Meet the Creators and Cast

Speaker 1 Rusty Quill presents

Speaker 2 Good evening, gentlemen and gentle ladies of hell. First and foremost, thank you for tuning in.
Your support keeps the flames of the gentleman from hell burning bright.

Speaker 2 If you're enjoying your descent into the infernal depths of our world and want to dive even deeper, consider supporting us on Patreon.

Speaker 2 There, you'll unlock exclusive content, including original art from Mark Angelon, housed in the legendary Gallery of the Damned, deep lore and world-building treasures within the memorabilia of the House of Sparrows, and coming soon, the Testimonies of the Damned, a Patreon-exclusive audio series that expands the twisted mythology of the gentleman from hell.

Speaker 2 Plus, fans of the wider Meltopia universe will uncover a trove of exclusive lore, audio dramas, artwork, behind-the-scenes videos, and much more. Ready to explore the deeper circles of horror?

Speaker 2 Join us at www.patreon.com forward slash Meltopia Meltopia and embrace the darkness.

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Speaker 7 Welcome, everybody, and this is the Meet the Creators and Cast episode. I'm Steve Anslone.
I do all the sound engineering and, you know help create the series.

Speaker 7 We have Mark Anslone who's the actual creator of the

Speaker 7 Gentleman from Hell series and Maltopia as a whole. Hello.
And we'll do a, we'll, and Walker, he's our editor. And

Speaker 7 we, I'll just do a round robin of everybody can introduce themselves if you want. Aubrey, you want to start off? Yeah.
Hi, guys.

Speaker 1 I'm Aubrey Akers, and I mainly voice Phyllis in The Gentleman from Hell. I've been a voice actor for about three years, and I do a lot of audio dramas, animated shows, and video games.

Speaker 7 Awesome. And you also do, I know you do the

Speaker 7 therapist. You've done

Speaker 7 mom.

Speaker 7 What's the important one? Sparrow. Mercy.
Oh, Mercy.

Speaker 7 Sparrow. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And then, Steve, you want to go next?

Speaker 7 Certainly. Hi, this is Steve Zivick.
I voice the dour and gritty Mason Rhodes, as well as our hypochondriac, Dr. Loctrum.

Speaker 7 You'll also occasionally hear me pop in as other folks, like I believe it's Elijah Sparrow, and you can hear me throughout the rest of the Maltopia podcasts in a variety of roles.

Speaker 7 And, well, I'm basically known for that.

Speaker 7 Yep, you're, you're,

Speaker 7 I believe you're Edgar Sparrow. Yeah, you're Edgar.
You're the.

Speaker 7 Sorry. Yep.
No, you're the paid, the patron of the group. Edgar Sparrow.
My apology. The patriarch of the group.
Yep.

Speaker 7 And then we'll go with Sam.

Speaker 12 Hey, I'm Sam Stark. I voice Leon and a bunch of red shirts that die.
And

Speaker 12 that's basically all I do with the gentleman from hell.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I've been a voice actor for six years now. And I do mostly video games and podcasts, audio dramas.
And my day job is I record audiobooks.

Speaker 12 for

Speaker 12 both big publishing houses and indie stuff.

Speaker 1 awesome and then we'll go to jesse hi i'm jesse van hove i'm an audiobook narrator and i'm play margaret and lore on the gentleman from hell as well as abigail

Speaker 1 and a couple of others across the different series

Speaker 7 excellent and then we have kelly

Speaker 1 Hey, everyone. I'm Kelly Bear.
I've been with the Mail Topia Boys for, I was just thinking it's 2019, you guys.

Speaker 1 Isn't that crazy? Yes.

Speaker 7 I play, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 I play Pat Ingersoll on Gentleman from Hell. And then I've been across a lot of things over the years.

Speaker 1 Sleepwake Cycle, I play Rosemary Stroud and

Speaker 7 Mary and everybody else on there and a couple other across the

Speaker 7 Genevieve. Genevieve.
Yeah, Genevieve. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yep. Yep.
Helena, Obscuary, and a bunch of different witches, monsters, and other fun stuff. Oh, and doll face, of course.

Speaker 7 Anyway,

Speaker 7 favorite the gun maiden.

Speaker 7 I can't wait to get back to her.

Speaker 1 It's good fun. But yeah, anyway, that's it.
I've just done a few things with the boys here over a couple of years. So, yeah.

Speaker 7 Okay. And Matt?

Speaker 7 I'm Matt Van Hove.

Speaker 7 I have been voice acting unprofessionally for about nine years, but professionally about the last couple of years, started doing audiobooks.

Speaker 7 I voice Elijah, Joseph Whitlock, and a multitude, as Sam put it, of red shirts that decide that they're going to get themselves blown up or shot or destroyed in some way. So

Speaker 7 doing the character acting stuff has been really fun. I've been able to

Speaker 7 push my voice to the limit to do some of these things. So

Speaker 7 one of my favorite ones was playing Ruin in, was it Sleepwake Cycle? I think. Oh, yeah.
um being able to do that one was very you want you guys wanted something like a really deep creature voice so

Speaker 7 uh i ruined my voice that night for you guys so it was fun appreciate it you appreciate it

Speaker 7 no we we definitely appreciate that incredibly because my own voice is starting to go my uh

Speaker 7 my pipes are starting to show some wear so I've been trying to hand off as many roles as I possibly can.

Speaker 7 Gina, you want to go next? Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Hi, everyone. Uh, Gina Lee Smith.
I've gotten to play an assortment of roles across uh the gentleman from hell and also the Maltopia broader universe.

Speaker 1 Uh, I too have gotten to die through a lot of different characters' eyes, which has been a real treat. Um, and my background is in video games user research and video games voiceover.

Speaker 1 Um, so uh, it's been wonderful to get to dive more into the horror anthology side of uh things. So, yeah, wonderful, happy, very happy to be here.
Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 I'm noticing a theme here about how many of us die frequently.

Speaker 7 It's like you're on a horror podcast.

Speaker 1 Something, yeah, fascinating about that.

Speaker 7 And then we have Harper. And if you guys want to give your

Speaker 7 website and socials as well, we can do that. Or we can do it at the end or however you want to do it.
So that way. People can, if they're interested, we can take a look.

Speaker 7 Hello.

Speaker 7 Hello.

Speaker 1 uh i'm harvard tackent um i play an assortment of uh little cultists and ghouls and larvae

Speaker 1 all the creepy icky things and i love it

Speaker 1 um and gentlemen from hell i'm in a couple other meltopia productions um and yeah i'm a more newbie voice actress uh doing it unprofessionally for a couple years more professionally for less much less um and uh yeah you know i used to be a zookeeper and a game dev, and now I'm a voice actor.

Speaker 1 So it's all weird, and

Speaker 7 we're here.

Speaker 7 Standard voice actor CV.

Speaker 7 Standard.

Speaker 1 All you're missing is like the waitress role to complete the trifecta.

Speaker 7 We'll try to get that in there. It's

Speaker 7 got plenty of waiter.

Speaker 1 What do we do about that?

Speaker 7 And there's a couple other people I don't think could make it. So I'll kind of go over them.

Speaker 7 We have Lou Sutcliffe, and

Speaker 7 they played,

Speaker 7 I can't remember the name of Mark's characters, but he played one of the

Speaker 7 not the

Speaker 7 Sunita,

Speaker 7 one of the church

Speaker 7 people.

Speaker 7 We're very prepared. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Obviously.

Speaker 7 I cannot summon forth a mental ability to generate a memory when it comes to proper nouns. So I'll forget names over and over again.
But he beats,

Speaker 7 they played an assortment of different characters. One of the

Speaker 7 one of the

Speaker 7 church authorities,

Speaker 7 Ambrose, what have you. Ambrose.
Ambrose, yeah. Thank you.
Played Ambrose. Thank you, Stephen.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 also, they're on Burnt by a Paper Sun as well, doing a lot of narration.

Speaker 7 And then there's Trenton. Trenton plays another person from the church that Luce character talks to often.

Speaker 7 He's coming to me. One is the Archbishop.
Yeah,

Speaker 7 the other is a Sin, not a Sin Eater. It's not a Sin.
Not a Senater, but it's something very similar to a Sin Eater.

Speaker 7 There is something. I did write this card.
I know I did. And there was a name associated with that thing that I can't remember.
And that's what they played.

Speaker 7 That's all I can say. So for our listeners,

Speaker 7 I wish I could give something more specific. It was kind of like a Senater.
They were kind of like... Lord Osuma.
Yeah, no, no, that was...

Speaker 7 That's that's Trenton.

Speaker 7 And you're close, though, because Trenton plays Osula and the Mithra and

Speaker 7 Meltopian the sleepwake cycle. Yeah, sorry.
You say Elder Torres, like, well, we're going to have to be more specific.

Speaker 1 It's a bit of a theme there.

Speaker 7 We have so many of them.

Speaker 7 Meltopia has more than its fair share of Elder Torres, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on. And let's see, I want to make sure I get everybody because I don't want to leave anybody out.

Speaker 7 And then we actually have one voice actor who uh when we did all this we discussed who should be the actual gentleman from hell and uh i was like well i think we should we we want their voice to be totally novel and no one to have heard it before

Speaker 7 so we had uh edward baker edward baker actually plays the the actual gentleman from hell um who you only see okay then obviously spoilers if you're listening to this so uh spoiler alert um at the very end of the show, well, maybe we shouldn't say that.

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Well, it's a little late now.

Speaker 7 Yeah, well, I guess it's too late now. Well, I said there's spoilers, so no.

Speaker 7 But Edward Baker plays the gentleman from hell,

Speaker 7 which, as we will answer, there's one of the big questions that we've seen come up is

Speaker 7 that obviously the title of the show is The Gentleman from Hell. And

Speaker 7 some people took this very personal. It's like, where the hell is the gentleman from Hell? The show is called The Gentleman from hell.
Where is the gentleman?

Speaker 7 I never thought it would be that much, that often people were really eager. They were just in it for the title.
We must have a gentleman from hell.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 7 like I said, the gentleman from hell is more the overarching

Speaker 7 concept of the plot. But obviously,

Speaker 7 he is a big character. He's just kind of the character in the background.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 7 yeah, but I think that's everybody. I think that's everybody.

Speaker 7 And Mark and I do some roles here and there. I play Martin

Speaker 7 and like I said, occasional ghoul and Walker also

Speaker 7 play the occasional cultist, but mostly I'm the guy behind the sound.

Speaker 7 All right. With that,

Speaker 7 how should we proceed? So with that,

Speaker 7 maybe we could start from like a broad

Speaker 7 perspective of so what

Speaker 7 some people want to know looking through some of the questions people want to know we actually had a

Speaker 7 quite a few people think that they're like, is this a true story? Is this based on anything real?

Speaker 7 So Mark, would you want to handle that question, the inspiration behind the gentleman from hell?

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. My inspiration for the gentleman from hell.
Okay. Well, the gentleman from hell came from a lot of different places.

Speaker 7 First off, when we did Meltopia, I wanted to do something that was separate from Meltopia, something that was standalone.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 kind of, I mean, you could probably go into Meltopia, pluck any one of the mythologies, and and then kind of drop them into their own sandbox reality and get something like the gentleman from hell.

Speaker 7 But I couldn't get that kind of exclusivity from the sandbox that is Meltopia without having to kind of disentangle one story from another because they all lead into each other.

Speaker 7 So this was an attempt to kind of separate. one story from all of the rest focus and do a huge deep dive just on one particular dark mythology.

Speaker 7 And of course, I wanted to kind of texture it with a lot of historical flavors. So there was Judeo-Christianity in terms of some of the imagery and props that I put together.
And certainly

Speaker 7 a wide net that was used to gather a lot of the other influences in terms of demonology and things like that.

Speaker 7 So it kind of sprung from a want to isolate a story from all the rest of them, just kind of develop it on its own steam. and have one particular mythology that I developed throughout the course of it.

Speaker 7 Beyond that, I think I also wanted to do something that sort of

Speaker 7 overlapped with our experiences that a lot of people weren't aware of.

Speaker 7 I don't know how much I want to go into this, but one of the big criticisms of the show, actually, was that, and in horror in general, I think, is that people listen to the strange and goofy things that people do during the course of a supernatural investigation and have a tendency to go, nobody would act like that.

Speaker 7 That's just stupid. People would not act so irrationally and separate and do all this other stuff well steve and i and a number of other people uh way back in the day we we were going through our uh

Speaker 7 i think we're getting our pgs at the time so we had one anybody to know about this but we um

Speaker 7 had put together a supernatural research group And it had nothing to do really with the supernatural in the sense that any of us were true believers.

Speaker 7 But I was working on a research project and I wanted to kind of get into this stuff to see whether or not there was some underlying science to it. And to that end, we put together this group.

Speaker 7 I needed to get into people's houses and do the research that I needed to do. So we created this paranormal research group.

Speaker 7 And we went into a lot of different places and did a lot of different things. And there's a lot of different stories that came out of that effort.

Speaker 7 But a lot of the stuff that happened in terms of procedural stuff, what we actually did.

Speaker 7 when we got to a location and all the things that we did to set up and what have you kind of informed a little bit of the procedure and a little bit of the atmosphere and the mentality that I wrote into the characters going into this from the outset.

Speaker 7 When it developed into a true, full-blown supernatural like foray into hell, obviously, it departed from my real experiences. But

Speaker 7 that's kind of, I think, in a, in a,

Speaker 7 in short form, kind of where the gentleman from hell came from. I think for you, to give you an example,

Speaker 7 someone might say,

Speaker 7 if something blatantly supernatural happens,

Speaker 7 and then the characters go running for it. They're like, no one would ever do that.
That's so stupid. Why do they do that?

Speaker 7 Not sure because I've been in that exact situation and that's exactly what I did. I'd give you an example.

Speaker 7 My friends and I went out to this

Speaker 7 abandoned orphanage that had been, they had a real bad history and we wanted to do research out there. And we got out and it was, I don't know, it was two in the morning, three in the morning.

Speaker 7 And we had our microphones, we had our cameras, everything. And I shit you not, this happens.
We got out, we walked around, and we heard screaming.

Speaker 7 It was, it was, I mean, I almost questioned whether it was real because it was so obvious, but it was children screaming.

Speaker 7 And my first instinct was to run over there as fast as I could and try to get into that building. So we could run.
I will, I'd be, so I could go record it.

Speaker 7 So I will run right into the mouth of danger to do the, I will do the dumbest thing you're not, you, you, all the things you would criticize in a movie of horror people, I did.

Speaker 7 And I don't think that's not just him.

Speaker 7 And we were, all of us were, um, I mean, we were educated people, you know, we knew better to run into areas where there was obviously potentially anyway, some kind of a danger, but that's exactly what we would do.

Speaker 7 We would get into these locations and just split up. And the idea was to kind of self-isolate to see if anything would happen.

Speaker 7 So the gentleman from hell kind of had that built into it from the outset. I wanted to kind of inform their initial stages of investigation with the kind of

Speaker 7 brash-ness, I guess, that we kind of all appreciated when we did this.

Speaker 7 But like I said, ultimately, it was a want to kind of do a standalone that had some really familiar horror overtures.

Speaker 7 Okay, so I think a good way to do this is go back and forth between creator and the cast. That's somebody.
Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 7 So for the actors, one of the questions is how do you get into the mindset of your character before recording? Or do you, or is it like, what's your method of

Speaker 7 doing it?

Speaker 1 For me,

Speaker 1 I've always been really good at dropping in and out of various worlds, probably because I started my voice acting career on tabletop.

Speaker 1 Yes, I was a nerd. I'm not ashamed.

Speaker 7 But it's always been...

Speaker 1 easy once I get into a world to just be able to drop into it like picking a book back up after you put it down.

Speaker 1 So once I'm into it, I have a few key phrases that trigger certain accents.

Speaker 1 Like with my English accent,

Speaker 1 it was bloody hell for a long time until I got really good at doing it.

Speaker 1 That's basically it. And you guys have great stage direction.
So it's easy to follow what you want in terms of emotion from the character. You're not just saying, Here's your lines, good luck.

Speaker 1 That would make it a little more challenging.

Speaker 7 Well, I we're also geeks, we did a lot of gaming, and I can totally empathize with like the key signature phrase that you use to slide into character. I used to play this character, Finnegan.

Speaker 7 He was Irish, and every time everybody could see me in the back, going, Green is the grass, it grows in the ground. And that was how I always prepared for my very, very crappy Irish accent.

Speaker 1 My accent's not much better, so you know, crappy Irish accents for the wind.

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 accents are hard to do. Like, I can barely do any of them.
Like, my Irish, they're more of a pirate.

Speaker 7 That's why we're so glad you guys are on because, like, I try to do Cockney with like a mom because I run out of, like, I wanted them to have a cool, sound cool, but I don't want them to sound like me.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 he gets mad because every time he does mom, I'll say, why, why, why, why are you having him talk in this episode? Why don't you, why, why is he speaking for so long? Stop using that.

Speaker 7 I was like, I only have so many. So, like, we only have a few to choose from.
So, so, yeah.

Speaker 1 Even ones I've done like a lot, it'll take me a second. Like, I'm Arabic, my father's Arabic.
Every time I try to do an Arabic accent, I have to.

Speaker 1 My father begins every voice message with, hello, sweetheart.

Speaker 1 So, every time I'm like, Arabic accent, hello, sweetheart. Okay,

Speaker 1 just how it works

Speaker 7 for Whitlock. You asked me for like an old, like, well, Pennsylvania Dutch.
Yeah. I had no idea.
That's it.

Speaker 7 Thank you for saying that. Pennsylvania, that's what it is.
Yeah, I had no idea what that accent was. I had to go look it up.

Speaker 7 And then there were a bunch of things that were online, like, this is how you speak Pennsylvania Dutch. This is why they speak it.
None of that helped.

Speaker 7 What helped was an episode from AE where they did some Amish reality show, and it was one phrase. And it kind of hit all of the things that they say.
And it was, what is it? It's,

Speaker 7 I have to go out and tame the horses.

Speaker 7 I mean, that's all she said. And I was like, that's it.
I focused on that one word. And like for

Speaker 7 just to do any of those accents I hadn't heard of before, I can, I basically think of a phrase or look at a phrase that's been given and go, okay.

Speaker 7 This is how it's supposed to be said. And I actually learned, so I do a Scottish accent that's very, very similar to Pennsylvania Dutch.

Speaker 7 It was very hard not to jump into that accent while doing it because they're so similar. But with Scottish, they roll their R's.
Pennsylvania Dutch doesn't.

Speaker 7 So Scottish would be horses. Or let me do a better one.
Horses.

Speaker 12 There's the, there's that.

Speaker 7 hard roll. For Pennsylvania Dutch, it's horses.

Speaker 7 There's no role whatsoever.

Speaker 7 It's so subtle, you won't be able to tell, tell but it's easier for me to understand how to do it that way but yeah that's kind of how i like when you guys give me something that i'm you're like do this accent like okay so what phrase are you writing down that i can zero in on to like pick out the character that i'm going to be playing that's what i think i really enjoyed about your accents was they were very um legitimate.

Speaker 7 I mean, there was nothing caricature-like about them. Whereas when I do that particular accent, it's just pure caricature.

Speaker 7 i mean it's something you might find in disney or something like that it's it's i remember the the actual term you guys how that'd be that would be the go-to accent for any place that was in the woods it didn't really matter where in the woods i just assumed everybody assumed that the the

Speaker 7 uh the the gentle country folk all spoke that way and that would they would accept that whenever we role-played that's where we get ready

Speaker 7 it's funny how things grow out of something as simple as role-playing because when we were all young we would we would do that we were always interested in science and and and writing and things like that but our social group was very much consistent with just getting together role-playing and i was the gm and so i was responsible for coming up with all the really crappy accents and i feel your pain i really do

Speaker 7 yes who's the dm for my group i'm i'm basically the forever dm

Speaker 1 I share that as well. So it seems like we have a lot of forever DMs in this group.

Speaker 7 It was actually Gina who asked me recently because

Speaker 7 she's like, well, how do you, what's this accent you want to do? And I wish I had known Pennsylvania Judge. I knew what they sounded like, but I had no idea what the name of it was.

Speaker 7 And the only thing I could think of is people who talk that way, the the and thou, and Mark knows how to write all that stuff because he used to, he's got a big background in like uh mythology and history and everything, but um, was the movie The Witch.

Speaker 7 And that's, that's what I sent her. I was like, I guess they talk like they talk like this.
And

Speaker 7 so I sent that or because you did, yeah, you did a wonderful job with with hester by the way it's it was she was awesome thank you so much she only gets to show up like

Speaker 7 two or three times during the show poor poor hester but uh yeah she you did a wonderful job there but yeah that was that was the influence for hester i think was the witch and uh i wasn't sure if if gina had seen the movie or not and i did

Speaker 1 if she was a big horror fan or not but uh yeah that was definitely a big horror fan um and my approach is like i try to um

Speaker 1 if it's an accent that i've been coached with my dialect coach, I have like a really clear breakdown of sounds that I'll just run through before doing that accent.

Speaker 1 But if it's not, I try to also find like archival footage or,

Speaker 1 you know, anything that's as raw as possible.

Speaker 1 Like, yes, those breakdowns of like how to do this accent can be very helpful, but it's also really helpful to see how it is actually used by somebody who actually lives in that region, has that background.

Speaker 1 So that can help.

Speaker 1 Also, to the original question of how do you get into the scene,

Speaker 7 usually I can drop in.

Speaker 1 I also have a background in

Speaker 1 TTRPGs. So that definitely does help, Jesse.
I think that's a really good call out.

Speaker 1 But raise your hand if you're a TTRPG nerd.

Speaker 7 The screen is not on, but totally.

Speaker 7 There you go.

Speaker 1 But if you're having like a real block with the scene, what can also help is just get a reader to read along with.

Speaker 1 So you're actually talking with somebody and you, you, you know, it's, it's real, authentic and live. Not always always needed, but definitely can be helpful.

Speaker 7 But it's, it's, it's funny that you say that because on the technical end, when I was working on a particular accent, which was Cockney, I didn't know where to look.

Speaker 7 And so my first go-to was, wait a minute, Cecil Sedrick, Cecil the horse from Make a Bog Crane, or the

Speaker 7 what was it? Oh, Wind in the Willow.

Speaker 7 And I was like, I think that's Cockney. I'm going to go there.
So, I mean, that was the best I could do for an influence.

Speaker 7 I watched that show about 100 times before I could do the horse backwards and forwards, but I didn't know if that what got me or not.

Speaker 7 And how about from a,

Speaker 7 you know, the messed up part is, is I call it when, when I'm, because I'm so used to everybody playing a certain character, like Sam, Steve, and Aubrey, I'll refer to them like normally as Phyllis, Leon, and Mace.

Speaker 7 So like, I'm like, I gotta send Mace this email. I'm like, gosh, said that's that's Steven.

Speaker 7 And I also know those voices so well that when I'm writing, I try, I mean, one of the ways that I do dialogue, dialect, dialogue,

Speaker 7 is I'll talk in my best estimation of your voices while I'm writing because I really kind of want to get a feel. And I think over time, I've really gotten a sense of the cadence and so on.

Speaker 7 So when I'm writing

Speaker 7 lines, I'm actually speaking out loud a lot of times in my, like I said, my best and probably poor estimation of your own voices when I've heard them on the podcast.

Speaker 7 So it's been an interesting process because

Speaker 7 this is the only podcast that I've written where there is just, you know,

Speaker 7 there's no internal dialogue or anything like that.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 it was tough for me to

Speaker 7 want to back away off

Speaker 7 the description and all that other, the third person stuff.

Speaker 7 But like I said, one of the ways that I did that was to simply speak in what I thought was, you know, trying to imitate your voices so that I could kind of get the cadence and whatnot and just get the sentence structures the way I wanted them to where I thought it would work the best with your voices.

Speaker 7 I was going to say, you did an excellent job because the last few episodes, Steven has been doing an amazing job as Mace. And, like, I honestly thought,

Speaker 7 spoilers, I honestly thought that Mace was going to bite it at the end because of how just pissed off he was getting. And, like, I was really invested.
And I'm like, you can't kill off Mace.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry. You can't.
It's

Speaker 7 he's.

Speaker 7 I love Sam. I love Phyllis, but Mace is like the grounding, the grounding feature of the trio.
Like he's the one that's kind of like, listen, I know this stuff is getting haywire.

Speaker 7 It's kind of crappy, but here's the reality of the situation. And it was like, the way that you guys were writing the scripts were actually really good.
I don't think so. Thank you very much.

Speaker 7 Well, it's funny because when you first start the show, you think the

Speaker 7 one who's going to be the most,

Speaker 7 I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 7 I think the word might be cold. It would be Mace, because he's got the voice for it.

Speaker 7 He's kind of like, you know, he's got that hoarse voice got that deep voice and it actually ends up being more leon leon if you know the way mark designed the characters is

Speaker 7 leon's the more soft spoken one but he's also kind of the leon leon was kind of in my mind

Speaker 7 i don't want to say icy but he was the one who would hesitate the least to do the most intense job like when there were a lot of scenes where in the later episodes where there was some gunplay and people were getting shot.

Speaker 7 And Mace would fire out of a kind of exuberance.

Speaker 7 You know, he was, he was built to, or he was building like a volcano and then he would erupt and he would just, he would become violent, where Leon could slip in and out of that pretty easily.

Speaker 7 There was a coldness to him that.

Speaker 7 was kind of subtly introduced into his backstory as to what he had to deal with growing up and some of the character traits i thought might be uh intrinsic to that kind of an experience and so i thought for him

Speaker 7 it was more

Speaker 7 he had a kinship with Phyllis, but there was also

Speaker 7 a rock solidness to him that didn't oftentimes fluctuate. He was almost always a drown zero when you needed him.
But like you said, Mace kind of

Speaker 7 just

Speaker 7 the physicality of that character has a very grounding effect, too. And that's where I think Leon kind of sneaks in and it's kind of like, well, if you want someone shot effectively, you know.

Speaker 7 There's Leon. Leon take care of it.
And if you take the two examples, and these are subtleties that Mark writes in there, that if you go back and look, you can see, ah, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 7 And we're glad that we, the fans who picked up on that, like

Speaker 7 that

Speaker 7 Mace, they're like, oh, I'm glad you established Mace is kind of a loose cannon because it wouldn't make sense for anybody to do this, but you established early on that he'll do dumb things because he's just driven by emotion.

Speaker 7 And, you know, you can see that kind of like in the way they almost execute,

Speaker 7 again, spoiler, they execute some of the main villains is Mace is very personal about it. It's a very personal thing to him.

Speaker 7 Like when he finally executes Barnabas, he makes a joke, but you can see that he really relishes.

Speaker 7 It's like it was like Leon's choice to use the knife as opposed to the gub. He was more than willing to get close and cold.

Speaker 7 But I also, I didn't want a traditional duo because they were obviously working together for quite some time.

Speaker 7 And I didn't want to create a kind of, you know, to play into kind of that rote where, you know, there's the aggressive one and then there's the less uh the softer spoken, more rational one.

Speaker 7 And I didn't want that to be the case, I wanted Mace to be kind of unfocused, where Leon was much more focused, and he had a lot more control over Mace than Mace had over Leon.

Speaker 7 And so, there was a very complex, I like to think I'd written a fairly complex relationship between the two that didn't stray into stereotypes. And Leon was of the entire group quiet, but there was a

Speaker 7 a capacity in him that wasn't his present in the other two and then later on in the other uh the other two the uh the ingersoll sisters yeah and that's where i'm reminded of like i said how barnabas gets taken care of the hyena uh barnabas gets taken care of by mace which is kind of he's just so glad to kill him like he's he's emotionally driven and when leon takes out mercy he's just very shoots her in the head let's go and that's it that he'd be very cold about it very very matter of fact and just moves on and um yeah so i really i really liked and stephen and and sam you did an awesome job with with mace and uh and leon and and obviously phyllis is phyllis is like the heart of the group um

Speaker 7 you know she's kind of like a mother figure to leon

Speaker 7 and to a lesser degree but more of a peer to to uh to mace so that that that whole group uh we we think you guys did just a fantastic job yeah definitely let's see let's check out some more questions uh

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 one is is uh might be for me was um some people talked about the soundscape um and what my approach to that is i'm trying to find the question but i i remember it

Speaker 7 so So I by no, I will say this right out.

Speaker 7 I'm always hesitant to say that I'm a sound engineer because I'm not. There are people who go to school for that and

Speaker 7 know these programs infinitely better than I do. So I'm no sound engineer at all.

Speaker 7 I just do the sound for the show and I really just learn most of what I do by YouTube and just screwing around with the programs. But the way I approach it is

Speaker 7 just, I really want it to be a cinematic experience.

Speaker 7 So I just really picture a movie and then I'm like, okay, well, what would the sounds be in this if it was a movie and we just didn't have visuals and all I could go on is based on sound.

Speaker 7 So I have a lot of background sounds that I like to put in there to kind of give identity to the areas that they're in. And

Speaker 7 also,

Speaker 7 see, I lose my track of thought.

Speaker 7 Just to make it immersive.

Speaker 7 And especially with horror, I think in actual horror, even in movies, I think sound is the most important aspect.

Speaker 7 Even in movies, I think it's more important important than the visuals. I find myself focusing on sounds and horror movies than I do visuals.

Speaker 7 So that's kind of my approach is just kind of have this very immersive soundscape. And there are little mundane things that I like to do, you know, that seem like wisely put that in there.

Speaker 7 But it's just, again, I watch a lot of movies and horror blah, like first, if they're just talking and then you just hear someone in the background walking around.

Speaker 7 making coffee. It's just, it's just things that I think people typically do when they're discussing.
People go get a drink, people do this. I want it to be as realistic as possible.
And

Speaker 7 so, and you know, some,

Speaker 7 and we've had a lot of positive comments on that, which I'm very flattered about. And some people hate it.
I mean, some people, some people don't like it at all. So,

Speaker 7 you know, and I'm receptive to that as well. But that's kind of how I approach the sound to the show: trying to make it its own character and that it's,

Speaker 7 you know, it's immersive, it's interesting, it's dynamic.

Speaker 7 You know, sometimes it seems like maybe the footsteps go on for a little while, but I'm just trying to build tension and atmosphere.

Speaker 7 And, you know, like in a movie, you know, a horror movie, you'll see, there'll be a scene where they're just watching. That's why I do it.
They're walking down a hall and it's just very quiet.

Speaker 7 And you follow them for what seems to be an abnormal amount of time, but it kind of pays off in the end when something happens or something along those lines. So

Speaker 7 that's a, that's my spiel about some. But I, by no means, like I said, there, there are people, Sam, for instance, is probably a

Speaker 7 superior when it comes to, you know, just knowing the programs and,

Speaker 7 you know, I think you have a bit, do you have a bit of training, Sam?

Speaker 12 I do, but I actually had a couple things to say. I had a couple of things to add to what you were saying.

Speaker 12 When you do a thing, and you put that thing out to the world and people listen to it and people enjoy it, that actually kind of makes you a person that does the thing.

Speaker 12 So you say you're not an engineer, but you actually are in the very technical sense. And you have a very good ear and you have a love and a desire and a passion for it.
So like

Speaker 7 you can't say you're not.

Speaker 7 You just can't.

Speaker 7 I'm just always afraid someone's like, that guy's not a real sound engineer.

Speaker 12 No, it's, that's never, that's never going to be a thing because again, you put a show out that you sound design and people listen to it.

Speaker 12 And of course, there's going to be people that don't like it because there's always going to be people that don't like everything

Speaker 12 so you just you you do it and you do it well and you listen to other shows that are like known for their sound design like unwell unwell is like gotten a bunch of awards for their sound design you listen to unwell and then you and you listen to the gentleman from hell or the sleep wake cycle and it is it is different obviously there are different styles and different things that you do but it yours is just as good and it's it's like being a musician.

Speaker 12 Just because this one person has had classical training and they went to school to learn to play the violin and this person taught themself, they're both playing in the fucking symphony.

Speaker 12 So like, it's just how it works.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it's definitely a good way to look at it.

Speaker 7 Sorry to hop in here real quick, but also to piggyback on that notion, for all of you who said, I'm not a professional voice actor or I've been a professional voice actor for one year, but I've been doing it for nine years,

Speaker 7 you are wrong. You are a professional voice actor.

Speaker 7 If you approach this from a professional perspective and you accord yourself and compose yourself and comport yourself in your work as a professional, congratulations. You're a professional.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's very easy to imposter syndrome your way out of a job, but I think everybody here is actively and at a high bar

Speaker 1 doing the, you know, making art, inspiring people. And I think it is really remarkable.
So don't undersell yourselves, any of you.

Speaker 7 Well, thank you. We appreciate it.
I'd have to agree. And it reminds me,

Speaker 7 my day job, I'm a freelance writer and editor. I've been doing that about eight years now.
And it's because of these two. I was all set to go get a bachelor's and go to law school.

Speaker 7 and graduate law school in my mid-40s with 200 grand in debt. And the editing I was doing for them, they're like, you know, people will pay for this, right? And I'm like, shut up.
No, they won't.

Speaker 7 And so while I was finishing on my paralegal degree, I started kind of experimenting with freelance editing to begin with. And then I got into writing later.
And I was

Speaker 7 just doing some general research online on how to go about being a freelancer. And they said, for those brand new, brand speaking new,

Speaker 7 all you have to do is tell people you're an editor. Tell people you're a writer.
Sooner or later, someone is going to believe you and they're going to give you pay and work.

Speaker 7 And take that work.

Speaker 7 And congratulations, you're a professional

Speaker 7 writer,

Speaker 7 sound engineer, whatever. So I have to agree that it's definitely a fake it till you make it kind of thing, though.
Absolutely.

Speaker 7 Kind of being a little broken upstairs, as the three of us are,

Speaker 7 I still eight, nine years on, I definitely relate to what Steve's saying. And it

Speaker 7 part of me, it's still kind of in the back of my mind.

Speaker 12 I still get that

Speaker 7 little voice saying, are you the, are you afraid? Are you? And it's like,

Speaker 7 well, yeah, yeah. And it's getting easier to say yes.
And all you have to do is keep faking it.

Speaker 7 And sooner or later, whether it takes a year or 20 years, sooner or later that voice will finally shut up. And I really look forward to that day.

Speaker 7 Fan fiction podcast.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 7 the voice should be silenced a little bit after that one. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 7 We have a question for Steve specifically. Oh, no.

Speaker 7 So it says, Zivek's performance as both Dr. Loctrum and Maze in particularly struck me with a dang.
How do you approach playing two very different personas in the same show?

Speaker 7 Well, we've already talked about that a little bit.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 everybody on this show has voiced at least, what, in the finale, how many of us had like, what, two, three characters we were all voicing throughout the entire thing? So

Speaker 1 maybe they killed mine off,

Speaker 1 one of mine off the episode before.

Speaker 7 For Margaret, yeah. Or Margaret.
But you have, you have quite a few characters. But yes, yes.
Yeah. So we all voice multiple characters on the show.

Speaker 7 This kind of goes back into that question of how do you get into the mindset of your characters. And yeah, I got the same tabletop RPG brain issue that everybody else has.

Speaker 7 And I really got to direct this at Sam and Aubrey in particular due to the amount of time we spend talking to each other in the show.

Speaker 7 Have you developed that nervous tick in the back of your brain when you're reading the script and you're recording your lines?

Speaker 12 And I already know what you're going to sound like before the show comes out oh yeah so we've just been listening to each other for over a year at this point and it's like oh i totally know how sam would would respond to this or how phyllis would would do this or oh yeah i hear you guys in my head too yeah i had i had the extra pleasure of having um edited aubrey's voice in another podcast so i had actually already listened to her voice for literal hours and hours and days and so i was so good on like like phyllis's voice in my head when we started.

Speaker 12 We started. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And we've also actually either, I'm sure we've all listened to each other on other podcasts. I mean, Aubrey and Sam, I know you've both worked on Breathing Space.

Speaker 7 I popped in for an episode of that and actually worked with you, Sam.

Speaker 7 I think I was talking with you on like a tramp freighter as a crazy fam Elliott kind of guy.

Speaker 1 Breathing space reunion over here.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah, kind of weird.

Speaker 7 And, you know, you'll hear me creeping around occasionally in like silk verses and that kind of thing.

Speaker 7 But just,

Speaker 7 yeah, it's, you just sort of start learning to slip into the character. Me, I just read the scripts, and over time, a voice starts coming out when I'm talking to him.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, yeah, that kind of seems like this kind of a character based on what he's saying or what they're saying or what this thing is saying.

Speaker 7 And you just sort of slip into it. And

Speaker 7 then you sort of build up this persona in your head. And that's, that's basically how the characters start coming out.

Speaker 7 It's funny that you, it's, it's funny that you mentioned you hear each other's voices in your head because I, I do that as well when I'm

Speaker 7 so a little behind the scenes thing that nobody sees except Mark and I is how pissed I get when Mark, and he knows this,

Speaker 7 I feel bad every time. So

Speaker 7 I'll do the whole episode and it'll take like 14 hours. I'm just at that computer trying just OCDing the shit out of it.
Like, okay, I have the sound here. I want this here.
I want that there.

Speaker 7 And I get done and then I send it to Mark for final approval. And I fucking know that phone's going to ring.
And I get.

Speaker 7 And as you say, Steve, you know, I just need to, and I, and I know he's going to get pissed out. Now, listen to something.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I, you really don't know how something's going to sound to somebody else. So I try to be.

Speaker 7 as objective as I can, trying to, you know, the whole view from nowhere kind of thing, trying to figure out what the audience is hearing. And I'm like, ah, this needs to be tweaked just a little bit.

Speaker 7 And then I start to realize what's going to happen and how badly Steven's going to take it. So

Speaker 7 I'll call him up. And there's this silence on the end of the phone, which is like most silences.
It's pregnant with rage.

Speaker 7 Like,

Speaker 7 can you get rid of this and maybe extend that just a little bit? And there's always a pause.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but it's going to be a pain in the ass. And I'm, all right, well, if you're, and I always give them the same caveat.
Well, you can't do it.

Speaker 7 it's no big deal no i can do it all right all right it's just

Speaker 7 what he says again is like when you're working and maybe sam you could relate to this so he'll want to add a line somewhere and the whole the whole thing is perfectly spaced out with the sound effects and the music but if you have to move one fucking thing it makes every you have to move everything

Speaker 7 And the fucking thing stutters when it does things by a tremor, and it's just such a massive pain in the ass. And he's like, Hey, can you, can you get Steve to say this one extra line?

Speaker 7 I'm like, Oh, geez. Like, when I call him, it is like phoning into the middle of a tornado, like in the middle.

Speaker 7 It's already started, it's already winding around, and I'll, he'll answer the phone in the midst. The echoes of things breaking are there.
I mean, he's just glorious.

Speaker 7 But I'm also, I'm dogged. I'm like, I really want the extra line, or I really want that sound effect moved, or just clear a little space here.
And he'll he'll do it, but I'll do it very begrime.

Speaker 7 And then I feel bad later. Oh my gosh, he'll call me up and apologize.
Sorry, this is a pain in the ass. I'm like, I know, I know.
I just, I think it would be a little bit better.

Speaker 7 But as it pertains to your voices, when he add, he asks me to add a line sometimes. So I'll hold spaces and I have to literally try to talk like each one of you.

Speaker 7 So I've got it down so well that I know the cadence with which you talk or how you would say a certain line. So I can allot that space

Speaker 7 in the uh workspace in Adobe. But yeah, it's it's a part that nobody ever sees is that.
Well, it's also because of the

Speaker 7 really backwards way we go about this. I don't know anything about anybody else's podcast or how they put things together, but I have to assume it's more professional than us.

Speaker 7 Like we are right down to the wire. So I finish an episode, Walker edits the episode,

Speaker 7 and then I send it out, or Steven will send it out. We get all the voices, we get all the sound effects on Monday and then Tuesday he'll do it.

Speaker 7 And he'll post the rough on Patreon, which is the first time I get to listen to it, which may be an hour before we send it out.

Speaker 7 So we're making adjustments like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour before it goes out. So we're going back and forth, back and forth.
He's getting mad. I'll get mad because.

Speaker 7 I wrote something the wrong way and I used a word the wrong way.

Speaker 7 Usage has been, I mean, I get so pissed off when I've used the wrong word or something like that and we're just raging at each other across the phone lines uh

Speaker 7 and it just goes on that way until the final second like he'll send me a text is it ready to go yes it's and then it's out and like it's it's right down to the wire every single week for the last like however many we've been doing this it's funny because we have the plot it's all plotted out it's just it's just the specifics of like like what i'm doing i've been sitting there for and i know he does the same with writing because we're constantly writing, we're constantly, you know, this is all we do is

Speaker 7 podcasts, like 24-7. I mean, we do.
It's funny because we go back and say, I've been doing this for, I'm like, I'm writing two podcasts at once. Shut up, just do it.

Speaker 7 And he's like, well, I have to do the sound.

Speaker 7 I do the goddamn Patreon things.

Speaker 7 And we're just raging at each other. Two brothers who just, if we were in the same room, I'm sure we'd be hitting each other.
Which is why it's very good that we're not. But

Speaker 7 that's just a little background for what is the funny things that go on. I say funny because in retrospect, it's funny, but next time he does it,

Speaker 7 I'll be pissed.

Speaker 7 Because my wife sits there and watches me watch the foot. She's like, what are you doing so intensely? I'm like, just waiting for that fucker to call me and tummy.

Speaker 1 Assault is frowned upon in most societies.

Speaker 7 I want to say your sound netting has been has been spot on. And it, just you talking about how much that you put into it and how hard it is, it's it's been it's been getting better.

Speaker 7 There have been a couple of times that I've listened, and a character is dying. Like, um,

Speaker 7 um,

Speaker 7 it was when you introduced the Ingersolls, the

Speaker 7 um agent. And oh, yeah, he got he got eaten by one of the hyenas.
And I listened to it, and I'm, I have headphones on, and I'm hearing it. I'm like, oh, that's awful.

Speaker 7 That, oh, that, I don't want to be that person. So you've got like, you're doing really, really good with it.
I wouldn't. Oh, thank you.
So

Speaker 7 it's been awesome. We work very hard at it, but it's like I said, we're brothers and we're kind of used to being at each other's throats and certain things.

Speaker 7 I think there would be a pot, there's podcast material just in the interactions between the three of us because it's.

Speaker 7 I don't know why we do what we do. And well, I guess I do know why.
It's just kind of legend.

Speaker 7 I've written a lot of podcasts at this point. And so I should have a lot of experience in terms of the process required to get things out on time and so on and so forth.

Speaker 7 And I may have written more than

Speaker 7 a lot of them. How many have I written? And they're always like 70 episodes.

Speaker 7 So you would think after all of these podcasts, after all of these extraordinarily long seasons, like they go up to 74 episodes, I've written all these short stories, but I would have some semblance of an understanding of the process and how to improve it.

Speaker 7 No. No, I just keep doing the same stupid thing over and over and over again because it's the only way I know.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we, we, it's,

Speaker 7 it's a process. It's not stupid if it works.
No, definitely, it definitely works. Like, I told him, I'm like, it's just some people's style.

Speaker 7 Some people can write ahead, other people, like, like I said, it's all plotted out. It's just a matter of writing it.
Two one of us kills the other. It's yeah.

Speaker 7 Another question from the audience is: who is everybody's

Speaker 7 favorite part of the show, or favorite lines they had, or favorite scenes that they had, or favorite character they played?

Speaker 7 Well, I kind of said mine already.

Speaker 7 My favorite character is Mace.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 just the way that he is,

Speaker 7 he was someone who grew on me. Like I started off, like Phyllis is amazing.
She's very proper. She's very calm till the end.

Speaker 7 But like she started to be, she's the one that drew me in when I first started listening.

Speaker 7 But Mace really, really grew on me. Well, thank you.

Speaker 7 And to touch on that, actually, I would like to say, Sam, you're doing an excellent job as Leon. And I've really come to like him throughout the course of the show.

Speaker 7 If I had to describe Mace as one thing, it would be consistent.

Speaker 7 You know what he's going to probably say or do in most situations. I like that Sam has developed an arc over the course of the show, and he's come into his own.

Speaker 7 He's not a junior G-man. He's very much in control of everything he does.
He's become cold, calculating, highly professional.

Speaker 7 And it's just very interesting to watch that transition throughout the course of the show.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 12 Oh, wow. That was a little bit of the hair right there.

Speaker 7 Sorry.

Speaker 7 Do any of you have any favorite scenes or characters that you've played?

Speaker 1 My favorite part was actually Mace's last line when he made that joke.

Speaker 7 That was, I cracked open the booth when I was reading it. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 I have a joke for you. That That was a cold delivery.

Speaker 1 Stop me if you've heard this one.

Speaker 1 I died. Yeah, the line goes hard.

Speaker 12 I really enjoy all the kind of softer moments with Leon and Phyllis and Leon and Mace.

Speaker 12 I like, I like that there's room for that for

Speaker 12 just kind of like the, it's obvious how close these three are. And I actually don't have a favorite character because I like the main three so much.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I wanted to quickly tell a story that I was going to tell earlier and I forgot

Speaker 12 when Stephen was talking about how we know how we're going to like answer and how we're going to sound when we're reading the script. I actually was reading the March Hare

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 12 I think it was one of Aubrey's other characters that was like further down on the page or something. And I, and the March Hare actually accidentally said Phyllis.

Speaker 12 Like I was actually talking, I would like, for some reason, I was suddenly talking to Phyllis.

Speaker 12 But anyway, yeah, I love the kind of softer, slower moments. There's one, I think, a little bit earlier in the show, and he brings her, Leon brings her some tea.

Speaker 12 She's like reading a book or something. And I think that's the scene that kind of transitions into her talking about her mother.
And I really, really enjoyed that scene a lot.

Speaker 1 I think there's a lot of really strong interaction there, especially like as it keeps going, you know, they develop in this like sort of impossible situation together and it really shows who they truly are, but they still make the time for that connection to each other.

Speaker 1 Like they don't lose that connection and what keeps them together and makes them them, even when they're facing literally hell itself.

Speaker 7 That was one thing that was really important to me with regards to the characters was to make sure there was a solid bond between everybody.

Speaker 7 Because I really, you know, horror can kind of be its own thing, independent of characters a lot of the time. It takes on its own life when that becomes the kind of energy of

Speaker 7 a particular kind of movie or show or what have you. And I didn't really want the horror to be so overpowering that all they were doing was

Speaker 7 being scared and running away and all this. I wanted there to be a lot of time dedicated to them.

Speaker 7 They already come in with a bond, which is a given, which is kind of provided at the outset, but then they kind of, over the course of everything that's happening, kind of develop an even stronger bond.

Speaker 7 And I think that's, you know, to a large degree, I think horror kind of hits or misses based on the human element, which is, I think, something a lot of horror enterprises might miss, at least in my opinion, sometimes, is that

Speaker 7 really important human element that you have to have to have any degree of sympathy or empathy with the characters so that if something does happen to them, you have a stake in it.

Speaker 7 You know, it's interesting that you mentioned that, and also that I'm in a room full of tabletop nerds. I'm about to show my age here, actually.

Speaker 7 I don't know if you actually played the original, or not really the original, but Advanced Dungeons and Dragons way back in the day. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 The old Ravenloft module, the original Ravenloff module, where they have an exact conversation about this and

Speaker 7 how important it is to make sure that your villains and your creatures are grounded in some semblance of a reality and that they have that sort of personality and that they're more importantly, they're relatable to an audience.

Speaker 7 They have a human side to them. And it's typically that perversion thereof that makes them as terrifying as they really are.
And I feel that you really cinched that with a lot of the work on Meltopia.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 7 And you guys definitely brought it to life.

Speaker 7 I mean, like I said, the characters really come to life with you guys, with the voice actors, because we, like I said, you know, we can voice act pretty well, but

Speaker 7 you guys have really done a fantastic job

Speaker 7 bringing those characters to life. I was going to say, probably one of my

Speaker 7 it was a, it wasn't a small part, but it was a small part in the grand scheme of the show. But, Jesse, you did a character

Speaker 7 phenomenal job. Uh, you know, you did a phenomenal job with all of them, but there was this one character in specific that I love that you play because just you just really went into the role.

Speaker 7 I don't know her name. I, she, she was the central part of one story.
Um, in the gentleman from hell, in the gentleman, it's the cage, and the one that's in the cage.

Speaker 7 Oh, the yeah, yeah, um, oh, the the succubus lady, the succubus lady. Yeah, you did, you did an awesome job with her.
I mean, you just really got into that role.

Speaker 7 And that was, she was one of my, my, my, my, I always liked the villain. So, like, I love the sparrows.
I like how you all play the sparrows.

Speaker 7 And that character, that character was just really well done. You did an awesome job with her.

Speaker 1 She just really flowed once I got the idea of what you guys were looking for. She just.
was one of those characters that everything just clicked right into place and it wasn't a fight.

Speaker 1 We all know how they can fight sometimes.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So I did, and like I said, you guys have played all these characters phenomenally. And

Speaker 7 I think, you know, one of the other things that came into play too is that

Speaker 7 when I brought the Ingersoll sisters in with the main group, I also had to kind of foster a developmental kind of connection with them as well so that everybody was in at the end of it.

Speaker 7 They were in the same space with each other so that they were, there wasn't any, there was no learning curve with each other anymore.

Speaker 7 They kind of knew each other well enough to kind of predict each other's perspectives and what might lead a person to say this as opposed to that.

Speaker 7 And those arcs were extremely difficult to pull out too, because they had come in in the middle of the season. And,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 you guys did that wonderfully. Like, especially, I was trying to develop an arc for

Speaker 7 Pat whereby she started to assert herself in a way that,

Speaker 7 you know, it's hard for an outsider coming in, first of all. And second of all, you're in a wholly supernatural situation.

Speaker 7 And so her more granular personality had to come out like it was always there, but it had to somewhat come to the surface over the course of all the traumas.

Speaker 7 And Margaret was kind of going in the other direction. She was very scientized in her paradigm, and she was seeing that dissolve.
And then the reality behind

Speaker 7 her pursuit started to show through as a supernaturalism kind of eroded her confidence and steadier reality.

Speaker 7 And so by the time time everybody was in the same space, I was at a point where I was viewing everybody as just, there wasn't like latecomers or newcomers. It was like, this is the, this is the group.

Speaker 7 They're kind of an

Speaker 7 unexpected family at this point, which was why when I wrote Margaret's death into it, I thought that was almost necessary because every family needs that dark moment.

Speaker 7 Every family needs to have that death from a family, I think. And I think the way everybody reacted to that was just fantastic.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I had the listeners saw that as, you know, we, we had planned Margaret's death for a long time, and Mark had a trajectory where you, you, with each episode, you start to see Margaret kind of

Speaker 7 her will to continue on just degenerating as it became. But I also wanted to be realistic.
Like I, sometimes I'm, I don't know

Speaker 7 what the audience is thinking. And so I kind of hope they're seeing what I'm putting out there.
Like I didn't make anything too obvious.

Speaker 7 Like there was a part part where Margaret had brought to pass attention that they had received this letter from

Speaker 7 David's character. Yeah.

Speaker 7 The guy who hired them in the first place. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And, you know, they have this, they have this interaction, and it seems like Margaret really legitimately didn't intend to bring that letter to pass attention for the purposes of kind of negotiating a way out of this.

Speaker 7 Pat got very upset, seemingly over the top. Then Margaret kind of explained to to her, oh, no, that wasn't the way I did this.
You're an asshole for suspecting as much.

Speaker 7 And then she marches off and presents the letter to someone else. But the subtext there, I thought, was you could easily not come away with that perspective.
Margaret really did.

Speaker 7 She's a reason why she didn't

Speaker 7 not bring the letter to anyone else and she brought it to Pat. And so I was trying to kind of subtly influence this other dimension to her character whereby she was slowly eroding.
She was.

Speaker 7 losing it in the face of what is obviously not a stable world anymore. This is is how things are.
That's not how she would want them to be. Science fails in the face of it.

Speaker 7 And so she eventually trembles. And Pat does the exact opposite.
She's coming out of it. She's establishing herself.
She's in her

Speaker 7 element, so to speak. So that came, I think, you know, with everybody's acting on that was wonderful.
I thought it was, especially the death scene, Kelly. That was tremendous.

Speaker 1 Like I say,

Speaker 1 the evolution of the sisters, like the introduction of them and the way that you wrote them, like exactly what you just said, that that's exactly how it felt um

Speaker 1 but we got to i the death scene

Speaker 1 talk about shouting out in your booth right i was like oh

Speaker 1 like i had i didn't see that coming at all and i was like okay i need to do justice to this because i realized like what a absolute what the heck is happened is going on here right and so um yeah and i hate the fact that she's gone i keep going no no no there's something there's something right there's something she's coming back right um

Speaker 7 but kind of reveled in that because we kind of teased people with Mace. People thought Mace was dead, so we figured, ah, somehow we'll bring Mark.

Speaker 7 We wanted a false positive, like, oh, they'll bring the person back because they brought Mace back. Oh, they have people waiting in Discord for that.
They're like, oh, that finally happened.

Speaker 7 Exactly, right?

Speaker 1 I'm always of kind of the mentality that we're in a horror podcast. Not a single person's walking out alive.
Everybody's going to die. So when people walk away or Phyllis makes her return,

Speaker 1 it makes it like 20 times better because, nope, they're supposed to be dead.

Speaker 7 They're in a horror podcast.

Speaker 1 They're supposed to be dead. It's like being in a horror movie.

Speaker 7 You're going to die.

Speaker 1 But I really loved the destruction of Margaret's view of the world. And even more, I loved how it became clear the affection that was between the two sisters.

Speaker 1 They were not raised together, but you could tell that they had the strongest bond because Margaret was following her sister into this thing that terrified her, that challenged every rational belief she had ever had.

Speaker 1 But she did it because her sister asked her to, and she loved her sister enough.

Speaker 1 So to watch her fall apart and to realize that not even her beloved sister can fix this for her was both fun to play and just fun to read in a horribly twisted kind of fun.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it was

Speaker 1 a fantastic arc because some of the most devout fanatics of the weirdest stuff are scientific people

Speaker 1 because science has left them with something they can't explain and they're afraid. So they go looking for something to solve that.

Speaker 1 In my mind, kind of in the back of my mind, that was what was happening with margaret was her science was failing her and there was something else and it was bigger and it was scarier and she didn't have answers for the first time she didn't have answers

Speaker 1 so that's kind of where i was going through her destruction and her clinging to her sister until she just couldn't anymore No, that's exactly on point because that's exactly, I mean, you played that perfectly because

Speaker 7 that was kind of the perception that I wanted to kind of erode was that you have this confidence in the Newtonian world of cause and effect and everything has, whether it's extraordinarily complex or not, underlying all of that, there is a justification in the real world for it.

Speaker 7 And she had kind of built up a wall with her science. And it would look to the outside observer that she's into this because obviously she helped design this machine and so on and so forth.

Speaker 7 But that's really just an outward manifestation of that inner armor that she's developed through her adherence to science.

Speaker 7 And slowly over the course of the show she's losing that armor she's falling apart and pat is in a different place she's in a place where she's she likes the idea that there's more to the universe she wants there to be more to the universe she's into the supernatural but her problem is then she gets a little too much of what she wanted yes the world is troubled by ghosts and spirits and things like that but far more than just ghosts and spirits and things of that nature, which it was also

Speaker 7 a kind of reality that that phyllis had to deal with whereas she had kind of like one toe in the pond the entire time as a psychic where she'd been kind of exposed to the shallows of the supernatural and now she's moving into the depths and that was kind of where i went with her character whereas everyone else was kind of starting out from a perspective of not having

Speaker 7 real direct experiences of the supernatural, even if they've had experiences of supernatural, but they're objective. Like you could write them off with science or misdirection or misidentification.

Speaker 7 She's in there. She's at least got a toe in there.

Speaker 7 She's telepathic or clairvoyant. And so she starts out with a willingness that none of them have because she has direct experience.

Speaker 7 But then as the show goes on, she's shown entirely different vistas of that world that she's only been playing in the shallows of.

Speaker 7 And so that's where her descent comes in, which is why ultimately I had her hit the bottom, which is to take on those attributes herself, to become part of the paranormal

Speaker 7 as an entity herself, partaking of those energies, not just observing them. So everybody kind of had a different share of exposure to it

Speaker 7 as I wrote. At least that's how I intended it.

Speaker 7 But I thought everybody did just a spectacular job. And I will point out that the death scene with Margaret was one of those instances where Stephen and I almost came to blows

Speaker 7 because I didn't want to say she had hanged herself. I wanted the sound effect to speak for itself.
So his first, his first iteration, I was like,

Speaker 7 it sounds like the boards are kind of like overlapping with the rope. That's not going to work.
He's like, well, yeah, I did it that way specifically for this reason. He explains it.

Speaker 7 I'm like, yeah, but can we separate that out? Just so it's like, can we put a silence before that? Have the boards ending and then bring in the rope? And it's like, I got to make space for that.

Speaker 7 I've already done that. I'm like, look, can't you just move it just a little bit?

Speaker 7 So I just, we, I just want to hear the rope and turn the volume up on the rope so that there's no question in anybody's mind that she had hanged herself. So we went back and forth on that for a while.

Speaker 7 I was like, I was like, well, the fucking floorboards wouldn't just stop because she's hanging herself. They got to be there.

Speaker 7 It's like, well, we got to do it for dramatic effects. So just take it out.
I'm like, Pat's not moving. She's stopped.
She's done. She's not walking.
She's not moving. She's just standing there.

Speaker 7 So there's no floorboards.

Speaker 12 He's like, Yeah, but it just

Speaker 7 please. We just put the rope in that.
Just the rope in a total isolation. So we went back on.
I was.

Speaker 7 He was right. It was after I did it.
I cut out the music and I just did the silence. It's like, Cap, he's right.

Speaker 7 I always do it. I just begrudgingly do it because I'm just pissed I have to go back upstairs.
It's just like moving around in my house is a pain in the ass.

Speaker 7 I have like three floors I have to go up between. So I'm like, I'm willing to bet everybody here has an infinitely better sound booth than either of us.

Speaker 7 And we hate going into our respective sound booths. I have like a spare room that I converted.
That's just filled with junk.

Speaker 7 And he's got this horrible attic room that is just either a million million degrees or it's like 25 degrees below.

Speaker 7 So, like, when we get cast into our respective recording booths, we're just miserable. We just want to get it done and get out.

Speaker 7 It's really, I really want to say to him at some times, we're just like, you know, I have to go back upstairs and fucking record in the Arctic, right? I don't give a shit.

Speaker 7 I have to go back and then crew. And that's cold as shit.
So you can do it too. And I was like, all right.

Speaker 7 It's just like, no, I don't want to climb three, three flights of stairs, go into the cold and sit there and set up everything. I was like, oh, oh, fuck it.

Speaker 7 But I always do it because I want to make sure

Speaker 7 everything's good. But yeah, those scenes were awesome, though.
And

Speaker 7 you guys played it super well.

Speaker 7 Let's see.

Speaker 7 Oh, here's a here's a here's a common question we get, but

Speaker 7 so some questions are that you know, a traditional season is like 12 to 21 episodes. So Meltopia has a long history of having very long.

Speaker 7 So like it's 60 to 70 episodes.

Speaker 7 episodes and the gentleman from hell was no exception so some people were wondering why that that particular creative choice well i think everybody here is a well maybe not unique because we're all in the same boat i think and appreciate that because i you know i'm a writer but you know i i'm a gamer at least i was a long time ago and who doesn't want a longer session as opposed to a shorter session so you know your players are always like is that really the end can we is there more you know can we continue to play is there so you're always trying to squeeze more juice out of an idea because everybody enjoys it and so i just like to write.

Speaker 7 I make the, I, there's no real particular

Speaker 7 justification except for

Speaker 7 I like to write long, uh, long or very, very long seasons. I love to develop lore.
Um, and I like to,

Speaker 7 you know, as long as I'm not padding for length, you know, I'm not a big fan of the novel format, generally speaking, because I think a lot of novelists pad the material.

Speaker 7 just to justify the length and

Speaker 7 I only go as long as I have material and I have a, and I have an interest in that material. And so it just ends up being really long.

Speaker 7 I think a lot of it is also what we like to write or what we like to read. As Marcus said before, like we're big Lovecraft fans.
We're big fans of large worlds.

Speaker 7 And lore is one of the big things that we love so much. So like in The Gentleman from Hell, there's some side stories.
And I think that really...

Speaker 7 For me anyway, enriches the story because it's not, I don't want just a linear story that just goes, okay, step one, step two, step three.

Speaker 7 I really want people to feel like this is a real mythology that has, you know, things like in the real world, like, you know, in Christianity and

Speaker 7 Abrahamic religions, you have apocryphal scripts, you have Gnostic texts, you have all these other things that

Speaker 7 go into a belief system. And you have these stories, these parables and everything.
And we really wanted to get into that idea. And, you know, it's like that

Speaker 7 little story they read about with Jesse's character. I can't remember the

Speaker 7 succubus character.

Speaker 7 You know, where we read.

Speaker 7 I think vignettes are a really important part of the development of any story. I think that they're not just a colorful diversion.
It's something that kind of fills out the story and gives context

Speaker 7 and really does provide a lot of the

Speaker 7 give the story overall a kind of robust feel.

Speaker 7 What I think, another aspect of this that I think the voice actors could likely speak to is

Speaker 7 the one thing I know about the brothers is,

Speaker 7 and I learned this very soon after coming on board with Mountopia, is that

Speaker 7 the writing is a pressure release valve for them, especially because of their,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 They need that outlet. It is every bit.
Did you check your end?

Speaker 7 I may have. I did.

Speaker 7 I was going to say that visual cue is going to be lost in

Speaker 7 the audio, saying the vocal.

Speaker 7 I think I'm safe

Speaker 7 in.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're in the same room with them. Are you sure?

Speaker 7 I think the usage is, I think they'll allow it.

Speaker 7 But it's very much

Speaker 7 a part of their medication, every bit as much as the rather large bag of medication Steve has.

Speaker 7 Honestly, I've never seen

Speaker 7 so many pill bottles in one there. Anyway,

Speaker 7 they need it. And I think we all have that creative itch that needs to be scratched.
And I'm sure some aspect of this is part of why

Speaker 7 you guys do what you do.

Speaker 7 And that's why some of these stories are so long because

Speaker 7 Mark especially,

Speaker 7 he's like a dog with a bone. But if he did wrap these stories up sooner or make tighter stories or make more limited series, he's just immediately going to move on to the next one.

Speaker 7 And he has more notebooks of

Speaker 7 unfinished stories and more notebooks of ideas. and entire other worlds that will never see the light of day.

Speaker 7 We have enough content for multiple lifetimes, and it's because it's a pressure release belt. They need to let this out.
But we'd like to hear from you guys about

Speaker 7 is that part of why you do what you do?

Speaker 7 I think that's a fairly safe thing to say. I mean, I feel that everybody here and that works on this show, we all have a need to create and to express ourselves.
And

Speaker 7 I will say it speaks volumes to your capacity to select voice actors and the like, because,

Speaker 7 as we discussed earlier, we all find ourselves very capable when it comes to slipping into these characters. These personas very much seem to fit all of us like a glove.

Speaker 7 It's a very natural transition for a lot of us. I never struggle with, okay, now I got to try and figure out how I'm going to play this person.

Speaker 7 No, it's a very natural transition to turn into these persons, these creatures, these

Speaker 7 things that breathe life into the magnificent hellscape you've created for us. Well, thank you.

Speaker 7 I mean, I take that as a compliment, but

Speaker 1 yeah, I think it's kind of the nature of being a creative in today's world where capitalism is very much alive and stable work is very much a fun thing to have.

Speaker 1 Where I don't think you do this,

Speaker 1 I don't think you do it unless you have to, like unless you really need to in your soul do this.

Speaker 1 And so I think that a lot of us have that, you know, pressure release or that we want to have that create creativeness and creativity come out and be something we do and who we are because we're actively fighting for it.

Speaker 1 It's not falling into our lap.

Speaker 1 It's, it's some, some, all of us, everyone here, You know, we're all, we all got to do it.

Speaker 1 And there's also the love of the story. We're all involved in storytelling.
And you don't, much like Harper said, you don't just start telling stories for like, oh, you know,

Speaker 1 once upon a time, the end. No, you, you start storytelling in various ways because the story is an intrinsic part of who you are.
Matt can tell you, I am always reading.

Speaker 1 I am reading something at any given time. And it's usually a story, a story about someone's life, a story about fiction.
It just constantly the need for the story.

Speaker 1 And especially in, as Harper said, we're in a capitalist society and it's quickly trending towards a dystopian capitalist society, which makes the story.

Speaker 1 I'm an optimist, so I'm going with trendy.

Speaker 7 I mean, I'd go with incipient, but you you know.

Speaker 1 Optimist, optimist.

Speaker 1 So the story becomes even more important.

Speaker 1 And horror stories in particular, and the type that Stephen, Mark, and Walker put together for us to act out,

Speaker 1 it reminds us that, one, it could be worse.

Speaker 1 There are bigger, nastier, scarier things out there than what's going on in our lives, which helps, A, lessen the stress of our lives and B, kind of puts it in perspective.

Speaker 1 It's a lot less annoying to have to take a bus that's 20 minutes late when you're later on that night going to be playing a character who is literally fighting against forces from hell trying to come up.

Speaker 1 It kind of makes it a little more bearable the every day.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 1 yes, it gives context, and that story is absolutely crucial to that.

Speaker 1 I think I just started wandering off on a tangent, and I apologize.

Speaker 7 No, I definitely

Speaker 7 make sense. Yeah.
I mean, if you're talking about, if you're talking about pressure releases, I

Speaker 7 get to play a bad guy.

Speaker 7 I mean, what more of a pressure release can you have than being that sinister character and giving it your all and really going all out and how you make this person sound and feel?

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 for me,

Speaker 7 bad guys are the fun ones. Like,

Speaker 7 the heroes always have to have a hero aspect to them. Whereas the villains, you don't necessarily have to be a demonic force to be a villain.

Speaker 7 You just have to be an awful person and not care about who you hurt. So, like,

Speaker 7 understanding Whitlock right away, he not necessarily in his own mind was a villain. He was doing what he thought was right.
But when you look at it from the outside, he was an asshole.

Speaker 7 Like, he was just a piece of shit that that was like look we're gonna kill these people because we think they're the reason this is happening we don't know that they're the reason this is happening he was kind of right but he didn't know he was right and it wasn't until after afterwards and everything went to that he was like oh well i did a bad thing

Speaker 7 you know so that pressure release right there is really fun for me to do because i can i get to do it just an aspect of what the character is.

Speaker 7 So I love the story you guys were putting together and just being able to be part of it is

Speaker 7 that's my pressure release. I get to create, I get to bring this thing that you created to life.

Speaker 7 And that's, it's fun.

Speaker 7 That was a tough part for me to write. I didn't want, I mean, from that kind of character, like you said, he's kind of a piece of shit.
And historically, all of those kinds of people.

Speaker 7 were absolutely wrong and it pissed me off that he had to be right i had to write one of these characters that was actually i he did actually, they were witches.

Speaker 7 But, you know, generally speaking, those kinds of people are always pieces of shit. And I unfortunately had to make one of them correct.

Speaker 7 So I then tried to introduce enough subtext to kind of like, or even if he is right, he's still a piece of shit. So

Speaker 7 you know, that brings up an interesting point.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. Go ahead, Sam.

Speaker 12 Oh, I think I just laughed.

Speaker 7 Oh, okay. About to say anything.

Speaker 12 Unless you want my two cents, but it's not, it's not as honorable as everybody else here i i

Speaker 12 i got into um audiobook narrating and voice acting and i do this job out of spite mostly uh because i was that kid that was like i'm gonna be a voice actor when i grow up and people told me i couldn't do it and i was like oh how about

Speaker 12 you guys and

Speaker 12 it turned it obviously turned into something amazing and i love it so much but i really did start because people told me i couldn't do it

Speaker 7 that's awesome powerful motivator.

Speaker 7 I applaud you.

Speaker 7 I wish I had listened to that part of my brain like two decades ago. It would have been very, very refreshing.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 12 it is. And

Speaker 12 it is tied up to my transition as well.

Speaker 12 Cause I'm one of those kind of late bloomers where I didn't realize what was going on with me until I was in like my mid-30s. And so I was like, cool.

Speaker 12 Well, I'm about to morph into the person that I was always always supposed to be so how about we just completely change everything about my life all at the same time yay

Speaker 7 no that that definitely it's spite is a you know people don't give spite enough uh credit i i was much in the same boat uh when i was a kid i went to catholic school and you know i had a lot of behavioral problems because of my tourettes my ocd my schizoffective and everything so i had all these disorders and you know i fucked up and i i was always in trouble and i remember a defining moment for me me was when one of the nuns cornered me and said, you know what, I don't have to worry about you anymore.

Speaker 7 And she goes, you'll never be anything. You'll never be anything.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 7 And I remember that moment

Speaker 7 how much I fucking hated her

Speaker 7 and how much I was like, I will fucking dedicate my life to fucking proving this person, this fucking person wrong. And I went on

Speaker 7 to go and to get my, you know, my master's in behavioral neuroscience and trying to do everything I I can. But, you know,

Speaker 7 like you, Sam, it was, it was, it was, it wasn't a noble pursuit at first. It was just like, I fucking not live a life where this person was correct.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And, you know, and of course, I loved science. You know, I love neuroscience and I love writing.
Those were the two things that I really wanted to do with my life.

Speaker 7 And I ultimately went with more of the creative aspect.

Speaker 7 But, you know, I work in academia.

Speaker 7 But yeah, so, you know, never count out,

Speaker 7 you know, spite and things as

Speaker 7 good motivators.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, he and I have a very similar background with regards to academia and what we had to go through. I, too, went through Catholic school.

Speaker 7 And, you know, when I first got diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, I was going through a lot, you know, hallucinations and delusions and all this other thing.

Speaker 7 And so it just seemed like with that kind of a situation, I wasn't really going to end up doing anything that I wanted to do, let alone, you know, just, you know, manage to get some kind of a

Speaker 7 functioning lifestyle where I, you know, where, where just I could get the basics and so on and so forth.

Speaker 7 So I think I, you know, in the same respect, it was kind of like there were a lot of naysayers.

Speaker 7 And so to kind of get myself motivated, there, there was a lot of, you know, vindictive thoughts rolling through my head to get things, to get the ball rolling to where it finally snowballed into something.

Speaker 7 So I can definitely appreciate that.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 And you probably are in the same boat as I am where like it started out as spike, but now, I mean I love what I do now oh

Speaker 12 it brings me so much joy and I'm so I mean I'm so glad that the spike happened and it was a thing but like it is absolutely not why I keep doing it obviously oh yeah yeah exactly yeah no it's just it's just a good motivator to kickstart something is like you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna fucking do this now

Speaker 7 and uh and I think going back on the idea of the villain um one of the things I wanted to kind of bring up was was this idea that it's kind of antithetical to the show, which is some sympathy for the damned in the sense that Mark paints this universe that is kind of really shitty and unfair to the damned.

Speaker 7 Because, and this is where I really think

Speaker 7 the mythology has a strength of its direness is that, you know,

Speaker 7 like Mark has a, you know, loves folklore and mythology and that's that's how he knows a lot of this stuff. He bases it a lot off of, you know, apocryphal apocryphal texts and stuff like that.

Speaker 7 But you know, uh, in when you look at like Judeo-Christianity or any of those

Speaker 7 Abrahamic religions, or it really a lot, most religions, is that your behavior on this earth dictates what happens to you in the afterlife.

Speaker 7 And one of the things I love about this mythology that he's created is that that hope isn't there.

Speaker 7 The damned are innately damned, they have no hope, they have they're kind of they kind of got the shit under the stick.

Speaker 7 They were born to be bad they they they can there's nothing like uh which well yeah

Speaker 7 still

Speaker 7 all there's stuff going on there too oh i didn't know that yeah i don't tell you everything oh well anyway that that's how this pot we'll just edit that part out because mark didn't well he's right you're right to a certain truth but you know there's there there is some there's there's some underlying stuff there

Speaker 1 to be fair mark is innately unfair to everybody in his story so she says equal your screwedness in every screen.

Speaker 7 I think that actually one of the questions we had was, oh, yeah, you know, in a world as bleak as this one, you know, where, where does the good come from?

Speaker 7 And,

Speaker 7 you know, I don't want to, I want to give everybody else more of a chance to talk, but I think just to answer that question, I think that most of the goodness, I mean, taking my own philosophical perspective, I guess, to a certain extent seriously, I don't really think the world is designed to be good or bad.

Speaker 7 It just is. And good is where you find it.
And so even in a world like Meltopia or the world of the gentleman from hell, I just think that good is a mentality. It's a decision.
It's a choice.

Speaker 7 And it is exactly where people find it or where they make it. And so, yeah, you can have a horrible world.

Speaker 7 And in much the same way, I think there was a line somewhere

Speaker 7 that I was very deliberate to put in there. I think it was something.

Speaker 7 I think it was Pat's line where she said,

Speaker 7 a world that

Speaker 7 has a God who selectively gives a shit. Who selectively gives a shit isn't any different than a world that is governed by randomness or chaos or evolution or scientific principles.

Speaker 7 And that's kind of what my thinking is going into a lot of these kinds of stories, which is the world is really kind of an indifferent place.

Speaker 7 There's really not any intentionality to it, as far as I can tell. And so it is what it is, but we as volitional entities have an ability to change that should we choose to.
And so good occurs.

Speaker 7 It is generated from within.

Speaker 7 it's it's a synergy created by people who are acting in a moral way whatever that turns out to be whether it's consensus or intrinsic um so that's where the good is it just happens to be there when people want it find it make it uh and and spread it if they can so even in the worst of possible worlds i think morality and goodness is always a possibility and is a change is it is a uh

Speaker 7 an agent of change within that world. So that's kind of where my theory of goodness comes from or where goodness is in these entirely, you know, bleak landscapes and so on.
But

Speaker 7 let's see. So we got some little

Speaker 7 lighter questions.

Speaker 7 So they want to, some people, what's Mace's drink of choice?

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 7 I honestly don't know alcohols that much, or if it's alcohol at all. So I don't know what Mace's drink of choice would be.
Would Steven or Mark want to chime in on that? I median.

Speaker 7 I mulled this one over for quite a bit thinking about maze.

Speaker 7 I mean, if you listen to the show, I mean, I feel it's a fairly confident statement to say his drink of choice would, I mean, in all likelihood, be coffee. I mean, he worked for the FBI.

Speaker 7 He's done, I don't want to think of how many stakeouts, how many sketchy places he's had to wait for contacts and go through all the minutiae and nightmare that actually goes on in law enforcement and not just have a massive need to just consume caffeine to function normally.

Speaker 7 I feel if he ever stopped drinking coffee, he would crumble to dust. He has a little blood in his coffee in the morning.
That's what happens.

Speaker 7 Someone wants to know if Lenore has the hots for Martin. And

Speaker 7 I think we've definitely seen hints of that, that Lenore and Martin have something going on. I haven't asked Mark about that

Speaker 7 because it seems like something, I don't know. I think something he's building too.
I think they've even, I think the damned have actually mentioned it as they're taunting Lenore and Martin.

Speaker 7 But I guess.

Speaker 7 Sorry. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 1 I thought you were pausing. So apologies.

Speaker 7 Pause both. No, go ahead.
That's fine.

Speaker 1 In my personal head, Canon, as Lenore's actress, there's definitely a thing. It's one of those quiet, we don't see it hidden romances.

Speaker 1 They just grab those little seconds together before all the bad things happen. There's is a relationship of moments in my head, if that makes sense.

Speaker 7 No, definitely. I definitely agree with that.
I think there's a mutual care for each other, romantic care between Lenore and Martin. And Martin is, you know, very, you know, stoic in that sense.

Speaker 7 But, you know, when it comes down to when you see

Speaker 7 when Lenore is in trouble or when,

Speaker 7 you know, it's down to the line, he'll do anything to go help Lenore and vice versa. When Martin's in trouble, Lenore will go out of her way, you know, to really help to make sure Martin's okay.

Speaker 7 So I think there's something going there, I think. Martin almost didn't make it because I hate the sound of my own voice.
And Steve sounds so much like me.

Speaker 7 Every time I listen to the episode and hear his voice, I'm like, ah, I got to kill Martin. And then

Speaker 7 he almost didn't make it. So they're made, you know.

Speaker 7 Hopefully he manages to hang out long enough for this fire to kindle

Speaker 7 to take root. And but I was like, so many times, I was like, I gotta kill his character.
I just can't stand listening to his voice because it's so much like mine.

Speaker 7 It's another, it's another issue of contention between me and Margaret. Like, why are you gonna do your goddamn button? Like, you fucking hate my accents.

Speaker 7 What else am I supposed to do but my normal fucking voice? And it was my fault. I told him, I said, don't use an accent, just use your normal voice.

Speaker 7 I thought I'd be all right with that, but I hear it. I'm like, I gotta fucking kill him.
Jesus, I gotta get rid of that voice.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's the same with me. Like, if I'm not doing like a voice that's really

Speaker 7 over the top, not how I normally sound, I can't stand it. And there are times when I'm doing Isaiah from the sleep wake cycle where I could hear myself and I'm like, oh, I got to kill Isaiah off.

Speaker 7 I just can't stand him. I just can't stand my voice.
I just want him to die. But

Speaker 7 anyway, that was a colorful aside.

Speaker 7 Here's a good question, I think. And I think this, where'd it go? I'm sorry.
I'm the scroll. Well, at least we know now that Lenore is going to be heartbroken at some point.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 There's going to be a crying episode, I'm sure.

Speaker 7 It's probably either kind of Mart's hatred of going

Speaker 7 for hearing his voice or my hatred of going upstairs in the fucking cold or he's like, Martin, I don't want to fucking do it anymore. It's like a living hell up there.
It's so fucking comic.

Speaker 7 You got to kill Martin.

Speaker 7 Well, I had a completely different ending in mind at first.

Speaker 7 You know, I generate so many different alternatives to each and every show.

Speaker 7 You know, my problem has never been writing writer's block. It's always always been I got too much material.
And

Speaker 7 in one of the endings, I had Martin die, and it was Lenore kind of cradling Martin.

Speaker 7 And then I had to seriously analyze my motivations. I'm like, is this good for the story or is it good for me? Like, I really want to kill him.
And so finally, I backed off of it.

Speaker 7 I'm like, no, I'm going to. He works for the story.
No one else has the kind of reaction to his characters I do. I'm going to keep him in there.
So,

Speaker 7 yeah,

Speaker 7 he'll probably be in there, I guess. Got some life left to you.
Maybe.

Speaker 7 Maybe. We'll see.
Maybe. I like this question.
When our main characters are sleeping in one big bed, who's the biggest spoon and who's the littlest spoon?

Speaker 7 And I don't know how to answer that question because I've always never known the role of the big spoon versus the little spoon. I assume the big spoon is the one who's...

Speaker 7 comforting the other one. I've always assumed that, but then, you know, so I kind of, I don't know, I think,

Speaker 7 I think Phyllis might be the big spoon. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 I do think Phyllis would, because she's the one, she kind of grounds everybody. She kind of, she's kind of like the heart of the group.

Speaker 7 I always kind of picture her as, you know, like I said, the one that motivates everybody to keep going. And she's kind of the heart of the group.

Speaker 7 So I think, I don't know who the littlest spoon would be. I'm not sure.
I think Margaret might have been the littlest spoon because she's the one I think that needs, you know, kind of

Speaker 7 the most support because you know her reality is breaking that that was also a tough spot to write i had everybody in the same room and i was like did everybody try to sleep in the same bed and what would they do would they like push everything together like what that i didn't know i didn't know how i like they had to be in the same room but i didn't know but we wanted to circumnavigate the the kind of uh

Speaker 7 stereotypes and tropes that you often see like the dumb mistakes they always make in horror movies aside from the ones we mentioned earlier where we felt justified putting them there because like we like we actually do do those things so we feel justified putting them there but like when it came to like uh separating you'll notice throughout the show they never separate because it's just a dumb idea to to do that um i believe they did sleep in the same room at first i i believe that they put up mattresses if i remember correctly in the episodes uh that they all slept in the same room at one point um and then i think they'd be an interesting question now that everybody's played through the first season and everybody has a good idea are there any things that you can think of, or maybe in the moment when you were playing them, but you, you was as, as the pilots for these characters, that you would have done differently or you don't think that they would have done in the circumstances they were at?

Speaker 1 There was not nearly enough crying in a corner because that's what I would be doing.

Speaker 12 I think that Leon needs more jokes, like really dry jokes, because I tried to interject a little bit of like, oh, God, we're going to die.

Speaker 7 This is great.

Speaker 12 Oh, fuck, you know, like

Speaker 12 into kind of how the delivery for Leon.

Speaker 12 And I think that it would be really nice to have him actually be able just to say some dry things once in a while, because he seems like the kind of character that would do that.

Speaker 12 Like, he's just fucking done. And

Speaker 12 like, most of the time.

Speaker 12 And that, that would be the only thing that I would really change about Leon at all.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I can see Leon with a very British sense of humor at this point, that very dry, subtle sense of humor.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 12 he's the agent that his uniform was always like

Speaker 12 pressed like his suit always looks nice his hair is always looks really good you know and i feel like it would just be a really nice like if it was an anime he'd be the one with glasses and he's always pushing him up you know

Speaker 12 and uh and

Speaker 12 And I feel like just with a little tiny bit, a little, a little bit of dry humor would probably like elevate that character just a little bit. But, you know, I like him the way he is too.

Speaker 12 So it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 7 would be, that would be the outlet,

Speaker 7 yeah,

Speaker 1 some closing, especially if it came in as a, especially if it came at an unexpected time

Speaker 1 where everyone just kind of turns and looks like, what,

Speaker 7 yeah, yeah,

Speaker 7 no, definitely. I think that that's a good point.
Yeah, I do.

Speaker 7 I see, I do see Leon like that because he's he's done some funny things to me, but it's because I have a kind of a horrible sense of humor. Like, what I actually laughed when he shot

Speaker 7 what's his name in the head

Speaker 7 when he shot uh

Speaker 7 abigail or not abigail mercy just he's like all right just yeah let's go i really i really really liked that part and my

Speaker 12 my nine-year-old when she was listening to it she was like oh man that was cool so i mean good job right at that

Speaker 7 that is the best compliment you will ever get right right there yeah yeah and by the way your daughter is an excellent voice actor i i did she did an amazing job with

Speaker 7 the children that she played.

Speaker 7 Thank you. Definitely two of them.

Speaker 12 The other child actor was fantastic, too. We just, we're very lucky to have all of these children on hand for child paper.

Speaker 1 Those handy kids. Yeah.

Speaker 7 My son used to be all in, but then I actually wrote him a larger part. I was like, you ready to, you ready to play another? Because he's always bugging me.
He wants me on the podcast.

Speaker 7 And I said, y'all, you ready? But this was after he'd been introduced to Fortnite. And

Speaker 1 it was over.

Speaker 7 He was like, how long is it going to be? Like, how long is this part?

Speaker 7 Is this your Lazilock? Your next

Speaker 7 short-term dopamine loop.

Speaker 12 There were actual animated stars in my daughter's eyes when I was like, hey, would you like to play like a child ghost again? Like actual literal glittering in her eyeballs.

Speaker 12 I'm so excited. Yeah.

Speaker 7 She did an amazing job. Yeah, she did.
She had lost some. I really, she knocked it out of the park.
I will say that the creepy, you, you guys nailed the creepy kid

Speaker 7 trope in the series.

Speaker 7 Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Well, you know, the biggest compliment or the thing that apparently scared the people the most was the hyena. Yes.

Speaker 7 That actually had nothing to do with me.

Speaker 7 I mean, it only had to do with me and the fact that I found a sound effect that I thought was, I didn't, I knew what hyena, you know, you watch movies and you watch the things, but hyenas sound like they have a high-pitched cackle.

Speaker 7 And I was looking for something. I'm like, I really want something that just sounds fucking weird.
And then there's a different, I guess there was a different kind of hyena.

Speaker 7 I may be getting this wrong. And it just has this fucking,

Speaker 7 that weird.

Speaker 7 It's just,

Speaker 7 it's their vocalizations. As soon as I saw what you were using as the source for that, I went, oh, no.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 some other weird side project I had to do once, they were having me vocalize like for a null or something. And I did the exact same thing.
I'm like, all right, I got to learn what hyenas sound like.

Speaker 7 And yeah, no, that's just them. They have a very strange range of vocalizations.
And yeah, it's like this weird choking noise. Yeah.

Speaker 7 It sounds like it actually in the sound effect, it says constipated hyena. And I was like, what the fuck is this? I listened to it.
I'm like, oh, that sounds, it just sounds eerie and weird.

Speaker 7 So I put some effects on it and I'm like, oh, that sounds good. And then Mark's like, ah, mix that with your laugh.
And I was like, all right.

Speaker 7 and then you know we put it in there and then everybody's like we kept getting comments like oh that hyena sounds it's terrifying so it was like it was uh the hyena that what that people uh were like oh jesus that's a horrifying laugh uh so yeah we we that we're really happy with that and like i said i had to go looking for you know, trying to find sound effects that worked and then modify them to get them to sound really weird.

Speaker 7 So yeah,

Speaker 7 they were one of the

Speaker 7 definitely one of the scarier things that apparently people

Speaker 7 saw or heard in the show.

Speaker 7 There's a question here somewhere.

Speaker 7 If I were to ask everyone, what would their favorite parts of the show be? Like what particular scene did you enjoy either doing the most or just in general like the most?

Speaker 7 Oh, anytime that Mace has to just absolutely lose his shit and start shrieking like a lunatic.

Speaker 7 I got to admit, it's fun, and yeah, that is my favorite thing, just completely losing yourself in a thing that's just piloted by rage and misery at that point. I will say, you do an awesome job.

Speaker 7 I always listen to Mace going nuts. It's like, geez, I feel bad for Steve.
He's got to fucking yell.

Speaker 7 No, no. Time of my life in this booth.

Speaker 1 That pressure release valve that was being mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1 That's apparently Stephen.

Speaker 7 Yep, yep. Just lose your mind.
It's fun for a little while.

Speaker 7 It's so perfect. Every time I would, I would start.
Because what, you know, when I do,

Speaker 7 I do different characters and Maltopia and whatnot. And I always have to yell.
And

Speaker 7 I just, I don't sound sincere. Like, I really don't feel like I'm bringing across the rage.

Speaker 7 But when every time I would write Mace, like, losing his shit, I was like, I know this is going to be really fucking good.

Speaker 7 Because you always nail it with that. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker 12 I think that my favorites were

Speaker 12 They Herd You the First Time, just because my kid liked it so much.

Speaker 12 And then I actually really liked the when Leon has his first encounter with the hyena.

Speaker 12 And then

Speaker 7 the

Speaker 12 there was There was another part where I had to like freak out. And it might have been when we were in the hospital and it's, I think it's the first time that Phyllis died or something.

Speaker 12 And to get into that

Speaker 12 part, usually I do something physical. If I'm, if my character is running, or if they're fighting, or if they're upset or whatever, I will

Speaker 12 do like a bunch of jumping jacks or something because being actually out of breath and like sweaty, I mean, obviously helps.

Speaker 12 So, I did a bunch of jumping jacks, and then I came in to record that part, and I sat on my cat because my cat is black. And so the cat like screamed and clawed the shit out of my leg.

Speaker 12 And I, of course, was having the, oh my God, oh my God. So everything that happened in that scene was all me like after effects of the cat, you know, being almost crushed beneath my body.

Speaker 12 So that I'll always remember that

Speaker 12 for that scene.

Speaker 7 My favorite scene with Leon would be the going out that first time through that open door, out into the back trying to chase down the thing out there in the field and you were talking about the tropes and we never split up and that was one of those situations it's like oh god please may this not turn out like we're all expecting this is going to turn out yeah

Speaker 12 I think I played the first I don't know like 30 episodes expecting one of us to die like I was pretty sure celebrate Any episode, we were going to die. So I was just like getting ready for it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, nevertheless, that was one of those scenes where we based it off us. I was like, What would Mark and I do if there was something out there?

Speaker 7 And I'm like, We would immediately run after it because I've, again, from experience, that's we do the dumbest things they do in horror movies, which is to just if like if I saw if I heard a Bigfoot sound in the woods, I most people would be like, No one would go, I would immediately run in the direction of the sound.

Speaker 7 I'm, I'm so desperate to see something like that that I, I have,

Speaker 7 you know, to my own detriment, no fear of seeing those things. I just, I really want to see it.

Speaker 7 And I was like, oh, but so that, you know, that was one of those scenes where we kind of base it off of what

Speaker 7 the other thing,

Speaker 7 whenever I would write a scene where a character might have done something, another person could go, hey, nobody would do that.

Speaker 7 First of all, I kind of think maybe you see a hyena and you really don't know what's going, maybe you'll chase it.

Speaker 7 But I thought to myself, I'm not killing anybody unless it's a scenario where everybody would agree that, yeah, they did the right thing. That it just kind of happened.

Speaker 7 It was, you know, it was an unfortunate thing, but nobody, nobody put a foot out of line.

Speaker 7 It was just kind of a so whenever I would do something like that, I would make sure that they were insulated from harm.

Speaker 7 It's interesting that you put it that way, because again, everybody knows what the rational part of their brain would do. Oh, well, I wouldn't do this in that situation.

Speaker 7 But when you're in those sort of high energy situations where adrenaline is literally the thing that's suppressing that part of your brain and the reptilian part of your brain is the part that's saying, okay, let's go check this out.

Speaker 7 Let's go do this. Let's go investigate this thing.
I'd really like to see it. The sane part of your brain is saying, no, we probably shouldn't.
And

Speaker 7 don't care. Yep, I'm going to go see Bigfoot.
Well, it brings me back to the time I talked about the orphanage because I was so desperate to get in there.

Speaker 7 I started guilting everyone around me because no one would go with me. They're like, no, no, no, we got to go.
We got to go now. And I was like, no, no, no, we got to go in there.

Speaker 7 And I said, how bad would you feel if there was real kids in there and they're really screaming and they need our help? And he's, my one friend looks at me like, oh, don't fucking do that, Steve.

Speaker 7 I'm like, no, seriously. He goes, you know, you don't believe those are real kids in there.
You just want us to feel guilty, so we'll go in. I'm like, no, no, it's really, you'll feel terrible.

Speaker 7 If those are real kids, we're going to fucking hate ourselves later. We should, we should definitely go in there.
So like, it was one of those

Speaker 7 things where, like, like I said, I've, I've, I,

Speaker 7 historically speaking, I will go to great lengths to put myself in a position where

Speaker 7 I will get myself killed by some supernatural force.

Speaker 7 Well, you know, the thing about that scene was all I was trying to do to really justify it was like, if I was outside and I saw something that looked like a hyena, knowing full well that a hyena shouldn't be there, like how, to what length would I go to follow it?

Speaker 7 And I kind of thought to myself, well, if I could still, if I still had eye contact with it and it wasn't fully visible, I'd probably continue moving until at least I got a good look at the damn thing.

Speaker 7 And so I was careful to make sure that it was always just slightly out of view and he couldn't tell what it was.

Speaker 7 And so he kept pushing himself a little bit further to see if finally he'd get to a clearing to see the damn thing but my rationale was like as long as he he's still kind of seeing it but not enough to convince himself of what it is so maybe that that is convincing enough to kind of compel him to continue going but that was that was a tough scene to write just because i didn't want people jumping in going nobody would no one would follow something like that and i'm like

Speaker 7 i don't know maybe they would if i had a hyena running around in my backyard that i couldn't see clearly and wasn't certain it was a hyena maybe i'd follow it they're also trained fbi agents So it's like they are like that was their job for a long time to like go toward the danger.

Speaker 12 So I, when I was reading it, I didn't really have a problem with any of that because it just seems kind of like what they would do. And also there's Phyllis.

Speaker 12 And so there's a lot of like trying to protect Phyllis in the back of their mind too.

Speaker 12 So yeah, a lot of layers.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a, it was a tough scene because, you know,

Speaker 7 I shouldn't listen to a lot of the critiques, but I'll hear somebody say, oh, you know, they did this and they shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, really? I don't know.

Speaker 7 I really kind of like, like you had said, you know, they're FBI agents. They have guns.
It was a hyena. And, well, a formidable creature, not so formidable to take a bullet.

Speaker 7 So I'm thinking that he's probably pretty comfortable out there. I think he's probably moved through the bushes and

Speaker 7 remained fairly confident that he's safe and he can handle whatever happens. It is only a hyena.
So, um, but yeah, I, but I'm always like that.

Speaker 7 I'm always calling Steven and like, you look at this person said.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I think people imagine like podcasters are like,

Speaker 7 you know, we're like, we're just, we're steeled against negative criticism. And like, we're not.
It's like the second I see one, I just don't buy into them.

Speaker 1 Like, do you see what this one says?

Speaker 1 Well, you also got to. You got to get people listening.

Speaker 7 We're purposely going to go with those.

Speaker 1 But you also got to think.

Speaker 1 Tropes are and stereotypes are the way they are because enough people have done them in real life. It's the same reason we have warning labels.
Somebody did it. So is it really that far-fetched?

Speaker 7 Yeah. And plus, you know, on top of that, sometimes you just have to have those tropes because there wouldn't be a story without it.

Speaker 7 It's like when my, my wife, especially, when she watches these movies, she's like, why would they do that? I'm like, because if they didn't do that, there wouldn't be a fucking movie.

Speaker 7 Like that it'd be over. They would just leave.
I mean, everybody has the logical sense. We're like, what? Why didn't I just do this? Then it was it.

Speaker 1 Tropes are tropes for a region, you know, they're effective.

Speaker 7 There's a guy on YouTube that I keep seeing on the YouTube shorts. He does what would happen if you were logical in a horror movie.
And it's like,

Speaker 7 we want to go explore the haunted, the, the, uh, the haunted asylum. You want to come with us? No, and I don't want you to ever call me again.
We're no longer friends.

Speaker 7 New credits.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I think one of my favorite scenes was just the twist of the resonator being used as a bomb.

Speaker 7 Like

Speaker 7 the sparrows didn't, were like, you're bullshitting. And then the people down who were waiting to transcend were like, you tricked us.
Boom. Like it was.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 That was one of my favorites. That was a fun twist.

Speaker 7 That was interesting because

Speaker 7 I never know what we can get away with with just sound. Like,

Speaker 7 excuse me. You know, I always, I want to write scenes where we're kind of cutting back and forth.
And I wanted that scene to be, you know, you see Pat standing there. She makes a declaration.

Speaker 7 And then I kind of wanted to do a cut scene where, you know, the elevator is going down ding, ding, ding. And I wrote it that way.

Speaker 7 And I was like, I hope that the sound guides the listener well enough so that they know what's going on. Cause I always, in an audio drama, you know, it's difficult to really

Speaker 7 relax what's going on through just the sounds, especially if nobody's talking. So I was.

Speaker 7 I was really glad everybody got that impression of that scene because I was like, I wonder if I didn't, you know, we didn't transition those scenes.

Speaker 7 That's where Mark and I bump heads to like on the on the sound side is where he's like, Steve, I gotta fucked up. I'm like, what'd you do? He's like, I didn't say that the fucking car crashed.

Speaker 7 I'm like, Mark, it's obvious the car crashed. There's a clear sound that there's no way no one will understand.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but what if they don't understand? And like, I'm like, I'm not fucking changing it. I'm not, I'm not gonna, we're not gonna get so paranoid.
I'm like, we're not fucking putting it in there.

Speaker 7 It is clear that the car is driving. It is clear that it has crashed.
There's no other interpretation of that. He's like, fine, just fucking do it.
No one's going to know what happened.

Speaker 7 I'm like, I left.

Speaker 1 Nope. No clue whatsoever.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I just, I just get so.

Speaker 7 It's funny, too, because when I'm listening to it, I try to go to this like super objective place where like

Speaker 7 everything, you know, I just want everything handed to me.

Speaker 7 Is it being supplied in such a way that it's guiding everything properly? And then I'll go to Steve and I'll say, I don't think this works.

Speaker 7 We got to, we got to have the person actually say something, which was why when Margaret died, I had rewritten that script a million times. Like I, maybe

Speaker 7 we need Pat to say it. And I'm like, why would Pat say it? She's in there by herself.
No one approaches the body and goes, why would you hang yourself? Well, it's not a line that anybody would speak.

Speaker 7 So I was like, we just got to go with the rope. The sound of the rope's got to be super clear.

Speaker 7 We've been back and forth on the philosophy of whether the sound should speak for itself.

Speaker 7 And, you know, and I've read a lot of debate between like other creators as to whether one should say something explicitly or let the sound effects speak for themselves.

Speaker 7 And really, it's really just on a case-by-case basis of

Speaker 7 how obvious it is. Like with the car crash, I stuck to my guns because I'm like, there's no fucking way anybody can interpret this any other way.
That is a car crash.

Speaker 7 There's no way that they wouldn't know. So he's like, all right.

Speaker 7 But like with the with the rope thing, it was, it was a little bit because it's, it's, you know, it was, you know, I, I, I, I, I spend, uh,

Speaker 7 you know, my, my own money on like these, these websites because I want to make sure I have good sound effects. So you get these royalty-free, you know, things or whatever.

Speaker 7 And it's just, it's, you'd think it's easy to find some of these sound effects or to make them yourself. And they're just, they're so hard to find or make yourself.

Speaker 7 And like that, that fucking rope was like, I spent, I swear to God, like two hours looking around for just the right sound of that, that rope.

Speaker 7 You could do it the right, right, first time and then do it.

Speaker 7 I know how you feel.

Speaker 7 I still do them, but not as much as I used to. I used to do YouTube a lot.
And trying to find sounds that are free is

Speaker 7 like I have one that I go to. It's freesound.com.
And they're all right.

Speaker 7 But trying to search through thousands of things for that perfect sound and then you don't find it and you get annoyed.

Speaker 7 And believe me, trying to find sounds, I feel you're even, even I'll tell you right now, even with the paid sites, because I pay for like

Speaker 7 10, 12 sites, because I just, I'm so paranoid. I won't have a sound that I need and that I can't make it or whatever.
So I get these and they are some of them, it's weird because some sounds.

Speaker 7 I can't remember what the sound is that I always look for. And I'm like, how is this sound not been made? Like, it's such a normal sound and I cannot find it.
And I can't remember what the sound was.

Speaker 12 Sometimes though, sometimes though, it's not just that you can't find the sound effect.

Speaker 12 Sometimes it's like you find the thing you're looking for, but it's in like a really huge, loud room, or their like noise floor is so loud, you can't really use it.

Speaker 12 I'm right now doing, uh, I'm lead sound designer on the podcast store 236,

Speaker 12 and I spent like probably an hour trying to find uh balloon sound effects, just somebody handling a balloon. That's all I needed, just handling a balloon.

Speaker 12 So I literally had to go out and buy balloons, blow them up, and then like bang them together so that because there's a very, very specific, everyone is going to hear this noise and they're going to know that it's not actually a balloon hitting another balloon.

Speaker 12 And so you have to, you have to get balloons. You have to get the actual balloons and hit them together.

Speaker 12 And you, and I found balloon sounds on the sites, but like they're in the middle of like a fair.

Speaker 7 So it's even a soundbite.

Speaker 7 soundbite yeah so you gotta deal with the background noise and it just doesn't come off right yeah no it can be so frustrating to just try to find sound yeah and i sound design is like my day job it's what i do for yeah most of my income again i'm not trained either

Speaker 1 but Again, you know, I make money off of it. So I call myself a professional.

Speaker 1 But it's funny how many times a day I will just like lean over to my husband and be like, hey, hon, how would you describe the sound that is made when you stretch pleather?

Speaker 1 Like, what is that like a crickle, crickle, crickle sound? Like, how would you say it? Because sometimes you just can't describe it to even search for it.

Speaker 7 That exactly, yeah. No, that, that, that's one of my things is trying to, I'm like, how do I fucking describe this thing?

Speaker 7 I think one of the ones was, One of the hardest ones was to find was it was for another show. I think it was,

Speaker 7 I think it was the Sleep Wake Cycle Cycle or Red Mother. There was a bridge, and I wanted that bridge to sound like it was coming down.

Speaker 7 You know, that you probably all know what I'm talking about with that wire sound, that something's coming down, if it's breaking down. I'm like, I want that

Speaker 7 snap. And I'm like, where the hell is that? So I put wire snap and I couldn't find it.
And I put a cable snap, couldn't find. Again, it was the hours of searching.

Speaker 7 It was like, like today, I was doing the devil's details and I was getting really pissed because I'm like, all right, phone hang up.

Speaker 7 I wanted the phone hang up sound of when you're on the phone and you hear someone the click that while you're on the phone, not external to the phone where you hang up, where you pick up.

Speaker 7 And Jesus, I had to go through like 12 pages of listening to people hanging up phones. That's how excellent.
I'm like, who the fuck did not think to do this one sound? I'm like,

Speaker 7 and I finally found it. I'm like, Jesus.
All right. I finally got it.
But I will go to great lengths.

Speaker 7 My OCD doesn't really let me just, I go to great lengths to find like the one sound that I really want.

Speaker 7 So yeah, that definitely, definitely is

Speaker 7 so don't feel too bad if you have to just use the free ones because the paid ones, they're they're they're obviously more options, but they're still incredibly hard to find.

Speaker 7 There are just certain sounds that you cannot, nobody does. And I sometimes I just wonder why no one, some of them seem so obvious to me that someone would make it.

Speaker 7 But and then, you know, should we start wrap up? Yeah, we should start raping. So, the one, uh, the other question a lot of people are asking is: what should we expect from season two?

Speaker 7 So, uh, before we get jump into that, I do apologize. I am going to have to bow out at this point, I'm afraid.
Oh, no,

Speaker 7 I am so sorry to have no problem at all. Thanks for sticking around as long as you have.

Speaker 7 I just thank you again for having us and for giving us this wonderful world to function within.

Speaker 7 Thank you so much, Harper, Jesse, Kelly, Matt, Lou, Trenton, Sam, and thank you, Steve, and thank you, Mark, for all the hard work that we've been putting into this show.

Speaker 7 It's truly been a phenomenal experience. Thank you very much.

Speaker 7 An absolute pleasure to have you on.

Speaker 7 All right. Well, enjoy the rest of the show, ladies and gentlemen.
I'll be bowing up now.

Speaker 1 We'll shame you later.

Speaker 7 And is Aubrey still around, or did she have to go? I didn't see her. No, Aubrey had to leave.
Okay, fair.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 7 So, yeah, the last question what what we'll have is:

Speaker 7 what people, so everybody wants to know what we should expect from season two. And I know I've gotten,

Speaker 7 we definitely know what's happening in season two.

Speaker 7 But one thing we want to tell people about, because we know people get very attached to characters,

Speaker 7 is that, so one thing we can divulge is the second season will be dealing with a new roster of characters. That's not to say that the old characters are gone by any means.
They're still around.

Speaker 7 And it's all under the same story so everything's connected but it's uh for the second season uh for this part of the story arc to work we have a there's there's a new roster of characters essentially we're doing we're just going to introduce some new characters and um

Speaker 7 I think we're going to have some more interesting locations with regards to, you know, just an area for these people to explore. And of course, we're going to have some

Speaker 7 very new and ripe infernal mysteries to delve into.

Speaker 7 There's definitely going to be a continuation from season one. We're going to see how the characters from season one handled the events and where they are now.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I think we're going to see some things going on, some mysteries and some aspects to Mephitica that have not been divulged in the first season. So we're going to see some brand new, fresh mysteries.

Speaker 7 uh to explore and um

Speaker 7 i i just think that the the new environment environment will be interesting. It's definitely going to be taking place outside of the big city.
We won't see Cove Sparrow probably for a while.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 hopefully

Speaker 7 that jibes with people. They'll enjoy it.

Speaker 7 It's a completely new setup. Some new characters are going to be introduced.
All the old characters will be coming back.

Speaker 7 And I can say from a soundscape perspective, I'm extremely excited because this is one of my

Speaker 7 these are one of my

Speaker 7 favorite horror settings so we won't divide what it is but i'm very excited for uh for it from a soundscape and in a narrative perspective so i think i think people will really enjoy it and i think uh i think you guys will enjoy it once we we divulge more details about it but yeah it's it's going to be exciting i think and it won't be long because of course i i i have to keep the momentum going so it's going to be about a month and then we're going to be into season two.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 I suppose there's a saying there. What is it? The no rest for the wicked.
I guess that fits. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, looking forward to it.

Speaker 7 We are absolutely looking forward to having everybody back.

Speaker 7 Everybody did an absolute fantastic job.

Speaker 7 I couldn't be happier with how everything turned out. You all did fantastic.
It was a real honor and privilege to work with everybody.

Speaker 7 And we're definitely looking forward to having everybody back and doing it all over again.

Speaker 1 We are looking forward to joining the fun and maybe seeing if we survive.

Speaker 1 My bet's still on total party kill.

Speaker 7 Well, you know, interestingly that, you know, I kept mentioning how the show had one particular ending and then I scrapped it and I went for another one. It was planned from the very outset that

Speaker 7 everyone did die at the end. So

Speaker 7 I think that's just kind of going into why I write the way that I do is kind of like one week at a time is is because i like to see it evolve i like to get feedback and i like a lot of time to digest the parts that i've written not just from my own perspective but from everybody else's perspective and it really did shape the the narrative and in fact we never even spoke about ben

Speaker 7 um and ben interestingly enough was supposed to be the kind of the primary character it was a fairly simplistic approach, I think, to the to the story where they just kind of listened to the tapes and then they did some stuff and listened to the tapes and they did some stuff.

Speaker 7 And when I saw the talent and I just saw how everybody was doing wonderfully with these characters, I'm like, I don't think Ben needs to be front and center anymore.

Speaker 7 So that clearly evolved from the very beginning. I was like, I don't want Ben being that central.
I think he's important for the narrative to progress.

Speaker 7 And I think he's an important mechanism and device for that. But I really don't think he should be the star of the show.
I don't think he needs to be front and center.

Speaker 7 And then I just kind of brought everybody else in and pushed him out. So from the very beginning, there was a a completely different logic that was set out to govern the development.

Speaker 7 They worse than died. They got replaced.
They got at the very end.

Speaker 7 I guess it's fine for me to say this. It didn't happen.
But the very end scene was supposed to be,

Speaker 7 I don't remember who it was, but they come in after this huge apocalyptic event. And you don't know what happened to

Speaker 7 the

Speaker 7 three because at that point I hadn't planned for the Ingersolls at all. They're just the main three characters.
And

Speaker 7 whoever it was comes into the mansion, and then you see the three characters and mace who i think has a very distinctive way of speaking he speaks for the first time and he speaks with a southern draw indicating he had been possessed and all three of them had been possessed close curtain that was it there wasn't you know that was the end um so everybody perished essentially the three main characters ended up in hell and the solders rose um

Speaker 7 So that was the original end, but that's when we first started out.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And like I said,

Speaker 7 when I'm writing, I have everything written, everything's planned out, but I

Speaker 7 deviate quite a bit. Like the inclusion of Lotrum and Lenore,

Speaker 7 that was a decision that came mid-season. I was like, I really do want to display some of this somewhere else so that I can mix up the perspectives a bit.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 then I came up with these other characters. So a lot changed over the course of

Speaker 7 the series. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's generally how I roll.

Speaker 7 But Steven just abandoned me, so I don't know where he went.

Speaker 1 Well, now you're on your own.

Speaker 7 No, I know I know.

Speaker 7 I have no backup. And like I said, and I apologize if this is in any way, shape, or form inconsistent with your experiences with similar

Speaker 7 things like this because we don't, we don't, this is our first one like this. So if we sound ramble and whatnot, I apologize, everyone.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 7 I think that's it, right?

Speaker 7 Hey,

Speaker 7 I'm back.

Speaker 7 Is there anything?

Speaker 7 I'm sorry.

Speaker 12 The nice thing about this kind of thing, there's no like, there's no like rules for how you do it.

Speaker 7 So I'm just, I get so nervous about these things because I always, I'm just, it's,

Speaker 7 everybody's on Discord who talks, like, I always have Steven talk because I get so damn nervous I'm going to say something stupid.

Speaker 7 You know, it's like he's the voice of the show because I,

Speaker 7 every time I write something, now this may have something to do with with what I have I've had bouts of paranoia and things like that but anytime I write something

Speaker 7 I I ruminate for hours and days like somebody construe this the wrong way could they think this so I don't want to write anything so I was like Steve could you tell everybody X could you you know let everybody know we're doing this so he's he's my proxy

Speaker 7 I'm only slightly less I'm only slightly better than he is.

Speaker 7 That's why when I talk to you guys, you'll notice the abundance of smiley faces that I put in the, in my messages messages to you because I am so dreadfully afraid that you will misconstrue me as being rude.

Speaker 7 So the only thing I can think of is like,

Speaker 7 put a fucking smiley face there just make sure they know that I'm

Speaker 7 trying to be nice. And I always feel for Kelly because I always deliver the sleepwake cycle on Sunday.
And it's always in the middle of the goddamn night.

Speaker 7 I drop it up at like three o'clock in the morning and I'm always thinking, oh, I hope she doesn't have like her phone on her or something. I'm going to send this.
Never.

Speaker 7 And I'm always like, all right, smiley face hi i hope you don't mind that i'm i've gotten this off i'm i hope you're not i hope i didn't wake you up uh so yeah we we really do suffer from just yeah so it's the perils of having obsessive components yeah it's it really i i i've been corresponding with other podcasts and i hate i'm like mark why can't you just write the email because he's like i don't want her because i'll think about it for days i'm like i do the same goddamn thing i don't want to do it so then i'll get on there and i'll i'll sit there forever on an email i'm like do they think i'm being sarcastic with this i mean this could be interpreters me being a sarcastic gay so like maybe and then ultimately my only solution is the smiley face i'm like but then i'm like is the smiley face like a like a smug smiley face i'm these are the stupid thoughts that i have whenever i can

Speaker 7 it's funny because like he

Speaker 1 if it makes you if it makes you guys feel any better i have adhd and it's been a lifelong struggle one of the things i struggle with is time

Speaker 1 so whenever I'm sending you guys my lines, what I feel is like the last second, I'm just like, oh, oh, I hope they don't hate me. I literally couldn't get to it for X, Y, Z reasons.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, I'm late. I'm a horrible person and they're going to hate me forever.
So it's okay.

Speaker 7 We get it. Well, that's the other thing I always get nervous.
I'm like, I don't want to, I always feel terrible asking for like, like, the lines. I'm like, I know they're going to get me lines.

Speaker 7 Like, I always feel like,

Speaker 7 I don't want them to feel like I'm fucking like some tyrant who's just making them. So, like, I always feel terrible about it.
So, I was like, no, I pulled the

Speaker 7 whiff back every single time.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm, I think, I think I have delivered my lines on time maybe twice in the entire, we've got like 67 episodes. So, usually it's really good that you have messaged me and been like,

Speaker 7 hey, Sam, are you going to get those?

Speaker 1 Could we add those lines maybe, you know?

Speaker 12 But if you don't, it's okay, you know, and like, so sweet, and all the smiles, you guys are so nice about it.

Speaker 1 Here I am, like, oh, fuck, I totally forgot because I had 7,000 other things to do.

Speaker 12 So, it's really great that you

Speaker 12 remind me because I would, I just let Monday go on by sometimes.

Speaker 7 There has, yeah, there's been some times where Jesse and I will be doing something, and you'll send either her or me a reminder. We're like, oh shit, yeah, I forgot.
So, we go record real quick.

Speaker 7 No, there have been times where we're fighting over the booth. So,

Speaker 1 We have one booth between us.

Speaker 7 No, we're always just kind of like, we don't want to bother anybody. We don't want to disturb anybody.
And so we kind of wait. Like,

Speaker 7 this is the, I'll finish this with a quick

Speaker 7 analogy to give you a good, honest idea of how fearful I am of embarrassment or social situations. Was years ago, I was out swimming at a lake and at a lake with my

Speaker 7 family. There's two.
You can also tell them you could cut your artery. Yeah, that's what that happened too.

Speaker 7 And I was out there footing. Now, I can't swim that well, right? So I had this fucking bouncy ball.
You know,

Speaker 7 let me tell you the story. Let me tell this story from the perspective of someone who is watching it.
The idiot can't swim.

Speaker 7 He gets on this goddamn fucking inflatable donut and goes out in the middle of the ball. It was like a donut.
It was a ball. I was like, a ball.
It's even yours. You can't hold on to it.

Speaker 7 It goes out in the middle of a goddamn lake. Can't swim.
Can't swim swim at all. And he's floating, attached to this stupid ball.

Speaker 7 And boats are coming by, but the idiot's too goddamn embarrassed to ask for help. And the person actually said, do you need help? And he's like, nope, no.

Speaker 7 And then the ball gets away from her. No, see, you're telling her.
I was on it. So my family went back in.
They said, you good to go? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I got the ball.

Speaker 7 So I'm floating out there and a wave hits me and the ball floats away. And I just, it's this way, I hear this weird calm.
I'm like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 7 Can't, I thought I'm like, I gotta swim to get the ball, but then I'm like, if I swim too hard, I'll get tired and I'll drown. So I have to float.
So my family sees me out there and they're screaming.

Speaker 7 They're like, oh my God, Steve. Just, I'm like, I can't swim in because I can't swim that while I'll drown.
So I'm just slowly sinking.

Speaker 7 And I'm thinking, and my mom's watching, my family's watching, and I'm weirdly calm. I'm like, just ready to die.
I'm like, all right, I guess it's going to fucking suck.

Speaker 7 And I'm slowly going down.

Speaker 7 And finally, this boat comes, and I can see my family just breathing this sigh of relief and the boat comes to say hey you okay you you need you need to be need help and i think to myself i'm like

Speaker 7 how embarrassing will it be for me to ask for help and i got to go in there and then everybody's gonna know i was drowning

Speaker 7 and i just look at her go nope i'm good

Speaker 7 and they've they they drive away and the face of my mother at that point was

Speaker 7 horror and rage of like if you make it through this steven i will fucking kill you when you get to land for making such a stupid decision.

Speaker 7 So, my friend Dan, Mark is trying to swim across the lake to see if he can, but he's got my friend Dan with him, who's got a boat. So, in case he gets tired, he can just grab him.

Speaker 7 Mark sees what happened. He's like, Dan, go back to that fucking idiot and go get him.
So, I'm literally sinking underwater. And weirdly, again, I'm very calm.

Speaker 7 I'm like, I guess this is going to fucking happen.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 finally, I'm underwater. My hand is up.
It's literally like a movie.

Speaker 7 and someone grabs me and picks me up and it's my friend dan he's like oh jesus what's wrong with you i'm like get up and my first thought is my brother i'm like oh my god mark i'm like oh mark what happened to mark he goes your brother's dead we got to go just keeps

Speaker 1 he's dead

Speaker 7 he just panels me in to land

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 the other time he was working in the lab and then he cuts his artery. I think it's your carotid artery.
No, it was in my, it was in my excellent. Oh, yeah, you know, you're carotid.

Speaker 7 What am I thinking?

Speaker 7 That's his artery. He's spraying blood all over the lab.
Doesn't want to tell anybody because he's embarrassed. He cut himself, and he's bleeding out.

Speaker 7 I have the thickest sweater on, and I swear to you. So, what happened was I was trying to put a thermometer into,

Speaker 7 I can't remember what it was. I was trying to put a thermometer in something, and it had a rubber stop, and I pushed too hard.
The thermometer broke and went into my wrist.

Speaker 7 Oh, no, it went between my two fingers, and there's an artery there. Wow.

Speaker 1 And I see. You survived this long.

Speaker 7 No one knows. And I see reds

Speaker 7 spraying. And I'm like, at first, I didn't know.
I didn't know what happened. I'm like, what the fuck is that? Is that stuff coming out of the?

Speaker 7 And it's spraying all over the place. I'm like, holy shit, it's my hand.
And then, you know, I'm like, oh, Jesus, my lab mates are going to fuck it. He's then trying to clean it.
So I take off.

Speaker 7 Why he's bleeding. I'm trying to clean it.
So I take off my sweater. It's the middle of winter.
And it's a super heavy sweater. And I wrap it around my hand.

Speaker 7 And I call my friend I'm like hey dude you got to pick me up I'm bleeding I gotta go hospital he's like all right but I go but first I got to finish this experiment so I got

Speaker 7 can you help me clean up the blood while I do it he's like all right so he he just thinks it's a small cut he gets there and it's a fucking bloodbath I mean there's just fucking blood and that sweater I had is totally red and it is blood is coming out of that sweater.

Speaker 7 That's that's how bad the cut was. Long story short, neither one of us want to embarrass ourselves.

Speaker 7 When people tell you the statistic that

Speaker 7 public embarrassment is actually more of a fear than death, I am living proof that that is true because I have twice, twice I have chosen death over being embarrassed. We both have.

Speaker 7 I mean, I had a stone. I didn't know what it was.
I thought I was bleeding internally. And rather than tell my sister I was dying was in the cottage next to me.

Speaker 7 And I just put my head against the wall and quietly accepted death. I'm like,

Speaker 7 it's over. And I woke up afterwards.
I passed out from pain, but then I woke up later. I'm like, oh, I'm still alive.
It was fortunate. Maybe I'll actually call someone to come and get me.

Speaker 7 That's that's kind of the rationale, uh, like with sending emails and writing comments. It's like, I just don't want anybody to think negative things about me.

Speaker 7 I don't want to write anything that anybody can misinterpret.

Speaker 12 But I love that you're equating slicing your artery and having a stone to sending an email.

Speaker 12 It's all about the same level. Yeah.

Speaker 7 How bad it will get for us if like I can be in a death moment and I will choose like, all right, I'm going to die because I can't, I can't stand the idea of me

Speaker 7 feeling that social anxiety.

Speaker 7 Like if you see me comment specifically in Discord, you can be absolutely assured that it, that I wrote it three hours prior to posting it. I've read it at least a thousand times.

Speaker 7 I've corrected it and recorrected it and looked at it from every conceivable angle. And then it's posted.

Speaker 7 And then after I post it, you can be assured that for hours and days later, I will be coming back to that post looking for any comments that might suggest anyone took whatever I might have said a fascinating.

Speaker 1 You can edit it after the fact and just gaslight people. It's great.
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 And if fun is there for that reason.

Speaker 7 Exactly. They're gaslighting.

Speaker 7 Thank you, everybody, for listening. That was, you know, the creators and the cast.
And like I said, if you liked the show or, you know, comment and rate and everything. And

Speaker 7 we'll see all of us. We'll be in the next season.
And

Speaker 7 yeah, that's it. Thank you for listening.

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