Still comfortreading HP fanfics

[conuly]

It occurs to me that in the many years I've read fanfic, I've often encountered a scene where a wizarding world person would express some level of disbelief/shock/confusion about the existence of movies and/or television when of course muggles don't have sentient moving pictures - but I've never seen one where somebody actually sits down and explains to them how it works.

Like, can we get these kids a flipbook or something? They're small, easily portable!

(Or maybe it's the writers who don't quite understand how it all works. It's actually easy enough to explain - a recorded tape has a lot of still images that flash by very quickly and trick your eye and brain into thinking they're seeing one moving image.)

Comments

[sallymn]

I think I read a book once where a modern person was trying to explain electricity to a fantasy-primitive family... it was as I recall quite funny, and they finally gave up and agreed that there was magic leaking through the walls or something :)

[conuly]

And if they were trying to explain electricity or airplanes (geez, Arthur, just go to the library and take out a book) that'd be one thing but you can explain the basic concept of film with a flipbook or, if you want to be fancy, a kinetoscope. You don't even need to use your words, you can just give them the thing and say "It works like this".