31-yo-guy starts watching Harry Potter, now understands 90% more of internet

[JasonPratt]

Stumbled across this by accident, at BuzzFeed UK.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/wood-4-wood

Originally he meant to just tweet while watching it, but adds photos and gifs with captions.

"When you make a man a fire, you warm him for a while. When you set a man on fire, you warm him for the rest of his life." -- Hermoine

He's up to Deathly Hallows Part 1 now.

[bayonetbrant]

OK, that was pretty damned funny

[JasonPratt]

I wasted faaarrrr too much time at work today paging through the entries up to Movie 7.

Great commentary series; horribly coded html pages.

[Martok]

I'm guessing I shouldn't click the link if I haven't read the books or watched the movies yet? 

[bayonetbrant]

you won't get the jokes but it probably won't spoil anything for your

[JasonPratt]

It will totally spoil at least the movies (in broad details), and so also the books where the plots overlap (a number of things having been removed for the movie adaptations).

However, if you're never planning to watch the movie series, you can run through them vicariously with this guy in a painless way. :) He started out sceptical of whether he'd like them, but liked the first one enough to keep going and was sold on the series by #3.

The author does overlook some important contextual details (like why Snape is so hostile to Harry) and gets a few major plot points very wrong (like what happens to the philosopher's / sorcerer's stone in the first movie), but you'd pick those up in an actual watchthrough.


If you ever decided to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (and you should, it's a legitimately great work of fan-edit plot upgrading, which is slated to be completed by early next year), you'd probably want to read something like this Buzzfeed series to get a clear idea of what happens in 'actual' canon to appreciate what changes and what stays the same.

[BanzaiCat]

I only broke down and read the Harry Potter series because some friends of ours were VERY VERY into it and she let me borrow the books. This was about six or so years ago. I loved the books; at least the first several. Once it got darker it lost much of its charm. It became less kid-friendly, IMO.

[JasonPratt]

^^ That's true about the movies, too. They're shot progressively darker and darker to match the plot scaleups. (Though even the end of the first movie gets surprisingly dark in plot material.)


I should perhaps note that I've never read the books, only watched the film series (and read HPMOR).