Category Archives: production notes

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.

This is a shorter episode than I’m used to. Normally I would have added the first part of 87 to this episode, since 87 on its own it too long for one episode, but short enough that two episodes would both be a bit short. However now that I’m almost caught up to the written work (just two episodes to go!) I’m ok easing off the pace just a little bit. For those who’ve been asking – yes, I do have something in mind for what to do while the next chapters are being written. I’ll be announcing it next week.

Those reading along will notice that I actually changed a line slightly. I dropped the description of Voldemort’s voice as “high, like a teakettle”. As much as I love this description, and as much as I hate to stray from the source material, the difference between the voice-as-described and the voice-as-recorded was too great. It was potentially jarring enough to interrupt the flow of the story, and it was too late to change the recording of the voice. So I made a small adaptation. I hope everyone will be ok with calling it an artifact of translating the media from text to audio-with-cast. Many apologies to Eliezer!

There are many places to discuss HPMoR and argue the merits of various fan theories (I know of at least three). I cannot keep up with them all, so I’m simply posting my own speculation here. It’s entirely possible that this has already been brought up by someone else in one of those forums.

Based on the way Moody describes AK in this chapter, I think it’s likely that Harry was two words and a wand-twitch away from killing Dumbledore back in 81 with:

“I cannot let you go into debt to Lucius Malfoy, Harry! I cannot! You do not know – you do not realize -”

DIE.

Harry didn’t even know which part of himself had spoken, it might have been a unanimous vote, the pure rage and fury pouring through him. For an instant he thought that the sheer force of the anger might take magical wing and fly out to strike the Headmaster, send him tumbling back dead from the podium-

I wonder how long it will take Harry to realize this.

 

I mentioned a while ago that it hadn’t occurred to me to strip out all the “he said”s from the audio version once I got a larger cast until someone else mentioned it. I had generally left in the first occurrence of each in an episode, so a listener is reminded who sounds like what. I’ve eased off on that lately. I figure after this many episodes, the voices are probably pretty well known. I realize that first-time listeners who start with the latest episode will still need the prompt, but that’s probably not very common anyway. In these long chapters spread over multiple episodes, it’s sometimes a bit clunky to reintroduce a character in the middle of a dialog.

Very few time-travel stories allow for both a self-consistent single universe and unlimited time-travel. That would almost invariably be an instant victory condition for the time-traveler, and likely boring to read about. That’s why we need restrictions like only six uses per day. Interestingly, there was a movie nearly a quarter century ago that belied it’s understanding of this with its silly premise.

It’s possible some younger readers/listeners haven’t seen this movie, so I’m going to fully endorse Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It is in my top-five movies to watch when you just want to watch a plain ol’ fun movie. It doesn’t take its subject matter seriously, but it is a damn fun time! And it has the advantage of carrying a very humanistic message.

It is notable in that, like the Harry Potter universe, causality points both ways (present effects having future causes). This makes for a great break-out-of-jail scene once the protagonists realize they are very nearly gods. They never use this power for anything important (it is a goofy comedy, after all) but it’s a fun introduction to the self-consistency principle.

I believe I went through my entire range of non-cartoony female voices today. I’ve already gone through every single thinking-to-himself voice for Harry, and I had to bring in Brian Jones (Severus) to help me out with Ravenclaw Two. I can only say thank you again to those who volunteer their voices to help. :)

Brian has an amazing radio voice, which I hadn’t heard before due to the inflection he uses when he plays Snape. The richness of it really blew me away. I mean, he has a strong voice IRL, but people sound different when they’re talking casually compared to when they’re intoning. I’ve been told myself a number of times that people are surprised when they hear me on the podcast, and ask if I do post-production on my voice. I don’t, you just fall into a different cadence when you’re performing. As my friend Jon says – it’s natural, it’s just the “Dramatic Chipmunk” version which doesn’t get used in ordinary life. It’s the main reason I actually record a fresh intro every week (as opposed to pasting in a stock intro, like I do with the majority of the outro). Saying those twenty-six words injects me smoothly into narration mode, it’s almost like flipping a switch. Brian just slips into his with a few seconds of preparation. I’m glad to have him on board!

Rather than production notes, today I’m just providing links to help explain Bayes’ Theorem. Bayes’ Theorem is a way of thinking about beliefs and evidence that allows one to have a more accurate map of reality in their heads. It is what Harry means when he says “Proof, Headmaster? There are only ever probabilities.” It helps us to best know how we know what we know.

The guide I find to be most understandable is Komponisto’s “Bayes’ Theorem Illustrated“. It is simply enough that you can grasp it without even engaging the equations. And as a bonus, it shows you how to grasp the correct answer to the Monty Hall problem.

Another guide is Eliezer’s own “An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem“. I think people are pretty much split on which of the two is better, so if one doesn’t work for you, try the other. They’re both good.

If you’re wondering “What Is Bayesianism, anyway?“, this link will give you the core tenants. It’s much shorter than either of the previous two, and may be the shortest summary possible. And as it notes of LessWrong (and by extension, this podcast) – “that’s basically what this site is for: to help us become good Bayesians.”

Last week was a busy week, and now you know why. :)

I gotta say, it is crazy difficult being duplicitous with your loved one. In general I am complete shit at lying, I’ve always been against it so I never really got any practice. I do my best to implement the “act exactly as you’d act if you weren’t hiding this big thing” advice, but it really wears you down! I’m glad as hell this is finally over. Well technically it won’t be over until Saturday (so if you know Melissa IRL, don’t mention this to her yet), but I’m already feeling some relief just getting this out and thinking about it. Just a few more days…