Transcript - The Big Final QnA (Part Two)

JON:

Statistically speaking-

 

MÉABH:

That's so funny! Because it does begin with them, like, they're moving upriver, and I think it ends with them walking downriver. Was that…?

 

JON:

(Deeply unconvicing)

Uhhhh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

(Shrugging)

I mean…the river goes two ways, right? So…coin flip.

 

MÉABH:

(Mock-scandalised)

Jon!! Oh, you.

 

JON: 

It's fine! We can be candid. It's the final Q&A.

 

MÉABH: 

Yeah, you're like, it's fine, it's done.

(Taunting)

“What are you going to do? Take back the listens? You can't!” Amazing.

 

Mind Ur Ps & Qs asks,

 

“While a lot of characters die by the end of the series, a few are still unaccounted for. What ended up happening to some of the notable side characters like Charity, Gage, or Eddie, Faulkner's brother?”

 

JON: 

I'd actually like to turn this one over, I think. Méabh, what do you think happened to Charity? B., what do you think happened to Eddie? I think it's only fair that you should get some say over canon.

​

Editor's note: I forgot about Gage. I'm sorry. I think they tried their best to go legitimate, took flute lessons and really struggled with formal music tutoring, then stabbed the teacher and went on the run again.

 

B. NARR:

Oh, shit.

(To MÉABH) 

What do you think happened to Charity?

​

MÉABH:

(Thinking)

This is too much…this is too much power. This is too much power, this is too much responsibility.

 

Well, I mean…we do get our little snapshot of Charity, which I think was gorgeous! I loved that.  I

thought it was a wonderful - again, sort of little look at like, other things are happening in this big world. And it was pulling out the focus a bit and kind of bringing us back to season one.

 

So, I mean, I…because I I love her, I think Charity's just doing what Charity does. She's running with the snare-dogs! Like, I mean, I can't think of anything better, particularly when…you know, I don't think she wanted anything else. 

 

I think she had achieved Peak Actualization in that action. Love that for her.

 

B.:

I love this for her too! Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

 

I think…I don't think Eddie's dead. 

 

I think actually if this was a longrunning TV show, we would get maybe a like a a clip of him going to their dad's house and it's empty. And the rest of his family is dead and he doesn't know yet. And that's, like, where it ends for him narratively, and he has to just keep on living. 

 

Cos I think that's the most “realistic” - quote unquote - thing. Like, that feels very in the spirit of the show. Yeah, he doesn't get, like, a super clean ending cos he's just a person like everyone else is.

 

MÉABH

I actually like those two characters side by side and how we have to…

 

…because again…it's that thing again that this is a wider world and these things are still ongoing. And the rest of them (the cast) that's not necessarily connected to the main narrative, but you have that nice contrast.

 

Charity is still continuing - she's obviously engaging in that that strange cultist activity - and then you've got Eddie on the flipside of the coin who's just trying to live his life. and these are things that are still going on! People are still just trying to live, trying to get on with things, but on two sides of the coin, but it's kind of disconnected from the overall narrative.

 

It's gorgeous! Again, just adds to what a rich world - what a rich world everything takes place in.

 

Cern asks, “will there be any other stories in the TSV-verse? is that something you ever think of, or maybe some time has to pass before thinking of that?”

 

JON: 

I mean, we've actually had some talks about this, haven't we? 

(Diplomatically)

And there's been some good pitches-

 

B.: 

There's been bits!

​

MÉABH:

There's been fun pitches! There's been a lot of gags, a lot of bits.

 

JON:

There's been bits! OK.

 

I think the only sincere idea - which I did actually really like! - was from Jimmie, who pitched a

a followup that was almost an Iron Age version.

 

So go right back to the very origins of the setting, and look at actually these small isolated pre-medieval kingdoms discover, effectively, these immensely powerful weapons of mass destruction, and seeing how that would then reshape society for the infinitely worse.

​

Which I thought was a really fun idea! But as to “are we going to return to this?”…I, I honestly don't think so. I'm very happy with how we left it,  it feels like the characters got to where they needed to go. Thematically it feels like we very much made our point…yeah.

 

If it's just a case of wanting to return to horrible monsters and anti- capitalist satire, we are definitely going to be going back to that well again and again - it's kind of kind of my thing! - so yeah.

 

Hopefully whatever we produce next will satisfy you, but it will be something different, I think

 

MÉABH:

Live Hayward asks, 

(Dramatically)

“I understand if this is too personal but history denied will weep for answers. What would be each character's drag name?”

(Short pause)

Pam Cakes. Got it in there, done and dusted. 

 

B.:

(Impressed)

Damn!

 

MÉABH:

(Triumphant)

Carpenter!

 

JON:

(Confused)

…pancakes? 

 

MÉABH:

Pam Cakes.

 

B.:

That's Carpenter. Like, Pam Cakes, pancakes.

 

JON:

(Realising)

Oh, Pam Cakes!

 

B.:

Oh, my God-

 

MÉABH:

It wasn't really a deep thinker now- 

 

B. NARR:

I like it!

​

MÉABH:

I have to say, I'm not…I’m not good at this game so I was very pleased I came up with Pam Cakes. B., did you do…can you think of any? 

(As B. reacts)

Oh, B.’s got some! 

​

B.:

I wrote down one because I had to think a lot. I only have one for Faulkner, because I didn't feel right, uh, drag-naming other people. But I wanted a nautical pun.

​

So it's Naughty spelled “nauti”, Buoy instead of boy. (Nauti Buoy)

 

MÉABH:

Yeah, yeah!

 

B.:

I thought it was funny!

 

MÉABH:

Now that's a thinker! That's what we would call a thinker. 

 

B.:

Yeah, it's a thinker, it's a thinker I wanted something nautical themed. I don't think he's confident enough to do drag, personally! I don't think he has the genuine confidence needed.

 

MÉABH:

That's so funny, but you…well, here's the thing. I mean, well now, let's break it down a little bit - but not too much cos it's late. 

 

I mean, everything is drag.

 

B.:

That’s true!

 

MÉABH: 

And one could argue that, like, he's in drag as High Prophet. He's just playing the role, he's wearing them robes, but…you know.

 

B.:

That’s so true! So real.

​

LUCILLE:

I cannot think of Paige’s for the life of me! I know what my drag name would be, and so I might just…I might just say this would be Paige’s too.

​

Like, if I was going to do drag, my drag would be - this comes from a partner and I making Sesame Street jokes - so if I were going to be a drag queen, my name would be Cunt von Cunt. 

 

Cos like, the Count in Sesame Street is Count Von Count, and so I’d be like, “oh, okay, I can do this!” 

 

I mean like, if I were a drag queen, I definitely would be doing a lot of vampire shit. I love vampires! I'm like…I'm like basic that way. Twilight was huge for me when I was in middle school!

 

SARAH:

It would 100% be Abby Judicator. 

​

LUCILLE:

(Snapping)

Oh that's good! Snaps to that. Yes. 

 

MARTA:

I get to say that Val doesn't have a name, so we don't really know.

 

Like, the first thing I thought of is so inappropriate…but it's the only thing I could think of when I saw Val, knowing that it's an acronym for something else.

(Bracing herself)

And so what I came up with…oh, God…

 

…it's Voluptuous Ass Lover.

​

SARAH:

Yeah!

 

LUCILLE:

Yeah, that's good!

 

MARTA:

Bit of a mouthful, and I don't know if it's a name, really. But, you know, you can cut it down to Val and, yeah, no one will ever know what it stands for, really-

 

LUCILLE:

The Last Word would also honestly be a solid drag name if you really lean into, like, the domme of it all. 

 

SARAH:

I mean, She Who Shall Not Be Named you could probably do quite a bit with. 

 

MARTA:

True! I don't know, yeah. I'm terrible at naming, genuinely terrible at naming things. I'm not very good with puns and witty language jokes…I don't know. 

 

I'm sure there's people out there that are just screaming at us right now with amazing options.

 

In which case, like, you know…share them online! @ me!

 

SARAH:

Yeah, throw it…throw it back to the crowd. 

(To the audience)

If y'all want to do the Silt Verses Drag Revue, I'll come! Oh, yeah, I'll hold, like, I'll sit- 

​

LUCILLE:

Yeah, same! 

 

SARAH:

-be sat behind the table with like numbers and shit, hell yeah, let’s go!

 

LUCILLE:

Fuck, yeah. If you guys can come up with a good drag name for Paige I will…I will make it a point to become a drag queen and do at least one performance as Paige. That would be incredible. 

 

Like, this…like, this is already my favorite show I've ever done, but that would just really fucking put the, put the cherry on top for me.

 

SARAH:

And have it be, like, noir-inspired!

 

LUCILLE:

Oh fuck, yeah, I love this! Glitter, but it's like red glitter. So it's like…is it glitter or is it sparkly blood? Who can say?

 

SARAH:

If we could do the Woundtree covered in glitter, I think that would be the pinnacle of my life.

 

LUCILLE:

(Considering)

I think…I think Hayward’s would be The Hays Code. Like, if Hayward were a drag queen, I think it would be the Hays Code.

 

JIMMIE:

(Without hesitation)

Hayward would be Haley Hightower. It would be a purple or long black wig. With sequins, not glitter. The dress would be sequins, because glitter gets everywhere.

(Very seriously)

No one wants craft herpes everywhere.
 

MÉABH

Hange asks, “To B. Narr - What was your favorite thing about performing as Faulkner that you perhaps did not expect to enjoy?”

 

B.:

I didn't expect his arc to be so emotional when I auditioned for him! I'm going to be honest, like, and that ended up being one of my favorite things.

 

I got to cry and be messy. I didn't expect to get to, like, be so emotional, and it was very cathartic. It was delicious! I didn't know what to expect when I auditioned for this cat - once again, first role! 

​

Delightful, just…but I think it was the emotional depth and getting to like do that on screen was my favorite. 

 

MÉABH:

I mean, he's an incredibly complex character. I think it's the…unpredictability of everything is incredible.

 

He's just repeatedly pulling things out of the bag that's like,

(Disbelieving and annoyed)

“What?? How did you get to that thought process? What was the arc that brought you there?” It's

incredible.

 

Okay. Amazing.

 

John asks, “Jon! How much restraint did it take not to give Press Secretary Carson an absolutely punishing end and instead having Val show her capacity for kindness after her devastation? Was it at least tempting to give Carson something more horrific to pay for his crimes?

 

JON:

Honestly, it never even occurred to me! For several reasons, one of which is…obviously you don't feel any great resentment or anger towards a good villain when you're writing them. 

 

I certainly was not gritting my teeth going, “Ooh, I can't wait to see Carson get his comeuppance!” Rhys Lawton did an amazing job, but it also felt like we'd actually really hit on something with Carson that maybe we'd struggled with in the writing of the previous season's antagonists.

 

The real villain of Silt Verses is the setting, and that was very deliberate, but that often meant that when you're trying to find antagonists - often, you know, with Daggler and even to an extent with Mercer and Gage - you just end up with a bit of an absurd little one-trick creature that's out to cause harm.

 

Because there are…they need to be an articulation of the setting, but also in their own way a victim of the setting. And so it becomes almost…you have to make a point of them showing up, doing something mean, doing something mean again, just to try and get them to a point where they can be successfully knocked down.

 

Carson, it felt like actually for the first time we'd really found a way that - without needing to be the the end boss of capitalism - he could be a representative of the worst excesses and the shallowness of the setting we were trying to portray while also being an individual in his own right.

 

I've said this before online but the instruction we gave to Rhys was “Ted Lasso but evil”, which he just captured perfectly!

 

So I didn't feel any great impulse to kill him horribly, but more importantly that's the exact opposite of what we were going for with Val's journey.

 

Val’s story is someone who begins with unlimited power and then needs to rediscover her own humanity and capability for positive human values…and so if it just ends with her exploding Carson for 10 minutes, really, her arc becomes meaningless and she's learned nothing. So, yeah, it was never on my mind for a heartbeat.

​

MÉABH:

Incredible. And absolutely, Rhys Lawton, what an incredible turn as that character, and just the camaraderie, and sort of the friendly “we’re all in this together; let's just get along” that he just instantly brought the character, then just revealed himself to be more and more despicable as time went on, but yet with that completely disconnected way of, like, “well, I'm just doing my job and this is sort of what I do and what exactly did you expect of me?”

 

Incredible turn, incredible performance, and from Val as well. And to have two - it's, you know, this almost “unstoppable force meets an immovable object” - but then to have it end so calmly and kindly was an absolute turnaround.

​

And the response to it was incredible and justly so. 

 

Right! Franz Seward asks,

 

“What was the catalyst behind writing VAL? She's one of my favorite characters in the entire series, because she's incredibly powerful and evil, but she's also painfully human at the same time. Was there anything in particular that inspired her creation?”
 

JON:

There was…her creation was very much inspired by, I think, narrative necessity.

 

That we did need there to be some kind of active antagonistic force moving through the narrative - you know, wrapping up this war which we'd alluded to that was happening but we hadn't actually come up with any characters who were directly involved in that! 

 

So a character that could almost bridge these worlds of Glottage and this war, helping to very swiftly move through that storyline, without us having the necessity of trying to map out what an actual war would look like when there are no characters taking part that we care about.

​

So in some ways Val is the greatest deus ex machina, because she can change whatever the hell she wants to. We'd played in season one with the idea of rhetorical Gods as these very powerful banned Gods where you're literally using language to change the world around you. And I was aware that in season 2, because we'd moved to a bit more of an action-focused sound design some people were saying, you know, “I miss the narration.” And so coming up with a villain who narrates the action felt like a good get-out, where actually we don't have to rely so heavily on action sound design. Because she is going to tell you what she's going to do to you, and then we're going to hear it happen.

​

So I…it was interesting. I think lots of people still listen to season 3 and go, oh, you know, “There’s still, it's…it's still very action-focused,” And I think they don't realize just how much of the action is narrated; it's just narrated diagetically. 

 

So there was a lot of, I think, narrative necessity, that we needed an antagonist to fill this role who could behave in a certain way. And then I think the the human elements that come out were very much, 

 

“Now we've got this all-powerful figure, we need to do something interesting with her. She can't just stand around until the heroes join hands to defeat her at the end. We need to actually find a way of humanizing her, exploring her, maybe showing that all this power is ultimately quite existentially inadequate.”

 

MÉABH:

And it's incredible - for all her power, and the idea of her being a deus ex machina, I mean, she never actually…she doesn't come into contact with any of the main cast, you know? 

 

She doesn't actually have that direct (contact), and it's not a case of the “We join forces and we go and…” 

 

Like, her storyline is completely unpredictable from what you would assume as being presented as the Big Bad, what the ultimate end game is, it just takes a complete right turn, it's incredible.

 

JON:

Well, what I originally had on the table was the idea that she would be sent to the the Woundtree Camp to assassinate Paige and that she'd run into Carpenter or Hayward or Paige, one of these characters, and ultimately they would have a conversation that turns Val around.

 

And I just…I realized halfway through drafting the season, “this is hokey.”

 

You can't introduce a character out of the blue who is this threatening, this menacing, and then a good speech by the heroes just completely redeems them. And so it was much more effective to me to almost mirror what we had with Vaughn in season 1, where there's a disconnect.

 

These people will never know what they did for each other, but it happens all the same. That just felt like a much more interesting thing to explore.

​

MÉABH:

Fantastic.

 

Angel and Apollo ask, “What, if anything, do you regret/would you change about the plot of the show (other than Dick Faulkner, the rat bastard).  Thank you for everything.”

 

JON:

I don't know if regrets is often the term, because I think particularly with season 1 and now
season 2...the longer ago the production took place, the more you're able to see them as tradeoffs of the moment rather than choices that you actively regret.

 

I guess one thing that does play on my mind with this season is...I do regret that we weren't able to
spend more time really taking the story of the the Woundtree camp to a stronger conclusion.

 

I think we faced a real challenge with that one, because I think what I had in mind for it was this real Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed-style articulation of a very small-scale society starting to find its feet in
very difficult circumstances, and the everyday challenges and compromises, and the difficulties of being part of that small society which is trying to do its best and always faced with the temptation of doing something worse and being better off for it.

 

So I had this very grand idea of what we could do with that - but the problem is ,you know, what you end up with with a small cast is just lots and lots of scenes with Paige and Elgin in a room saying, "Oh, well,  now X problem's come up! How are we going to deal with X problem?"

 

And that's not...that doesn't make for compelling drama. And I was very concerned as I got deeper into
the writing of season 3 that we were Ent-ing with it.  And by Ent-ing I mean...you know in The Two Towers you have this real problem where you have two very compelling storylines. You have Frodo,
Sam and Gollum, and then you have Aragorn and co having all their adventures in Rohan...

 

...and then every so often we cut back to the Ents, and the the audience members at a certain point start to go, "oh, God it's the fucking Ents again. You know, we were having such fun at Helm's Deep, now we're
checking in with the Ents and their slow-paced storyline."

 

And it's not that...it's not that Peter Jackson does anything wrong with Merry and Pippin's storyline, it's just the inevitable conclusion of the stories from the novels now being presented side by side
in a very fast-paced cinematic fashion. Inevitably when you go back to the storyline which is, in its nature, just a bunch of conversations about "well, what are we going to do next?" that eventually gets to a
conclusion...

 

...by contrast it feels impossibly slow and tedious and like it's testing our patience. And so a lot of the ideas that I had for the the conversations that could be taking place at the Grace just felt like they were
falling short when everyone else was having these these great adventures, and so it we ended up really kind of cullng those storylines and spending less time with them in favor of the adventures that Carpenter and Hayward were having, and Faulkner's various misdeeds within the Parish.

 

And I don't know what the solution would have been! Because in terms of the pacing between
the different storylines it felt like we spent a decent amount of time on all of them, and we couldn't have spent more time with the Woundtree folks before the end.

But, yeah. I don't have a solution in mind, but I am sorry that I feel like we didn't really make the most
of that storyline before the ending, and I felt like that had a bit of an impact on Paige's character arc to a certain extent but also on Elgin and Dan, who I really wanted to bring out more of them as the story went on and we didn't really get a chance to do that as much as I would have liked.

 

So that is, that's one regret!

 

MÉABH

Dani asks, “what would an interaction between Hayward and Faulkner have looked like? I think it's very amusing that they never met and I can't help but wonder how it would have gone down.”

 

B. NARR:

I don't think they'd like each other! I think Hayward's little shit radar would be pinging the moment Faulkner walked in a room. 

 

And yeah, and Faulkner, I mean…depends on the season! Is he (Hayward) a part of the system, is he just another person to drown, or is he someone who's on a sinking ship the same as he (Faulkner) is?

 

Cos he never really interacts with the Woundtree either. So, like, what does that look like? That's…there's a lot of factors here!

 

MÉABH:

We're taking this very seriously. We're like,

(Nebbish voice)

“Now, what are the circumstances at play-”

 

B. NARR:

They do meet, though.

 

…Jon?

 

JON: 

They did meet! I don't know if it's a particularly meaningful encounter. Faulkner does at least run into Hayward in Bellwethers, when he sics a giant hermit crab on Daggler and and bisects him. So it does happen.

 

MÉABH:

But also aren't they in the car? Aren't Carpenter and Faulkner in the car together when Hayward, like, knocks on the window in season one?

 

B.:

Oh, my God, yes! 

 

JON:

Yes, yeah! These two have a rich history! 

 

B. 

Yeah, I was like, “I can't believe I didn't remember that!” That actually happened in canon.

 

MÉABH:

I was thinking, like…is that the context? Cos then Faulkner's immediately like, 

(Teenager voice)

“oh, Carpenter, I did something bad.” 

 

So I was like…is that the circumstances? Is it like, Faulkner has just done that terrible first murder.

(With emphasis)

First murder.

 

JON: 

I think B’s first comment…your first comment, B., was absolutely bang on. Like, Hayward, for all his flaws as an investigator in season one, he does have a good little shit radar. Which I think would be pinging when he encounters Faulkner in any season.

 

MÉABH:

I think it would be very interesting, actually, for Hayward to not like someone. Because as we see

him develop, he's very personable! He kind of gets on with most people. So the idea that he would clock Faulkner and be like, “no, I don't like that one,” that's quite funny!

 

JIMMIE:

I think it would be a Pokemon battle. 

 

8-bit music begins to unexpectedly play.

 

JIMMIE:

I legit think it would be like, Hayward and Faulkner would be like, “Go, crab monster!” “Go, giant tree! use this attack!” “Oh, it was super effective.”

​

MÉABH

Tybalt asks,

 

“To Meabh de Brun: How did it feel to do that finale scream?”

(Thinking)

That finale scream was…yes, very heavy to do, and I…but I was determined to do it right, to do it correctly and to give it the appropriate weight that it deserved, you know? You can't phone that one in.

 

So I actually recorded that scream in my parents’ house, in the middle of nowhere in rural Ireland, because I was like, “I want to make extra sure I can scream and scream and scream as much as I need to until we get this thing right.” So, yes, so I was in my parents’ empty house in the middle of nowhere, screaming and screaming and screaming.

 

And I usually give a couple of takes of most, you know, of…screams, well of lines and screams, of everything!

 

That one in particular, it was really interesting for me I guess to scream and then go, kind of, like,

“...does that feel appropriately heartbroken enough?”

 

You know? I…I was really taking it seriously. I was like, “this is the last - I don't know - big emotional display from this character of this season in response to the death of her brother.”

 

So I think the one Jon went with actually in the end, it's one when my voice is actually going a bit, because I've been screaming so much.

 

So that was the one I think that actually, ultimately got chosen and I think that was the right call because it's…it does sound broken, because my voice is breaking! And I think it's very reflective of what the character is going through at that moment.

 

But, yeah, no, it was…it was something I really took seriously. I was like, “I have got to get this scream right.” 

 

So how did it feel to do that finale scream? Very deep, heavy, weighty. A lot of responsibility to make sure I pulled it off and I did right by this character that I have been performing for four years, and it has been one of the most rewarding and joyous experiences of my life.

 

It was the last thing I think I recorded, that scream was the final thing I recorded out of the series. So it was intense, and I'm glad it came off as well as I hope it did. 

 

JON:

Méabh, I would also say that just - goping through your scream takes, and hearing the range between them, from the animalistic to the fractured to the weary, it genuinely sent shivers up my spine. And it was such a rich experience, getting to pick between all these different shades of meaning.

 

And, like, it's a scream! So it's loud and in some ways it's unsubtle, but it really really was each time. So yeah, really enjoyed it.
 

MÉABH

Oh, thank you! Yeah, that's…that's thank you very much, cos sometimes I do send them off and I'm like, “...this is seven takes of me screaming.”

 

But it...but it literally is exactly that. I'm like trying to sound more unhinged this time, I'm trying to sound more feral with anger or fury. This time I'm going to try and sound more tired and weary.

​

And it’s…very rewarding to know that it is coming across and it's not just me screaming in a microphone for seven takes that Jon then has to listen to and go, “...uh, this one

I think?”

 

So, wonderful. Thank you very much! I appreciate It.

​

Apollo asks, “Do you have any voicework plans after this? Where can we find you next?”

 

B., you want to hit that one up?

 

B. NARR:

Sure, yeah, I can! I'm…I mean, baby, you know it, I'm always trying to get in more stuff.

 

Right now I'm doing a bunch of stuff with Bloody Disgusting. If you didn't get enough of me dying in your horror podcasts…uh, boy, howdy. I do a lot of dying in those shows. All the shows that they, they're like, “hey, here's a guy, he's got to get ripped apart by zombies or whatever. Do you want to…you want to do that?” 

 

And I'm like, “yes, yes!”

 

That's largely what…what I am doing currently and I'm always trying to get my grubby little hands over, all over these other podcasts. Other shows, other video james (sic). Just more cool stories!

 

Because this…this show set my bar very high for what a production can be, what a story can be. what a cast and crew can be.

 

And so I'm always like…you know, my bar is high and I want to have these experiences more, and I want to work with y'all more and I hope…I hope every single person that we've worked with in this show, our paths cross again in these industries, because it's just it's fabulous.

​
 

MÉABH:

It absolutely is, and I will say - because I do, I act for stage and screen as well - but I have to say, I mean the opportunities that are there in audiodrama are incredible! 

 

Because, you know, again you just have these…just the character arcs and the scenes that you get to perform!

 

But, you know, to absolutely mirror B., the bar is now quite high. 

(Smug voice)

“Cos I was in the Silt Verses.”

 

So, um…but absolutely, I love acting in audiodrama. I'm going to be in…the next season of Omen is coming out, which is going to be so much fun, going back to the world of fantasy pirates. And then as well, I will be in Chain of Being coming up. I also have some other projects coming up in the future that are much further down the line.

 

But yeah, always keeping the hand in because audiodrama…it's just so fun! It's a delight. I really love it.

​

Any actors that I'm working with, when they're saying, “What are you doing at the moment?” I'm kind of saying, “oh well, I'm in audiodrama! It's great? Have you tried it? It's so much fun, everyone's lovely, and you get to be in these alternate fantasy worlds. You get to, you know, just the scope and the imagination and the worlds to explore and the characters, it's just absolutely fantastic.” And again I don't think most people are aware of it in the wider world! Like, once you're into the podcast (scene) you know what exists out there, but every time I tell people, like, “you know they're fully doing these complete like fantasy, horror, dark fantasy fics? Anything, any single genre you want, it's out there and it's in audiodrama.”

 

So yeah, it's brilliant. I love it. Good.

​

SARAH:

I can jump on! I've got...season 3 of of Ethics Town is going to be coming out next year.

​

And then we've go the Shelterwood Chronicles is coming out.

 

Again, like I said, I am only in stories that I can't listen to. So just...trigger warning for ever hearing my voice, ever.

 

And then besides that I am doing interactive and immersive theater in London - I am part of Bridge Command, where you can come and fly a spaceship. Yeah!

​

JIMMIE:

I am constantly doing voiceover work. A lot of my stuff tends to be in the videogame genre, so I can't mention anything cos none of it's coming out yet, so I can't tell anyone!

​

But as soon as it comes out, I will.

​

MARTA:
Um, oh God. So to quote Jimmie in the chat, “cry in a corner”, for sure, followed by pestering - which I've already done! - Jon and Muna about what they're doing next, and please cast me. Please put me in it. Please, I'll do anything. I'm not desperate or anything, but like I think I offered to be an inanimate mute object at one point in an email. 

​

I would very much like to be in whatever they do next. Because this was maybe one of my favorite things I've ever done ever, and the caliber of just…just the joy of of the writing and just everything about the show is amazing.

​

Uh, God - currently what am I doing? I am in a little show called Sherlock and Co, that some people might know about. It's a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes, we are doing the entire canon. And it is - basically, the gimmick is that John Watson is a true crime podcaster who follows around Sherlock Holmes.

​

And we are doing everything that was ever published about these characters, which is a lot, and it's a weekly release, so wish us luck! Yeah, yeah, we just…we just hit the one-year mark. 

​

And I play Mariana who is a sort of reimagining of Mrs Watson, absolutely a completely different character at this point, nothing to do with the original. But there's some fun winks to that.

​

I'm also in the Road Of Shadows which is releasing season 3 at the moment - a show that Jimmie was a part of as well! And you can also find me popping up in video games every once in a while! I'm trying to do more of that.

​

LUCILLE:

The main thing that I can think of - the only other show that I'm currently working on is one called Among The Stars and Bones. It's a sci-fi xenoarchaeology space horror type stuff.

​

Season 2 is either being released or has just had its final episode released. There's gonna be, I think, five seasons in total.

​

I only have a few lines in Season 1, I'm more present in Season 2. That's the only thing I'm currently working on - I'm not as in touch with things as I used to be a few years ago! Among the Stars and Bones is the main one. Apart from that, who knows.

​

MÉABH:

Frances asks,

 

“What advice would you give for aspiring audio drama writers, specifically in the context of balancing "writing more, practice more" and "reading/listening to great and influential works for sources of inspiration."

​
 

JON: 

Your question is one that really speaks to me! Audiodrama is an interesting medium, because we are very small and scrappy but we're also very prone to carpetbagging. Twice a year someone will put out a press release saying,

(Grandly)

“We have invented the world's first cinematic audiodrama!” And they have some SFX and a celebrity but actually it's very much something that's been done before.

 

And so I think there is conscientiously an impulse to really fly the flag for doing your research, knowing your stuff, and making sure that if you're going to create in this space you actually really understand the work that's been done - the best quality stuff that's out there and the exciting imperfect interesting work that's being done right now.

 

The flipside to that is…the scale of human artistic endeavor has never been so great. The accessibility of creation has never been so broad. And these are wonderful things but it means that there is far too much for you to listen to and you'll never hit some kind of perfect threshold where, actually, you've imbibed enough now; you can consider yourself a fully informed writer who can go out and create. You're never going to hit that!

 

And audiodrama can be a very time-consuming medium both to create and to ingest. It's

not possible to spend all day, with your headphones on, working on your own material and working on (studying) someone else's.

​

At some point you need to go out there and, for your own well-being, have a life, and doing so is very important. So I think I would provide a note of of just…grace and caution.

 

Try not to worry too much about, “have I actually listened to enough? Have I found the right balance of researching and listening to what other people are doing before I begin my own stuff?” Because you'll never hit it. 

 

I think the good thing is, audiodrama is timeconsuming but it's episodical. You by no means need to listen to all 350 episodes of Welcome to Nightvale to understand what it is doing well and what you can learn from it.

 

Be cut-throat. Pick out a few key episodes that people tend to recommend. Listen to them. Get a sense of, actually, what does the show do well or not so well and move on. Don't feel like you have to commit to some of these vast, vast series to get a full understanding of what they're doing well and what they're doing not so well. 

 

I'd also make the case that we are a scavengers’ medium, and while audioplays do have a a long and rich 20th century history, we are coming late to the table.

 

And so often I think when you're trying to inform your own creativity, it is absolutely just as valuable to enjoy other media and to ingest other media as it is to listen to audiodrama. If you really want to get into action sound design, my first piece of advice would not be to listen to us or listen to We're Alive or another audiodrama that does lots of that kind of action. 

​

I would say, “Go and scavenge.” “Go and watch The Good the Bad and the Ugly’s final scene, the climax in the graveyard with the standoff, and think about, “well okay, brilliant scene that relies very heavily on the visuals, the direction, and the music. How can you create that kind of wonderful rising tension when all you have to hand are a couple of voice actors, some footstep sound effects, and maybe some pistols cocking and gunshots?”

 

You know? What can you do with the limited resources and limited palette that audiodrama provides, with a scene like that?

 

So, yeah, my…my general thesis would be, “acknowledge completely the importance of doing your homework and understanding how people are playing within this space, but do not let it consume you and do not let it delay you from beginning your own work.”

 

MÉABH:

I think you're right, because I think that…you know, at a certain point reading or listening to great and influential works, it becomes its own barrier, you know? 

 

You can almost get a little bit…because if you're not doing it for enjoyment, if you're just doing it

because you need to, you're supposed to, um…

 

Like Jon said, if it's more a case of “I just need to figure out how they did this so I can hopefully put that skill into my toolbox”, do that and be done with it. But if it's not for enjoyment, you know, at a certain point it's just going to start Weighing on you.

 

Sometimes you just have to close the door and you just have to go, “right, this is just…this is my story, and I'm going to do it how I’m going to do it.”

 

Because it can get quite overwhelming. As Jon said, there’s a lot of things available out there. The internet has made it so much more accessible for people to put things out there, there’s so much more in all kinds of media - a myriad of television shows, films, everything.

 

Sometimes you just have to close the door and say. “this is the story I want to tell and I'm going to sit down and do it.”

 

Which would be my second point; so you just have to sit down and do it. It's a horrible, horrible, horrible thing, and I used to…when I first started kind of writing, and I was reading all of this writing advice, and all of them were like, “you just have to sit down and do it.” And I was like, “well, that's not helpful.”

 

And now I'm like, “...oh, it…that's it.” No, it's not helpful; it's just the truth. You just have to sit down and do it.

 

So I think that - sometimes, you know, that research aspect which might fall under the category of reading and listening to your works - that can bog you down too, you know?

 

When you're like, “oh I just…I just have to read this thing and then I'll know how to”, or, “well, it's set in like the Civil War so I'm going to read this thing!” And, you know sometimes you have to throw all of that out as well and just start pressing buttons on your laptop. Which is horrible.

​

I think the last thing I would suggest - because again we were talking earlier about how you would adapt, say, the Silt Verses, which is an audio show, for a visual medium - it's actually a great thing to read scripts. Scripts are great. And when I started writing for screen I would have read a lot of scripts, because again the screen is a visual medium, and so I would have started writing for theater. Which, again is…much more, there's much more of a verbal thrust to theater.

​

Screen then is predominantly visual! There's actually so little…when I first started writing for screen a lot of the feedback I was getting was, “they don't need to be talking this much!” Like, you can convey things in a glance.

 

Which, again, I was like…mind blown! But then you come to audiodrama, again, you're saying,

“okay, there's actually a lot I can't do here, because it's audio based. What can I do? What are the strengths I can lean into here? And maybe how have other people written that to convey it?”

 

So I think that there are audiodrama scripts available online. Obviously there's a lot of shows who put their transcripts up - the Silt Verses transcripts are online - and it shows, again, it's kind of quick things.

​

Like how a montage was structured to convey a certain amount of information, things like that. How it was laid out in the page. And again it does get you in the mindset of writing for that. So similarly, if you're writing for screen and you read a lot of scripts for screen, you're already in a place where you're thinking predominantly in screen direction as opposed to dialogue. And then if you write for audiodrama and you read a lot of audiodrama scripts or transcripts, you're in a place where you are not going to be describing visuals because it's predominantly sound design and things like that. SFX is what you've been reading!

​

So putting yourself into that mindset can be very helpful as well, and it can…help you structure the story or get the story onto the page in the format that is going to best serve it and heighten the story you have.

 

B.:

Yeah, absolutely. I don’t have anything to add to that, really, that you guys didn't say, because that's exactly it: know the strengths of your medium, know its weaknesses, play to the strengths and figure out where you can push the boundaries of the weaknesses and use those to your advantage.

 

Instead of worrying about consuming everything ever made, just know the structure, know the shape and know how other people have played with that shape and molded it to their own needs, and be like, “okay, what can I do here?”

​

And don't worry about being like, the first person to ever do it like that. You certainly aren't and you're certainly not the last. Because we're all humans and we're all doing the same stuff, and you're going to do it your way and it's going to be unique in that way.

 

So don't…mostly, don't stress. Don't stress so much, bud. You're good, you are doing great, don't stress. 

 

I know it's hypocritical, probably, coming from all of us.

​

But don't stress. We're not anxious people-

 

JON:

(Unconvincingly)

…whoah, whoah, what are you talking about? We’re not anxious people-

 

B.:

No!

 

MÉABH

Yeah, that caught me right under the ribs. I was about to say something and then it just kind of went…all the breath left my body.

 

I think the one last thing I was going to say was, because I know sitting down and actually pressing the buttons can be quite hard. I have had to restructure my thinking around that.  Because, you know, your first thought might be, like, “I don't want to do that”, and now I kind of think, “okay, but…do you want to have done it?”

​

That's the place you want to get to, and if you can kind of restructure it to that and say, “okay, you know, six months from now, I want to have done this.” And it's much better to think of it like that! That is something you can grasp onto. But…listen, nobody likes writing. Nobody actually likes it. That's actually the secret. The secret is, nobody likes it.

 

It's bad, nobody likes it, nobody wants to do it. It's bad and terrible. I don't like writing; I like having written.

 

And that - once you can kind of get that on, you're like, “oh, okay, it's bad and terrible and no one enjoys it. Ah, okay,” it's kind of easier to get onboard.

 

JON WARE:

(Hans Moleman voice)

I like writing.

 

MÉABH:

(Scornfully)

Yeah, Jon, we can tell! We can tell! 

(Also in a Hans Moleman voice)

“I was saying Boo-urns.”

 

Nausica asks,

 

“For Jimmie: did being Asian-American influence your portrayal of Hayward? In Season One, I kept hearing echoes of my Fiipino father and grandfather clinging to American Normalcy harder than white men around them.”

 

JIMMIE: 

I wouldn't say it directly influenced (me), but…if it did it was completely unconsciously!

 

Because, you know, you're influenced by your family themselves, or the people around you, so there is my family in who I am and how I act.

​

MÉABH:

Leo asks, 

 

“You said that your sound is one of the aspects of your work that you’re most proud of. Is there anything specific you’d like to recommend for someone jumping into the audio world? good programs and plugins, tips and tricks? Favorite parts to design, least favorites? Do you record foley, or is it strictly pulled from online libraries? It’s wonderful to see how your audio has changed over the course of the podcast, and I’m excited to hear the remaster of earlier episodes.”

​

JON:

…uh, yeah. 

(To B. and MÉABH:)

You know, I'm going to answer this separately so that everyone doesn't have to hear me waffle on, because it is getting late.

 

So maybe, uh…if you wouldn't both mind making some kind of reactions telling me how clever I am, I can just edit those in at the end and it will sound like, you know, you were really impressed by whatever I said.

 

MÉABH:

(Instantly)

Oh, my God, Jon, that's incredible. 

 

B. NARR:

Utterly brilliant.

 

MÉABH:

To be…but, like, I mean to be clear, we have already talked about this. The incredible sound design is astonishing. For as I understand it, you just sort of went, “I think I'm just going to do it! I think I'm just going to do it, nobody's doing it the way I want to do it; I'm just going to do it ,I'm just going to do it.”

 

B.:

Amazing.

 

MÉABH:

Like, what an incredible decision.

​

JON:

(Dismissively)

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's the confidence of the mediocre white man. Like, “I can do this. Sure I can do this.”

 

MÉABH:

It's a bit like Legally Blonde, when they're like, “did you think you just woke up one day and went, ‘I think I'm going to go to law school?’”

​

Jon went, “I think I'm going to design a cinematic special-effects audio soundscape for this fantasy world when I apparently have little to no experience doing it.

 

B.:

(Reese Witherspoon voice)

What, like it’s hard?

 

JON:

(To the audience)

Tip number one is…every object in a given location can sing, and any fragment of song, no matter how short, can contribute to to the listener's understanding of that location and the action within it. You don't have to use everything, but you should consider using everything.

 

If it's helpful, make a list: what objects are in the scene, what is the background noise of the scene, and what's going on outside the scene?

 

I now generally always begin from a position of maximalism and then gradually just pare back the elements as needed: so if it's an interior we might have an air conditioner or creaking walls and a TV playing. There might be curtains and books and a chair and the sound of rain on the roof. Cos it…if it's too much, again, we can always adjust those elements back, and actually we can always let the characters make those adjustments.

 

Because change and detail are our two best friends for conveying a scene. If we imagine that a character enters a room where the windows are open and we can hear some very loud rain and a thunderstorm happening outside…maybe that is going to drown out any dialogue! Maybe that is too much. 

​

But then we can have the character cross the room to the window, stare out into the rain, and then slam the window shut, and then the scene begins proper. And that extra sequence gives us a much clearer idea of the size of the space, the character's position within the space, and the mood of the character than if the rain never existed.

 

So I think if you listen to seasons two and three you’ll probably start to pick up on…we start doing this trick quite often where a TV or a radio is playing, a character will enter and turn it off. Something will be happening that is conveying the location and a sense…of the scene that then we just have the character deal with in order to create a bit of relative quiet so the the action can begin.

​

Speaking of action, I think in the same vein…audiodrama works best when it's a medium of twitchy protagonists and breakable props. Naming no names, but I have listened to some very famous well-regarded audio dramas that will have a fight scene that is stock punch sounds layered on top of grunts, and just doing that in a row to a certain extent. But that starts to feel artificial around punch three!

 

So everything within the fight scene needs to sing. You can have a punch, a grunt, footsteps to the left, a TV shatters, footsteps to the right, crashes. Everything needs to be brought into the action to prevent artificial monotony from sinking in. 

 

Likewise, twitchy protagonists! If a character needs to be reflecting in silence for a moment, that silence is going to start to feel like dead air or a mistake after about second three. So have them open a window, have them flick through a book, have them sit heavily in a chair. Make the environment the subject of their anxiety and restlessness., which is again something that we've done quite a lot of.

 

Tip number two, with that in mind - build up a library of spontaneous audio resources! One thing we did for our second two seasons when I took over sound design was, we asked our actors to give us a set of different generic noises - hard breathing, gasps, grunts - so that we could always evolve our directing beyond what we'd recorded.

 

If we needed to make adjustments or add another bit of action or spend a bit more time with the character silently in a scene, we could actually do that without requiring re-records.

 

For this season we also commissioned a bunch of extra adverts, so that we could again always have something playing in the background to help us give a sense of where we were and what was happening.

 

Tip number three, do use movement and panning to a reasonable extent. Back in season 2 we actually had a couple of listeners saying, “hey you're using too much panning and I only listen in a single earbud so I keep missing lines of dialogue.” We did then pare it back, but we still use it a lot.

 

This may seem like a really minor detail, but I'm making a point of it, because I have read - again, naming no names - audiodrama designers saying, “it's pointless to use panning because lots of people are listening without any kind of spatial capability at all…and even lots of the people who do simply don't notice.”

 

For me that's a little bit like saying, “hey, why bother with cinematography, cos people are just going to watch the movie on their phones and it's going to be compressed?” 

 

But for me more importantly - when you stop in the editing process and you use panning, you are creating a tangible stage left and stage right in earbud left and earbud right. You are plotting out the geography of the scene and then you are as a result creating the marked distance between objects in your head .

 

And I think regardless of whether the end listener can tell, “oh, that person's coming in in my left earbud,” you are going to have an immensely clearer understanding of the scene, and everything intuitively will make a bit more sense than it would have.

​

Favourite programs! I like EW spaces which I use for ambience and room effects. I have UVI Workstation’s footsteps tool which I really enjoy. Izotope’s RX8 programs, and I use Sennheiser for 360° panning.

 

Favorite parts to design…I did get really addicted to someone rising from water, the transition from spooky muffled underwater splashing to sudden noisy surfacing. We did it once with Faulkner in the echo-angel caves in season 2 and it was so cool that I do it about a million times in season 3. You can count them, it keeps on happening, it really became a problem…but I'll never get tired of it.

​

So if you listen to more of our shows…please get ready to hear it again.

 

Least favorite parts of design? Crowds are really hard. We had a lot of crowd effects this season. Stock foley for crowds…either it’s an actual football stadium or Taylor Swift concert, or it's literally five tired voice actors in a room going, 

(Bored)

“Yay. Yay. We haven't been given a script for this so I'm just going to keep going. Yay.”

​

There's actually very little room to create something organic sounding, unless you do a lot of layering which we had to do.

 

Also carpets and socks! Boots crunching on gravel usually sounds great and satisfying, but whether through live foley or footstep generation, a good soft footstep is a lot harder to capture effectively.

 

We had a whole thing with Faulkner and Carpenter's final big scene together; Faulkner has been drowning Rane in a pool, and he's kicked off his shoes, the audience knows that. So when Carpenter finds him, we ought to be hearing some wet barefoot footsteps upon the stone.

 

I rendered that for the scene; it sounded horrible and unconvincing! So I thought, “okay, let's imagine maybe he's put his shoes back on, so let's have some squelchy booted footsteps on the stone.” Also sounded horrible and unconvincing.

 

So for that scene I ended up just ignoring reality and logic, and you will hear that he has

some dry hard footsteps…even though logically he really shouldn't! No-one complained.  I guess maybe he did stop to just towel himself off.

​

MÉABH:

That’s fantastic. I mean, I just…I was blown away with what you achieved. It's truly astonishing. It's incredible stuff. OK! 

 

Shan, Mars, and Danika ask,

 

“I would love to know what songs or music would the cast assign to their characters?”

(Pause)

I…this is…I'm not good at these questions, I'm not good at these questions!

 

Because first of all, I don't really actually listen to that much music, which I appreciate a lot of people find annoying about me as a trait.

 

I kind of listen to…I hear individual songs, I put them on a playlist, and then that playlist just sort of grows over the course of the year, and then at the end of the year I start a new playlist and I never listen to those songs ever again.

 

No but so I don't have a very wide library of musical knowledge to draw on, but also I do feel that if you pick a song for a character it should probably sound like something that they would listen to themselves and I don't I don't think myself and Carpenter listen to the same kind of music. So I don't know.

 

That said, I did see at one point Jon said something about relistening to Fiona Apple over and over while writing a season and so, um…

(Straining)

…what's the, what's the song that she has? The, the clippers. The, the bolt cutters. Fetch The Bolt Cutters. So that's the one I'm going to pick.

 

B.:

Oh, that's good. 

(Very politely and supportively)

I love this, I love this for you, that is a bonkers way to listen to music. No judgment, my friend, no judgment.

 

…that's just the wildest thing I've ever heard. This is a…this is a…

​

MÉABH:

IS this a safe space??

 

B: 

This is a safe place and I love and respect you.

(Pause)

I have a whole-ass Faulkner playlist I've been curating since we started recording the show. I do that with every character I play pretty much for any period of time, because I just think it's fun! 

 

I just think it's a fun little thing to do, and I pick it more like, “what would play in the TV show if we were to pan out and the episode was going to end? What would we play?” Like, that's how I've picked it.

 

Like, Jon has a playlist for, I believe, season 3, and Bringing Home The Rain by The Builders And The Butchers was on there and I was like, “that's on my playlist!” 

 

MÉABH:

That's crazy! That’s…pretty wild.

 

B.:

I know. So I feel obligated to pick that one or one of a dozen Mountain Goats songs that ended up on there.