Category: production notes

I admit I am disappointed with this episode.

(spoilers for chapter 96 below)

I love this chapter, I find it very emotionally compelling. But listening to it, it fails to evoke that same reaction, even on a smaller scale. This is where Harry discovers he’s not alone in the world. Finally, a confirmation that there are others who understand death is to be rejected absolutely. At the grave of his parents, of all places. And the narration just… falls flat.

After a couple listens I think I know why. Over the past dozen episodes or so I’ve been drifting into more of an announcer-style of voice. As someone declaiming to an audience, perhaps. That has a distance to it which doesn’t fit with fiction, at least not the more intimate scenes. I need to soften a bit, as if reading to a younger sibling before bed.

Unfortunately there’s not enough time left to re-do this episode. Chapters 97 and 98 are already (basically) completed as well, but the tone of those chapters is rather different (much of 98 is proclamations, literally), so I don’t think I’ll be re-doing those. But I think I can get 96 re-recorded within a couple weeks, so I’ll be shooting for that.

Hey that’s interesting… The People’s Podcast Awards have opened up nominations for 2013. I’m kinda partial, but I think HPMoR would make a could candidate for the Entertainment category. :)

I mentioned last week that I was asked to do a presentation on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for a local con. I said ok and put together this little talk. It was fun meeting a few fans, thanks for coming out! The video’s about 25 minutes. It’s for the uninitiated, but I’m posting it here anyway. It was my first time doing public speak and I was crazy nervous. The next one will be better, but this ain’t too bad.

As mentioned in the podcast, I will be appearing at Myths & Legends Con on Saturday, Sept 28^th, at the Sheraton Denver Tech Center (7007 S. Clinton Street, Greenwood Village, CO). I’ll be giving a presentation on Rationalist Fiction, Rationality, and HPMoR. I’ll see if I can get someone to record it and put it on YouTube afterwards, but for anyone in the Denver area who would like to see me in person – come on down! Please feel free to come up to me and talk to me before or after, I’ll be more than delighted to hang out and chat with anyone. And of course there’s lots of other stuff to do as well.

(minor spoilers for the current chapter below)

As I just had to write a short presentation on rationalist fiction it’s right at the forefront of my mind. In my presentation I defined rationality as a systemized method for making good decisions, especially under uncertainty. The “rationalist” part of the conflict really shines through again in this chapter, as The Enemy is now specifically attacking Harry’s ability to make rational decisions. The hacking of the wards is a meta-attack, designed to make your opponent distrust his tools for gathering accurate knowledge about his situation; and even (in Harry’s case) to doubt the very integrity of his own memories and mental processes. How many other works of fiction feature this sort of attack? Where “destroying your opponent’s ability to make war” is literally an assault on your opponent’s basic epistemology? Not many. :)

Like most people, my musical tastes were really cemented in my teens/early twenties. It’s been over a decade now, and I’ve kinda been worried that my music selection for the podcast has been dating me. NIN, Tool, all the second-wave screamo, and most recently Live and Garbage – it’s all from the mid-90s to early-00s. Even Catch That Goblin is from the mid-90s demo scene. This was on my mind when choosing the new HPMoR theme. Yes, the theme is changing, since the mischievous romp of Catch That Goblin is no longer thematically appropriate. I wanted a song that conveyed a sense of mourning, yet also a determination to continue and ultimately triumph.

I had one immediately, but it was from that same time period and I wanted something closer to the present day, so I discarded it. The first alternate option to present itself was Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord”, which is freakin’ awesome, and pretty new. It has the mournfulness and the soldiering-on despite loss in it, and a tone of overcoming adversity. But the lyrics do strongly suggest putting trust in a father/mentor and accepting that things will be alright, which is very counter to the MoR theme of Nihil Supernum. No good.

Second option was “Marchin On” by OneRepublic, which has that determination and triumph to it, and has the good fortune of having gained popularity at the same time the last Rowling Potter movie was released, so there are a bunch of fan videos on YouTube showing poignant moments from Potter movies over the music of Marchin On. As such it’s likely there’s already a lot of emotional connection between that song and HP for a lot of people. Unfortunately there isn’t very much on the mourning side of things, and double-unfortunately I never really connected with the song so it doesn’t hold any emotional weight for me. And this is my podcast, so dammit, I want something I find personally meaningful in the theme!

So I went back to my first pick, which I had initially discarded. “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance. It’s an awesome song with great vocals and lyrics, and music that starts with mourning and ends in exultation. And the song is literally about a boy who feels a responsibility to save the world mourning the death of a female friend but promising to carry on regardless, in memory of her. Is there any song more perfectly suited for the final act of HPMoR? Maybe – but this is the one I like best.

Every now and then I mention stories I like. This one struck my fancy – Ancient gods in modern settings, non-neurotypical protagonist, smart people thinking through the implications of things, and a love story. A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed) (also available in audio!)

(edit: I’ve been informed that at least one person read this before reading/listening to Chapter 89, so a note – there be spoilers below. Do not read further if you aren’t at least up to 89.

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It was the previous episode, Hermione’s death, that finally got me to dislike Professor Quirrell. I’ve known he was evil for a long time, of course. He’s murdered and mind-raped whenever it would further his goals without any regard for others. Yet I still somehow deeply admired him, and delighted in reading any chapters he appeared in. If I can say “that person is evil” but I don’t feel disgust for him, then obviously my values aren’t truly lined up with what I wish they’d be, or pretend they are. What does it say about me that I had to witness Hermione dying before my emotional core snapped to attention and said “Oh yeah… THAT’S why we don’t like evil people!” ?

One of the best death scenes I remember seeing is the entire Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episode “The Body”. (Joss Whedon is extremely good at doing meaningful death in general). Throughout the episode the camera frequently lingers off-center, missing part of the main action in a good representation of shocked tunnel-vision. The camera often isn’t stabilized. There are long silences, and there is basically no soundtrack. This is all works very well to make the viewer feel dissociation and discomfort. The final fight scene in the episode, without the danger music in the background we’re accustomed to, was very disorienting. I wanted to do something like.

I don’t really think I got it. The music was put in to contrast with the silence that followed it, but that doesn’t really work when you haven’t established a tradition of background music. The silence did not break the listener’s expectations, because a single episode isn’t long enough to build that subconscious level of expectation. I almost stripped out the music when I listened and realized that. But… well… the music really did go pretty well with the action on stage. It didn’t do what I wanted, but it still made it better. So it stayed in. After Hermione’s death I got rid of nearly all the sound FX, including the page-flips that normally denote a page break. I also cut most of the outro, and the exit music. I don’t think it was quite enough, but it was something.

Of course all the emotional impact actually comes from Eliezer’s excellent writing of her death. At most I can try to make the audio environment match that a little bit. I hope I didn’t detract from the scene.

For those who are/were interested, the Immortality Panel went well. The video is here, my thoughts afterwards are here.