FAIL. JUST...FAIL.
One thing you should know about me is that I'm a Twilight-hater. As in, I consider it the cancer that is killing literature. As in, mankind ill needs a savior such as Stephanie Meyer. The thing is, last year I was so bombarded with ads and reviews for it that I thought something about it had to be good, so I read the first book out of genuine curiosity. It was more like a chore than a pleasure. I consider myself a feminist (and no, I want men and women to be equal, not an exchange of chauvinism) so the thought of so many girls saying they want to live a life like Bella's is disturbing in so many ways. But anyway, the main reason I post this is because even before Twilight came around, there was a YA series called The Vampire Diaries. It was about a pretty popular girl named Elena who had recently lost her parents and almost immediately falls in love with Stefan, a new student who's incredibly well-dressed, handsome and comes off as distant (sense a pattern here?) He falls for her to, because apparently she reminds him of his old lover Katherine. Conflict: At least with TVD, the conflict comes fairly early instead of Twilight. Stefan's douchebag brother Damon enters the scene and makes it his purpose to make Stefan's life hell, because as Elena finds out, ZOMG they're both vampires from teh Italian Renaissance u guise!!! Katherine was a dumb slut who made both of them vampires saying, "There's enough of me for both y'all!" But the brothers fought instead until she became an heroine. Oh, and the vampires in this world can go out in sunlight because they have magic jewelry. So...yeah. Anyway, one can easily say Twilight is an even less-realized ripoff of TVD, and since there's so much similarities the CW is making it into a TV series. Only they made Elena, a blue-eyed blonde, a brown-eyed brunette. And Stefan and Damon look more like Abercrombie models than former Italian aristocrats. And their backstory takes place in the American Civil War, not 1500's Italy. So it's like they're trying to make it even MORE like a shamless Twilight homage than it needs to be.
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Look, I like a good vampire story. In fact, I'm in the middle of writing a webcomic with vampires. Only I'm going to avoid the whole high school black hole and have it be in 1887 London while really playing up the Gothic themes. More on that later. The point is, I love True Blood and Hellsing because they simultaneously stay loyal to the traditional notions of vampirism, yet still present strikingly original characters and stories. (whether it be allegory for human rights or having vampires function as attack dogs) There's nothing wrong with writing vampire fiction, just at least TRY to avoid the style of what's already super-popular. What sucks is that 50 years later, fantasy is STILL milking off Lord of the Rings. "Hey! Let's publish a book series that takes place in a world that loosely resembles medieval Western Europe and give the characters names and attributes based on Celtic and Norse myths! And have the hero come from a humble, pastoral background and have him forced into a war that's older than him!"