Author: Eneasz

Last week I took the week off work so I could stay home and put 40 hours into finally finishing the re-edit and polishing of earlier chapters. At last it is done! Chapters 1-9 have been redone in their entirety. Chapters 10-20 have been gone over with sandpaper and a noise filter. And every single chapter has had large sections of my poor voice work removed and replaced with valiant voice volunteers, giving a distinctive sound to many characters. Never again will anyone have to suffer through my McGonagall or Weasley Twins. Chapter 50’s Padma is now done by Amanda Grassello. In fact, over a dozen voices from early episodes have been upgraded, also including:
Ernie Macmillan
Anthony Goldstein
Auror Komodo
The Carrow Twins
Madam Hooch
Morag MacDougal
Gregory Goyle
Pansy Parkinson
Lucius Malfoy
Neville Longbottom

And of course there are still some roles available, see here if you’re interested.

*(I realize a couple lines are off… I hadn’t gotten them recorded, and for completeness I substituted a place-holder that means something very similar. These will be replaced with the correct wording in a couple weeks)

The shouts of the Wizengamot are actual recordings of Parliament in England – all from the House of Commons I believe. In retrospect, I don’t think it added anything to have the source be “authentic”, and it was fairly limiting. Much like Draco’s Colloportus idea, I got hung up on actual Parliament sounds because it seemed so clever at the time. By the time I realized I’d be better off with generic cheers/jeers I didn’t have enough time left to make the revisions. /sigh

Spending the week of this writing doing massive revision to earlier episodes. Will have lots of updated stuff next week.

It never fails to infuriate me when someone comments about how they “got out of” jury duty, or conversely, complains that they couldn’t get out of it. When I served on a jury a few years ago I had to repeatedly rebuff friends and coworkers who tried to offer me their condolences. The judicial system won’t work if all the smartest people focus their efforts on shirking this responsibility. If I’m ever up on false charges, or in a dispute with a neighbor, I want my jury to be the brightest and best of the population. There isn’t a lot I can do to make that more likely, but there are a few things, and one of those is to heap scorn on those who try to wriggle out of jury duty, and praise those who make the effort to be the best jurors they can. Serving on a jury is a thing of pride, and anyone who tries to make it seem like anything undesirable is immediately told why they are wrong, and that I won’t participate in their “joking”. Otherwise we may fall back into Wizengamot-like political feuding where the powerful are above justice and the masses are beneath it.