader that I don’t consider someone a Twilight fan if they haven’t read the books, while the movies are great; I always lean towards the book in almost all cases. Whenever a book is adapted to the cinema, there is always a lot of material left on the outside. The books tell the story of Bella Swan and her arrival in the city of Forks. She meets a young man named Edward who has a secret. The two fall in love and have to deal with the consequences related to friends, family, society and Edward’s secret.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Buffy The Vampire Slayer series tells the story of Buffy Summers, a girl with a secret, and her arrival in the city of Sunnydale. He meets a young man named Angel who has a secret. The two fall in love and have to deal with the consequences related to friends, fate, destiny, and their respective secrets.

Stephanie Meyer maintains that she had never seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer before writing her series. The creation of the world of Twilight began when he had a dream about the two main characters and a dialogue they have, which sparked the novels, the world, and pop culture. While there is no reason not to believe Stephanie Meyer, there are some significant similarities between the two series.

** Warning: the remainder of this article will cover content from both series which would be considered a spoiler if you haven’t read the entire Twilight series or haven’t seen the entire Buffy The Vampire Slayer series. **

Buffy Summers and Bella Swan, both young and independent women. Each of them is deposited in a new city and left to climb the mountain of integrating into a new school, making new friends, and adjusting to life with a single parent.

  • Buffy falls in love with a vampire named Angel, Bella falls in love with a vampire named Edward.
  • The Buffy series had a werewolf named Oz who was part of the main cast of characters. Jacob is the werewolf from the Twilight series.
  • Both female leads have a best friend (female) with supernatural powers.
  • Both series have a supernatural governing body, which sets rules for the worlds they live in and disapproves of the relationship between vampires and humans.
  • In each series there is a vampire and his partner who come to town to cause trouble.
  • The theme of forbidden love, betrayal and heartbreak prevail in both.
  • The best friend of the female protagonist is the victim of an unrequited love.

The list of similarities goes on for quite some time, however the point has already been made.

Despite all the similarities, there are many ways in which the two stories deviate.

  • Buffy has supernatural powers from the introduction of her character and struggles with a dual identity throughout the entire series. His life is a constant struggle between fate, destiny, and free will. Bella doesn’t fully realize her supernatural abilities until near the end of the series. While his story isn’t about such ominous ideas as fate and destiny, his is more of a story of love, romance, and family.
  • Buffy can never make her relationship with Angel work and while he will always be the love of her life, their relationship will never be fully realized. Bella and Edward at the end of the series find themselves in love, happy, with a daughter and an eternity before them.
  • Buffy almost weekly finds herself in the middle of a battle in which the fate of the world is at stake. Bella may feel like the world is ending many times, but in reality the scope of her actions doesn’t extend too far outside of Forks.
  • Buffy is a hero, with that comes fight, resolution, failure, and redemption. Bella is a teenager, identifiable, fallible, and her character develops intensely throughout the series.

In my opinion, the verdict is simple, Twilight is not a remake, nor did Buffy The Vampire Slayer greatly inspire it. While there may be some similarities in character details and plot elements that can be easily explained by the genre the stories are based on. When you write stories about vampires in modern times, when your protagonist is a teenage woman, you should expect that some of the same plot devices are present in both. When looking at the rites of passage and the inner workings of love in youth, it’s no wonder the stories play out similarly – after all, Buffy and Bella are human.

The general story of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is that of a young woman who was destined by fate to be a heroine. She struggles with the dual identity of being a normal girl who wants to fall in love and the Assassin who has the responsibility to protect the world from unimaginable evil. The Twilight series is a character study of a young teenage girl involved in an ill-fated love story. However, dismissing any of the stories because of their similarity to earlier work sets a terrifying precedent for countless great works of fiction. Again and again we see stories with stories that closely reflect and are inspired by other works. Some of them have become landmarks of popular culture. The Harry Potter series, the Legacy series, and even the Star Wars series all have their roots in literature prior to when it was written. It does not deny the value or entertainment inherent in those works. We are all inspired daily by the things we see, read, and hear. Our lives are the sum of our experiences, and as writers take experiences and use them to inspire their work, it remains valuable, entertaining, and honest.

Why should there be a choice? Why should you be in Team Buffy or Team Twilight? For my part, I am a huge fan of both series. I think they are fantastic stories full of elaborate characters, and they cover topics that go way beyond the superficial layer of entertainment, that should be what you take away from any of the series. That’s what has spawned fans on both sides who share one thing in common, passion.