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Animated Skeleton
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Oh, I can't resist!
Oh, I can't resist stirring this up some more.
Frodo (whom I adore) not only told lies, but lived a lie for several months when he was planning to exit from the Shire. He led everyone to believe that his money had run out and he was returning to Buckland to live a more quiet, simple life. NOT!!
And when he fell off the table in Bree, he told everyone, "I didn't vanish, I crawled away to chat with my good buddy Strider." NOT!!! Wait--and hadn't Frodo just lied about his name? No, it was Merry who lied to Butterbur: "And this is my friend Mr. Underhill" NOT!! (Nasty hobbitses, lying hobbitses...)
Finally, okay not LOTR, but JRRT) Bilbo certainly lied about how he got the Ring. Indeed, only Frodo & Gandalf (and maybe Sam who'd been eavesdropping) knew the true story until the Council of Rivendell. Speaking of morality and ethics...for what it says of Sam's character, eavesdropping is generally not considered morally correct behavior.
BUT, regarding one of the ORIGINAL points of this thread--plagarism. I've read all the Harry Potter books and I found only one rather distrubing similarity. That was in Book 3 when Scabber (in human form) pleads with the others to spare him. His pleas are very, very reminiscent of Gollum's pleas to Frodo. "Don't hurt me master, good master." I had heard rumors of possible infringementlawsuits by the Tolkien estate and wondered what they were thinking until I hit that scene.
One cannot copyright an idea, only the unique expression of that idea. To me, the tone and phrasing of that scene skated way closer to the edge of "unique expression" than I feel comfortable about. (As a managing editor, I'd undoubtably ask my writers to rephrase anything that close to a previously existing source, just to be on the safe side.) On the other hand, the amount of text is very small in proportion to the book's overall length and the characters' situations and overall plot/tone are very different, so I can't see the Tolkien Estate charging into court -- they undoubtably have bigger issues with the "expanded" role of Arwen in the movie. <img src=wink.gif ALT="
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