Tuesday, August 04, 2009

was breaking dawn not original?

twilight fans, myself included, will surely be disappointed if the plagiarism accusations by an otherwise unknown author named jordan scott against stephenie meyer are proven true.

in a lawsuit, scott alegges that meyer borrowed heavily from her 2006 novel titled "the nocturne" to advance the plot of "breaking dawn", the final chapter in meyer's hugely successful vampire series.

now, this news is something that i will not take in stride. am a fan of twilight. after it was introduced to me by tita amie and ali, i was similarly hooked to the series the way teenagers (yeah, hahaha!) were...

recently, i posted an interrogatory story questioning whether meyer might have been "inspired" by charlaine harris' "true blood" series after i noticed some interesting similarities between twilight and "true blood". after initially watching the first two episodes of the TV adaptation of the true blood books, i was curious why the characters and early plot devices (mysterious killings, mind-reading, shape-shifting third guys, etc.) seem similar to twilight. then what fueled my curiosity even further was when i discoverd that true blood came out more than three years before stephenie dreamt about her twilight series! hmmm...

but after i finished watching the first season of true blood, i discovered that it takes on a different life - a more mature story progressed that is world's apart from twilight. meyer was saved, so to speak. hahaha...

and now, here's another price that meyer has to pay for her books' success.

there is a 15-page document that TMZ posted on their website (follow this link http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0803_meyer_infringement.pdf) that details various similarities between key scenes in the "the nocturne" and "breaking dawn".

i have attempted to read through the lifted passages from both books but i couldn't seem to fully see the similarities that the lawyers of the complainant saw! i may be less of a literary person, i guess, lol.

but whatever happens, this only will benefit the series more and the movie adaptation of the second book in the series called "new moon" that's due to open in theaters in november. meyer, when i interviewed her last october, seems to be not the type who would deliberately copy someone else's book. she's BYU-educated - a christian!, she's just not the type. her prose may have been dismissed by stephen king as lame (in one of king's entertainment weekly back cover editorials) but she sure can entice many readers to a unique universe where vampires, werewolves, and humans, strangely cohabit.

be the judge my friends... while i watch true blood's first season adventure again.

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TMZ.com

philstar.com - entertainment

CNN.com

EW.com