J.K.Rowling & The Legend of Rah and the Muggles

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 14484


> At 03:06 PM 03/16/2001 +0000, you wrote:
> >We would all be very stupid to assume that this is a coincidence. 
How
> >can Rowling make up a story about sitting in a train and making up
> >the characters, while she took the ideas from Stouffer? J.K. 
Rowling
> >is taking all the credit for characters she did not even 'make'!
> 


It looks like Nancy Stouffer has joined out group. What a laughably 
naive post.

All I can say is that I have looked at Stouffer's site and her 
claims, and I do not believe that she has even come close to the 
legal standard of significant similarity. 

Her claims have been examined in depth in this group and have been 
found severely lacking-- for example, the little bald cartoon 
creatures she calls "muggles" bear no resemblance that I can see to 
the muggles of Rowlings books, which are simply ordinary human 
beings. Muggles by the way is a word which you can find in the OED-- 
and in Scotland has been a piece of popular slang meaning "stupid 
person" at least since the 18th century.

Another example:  Stouffer's "Larry Potter" (who bears a striking 
resemblence to Henry Reed, a popular character in children's 
literature *smile*) has brown hair and brown eyes, not black hair and 
green eyes, and so far as I can see has no lightning shaped scar his 
forehead, nor is he a wizard. "Lilly Potter", his "friend" is a 
little girl with brown hair-- not his red-haired green-eyed magical 
mother who died to save his life. Given that the names are common as 
dirt and can be found in a multitude of phone books, and given that 
Stouffer's story is not in any way about witches and wizards, where 
is the significant similarity? 

Most of Stouffer's claims for similarity rest upon devices which are 
common to many, many fairy tales and are not original to either her 
works or Rowlings. They are very weak claims. Interestingly, despite 
the claims she makes on her website, Stouffer is not pressing a 
plagarism suit against Rowling: she is only claiming trademark 
violation. Considering that Stouffer's trademarks are still pending, 
and that Rowling has never used any of her trademarks, these are wild 
claims indeed. I would suggest that given Stouffer's long history of 
failures that she is benefiting from Rowling's name recognition-- not 
the other way around. If it looks like gold-digging, smells like-gold-
digging, and sounds like gold-digging.... *smile* Of course this is 
only my humble opinion. 

Not surprisingly, Stouffer has won no victories.