The Magnus Protocol Season 1 QnA
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Hello, everybody. Guess who it is? It is us. It's me and Alex. It's your spooky boys. We're here. Hello. If you are listening to this, then presumably you have listened to the first season of Magnus Protocol. If not, you're starting to continue the wonderful trend that is jumping on at just

utterly random and pointless points so kudos to you i wouldn't recommend it but to each their own i have actually done that before with a podcast you jumped on a q a for someone accidentally i like i got about 10 minutes in and i was like like wait hang on this can't be right turns out i was correct well that is unacceptable nonetheless we shall treat this as if it is your first so with that in mind why don't you introduce yourself and then we'll go from there

Hi, I'm Jonathan Sims, Johnny. I am one of the writers and one of the voice actors for The Magnus Protocol. And I am Alexander J. Newell, founder and CEO of Rusty Quill, the people who make the show. And I do some writing with Johnny, direct, and do some voice and do some produce because I am a glutton for punishment. And today what we're doing...

is another time on a tradition which is q and a's by which i mean a team has gone through thousands of questions and a lot of them are summarized to basically everyone asks um and we're going to be answering questions about primarily protocol i assume i mean one assumes i don't know maybe people are like really into asking about like your skincare routine or something johnny we got a lot of that in archives oh don't ask about my skincare routine it's i've not been keeping up with it oh

that's a shame. What are we going to do with your skin now? We can't harvest it and use it for things like bookbinding. It's a bit of a shame because I'm often being told that I have very good skin. It actually doesn't take much for me to like a very basic skincare routine has dramatic results. So it really is a waste that I'm not doing anything with it at the moment. The reverse of that is when anyone sees videos of me and goes, oh no, what happened? And you're like, age, we're all rotting. Entropy is coming for you. That

That's a fun one for me. You look fine. Exactly! Before I looked amazing! Right, we're going to go through some questions. So I have the list here, which I'm coming at cold, but I can at least see who asked what. Now, a lot of these are from quote-unquote loads of people. Should we take turns in like being loads of people? Sure, all right. I'll go first then. This is from loads of people.

While writing the story of the first season, did you originally plan to have as many of the TMA characters that appeared in the season from the start, or were they put in as the story progressed?

The number was pretty much consistent from the start. Which ones is the bit that was pretty, like, hotly contested and we went back and forth on a lot? I really like the idea, though, that we're just like, episode three, chuck one in there. Episode seven, chuck one in there, why not? There was a plan. We just hit episode 18 and we're like, but what's going on with Helen? We just don't know. LAUGHTER

We did have a plan, just to be clear, but there were substitutions where people weren't available or timings didn't work out and things like that. So I'm happy to say I'm really, really, really happy with what balance we've struck. Genuinely, I'm like, yeah, this works really nicely. It's not like we were in dire straits or anything, but at the same time,

We were careful to make sure that the structure was built in such a way that, I don't know, let's say that Imogen just categorically couldn't be here as Helen. Okay, we have other options for who we could have subbed in there if we had to and stuff like that.

We were very cognisant from the start that this was not going to be, let's check up on every single Magnus Archives character, because there were a lot. And trying to get the balance of the show so that it feels, in conversation with the original, without being too fanservice-y, was a constant discussion.

you may think we erred one side or the other, but at the end of the day, like, the Archives characters that we definitely wanted to revisit in a significant way have remained pretty much the same since original conception, but...

But there is a sort of kind of a tier two where we were like, well, at some point, because of the role Celia gets to play, we can check in on our alternate reality versions of some of the Magnus Archives characters and which ones those were. That was what we were like, had a lot of discussions about.

We knew that we would probably be checking in on like, I don't know, three or four of the Archives characters, but which ones? A lot of that came down to who was available. I fought for more than Johnny, I think, in that it left to my own devices. I turn everything into a Dickensian mess of everyone's accidentally each other's grandmothers and stuff.

Johnny had a lot more restraint than me. I had to be like, no, that's too many. Cut them. No one will ever know what happens to this character in the alternate universe. And that's good, probably. I'm going to pass across to next question. This is a good example of what's probably going to come up a lot. This is from Riley and Dear Teleport.

Where did Jack, Celia's baby, come from? Essentially, did Celia get pregnant and give birth to a baby after finding herself in a strange new dimension? Or did Celia take over Jack's actual mum since she's got severe stranger danger going on from the last episode? I understand if this can't be answered, but I'd like you to know I got the red string out so many theories. I feel like this is going to be one of a few that's a none of your business. No, actually, you know what? This one...

Like, there's a lot that I'm like, ah, no spoilers. But this one, honestly, I'm quite comfortable answering because it's not a plot point. It's just be patient is my stance. Like, you'll find out. I'm happy to say, yeah, Jack is Celia's kid.

When Celia says she had some wild years over the last few years and ended up with a baby that she loves, she's not lying. I'm quite happy to say that. Like, it doesn't feel like a reveal to me. I mean, it's not. It's just a, like, confirmation, I guess. To me, a lot of the theorising and, like, the red stringing about Jack...

is indicative to me that it's like, oh no, we weren't quite clear enough. The baby's not a mystery. I think the timing fell a bit oddly where we ended up with some Celia scenes tying in too closely to, like, Demon Baby script. Oh, yeah. So as a result, that steered people down a route where, don't get me wrong, like, I get it, but as a general rule...

If Johnny and I were going to be doing horror stuff that centres around a baby slash toddler as a plot point, like, that's really hard to do well and not kind of cheap. It's a tricky one. I'm going to be honest, I would have stayed clear of that even if that was on the cards because it's just, it's messy. It's messy. But it's one of those things where...

Jack, to me, is all about emotional stakes for a bunch of different characters. So I'm quite happy to sort of demystify him a bit so he can, you know, serve the plot function that I want him to. And I just wanted to have a one character who wasn't footloose and fancy-free. Because they're always footloose and fancy-free. Everyone always sneaks investigations in around their job. And I'm like, how? How do you balance your responsibilities? Ah, you don't.

after you've been writing for a while you realize why so many protagonists are like orphans or like don't really have any friends or are like cut off from society because every time you're like okay no this protagonist isn't gonna be like an orphan they're just gonna they're gonna exist in the world and so much of your story is like what do their parents think about this because people have noticed it's inconvenient but that's kind of why i like it

Another question from loads of people: "Why alchemy and not a continuation of the fears? Was there anything specific that sparked your interest in alchemy this season?" I love how aggressive your loads of people are compared to mine. I think you should start with this one because this actually technically bore out from your criteria for what protocol had to be. The big thing is like, why not a continuation of the fears? Because you all know about the fears.

Or let's do a horror mystery podcast, but we've had 200 episodes explaining what the core mystery is already. It kind of stops being a mystery podcast and starts being a glorified Pokedex, doesn't it? We didn't want to just be writing Magnus archives again. The fears are great, but we've done them. So we wanted to do something a little bit different. We wanted to explore different ways that the metaphysics of the Magnus universe could work. What I did was I sat down and said, hey...

Alex, you get to decide on the metaphysics for this particular reality, because I've already done my metaphysics of fear. I could try and do another one, but I'm much more interested in like what you're going to come up with. So Alex went away and came back with a system that can be accurate to three decimal places.

And then I got a text message from Alex saying, hey, I'm looking into alchemy. Does that sound like an interesting avenue? And I was like, I mean, I love a bit of alchemy. About 10 years back, I got really into looking into it and I didn't remember everything, but I was like, oh yeah, alchemy, that's fun. A lot of cool symbols, a lot of like mystery, a lot of historical stuff going on there. And I was like, yeah, alchemy sounds good. And then our next meeting, Alex turned up with a full notebook. Well, yeah, you gotta do your research.

60 70 pages very close written notes on this intricate alchemical system i i think like maybe five to ten percent of it has actually made it into the podcast so far i keep pushing i keep pushing all this stuff is no one's gonna okay we can just pretend these 70 pages are how it works as well but actually it's these first five pages that we're going to be dealing with mainly

Johnny just takes umbrage because as part of it, I insisted that he watched a video on fifth dimensional vectors. And then he was like, this feels a bit much. And I was like, what? God, I think I watched it in the end. Totally hamstringing me, dude. I know you didn't. Because I referenced it and you were like, what? I don't know. What? In Johnny's defense, I set myself two goals when given that, which was one, it needed to be compatible in that, like Jenny says, it has to be in conversation with the previous. It can't just be like...

Now it's all aliens all the way down. The metaphysics are different, but also the same. Yeah, they connect. They have to function around one another. And the other one was that Johnny explained very articulately in a way I'm going to bastardise now, which was...

By definition, because you did all of the metaphysics for archives, anything that you make is going to feel very archives-y unless you have a different foundational scaffold to work from, to mix my building metaphors a bit. So I was rather explicitly not...

going into it the same angle that you did. So I actively was turning down options in my head, going, no, that would be too similar, that would be too similar. And I, from day dot, wanted one that was... I always think of, like, if archives is, like, what happens if history got weird, this one's a little bit more like what happened if other fields of study went weird.

And I don't know whether it's worked yet, but that was sort of the guiding principle when generating my unnecessarily huge and pointless research. I mean, it was very good. We've ended up using quite a lot of it. It was just a lot all at once. Don't pity me. I mean, I did a fairly significant amount on like Chinese alchemy that was like pages and pages of stuff with the final paragraph being, I don't think any of this is relevant, but I made you read it though. That's the important thing. Next question. All right. This one's from Colby Elizabeth Column and Jen Devon.

Who is your favourite external? Are there any fun ones planned for future seasons we haven't met yet? I'll tell you who my least favourite external is. It's probably my favourite. I'm gonna swear, and I don't do that on podcasts, f***ing Needles. Yeah. Needles is the worst idea I have ever encountered, and the only time that you have vetoed my veto. You're wrong. To be fair, Alex,

The end result is fine, but conceptually, Needles is dire. I didn't so much veto your veto as, like, you vetoed Needles. And I was like, okay, but, like, Needles is kind of what I got. What have you got for this role, for this episode? Because it needs to serve a very specific function. Yeah.

And you didn't come up with anything in time. So I was like, I'm on veto in this. That's not how I remember it at all. And then you were like, can you make this go? And I was like, I'm taking this as a challenge. And then I won. That's not how I remember it at all. I got good.

No you got lucky because you had a very very skilled performer manage to polish a very specific material It's a bit sharp is not a pitch for a monster Man made the needles mate It wasn't even like oh maybe he's interested in blah blah blah he's like what if he's like needles

This is like late stage, you know, three in the morning, drunken Stephen King, like, oh, like needles, I guess. It is never not funny to me how immediately and viscerally you hated it because it was such a square brackets idea. To my eyes, it was so obvious, like...

you know, probably not actually this, but it's just an idea to sit in this position until we come up with something better. And it was because you were so angry at the placeholder idea that I'm like, it's no longer a placeholder. I need you to know two things. One...

Whilst I admit that it has worked, and I will confess that, I still hate it. Yeah, oh yeah, that's fair. And two, Needles is just what happens when you've committed to the bit and are willing to put my professional life and your professional life on the line for the bit. That's what Needles is. Alex, we are both always ready to put our professional lives on the line for the bit. LAUGHTER

It's maybe our Achilles heel as creators. A little bit. We should probably actually answer the question that's asked rather than just me using this as another chance to tear you down. Well, no, like, I honestly think Needles is kind of my favourite external, largely because... Because of this. Christ. I will do what I do, which is never answer it straightforwardly, which is my actual favourite, despite everything, is Bonzo. Because it's just f***.

weird and it's come out nicely i think the one who's arguably the most interesting is ink soul in terms of like my writer hat on for a second i'd be like oh yes ink soul is an interesting examination of blah blah blah or as bonzo there's something to be said for just like what is he big and scary anything else no

Like the opposite of Needles. Not sharp, but still manky. I feel like Bonzo is great, but I feel like we can't really take as much credit for Bonzo as all that. Oh, no! It didn't say which we were most proud of. It said which is your favourite. I feel like I'm not going to have a favourite that I'm not properly proud of. And I think Bonzo's come out brilliantly. April did some amazing work on the actual design design. But Bonzo is broadly us like...

surfing the crest of the wave that is Mr Blobby's return because Mr Blobby has been back in the cultural zeitgeist for oh what couple of years now I mean he only just got confirmed as an official like has a show coming oh really oh yeah we did it again so we basically went wouldn't it be messed up if Mr Blobby came back there's a blast of nostalgia that no one oh right and then a record-breaking deal was just signed with the creator month

months months after we reveal bonzo as a character we were very much like just surfing a zeitgeist wave with bonzo and i think we surfed it with some real style but at the same time i don't feel like we can take a huge amount of credit oh what an off the wall idea no never said that just said i enjoy and you know what it was specifically i can pick the moment where i'm like oh it's worked and i like it

It's when he crushes the car on the way out of the house. Just that crunch. Yeah, all right. And I'm like, that's such a dick move, Bonzo. You prick. You absolute unnecessary prick. Well, the thing is, Blobby always was a prick. That's the thing. That's why I like Bonzo. It's just that being a little bit of a prick. Unlike Needles, who is too much pricks. He's all prick. Yeah.

Next question, Johnny. Go for it. Because of how he's made of needles. Yeah, no, I get that, yeah. From loads of people. How different was it writing for the season with a whole roster of guest writers contributing? Did you have to make any adjustments to their material to make it fit into a wider narrative? Have the guest writers had influences on the greater story? So that's three questions. We should probably do those one at a time. The short answer is...

very yes and no or rather not a lot in that order but to go into a little bit of detail it's very different with the guest writers from my point of view at least because the whole structure of it is different I mean to be fair Protocol like it's not just the guest writers

Protocol's writing structure has been very different to how archives worked because it's not just the guest writers, it's also... There is a structure. I mean, yeah, yeah. Like the structure of archives was, hey, Johnny, recordings tomorrow. Do you have the scripts ready? Yes, of course I do. They're in this box that only I can see. See you tomorrow with the scripts that I absolutely have. Well...

Whereas with this, because anything I write goes through Alex and then back to me and then back to Alex, anything Alex writes goes to me, then back to Alex, etc. Anything that's guest writers goes through both of us. And like, so there's a lot more of a pipeline, a lot more hands are touching pretty much every script.

The guest writer aspect, to me, has felt part of a wider shift in how the pipeline has gone writing-wise. I think it's probably worth explaining what the process is very quickly for people, just because that'll probably answer the questions better, which is effectively for

how it worked is we generated out a series bible we then generated an abridged series bible with all of the really interesting bits cut out by johnny because quote i'm sorry alex but at some point alchemy just gets boring that's then provided to the guest writers and along with that we provided a list of prompts and basically said listen you can either pick a prompt from here or suggest an alternate that hits the similar kind of beats as this prompt so that that way we're not you know having a complete tonal shift or whatever a lot

A lot of people pitched their own of those. Some got them, some didn't. And then blah, blah, blah. They all get allocated out. Then they wrote their episodes sort of separate with us answering questions in terms of like, how does it interact and so on. Generally speaking, there was a slow trend towards people preferring just to focus on the cases rather than whole episodes, which makes sense. It was a sort of bit of a back and forth. A bunch of writers did scenes, but like...

Asking people to write plot-heavy dialogue scenes late, like halfway through an ongoing season, it's an almost impossible ask. So then what happened after that is, once we've got that in...

If there's scenes missing, generally speaking, we've been trying to flip out who's dominant in an episode between Johnny and myself to spread the workload. But generally speaking, Johnny's been the one who's been focusing more on editing the cases. And I've been the one who's been focusing on editing the scenes a bit more. And then like Johnny says, if it's a guest one, guest provides their materials, additional materials go in, and then it passes between both of our hands. Then I'll do a final pass as a director. But the director's pass is more like...

how am I going to record this as opposed to is it working as a script? It's going to be more like, oh, I'll cut this line. Why? Because I know that, I don't know. Billy can't say that word without fumbling it. I'm picking an arbitrary example. It's just really from Billy under the bus. Well, no, I was just thinking because Billy had this huge thing about is it Choco Leibniz or Leibniz and we have to get this right and it was a whole thing. Oh, really? As a director, what I should have done is just cut it out and gone Chocky Bicky, done.

done that's very funny because i say both randomly i eat them a lot and i don't think there is a correct one this is the thing is right so that's the kind of thing as a director would be like this feels like that might waste huge amounts of time i should cut that instead of i'm going to just leave this here and eat up a good hour of april's time based on chocolate biscuit branding but yeah effectively it is different working with guest writers adjustments to fit into the wider narrative

Yes and no. There wasn't really much in the way of people just going in the wrong direction or anything like that. It was a lot more like detail orientation, so it'd be stuff like changing a name here or a place there and stuff like that. Often we would need to slightly tweak the ending to archivist statements, because those had to be much more directly tied into the metaplot. In terms of, like, guest writers having influence on the greater story, not directly. The season planning meetings are

me, Alex, and April. And that's where we sort of hash out how we want each season to work. There were a few bits where we were like, oh, this thing from guest writer statement works really well. It resonates really well with X or Y theme. We can pull that out and add it into season two in this bit or this bit. We might be like, you know, there's a through line to a few of the different guest statements, actually.

So we can do something in season two that actually is working with the theme that they've sort of set up and started developing. Yeah, I think for me, there was most of that where you'd look at like two or three and be like, actually, thematically, once you pair this with one that say Johnny wrote or whatever, there's fertile ground there. So rather than it just being like,

And now part two of this case, most of them, it was, oh, interesting. There's something here that can expand on. Because we've not got as many episodes to work with in Protocol as Archives. We're doing a lot fewer, like, part twos. I always laugh that it's like, as writers, it's like, we only have 92, depending if you include bonus stuff, 110 episodes. How do people live like this? How could anyone tell a story in this format? And then the director in me is like,

I already know what a hernia feels like. I don't want to know what a cardiac arrest feels like. This is fine. This is sufficient. I mean, the thing is, it's not that 90 episodes aren't enough to tell a story. It's 90 episodes building a really intricate world. Also, because you don't have season one in Protocol. I mean, obviously you have season one of Protocol. But the thing about the Magnus Archives season one is that it is functionally just an anthology show.

Yeah, that was odd. That was weird. Like, the metaplot is very slow burn being introduced, which means that all the focus is on the stories, is on the statements, with little bits of characterisation being gradually drip-fed in for the actual characters that are going to continue through the story.

Protocol, that's not an option because we've got a shorter runtime. So if people are going to be invested in the characters, we need those characters to be front and center quite early. Also, because you can't uncheck the big meta-narrative tick box. Once you sound the gong that says huge meta-narrative, you can't then go back to being like, oh, but maybe it's just a bit of an anthology series because people would get really impatient and it would be a much...

harder ask to get rolling and again with a shorter runtime you're burning time that you need to establish these characters and to tell your actual story i have found it fascinating and i suspect you've seen it as well i've seen a little bit more of the fandom for protocol than i did for archives just by virtue of i guess the nature of my work being a

it's the exact split to my eye of a third of people going this is moving far too quickly far too quickly compared to archives a third who are like yeah this feels right and then another herd who are like this is agonizingly slow this is killing me slow which means that we're striking the balance right and i can't help but notice that the people who think it's going too fast are the ones who were there for like week by week release for years and the ones who are like this is slower the people who came to it later in general i will bet you any

money the people who were saying this is going too fast are people who were like there for season one or like there for the and the people who are like this is way too slow are people who binged all of archives in like a weekend almost certainly it seems to be the trend but it is just fascinating to see there was a piece of advice i was given by a writing teacher years and years ago which is

If everyone is irritated but not angry, you've probably done it right. I don't know about everyone. I'd like some people to just be like, I am enjoying this podcast, thank you. I don't think that's an option, Johnny. So, oh well. All right. Next one is from...

loads of people. Well, right in the last season of the Magnus Archives. Did you already have ideas brewing for the sequel or for either case files or character arcs? How did you come up with the storyline for the Magnus Protocol? Inspirations? Question mark? Mark? I

I don't think we had any of the specifics of Protocol in mind when we were working on the last season of Archives. We knew the mechanism that would be available to us. We knew that what we were doing at the end of Season 5 was essentially opening up a multiverse.

We were just leaving a door open a crack and putting a little doorstep in there and then just... Yeah. There were and remain all sorts of, like, other Magnus stuff in the works that it is really useful from a sort of a metanarrative point of view to be able to go...

There are infinite Magnus universes. This can take place in a different one. At the risk of making it a bit unglamorous and showing how the sausage is made, as a production company for a moment, it's a very different prospect, say, trying to work with a third party to make an RPG. Monty Cook did a really good job. And then being able to go, look, you

you can pick what you want rather than you have to have memorised basically five years worth of constant work before you can even begin to touch this as an idea. It's untenable unless you give a cheat of some kind. The RPG is a really good example that people are saying like, oh, the art in the RPG is that canon. And

And it's like, I mean, it's probably canon for any, for one of the infinite realities that are now possible within the umbrella of Magnus. And also, don't forget, this was a few years ago. It wasn't quite the du jour move as it is now. I think that we are quite good at accidentally picking up on a zeitgeist just before it becomes overplayed, which is great for our stuff when it releases, but often means that afterwards you're like, oh,

Oh, dear. Ages like milk. Yeah, we're good at being the last person in the door on stuff, I think. We're the last cool people to do multiverses. Oh, yeah, yeah, cool. That's what I meant. Cool, yeah. Did we already have ideas brewing or character arcs or blah, blah, blah? Not really. No, but here's the thing is...

we did sit and informally natter and you could see which strands just led off, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor a little bit, but you could see which ones led through, but we didn't sit there and go, right, let's start work immediately. You've got to remember, this finish, and then you could not have nailed me down near to archives for at least six months just by virtue of, I know writers get it.

Trust me, directors get it worse. You hit a point of like, I can't look at this for X amount of time. I can't. For Rustic Wheel Gaming, which predated Archives, it was something like two, three years before I could even look at an RPG again. Yeah, something like that. And Archives wasn't that bad, but it was still the same thing where it's like, I'm kind of done.

I'm done for a little bit. I'm going to go do other things. It was conversations about how we could conceivably do a sequel that sort of worked us into a shoot of actually doing it. But what's fascinating is looking back, the conversations that ultimately convinced us to do Protocol...

Almost none of the ideas from those conversations actually ended up in protocol. Yeah, I have noticed that. Soon as we made the decision, no, we're actually doing this. We kind of just sat down and did it from first principles. Yeah, because I was originally pushing for something that was a lot more corporate-

Whereas we ended up with like civil service. And to be clear, like all of the good bits from the prior things have made it through. But Johnny's 100% right, because I was always in my head going, yeah, we'll do it as this weird corporate thing where it's like, what happens if capitalism gets all mashed up with it? We had a lot of ideas for organisations, basically none of whom have actually ended up in protocol.

Which is fine. Like, we took all the bits we wanted, but I think it was Johnny that originally proposed civil service, actually. Probably I was at the start of working on Burnout, which also has a character in the civil service. So I was very civil service brained at the time. That makes sense. All of it comes out from having lived with someone who worked for the civil service for a few years. Yeah, yeah, same.

I have publicly said this and I'll say it again though, which was, it was computer game Control that pulled the trigger on me. Yeah, Control was you coming to me and being like, we need to do this. Johnny recommended this to me, I played it, and then I went...

Ah, Johnny's mentioned this before. Literally years ago, God World, you were talking about filling the tank. The tank is like inspiration that comes from other people. I think of it as a soup these days. Yeah, sure. A gumbo. Effectively, my tank was empty at the end of Archives, where like, you have ideas and mechanically you know what to do, but it's a really bad idea to pursue stuff at that point because you're running on fumes. Weirdly enough, I know that it was the game control that triggered...

For me, that, oh, the tank's full and I know what to do. I prefer to think of it as a suit because a suit can have chunks in. And I think that in terms of inspiration and like, you know, that mess of ideas and thoughts...

sometimes you have chunks in them. You have certain ideas or certain things that are thicker, a bit more lumpy than others. Your tank metaphor implies that all ideas and inspirations are sort of equally filtered and of equal consistency, which I simply don't agree with. It's because you're not distilling your ideas properly. LAUGHTER

I also just noticed that April's telling us to hurry along and I shouldn't be breaking the frame in this way but I'm deliberately now lingering just to annoy producer April before moving on so is there anything else you want to share about gumbo before we move on Johnny I fear April in a way you do not you should I'm just foolish so a question from bloody baroness cosplay in

In the cast list of episode 10, Mr. Bonzo has been listed as uncredited. Can you tell us the reason for this, and will we ever find out who voiced Mr. Bonzo? No, it's because we got Mr. Bonzo in. He's expensive. It shouldn't say uncredited. It should say as himself.

someone with the legal department meant that it ended up being listed as uncredited rather than as himself oh yeah there was a bit of a mix-up there no the problem is is that we had to sort of take certain bits back after he trashed the studio i mean we knew he was going to so we used a decoy studio but nonetheless like you know that stuff costs and so we had to punish him in some way otherwise he just

keeps doing that kind of thing you know yeah i don't know actually i'm not involved in the production side of things so do you want to know do you want me to dish do you want the tea i'll be honest everything i've heard in the industry it sounds like mr bonzo is a pretty professional you would definitely have heard that from certain parties yeah but all i'm just gonna say is oh really the thing with bonzo right is he's got two sides oh okay it's all happy fun time unless people aren't laughing then the anger comes out and it's a whole thing that's fair i think

I think we've answered that then. Oh, actually, no. Carry on from Sentient Forest Orb. Is Mr. Bonzo happy with his job? Does he get good benefits? And can I apply for that job as well? So that's a good question. Is he happy with his job? I mean, presumably? Yeah. On the whole? Yeah, I think so. Does he get good benefits? He gets better than I get. I can tell you that. Better than any of us. Like, you know, we're all self-employed, aren't we? Not all of us get the big bucks like Bonzo. And can you apply for that job as well? What, being a different person?

I suppose are they asking, can I be a voice actor? No. I think they're talking about within the fiction. So the strip club murderer, I think, is the job that they're asking for. Live your dream. I mean, I haven't seen many listings on LinkedIn for strip club murderer. Live your sexy murder dream. Moving on. Seeking murderous host must provide own cleavers.

Okay, loads of people. Beth Eyre plays the archivist in Protocol, but also Lucia Wright in Archives. Is there a connection there? Is Error slash the archivist someone that we know or someone new altogether? What were you looking for when you cast her? Did you consider bringing back a character from TMA for the role instead? Again, lots of questions. After you, Johnny. This one's like, we're not answering most of those questions because it's a spoiler.

in terms of what were you looking for when you cast her? Like, why did you cast Beth Air? Broadly speaking, because Beth Air rules. Did a really, really good audition. Yeah. Very good to work with.

The problem is, is it's not just having worked with people before. There's a reason that you'll see some of the same people coming up. And that's by virtue of like, really good to work with, very reliable, thoroughly recommend. And that's not a put down on the people who aren't because availability shift. I'm not going to go into the story reasons, like Johnny said, because of be patient. But it's odd that people feel the need of why we need to justify it. She's really good. She's a fantastic voice actor. And, you know. Next one then is from Robin Ryder.

Oh, I need a new voice. I was immediately wanting to do my Daffy Duck and I'm like, no one's going to be able to hear me. Trans woman here, what made you want to write an explicitly trans character for the Magnus Protocol? Why will or why won't Alice's trans identity ever be important to the story?

I write a lot of trans characters, so does Alex. Like, we like writing... Like, our lives are full of loads of different people, a lot of whom are trans, and, like, we want to see that reflected in the fiction that we create. I mean, it was a day one point as well, actually. It was literally... It was, like, the second thing that Johnny was like, ''I'd like this.''

Yes, I think that is a good idea. Yeah, and also, like, Alice's trans identity will not be important to the story. Because, broadly speaking, I always think that everyone deserves to be able to see themselves in the fiction they consume without needing to feel an urge to justify their presence. There doesn't need to be a story reason that Alice is trans.

I'm not really necessarily the one to write the story about being trans, but that's

But that doesn't mean that trans people don't exist in the worlds that I imagine, in the worlds that I write. I can't think of any situation I would want to hang plot off a section of someone's identity like that, because it kind of abandons the idea of intersectionality entirely, which is weird to me. And I find it really hard to conceive of things like that. It's like with archives. No one's asking like, hey, what made you want to write a dude main character? Right? Nothing made me want to, I just...

flipped a coin. Actually, no, what made me want to is my voice. Yeah, that's not a good example. Basically, for the rest of the characters, it was a coin flip half the time.

In fact, we have actually, not even due to logistical things, just as we figured it out, we've either gender or sexuality flipped a few characters whilst you iterate on the story for Protocol. Yeah, because sometimes it's rarely like for plot reasons, but often like thematic consistency. I don't mean we've sexuality flipped anyone, but we've definitely gender flipped a few people for voice acting reasons. Well, the problem is, it's hard to say sexuality flip because basically you and I both pretty much write everyone as bi all the time and we'll pay attention to it if it comes up.

Yeah. Sometimes thematically or for plot reasons or because two characters just feel like they got a vibe. You're like, they should go together. You don't want to be like, oh yeah, but we decided this one was straight for some reason. No. I very much have come to realise that at least in any world that I write, every character is bi. They just might not have met someone sufficiently sexy of a specific vibe. We are very much of the everyone's bi because we're lazy writers school. Yeah.

Okay, okay, okay. I think it's a you question now. Morgan Mitchell and Marceline Gaming.

You've mentioned your influences for the horror aspect of Magnus in previous Q&As, but does anything specific inspire the comedic-slash-satirical aspect of the show? After avoiding making TMA a workplace comedy despite a fan outcry, but this show has ramped that up. Why the change? I don't know. Magnus Archives was pretty funny. I have been told that I may be pushing the...

comedy satire a little harder so the fact that I'm a little bit more involved on the writing on this one means it might be coming through a bit more but I think it's underestimating archives quite a bit there archives is a really bleak humor I think the thing is that you write jokes more than I do

I think archives is very funny, but it is very much my sort of sense of humour, which is not... There are very few things you could point to and say, like, oh, that's a joke. Whereas in Protocol, you've got a much bigger presence in the dialogue, and I think your, like, how you tend to write that same tone... Well, I came up through comedy,

It influences you. Yeah, you are from a background of jokes. It's just sometimes in the jokes that people die and then you have horror. Yeah, and so I think that the comedy is a lot more obvious in Protocol. I think it is more readable as comedy.

With Archives, the number of times I've had people come up to me and be like, it's dreadful, but I actually find X or Y thing very funny. And I'm like, yes. But the number of people who'd be like, you know what? I actually found Monster Pig quite funny. Yes, because of how it's very funny. Because of how I'm very funny. Archives still has my favourite funny moment to date of anything that's Magnus related, which was, what are you going to like cut your eyes out, beat?

fuck off like that's not because the thing is that's not a joke but it's funny yeah i'd love to give some like here is the specific references for comedic satirical but no structurally unintentionally it often follows sitcom structures by virtue of office environment which means that there's a reason that office sitcoms follow a specific shape and there's probably an unconscious element of following those but it's not a specific like oh it's like the office but or anything like that

Unless you've got anything specific, I genuinely don't have a specific point I go to for it. It's tricky. Like, bringing up specific examples, I think overstates the importance of, like, that specific show or book or whatever. Like, I think that we are both very influenced by the shift and flow of comedy in British comedy. Like, peep show. I don't think there is a lot of peep show in Protocol, but I think that that slight style of, like...

It's not awkward comedy in the way that something like Peep Show really leans into, but it's got that slight bite to it, that slight edge. See, I'd argue it wasn't intentional, but I think there's a dash of the thick of it. Yeah, thick of it. Well, thick of it is an evolution of the Peep Show style into a more realistic, into a different format. Yeah. This is what I mean when I say that we are heavily influenced by the

currents of British comedy, because that is a scene that we have both been in for most of our life to one degree or another. I think it'd be safe to say, though, it's definitely a UK vibe, not a US vibe. Although people always ask you to quantify that, and it's tricky to do it seriously. Genuinely, it's quite hard to quantify, but it's definitely more UK than US, but...

I think that's the best I'm going to be able to manage. Weirdly, if I had to pick specific influences, I'd probably reach for a handful of sketch comedy troops I saw six to seven years ago at the Fringe that no longer exist. Oh, there's this one. What were they called? What were they called? Casual Violence? Was that the name?

Oh, no, no, I don't think so. I think it was whatever was really successful was the ones. Just to explain that little dig at Alex's, Alex used to direct a sketch company called Casual Violence. I have directed many things. They were amongst them.

Okay, Charlie B and Anon. What's made you decide to create a guy in IT and then make him scared of machines? I love it. Is Colin actually being tormented by the eye, or is he just having a breakdown due to being an overworked, under-supported IT manager during late-stage capitalism?

I mean, for a start, that is a false binary. But also, this is a very easy question. Every single person I know who works in IT is scared of machines. Well, yeah. Every single one. The more that you know about them, the more it's like, oh no. The one that's the scariest is the internet. That is a cough away from imploding. If you think you understand machines and you're not afraid of them, no, you don't. You know what? That's as pithy as you're going to get. I am happy to move on because that is bang.

bang on we're just writing realism it's just realism here after you johnny for the next one this is the rq plebs discord kath and jared sage i really hope they call themselves the rq plebs and that someone hasn't just been really mean in in rq when writing up who did this

are case DPHWs, categories, plus ranks, things that we as listeners are able to work out given current information. Also, why did you do this to us? When determining the case info for each episode in production, not in universe...

Do you look up in a master spreadsheet based on the theme slash sub-theme, the way Alice describes, or do you pick the appropriate DPHW cat and rank for each episode, knowing what those systems mean? I think you should definitely answer this one, Johnny, since you're so utterly au fait with all of the nuances of this highly specific system. Uh, Alex just kind of makes it up.

This is a chunk of that enormous Bible that Johnny was alluding to earlier. DPHW categories and ranks absolutely have meanings. They are not arbitrary. Well, they are arbitrary insofar as they reflect the numbers that we would personally ascribe to these things. They are workoutable at this stage as well. Categories and ranks should be pretty simple. If you can't work out categories and ranks yet, what are you doing? Come on. All right, calm down, Johnny. Calm down.

Fools. All of them fools. Yeah, categories and ranks, pretty discreet. The DPHW, you should probably be able... No, I don't know about should. It is theoretically possible that you could work it out. I have become aware of a couple of people who have danced around it a bit, but I can't stress enough, to have worked it out at this stage is proper sleuthing. Mm.

This isn't something that you just passively be like, it's probably this. I will also say, in something that is very, very funny to me, what you have to remember is the DPHW, the categories, the ranks, that is how the OIAR

defines these things. Yep. Which means whether it has any relation to the actual world, to what's actually going on, who knows? Yep. Who knows? There's a non-zero chance it doesn't matter at all.

but it could but it all connects together and that's the same thing as objective truth right if a system's coherent so yes it is a coherent system used by the oiar we don't have a big book of categorizations we we vibe it a lot more we have a book of previous mentions and stuff that has to be but that'll be like for

For consistency. Yes. So if we have something that's similar to an earlier episode, we can look at the DPHW from the earlier episode and be like, ah, maybe adjusted a little bit. But our way of categorising them is the same as the OIARs, except ours is more vibe-based. I mean, let's be honest. The OIAR is also vibe-based, I reckon. It's just the vibes are dreadful. Especially because deliberately in the show notes, we have the first few ones that Sam's done and they're just...

either wrong or barely a thing, because ultimately their entire system relies on someone going, I think this? Just with bells and whistles. Yeah. Fatal Drum asks, Okay, I need to know what kind of dog was in the Newton Statement. I've heard Newton's favourite dog was a Pomeranian, but he's giving me Terrier vibes in the statement. Thank you. You need to answer this one, because you wrote the statement and you know more about Newton than I do. What was Newton's dog?

To answer things in an order that will help people. Number one, Johnny was rightfully reticent to include Newton in all. I wasn't pushing for Newton as something I was obsessed with. It's just that if you do anything to do with alchemy... You can't not Newton. If you're doing alchemy, you can't not Newton. All roads lead to Newton. It actively makes things go really weird historically if you don't include Newton because he just sort of sat at the middle of everything being a bit of a dick.

In terms of like the dog, I'll be honest, I can't even remember the breed off the top of my head. It is whatever it is historically. Do you want me to just literally on-air Google Newton's dog? Go for it. I wrote it whilst looking at some wood cuttings of the burning down of his... I think he called it the lab. I can't remember. And it has images of that dog. So I just wrote with that in mind.

Diamond Bracket's dog. Diamond was, according to legend, Sir Isaac Newton's favourite dog, who set fire to manuscripts containing his notes on experiments conducted over the course of 20 years. They weren't experiments, it was all alchemy. He was so into it! Some historians claim that Newton never owned pets. But yeah, I did it based on wood cuttings that I'd seen of, like, what the dog looked like. No, those historians are ignorant.

I'd believe it. The brutal truth is I didn't have a specific breed, I just wrote it based on- there's a very specific woodcutting which is the one where it's literally- it has like a Penny Dreadful-esque quote underneath which is something like, uh, "Oh diamond, what hath thou done now?" or whatever it is, I can't remember. That's all I did. Yeah, it's like a shaggy little guy. "Oh diamond, diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done." That's it, and then there's a little woodcut over the top which is paired with it, yeah.

that I just wrote to that so whatever that is it's claiming he was a Pomeranian all right if it existed then it's a Pomeranian I'll be honest you

You're right, it does have Terrier vibes, but eh, your mileage may vary. I'm happy to move on with, sorry I looked at a picture and did it off that, because I knew there wasn't much data on it. To be fair, given that this is our own universe and we can change whatever we like, I might declare... St Bernard. I was thinking of a St Bernard. Just a big, slobbery St Bernard. Just a huge, unnecessarily massive St Bernard. Yeah, basically the dog from the movie Beethoven.

Just lolloping around. That scene changes so much when you do that. Just lolloping around Sir Isaac Newton's workshop. It's a Beethoven then. Johnny, this is the last question, which is from Anon, appropriately enough.

what's something you wished fans knew about making the show? It's really hard. All the bits you think are easy are really, really hard. All the bits you think are hard are just a bit hard. Yeah. Like, getting it to sound accurate that someone has sat in a chair is exhausting and aggravating.

agonising painstaking work and it's something that you'd just be like oh they probably just sat in a chair sometimes just to punish Alex I'll write the words the character leaves closing the door behind them which is why I have the director passes no actually even worse even worse there is brackets at the start of a dialogue tag

while leaving. Oh, that's a... The one that really, really annoys me with Johnny, which is... And I know you do it to mess with me, because I have a pet peeve which is irrational, which is you'll write something like, there is the sound of, and then a description. And I'll immediately wade in and start editing that, because I'm of the opinion that you should never, in an audio script, write the word, there is the sound of. It should always be like...

A knife is dropped. I mean, you're not wrong. But yeah, honestly, it's just, it's the bits that you think are easy are really hard. Genuinely, like the editors are actual miracle workers at this point in a way that you'll never, never appreciate.

And I think that we have successfully answered the more than 1,000 questions we have received in that time. I think we're good. Yeah, if anyone has any other questions, then... They're bad and should feel bad. They're wrong. They're incorrect. They don't, actually. We've answered that question. Yeah, they're mistaken. They think they have questions, but actually... Look, it's a mystery show, but there's X amount of mystery, and beyond that, it's just noise. Yeah, after a certain point, they don't... That's not a question they have. They just think they have. It's a mirage. See, the funny thing is...

I have no idea at all what the selection criteria is for questions. So we are chucking vast streams of people under the bus with no understanding of context. Yeah, I'll do that. Under the bus you go. If you're like, oh, my question wasn't answered under the bus. Stop.

bussing the fandom get under the bus see they all mocked me when I said it was bussing little did they know oh god I didn't even clock what was happening talk to you all soon bye

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