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JK Rowling - Harry Potter books [split topic]

Started by Thomas, June 09, 2020, 01:09:13 PM

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Pingers


Barry Admin

Quote from: Sin Agog on June 09, 2020, 02:42:52 PM
Kinda feel like my post was split into the wrong thread.  I wasn't exactly recommending reading material for young children.  Guess it had even less to do with J.K.R.'s diarrhetic online Pollocks, though.

I'll put it back in a bit then.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: popcorn on June 09, 2020, 03:08:29 PM
Yes, the Japanese is MAGIC PLACE

Pure cringe. But also apparently not in the books.

jobotic

What the hell are you people talking about?

Ferris


thenoise

Quote from: king_tubby on June 09, 2020, 02:52:23 PM
It bares more than a passing resemblance to The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy.

This is what it reminded me of too, with a hint of Narnia.  I'm pretty sure the idealised view of public/boarding school, as a fantasy enjoyed by plebs like me who went to normal school, wasn't original too but I'm not sure where it comes from.

Like most well read children, I also persevered with a lot of absolute dreck, so I read the first book through to the end.  It was ok, read worse.  I always intended to read the sequels, to be honest - my mum had them all - but I never quite got round to it.  I was in my twenties before I realised that if I wasn't enjoying a book I was reading, I could just give up on it.

Sin Agog

Quote from: Barry Admin on June 09, 2020, 03:12:31 PM
I'll put it back in a bit then.

Sorry, wasn't trying to add to your workload with my anal nonsense.

Sin Agog

I was always way too cool to look at maps in fantasy books.  "The Benighted Lands are just to the right of the Eld Ditches?  I don't give a fuck."

Not too cool not to read any of the fantasy books, though.

chveik

in retrospect, I had a lot more fun in making my own maps than reading fantasy books

Sin Agog


Barry Admin

Quote from: Sin Agog on June 09, 2020, 04:19:24 PM
Sorry, wasn't trying to add to your workload with my anal nonsense.

Eh no it's fine mate, that thread was a sprawling mess to sort out anyway :-)

Ferris

Quote from: Sin Agog on June 09, 2020, 04:35:17 PM
I was always way too cool to look at maps in fantasy books.  "The Benighted Lands are just to the right of the Eld Ditches?  I don't give a fuck."

Not too cool not to read any of the fantasy books, though.

I was so cool I read all of the appendixes in the lord of the rings.

Quote from: Barry Admin on June 09, 2020, 04:52:11 PM
Eh no it's fine mate, that thread was a sprawling mess to sort out anyway :-)

Yeah I feel bad when I go off on a tangent because I know everyone hates it (esp Barry!) and am trying to get better at splitting off my own threads rather than wait for you to have to do it


peanutbutter

Said in the other thread, the key things about Harry Potter were how it went against the trend of successful kids books series at the time (focus on the heavy readers exclusively, waving defeat for everyone else to Nintendo et al and instead making these gigantic sprawling never-ending things), how they managed to market it quite well (newsround specifically seemed to play a big part iirc), and how the first three books remained aged with their original audience well enough to let the marketing and hype build up.

Once you got to book 4 and the films it would've been nearly impossible to slow down the momentum other than bailing on the seven book plan.

Urinal Cake

I think the appeal of the books are the characters in that they feel more realistic  since they have a foot in the 'real world.' Also she can write a decent mystery novel which is a big factor in the books as well. The world creating is a bit whatever. I mean only a pure bookworm would create a sport like quidditch.

shh

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 09, 2020, 02:57:41 PM
this comes up occasionally, how shit J.K.'s world building was and how Eurocentric and racist it is

At Swim-Two-Birds is 'eurocentric', I'm not sure what else it should be. I think you're reaching for an impossible 'ideal'. What percentage of fiction ever written is/should be 'global-centric'?

As a child I would probably have found that all this 'filling in the map' ruined the fun. I was flicking through a modern edition in a bookshop a while back (halcyon days) and they even have a map of the grounds on the inside cover. The talent of these writers is to create just enough world that allows/encourages children to be able to fill in blanks. Hubris is the probably the worst insult you could level at her.

studpuppet

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:29:10 PM
Has anyone actually accused Rowling of plagiarism? There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and gets an owl" from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic comic, but even Gaiman has said it was just coincidence.

Other than that, I've no idea what it is Harry Potter is supposed to be derivative of, and I'm pretty widely read myself.


Hahahahahaha.

Boy in mundane small village, discovers he has magical ability, is taken off by a wizard and (eventually) sent to a school for wizards (sleeping in dorms, communal eating etc.). Befriends a down-to-earth less clever boy and makes an enemy of the condescending born-to-it higher class boy. Goes to lots of different magic classes (learns potions, names of things etc.), then unleashes terrifying evil (giving him a scar that hurts every time he's in proximity to it after that) that he spends the rest of the book trying to overcome.

Sound familiar?

ProvanFan

Quote from: shh on June 10, 2020, 01:20:59 AM
Hubris is the probably the worst insult you could level at her.

Let's have a contest

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: studpuppet on June 10, 2020, 11:25:52 AM

Hahahahahaha.

Boy in mundane small village, discovers he has magical ability, is taken off by a wizard and (eventually) sent to a school for wizards (sleeping in dorms, communal eating etc.). Befriends a down-to-earth less clever boy and makes an enemy of the condescending born-to-it higher class boy. Goes to lots of different magic classes (learns potions, names of things etc.), then unleashes terrifying evil (giving him a scar that hurts every time he's in proximity to it after that) that he spends the rest of the book trying to overcome.

Sound familiar?

I read A Wizard of Earthsea last year and, aside from the admittedly significant point of it involving a school for wizards (was Le Guin the first writer to do this? I honestly have no clue), I really didn't think it had much meaningful similarity with Harry Potter. Most of the points of comparison you've listed seem to me like either extremely common fantasy/adventure tropes or rather selective readings of certain plot beats that make them sound much closer than they actually are. To me the whole construction of Earthsea, Le Guin's conception of the nature of magic and wizards and their place in society, the way Ged's story is told and the particular philosophical arc it expresses are all so unique and so alien to Rowling's approach in the Harry Potter books (which I did enjoy a lot as a kid, but happily concede have less literary merit than Earthsea) that the idea of them as some sort of blow-by-blow imitation of the former doesn't ring true at all for me.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on June 10, 2020, 12:14:10 PM
I read A Wizard of Earthsea last year and, aside from the admittedly significant point of it involving a school for wizards (was Le Guin the first writer to do this? I honestly have no clue), I really didn't think it had much meaningful similarity with Harry Potter. Most of the points of comparison you've listed seem to me like either extremely common fantasy/adventure tropes or rather selective readings of certain plot beats that make them sound much closer than they actually are. To me the whole construction of Earthsea, Le Guin's conception of the nature of magic and wizards and their place in society, the way Ged's story is told and the particular philosophical arc it expresses are all so unique and so alien to Rowling's approach in the Harry Potter books (which I did enjoy a lot as a kid, but happily concede have less literary merit than Earthsea) that the idea of them as some sort of blow-by-blow imitation of the former doesn't ring true at all for me.

This perspective is usually missing when accusations of plagiarism come up. If a work borrows ideas but does something different with them, I personally don't have a problem.

Sin Agog

Yeah, the plagiarism angle is a bit of a blind alley being used by people like me who just think the series is a bit square and naff.  The politics, too, to some extent; at least, I don't think it did too much harm considering the Harry Potter generation generally grew up to be the young socialiszts and wokerati who vote disproportionately against all the other age groups.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 09, 2020, 02:57:41 PM
this comes up occasionally, how shit J.K.'s world building was and how Eurocentric and racist it is

Real-world worldbuilding is also shit though. Most places have names meaning River Town or Big Log or Dave's Place.

And fantasy literature in general, even the better stuff, is full of places called things like Naglimund.

What was the Pratchett joke - "foreign" places were called things like A Mountain and Your Finger, You Fool as that's what explorers were told when they asked "what's that?"

Sin Agog

The best fantasy books ever written are David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus and William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.  Almost bugger all tropes whatsoever.  It's a genre that really could have been somebody, instead of a bum who spends all their time making up names rather than mining their unconscious for inspiration.

Buelligan

Quote from: shh on June 10, 2020, 01:20:59 AM
At Swim-Two-Birds is 'eurocentric', I'm not sure what else it should be.

Oh, why's that then?

Quote from: studpuppet on June 10, 2020, 11:25:52 AM

Hahahahahaha.

Boy in mundane small village, discovers he has magical ability, is taken off by a wizard and (eventually) sent to a school for wizards (sleeping in dorms, communal eating etc.). Befriends a down-to-earth less clever boy and makes an enemy of the condescending born-to-it higher class boy. Goes to lots of different magic classes (learns potions, names of things etc.), then unleashes terrifying evil (giving him a scar that hurts every time he's in proximity to it after that) that he spends the rest of the book trying to overcome.

Sound familiar?

Thanks for reminding me.  One of my top favourites that was, dear lovely Ged, Sparrowhawk and his shadow.  That was the root of my rage!  And Le Guin's so much better, politically too.

Buelligan

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on June 10, 2020, 12:14:10 PM
I read A Wizard of Earthsea last year and, aside from the admittedly significant point of it involving a school for wizards (was Le Guin the first writer to do this? I honestly have no clue), I really didn't think it had much meaningful similarity with Harry Potter. Most of the points of comparison you've listed seem to me like either extremely common fantasy/adventure tropes or rather selective readings of certain plot beats that make them sound much closer than they actually are. To me the whole construction of Earthsea, Le Guin's conception of the nature of magic and wizards and their place in society, the way Ged's story is told and the particular philosophical arc it expresses are all so unique and so alien to Rowling's approach in the Harry Potter books (which I did enjoy a lot as a kid, but happily concede have less literary merit than Earthsea) that the idea of them as some sort of blow-by-blow imitation of the former doesn't ring true at all for me.

There was that whole thing of Ged overreaching his powers and unleashing his possible nemesis.  Sorry, I'm catching up with the thread.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Harry Potter is one of those things I know a ton about even though I never read any of the books. I was Very Online in the early 2000s and swimming mostly in the fannish end of the Internet where it was near inescapable. And the wank, oh the wank, children. Any time I see a copy of a Mortal Instruments book I'm transported back to the Cassandra Claire plagiarism scandal. I can't think of another fandom as big today, but whether that's because I'm less involved in fannish spaces, more people use the Internet, or more people have migrated to Tumblr and Twitter rather than huddling on single fandom forums, I don't know.

Mister Six

Quote from: Buelligan on June 10, 2020, 04:32:04 PM
There was that whole thing of Ged overreaching his powers and unleashing his possible nemesis.  Sorry, I'm catching up with the thread.

That doesn't happen in the Harry Potter books.

As pointed out above, you can cherry-pick story details and shave off context to make two dissimilar books look similar. It doesn't mean they're actually like one another in practice, though - as is the case with Harry Potter and Earthsea.

The stuff about Troll is even more of a stretch. "It's got a kid called Harry Potter in it, and some supernatural creatures." That's it. Rubbish.

Nobody knows what plagiarism is any more.

bgmnts


gilbertharding

Quote from: studpuppet on June 10, 2020, 11:25:52 AM

Hahahahahaha.

Boy in mundane small village, discovers he has magical ability, is taken off by a wizard and (eventually) sent to a school for wizards (sleeping in dorms, communal eating etc.). Befriends a down-to-earth less clever boy and makes an enemy of the condescending born-to-it higher class boy. Goes to lots of different magic classes (learns potions, names of things etc.), then unleashes terrifying evil (giving him a scar that hurts every time he's in proximity to it after that) that he spends the rest of the book trying to overcome.

Sound familiar?

Is it A Dance to the Music of Time?

Pranet

I love Ursula K Le Guin but I don't think JK Rowling ripped her off and I don't think UKLG thought that either, though she could be grumpy about it at times. Though to be fair I was too old for Harry Potter so I only read the first book out of interest to see what the fuss was about. I liked it well enough I seem to recall. What it reminded of more than anything was the Jennings books. There was a lot of public boarding school fiction about when I was a kid which I read because there wasn't much else to read. Jennings, Molesworth, Billy Bunter, lots of comics. And even in stories where it wasn't central people were always going away to school. Harry Potter seemed to take more from that tradition than Le Guin.