[ SECRET POST #2972 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2972 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 072 secrets from Secret Submission Post #425.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if there is a possibility that the HG author was aware of Battle Royale when she wrote the books? I also made the BG association the moment I heard of HG, but I wonder if it was coincidence.

[erinptah]

I read somewhere that, early in the writing/drafting process, there was a conversation like this:
Editor: Have you heard of this series called Battle Royale?
Collins: No, why? Should I check it out?
Editor: No! Absolutely not. Anything you know about it will screw up your ability to write this story without second-guessing whether every decision is original enough. Red card. Do not approach.

...which I could believe happened. The similarities are mostly really broad, general-premise-level things. It would be like accusing Firefly of being a ripoff of Star Wars because it involves a ragtag group of outlaws on a spaceship in a faraway galaxy, and two of them are brother and sister.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting. I certainly don't think it's impossible that she came up with the idea on her own. But the whole arena with kids fighting to the death in a dystopian society, still seems like a bit of a coincidence, especially considering BR has a big cult following. I daresay it's still possible that she had come across the plot summary or a reference to BR, without necessarily seeing it, but oh well. Either way, I think the plots are different enough, and the purpose of the novels are different enough, where that doesn't matter much anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

I think both of them were drawing from Roman history...

[(Anonymous)]

She claims (or at least has been told to deny it) that she'd never even heard of BR prior to writing HG.

I'd buy that she hadn't read or watched, but if you had enough of a passing interest in her subject matter to write an entire trilogy about it, I find it implausible that she'd never even heard of BR. If you express even the slightest interest in dystopian futures featuring a YA cast then it's impossible to avoid hearing it mentioned at the very least.

[sarillia]

I never heard much about it until people started using it as a weapon against HG. I can easily believe that an American YA writer wouldn't have heard of a Japanese book that wasn't on YA shelves when I bought my copy even if there are superficial similarities in the premise.

[(Anonymous)]

"never heard much" isn't the same as "never heard a single thing EVER, nope."

HG (the first novel) came out almost ten years after BR.

I wasn't even into YA or dystopian novels when either BR or HG were released, but even vague reading around what was popular and what people were discussing when it came to their books brought up BR long before HG. I only heard about HG from a romance novels review blog. I'd heard of BR in many places before then -- like someone mentioned, it's a cult classic. It's something most people will have heard reference to, even if they've never read a word of it.

I find it very difficult to believe that someone who spent her career writing for children and young adults would never have even heard of BR depsite the publishing and media circles in which she travelled and worked. This isn't someone who just decided to pick up writing for young people, this is what Suzanne Collins has always done.

I'm not saying it's a ripoff. I'm not even saying she's lying when she says she hasn't read it. I'm just saying it's ludicrously unlikely that someone in her position hasn't even heard of it.

[sarillia]

You probably have a point about Collins's history, but:

It's something most people will have heard reference to, even if they've never read a word of it.

That has not been my experience at all. Maybe I've been surrounded by people who are particularly ignorant of books but I just cannot agree to that line.

[(Anonymous)]

It's possible you have been, because as often and as widely as pop culture references and parodies Battle Royale then you must have been living under a rock for the past fifteen years to literally miss all of it.

[(Anonymous)]

The only reason I know about Battle Royale is because I went through a weeaboo period. I heard about it in the Japanophile cirlces I ran in, and nothing about it in the wider culture. After I got out of that phase, I didn't hear about it again until people online started complaining about the Hunger Games.

You're seriously overestimating the extent to which people outside of certain subcultures have heard and talk about Battle Royale.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

But the point is you HAD heard of it.

Suzanne Collins is denying even that much, which is the part that seems off.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

But my point is I wouldn't have heard of it if I wasn't really in to Japanese media. I was in a subculture where it was very likely I'd hear about it. The people I knew outside of that subculture hadn't.

Even today, after all the comparisons, I still run in to people who never have heard of it. It isn't that weird for people to not hear about a cult foreign film.

[(Anonymous)]

Fan Myopia (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanMyopia)

[alenxa]

Chiming in to say that all I knew about BR before all the hoopla over HG was the title, that it involved either kids or manga-folks drawn to look like kids, and that it was Japanese in origin. Seriously. That is all that "heard of it" meant in my case and it's actually more than I know about several other "classics." Granted, I'm not a children's author, but it doesn't strike me as unlikely that a writer of books for any audience in English wouldn't be pursuing familiarity with books for that audience that originated in a different language.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

But like you say you'd still actually heard of it, which is the part of Collins' denial that seems pretty implausible. She says she'd literally never even heard of it at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I had literally never heard of it at all until after I'd read the Hunger Games. I never really watch anime, although I do consume a fair bit of YA lit. Writing a YA dystopic book doesn't mean you've read/watched every bit of the genre, and it seems silly to assume that is so. I mean, shit, my favourite show in the world is Leverage, which was an American show on a cable channel that went for 5 years, not really obscure or tiny, but I never assume everyone's heard of it--many people never have.

[meredith44]

I took both YA literature and Children's literature classes when going for my MLS. I have read tons of books, especially fantasy. And I had never heard of Battle Royale until after The Hunger Games came out. I hadn't even heard the title. So, yes, I believe it is very much possible that she hadn't heard of it either. And that you are inflating the importance of Battle Royale outside of particular circles.

[ceebeegee]

I'd never heard of Battle Royale until I got into THG (and then I couldn't possibly avoid it since tons of BR fans made sure you knew aaaalllllll about their...movie? Book?). So if I'd never heard of it (and I got SC's other allusions, was right on top of all the Roman references), I can well believe that SC herself didn't. I still know nothing about BR other than its connection to THG. Neither SC nor [whoever came up with BR] invented this shot, it's all from classical mythology.