Line #16 FandomRivalry/Literature


1	* ''Literature/ACourtOfThornsAndRoses'':
2	** Some fans of Anne Bishop's ''Literature/BlackJewels'' series don't have the highest opinion of ''A Court of Thorns and Roses'' due to perceiving the latter as ripping off many elements from the original ''Black Jewels'' trilogy. Admittedly, there are some similarities between the two works that seem too alike to be a coincidence and for what it's worth, Sarah J. Maas herself has stated she is a fan of the ''Black Jewels'' series. Some readers don't mind the similarities too much and see it more as Maas just taking inspiration from earlier works she likes (she'd hardly be the first author to do so), but others are less forgiving and see it less as inspiration and more as bordering on plagiarism.
3	** ''The Plated Prisoner'' by Raven Kennedy can be considered this for its similarities to ''A Court of Thorns and Roses'' (fae romance with a toxic RomanticFalseLead and an AntiHero romance). On the flip side, there are readers who say Raven Kennedy managed to take the basic plotline and make it ''better''. It’s often argued that there’s less of a grey area in The Plated Prisoners' RomanticFalseLead, as while there are humanizing moments, he’s just a bastard who happily uses the heroine to get up in the world. Whereas Tamlin, arguably, is simply reacting to present-day trauma and isn’t given a chance to cope. They also argue that the series true LoveInterest is more of a feminist ally than Rhysand ever was, by respecting the heroine’s autonomy at every step and never using cruel or manipulative tactics under the guise of “helping” the heroine to get what he wants. Of course, that being said, there is also quite a bit of FriendlyFandoms at play with readers liking both series ''because'' of their similarities.
4	* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' vs. ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': Unsurprisingly, given both are very dark takes on HighFantasy but the former is known for its GreyAndGreyMorality and favoring gritty realism over magical solutions, while the latter has extreme BlackAndWhiteMorality and relies heavily on magical DeusExMachina. The animosity is mostly limited to the ASOIAF fans, who have made a long-running game of mocking the [=SoT=] series, its author Terry Goodkind, its fans, and its similarity to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy (it's notable that George RR Martin is socially and economically quite left-wing). Animosity on the [=SoT=] side is mostly limited to reactions against this game.
5	* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' vs. ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' is far more flammable due to fans of the former accusing the latter of being nothing but a thinly-veiled ripoff.
6	** It really does '''[[{{Understatement}} not]]''' help that when asked about the similarities between the two series, Creator/TerryGoodkind (author of ''Sword of Truth'') suggested that people that find any similarities "probably aren't old enough" to read his books...
7	* ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', being such a massively popular fantasy franchise, has multiple rivalries across the literature landscape.
8	** Some fans of ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' never pass an opportunity to point out that Harry Dresden would [[CurbStompBattle utterly destroy]] Harry in a fight. Never mind the fact that the only similarity between the two characters that even warrants any comparison at all is that they're both wizards named Harry... who have difficulties with the magical authorities, [[StepfordSnarker snark in response to emotional pain]], and had awful childhoods. Okay, a couple of similarities, though they're still very different.
9	** There was some animosity between ''Harry Potter'' and ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' fans due to a misconception that ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' character Ponder Stibbons (and the Unseen University as a whole) copied ''Harry Potter'' (and Hogwarts), or the other way around. In reality, Creator/TerryPratchett said that Creator/JKRowling is a friend of his. (And besides, Ponder appeared years before.) Pratchett also pointed out that like many mythological or fantasy components appearing in their respective fiction, the concept of a school or college for magic-users goes back for ''thousands'' of years.
10	--> "We're all fishing from the same stream."
11	** When both ''Harry Potter'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' had their first movie adaptations released within a month of each other, many comparisons were made, with small skirmishes between the two fandoms resulting. The two [[TheMentor mentor]] wizards (Richard Harris and Ian [=McKellen=]) even sniped at each other in the press, and the latter turned down the role of Dumbledore when offered to him after Harris' death (though that was apparently out of respect for Harris).
12	** Thanks to Creator/OrsonScottCard's fairly harsh criticism of Rowling for her lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon, a few fans of ''Literature/EndersGame'' have turned against it too.
13	** There was a bit of a rivalry with ''The Literature/InheritanceCycle'', but that died out when people noticed that it was entirely manufactured by the marketers.
14	** ''Literature/TheCampHalfBloodSeries''. Fans of ''Harry Potter'' accuse it of [[TheyCopiedItNowItSucks being a rip-off]] and criticize it [[TrueArtIsAngsty for being too lighthearted]]. Fans of ''Camp Half-Blood'' defend that the series stopped being "Harry Potter with Greek Mythology" after the first book and [[GrowingTheBeard came into its own as it progressed]], that it kept a consistent tone while [[TooBleakStoppedCaring HP started taking itself too seriously after]] ''Goblet of Fire'', and the ''Camp Half-Blood'' books do a much better job with racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ+ representation than ''Harry Potter'' does. The rivalry only intensified in late 2019 when J.K. Rowling got hit with accusations of transphobia after defending Maya Forstater.
15	* The polarizing ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'' book series has inspired quite a few fandom rivalries.
16	** There's ''Potter'' vs. ''Twilight''. Never has such a fandom rivalry been so whipped up by the ''media itself''. ''Twilight'', like ''Potter'', is something of a literary phenomenon, and its [[FilmOfTheBook movie adaptation]] stars a ''Harry Potter'' [[Creator/RobertPattinson alumnus]], so the two were constantly compared. They really have nothing in common though, apart from both being children/young adult fantasy series.
17	** To a greater extent, fans of other vampire-centered media, especially those of [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer the Buffyverse]] and Creator/AnneRice fans. Just go to the trope page for YourVampiresSuck, where more than half the potshots are aimed at how ''Twilight'' portrays vampires.
18	** ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' is a stranger case. While most of its fans praise it as a better series than ''Twilight'' for its [[DarkerAndEdgier darker and heavier]] themes and having less emphasis on the romance, many ''Twilight'' fans like it nonetheless due in part to Creator/StephenieMeyer's glowing review of the books.
19	* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' versus ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' serves as a microcosm for Christianity versus atheism. On the ''Narnia'' fans' side, it was primarily caused by the author of ''His Dark Materials'' loudly criticizing the ''Narnia'' series and aiming specifically to be Lewis' atheist counterpart. You can't say stuff like that without causing a fandom war, folks.
20	* For some time there was an entirely ''mock'' rivalry between Creator/IsaacAsimov and Creator/HarlanEllison, who in real life were close friends: Ellison brought it to an end, because his regard for Asimov was so great he was worried fans would take the rivalry as real.
21	** Asimov had mock rivalries with several writers. He once wrote that he and Lester del Rey had been playing a friendly (no, really) game for decades, wherein one of them would "insult the other. The proper response to an insult is a slur, which must then be topped with a minimum of delay." Their wives would keep it from escalating to Global Thermonuclear War by making them stop by the time it got to three exchanges.
22	** Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke reached an understanding in which Clarke would admit he was only the world's ''second'' best science writer and Asimov would in turn admit he was only the world's ''second'' best science fiction writer.
23	* There exists a minor rivalry between ScienceFiction and {{Fantasy}}. Some, like author Creator/DavidBrin, regard fantasy as inherently [[ScienceIsWrong anti-science]] and [[DemocracyIsBad pro-authoritarian.]]
24	* Fans of Creator/JaneAusten vs. fans of the Brontë sisters. Charlotte Brontë personally never liked Jane Austen's work herself, and many fans of Austen's romantic comedies and the Brontë sisters' DarkerAndEdgier Gothic romances dislike the other's works. This even gets a professional shout-out, in the "Jane Bites Back" series by Michael Thomas Ford, Charlotte Bronte appears as a rival to "Jane Fairfax."
25	* LitFic fans vs fans of SpeculativeFiction.
26	** LitFic fans vs fans of any genre based writing for that matter.
27	** Fans of the classic books vs. fans of popular contemporary books.
28	* ''Literature/BattleRoyale'' fans (book, movie and manga alike, who also have their own rivalries) vs. ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' fans. Fans of ''Battle Royale'' aren't happy about how [[ItsPopularNowItSucks much more popular]] ''Hunger Games'' is and frequently accuse Suzanne Collins of having ripped off ''BR'' while writing her series, an accusation that ''HG'' fans counter by noting that ''BR'''s plot itself [[OlderThanTheyThink isn't all that original]] (see ''Literature/TheRunningMan'', ''Literature/TheLongWalk'' and GladiatorGames in general). Moreover, Collins herself has stated that she had never heard of ''Battle Royale'' until her publishers brought it up to her and cited the inspirations for ''The Hunger Games'' as the legend of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth and the MoodWhiplash that came from channel-surfing between horrifying news of war and superficial reality television.
29	* Within the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, some fans prefer Creator/HPLovecraft's original inscrutable, human-morality-means-diddly-squat vision of CosmicHorrorStory, while others have no problem with August Derleth's belated addition of good-vs-evil and four-element themes to the Mythos. Even the "Lovecraft Circle" itself had members who'd argued over this one.
30	* There's a small degree of this between ''{{Literature/Animorphs}}'' and ''Literature/{{Everworld}}'', due to the fact that K.A. Applegate (the husband-and-wife team of Creator/KatherineApplegate and Creator/MichaelGrant) left to work on ''Everworld'', causing the ''Animorphs'' series to largely be ghostwritten and [[OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight its quality suffering as a result]]. Fortunately, nothing gets too overly heated.
31	* Fans of ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' vs ''Literature/Fahrenheit451''. Fans of ''1984'' criticize ''Fahrenheit 451'' as being a knockoff due to similar themes such as censorship and a dystopian government advocating anti-intellectualism and criticize the book's sci-fi elements. Meanwhile, fans of ''Fahrenheit 451'' criticize ''1984'''s length and writing style.
32	** Fans of ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' sometimes get thrown in due to similar themes.
33	* There was some rivalry between ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' and the ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'' during their common hey-day, courtesy of both being major {{Genre Deconstruction}}s of HighFantasy and willing to kill off important characters, even though that's where the similarities end. Malazan fans were arguing that at least there was rhyme and reason beyond the shock value in their series' character deaths, and besides, at least Creator/StevenErikson was delivering his {{Doorstopper}} volumes on time, while Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's fans were claiming they'd rather wait five years for a book than deal with the inconsistencies and {{Asspull}}s the ''Malazan'' series was riddled with. The situation wasn't helped by ''Malazan'' fans also often being fans of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' but leaving it behind due to the increasing ScheduleSlip and ''[=ASoIaF=]'' fans looking for a palate cleanser between books but finding the ''Malazan'' series to be nothing like their favorite series and turning away in disgust. Lots of mudslinging happened. The authors themselves are on friendly terms, and tried to discourage any thoughts of competition but ended up fueling it even more in some cases by stating that they'd read each other's first volume and found it not to be their cup of tea. The rivalry died down when ''[=ASoIaF=]'' became hugely popular thanks to the [[Series/GameOfThrones TV adaptation]] and the ''Malazan'' series had its last volume published.
34	* ''Literature/WarriorCats'':
35	** There is a rivalry between ''Warriors'' and the other Creator/ErinHunter series. ''Warriors'' versus ''Literature/{{Survivor\|Dogs}}s'' is most common but a lot of the arguing has less to do with the series' and more to do with whether the reader is a "cat person" or a "dog person".
36	** ''Warriors'' has rivalries with almost every cat {{xenofiction}} book out there simply because they all star cats. ''Literature/VarjakPaw'', ''Literature/TheBookOfTheNamed'', ''Literature/TailchasersSong'', and ''Literature/TheTygrineCat'' are some of the few works that have some level of a fandom rivalry. It's mainly {{friendly\|Fandoms}} in that the series often share fans, but it can get ugly when fans of one call it "better" than the other or accuse one of ripping off the other (even if [[OlderThanTheyThink the book predates the other]]).

Context FandomRivalry / Literature