Hi Andrea, and a big welcome to Planet Tolkien. I'm afraid I've had to switch the signature off in your previous post, however, as it breached our rule about signatures being no more than three lines long.

Have a great time here

Thanks, I changed it

Hello Andrea, welcome to our Forum.

I hadn't noticed that before, but of course imitation is often the best form of flattery.

Peter Pettigrew's nickname is wormTAIL rather than tongue, but yeah, you do have a point. But isn't everything derivative of everything else when you get right down to it?

Personally I h.a.t.e. HP,but don't mind me.Still,i think you can't compare the two writers,nor their books.In no way.
ps Welcome to the forum!Hope you don't mind I said what i said,but different people,different opinions.See you round!

I love both postAuthorIDs very much and my experince was exactly identicall to musicimprovedme

I personally beleive there is a curve when it comes to "stealing" ideas in fantasy...

We all grew up knowing about wizards, dragons, princesses, magic swords, great castles and kingdoms...
It very hard to get these influential images out of our heads when it comes to being creative. I think that if you are going to write a classic, timeless fantasy novel you have to keep these traditions in mind. While it is refresshing to read a completely original book with characters you have never imagined before, how many of them stand the test of time and influence peoples of all nationalities and cultural backgrounds?

When you are writing a fantasy there is a structure to be followed. You must have an underdog, a wise leader, an evil being, and a happy ending. There is not many ways to get around that structure and still have peice of work that will leave people touched.





[Edited on 23/3/2003 by Kaimelar]

I have not read it. And i don't think i ever will.I never liked the look of it myself too much hype around the whole film in the papers..over here in the UK. maybe I'm missing out on something maybe I'm not. I think I'll stick to my usual reading material.

In which case The Hobbit is far superior (obviously).

Acctually Tolkien took things from mythologies, for example V’lusp’ (I have no Id how to write the name in english) there is a poem wich goes like this in one part.

Veigur og Gand’lfur
Vind’lfur, ’r’inn,
’ekkur og ’orinn,
’r’r, Vitur og Litur,
N’r og N’r’’ur,
n’ hefi eg dverga,
- Reginn og R’’svi’ur, -
r’tt um talda.

Also Wormtounge could easily be a refference to the story Gunnlaugssaga Ormstungu (Wormtounge) where the main character is a bad mouthed poet. This story was written hundreds of years ago.

I shall not comment this book because I do not like it!

Oh yes of course! Silly me forgot about the pheonix.
He is called Fawkes, but Vulcan in Norwegian. I'm "scared" to see the movie if he is there because I'm afraid he will look as wrong as Doddy does.

Dobby, doddy, I don't really care. I like his norwegian name better, Noldus. Dobby is a boring name.

On 23/06/03 #1ElijahLover posted

[Edited on 23/6/2003 by Valedhelgwath]

I love the Harry Potter series, but it is more platonic than my love of Tolkien's work. Tolkien's work is like forever in that it has depth in its fullness, while J.K. Rowlly's is only for a lifetime because it is rather two dimensional, in that I see no underlying storys within the storys, no matter how much I like her writing, characters, and plot. She is writing a wonderful series of barn burners (page turners).

I can hardly wait for bedtime, so I can read another hundred plus pages of the HP and the Order of the Pheonix. (I'm averaging 200 pages per early morning reading, as I'm now ready to start Chapter Nineteen 'The Lion and the Serpent' on page 397.) NOT

Interesting discussion going on here, I was having a similar discussion with some people over at CoE the other day on sort of the same topic.

I personally have never read any of the HP series, and I highly doubt I ever will. Nor have I seen the movies. For whatever reasons, HP has just never appealed to me in any way. I know so many people who have read those books, including some highly intelligent people who I really respect, and I’ve heard nothing but good things. I have nothing against HP whatsoever, but I just don’t care. Again, for whatever reasons, HP just doesn’t appeal to me.

However, even though I haven’t personally read the books, I would never sit here and say that they are crap either. Like I said, I’ve heard very good things from people whose opinions I highly respect, and trust. I think those books have accomplished a lot of positives things. They are getting so many people to read, especially young boys and that’s a good thing no matter what. Plus I really feel like those books can, and will be a stepping-stone for a lot of young minds to other greater postAuthorIDs like Tolkien, etc. So by all means, for all you HP fans, please keep reading!

You can’t try to compare HP to Tolkien. That’s like trying to compare hamburger to filet mingon (my apologies to all you vegetarians out there). What I'm saying is that nothing in the fantasy genre (and really almost anything else) can measure up to Tolkien. I think Grondy said it pretty well with this comment;

Even though they're both in the fantasy genre, that’s exactly it. They're different styles of writing, and written for different people. J.K. Rowling has written her books specifically for children, but they’re so good that they have ended up appealing to a much larger demographic.

I don’t see her as a copycat at all, she has created her own world, her own stories, her own characters, and they are unique to her. Yes, undoubtedly she has been influenced by Tolkien’s work, but as a fantasy writer, it would be impossible not to be. Also, from what I understand Rowling got most of her names from some oddball floral/plant book. Names like Voldemort, etc., come from this plant book, not from stealing things from Tolkien. Furthermore, as Kaimelar and others have already pointed out in this thread, there are certain elements, and sort of a certain basic structure that has to be adhered to when one is writing fantasy, that’s what makes it fantasy!

Even though I haven’t read her books, I really admire, and respect J.K. Rowling. If you know anything about her personal history, it really is quite an amazing success story, and I’m happy for her that things have worked out for her the way that they have (even though I know she is starting to find it all a bit overwhelming). As an postAuthorID she has managed to climb a very difficult mountain, and she now finds herself above the clouds, atop the highest peak, and she should be commended for it.

Again though, you can’t compare her works to Tolkien's, because even though she has managed to make it to the top of the mountain (a difficult task indeed), Tolkien is all the stars in the infinite universe that she, and everyone else is looking up at, and forever will be.

Really? Harry's temper was one of the things I actually didn't like about it, it began to bug me after a while and I just wanted to yell at the book "Stoppit! Cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it!"
It was very very good though.

Exactly, except I was a grownup, when I first Tolkien, but I still couldn't put The Hobbit and LotR down having to see what happened next.

The Harry Potter bools are so well written that even I can relate to those kids and their problems, remembering back to my school days fifty years ago. And her stories are page turners, this new one I finished reading early this morning. I read it in four nightly sessions, averaging 56 pages per hour, which probably says I'm a slow reader, but who cares. It is not the speed of one's reading that matters, it is the enjoyment one gets out of it.

Hey I dont really can say what I think then I only was watching the movies, Okay I dont like Potter the Flotter(there is not really a good storie behind, she tryes to write every year or so a new book >>> only for the mony not for the one thing, the one world, like Tolkien did ) *g* but what else??

I have this
http://www.tolkienonline.com/docs/6654.html

for you, have a look and have a lough and the talk *g* Bey then and take care



[Editiert am 27/6/2003 von Nessa]

I'm finally home today, and I found it sitting in the outhouse outside my front door, so having almost the entire day to do nothing in, I'm going to listen to the stack of Judas Priest records I bought last week, and get somne serious reading done for the rest of today. Will tell you what I think tommorrow, when I may have finished it...

If you have a look in the what are you reading thread in the Dragon melly, you'll see that I finished it in a very short time, and quite enjoyed it I think. I think i said more there though.
Will probably read it again soon, as I went through it a bit sharpish.

When Grondy said it was a barn burner (page turner) he was not kidding! I'm on page 654 and the barn could burn down and be rebuilt around me and I wouldn't notice a thing. I can't put it down! It is great! Hardly a dull moment (or maybe I'm reading to fast to notice ). But it's almost over now. A re-read is a must. *runs back to book*

i agree. even though my last post was a bit harsh. and i still agree with.

[Edited on 8/7/2003 by #1ElijahLover]

(Grondy just fixed the errant ASCII numbers.)

[Edited on 8/7/2003 by Grondmaster]

#1eliahlover, I was never interested in HP whatsoever either, I had never read the books and i just was not interested, but then, I had to read it for my english class, and at first I was like what is this? but then it got really interesting and I read the next books and I liked them, maybe you should read them.

My dear I-belive-everything-I-read-on-the-internet. If you had bothered to even glanse at a HP book you would see that JKRs books contains nothing of what your are insinuating they do. All her spells are made up and there is nothing even hinting towards ANY religion what-so-ever, and do not encurage kids to learn witch-craft and serve the devil. It is not that kind of witches and wizards they learn to became AT ALL!! And there are no foot-notes telling kids where to look up more about witch-craft. It's all lies.

All she is learning the kids is to be true to their hearts, to speak out agains racism and dicrimination and bullying, to look after those who are weaker, to take care of your friends and be nice to people even if they are different, if you get to know them you might be pleasently surpriced, AND the kids are enjoying themselves while learning this!

Sit down and read one of the book befor you go shooting of your mouth like that.

Yeah you’re right as usual Plastic. Just felt I had to kill the lie before it spread (further).. I know I’m short tempered, I’m sorry.
A few years ago before I had read anything of HP, I heard these rumours too but didn't believe them. It does of course depend on where you heard the rumours. I just read them, if I’d been told about it I might have felt different. I did however believe there were footnotes in the books, but that they were pointing to something less anti-christish then the rumours told. Maybe pointing to a story from where she got a spell or something. Got a bit disappointed when I found out it wasn't true actually..

Of course yelling and shouting at someone is not a good way to get the massage through, but I'm a lemming; tiny and cute but can explode any minute if I feel provoked somehow. I'm sorry that me biting your head of was the first greeting you got from me in here. Believe it or not, but I'd defend you with teeth and claws if anyone had been telling lies or harassing you #1ElijahLover. If this had been a real life conversation about the matter, we would have shouted and growled a bit, then we’d agree on something and everything would be fine. Now only the shouting is visible, but I’m usually a nice and trustworthy girl who tries to see both sides of the story.

And I like your poems too btw, I really do.

*reaching out for #1ElijahLovers hand*

Hmm.. just realized I probably won't be online for a while now 'cause of my sisters wedding and lack of internet at my apartment. Glad I got to say I'm sorry, and I hope me sounding like a b**ch doesn't stop you from wanting to come here and speak your mind about things.