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/lit/ - Literature

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4010408 No.4010408 [Reply] [Original]

*Ardwen - Arwen
*Isenstar - Isengard
*Mithrim - Mithrim or mithril
*Angrenost - Angrenost
*Morgothal - Morgoth
*Elessari - Elessar
*Furnost - Fornost
*Hadarac Desert - Harad Desert
*Melian - Melian
*Vanilor - Valinor
*Eridor - Eriador
*Imiladris - Imladris
*Undin - Fundin/Udun
*Gil'ead - Gil'Galad
*Ceranthor - Caranthir
*Isidar - Isiludir
*Eragon - Aragorn

>> No.4010414

>>4010408
It looks legal to me.

>> No.4010417

what are you getting at OP

>> No.4010427
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4010427

>>4010408
never knew about. mostly because i don't read shit that was meant for ten year olds

>> No.4010424

And The Asylum couldn't name their movie "Age of Hobbits"? What is this world coming to?

>> No.4010433
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4010433

>>4010417
At what point does a story become so derivative that it's actually plagiarism?

As an example I give you Star Wars by way of The Lord of the Rings aka Eragon.

>> No.4010435

>>4010408
Mainly because copyright infringement is governed by tort law so you'd have to show actual damages, which is to say, unless you can prove Paolini's shit actually damages the Tolkien estate or costs it money there's nothing to legally remedy to seek.

>> No.4010472

>In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

>> No.4010521

Tolkien copied a lot of the names in his books from Nordic myths anyway

>> No.4010525

>>4010521
I can think of Gandalf and Hrothgar and not any others.

>> No.4010536

>>4010525
I think a few of the dwarves from The Hobbit got their names from myths as well. Either Balin or Oin or another one of those, right now I just don't remember.

>> No.4010538

didn't paolini start churning this out when he was like 17

>> No.4010551

>>4010538
18 actually

His parents published it when he was 19 and it took him a year to write.

He "imagined" the story as a 15 year old though so that's when they told everyone he wrote it, in order to market him as a prodigy.

Remember that if you ever encounter an Eragon apologist who thinks that 15 year old kids are exempt from being criticized for being shitty writers.

>> No.4010572

>>4010435
Nah.

It's because copyright laws only protect the author's original statement. They don't protect Tolkien from another person taking his ideas and retooling them.

Like if a person took an article from a newspaper and slapped their own name on it and sold it to another newspaper, that's theft. But if a person took an article from a newspaper and used it in a dadaist collage, or used it as wrapping at a fish market, or used it to make a papier-mache sculpture worth three million dollars, he doesn't owe the author anything, because he retooled it into something new.

Not that I'm defending Paolini's lazy writing. I'm just saying that technically Paolini did write the book himself.

>> No.4010580

>>4010536
So like, four of them then. Out of just under 1,000 named characters.

>> No.4010584

>>4010572
I'm not disagreeing with you in totality, but you can protect a characters and premises. However like I said, if there's no damages to the authors property, there's no crime.

Now yes, "names" is a bit beyond characters and premises. you can't really copyright that much.

>> No.4010591

Let's not forget that while Tortellini stole his world and every name he could from Tolkien, the plot and characters are straight from Star Wars. Just look at the movie's Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus.

>Written by a teenager (and it shows), Eragon presents nothing new to the "hero's journey" story archetype. In movie terms, this movie looks and sounds like Lord of the Rings and plays out like a bad Star Wars rip-off. The movie spins the tale of a peasant boy who is suddenly entrusted with a dragon and must, with the help of a mentor, train, grow strong, and defeat an evil emperor. The way the critics picture it, the makers of Eragon should soon be expecting an annoyed phone call from George Lucas.

>> No.4010596

>>4010584
I think you can trademark them, like Mickey Mouse, but I'm not one hundred percent clear on the difference between being protected by copyright and being trademarked.

>> No.4010607

>>4010591

Ready to get your mind raped, pleb? The plot of A New Hope is straight ripped off from The Hidden Fortress.

Inception bitch

>> No.4010609

>>4010591
I mean, come on.

With Star Wars and Eragon you've got a princess who is the leader of a rebellion against an evil empire being attacked by the right hand man of the evil emperor. Then before her capture she sends off an item of great importance which is found by a boy with a mysterious past living on his uncle's farm. The evil empire traces the item of great importance to the boy, kills his uncle and torches his farm, but the boy is whisked away by a mysterious old guy who was once a member of an order of warriors with mystical powers. Then at some point the old guy dies defending the boy and also the boy attempts to rescue the princess who leads the rebellion and he does so with the help of a rogue then he shows up last minute to save the rebellion from the evil empire at some crucial battle before going off to find another surviving member of the ancient order of knights with mystical powers to further his training.

>> No.4010616

>>4010607
Please. I've seen The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress.

Just try aligning the plot of that movie with Star Wars as easily as Eragon aligns with it here >>4010609

>> No.4010617

>>4010609
Wasn't Star Wars based on a Kurosawa movie? George and Akira were BFF's

>> No.4010619

>>4010591

>Tortellini

cannot. stop. laughing.

>> No.4010624
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4010624

>>4010616

No you di int

>> No.4010625

>>4010596
A copyright is the right to, obviously enough, make copies. This applies not just to the stories you right, but in a more abstract way to the stories you didn't right about the characters and settings you invented. Which I know sounds a little weird, but its just sort of the way it works.

A trademark is a protection of a name, WITHIN a trade. Its not applied to all things, its not something that has to do at all with any stories about it. Its a protection that basically says "Oh, you make pottery under the name PotCo, then you are the only potter who can use the name." It prevents competitors from stealing your good will or whatever. But its within a given trade, Johnny may sell medical marijuana under the name of PotCo brand reefer, and it may very well be legal.

>> No.4010631

>>4010617
>Wasn't Star Wars based on a Kurosawa movie?

Star Wars was inspired by Kurosawa's films and old sci-fi adventure flicks.

There is no original Japanese version of "The New Hope" though.

>> No.4010636

>>4010624
Yes, I have. That's why I know what the real name of the movie is.

>> No.4010640

>>4010631
Star wars only really succeeded so much as it did by way of its special effects. It may have been a scene for scene retelling of the 47 ronin, all that matters is those special effects.... and maybe Harrison Ford.

>> No.4010659
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4010659

Tortellini also stole the magic system from A Wizard of Earthsea word for fucking word.

It just really flusters my jimbobs knowing that an 18 year old made millions by writing a shitty Star Wars/LotR/Wizard of Earthsea fanfic staring his Mary Sue self-insert. And that he thinks he's a literary genius on par with Tolkien "at his best" and Seamus Heaney because of it.

>> No.4010662

>>4010640
>It may have been a scene for scene retelling of the 47 ronin

It really wasn't.

>> No.4010669

I enjoyed reading this book when I was 15.

>> No.4010671

>>4010662
I know it wasn't, I wasn't trying to it imply it was.

>> No.4010676

>>4010671
Oh, I get you now.

>>4010669
Shame on you. Also, hadn't you read A Wizard of Earthsea or seen Star Wars by 15? Didn't you notice how horribly derivative Eragon was?

>> No.4010709

>>4010521

That's public domain, though.

I can only think of two, Gandalf and Hrothgar.

There's also the Anglo-Saxon names for some of the Rohirrim, I suppose.

>> No.4010713

>>4010676
I read it around then too, but I didn't enjoy it. I'd seen star wars and also seen LoTR movies but I didn't make the connection. My problem was it was just straight-up shitty boy-goes-on-adventure high fantasy crap.

>> No.4010718

I remember reading this shit when I was in 4th grade.

I liked the Roran story from the 2nd one. Whatever happened to that fucker?

>> No.4010729

>>4010525
He borrowed much more.

>> No.4010730

>>4010718
>I liked the Roran story from the 2nd one

You liked how a farmer with no fighting experience managed to kill like 40 or 80 or some outrageous number of trained soldiers?

With a blacksmith's hammer no less. So a hammer with a very short handle, which would be totally impracticable for fighting.

The fighting in Eragon functions on video game mechanics.

>> No.4010736

>>4010408
>*Gil'ead - Gil'Galad

Gilead is a region of Jordan, mentioned in the Bible.

>> No.4010739

>>4010659
Ummm, the concept of a magic language is older than that, dude.
Nonetheless, that book does suck money for dick. I had the misfortune of reading the first book way back.
Every other scene the character fucking blacks out! Apparently it's supposed to make flying sharks reasonable.

>> No.4010748

All I have to say about all this is, all artists get inspiration from some other source. I don't really care if he got ideas from other writers. He did a wonderful job of describing scenery in the series and he kept me wanting to find out what was going to happen next. All in all it was a good series. Would I read it again? Possibly. Though I'd rather reread the Acorna series by Anne McCaffrey a 3rd time first.

>> No.4010759

>>4010730

I liked how the village had to survive.

4th graders can like things, especially things like video games!

>> No.4010769

>>4010739
>Ummm, the concept of a magic language is older than that, dude.

Yeah, I know. It's the specifics, obviously. About the grammar and the name of the ancient language and whatnot.

>>4010748
>All I have to say about all this is, all artists get inspiration from some other source.

Obviously. But please, look at >>4010408 and >>4010609 and tell me that this isn't derivative tripe.

>All in all it was a good series.

It was as bad as it possibly could have been. Like, objectively so.

>> No.4010809

>>4010769

>>4010609 wasn't completely accurate. The princess was not the leader of the rebellion in the inheritance cycle. And like I said, all artists draw inspiration from somewhere else. So what if he put his own twist on it? Reading the series definitely helped pass time when I had nothing else to read. Honestly, the Inheritance cycle was much better than most of the other crap I see on shelves these days. What happened to writers like Anne McCaffrey or Larry Niven? There are too many amateur writers nowadays that overshadow the people who can actually write a good book.

And everyone has their own opinion on what they think is "good" or "bad". I would still rather reread the Acorna series by Anne McCaffrey a 3rd time before rereading the Inheritance cycle anyways.

>> No.4010832

>>4010809
Oh please. She was a leader, whether or not she was "the" leader.

>Honestly, the Inheritance cycle was much better than most of the other crap I see on shelves these days.

Let's look at the books by themselves, all right? They're fucking shit. Not just because they're derivative, but because of the purple prose, and because Eragon is such a Mary Sue, and because Tortellini is a pedant who throws in obtuse words like "thews" as often as he can so he can impress everyone with his thesaurus savvy.

Anti-shurtugal had a list of all the obtuse vocabulary he used, it was ridiculous.

>> No.4010844

>>4010809
Get off Anne McCaffrey's dick, she was not that great of a writer. Nor was Larry Niven, for that matter, although I admit the fact that I dislike the man personally may be influencing me.

Anyway, yeah, books on the shelves may or may not be shit, but that should not affect our appraisal of these books, because other books can be shit and Eragon can be shit at the same time.

>> No.4010926

>>4010625
There are hundreds of Star Wars books.

>> No.4010938

>>4010832
Leia isn't the leader of the Rebel Alliance, either.

>> No.4010996

>>4010659
>It just really flusters my jimbobs knowing that an 18 year old made millions by writing a shitty Star Wars/LotR/Wizard of Earthsea fanfic

Well 50 shades was born as a Twilight fanfic and it made the author a bunch of dollars
And Harry Potter copied so many ideas from other books it could also be called a fanfic
And the writer of Twilight, although didn't intend to write a fanfic per se, took every single thing that is cliche from the vampire genre and vomited it into a single series of books

So yeah, shitty books sell a lot.

>> No.4011016

I read Eragon and Eldest a few years ago, around the time the movie was coming out (they were purchased for me). One day, I'll read the last two.

No fucks given.

>> No.4011119

>>4010472
>Tolkien
>beauty

Is that a thing in the English language, that there are absolutely no good fantasy authors to make you realise how mediocre the T-Man actually is?

>> No.4011149

>>4010659
He has wealthy parents who self-published it and know how to market a book

>> No.4011154

>>4010472
Doea he really think his writing is as good as someone's who won the nobel prize for literature?