My thoughts immediately went to a romance where Christopher Walken hooks up with a high school girl and much destruction and death ensues. Edit: Props to the two people who actually got that.
I feel like we missed out on a Twilight Clone X Hunger Games clone fusions. SHE is an ordinary teenage girl from district vaguely-Appalachian-slum-sylvania who is also the last hope of the resistance. HE is a time traveling Leprechaun who has lived for centuries in the shadow realm. Only their shotgun marriage can unite the resistance and the fey together in an alliance to destroy the evil overlords from the Strawman District. Then when it inevitably needs two and a half sequels, they both get a rival who is an Isekai protagonist.
There's nothing wrong with liking the premise of Twilight (normal girl is the subject of intense obsession of hot guy with supernatural powers) but the books themselves have serious ethical problems.
Remember that you can like something and still acknowledge that it technically sucks. Like, I will stick up for Sonic Forces because I genuinely like it, but I am nowhere near about to paint over its flaws when they come up.
@@TacticusPrime They really do, but the criticism we see nowadays is nothing compared to the wave of vitriol that fans for back in the day. I'm happy that we have a more nuanced view now.
@@JamesTullos I'm not sure the same author wrote the sequel trilogy. I read she had a conflict with the people who paid her to write it and that they were the actual owners, and so she refused to write more and they used a ghostwriter instead.
@@Neolithika I mean, the coffee shop au and the f!ck or die trope literally came from the 90s/early 2000s. So all the tropes have literally been around god knows how long.
Ah, the good old days when bookstores had entire shelves for “paranormal romance”...I feel nostalgic already. By the way, my family and I recently drove through Forks, WA on a road trip down the US West Coast. They certainly seemed to remember when their little town was the center of attention all of a sudden.
His whole performance reminded me of Squidward in that one episode of Spongebob where he wore that giant "I really wish I weren't here right now" pin, and is doing this role out of protest so someone else doesn't come along and play Edward with the dignity & nuance that the character never deserved. I still cant believe Henry Cavill was at one point considered.
@@fightingmedialounge519 It literally was fanfic. It was 'what if Edward not vampire but rich'. Before it was published, 50 Shades was named Masters of the Universe and had the character names be literally the same as Twilight's. Then she rewrote it, changing the names from Bella to Anastasia and Edward to Christian.
Honestly, I don't think that Hiden magic world setting needs to be sign of lazy writing. You can still be creative with developing this kind of seting. You still must think about rules and also you need to create history with humans and make a good explanations for them (vampires, werewolfs etc.) hiding. Also sorry if I have some grammar mistakes here. English isn't my first language. Thanks for understanding.
THANK YOU! As someone who's currently writing a novel with those topics, I feel really discouraged when ppl just discard my novel as "one of those boring hidden world thingies". Like, you can actually make good stuff with those!
I used Shaman King to shape my own hidden magic world setting. The best way to hide the magic world is making sure it is not physically there, and there's always a way to hide it.
@@fightingmedialounge519 it is hit or miss with Kristen Stewart. In the movie Equals she is perfectly casted (imo) but she was the wrong choice in Snow White.
To be fair, The Vampire Diaries original series was written in the 1990's. Obviously the television and expanded series was brought on by Twilight's popularity.
They tend to be harem with the mc being the only one good enough in those stories with other guys being toxic and easily hated that's if we don't count shoujo
It all depends of who's the biggest consumer. In japan, the light novels and manga are mostly consumed by young boys, so the escapist plots are made thinking on them. It's all about making profit with the biggest market possible.
The book was bad. Its about a girl who is soul mates with an Angel named Daniel who is an asshole and Lucy the main character is basically Bella Swan in terms of personality. Unlike Bella Lucy apparently killed her ex boyfriend Trevor(that actually from what i recall never went farther than explaining why she was put in a school for the mentally unstable.) Lucy also reincarnated every 17 years. And it was all executed horribly. It also doesn't help that Daniel is a horrible guy and boyfriend who doesn't care about Lucy because of her constant reincarnation apparently keeping him distant and cold but they are meant to be together by fate so Lucy can't be with a man who actually loves her
"The same way you'll almost never find a shounen anime with a girl in the lead..." Shows picture of shounen protagonist, including secondary main character Death the Kid from Soul Eater instead of the female actual main character Maka....
I CANNOT believe this man just said death the kid was the main character of soul eater. The show is NAMED after Soul. It starts with soul and maka and ends with maka defeating the main antagonist. I am FUMING.
I'm real happy to have a male presence on "booktube" (tbh, you come across as more a video essayist, but it's about books, so I'll count it). You're also thoughtful, so great!
This era of vampire novels got me into urban fantasy which I’m grateful for because it’s still my favorite genre. I love to see how authors build a world where humans know about and live amongst the supernaturals.
Havent watched the entire video yet btw but I have my own answer to the question at 1:33. As a young kid who didn’t have much going for them the idea of having a thrilling, enticing, and mysterious adventure with an attractive mysterious guy who was all about me was an addicting fantasy. It helped that the main protagonists were generic okayish looking females without much of a character arc. I could insert myself right in. It spoke to someone who was lonely and overlooked. I think if you didn’t fit the target demo it’s flaws were unbearably obvious but if you did it fulfilled you emotionally. I think it’s popularity says something kinda sad about being a young teenager honestly lol.
The whole Twilight Clone claim even reached Backwards through time, and probably not for the best. There was a series I read in my teens, "The Last Vampire". I thought it was good then, dunno if it really was, but it was about a female vampire who hunted other vampires, wanting to be the last because... If I remember correctly... Some deal she made with one of the Hindu gods. There was Some romance aspect, between her and a guy she blooded after she'd had to shoot through him to get the vampire holding him (Wonder if the author saw Hellsing?) But it mostly focused on the whole "Hunting and killing vampires" thing, and a lot about her backstory with the First vampire, and his desire to straight up murder the gods themselves. And yet, because "It has a vampire in it." I found a rereleased version in a charity shop recently with a different cover, and claims that it would, somehow, appeal to the twilight crowd. And I mean... Did tween girls wanna read a book where a major character gets kidnapped, mutilated, and tortured by a rapey serial killer, so that the guy could keep him, limbless, as a continuous source of vampiric blood?
@@derealization_ Main villain of the first book turns out to have survived, barely, the ending of book one (Main character convinces him to accept a murder/suicide where she fills her own house with explosives. But she had an secret escape plan.), only to be captured by the main villain of book two. Villain 2 rammed spikes into the bases of where Villain 1's legs should have been, so he couldn't regenerate. IIRC, main character mercy kills him when she finds him. And kills Main Villain 2 by seducing him using magic music learnt from a Hindu god, luring him into the back of the icecream van he was using to transport his victims, and hacking him to pieces with a fire axe.
Oh wow, I read these books when I was in middle school, found them in my school's library, lol... in its defense, it's way better than Twilight, like by a country mile.
@@wiseguy01 I don't think I ever read past book 2 or maybe 3? But some googling makes it look like it ended at book 6, then 3 more books came out that retconned the ending and went fucking crazy?
I’d like to argue that Darkest Powers doesn’t really fit as a clone? The author had been writing in that world since 2001 (first book in the series was Bitten and was a werewolf mystery novel, really fun) but in the adult genre and while she might have jumped on the YA trend because of Twilight, but it was definitely a pre-Twilight space (I actually read the adult series before the YA as a teen). Also all main characters (bar a single one in the adult series) are supernatural beings. Granted the YA series have the characters discovering what they are so kind of half a point there. Also, the romance is very very slow burn and doesn’t actually introduce until the second or third book. Really I think you could easily remove the romance in Darkest Powers and it wouldn’t really suffer. The main plot was about kids escaping evil scientists, so maybe a tad more in the Maximum Ride vein. I think it was more just an urban fantasy that hit at the right time.
Teen romance pointed at guys: Ever read "September GIrls" by Bennett Madison? I'd love to know what you think of it. When I was still at Harper I ended up tripping over a reprint sample and rifled through it. Ended up reading it and really enjoyed it. Kind of different, but some common tropes as outlined above. As you mention: it didn't sell exceptionally well. It sold well enough to reprint a couple of times, but not to become the next 'it' thing.
like, Beastly isn't good, but its a shitty Beauty and the Beast retelling not a Twilight clone. Every paranormal/preternatural/fantasy teen love story isn't a twilight clone. and like I know other people are going to bring it up but LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries well predate Twilight (and Night World was better anyway)
@@hystericalAnarchy I recently found a omnibus edition of the first 3 books in my favorite used bookstore and I'm looking forward to a nostalgic reread sometime in the near future.
I find the graphic at 7:15 funny about how you say you'll never see a shounen with a girl in the lead, yet there's Death the Kid there, replacing Maka's place as the female lead of a shounen anime. Soul Eater may be named after Soul, but Maka is the heart and soul of the show (pun intended)
Sookie Starkhouse Southern Vampires Mysteries is nothing like Twilight, vampires are in there are morally ambiguous almost alien, they can say that they love you in one minute and kill you in the next, and I cant say that they were fighting "bad guys", because like Games of Thrones, every vampire in Southern Vampire Mysteries are ruthless cutthroat vampire.
"You'll almost never see a shonen anime with a girl in the lead role" and the guy on the right of the image shown? Not the main character. The main character of Soul Eater is, arguably, Maka. A girl. (It's more an ensemble cast really, of which 4/7 are female, but hey.) I mean it is true that a genre that literally translates to "Boy comics" is aimed at and thus tends to star males, but I thought I'd point out that Death The Kid really isn't The main character there. Maybe A main character.
I immediately thought of The Promised Neverland, which was published in the same magazine as One Piece and Naruto, etc., whom the protagonist is arguably Emma, a girl. The 2 other main characters, Norman and Ray, are boys but the author definitely put more focus on Emma and her arc. It's a great manga, I love it.
7:14 isn't Maka the protagonist or at least a very main character in soul eater? Your point still kinda stands just I don't feel like who you chose isn't really "the" protagonist compared to her or Soul
God, I remember reading Lux. I knew it would be bad and I still hated it. My copy came with a couple extra chapters at the end that were a few key scenes from the love interest's perspective. They managed to not only give no new information, but made the story retroactively worse and creepier by revealing that he was super attracted to her all along.
I think a big reason why teenage characters are so popular in general is that people in their early twenties can't really go on crazy adventures all the time. You can't spend the whole day hanging out with your friends if you still need to work to pay rent for your crappy studio apartment. That's why shows like Friends can seem unrealistic. Teenagers don't have to worry about work, money, food, or bills. They even have 2 months of the year where there aren't any responsibilities.
There was one I was trying to find, it was about a female vampire in high school that had a crush on a human guy there. I read an excerpt and she was swimming in the ocean when a shark approached her, but then left being afraid of her. I have been trying to find that book ever since I read that. I had forgotten the title of it and never saw it advertised again. I think there was a picture of an eye on the cover of it. Does anyone know what book I am talking about?
There is even a Twilight remake made for Indian TV (Pyaar ki yeh ek kahaani). It started with the same plot, but then went on to add a whole lot of different elements and plot twists, but it is still is the same premise of the points James mentioned. Even in 2020, some of the most famous and well-loved shows on Indian TV are Naagin (snake-woman and her shenanigans with human males), Yeh Jadu Hain Jinn Ka (Jinn magic with other elements), and before covid pushed it off-air, Nazar (similar to previous one mentioned but with Hindu mythology instead). Damn! This video really is gets to the heart of the "genre".
I actually refer to your clones and how they work videos when I am in complete sheer boredom and just want to read a book without thinking too much or getting too attached. I’ve read a few in the opening of this video and the hunger games one already, so yeah.
I hope you’re talking about Beastly the movie and not Beastly the book, ‘cause the book definitely more of a twisted fairy tale than a Twilight clone lol.
You talked abour shounen not having female main characters but you showed a shounen anime where the main character IS female but you chose to put a pic of a me side character. (Soul Eater) Also, JoJo part 6 has a female protagonist
Ugh my eye instantly fixed om that "beautiful creatures" book and im just UGH, i read the whole thing all thanks due to teenage strength and determination, i had bought the second book at the same time thinking i obvs was gonna love a book about witches. Ah, i miss that fervor i had back then. Havent read for pleasure since like december of last year lmaoooo .....😭
Jfc one of my favorite Twilight ripoffs is the series Wings by Aprilynn Pike solely for this reason: Main character is newly discovered fairy of a royal lineage with dual love interest vying for her... Because duh So, LoveInterest is wearing gloves and MC is like, "why you wearing gloves?" And goes to touch his hands and he yanks back and is like, "Because when it's time to pollenate (aka mating season), male faeries release pollen from our hands..." So this dude is sitting in human high school with gloves because he has FAIRY PRE-NUT on his hands and I just scream everytime I think about it
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle I applaud the world building of faeries sharing related anatomy of flowers because "faeries are nature", but the execution was hilarious even to high school me with poorer literary taste 😂😂😂
Hey, so, you mentioned shounen anime rarely having main characters who aren't male, but when you do it you show a group of shounen characters that includes, on the far right, Death the Kid, who is from Soul Eater. The main character of Soul Eater, though, is Maaka Albarn, who is a teenage girl. Might need to note/fix/edit that.
@@westvirginiaglutenfreepepp7006 Tell you what, come up with a better way to point out that he's got a mis-example here and I'll write that down and use that instead in the future. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I didn't point this out because I think he's wrong about the point he's making or something like that.
Thinking back through some of the books I've read that fall under paranormal romance, I just now realized that most of the books has REALLY questionable love triangles or relationships: 1) Jessica Shirvington's Violet Eden series has a 17 year old girl in a love triangle with a 26(maybe?) year old half angel and a several thousand year old fallen angel 2) Marissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series had several bad relationships on its own, including the first book's main relationship being a high school senior girl and a playboy faerie king and the second book's main relationship being between another high school girl and an emotionally manipulative, different faerie king In regards to there not being any books with normal high school boys entering the magical world, the only series I can think of that meets that is Thomas Sniegoski's The Fallen series (separate from Lauren Kate's series and actually pretty good if I remember correctly. That one also had a movie adaptation with Paul Wesley from Vampire Diaries playing the main character.)
Think of a Romance aimed at men or boys, alright: "Gawain and the Dame Ragnelle", "Amadis", Gawain and the Green Knight, a lot of chivalric tales about knights going out and killing monsters and rescuing madens.
Twilight itself is a clone, taking something that’s already a hugely popular scenario in other cultures and introducing it to your own is still taking something that already exists and tweaking it to fit you
Paranormal romance is still my favourite genre to read and write and I am pleased by the fact that trends repeat and it will come back into style lol. PNR has come and gone from the spotlight plenty of times, it's gonna rise from the dead. 😩🙌
just leaving a comment to let RU-vid know that this is the greatest thing ever and they should definitely recommend it to lots and lots of people because it's very good
The twilight hate thing was such a strange thing. I'm glad my country wasn't that "public shamy" at the time, so i evaded most of the bs. Twilight was just a normal book for teenagers~ But suddenly ppl that never touched a book, where critics. That was so strange.
thoughts before even watching the video I want out there: I love the hush hush series, they were my favorite growing up and I've always felt so lucky I accidentally found them at a local book store. what I always credited as the driving force as to why I loved those books so much was because I, as a young girl, didn't hate the female protagonist and actually saw in her a strong, smart role model to look up to. now, disclaimer, I haven't looked back at those books in forever so I am not quite sure that holds up, but it's the sentiments I felt while reading them as a young girl and am forever grateful they never got movies, despite me wanting that while I read them.
Yeah, I don’t think men are typically jumping at the chance to read a specific romance, even ones aimed at them. The reason I say that, is many stories have romance, whereas Twilight is basically a romance with a twist. So, media mostly aimed at men does feature romance, it’s just not the main focus, see the James Bond films for instance.
Haven't seen the video yet, but I remember when I read it it had no substance and was super predictable. As soon as I heard that she was clumsy, I knew that she would inexplicably be really good at being a vampire or whatever when she would get turned into one- which was also super predictable.
Can you videos about fantasy and sci fi stories good world building that are set up realistically to both their and our world? As well as stories that have incredible world building but the way it happened is probably questionable like Star Wars the Expanded Universe during the Old Republic era or Frank Herbert's Dune? I kinda find the Imperium of Dune banning robotic technology for more then 10,000 years to be a little questionable because by time of the first Dune book 10,000 years would pass and everyone from the times of the Thinking Machine would be long dead and the events back then would be not as well cared for by the Imperium's population. It would make for a interesting topic.
I was pretty young when twilight came out and I loved watching the movies with my older sister then I’d talk shit about it with my little 4th grade friends at school
I quite enjoyed the Vampire Academy/Bloodlines series. And you'd think I'd be far too old and far too male to have done so. I couldn't make it fifty pages into Twilight, but them I liked. Well, the first ten books. Those last two Bloodlines novels, though, oh, boy. In any event, interesting world building, characters with some depth and on balance some pretty robust plots...except for those last two books, again. As an aside, the author, Richelle Mead seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. She had a series cancelled for poor sales (Age of X) and another that I believe got on the wrong side of Twitter. Last I checked she'd been radio silent on all social media for well over a year. Probably longer. And the Vampire Academy movie was the worst movie I have ever seen to which I paid full admission. It must be seen to be believed. Fortunately very few have. Proudly released by the Weinstein Group, even. 😐
Please please read the "Age of Legends" trilogy by Kelley Armstrong. It has a really good concept that sucks you in (with evil monsters, spirits, and magic) but a kind of... weird execution. Like some abilities only work some of the time. You'll either love it or hate it.
I actually really enjoyed the darkest powers books because the romance wasn’t the main focus; the mystery & action was. Any Kelley Armstrong fans? James, I think you may like it, if you need a palette cleanser after Halo!
