Wednesday

There is a one of thinking that majority of movies / books boil down to one of 7 root stories so it's easy to say stuff was copied
 
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My eldest is doing something on Harry Potter and trans stuff on you tube or something.

She's got a bit more to do before its finished.
 
bumface said:
Close. I think that Home and Away did it first.
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Damn. I just looked her up and was a bit gutted to.see she died a few years back. I could never be bothered with her novels, but I read a load of brilliant short stories by her when I was a little fella. Anyway!
 
fella said:
Damn. I just looked her up and was a bit gutted to.see she died a few years back. I could never be bothered with her novels, but I read a load of brilliant short stories by her when I was a little fella. Anyway!
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And Rowling is still alive. There's no justice in this world.
 
bumface said:
Ursula Le Guin's first Earthsea novel, mate. Boy wizard, with a scar on his head goes to wizard school and something evil is out to get him. Does that sound familiar?
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It does, but it's boiling a story down to its roots and if you go into detail it's vastly different

You get the same comparisons with stuff like Avatar and Ferngully, Hunger Games and Battle Royale etc

Harry Potter; and earthsea, both form part of Overcoming a Monster, The Quest, Rags to Riches, Voyage & Return etc. when you link lots of these plots together it's hard not to see a comparison, especially when you summarise them at a high level.

Good answer on quora goes into more detail

I’ve read both book series, and while each is a coming-of-age story about youths attending schools of wizardry, I see little resemblance in detail between the two. The basic premises may be similar, but the execution is vastly different.

A Wizard of Earthsea is set on a different world, Earthsea, an ocean planet with many scattered islands. A boy named Ged becomes apprenticed to a master wizard in order to realise his considerable ambitions; soon he is off to a school on another island. There, his own hubris leads him into folly, with disastrous results.

This is quite different from Harry Potter’s situation, in which he is a wizard only by virtue of his genetic make up; wizardry in the Potterverse is a question not of desire, but of DNA. What is more, wizards in J. K. Rowling‘s books do not come to their trade or profession through apprenticeships or sponsors, but by going to a magical boarding school, enrollment in which is a birthright.

The contrast between the two series are clear in the very different ways each author handles magic.

LeGuin thought out her magic in great detail, and the result is a satisfying and self contained system. Words - the “true name” of a person or thing - are the basis of magical power. These words are not the triggers for spells, as in the Potterverse, and there are strict natural limits to a wizard’s use of them.

The world of Earthsea is in equilibrium, and wizards are charged with maintaining this balance. Any act of magic alters the balance in some way; so there is no casual or careless act of magic, no battles with bolts of colourful goo flying back and forth. Instead, Ged learns not only that words have power to change things - just as they do in our world - but that one must control himself, lest his words do himself, or someone else, an injury.

how’s that as a lesson for the typical mouthy teenager?

The idea that words have power to make things happen, whether for good or ill, is a very important part of an adolescent’s learning to control himself or herself. This is the very literal coming-of-age lesson that LeGuin gets across, and painlessly by cloaking it in wizard’s robes.

in contrast, the basis of magic in Harry Potter is a complete mystery; Rowling never offers any explanation for where it comes from or what its nature is.

Certainly there are magic words, which once uttered, cause a set of instructions to unfold, a lot like a computer algorithm. But the words that trigger a spell have no relationship to either the wizard or the object of the spell. And they disturb no magical balances because as far as we know, there aren’t any. The only limitation on what a wizard can do, it seems, is that the secrecy of the Wizarding World must remain inviolate.

What, then, does Harry learn that will help him become an adult? Lots of practical things, such as the primacy of love, and the importance of relying on others. Ged learns those things too. But the paths they take could hardly be more different.

Are there similarities between Harry Potter and Ged? Superficially, yes; but only in the way any two coming-of-age stories chosen at random would necessarily have things in common.

But when it comes down to details, the two series are - quite literally - worlds apart.

And that’s okay; each remains an excellent and engaging read.
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ThatFragranceGuy said:
It does, but it's boiling a story down to its roots and if you go into detail it's vastly different

You get the same comparisons with stuff like Avatar and Ferngully, Hunger Games and Battle Royale etc

Harry Potter; and earthsea, both form part of Overcoming a Monster, The Quest, Rags to Riches, Voyage & Return etc. when you link lots of these plots together it's hard not to see a comparison, especially when you summarise them at a high level.

Good answer on quora goes into more detail
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So because most plots can be traced back to about seven templates (Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story etc) it is the finer details that make them similar; like scarred foreheads and wizard school.
 
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