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Originally posted by JonHecht:
Not all books about children are rip-offs of each other.

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Thanks, but I was asking about Harry Potter.
 

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Posted by kacard (Member # 200) on :
 
We admit a few eyebrows were raised at our house when we first read it But, I think it's not that elements of Ender's Game were ripped off, I think it's that both books hit some very truthful things about adolescence that resonated with lots of people. I think its not that Ender's Game was ripped off. I think it's that they are both popular because the books tell the same kinds of truth.
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
Indeed.
Evern story is an unconcious rip-off of some other story anyway.
Or at least most of them are related to each other somehow.
 

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Posted by Tara (Member # 10030) on :
 
I've heard so many people say that Harry Potter was ripped off other books...First Lord of the Rings and then Ender's Game...Both of those claims seem ridiculous to me. The only thing JK Rowling seems to have "ripped off" when she wrote Harry Potter was common witch and wizard folklore, which has been around for centuries and is anyone's property.

When Harry started training other kids in defense, it was because their current Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was teaching them nothing at all, and the war against Voldemort was (is) imminent. It made perfect sense in the situation, and there was nothing to suggest that Rowling got the idea from anyone else. Plus, it was Hermione's idea, and Harry didn't want to it at first.

I don't really see any good connection between that and Ender's extra practice sessions. Even if there were -- is there ANYTHING else invented in Harry Potter that's remotely similar to anything invented in Ender's Game? If you don't have any other points of argument, I don't see how you have any argument at all.

Sorry to go on about this, but I'm a bit tired of people accusing authors left and right of ripping off others. I'm sure that ARE cases were a some ripping off has been done, but Rowling is one author, I think, whose name is clear in that regard.

[edited to remove some things that weren't actually true]
 

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Posted by SkeletonRock (Member # 10563) on :
 
I'm glad we can talk about this without getting emotional.
 

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Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
Or sarcastic.
 

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Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
 
I have to admit, the thought never even crossed my mind. Besides, if she DID rip off Ender's Game, it wasn't done very well. Harry Potter is fun, but it isn't in the same league as Ender, though I'm sure Mr. Card wished profits followed talent a little more closely.

Rowling is an OK author. Her first four books were entertaining, and even thought the books have gotten alot less fun, you can see she's refined her writing style alot too. However, she's a MUCH better businesswoman than she is author. Still, nothing to hold against her. All in all, she's done a pretty good think with Harry Potter, so even if she DID rip it off from somewhere (definitely NOT Ender), who cares? Ideas are pretty much fair game, and if she could pull it off better than the others, then good for her.

BTW... If you want to REALLY see idea ripping off, compare "Star Wars" (the original book) to the first Dune.
 

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Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
 
Not at all. The concept of "the one" is as old as they come, as is special training.

Harry doesn't have to fight Voldemort. He chooses to. When the final showdown happens, Harry will know it's the big one, and if he kills Voldemort, he will know that Voldemort is dead, provided it doesn't kill him in the process. Hogwarts doesn't train dark wizard catchers, it trains students who do what they want in life with their magical abilities. The Battle school students, while some went on to other military endevors, were trained to fight that big battle in the end- a battle they didn't know they fought until after it was over. Ender didn't know that he killed Bonzo, Stiltson and the Hive Queens until well after he did it. At the end, Graff described Ender as his weapon. A gun does not know it kills- a human fires it and it spits out a bullet into the air with amazing momentum.

Unlike Ender, Harry Potter has peers. While Ron and Hermione are aware of Harry's fame, power and potential, at the end of the day, they fight, laugh about rule breaking and Harry is just another kid. Ender had no peers. The commanders singled him out from day one. Remember when Val wrote that letter signed "all my love turkey lips, still paddling the old knew"? The teachers had noticed Ender's depression. He had written "poor Ender" after the students laughed about the time they had fended off the attempts at disrupting their sessions Ender had walked in on them and they stopped laughing, becaue he was there. They regarded him as an adult, and not another student who just happened to know a lot. He realized he had no friends and it hurt him. Even in the end, he protests so when he is told by the jeesh he'll "always be our commmander".

You take away different elements from each book. Ender's Game was inspired by concept of 3d weightless battles, but I see it as a look into the head of a perfect hero, who thrived on winning, but just wanted to be loved in return. It's about finding a place after your world gets shattered time and again- when you can never return to your family, or even your planet. After all that had been taken from Ender, he still responds with love- he does menial spaceship labor before Val arrives at Eros because he has nothting better to do, and it's useful. He governs the colony as a way to escape with Val, but earns the people's respect as a legitimate leader, letting other people take credit for his ideas so things would get done. He invents speaking for the dead so that humans understand that killing the buggers was bad. He makes it his life's work to be an ambassador for intelligent alien life. By all rights, Ender should have retired to the house by the lake that he was given, hired a bunch of servants as well as a shrink or three, done parades and tv gigs as well as a ton of drugs. But he doesn't, even when he believes the most important part of his life was over, even telling Val not to write about his governing work in his biography.

The best bits of morality take people take away from Harry Potter are usually one liners from either Dumbledore or Sirius ("it is the choices, not our abilities that define who we really are", "if you want to know what a man is like take a look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals", "the world isn't divided into good people and death eaters", I know I'm missing some here). For me, Harry is one of the least interesting characters. I want to know what happens with Harry's parents and their contemporaries. What really happened to Regulus Black? Yes, Harry is the one everything happens to, but the brilliance of the Harry Potter series lies in the way everything comes together, how charcters play subtle roles inside and between books and all of it was hinted at pages ago. Harry lives in a fully developed world. My biggest fear about book seven is that it will be like Lemony Snicket's The End. Snicket ends the Series of Unfortunate Events rather clearly, but ties up very few loose ends and answers very few questions. I have a huge expectation of book seven that everything will play a role, but I know it's impossible.
 

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Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by SkeletonRock:
I'm glad we can talk about this without getting emotional.

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quote:

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BTW... If you want to REALLY see idea ripping off, compare "Star Wars" (the original book) to the first Dune.

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