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Vampires = £££
A time-honoured way to make a fast buck is to jump on the back of a passing cultural bandwagon and sponge from the fans. Parody is probably the easiest medium and possesses the advantage of not actually having to be funny. Lord of the Rings spawned Bored of the Rings and The Soddit and Harry Potter spawned the Barry Trotter series, amongst many, many others.
When I saw Twilight I was immediately inspired to write a parody entitled Twiglet, in which a dashing young Vampire falls in love with an unremarkable piece of wood. However, I quickly realised that this is not parody as it's exactly what happens in the original book.
Moving on, the next most common method of bandwagon-hopping is to combine two currently popular genres into a single property in the hope of catching money from fans of both originals. My next idea was to combine Twilight with Harry Potter, and write stories about a school for vampires. It'd be set somewhere in the Midwest (as that's where vampires seem to live these days*), and feature various 'houses' or 'clans' of vampires, some of whom are good, animal-eating Gryffindor-types, whilst others would be evil, Dracula-like killers and Slytherin-types.
To my dismay I discovered I'd already been beaten to it by the Vampire Academy series of books, in which an innocent young vampire goes to a special vampiring school in, you guessed it, Montana. Because if you were going to build a school for vampires you'd obviously build it in one of the square states rather than, say, Transylvania.
I don't know if you're aware, but the highest-grossing film in the UK last year was not The Dark Knight despite it being probably the best mainstream film I've seen in years. It was in fact Mamma Mia!, a musical in which Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan tunelessly warble Abba songs about how much they love some dippy bird who put it about a bit thirty years previously. Women in their droves went to see it and as soon as I learned this and put it together with the idea of Vampires, my eyes span round and round to be replaced with pound signs like what happens in cartoons.
Once you've had an idea like that, it kinda writes itself:
Seven Brides of Dracula for Seven Brothers
A vampire musical by David, with apologies to Rogers & Hammerstein.
The scene: A gothic Midwestern town at midnight. A well-maintained graveyard is surrounded by black clapboard houses with little turrets. A gang of vampires, wearing traditional midwestern vampire garb (silk black and crimson check shirts and dungarees) are having a "crypt buildin'" competition when they are interrupted by a gang of werewolves. You can tell they are werewolves because they are played by an ethnic minority and wear leather. The two groups face off before the scene is interrupted by Edward Dullen, a handsome young vampire and his girlfriend Dulla, a young werewolf.
Edward: Hey, everyone. We shouldn't fight! We should live together in harmony! My girlfriend and I are a metaphor for interracial harmony and we've got an important message to impart!
Werewolf: Yo, fangy! Yo' sayin' werewolves jus' some jive-ass racial stereotype?
Edward: Fo' Shizzle, my werewizzle.
Werewolf 2: Hey! he speaks the jive! He's in the hood! Damn, brutha!
Edward (singing):
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends,
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends.
Tho' one likes to drink your blood,
The other lives in the wood,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends.
All:
Supernatural folks should stick together,
Supernatural folks should all be pals.
Werewolves don't rend the vampires children,
Vampires don't devour the werewolves gals.
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends,
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends.
The vampire can't cross running water,
The werewolf cannot help the slaughter,
That's no reason why they can't be friends
All:
Supernatural folks should stick together,
Supernatural folks should all be pals.
Vampires dance with werewolves daughters,
Werewolves dance with the vampire's brides.
To my dismay, I realise that this sort of thing made Andrew lloyd Webber a millionaire.
* The setting for American gothic horror these days seems to have moved from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest, a development which could well bankrupt![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
docbrite.
When I saw Twilight I was immediately inspired to write a parody entitled Twiglet, in which a dashing young Vampire falls in love with an unremarkable piece of wood. However, I quickly realised that this is not parody as it's exactly what happens in the original book.
Moving on, the next most common method of bandwagon-hopping is to combine two currently popular genres into a single property in the hope of catching money from fans of both originals. My next idea was to combine Twilight with Harry Potter, and write stories about a school for vampires. It'd be set somewhere in the Midwest (as that's where vampires seem to live these days*), and feature various 'houses' or 'clans' of vampires, some of whom are good, animal-eating Gryffindor-types, whilst others would be evil, Dracula-like killers and Slytherin-types.
To my dismay I discovered I'd already been beaten to it by the Vampire Academy series of books, in which an innocent young vampire goes to a special vampiring school in, you guessed it, Montana. Because if you were going to build a school for vampires you'd obviously build it in one of the square states rather than, say, Transylvania.
I don't know if you're aware, but the highest-grossing film in the UK last year was not The Dark Knight despite it being probably the best mainstream film I've seen in years. It was in fact Mamma Mia!, a musical in which Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan tunelessly warble Abba songs about how much they love some dippy bird who put it about a bit thirty years previously. Women in their droves went to see it and as soon as I learned this and put it together with the idea of Vampires, my eyes span round and round to be replaced with pound signs like what happens in cartoons.
Once you've had an idea like that, it kinda writes itself:
Seven Brides of Dracula for Seven Brothers
A vampire musical by David, with apologies to Rogers & Hammerstein.
The scene: A gothic Midwestern town at midnight. A well-maintained graveyard is surrounded by black clapboard houses with little turrets. A gang of vampires, wearing traditional midwestern vampire garb (silk black and crimson check shirts and dungarees) are having a "crypt buildin'" competition when they are interrupted by a gang of werewolves. You can tell they are werewolves because they are played by an ethnic minority and wear leather. The two groups face off before the scene is interrupted by Edward Dullen, a handsome young vampire and his girlfriend Dulla, a young werewolf.
Edward: Hey, everyone. We shouldn't fight! We should live together in harmony! My girlfriend and I are a metaphor for interracial harmony and we've got an important message to impart!
Werewolf: Yo, fangy! Yo' sayin' werewolves jus' some jive-ass racial stereotype?
Edward: Fo' Shizzle, my werewizzle.
Werewolf 2: Hey! he speaks the jive! He's in the hood! Damn, brutha!
Edward (singing):
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends,
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends.
Tho' one likes to drink your blood,
The other lives in the wood,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends.
All:
Supernatural folks should stick together,
Supernatural folks should all be pals.
Werewolves don't rend the vampires children,
Vampires don't devour the werewolves gals.
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends,
Oh, the vampire and the werewolf should be friends.
The vampire can't cross running water,
The werewolf cannot help the slaughter,
That's no reason why they can't be friends
All:
Supernatural folks should stick together,
Supernatural folks should all be pals.
Vampires dance with werewolves daughters,
Werewolves dance with the vampire's brides.
To my dismay, I realise that this sort of thing made Andrew lloyd Webber a millionaire.
* The setting for American gothic horror these days seems to have moved from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest, a development which could well bankrupt
docbrite.
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Twilight High School Musical
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Oh, and
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Gimme! I neeed something like that so I can get away with it at goth clubs. :o)
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If i remember correctly, Vampires use the same school as humans by hiding behind a bookcase during the day...
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Unless you tried a Vampire version of a Shakespere classic? All you have to do is change one or more main characters to Vampires.
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(Anonymous) 2009-01-14 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)D
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(Anonymous) 2009-01-14 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)V
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