Category: production notes

Woo, this was a high-stress episode to make. Previous to this, all voice actors had months of notice that I would need to borrow their talents, and I had all the lines I needed already waiting for me when I was editing the episode together. With this chapter I was calling or emailing people on Sunday asking if they could get lines to me within 7 or 8 days, hoping they were available and scrambling to get out to those who live near me. I had to edit together the chapter with blank spots left in for voices to be inserted later – two of them being dropped in Tuesday afternoon. It was nuts, but everyone came through, and we have a brand-new episode out today! Heck, I even have several new voices! Thank you all!

And OMG, can you believe I got Jay Novella to do Argus Filch? Hellz yes!!

Also, as mentioned on the show, I will be participating in FTBCon, on a panel with David Brin, PZ Myers, and Eliezer Yudkowsky discussing whether human immortality is a good thing or a bad idea in principle. It’ll be broadcast live over Google+ and YouTube on Sunday July 21 at 12:00noon Pacific Time.

I also thought I’d post what Eliezer said about chapter 88 on his Facebook feed:

The cognitive skill taught in Ch. 88 is the insight that I call ‘wasted motion’. If you read Ch. 88 closely, a ‘Tick’ does not occur just because time passes. It occurs after each of Harry’s thoughts (or actions) that predictably do not contribute to [resolving the issue successfully].

For more general example, if you want to solve a problem, then after you’ve solved it, any emotional fretting you did about whether you could solve it will have been a wasted motion in retrospect – those thoughts will predictably not have contributed to reaching the goal in hindsight.

“But if I’m genuinely not sure if I can solve a problem, the value of information about whether I can solve it is high, if the cost of trying and failing is non-negligible!” True, though this depends on the existence of branches where you don’t solve the problem, which isn’t very heroic epistemology. The value of information about the exact level of effort required is even higher, and if it leads you to put in the correct level of effort, that will not have been a wasted motion in retrospect – heroic epistemology certainly allows for possible worlds in which higher levels of effort were required.

But regardless of this sort of obvious theoretical objection, *in practice* you would still be very well advised to fix in your mind the scenario where your goal has been achieved, and ask whether a thought will predictably not have contributed to getting there in retrospect. In a mind which has not practiced detecting wasted motions, there will be many, many wasted motions; so ignore the theoretical objections and just do it for a while.

[Spoilers for part 2 below]

Brian’s rendition of the Lord of Dark is not exactly the way I would have done it… he has a bit of arrogance in his voice, even at the very end, where I had originally had reassurance and sympathy. I think I like it his way better. Some measure of arrogance is probably a key component to a character like the Lord of Dark… but more importantly, it reinforces that he is not me. When I identify completely with the Lord of Dark it’s very easy to see this story as a triumph of good over evil, intelligence over tradition. When there’s a small note of The Other in his voice it reminds me that he is not me, and maybe he can’t be trusted completely and implicitly. It makes the story a bit more complex, a bit more uncertain. Am I still sure that casting the Spell of Ultimate Doom was the best idea? Yes, probably. But no longer completely.

When I went to grab the scream from Come To Daddy I was pleasantly surprised that someone had already looped it over 9 minutes, saving me a lot of time and work. I also listened to it a lot over the next week. This may sound odd, but I really like well-done screaming. A lot of my favorite lyrics are screamed (which is not to say that screaming is always good, much of it is crap). There is something emotionally raw about it which sends shivers up my spine, and obviously I’m not alone. Even songs shouted with a ragged edge work.  I’ve had the Sword’s Wail and Scream mapped in my brain to the two excerpts I used since the first time I read Sword of Good years ago.

Doing this episode made me appreciate well-done screams even more than before, because I just couldn’t get Hirou’s scream right. I did quite a few takes and nothing sounded right. Nothing sounded sincere enough. I almost went with the Greatest Scream In Cinematic History, but I decided to try one last time. I had forgotten that the superman scream had echo and processing. With that inspiration and some reverb and echo thrown in I think I finally got something that works.

Having more time between episodes is interesting. I really liked the weekly pace before. And unfortunately a moderate fraction of that extra time is now being used sub-optimally (I finally started Mass Effect 3, which is cool-ish, but I’m not sure how I feel about returning to video gaming). But I do have more time to devote to my other interests, as well as spending more time on the episodes themselves – which is why Sword of Good part 1 has tons of sound effects, ambiance, and even some background music at one point. Can’t say I mind that part. :)

For those who are unfamiliar with TVTropes, be forewarned – going there for the first time will probably end up eating a large chunk of your day. Don’t follow these links if you need to be productive today.

These are the tropes called out by Hirou:
Dark Messiah
Knight Templar
Well Intentioned Extremist
Lawful Stupid

Meant to post this last week, but I got wrapped up in the Kindle Worlds thing. So, posting some of my speculation here:

It seems almost everyone is convinced that Hermione has been framed. I think she may have been “set up”, but it seems entirely plausible to me that she did intentionally try to murder Draco.

I’m always shocked and infuriated by heroes in stories who throw their loved ones into the maws of psychopaths and murders because they can’t be bothered with a quick consequentialist calculus. I’ve read multiple books where a hero is holding a gun and watches a villain calmly walk away after that villain has promised to murder/rape/torture his lover/child/family, AND has already demonstrated a willingness and ability to do so! Often times in situations where there would likely be NO repercussions if he simply shot the bastard (in the most recent case, in the middle of a low-level civil war occurring in the city!) This is the height of stupidity.

I also figured Hermione wouldn’t have ever tried to kill anyone. This was before I read Chapter 87. Specifically:

“- the sort of things Malfoy has been saying about me? What he said he’d do to me, as soon as he got the chance? … It’s unspeakable in the completely literal sense that I can’t say it out loud!”

and the second time I met him, he talked about doing it to a ten-year-old girl

Recall for a moment the violent physical reaction you (probably) had the first time you read Chapter 7. Now imagine that YOU are the target of Draco’s rape-threats, and that you are an 11-year-old girl. If you’re as smart as Hermione you’ve probably also come to the same conclusions Harry did in Chap 7 – Draco is politically untouchable. He can rape you, and you cannot stop him or get justice for it in any way. The only thing you can do is hope that he doesn’t want to.

Now imagine you’ve been mind-hacked by Mr Hat-and-Cloak, and you believe that not only does Draco intend to rape you, possibly repeatedly, but he has the backing of a major Authority Figure at Hogwarts – Professor Snape. They can overcome you with magic, maybe just physically hold you down, and do whatever they want. Practically whenever they want. You’ve gotten to the point where you jump at shadows even in the middle of a televised event in a large public park surrounded by friends.

Even now, when all the Sunshine General’s focus should’ve been on the coming battle, the Ravenclaw girl’s gaze was constantly darting in all directions, as though she expected Dark Wizards to jump out of the bushes and sacrifice her.

She probably falls asleep terrified every night. It’s likely she’s thought of all sorts of ways to stop Draco, including murder, but there’s never a way to execute any of them. No one listens to a little girl, certainly not a mud-blood with no family accusing a noble of intent-to-rape.

Out of the blue an opportunity falls in your lap – Draco wants to meet. But he wants to meet in secret, in a place no one will see or hear anything, in a place she can put her blood-cooling plan into action. Maybe she’s not sure she’ll do it. Maybe she just goes to duel with him, to show him again that she is NOT powerless and he can NOT simply abuse her. But then she loses the duel, and he’s standing over her triumphant and grinning down at her, and she realizes that she has no recourse at all, she can’t even defend herself in a fair one-to-one fight, he could rape her right now if he wanted to. So he turns and leaves and Hermione does the SMART thing that every dumb-ass hero never did. She picks up her wand and she shoots him in the back and she escapes unseen. She will no longer live with that threat over her head. Draco will never threaten any girl at all that way – she’s rid the world of a vile man who does evil, and the world is better off for it.

It’s entirely possible Hermione would’ve confessed after the fact anyway, because she’s a good person. But that doesn’t matter, because the Puppet Master (possibly Quirrell) erases the instigating belief of imminent-rape-assisted-by-Snape from her mind, clears up some other odds and ends, and arranges it that Quirrell finds Draco’s body just in the nick of time. This is much cleaner than Harry’s proposed situation of tons of Memory Charms on both Hermione and Draco and then Obliviations afterwards to remove evidence. It requires less access to Hermione and no access at all to Draco. If some time-turned individual did manage to observe or avert the duel, he’d see these events rather than the Puppet Master working intricate Memory Charms on two subdued students. It is elegant and… “delicious”, in a sense.

The Puppet Master would still be primarily to blame, and a case could be made for self-defense. But I think it’s quite likely Hermione did pull the trigger herself, of her own will.

Of course the fact that Draco is not inherently evil and is slowly being corrupted toward the Light just makes the whole thing even better. :)

I like that the last sentence of this chapter is ambiguous. Normally I’m not a fan of that, but given the nature of the chapter one can read that Harry has stormed out in a huff, or if one is more comically inclined, assume that Tano fled in a panic (which was how I’d first pictured it). I didn’t even realize there was more than one possible interpretation at first, it wasn’t until I was re-reading just before my recording that it occurred to me.

Things I like less – Amazon is now paying for (some) fanfiction. I wrote about it the day it was announced. I don’t trust them.

As mentioned in the episode, the HPMoR podcast is now going to an every-other-week schedule. This is in large part due to my desire to start exploring other projects. I’ve been doing the podcast for two years now, and while it’s been amazing and I’ll certainly keep at it until it is done, I don’t have a lot of time left over at the end of the day once all my obligations are met. I’ll be taking a break for a week, and then hopefully I can start in on things that have been floating around in my head for months now. I’m a bit scared that I’ll end up NOT doing any extra work… that the time I free up will be wasted on gaming or reading or something. I want to catch up on those things too, but I don’t want that to take over. That would be extremely counter-productive. It’ll be me vs my elephant for a bit, lets see how much effort it takes to wrangle him in. :)

As also mentioned, in the time between new chapters I’ll be giving the same audio treatment to some of Eliezer’s other works, with his blessing (thank you!). Sword of Good will be first, it’s an excellent story, and several voices from HPMoR will be making an appearance there as well. If you haven’t read any of Eliezer’s other stories you are in for a treat. :) Future plans include Three Worlds Collide and perhaps (if I can pull it off) Trust In God.

Today’s episode is the first one where I used Audacity’s Compressor to level out the various audio channels to (hopefully) all come in at the same volume. If it didn’t work out so well, please let me know.