Author: Eneasz

I hope I’m not dating myself too badly with the Mortal Kombat theme. I recall a time when every other fight AMV was set to that song…

It’s amazing just how much information can be transferred visually in a written medium without even needing to read the words. The first section of this chapter is a montage, with summaries of every-day mundane activities in plain text interlaced with vingettes giving a sampling of the memorable extraordinary events in italics. One can quickly grasp the back-and-forth nature simply by looking at the page and seeing the alternating plain and italicized text. As with the POV-changes and reading-of-letters previously, I had to find some way to do this with audio cues. I read the daily-life sections in a more relaxed voice, and the vingettes with a bit more intensity, but that only did so much. It still sounded like a somewhat jumbled mess. I tried to mark the vingettes with the echo effect of the Humanism Flashback Scene, but it was far too portentous for what this was. But it did trigger the “treat it as a flashback” idea, and I settled on a variation of the “going into a flashback” noise that I remembered from Lost to separate the two narratives. It seems to work.

It’s been a busy week, so a short Production Note today. You’ve likely noticed a lot of pop-culture references in HPMOR (and for that matter, some high-brow-culture references as well). A lot of the fun of reading this sort of fic is finding them on your own and basking in the in-group glow, so I don’t generally point them out (that, and I don’t catch them all either, and I don’t want to look like an out-group loser :) ). But I must make an exception for The Tragedy of Light. Because it’s very good and you should see it if you haven’t yet. It’s a reference to the anime Death Note, and while it drags in the middle, the first half is awesome and finale ain’t bad at all. One of the best animes I’ve seen, so this is a recommendation.