Author: Eneasz

There’s a new Madam Longbottom.

When I originally recorded chapter 38 I asked my girlfriend to do Madam Longbottom’s voice. I had already slated her to play Amelia Bones, because my girlfriend is also a tough-ass bitch and she feels perfect for the part. But I didn’t yet have anyone for Madam Longbottom, and it seemed that this was a one-off role which wouldn’t reoccur, and had over a dozen chapters from her appearance to Amelia’s appearance. No problem, right?
Not long after that Taboo Tradeoffs came out, and not only do the two of them appear in the same chapter, they actually speak directly to each other. >.< Epic facepalm.
So I have recruited a new Madam Longbottom. I’ve also gone back and replaced Melissa’s lines in 38 with Sabrina’s, for consistency. Hopefully Lily Potter won’t ever have a conversation with Molly Weasley…

In non-Potter news, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson is absolutely awesome. It’s got power armor, lightsabers, and an awesome messiah character. It’s full of Capital Letter Ideals and if you like fantasy I highly recommend it. Not strictly rationalist fic, but lots of problem-solving, some research, and at one point the messiah character asks the Fundamental Question of Rationality almost word-for-word.

I somehow missed in my first read-through that Snape had removed the memory of his presence from everyone who witnessed the Harry-summoning. Which – first of all – holy crap! How did I miss that level of malfeasance? But secondly, makes you consider just what a really powerful and dedicated group of wizards could do with rituals if they really put their minds to it. Might they even be able to nearly-perfectly erase an entire city of out of the world’s memory?

I used a time-rewind-ish sound effect for the Obliviation. I know the repeated Obliviations aren’t actually a time-rewind, but it felt very appropriate given the trail-and-error nature of the attack. Perhaps I’ve played too many video games, but I was reminded of the fail-rewind-try again mechanics of Prince of Persia and Braid immediately, so I jumped right to that.

The Mr Hat-and-Cloak whisper was frustrating. The first time he appeared I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with his voice, but I wanted something interesting. So I did several different takes of his lines, figuring I’d pick whichever sounded best, and apply some sort of filter. As I was listening to them I thought “Hm… this might sound kinda cool if I just layered one over the other…” I tried it and liked the effect and went with it. Unfortunately I didn’t really have a procedure for what I did, which made replicating it this week darned difficult. I don’t feel that this is quite as good as before, but I don’t have the time to redo it entirely. Hopefully it’s very close, and it certainly won’t have been the first voice to have changed over time.

Martyrdom has been given a bad name by religion. Not surprising, since religion tends to poison whatever it touches. But at it’s core it is still a noble concept – to give up one’s life for something one deems to be more important for society or humanity. To gain more fulfillment of your utility function by dying to support a goal than could be gained by continuing to live – it is tragic and awe inspiring.

Belief in an afterlife seems to cheapen the whole concept. Jesus didn’t permanently die for anyone’s sins – he was temporarily inconvenienced. As was pointed out in 39, dying isn’t so horrible when it doesn’t end your life. When someone who knows that death is permanent accepts a significant risk of death, giving their life over for good, it feels to me like it means far more. This may be self-serving bias. But I think of Tricia Glasswell as a hard-bitten cop with no delusions of an afterlife, and it makes me want to write a fanfic-fanfic of her story. Facing annihilation when there is no afterlife recourse – that is hard-boiled badassery.