A series of vampire books from my childhood (
The Vampire Diaries) is coming to TV. I suspect only because of the success of
Twilight, although to be fair vamp books have been getting picked up for movies/TV for awhile now.
Yes, a lot of things in this series are cliche NOW, but they were published back before some of it got annoyingly cliche. (1991)
Anyway, I just gotta do it!
[dramaQueen]My childhood is now officially being raped![/dramaQueen]
Not really, but I couldn't resist saying it, because I think everyone else has said it in regards to something, and this potential new show comes closer than anything else has to making me feel this way.
The first three books (
The Awakening,
The Struggle, and
The Fury) were published in 1991 followed in 1992 by
Dark Reunion. Now in addition to the upcoming television show, L. J. Smith has started on a NEW
The Vampire Diaries trilogy, the first book of which has all ready been published -
The Vampire Diaries: The Return Nightfall.
(I have not read the first book of this new trilogy, but it is not well-loved by those who have read it.)
But I am here to talk about the "raping" of my childhood by the "upcoming"
television series not the "raping" of my childhood by the new trilogy written by the actual author of the original series, unlike the television series.
Now to be fair, I'm shockingly not as broken up about this as other fans of
The Vampire Diaries are, but I'm not exactly thrilled here either.
Here's a partial script from the very first episode. Obviously, following both those links will lead to spoilers from the TV series.
But first a real downside for me that I doubt anyone else will ever care about. I write fanfic, and I've always (for some reason) had trouble writing the character of Meredith, who is all set to be left out of the television series entirely. Anyway, every time I try she just feels lifeless and bland to me, so I was hoping to get closer to her once I could see an actress giving her "life" alas that apparently isn't going to happen.
(Meredith Sulez wasn't the main character, but she was in the group of primary characters.)
I have no problem with the name of the town being changed from Fells Church to Mystic Falls, though I do have to wonder why they changed the name. It just seems pointless. But more importantly I have to wonder why so many of the characters are getting a surname change. Again, there doesn't seem to be a point to it, except I suppose in the case of Damon and Stefan Salvatore in the books to Whitmore in the show. To be fair, I almost get that one, but changing the others just seems beyond pointless.
Also adding/changing relatives seems silly - though I don't really care that Margaret (Elena's baby sister) isn't there, I just don't care enough about her to care - I felt like L. J. Smith only included her in the books so that Damon could threaten her to get Elena to come to him. Trouble is I don't think I'm going to care anymore about Jeremy (Elena's slightly younger and drug dealing brother) than Margaret.
I don't even want to talk about making Matt and Vicki related... In the books they barely knew each other, but on the show they're going to be brother and sister. Oh, yeah, and Vicki's gonna be a slut... Drugs and whores, this is nothing like the books I remember, and I've read them repeatedly. Seriously though, based on the script the drugs (yes the drugs) get more screen time than the vampires. *sigh*
But the one thing I think I might actually hate is what is/will be done to Caroline Forbes. Sure Caroline wasn't a saint in the books, and she certainly wasn't a
Cordelia (from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not a saint, until
Angel the Series screwed Cordelia up), but at least Caroline wasn't pathetic, and from what I'm reading about her character in regards to the show pathetic is what she's going to be.
They've even butchered the main character - Elena Gilbert, who was very much like Cordelia Chase from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV series seems set up to make her a saint from the get-go, which isn't Elena. Did shallow!Elena do some good things? Certainly. Just as shallow!Cordelia did some good things, and Elena did end up giving her life to save the others in the third book, but she was written as a normal popular teen girl when the books started and grew into this almost saint person. Which I hated about as much with Elena as I did Cordelia, but I wasn't as fond of Elena as Cordelia so her sainthood just doesn't annoy me as much. Though L. J. Smith does shoulder some of the blame here, I suppose, since she went overboard with saint!Elena before the TV show really got going.
Not that this matters because if it does make it to television I will probably at least watch it once. But I was (like others) hoping a television series might at least attempt to give more depth to the characters that we know/knew and loved/hated. Still I feel that it is possible I might be able to like this show for what it is and not hate it for what it's not.
I mean I do understand that a television series could not just stay with the books - even adding the new trilogy would only give them so much to work with. They would have to add/change some things (like
Blood Ties did to Tanya Huff's vampire series) - I mean it'd be a real short series if it didn't, but like others I was hoping the show would build on what was all ready there rather then tearing the house down and rebulding it into something almost completely different.
Which leads to my last point - why did they shell out cash to L. J. Smith for this? No, serious question. With the way they're changing everything I think all they'd need to do is change ALL the character names (not just their last ones) and they'd have a series that I doubt anyone would connect to
The Vampire Diaries. The only thing I can figure is that they really wanted the title, but I don't really see why they couldn't come up with another title and have a series they could take full credit for.