Mithrandir
03-13-2006, 02:40 AM
This is going to be an interesting thread for me, because I have quite the interesting story behind it. Upon my return I have been reading through much of the forum trying to get reacquainted with the current mindset of its members.
Upon my searching I came across a mindset I had completely forgotten about this forum, and I am sure most members are very aware of. There is a very evident animosity shown towards the fans of Harry Potter on this website.
Enter my story. I find this quite humorous because back in my days of TTF I would have been one of the members constantly berating the "horrible HP fans that bring down our society!" Yes, it is true I tend to dramatize. I hated Harry Potter and everything derived from it, it's fans to its movies all the way to its mere mention in my presence. I was probably known to go on rants on and off this site about how it was a mere clone of LOTR and had nothing resembling creativity.
Sadly the day came when I left TTF, in order to preserve more time for my music career and schooling. I went to college and continued to study and read. Enter my third year of college, when I moved to NYC to study Jazz Performance. By this time my anger for Harry Potter had subsided by a significant amount. Ironically, through all these years of hatred and spite I had refused to watch any of the movies as well as read any of the books.
Anger soon led to curiosity. As my mind opened up I began to realize my hate was based on nothing because I had never gave any of the idioms of said franchise any chance whatsoever.
I made the decision to read the books. All of them. And see what in the world everybody from elementary school, to college age students, to full grown adults, had found so mesmerizing by the wizard world. I read all 6 books within 1 month and a half and I realized something by the end.
The Harry Potter series starts out incredibly childish, and is no wonder is in the kid’s section. It is a sophisticated child novel, but a child novel nonetheless. However, by the 4th book of the series this feeling is gone entirely. It enters a very dark and sophisticated story that in my opinion, is not intended for children at all, or at least should not be.
I believe the world J.K. Rowling has created is filled in myth and magic, which brings me to my main point. So is the Lord of the Rings by our beloved Tolkien. I think that THIS and this alone is the basis for the similarities within the two series. If you actually take the time to set aside your automatic feelings of hate, if they are there, and read the series, I think it is VERY evident that the two series are incredibly different stories. Yes it is true, there are wizards and magic in both, it is true Dolby has some striking similarities to Gollum. There are in fact living trees in both (although the living trees in HP are nothing like the ents) and I am sure and I know there are others that can be talked about. The fact of the matter is, however, a lot of the similarities take their roots from mythology and not LOTR.
The likeness of say Dolby and Gollum is one we can trace back to LOTR. However, my question is this, are not all authors inspired by something? I know for a fact that Tolkien was, and some of HIS literature is in fact traced back to other works, most significantly Greek mythology and the Bible (I know this is a completely different argument, but try and not get off course). IF and only if J.K. Rowling read LOTR before she wrote HP (I read somewhere here that she supposedly has stated she did not) then we can certainly acquaint the similarities to inspiration and not forgery, which I think is evident if you read the books.
In the end of this ridiculously long post my question is this. To those who have not read HP is your observation of hatred based solely on the movies? If so, is this hatred valid? Would you like someone to judge LOTR solely on the movies portrayed by Peter Jackson? If you have read HP, and still hate it, please share with me your reasons, if you can be civilized about it and not offend anyone.
Any other thoughts or theories? Please share, this is a forum after all :cool:
Upon my searching I came across a mindset I had completely forgotten about this forum, and I am sure most members are very aware of. There is a very evident animosity shown towards the fans of Harry Potter on this website.
Enter my story. I find this quite humorous because back in my days of TTF I would have been one of the members constantly berating the "horrible HP fans that bring down our society!" Yes, it is true I tend to dramatize. I hated Harry Potter and everything derived from it, it's fans to its movies all the way to its mere mention in my presence. I was probably known to go on rants on and off this site about how it was a mere clone of LOTR and had nothing resembling creativity.
Sadly the day came when I left TTF, in order to preserve more time for my music career and schooling. I went to college and continued to study and read. Enter my third year of college, when I moved to NYC to study Jazz Performance. By this time my anger for Harry Potter had subsided by a significant amount. Ironically, through all these years of hatred and spite I had refused to watch any of the movies as well as read any of the books.
Anger soon led to curiosity. As my mind opened up I began to realize my hate was based on nothing because I had never gave any of the idioms of said franchise any chance whatsoever.
I made the decision to read the books. All of them. And see what in the world everybody from elementary school, to college age students, to full grown adults, had found so mesmerizing by the wizard world. I read all 6 books within 1 month and a half and I realized something by the end.
The Harry Potter series starts out incredibly childish, and is no wonder is in the kid’s section. It is a sophisticated child novel, but a child novel nonetheless. However, by the 4th book of the series this feeling is gone entirely. It enters a very dark and sophisticated story that in my opinion, is not intended for children at all, or at least should not be.
I believe the world J.K. Rowling has created is filled in myth and magic, which brings me to my main point. So is the Lord of the Rings by our beloved Tolkien. I think that THIS and this alone is the basis for the similarities within the two series. If you actually take the time to set aside your automatic feelings of hate, if they are there, and read the series, I think it is VERY evident that the two series are incredibly different stories. Yes it is true, there are wizards and magic in both, it is true Dolby has some striking similarities to Gollum. There are in fact living trees in both (although the living trees in HP are nothing like the ents) and I am sure and I know there are others that can be talked about. The fact of the matter is, however, a lot of the similarities take their roots from mythology and not LOTR.
The likeness of say Dolby and Gollum is one we can trace back to LOTR. However, my question is this, are not all authors inspired by something? I know for a fact that Tolkien was, and some of HIS literature is in fact traced back to other works, most significantly Greek mythology and the Bible (I know this is a completely different argument, but try and not get off course). IF and only if J.K. Rowling read LOTR before she wrote HP (I read somewhere here that she supposedly has stated she did not) then we can certainly acquaint the similarities to inspiration and not forgery, which I think is evident if you read the books.
In the end of this ridiculously long post my question is this. To those who have not read HP is your observation of hatred based solely on the movies? If so, is this hatred valid? Would you like someone to judge LOTR solely on the movies portrayed by Peter Jackson? If you have read HP, and still hate it, please share with me your reasons, if you can be civilized about it and not offend anyone.
Any other thoughts or theories? Please share, this is a forum after all :cool: