Where JKR really stole her ideas from

[mschub at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 9299

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Amy " <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Bob Dylan:
> "It was known all around that Lily had Jim's ring."  --"Lily, 
> Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," from Blood on the Tracks
> 
> The creators and writers of TV's M*A*S*H:
> Col. Potter, played by Harry Morgan.

Hello all! Bear with me, I'm new...
Here's another important one: Similarities between HP and Philip 
Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. e.g. - in "The Golden Compass" 
(Book 1 of HDM), there's a certain "Palmerian Professor" named 
Trelawney... in both "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass" 
(Books 2 and 3), we see "Specters", evil creatures that glide around 
and feed on the souls (or daemons, in the books) of their victims. 
Just being in the vicinity of these creatures causes one to feel 
"cold" and "sad". 
A Specter's attack consists of lowering its hood (revealing "what 
would have been its face, had it had one") and administering a fatal 
"kiss", in which the soul is destroyed forever. There's a really good 
paragraph where this is described, but I'm afraid I've loaned my copy 
of the book to a friend, so I'm unable to quote it.
Now, the timing on these is questionable. Who is "borrowing" from 
whom? Did JKR already have these creatures plotted out before The 
Subtle Knife was published in '97? Who knows. It is interesting, 
however, that both of the authors routinely recommend the others' 
books to their readers. So I guess they're OK with it.
As I said, I'm new. I've been lurking for a few days, reading up on 
old posts, but if this coincidence has been brought up before, I 
haven't seen it, so please forgive me. Also, if anyone HASN'T read
the HDM series, and enjoyed HP, I would VERY highly recommend them.
-Mike