People who read Harry Potter and nothing else (kinda lame)

The BBQ Pit
1

Background: I’ve written a fantasy tabletop game, available via my website. I work on it off and on and answer the occasional question about it via email. I maintain the delusion that it will one day skyrocket in popularity and I will become the Gary Gygax of miniature wargames. The game, like many (possibly most) fantasy games, contains hippogriffs, and that is the source of my present dismay. So:

To the people (not many, but enough to annoy) who have written me asking if I have to pay J K Rowling anything to be allowed to use her invention hippogriffs in my game… try reading a fucking book that didn’t fucking come to you through the fucking fad-of-the-fucking-month club. I have read the first Harry Potter book and it was perfectly fine and J K Rowling can write and all and I’m sure the other books are great and everything and I’m sure she deserves every penny she’s earned and I’m happy for her, but…

It’s… Not… Original.

J K Rowling did not invent the genre. She did not invent the concept of the wizard school. She did not invent the concept of classes in different magical subjects. She did not invent dragons. She did not invent the character of a young wizard at school. She did not invent cave trolls. She did not invent the wizard/muggle division, although she may well have invented the word “muggle”. She did not invent the story of a child in a terrible family turning out to be from a completely different place and very special and much better than their family in every way. And she definitely did not invent fucking hippogriffs. OK? OK.

2

Erm… whats are hippogriffs?

(Oh, and I haven’t read a single Harry Potter book. :slight_smile: )

3

Hey! This is how I felt the day some girl told me Whitney Houston wrote that song “I Will Always Love You”!

4

Wha… what?

You must be lying. Yes, that’s it. Priceguy is a liar. Yes, now I can return to my little fantasy world, courtesy of Mrs. Rowling.
Lord Ashtar (who prefers Dragonlance to whatever world Harry Potter lives in)

5

Aaaaaaaarghhhhh! :mad:

That’s the one that always gets me. That and “Celine really wrote a great one with that ‘Drove All Night’, didn’t she?”

6

A cross between an eagle and a horse.

7

But George Lucas was totally original, wasn’t he?

… Wasn’t he…?

Damn…

8

Picture of a hippogriff.

9

Actually, I believe that was William S. Burroughs.

10

Y’r complainin’ to the wrong guy, bud.

Y’see, I personally think everyone ought to read something, as often as possible. Expands the mind, cheaper than drugs, still legal in THIS country, and harmless enough.

Unfortunately, it seems like there are a great many people who simply cannot, will not, ever pick up a freakin’ book. I know a woman who read Stephen King’s It just to see what the fuss was about. That was in 1988. She hasn’t read a book since.

People like that creep me out.

And the year before the first Harry Potter movie came out, I noticed that you could buy Harry Potter stuff at Halloween. There were little kids dressing up like Harry Potter to go trick or treating.

Now, think about that.

These are kids who COULD have dressed up like Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Transformers, or any number of other things.

Instead… they chose to dress up like a character from a book. A literary character.

I was blown away. I wasn’t aware that children still DID read anything that wasn’t assigned by teachers at gunpoint.

It was a neat moment. Gave me hope for the future, it did.

Admittedly, they ain’t all gonna keep reading after that. For some, Harry Potter is as far as they’re gonna go.

But others will keep reading stuff.

So I ain’t gonna complain. If a few of them can keep going, then it’s time and money well spent…

11

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=137907

I have to confess that I’d considered myself reasonably well read, but had never heard of a Hippogriff and assumed it was one that JKR made up. I mean, everyone’s heard of unicorns, but hippogriffs seem rarer. Though I wouldn’t accuse someone else of copyright infringement without googling for 5 sec first, and do find it annoying when people have no idea about standard legends. (“No, Rowling didn’t make up XXX”/“They’re real?!”/“No, of course not! But they’re like standard mythology.”)

As a matter of curiosity, in what other books than HP and apparently Orlando furioso do people remember them appearing?

12

They’re a staple monster of the Dungeons and Dragons game, for one thing.

13

Aah. I should have guessed that… Thanks, Miller.

14

I gotta admit, I only know what a hippogriff is because of all the hours I spent playing D&D (and later Moria and Angband).

Since the name is a combination of horse (hippo-) and griffon, and a griffon is half eagle, half lion, isn’t a hippogriff a combination of all three?

15

Ah, but it’s the combination of ‘hippo’ with the front of ‘griffin’.

d&r.

16

Right, so doesn’t it have the back end of a horse, the head and wings of an eagle, and the front legs of a lion?

17

And Sub gets the joke about a minute and a half after posting.

18

Ah, a fellow sufferer!

I once was routing a couple of digital artists in for a game project - basicially a fantasy high sea trading game. I came up with a custom world, with your defacto elves, halfings and dwarves. One of the commodity which could be traded is of course, mithril.

So while in a game world review, I mentioned, “And so, the Dwarves from Telazorium mined mithril, the only place where it could be fined.”

Clueless Digital Artist: “No, I thought the Elves mine mithril?”

Blink. Blink-blink.

Me: “Er, where do you get that from?”

CDA: “Dungeons and Dragons said so?”

Me: “But Tolkien said the Dwarves mine mithril!”

The Clueless Digitial Artist maintain his stance for the next few sentences, before I assume my Mantle of Authourity (Charisma +5, cast Dominate Person three times per day) and put on my Hat of GM Authourity (even though technically we are not gaming) and say, “This is my game design. This is my world. If I say Dwarves mine mithril, then dwarves mine mithril because this is not D+D!” (And beside, Tolkien said Dwarves mine mithril! It is not as if I am saying hobbits mine mithril and woke up the Pimpled Balrog of Foulness, right?)

He was a bit plussed off by that.

Another annoying occurance was when after watching Fellowship of the Ring, some Everquest and UO gamers will discussing about the character, particularly about what class Aragorn was. “He’s a paladin!” one of them exclaimed. I did a double-take. Aragorn was the arche-type of ranger which D+D derived from. How the hell did he imagine a paladin?

One of them even made the remark how the movie was so like D+D/Everquest. Man, I felt like strangling them all!

19

Thanks Shade for the cite. I really had no idea where they came from. They apparently come in two varieties, one with the head and wings of an eagle, forequarters of a lion and the hindquarters of a horse, and one with the head, wings and forequarters of an eagle and the hindquarters of a horse. The eagle/lion/horse combo has always been the quintessential hippogriff for me, but now I learn that the eagle/horse combo is the original hippogriff. We live and learn.

And since Ludovico Ariosto died in 1533, I think the copyright question is resolved.

20

So, the guy who’s game is “…a fantasy game, depicting valiant elves, stalwart dwarves and brave human warriors tirelessly fighting orcs, trolls, dark sorcerers and other agents of evil.” dares complain that JKR is not being original? :slight_smile:

I know, I know, you are complaining about other people assuming she is. But be glad that the genre is getting a bit of a shot in the arm from JRR and JKR these past few years, bringing new kids in that may have otherwise been lost forever to Super Mario.