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Episode: Season 4 Discussion: Questions, Thoughts & More

Author: Harlan Guthrie
Duration: 01:26:24

Episode Shownotes

Finished Season 4 of Malevolent? Looking for MORE content while you wait patiently for Season 5? Look no further!On this, the fourth anniversary of Malevolent, Author Ren Brooke sits down with the creator of Malevolent Harlan Guthrie to talk ALL about Season 4!Consider supporting now at: https://www.patreon.com/TheINVICTUSStream Hosted on Acast.

See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_00
Hi, malevolent fans. This isn't the voice you usually hear on this feed, and that's because we're doing something special today.

00:00:11 Speaker_00
We're going to be diving into season four in all its guts and glory, answering questions and talking about what's next for the show.

00:00:20 Speaker_00
I'm Wren Brooke, writer and malevolent fan, and I'm here with Harlan Guthrie, sole creator of, and every single voice, yes, even that one, of malevolence. The reason we're all here

00:00:33 Speaker_00
The reason we're crying over things like Gardettos and music boxes and cans of peaches. Harlan, hello. How are you?

00:00:40 Speaker_02
Hello, I'm fantastic. How are you?

00:00:44 Speaker_00
I'm pretty good.

00:00:45 Speaker_02
Thank you so much for doing this and having me. I'm excited to chat malevolent.

00:00:50 Speaker_00
Yes, yes, lots to chat about.

00:00:52 Speaker_02
I hope, I'm hoping that I have enough to add to it, that my voice wasn't completely in just the show and nothing else. But I don't know, maybe I'll have some thoughts that exist beyond what the clever fans have already created.

00:01:07 Speaker_00
I think we could probably talk for an hour about Intermezzo alone.

00:01:12 Speaker_02
Oh, yes, please.

00:01:14 Speaker_00
Before we get into all of that, I have to say here, this is going to be spoilers for all of season four and Intermezzo, so if you haven't listened to those, go listen to those first and then come back to this.

00:01:27 Speaker_00
In fact, my first question dives right into Intermezzo. Get into the good stuff first. Those avoiding spoilers will want to turn back now.

00:01:36 Speaker_00
In essentially the first moments of Malevolent in season one, part one, chapter one, John lays out the idea of a multiverse and the dark world.

00:01:48 Speaker_00
Now in the intermezzo before season five, 200 chapters later, we get another summary of the multiverse from Kane, and we've learned how integral these other timelines are to Kane's plans.

00:02:03 Speaker_00
It's an idea you set up at the very beginning and now after four seasons, how does it feel to finally see this seed come to fruition?

00:02:11 Speaker_02
Oh man, it feels good. It's really, you know, when I had the idea, season one for the, you know, the multiverse, the dark world, all the kind of, it was before all the hot, hot Marvel movie multiverse stuff.

00:02:31 Speaker_02
I mean, obviously that existed in comic books well well before it is by no means a new idea whatsoever. It was also something I had used in my role playing campaigns.

00:02:41 Speaker_02
I always loved the idea of, you know, connectivity, interconnectivity, through characters that you play, you know, you sit down in a D&D game with me, well, what if your character in this

00:02:50 Speaker_02
you know, is a long distant cousin from this other campaign that we played. I just always found that really comforting and really fun. So it was something that kind of carried over from my RPGs.

00:02:59 Speaker_02
But Intermezzo was kind of, yeah, it was the final point that I got to clarify. And boy, did it take a long time to like crystallize it in the script of what the bigger picture here is in Malevolent. You know, to agree, yes, it's all led to this.

00:03:18 Speaker_02
I know a lot of people, you know, especially in season two, when I think the show started to really blossom and people were asking, you know, well, how, how is this going to be satisfying if, if he's just writing it chapter to chapter?

00:03:30 Speaker_02
And I would always say, well, no, there's, there is an underlying theme. You know, there is an underlying kind of feeling and there is an underlying story.

00:03:37 Speaker_02
And I think season four and Intermezzo are really a big weight off my shoulders, hoping that the fans are like, Oh, good. Okay. So not so much just the answers, but the trust being like, okay, cool. So there was a reason he did this.

00:03:50 Speaker_02
There was a reason because with the nature of my writing week by week, yeah, there are certain things I kind of have to play jazz with. There's certain things I do have to kind of make up on the fly.

00:03:59 Speaker_02
But I don't want that to be the cost of the larger picture that Beloved One's going. So it feels really good. It feels like a weight off my shoulders.

00:04:06 Speaker_02
And, and exciting, frankly, I want, I want to see all the theories really spinning now, you know, it's incredibly exciting.

00:04:13 Speaker_00
And yes, the theories are already spinning, and they're only going to spin faster as Intermezzo hits the patrons and then the public. Intermezzo has a lot of your Call of Cthulhu campaign lore.

00:04:27 Speaker_00
Um, I think you did a really good job giving the audience what they need to know without going back and watching the games themselves.

00:04:33 Speaker_00
But two questions, how did you balance wanting to integrate this lore into malevolent canon while knowing most people hadn't seen the games?

00:04:42 Speaker_00
And then two, as more lore from these games becomes malevolent canon, would you recommend listeners seek out those games?

00:04:49 Speaker_02
Well, I can answer the second one quicker. No, I don't. There's a lot with the old Call of Cthulhu games that A, I want to not really worry too much about, but B also, it's just a huge, you know, it's a huge time sink for people.

00:05:03 Speaker_02
And truth be told, the stuff that I'm taking from them is summed up more or less in Intermezzo. So you don't need to worry too much. I think the benefit or the beauty of it is going back kind of

00:05:16 Speaker_02
is like watching the behind the scenes footage from Lord of the Rings. It makes things a little better. You're like, oh, Aragorn broke his toe there. That's so cool. That's where the connection came.

00:05:27 Speaker_02
To me, it enhances malevolent, but it doesn't answer it. So I wouldn't say don't bother if you don't want that. But if you're done listening to malevolent and you need more, they're the perfect kind of outlet. And how was it balanced?

00:05:41 Speaker_02
What was the first question?

00:05:43 Speaker_00
How did you balance wanting to integrate this lore knowing most people haven't seen it?

00:05:48 Speaker_02
Yeah, it was tough because it's a real, you know, verbal payload being dropped by Kane who typically isn't somebody who's serious in the way they try to, you know, give exposition and stuff like that.

00:06:03 Speaker_02
So it's funny because I tried to make it really playful and then there's a point where I writing it was like, I think I'm losing the audience. And Kane is kind of like, get it? No, okay, look here.

00:06:15 Speaker_02
And then he just like really breaks it down Cole's notes. And that was like, purposeful.

00:06:18 Speaker_02
I was like, I should I should double beat some of this stuff to make sure the important bits land because I recognize how difficult it is sometimes to just hear somebody even someone as entertaining as Kane to just like lore dump on you.

00:06:31 Speaker_02
But you know, for the most part, I think I've done it pretty good job of including enough of those games that I want to carry over in small drips and drabs to make what Kane says a connection rather than a whole new piece of the puzzle.

00:06:49 Speaker_02
You know what I mean? He talks about Henry McFarland who

00:06:52 Speaker_02
his daughter is mentioned in episode one, he talks about Frank Underhill, who's mentioned in season two, and kind of becomes a character that the king in yellow takes on to try to manipulate Arthur.

00:07:03 Speaker_02
So it kind of feels more like answers than it does an outright new piece of the story, which is what I was trying for. So part, you know, set up means that the payoff is less, um,

00:07:17 Speaker_02
right turn, because I think that's a big thing I try to, I try to make it that when you go back, you go, Oh yeah, that, that was, and you know, a good example being in the final episode, uh, part 40, when you're listening to it, uh, Noel and Arthur, uh, have a quick conversation before going into the room with the machine where, uh, Arthur says, well, you know, and it's not just the two of us.

00:07:40 Speaker_02
And, and Noel says, that's right. And they're talking about the butcher. But I kind of wrote that trying to be clever because I really didn't want to tip my hat. I really wanted the Butcher Reveal to be a hard twist.

00:07:52 Speaker_02
Well, I think I successfully got most people. I'm excited to expand on my motivation for that.

00:08:01 Speaker_02
I, I wanted it to be vague enough that people would automatically assume, Oh yeah, well, obviously they're talking to John, but also going back being like, Oh, they're talking about the fucking butcher.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
So, you know, when you set up, when I set up things like that, I feel like that twist is a little bit more earned. And again, I think that's a big part of that balancing act in the end where it's kind of like.

00:08:20 Speaker_02
These are answers more than just new lore.

00:08:22 Speaker_00
Everything in Part 40 and Intermezzo felt so earned. And I agree, it was a sigh, not of relief, but of, yes, we're here. And being so excited to see what's next also.

00:08:37 Speaker_02
We're getting the big storyline now. Because when you think about it,

00:08:41 Speaker_02
you know, season one and two, well, season one was about getting Arthur and john their own bodies back season two was about more or less escaping the dreamlands, but also with that as a sort of subset, like getting their bodies back.

00:08:54 Speaker_02
Season three was really just about like survival, like it was about we got to get the fuck out of here. And then their motivations changed. And then season four was all about getting to the order of the fallen star. We don't

00:09:04 Speaker_02
really know or we didn't really know what the author had in mind for like the series. Like, why does he say it ends after season six? What's like, what is the main plot here?

00:09:17 Speaker_02
And that was purposeful because I didn't want to introduce the main plot point in season one or two, just to have it drawn out forever. You know, I, I want it to be more of like, uh, here's what I want. Here's what you can do about it.

00:09:29 Speaker_02
And now go do it type type five. So, you know, it feels really good for me as well.

00:09:37 Speaker_00
You mentioned the amazing twist with the Butcher. And when you were writing Prelude at the beginning of this season, did you know how big of a role the Butcher was going to play in the season?

00:09:48 Speaker_00
Or did you think it was going to be more of a one off and he grew as the season expanded?

00:09:54 Speaker_02
I definitely intended him to be a major antagonist because At the end of season three, you know, I sort of intended Larson to be this, this shorter villain solved in season three was my mind.

00:10:07 Speaker_02
But again, you know, with the Patreon choices and the way my mind kind of has to reset every week to kind of see where the story goes.

00:10:15 Speaker_02
I ended up really enjoying him and being like, you know what, this feels like kind of a bigger figure, ironically, in such a small kind of like weenie body.

00:10:25 Speaker_02
So, you know, like there was some serious consideration, even at the end of season three, that when Arthur came up to the mansion, that he was going to kill Larson.

00:10:35 Speaker_02
And then I kind of tweaked it and thought on it and thought, no, you know what, this makes more sense and it's more satisfying if Larson's completely gone, you know.

00:10:43 Speaker_02
So retooling of villains and stuff like that, you know, made me consider, okay, well, you know, if I like Larson now, I need a more minor villain. So I really wanted to do that introduction of like the minor villain type trope.

00:11:01 Speaker_02
But I fully intended that there would be a cat and mouse game. It's funny, because like starting season four, I knew the vibes of what I wanted. And I kind of wanted this like,

00:11:10 Speaker_02
New York detective brutality like I wanted like slamming of trunks and shotguns and like splatters of blood and I wanted panting running down the street and I wanted like chasing and I don't know I just I the vibe was like more 70s New York exploitation cop film then straight up malevolent.

00:11:31 Speaker_02
And I think there are moments in there that I succeeded at that.

00:11:35 Speaker_02
Ultimately, I don't think it would have worked if I tried to do the whole season like that, but like that whole butcher arc where it's his perspective is really, I could point to as what I was really aiming for, for season four, like.

00:11:46 Speaker_02
brutal you know the way he the way the butcher just blows away that guy who's like hiding in a closet is like so perfect in my mind for the tone of the season where he's just like okay chuck chuck bam and you're like oh my god this is fucking horrible

00:12:03 Speaker_02
It's brutal. And I always knew that I wanted The Butcher to be that.

00:12:08 Speaker_02
And I think what was interesting is as I wrote The Butcher, who was a character I was familiar with, and Arthur, the similarities between the two, you know, the dichotomy, the reflections, you know, the brutality, the nature of, you know, killing and all that kind of stuff.

00:12:26 Speaker_02
I enjoyed their conversations. And what I did see, and I think a lot of the people saw those who, you know, shipped them or made them friends or whatever, saw also this kind of like duality in their personalities.

00:12:38 Speaker_02
And as that came, that's when the realization dawned on me of, oh, you know what, I think

00:12:44 Speaker_02
there is a route here where the butcher has turned and come to respect his prey his quarry, you know, who's now kind of got the drop on him more or less there's like an honor amongst thieves type vibe from the train episode, I never intended that the butcher would

00:13:01 Speaker_02
befriend Arthur at the end or be on his side. However, I knew the character well enough that he had honor in him. You know, that's why he tips his hat.

00:13:09 Speaker_02
The first thing you see at the end is when Arthur bests him, he literally removes his hat and like, is like, Hey, you got me. And looking back now, you know, that, that character understanding that character more or less is what makes the ending.

00:13:24 Speaker_02
So obvious because it's like, well, here's a guy who respects the

00:13:29 Speaker_02
the game and gets it, you know, and, and when he loses the game, he's not petulant about it because he has some really good moments where like Arthur is like, you know, digging his heels in and, and he gets the better of Arthur here and there, you know, but for the most part, he, he respects it.

00:13:45 Speaker_02
And I thought that was a really cool thing. And when it came to the finale, uh, or part 40, I should say, I sat down and I was like, well, look, Larson got the better of Arthur when they met.

00:13:58 Speaker_02
And Larson, to an extent, got the better of Arthur in New York because, you know, he's sick the butcher on him. But Arthur's not an idiot. And he also has Noel now. And I was like, if you had eight hours to kill, what's your play?

00:14:12 Speaker_02
And in my mind, I, you know, I pictured at the end of part 39, Arthur talking to Marie for a few hours.

00:14:18 Speaker_02
And, you know, as his mind is drifting and she's wobbling on about whatever, you know, he gets this idea and he's like, excuse me, he goes, calls Noel and he's like,

00:14:27 Speaker_02
I have an idea and they meet up and he pitches his idea and Noel's like, that's crazy.

00:14:31 Speaker_02
And then the two of them go to the prison or go to the police station and they have this like conversation and you know, the butcher is like, all right, okay, fine. I can get behind this and. And to me, that all made sense.

00:14:42 Speaker_02
And I was like, well, that then that's perfect. So that that is how I, I let the audience know that Arthur is deserving of his title of like a detective, you know, the butcher definitely respects Arthur.

00:14:54 Speaker_00
Does Arthur respect the butcher? I think

00:14:58 Speaker_02
Yes, I think there's a subset of Arthur, that brutal Arthur, that one who shoved his thumbs through uncle's eyes, that recognizes the beast within all of us. And a lot, you know, a lot of malevolence is about choices.

00:15:13 Speaker_02
It's about who you are choosing to be in that moment. And I think I'm going to get a lot of flack from Intermezzo for people being upset about John's choice in Intermezzo. And I

00:15:24 Speaker_02
think that if you don't see how obviously he would make that choice, then you're not really understanding what John is and what Arthur is for that matter.

00:15:33 Speaker_02
Because if I flip the characters, I think Arthur would do the same thing because it's, it's not, it's, you know, to me, the choice John makes at the end there is, is a, is a social, is a human

00:15:45 Speaker_02
failure, you know, it's a human issue of being like, well, you know, if I could erase this person's memory, and I just fucked up, I would totally do it. The truth of the matter is, you know, this person can do it. Ultimately, he doesn't.

00:15:58 Speaker_02
But, you know, the tantalizing notion of just getting a little reset is like, Oh, well, then I, you know, I could do this. So, you know, I think as much as Arthur is always trying to choose the better path, and same with John, they fuck up.

00:16:15 Speaker_02
I think the big difference is Arthur, even though he pushes it down, he's aware of it so much more than John is, like, especially after season three, I think.

00:16:24 Speaker_02
the season for Arthur subconsciously, you know, knows like, okay, yeah, there's like, there is an ability in me to be pretty, pretty violent. And it's fun to tap into that sometimes, I suppose we see it in chapter 40, or part 40.

00:16:39 Speaker_00
We see it too in the bathroom scene where he, which perfectly, I don't know if this was deliberate on your part, parallels the prologue of Witch's Mark where we get introduced to Collins for the first time.

00:16:52 Speaker_02
For the call because Hulu gave us or for this?

00:16:54 Speaker_00
Yes.

00:16:55 Speaker_02
Well, so the Call of Cthulhu games, yes, he kills a guy in the bathroom. Yeah, 100%. And I definitely meant it to be a parallel to Butcher. And it's funny you mentioned that because yes, that's one of those things.

00:17:05 Speaker_02
It's like, well, if you've heard the games, you get the direct parallel. I meant it to kind of be a companion piece to the

00:17:11 Speaker_02
person that the butcher kills in the barbershop in prologue as a less overt parallel because the two of them have Brutality over them, you know, he's not questioning him in the prologue obviously he just straight kills the guy but the idea of like Walking into the room really calmly the guy talking to him, you know I wanted to make a indirect parallel so that those searching would be like oh shit, you know part 39 and Prelude have similarities between Arthur and butcher

00:17:41 Speaker_00
Since you mentioned John's choice in Intermezzo, you sniped my question, which is why is John choosing avoidance here, but I completely agree with you. It reminded me of when I would lie about my bad report card getting lost in the mail.

00:17:57 Speaker_00
It's exactly that.

00:17:59 Speaker_02
Well, and I got a lot of flack from I think it was part 37 or maybe part 38 where Arthur calls John a kid, a child.

00:18:09 Speaker_02
There's a certain subset of people who were believing that I was trying to imply that those who ship them, that there's some sort of like

00:18:18 Speaker_02
You know belittling going on that wasn't my intention Arthur calls John a child because emotionally he is not not Physically, but the fact that Arthur is realizing that John is only new to these concepts and you know the idea that I mean and and maybe this is just From my perspective as being a parent of a six-year-old and a four-month-old, you know, like I

00:18:40 Speaker_02
My son can walk up to me, put a hand on my back and say, you know, Daddy, I love you. I'm so sorry you had a terrible day. You can do better. You can do everything you ever want. And I'll say, thank you, Henry.

00:18:52 Speaker_02
And then he'll fart and be like, I can't believe that we don't have pizza for dinner and storm out of the room. Like kids, like children are like that because they're emotionally immature. They don't understand.

00:19:04 Speaker_02
And that's why in season three, John can have these emotional depths of like, I won't let you fail. And then the next moment be like, okay, but Oscar needs to go because he doesn't, he doesn't have.

00:19:18 Speaker_02
30, 40, 50 years of like understanding that breakneck switching that fast is not good or helpful. He doesn't get the bigger picture yet. He doesn't have wisdom. You know what I mean?

00:19:29 Speaker_02
And I think a lot of people may have misinterpreted Arthur calling him a child, which is why in the direct next part, he addresses it. He's kind of like, no, no, you're a child because you're immature.

00:19:40 Speaker_02
And I think that's exactly, exactly exemplified in Intermezzo when You tell a child, I mean, are you telling me, you know, like a kid, a six year old kid who was exactly caught for, you know, having their report card lost in the mail.

00:19:57 Speaker_02
And then you said, listen, we can pretend this never happened. And I will erase mom and dad's memory. Uh, if you, if you'd like that kid wouldn't go, yes, I'll take that. Please. Yes, please. That like it to me, it's so obvious, you know?

00:20:09 Speaker_00
Yeah. It's anywhere on the emotional spectrum of six to 16.

00:20:16 Speaker_00
He has so much teen in him as well of the, like you said, not having those emotional tools, not having a toolbox at all, which does come from experience, but then also married with, he has memories of being an all-powerful being and getting everything he wanted all of the time.

00:20:37 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's like a spoiled, yeah, it's like a spoiled kid. And then, up until eight, and then bringing them into a house where they got nothing. It's like, listen, beans off the floor, like that's as much as you get.

00:20:48 Speaker_02
And, you know, and they're happy for it. They're like, okay, like I'm, you know, John's not a bad person or a bad character. He's just a troubled character. And I think it's pretty clear throughout the series of the show that that's the case.

00:21:03 Speaker_02
I think a lot of people,

00:21:05 Speaker_02
we're frustrated thinking that season three's moment where john has that with arthur was like the end of his turmoil and i you know i get it but that's a bit but no because season three ended with him deceptive deceiving arthur as well so i think i always intended to be like yeah but is he really done now is he fully cooked now because he helped his friend you know

00:21:28 Speaker_00
Absolutely. And it seems like this season, john has really been wrestling with what is his next move beyond the deal? What is his identity in part 40? You say he's a broken mirror for the king in yellow, and he doesn't fit with the king anymore.

00:21:46 Speaker_00
But it also seems like he's struggling to fit inside Arthur more and more. He uses the term Prisoner and voiceless. So where is he at the end of season four now?

00:21:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean, I think john is being introduced to that part of humanity, you know, or I suppose childhood where you know, you've outgrown I guess adolescence, you know what I mean? Where he's no longer a child where everything is like done for him.

00:22:14 Speaker_02
And he's always been struggling, you know, with Arthur to an extent, but he's kind of ebbed and flowed to the point where, you know, maybe there's been moments where he's laid back and be like, you know what, I'm actually going to enjoy this ride.

00:22:24 Speaker_02
I'm just going to help. But as he becomes more and more mature in a way, he's also recognizing that there's a line in episode 40 where the king in yellow where Arthur says to the king in yellow, that you'd be trapped in Larson.

00:22:40 Speaker_02
And John sort of says trapped, like kind of realizing or not realizing, but like reminding himself that he is a prisoner.

00:22:50 Speaker_02
And I think one of the big changes in his character in 40 is that we learned that John has a new ability, which is that he can now project himself outside of Arthur, which A means, okay, well, what other abilities does Jon have?

00:23:06 Speaker_02
Does he have the capacity to do? And B, how does Jon feel about all that kind of stuff? And obviously season five is going to have to first and foremost deal with the betrayal of what the hell John just did to him.

00:23:20 Speaker_02
But I think, and I'm excited for season five, season four, I wanted to focus on Arthur, you know, we get nightmare flashbacks of Pharaoh's birth, we get to visit his father, we get Arthur to interact with all these characters.

00:23:37 Speaker_02
Season five, I intend to be more like not necessarily Jon focused, but to dive into his mentality, you know, without spoiling too much, I want a little bit of the other side of the coin now to kind of understand where he's at.

00:23:49 Speaker_02
So I think we're going to see a really interesting realization from Jon. And yeah, without spoiling too much,

00:23:56 Speaker_02
There's going to be some opportunities early in Season 5 where Jon is going to get to kind of for the first time lay out who he is for the audience. You know what I mean?

00:24:06 Speaker_02
I have a few ideas for some really cool episodes because we get to see a lot of Arthur's side of things and we don't get to see much of Jon's side of things.

00:24:15 Speaker_02
But suffice to say that I think we're only just about to see where Jon sees himself and how he feels about all of

00:24:24 Speaker_02
all of what's been going on, for better or for worse, because obviously there's moments where I think, like anybody, Jon feels powerful when he gets to pull Arthur out of the brink, you know? Power is a big theme.

00:24:37 Speaker_02
You know, being powerful doesn't make you better, which is said, echoed by Jon, which is something Arthur says, not even to him, but to Yellow in season three, in the finale. And here, we are also kind of

00:24:51 Speaker_02
We have to acknowledge that Arthur and John are struggling for power in a, an emotional sense, you know, like the reason John was so comfortable and this gets addressed and I think part 38 as well.

00:25:02 Speaker_02
The reason John was so comfortable with Arthur in the end of season three is because he had the emotional power. He got to pick his friend up. You know, how, how validating that feels.

00:25:11 Speaker_02
If you're in a, excuse me, if you're in a relationship and your partner is crumbling and you're like, Hey, listen, like you can do this. Of course you're being loving and caring, but you also have this thrill of like,

00:25:21 Speaker_02
I just helped somebody that feels so good. You know what I mean? And I, I think a lot of people think that feelings like that exist in a bubble.

00:25:29 Speaker_02
You know, it's like when you, when you, you have people online handing bottles of water to homeless people, it's like they're filming it for a reason. They're not just doing it because they're good.

00:25:38 Speaker_02
They're doing it because they also want people to make them feel good about doing a good thing. And that's why the many shades of humanity. exist in Malevolent. I've never, ever tried to make these characters two-dimensional.

00:25:51 Speaker_02
And I think it's much to the chagrin of many listeners because they think, well, no, John is good now, or John is bad now, or, you know, Arthur's good now, Arthur's bad now.

00:26:00 Speaker_02
And I feel like since day one, it's been like, no, that's not, if anything, that echoes the multiverse theory more than anything is that there are so many versions of us, so many ways that we can be perceived.

00:26:13 Speaker_02
that Arthur in one episode can say I'll never hurt another living thing and in another episode gouge the eyes out of a weird ram person, you know?

00:26:23 Speaker_02
So long story short, we'll see a lot of John's true mentality in season five is my plan, you know, interesting, very interesting.

00:26:31 Speaker_00
That makes me think about the two kind of bottle episodes we got this season and you playing around with format.

00:26:38 Speaker_02
And 100% I have a format idea for season five that I think will be really fun.

00:26:43 Speaker_00
Oh, that's very exciting. Going back to season four, John.

00:26:48 Speaker_00
Before part 39, the only significant time John communicated to a living thing, not counting the king or Cain or any other entities, was Lily in part 20, where he has Arthur impart final words to her. Then he doesn't have a voice again until part 39.

00:27:06 Speaker_00
John's first words that are ever spoken aloud to another human being are, I feel at times like a prisoner, voiceless, unheard. And then he finds instant empathy in Noel. So how did meeting Noel change John this season?

00:27:23 Speaker_00
And in the trajectory of John's story so far, how important is this moment of being heard?

00:27:28 Speaker_02
Oh, very important. I think I think the audience picked up on that right away.

00:27:32 Speaker_02
I think that moment was more or less specifically engineered to be a counter to how he felt about Oscar, you know, like, John was introduced to Lily and humanity, you know, days ago, more or less in that, but

00:27:49 Speaker_02
What we now know with Intermezzo is that he also spent a long time in the dark world between Lily and coming back to Arthur. And season three, when he comes back, you know, we don't know how long he's been gone and he's just kind of thankful.

00:28:02 Speaker_02
He's like, Oh my God. Yes. Thank you. You know, he's, it's kind of the opposite of, of season one where he's just manipulative. Now he's just like thankful, which is why it was so easy for him in season three to kind of be like, Okay, everything's great.

00:28:13 Speaker_02
Everything's great. I got to do this thing with Kane. I got to fulfill my obligation, but everything's great. It's fantastic. You know, now he is sort of falling back into his old ways as New York is kind of playing out.

00:28:24 Speaker_02
And he's realizing, oh God, no, like this is still, this isn't the savior I thought. I'm out of the dark world. I'm feeling better, but I'm still lost in this.

00:28:34 Speaker_02
And I think he, especially with Oscar, becomes callous because he's, you know, lost so much of his voice in the season to a degree that he's removed himself from the desire for humanity after such a long time in the dark world.

00:28:49 Speaker_02
To a degree, obviously he's not not ready to abandon it, but he just isn't focusing on it in any way, shape or form. And he's like, well, you know, get rid of Oscar, it's easier.

00:28:57 Speaker_02
And when that realization comes out, and it's like, Whoa, fuck, like, what are you talking about? He sort of has this moment of like, this is gonna be fine. Like, this is this is good. They're in the car driving.

00:29:06 Speaker_02
And john's like, see, like, this is what we wanted. And he's sort of internalizing and being like, right, this is good. This is better now. It's just us again. It's going to be cool.

00:29:16 Speaker_02
So I think that like hits him like a ton of bricks when he realizes, you know, if he had a chance to speak with Oscar, Oscar would have been equally as empathetic.

00:29:25 Speaker_02
possibly, if he believed Arthur, and that he sees the figures in Arthur's life, not as just these obstacles or just these things that Arthur is interacting with, but as empathetic creatures, the way he saw Lily, you know what I mean?

00:29:41 Speaker_02
And that's why Lily was something he empathized with, because it wasn't anything that took away from his experience. Lily was just a part of their journey together, you know, and it was easy for him to connect to that.

00:29:51 Speaker_02
But these other things are just obstacles, they're in the way, you know, like, I want to be the one that's talking to Arthur, because that's what we fucking do, man, like, and now he's like, Oh, shit, no, he's a real dude as well.

00:30:01 Speaker_02
And that was so important for what happens in episode 40. Because john jumping out of Arthur's skin isn't about Arthur. It's about It's about him empathizing with a creature to the point where he can manifest power.

00:30:16 Speaker_02
So that's a huge development in terms of, I guess, his character. And I suppose that's really what your question was, which I think is really fair.

00:30:24 Speaker_02
I guess to me, because I haven't got to dive into the meat and potatoes of him explaining that yet, it feels it feels like I haven't got to sink my teeth into it yet. You know what I mean?

00:30:34 Speaker_02
And that's kind of one of the issues with writing piecemeal is that until I get to sit down and write the episode, where john talks about that feeling, I know what I've intended with it, but I haven't got to actually express it yet.

00:30:46 Speaker_02
But I mean, yeah, you're entirely right, that that is really a big turning point in his character, because that's, Yeah, that's when he's sort of learning that these figures in Arthur's life aren't just figures. They're not just obstacles.

00:31:00 Speaker_02
Now, of course, that gets kind of like pushed over because the deal with Cain is so much more important for him because he did anything to not go back to the dark world, you know, which is sort of the implication of what that deal means.

00:31:09 Speaker_02
You know, you do this or else you go back. Yeah, I think that was really, really important for him and a really important thing to make his character really grow.

00:31:18 Speaker_00
Arthur clearly saw it too because it wasn't the patrons that voted for Arthur to spill those beans to Noel. That was all Arthur. He clearly sensed that John needed this.

00:31:31 Speaker_02
I think, again, I established that a little bit in the beginning of 39 and a little bit at the end of 38 where I think Arthur is, during his sort of confession, he's kind of like, I never, you know, I haven't given you a chance to do this.

00:31:45 Speaker_02
And it was always something I had in my document of ideas.

00:31:48 Speaker_02
And it's really funny to go through my document of weird thoughts that like, to see where they ended up, you know, like, for example, I would say, I don't know, two episodes, like maybe the first episode The Butcher is in.

00:32:01 Speaker_02
Oh, the first episode The Butcher is in that he talks about hearing music. I wrote down in my document, Butcher's head explodes. I can't hear the music. I was like, that's, that's how he'll die. Like, that's the best way to die.

00:32:13 Speaker_02
Because I think that's so cool. I was like, that's so fucking, which to me was like, well, how do I get that in? And now I want to be clear. A lot of the ideas I write down, if, if the choices don't make it happen, they just get scratched out.

00:32:26 Speaker_02
But of the ideas that haven't been scratched out, you know, that was one that ended up kind of getting its path. You know, I would say half of the ideas. I was like, Oh, you know, like, no, we'll die this way.

00:32:37 Speaker_02
It's like, ah, it doesn't work anymore, because they chose this or whatever, cross it out.

00:32:41 Speaker_00
Your documents, the, the multiverse in some other malevolent that Noel death.

00:32:47 Speaker_02
I mean, and I think that's a really cool and interesting thing that Kane talks about, too, is like all of these versions that are slightly different. Obviously, it's meta, because it's talking about the patrons.

00:32:56 Speaker_02
And I think I was really, really excited to make that scene because it's the first choice. And I think most listeners understand that, but that scene in Intermezzo where Arthur and Parker and, uh, John and Kane are in the closet.

00:33:15 Speaker_02
Um, that's the first choice of the entire series. Do you fire, do you shoot Eddie? And then, you know, dark, dark third, like you said. I love this version.

00:33:24 Speaker_00
So good. Oh, I hope the fans run with that.

00:33:28 Speaker_02
Oh, they'll listen, I, I fully expect people to be changing their names on the discord to dark Arthur or darker. Joe called it immediately after listening to it. She's like, so many people are gonna be changing their name to that.

00:33:39 Speaker_02
But obviously, you know, all those choices matter. So yeah, that document of like things crossed out, you know, yeah, there are things that in the intermezzo episode that were choices that got crossed out.

00:33:51 Speaker_02
you know, and little satisfying things to like that hole in the wall breathing scene, which I I'm really curious to how many people are going to understand it right away. How many people are vaguely and how many people it immediately clicks for.

00:34:04 Speaker_02
Because that was so long ago.

00:34:07 Speaker_00
It was so long ago. And the episode is already so dense. with.

00:34:12 Speaker_02
It's so dense. Yeah. But that was a really cool thing I was excited about. And I knew again, an idea, you know, I was like, Listen, when Kane is flashing through worlds, it they'll go back to that.

00:34:23 Speaker_02
And they'll hear the breathing and it'll be Arthur on the other side of the wall. And I was like, I thought that was such a cool. The shame is the things I didn't get to put in the Kane intermezzo episode because for timing and just work,

00:34:36 Speaker_02
I was like, well, it's not really worth it. You know, as a writer, you know, this half of it is what you just don't include because writing too much becomes, I knew I wanted like four flashes. That was important. And any more would be superfluous.

00:34:50 Speaker_02
Any less, it would be too little to demonstrate the power. But you know, I had I had a few ideas.

00:34:56 Speaker_02
I fully had the idea to show the conversation between the butcher and Noel and Arthur in the thing to be like, look, you know, but again, I was like, Well, this is just it detracts butchers dead now.

00:35:10 Speaker_02
Let's not hear his voice more fun that way, you know?

00:35:13 Speaker_00
Well, and leaving it up to the listener just means there's more opportunity to fill in your own

00:35:20 Speaker_02
fan stuff too, right? Like the amount of Ao3s that get to play with alternate realities, which, and this is kind of an allusion to, you know, people have talked about the Furovers and stuff like that too.

00:35:31 Speaker_02
And, you know, I've tweeted once, like, you're not the first to come up with this idea. Uh, not to say that the amount of work put into it, obviously, but in terms of like me being like, Oh, cool.

00:35:43 Speaker_02
Well, there'll be realities with this reality with this, like, yeah, there there's. I established episode one that there is multiple realities. You kidding me? Like, you don't think I've, I've considered the idea of, of a four over. So it'd be so cool.

00:35:56 Speaker_00
Furrow with a shotgun. Hell, yes. You mentioned very, very briefly about some of your writing process, which is until you actually sit down and write the episode, you're not 100% sure what the feelings are or what it's going to be.

00:36:12 Speaker_00
I remember you mentioning in season four, writing Marie's final scene and not knowing that that was going to happen at all until you sat down. Can you talk about that and other times that happened during the season?

00:36:26 Speaker_02
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, so typically my writing process will be the idea stage. I'll always be throwing in small little things to how I want it to be. And for example, funnily enough, the book that you gave me.

00:36:42 Speaker_02
I was using for intermezzo and I wrote, so actually here's a flash that didn't happen. Arthur coma, Cain pillow kill.

00:36:51 Speaker_02
I had this idea that Cain brings them to the part where Arthur's in a coma and like walks up and like smothers them with a pillow to be like, see you die in this one. And I thought that'd be really funny.

00:37:01 Speaker_02
I also, I also took the baby scene with Arthur very dark in one version. And I actually talked to Joe about it. I was like, and we both kind of decided, you know what, I think it's just better to leave it as is.

00:37:12 Speaker_02
But there was definitely a version where, you know, Cain was like, Hey, you know, I mean, there's a baby here and I'll just kill it.

00:37:21 Speaker_02
um but like here i wrote let me tell you a story story reveals that henry lived in other worlds arthur birth kids are great i have a daughter she'd love you uh black stone is what i want others have failed i'll give you a deal same as arty i'll make him forget i want you two to succeed

00:37:37 Speaker_02
Like little kind of notes like that. So especially a big episode like Intermezzo will start like that with like a distillation of the big bullet points. And then when I think Intermezzo, I was really daunted by because so much has been leading to it.

00:37:51 Speaker_02
And I wanted to be so succinct with the words and the interpretation that I was kind of overwriting the bullet point part and I was kind of getting nowhere.

00:38:02 Speaker_02
And then the minute I started writing in Kane's voice, I was like, Oh, this is so much easier because I know Kane, this is how he'd tell it. You know, it adds more like pauses and humor and jokes and whatever, just it started. flying through.

00:38:15 Speaker_02
And that's when all the little subtleties started to come out.

00:38:19 Speaker_02
So once I write in the dialogue, and the same with Marie, you know, once I was writing her dialogue and hearing her voice in my head, I realized that there was so much more to her in speaking.

00:38:31 Speaker_02
You know, like as she's talking, she wouldn't just say, anyway, Arthur, it's nice to see you. You know, she, she's like, oh no, this is like a person. And when I write, I'm seeing it play out in my head. I'm,

00:38:43 Speaker_02
always a visual writer, which is ironic because it's audio, but I'm always a visual writer and I saw her sitting in this like flower pattern high back chair and I saw the sun leaking through and I saw her looking towards it and I was like, that is perfect.

00:38:58 Speaker_02
That makes sense. And Once you're in that voice, it's easier to envision the scene. And then I think I get another creative input when I do the sound effects and editing. So really I do a part of the writing in editing in a way too.

00:39:16 Speaker_02
And to take Intermezzo, for example, because it's the freshest in my mind. In the final scene, when Cain is telling Arthur to play piano, I originally just had Arthur play the song for Rose Goodbye.

00:39:29 Speaker_02
And then as I was editing it, I was like, this doesn't make sense. Arthur would stop and Cain would forcibly be like, keep going. Because there's just too many dramatic moments in Cain's speech that Arthur would be distracted by.

00:39:44 Speaker_02
So I ran back to the booth, added a few like, keep going. added artificial pauses. And that's how that happens. And I mean, sometimes it's not big moments, either. It's jokes, like the closet scene with Kane and dead Parker, the clacking of the teeth.

00:40:01 Speaker_02
So entirely, I didn't write that. I was just like, I envisioned Kane just being like, okay, but then I was like, Oh, no, he's got to fucking grab this dude's mouth and like, jank it around and you get the squishing.

00:40:13 Speaker_02
And that elevated it immensely, you know, so that was storytelling I got to do in sound effects. And honestly, this is one of the cool things about getting to do all parts of the show is that I'm directing every aspect of it.

00:40:25 Speaker_02
You know, I would be so annoying working with actors or a sound effects person. Because I'd be like, oh, try this, try this.

00:40:32 Speaker_02
It's so nice to get to do it myself because as I'm listening back or as I'm remixing, I'm like, oh, no, this needs a little bit more of that. And it's really, really nice to get to do that. So writing in the voice gives me all those kind of moments.

00:40:43 Speaker_02
And writing doesn't stop, I think, until until I give it to Jo to listen to. And then even then she'll be like, oh, you know, add a pause here or something like that.

00:40:52 Speaker_00
I have to also compliment your Cain voice hearing him in Termezzo especially after so long. It's like Mark Hamill is the Joker level.

00:41:04 Speaker_02
Good. Oh, wow. Thank you. Yeah, Cain's easy to slip in because it's just me with more like just energy, honestly. The toughest thing is just when to record because I'm like, man,

00:41:15 Speaker_02
that it takes a lot of like yelling and laughing and like you know like all that kind of maniacal heated stuff and uh but yeah there's a few it's funny because there are a few moments in Kane's speeches in 40 and intermezzo that

00:41:32 Speaker_02
Again, weren't written, but I just really liked like the, um, there's a part where he's talking about Arthur and he's like, you just can't really do that. And he kind of like laughs to himself. It's very weird, but I really liked that.

00:41:46 Speaker_02
That was just like a recording booth thing.

00:41:48 Speaker_00
We got so much more of his personality this time, I feel like.

00:41:52 Speaker_02
Yeah, well, and it's funny too, because I tried to walk the line because I don't want him to be too cartoonish. Like I do want him to feel like you could listen to part 19 and part Intermezzo and feel like it is the same character.

00:42:08 Speaker_02
And I, you know, I do have the tendency sometimes to you know, I mean, John sounds so different from one to now, that is purposeful, because I do want wanted that.

00:42:17 Speaker_02
But I do want and I do think especially in intermezzo, there are moments where Kane is more like calm and like kind of like, like he was in 20, which is purposeful, but, but it was it was it's really nice to kind of know what a character sounds like in your head.

00:42:31 Speaker_02
Just an unhinged version of you, I suppose, with a lot of energies.

00:42:36 Speaker_00
You wrote a lot of new voices this season. a lot of new characters, which one was the easiest to slip into? And which gave you some struggles?

00:42:48 Speaker_02
No easiest New York is like more or less like pre pre, you know, I mean, it doesn't really matter if it's like New York or Boston, like doesn't really matter. Like no could be putting it on fake. You know what I mean?

00:42:59 Speaker_02
Marie, once I found her voice was really easy to Well, I should say this. Sometimes I'd have to like retake it because the speeding up sounded a little too artificial.

00:43:09 Speaker_02
And like, I would say there's like one or two words in season four that I kind of wish I retook. Not a big deal. I would say in Increasing Difficulty, Oscar was like kind of up there. Butcher is like in the middle.

00:43:22 Speaker_02
There were some times like Prelude Butcher is like really Irish. Forty Butcher is a little less. But I'm not too worried about that. I think he was putting it on, really, frankly, at the beginning.

00:43:34 Speaker_02
And Oscar was more difficult, just because certain words sound really weird to my ear, trying to put on a Scottish accent. I would say top, though, was the Grand Vizier. The Werner Herzog was really fucking tough. Once I got into it, I could do it.

00:43:50 Speaker_02
I'd have to like talk like him for a little bit to try to, you know, but like, it also kind of like sometimes slid into Jamaican weirdly. Like I guess, cause there's like an enunciation thing.

00:43:59 Speaker_02
I don't really know, but Grand Vizier, I think was by far the toughest. Oh, you know what? Easiest, Larson. I should have put him first. Larson is fucking simple. My God.

00:44:09 Speaker_00
In every way.

00:44:11 Speaker_02
Oh, he's so, he's my favorite character in the show, I think. He's such a fucking shitbag. I cannot get over him. In episode 40, I was so happy with how much of a fucking dick. I mean, when he shoots Noel, it's- Oh my God.

00:44:28 Speaker_02
I can picture, and you know what? I grew up on 90s movies, and I feel like the 90s were the height of the petulant villain, where he shoots and runs away. Without a doubt, one of my favorite movies of all time is Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

00:44:44 Speaker_02
And Alan Rickman is like the most fucking we, you know, like he's such a, and like, like the part where Robin Hood burst in the room at the end and be like, grads may marry and like kisses her.

00:44:55 Speaker_02
Just, it's like such a fucking scuzzy thing, but he's also, but his portrayals also so pathetic, like it's meant to be, you know, which I love. Oh, I love, I love, love, love that villain. And you don't see enough of those types of villains.

00:45:10 Speaker_02
They're either like way too bad. Like, listen, this is like really super serious. Like this guy's tough. or they're not really intimidating.

00:45:19 Speaker_02
I love the little middle ground of a really pathetic weenie little character who's also violent and a piece of shit and intimidating when he wants to be, but still always under the guise of this little dweeb. I love him so much.

00:45:38 Speaker_00
We love to hate him. It's a lot of fun. He's a great villain.

00:45:44 Speaker_02
I do think so, I must say. I'm really proud because I think season four really exemplified or really solidified him in my mind as like a proper villain because of just... Because he's such a piece of shit. Such a piece of fucking shit. I love it.

00:45:59 Speaker_02
And he's like crawling on the ground.

00:46:02 Speaker_00
Oh, yeah, and you could just like feel the smirk. Like, why are you smirking? Like, fucking stop it. I'm so glad that he got a fate worse than death. I'm so glad.

00:46:13 Speaker_02
He did. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, uh, I'm really, yeah, he's, he, his eyes fucking blew out of his head. I think it's a kick to the dream. My favorite though is like, I think, I think all of his path led to his no.

00:46:28 Speaker_02
And I think I said in the discord, but there's a line where Cain is like, don't you fucking get it? And he's like, no, I don't like, no, like, explain it for me, please, daddy.

00:46:40 Speaker_02
And Cain's like, no, you fucking worthless piece of shit and kicks him out of there. He's like, you don't get it. Like, name, we choose our names. That's the whole theme, bro. Like, you don't you don't. Narlothotep is nothing to me. I'm Cain, idiot.

00:46:55 Speaker_00
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, it's so good, especially because Larson does this reveal that a certain subset of the fandom has been looking forward to for so long, but he does it in such a simp. You're simping for the great old ones, bro.

00:47:16 Speaker_02
Well, this is why Arthur despises cultists.

00:47:19 Speaker_00
Exactly, exactly. And then Cain just shuts him down. So who fucking cares? That's my second favorite line of the finale.

00:47:27 Speaker_02
Well, and that is also one that I have had since. Oh, my God, I can't remember. That one is probably a season two idea that I wrote down.

00:47:37 Speaker_02
Um, when I was just like, because people were online and they were being like, Oh, I came to this hotel and blah, blah, blah. And I remember being like, Oh my God, who fucking cares? Like, it's not about that.

00:47:47 Speaker_02
And then I was like, Oh, that's what he'll say. And I jotted it down immediately. And that was like my big, like, Oh my God, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who he is. He doesn't, he would have said if it mattered, like anyway.

00:48:01 Speaker_00
Yeah, speak on that a little more because you use some references to, you know, the greater Cthulhu mythos stuff, you take names from books, but like the Grand Vizier came from a book, but you changed around the powers a little bit.

00:48:21 Speaker_00
And you really make it your own. And you famously said you have never and will never read Lovecraft because he's a piece of shit. Yeah, so Speak on using those influences for your own.

00:48:35 Speaker_00
And then also, I mean, knowing that the fandom is going to go buck wild with their theories the moment you introduce any of that stuff.

00:48:43 Speaker_02
Well, I'll say this then and keep it brief. I mean, yeah, the Grand Vizier mask, I think, like I took verbatim. And I think for the most part, a lot of the objects, I guess I take, are kind of canonical, if you want to put it that way.

00:48:57 Speaker_02
Like the Crystallizer of Dreams is a real thing. The lantern was kind of a real thing. I think I might have skewed what it does. just because I think that adds some cool, you know, connections to things that you might've known.

00:49:11 Speaker_02
Yeah, like if you played Call of Cthulhu, you're like, oh, I know that, that's kind of fun. I think, I know I've jazzed a bunch of them up and changed my own and stuff.

00:49:17 Speaker_00
The Glass of Laying, I think is one.

00:49:19 Speaker_02
Yes, yeah, that's right, yeah. But in terms of like, and I think Intermezzo is a really nice kind of answer to that. And what I'm basically trying to say, or what Kane outright says is like,

00:49:30 Speaker_02
The way you think you know these gods, the way you think you know any of this in this world, is no longer the case. Shub-Nagrath, this like great old one, is just fucking gone. Like dead. Doesn't even exist in all these other worlds.

00:49:42 Speaker_02
And you only know about it because she was deleted from this world.

00:49:45 Speaker_02
me what you think me no i'm none of that anymore i'm whatever the fuck i want to be and when kane's ultimate goals come across it's going to be even more revelatory i suppose like it's going to be very interesting to see like what he actually wants because i i know people have theories and they're wrong um but the idea that um

00:50:06 Speaker_02
the things you know in this world are no longer the case is really my theme. And I struggled with a way to articulate that. I think that the piano analogy ended up working miraculously well, I think, in my mind.

00:50:19 Speaker_00
I think it worked really well. And especially because it ties into the way that you talked about opening portals, which is also music-based. These very deeply musical-based ways of describing undescribable things.

00:50:34 Speaker_02
Exactly. I was really proud of that. And then the fact that he gets to actually play it was just, oh, it's like, okay, this all works out really, really well. Which is the only part of Intermezzo I wrote pre.

00:50:43 Speaker_02
I wrote that before I started working on the finale. I wrote Kane's explanation of who he is. just so I could kind of work backwards from that point. But I knew this was where we were going to end, which is very different from any other season.

00:51:00 Speaker_02
Every other season, well, definitely season one and three. Season two, a little bit more idea. I was like, okay, I know I want to end with the king confrontation. So that's why also it ends on a nice clean 20. But like, season one ends on randomly 12.

00:51:14 Speaker_02
And then season fucking three ends on like, I don't know, 28. 28 just like random, because those seasons were like a little less, here's where I want to end with it.

00:51:25 Speaker_02
But, but yeah, you know, the gods in this world in malevolent are very much skewed, altered different versions, because if we can extrapolate that Cain is this version of Narlathotep, one where Excuse me. But when he says, you know, I killed them.

00:51:43 Speaker_00
When he revealed that, I lost my mind.

00:51:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, he says, I killed them. Executed by this one, this guy, you know, that just you can then kind of assume, okay, well, what other truths are about the gods?

00:51:56 Speaker_02
I mean, we already know King in Yellow fractured, we know that the real King in Yellow was yanked from the dreamlands and thrown into Arthur, which to me is a really fun piece that I think is alluded to, I don't know if I cut it or ended up in the episode.

00:52:11 Speaker_02
The dreamlands are world have been a lawless waste since the beginning of season three, which is kind of cool. There's no king in yellow there. What does that look like? You know what I mean? Like, what the fuck is going on there?

00:52:22 Speaker_02
And, you know, and so much of this is about not giving the whole picture to right, like, I love people trying to extrapolate and figure out things like that, too. And I, in a large part, don't want to give all the answers. I just want to give enough

00:52:35 Speaker_02
to make people feel satisfied and nip a few things in the bud. Who was breathing in that wall in Addison? Okay, cool. Checkmark. Done. That's closed. What would have happened if we had shot an Eddie? Done. Checkmark. Closed.

00:52:47 Speaker_02
I want certain things completely wrapped up. Who escaped the pits? Because that's satisfying for them too, but there's still a lot of the mythos that I do want to keep vague so that people can make their own assumptions or guesses or

00:53:05 Speaker_02
I get the opportunity to surprise people.

00:53:08 Speaker_00
Absolutely, which you did very consistently in part 40 and intermezzo.

00:53:14 Speaker_02
Yeah, I I would agree with that. Honestly, I was really I think there's like three big I did not see this coming. And I think the first is the butcher working for them. I think the second is John being projected as probably the biggest one.

00:53:32 Speaker_02
And then I think the memory wipe fake out is the big one for Intermezzo, which I was really proud about.

00:53:39 Speaker_00
And the I didn't say I would close his ears.

00:53:42 Speaker_02
Yeah, that was fun. I really liked that. So good. Thank you.

00:53:48 Speaker_00
You already knew where this season was going to end, which you said is pretty different from your other seasons. As you got closer to the finale, did it get harder to maneuver everything into place?

00:54:01 Speaker_02
I think I do enough, like, theorizing and jotting little ideas down to really, at the end of the day, when it came to the finale, it was about assembling them. I would say my biggest failure with the finale was just how long it was, honestly.

00:54:18 Speaker_02
I didn't, and it's for multiple reasons. Number one, I wanted to end on chapter 200. I think around chapter 187, I was like, I could, I can nail this out in you know, but but that came

00:54:33 Speaker_02
ironically, as a result of lengthening the farm episodes, purely because, well, A, my daughter was born around that time and I was like, okay, well, we need to slow down a little bit. But also I was like, you know, I'm enjoying the scene.

00:54:46 Speaker_02
I'm enjoying Oscar, I'm enjoying what could happen. I'm enjoying the revelation of that little arc, which is who Scratch is, which is really fun.

00:54:56 Speaker_02
Um, but, uh, just kind of enjoying myself more, but I think what it did was it made me realize, Oh, I want the shh, I want season four to end on part 40. And now I need to make it really lengthy and you know, an hour and 40 minutes.

00:55:11 Speaker_02
I recognize, I hope the negativity will be like, Oh God, that's long, but I'm happy about it. I'll just find the time rather than be like, Oh, too long. No, thank you. Because I do recognize that people's time is precious, but.

00:55:24 Speaker_02
That's why public release splits up into two pieces.

00:55:27 Speaker_00
So yeah, I, I doubt you're gonna be seeing a lot of that knowing how many people come to this podcast by binging it in as short as I think I've seen somebody just like not take a break at all to a weekend or like a week people love getting through partially because of the

00:55:46 Speaker_00
the plot and the mystery, the way that you do cliffhangers makes you it makes it impossible to stop listening. And then the characters, Arthur and john, especially their relationship and wanting to see where it's going.

00:55:59 Speaker_00
And are they going to continue arguing? Are they going to evolve in their relationship? You know? So I don't think you're going to hear a lot of complaints about the finale being long. I think it's going to delight people. In fact,

00:56:14 Speaker_02
I hope so. I mean, well, there definitely will be complaints, but yeah, you're probably right. I probably won't hear much of them. But yeah, I mean, I would say that was my only...

00:56:24 Speaker_02
quote-unquote failure because I mean, I ideally, well, also it just run myself ragged, you know, like every week I was making 23 minute episodes.

00:56:33 Speaker_02
So it's like a 11, 12 hour workday, more or less in, in just, you know, I might just be staring at a page sometimes, but, or helping out with the baby and doing other fun things to kind of supplement my time.

00:56:46 Speaker_02
But for the most part, it was just, it was a lot. And I'm officially, going to say, for anybody listening to this, and I'll probably make a post, season five, chapter one of season five, whatever, 201, it's going to be nice and short.

00:57:01 Speaker_02
Chapter two, three, four, the first, listen, the first few parts are going to be back in like the 30 to 40 minute range. Do not expect anything big because I need to reset the pace. It needs to drop right back down.

00:57:14 Speaker_00
A hundred percent. Yeah. You can't, you can't have those big meaty frigging 25 minute chapters.

00:57:20 Speaker_02
Well, exactly. It's never what I intended to do anyway. It was never really meant to be an over hour show. It's always meant to be like a 35 to 45 minute show.

00:57:33 Speaker_00
Since you knew where season five was going, some might say, not me, might say the votes might not matter so much since they can't totally derail the plans, but you and I know the votes matter. Speak on the votes for a minute.

00:57:47 Speaker_00
What did the votes represent to you and why do they matter?

00:57:50 Speaker_02
Happily, it's so interesting I think and actually I would love to talk about this because I think a lot of people misunderstand what like votes mean When you we think of voting we think like I mean if you're American, I suppose I'm not by the way But if you're American you think oh this candidate or this candidate and that's gonna like change the course of your entire four-year Whatever, you know, I mean but like

00:58:12 Speaker_02
When you look at the votes, I would urge people to look at the roots of a tree, maybe more than a this or that. Meaning that some choices, yeah, they're influential.

00:58:24 Speaker_02
But the reason The Butcher came to the end was because of a choice in maybe the train episode, or maybe a choice in the Daniel episode. These aren't choices that decide the fate of a character.

00:58:43 Speaker_02
They're choices that lead to a path that alter the entire direction of where you, you know, where the show ends up.

00:58:50 Speaker_02
Now, season five, whether episode 39, uh, Noel had nothing to do with Arthur, Marie was dead and Oscar was standing next to, uh, Arthur in the rain, still would have said,

00:59:05 Speaker_02
Okay, we're gonna go to the order tomorrow like that always would have been the case but who would have been helping him in the order, whether the butcher would have been alive or dead, whether Larson would have been missing a fucking arm or not.

00:59:16 Speaker_02
Like there's so many little things that would have changed the entire course of the show that get built upon and built upon and built upon. Because I only write for the next chapter.

00:59:27 Speaker_02
I mean, if I were to sit down now and write out what I think season five will be versus what it will be in a year from now, it'll be so different.

00:59:37 Speaker_02
And again, even at the beginning of this, I talked about what season four in my mind was going to be, which was like, I wanted I wanted more cop, robber detective type stuff.

00:59:47 Speaker_02
I wanted more like, I mean, fucking even that hotel and I never intended Arthur to, you know, meet Oscar at all. Really, that was a distillation. I never intended uh, for scratch, uh, to be introduced the way that scratch was going to be that.

01:00:05 Speaker_02
I mean, that's a long winded answer that will come at season six, but there's elements there that like totally.

01:00:10 Speaker_02
We're just based on the choices and kind of what happened and subplots were written in the throws of season four because of choices that people made and, and, you know, came back. So do your choices matter in the way that

01:00:27 Speaker_02
you know, it will, one choice will dictate the entire outcome of the show. No, if I write something entirely, and I'm talking entirely different based on what you've chosen, I mean, that would just be so jarring. Chaos. It would be chaos.

01:00:43 Speaker_02
And it would be ugly. It would sound ugly. You know, like if, if John and Arthur were like, Well, you know, should we do this? And then Arthur is like, no, there's no way we can do that. Or, you know, it just, it would just sound really gross.

01:00:55 Speaker_02
It wouldn't be a good show. Um, but do the choices accumulate and like make a, like an arc to in the direction of where you're heading a thousand percent. And I could point to almost every single choice in the show. I would say even bread and cheese.

01:01:12 Speaker_02
ended up being not only a huge discussion in the poll community, but is still a famous decision vote. Could you really argue that that was meaningless if it had an impact on the community?

01:01:26 Speaker_02
Because isn't, at the end of the day, the votes meant to be a reflection of the community?

01:01:32 Speaker_00
Exactly.

01:01:32 Speaker_00
In the commentary track for part seven, which is a Patreon exclusive, you said, we're playing a game, the patrons and the storyteller, and I think most people who have bought into the experience understand that this is a game, it's a story, that this is fun.

01:01:47 Speaker_00
So what was the most fun you had playing the game with the patrons in season four?

01:01:53 Speaker_02
Man. I mean, there was a few flips that were really satisfying.

01:02:00 Speaker_00
Oh, yes, the triple flip.

01:02:01 Speaker_02
I don't remember.

01:02:02 Speaker_00
There was the one where there were three choices to go to the hospital. Two of them were essentially talk to somebody, and then the third was sneak around.

01:02:12 Speaker_02
That ended up flipping three times. Yes, that one was really interesting. I remember that one. That was with the butcher and all that. The flip that I remember being really fun or satisfying was, God, what are the other flips?

01:02:28 Speaker_02
There was one that I really liked. That one was fine.

01:02:32 Speaker_00
Oh, the ring versus knock with Daniel. That one haunts me.

01:02:36 Speaker_02
Oh, the ring versus knock. That was really fun.

01:02:39 Speaker_02
Yeah, that was really interesting, because I had like kind of a flowchart of like, you know, what would happen because because I planted the seed earlier, you know, he he wrote a letter to knock at the door or whatever.

01:02:51 Speaker_02
I can't remember which I went with now, but I think you guys chose the wrong one, didn't you?

01:02:56 Speaker_00
Oh, we definitely did, yeah.

01:02:58 Speaker_02
Not that you would've known. And that's the thing, too. People are like, well, what's the right answer? It's like, well, A, sometimes there's no right answer. B, sometimes there's no way to know the right answer.

01:03:09 Speaker_00
That's exactly right. Oh, yeah. And in the Discord, we have so much, we own our Ls. We are like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't have gone upstairs. Maybe Oscar would've lost an arm. People are pretty good with that.

01:03:22 Speaker_02
There's only a few people that are like, No, I stand by because it's true for this or whatever.

01:03:27 Speaker_02
But especially in the last one, when Arthur was go willingly, I think that might have been the one that I think that was the most satisfying one, because I got to weigh in and talk about who Larson is. And I think that's, yeah, that's where I created.

01:03:42 Speaker_02
That's the one I had most fun with. Because Because I think Larson hasn't gotten scream time in a while. But also, I think a lot of people didn't really understand what I was leaving breadcrumbs for in terms of who Larson is, you know?

01:03:58 Speaker_02
Like, here's a guy who's eating an apple across from Arthur at the table. Like, what kind of person do you think that is? Is this a guy that's asking you a question? Do you go willingly? Like,

01:04:10 Speaker_02
Seriously, or do you think after coming from another room where he had a scene played out that he's trying to reflect a part of your life that he learned about because of the voice in his head. You know what I mean?

01:04:22 Speaker_02
Like he's doing it to be a kind of a fuck, you know? And to me, it was really, it was really satisfying to kind of just ask questions and be like, who, what kind of person do you think Larson is?

01:04:34 Speaker_02
And I think the question I asked was, why do you think Larson is asking this? And a lot of people were like, well, because he needs Arthur to be willing to go through the thing. And I was like, but why, how, where does that come from?

01:04:46 Speaker_02
Why do you think that? And they're like, well, in part 12, you know, so it was really kind of nice to like, not coach, but like kind of walk people through their own theories.

01:04:56 Speaker_02
Yeah, well, I mean, I have said this many times, it's so often, and there's a famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quote that I that's been in my mind, because I love playing

01:05:06 Speaker_02
Murder mystery escape games and stuff like that where it's like, you know, don't let your theories lead to assumptions or rather It's uh, it's you're making the facts suit the theories rather than the series suit the facts exactly and I think that happens sometimes Knowingly and obviously and sometimes to the benefit because you know, like I said, there's no right answer sometimes you make a Fact guess and you jump on it and it ends up being beneficial for the story and for the characters

01:05:36 Speaker_02
But that was definitely one where I was like, I don't think everyone's really understanding what kind of person Larson is based on evidence, you know?

01:05:43 Speaker_00
Yeah. I loved that because sometimes you do let us just run away with our assumptions. And we make just somebody says something that becomes something else. And then that becomes the cornerstone of the vote all of a sudden.

01:05:59 Speaker_00
and sometimes you let us run with that but for this one I really liked how first it was we were gonna try to get a crit for not willingly yeah and that was what was going on in the first like 24 hours and then you came in and said who said Arthur needs to be alive to use the machine

01:06:19 Speaker_00
Yes.

01:06:20 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:06:20 Speaker_00
And then all of a sudden, we were like, Oh, no. So then it was tied for most of the weekend. And then you came in again. And we like the this great dialogue about Larson as a character, just beyond even the vote, to be able to

01:06:38 Speaker_00
have a creator and have it be like a trusting, open, respectful space to just talk about a character, almost like a DM, you know, sitting around the table after a session talking about the NPC. And I just love it.

01:06:55 Speaker_02
Well, and I think that's a big thing that sets the show apart that I think, and going to your question, when you talked about people who get the game and people who don't get the game, that's exactly it. That's the game to me.

01:07:07 Speaker_02
Like for me, people might say I'm a creator and Yeah, I am. But I like the way you phrase it almost where like, there are times when I almost want to be more of a DM and be like, Yeah, but what do you think this guy's doing?

01:07:18 Speaker_02
Because that's the fucking fun. Like, this is all just a big game. And it's big show. And it's just about, you know, a path of these characters. And there's no good or bad. There's no right or wrong.

01:07:28 Speaker_02
And to me, when you understand, I think another question I was asking, too, is like, Okay. So you want to go willingly. How do you think no would react? How do you think John would react? What the people around you right now, what are they going to say?

01:07:40 Speaker_02
You know, and people will be like, well, no, it might be okay with it. Like, what do you though? Look at, look at this guy. Spit in the eye of yellow for 10 fucking years.

01:07:49 Speaker_02
You think he's going to be like, yeah, I'll go, go willingly, you know, like, like understand where you're at. And, and to a degree as a GM, I often, or a DM often I'm like that too, where it's like,

01:08:02 Speaker_02
You know, I've played a bunch of convention games and convention games are always the best for bringing new people into the game.

01:08:09 Speaker_02
And one of the staples of Call of Cthulhu is treat the game real, like treat it like you don't have a hundred hit points like in D&D, you have like six. And if you pull a gun out in Call of Cthulhu at a cop, you'll get shot.

01:08:25 Speaker_02
Or if you, you know, fight a monster, you get shot. And there's a moment of like, you know, treat, treat the scenario that you're in real.

01:08:35 Speaker_02
And I think more than anything, not to say one way or the other, but the willingly, but like imagining you're standing in Arthur's shoes and you are that character, uh, you know, I think the people who have the most.

01:08:47 Speaker_02
Success in enjoying the story are the ones who take the votes as a story rather than as a, well, I wouldn't do that. Or, you know what I mean? And I think Danny's mom is the one who does it.

01:09:02 Speaker_00
Yes, Danny's mom is the one who gets it right every time. Okay, we should quickly go through. Now, we can't talk about everything that happened in season four.

01:09:14 Speaker_00
I'm going to try to get through just a couple of points of the crazy shit that went down in season four because as I was going through it, I was like, oh man, this has been a long season.

01:09:26 Speaker_02
Yes.

01:09:27 Speaker_00
a lot of things have happened. Okay, the train and loosening the caboose that we start with that.

01:09:33 Speaker_02
I remember thinking that I was like, man, I want to start season four off with like a real big espionage vibe, which I tried to echo in the finale a little bit too.

01:09:41 Speaker_02
Like I wanted like a Mission Impossible almost type, like vibe, not with the like the gymnastics of it, but like, yeah, running across the top of the train and you know, that so.

01:09:53 Speaker_00
And the bait and switches with the butcher and the spycraft and the unreliable narration.

01:10:00 Speaker_01
Mm-hmm.

01:10:01 Speaker_02
I mean, yeah, the train obviously, like I wanted to get this vibe set and it all also changed a big part of New York because the final part, final choice of that was like jump off the train, which I had a whole kind of mapped out idea of like, cool, like Arthur's kind of back in the wild a little bit.

01:10:19 Speaker_02
And there's like a bit of a cat and mouse in the woods. And you know, that's a big reason why the butcher doesn't show up until Daniel's house because of that choice.

01:10:27 Speaker_02
So again, talking about choices, like there's a, there's a big one that changed a lot of the show.

01:10:32 Speaker_00
And then everything with Scratch. I mean, we haven't even talked about Scratch.

01:10:37 Speaker_02
Just the nightmare. Scratch is fun. Scratch is very interesting. Really proud about how that came out. I knew I wanted a... In fact, Scratch sort of came up because The Butcher was in the back burner because of that choice, again.

01:10:53 Speaker_02
And I wanted a little bit more of an antagonist. But Scratch, as we know from the episode with Scratch, was quote unquote banished, there's kind of something more there, and I don't wanna give too much away, but I will say that Scratch is not over.

01:11:11 Speaker_00
Very much, I mean, we have the woman behind him.

01:11:15 Speaker_02
Yeah, the woman who's been mentioned, seen, and now interacted with.

01:11:21 Speaker_00
Yes.

01:11:22 Speaker_02
Do you know who that is? Did you figure it out? Yeah. We know who Lilith is, right?

01:11:27 Speaker_00
Yeah.

01:11:27 Speaker_02
And I kind of hint at it in Intermezzo as well, which is really interesting.

01:11:32 Speaker_00
Yes, I noticed that there are some people on the Discord that are going to be extremely happy with that line.

01:11:38 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean, I think it's no secret to say that that is also seed planting for a bit of a bigger part. I think that's a season five thing too, which will be really fun.

01:11:49 Speaker_02
Now there's another seed I planted in Intermezzo 2, which I'm really interested in. Again, I don't think people are going to pick it up until the beginning of Season 5. Interesting. Actually, I won't say it, I won't say it.

01:11:59 Speaker_02
Okay, you have to cut this, you have to cut this. But I'm going to say there's going to be a cool thing about it. And I've teased this in the Discord, I don't know, like a month ago, where I was like,

01:12:21 Speaker_00
That's going to be awesome. That's okay.

01:12:23 Speaker_02
Yeah, so yeah, but we cut that.

01:12:26 Speaker_00
Yeah. The Cain versus Anna question for the Vanguard seemed like it would have gone horribly, horribly wrong if we had voted for Cain.

01:12:37 Speaker_02
very, very different. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, because we were like, well, Vanguard hasn't talked. It's been like two days, you know, it's not been that long.

01:12:45 Speaker_00
So barely 48 hours for real. And then the nightmare, the whole nightmare episode. I mean, we could talk about that for fully three hours.

01:12:55 Speaker_02
That was really fun. That honestly, I would say The Nightmare, probably since the first episode of The Dreamlands, The Nightmare felt the most freeing to write.

01:13:05 Speaker_02
And it came the easiest and it came the quickest and it came, it was hands down the most fun. Because when you write a show this long, it's all cumulative. It's all about what's come before, you know, Arthur reaches into a bag,

01:13:18 Speaker_02
what's been in there before, what's in his bag. The nightmare gave me permission to just go wild. And I'm really excited for season five because I get to do that again.

01:13:28 Speaker_02
I mean, I'll tell you the amount of times I researched New York shit, you know, like a lot of people and this is, this is a fun little inside. A lot of people talked about the Egyptology references when they went to the Freemasons.

01:13:42 Speaker_02
That's all in the Freemasons building. I watched videos of tours of the Freemasons buildings. They're all connected. So a lot of people were like, oh, this is so interesting. And I was like, no.

01:13:53 Speaker_02
In fact, that wall of photos that he finds Aldrich Ward on, that's a wall of photos in the New York offices. To a degree to the floor that they go to is the floor of the executive offices of the Freemasons building in New York, which you can tour.

01:14:15 Speaker_02
So obviously I had to backdate it and I tried to find photos and stuff like that. But one of the biggest taxing things about New York in general is you can map. the route that Arthur takes around New York.

01:14:27 Speaker_02
You can see he walks from Grand Central to the Tudor Tower Hotel. He takes a taxi up to Marie's place, takes a taxi to Daniel's place. The whole Daniel Butcher like chase scene I mapped out basically where they are.

01:14:39 Speaker_02
The Lenox Hospital is like within running distance from that. You know what I mean? It's all very interesting. And the road that the farm is on, Boulder Road, I would love the listeners to Google Boulder Road, New York.

01:14:55 Speaker_02
Because I think a lot of people, I don't, I didn't see one person reference that. I don't think anyone caught that.

01:15:01 Speaker_00
Oh, interesting. Very interesting. I, when I was listening to that description, I knew you had done what I have done, which is go, go down a research hole and it, it's somewhat good, but then it's also so exhausting. It's the worst.

01:15:16 Speaker_02
Because you know what it is? It feels like, and I've said this to Joe many times this season, I will spend two, three hours researching or whatever. And I'll come to her and be like, I've done nothing this morning.

01:15:28 Speaker_02
And she's like, well, you've been doing this. I'm like, but you don't understand. When you're when you're working without producing something, it feels like you've wasted time. I know it's not true.

01:15:39 Speaker_02
But God, the amount of time I felt like I've wasted, which

01:15:43 Speaker_00
And then for like a throwaway line too.

01:15:45 Speaker_02
For like a throwaway line. Oh my God. And I will say season five is not going to have that. And I'm again, I'm excited to talk about season five a little bit, but I want to be clear at this point for those who now know where season five takes place.

01:15:58 Speaker_02
This is not going to be the medieval England that you scholars know about. This is got a very specific vibe to it that this is not

01:16:08 Speaker_00
you know, there's no... It's Harlan Guthrie's medieval.

01:16:11 Speaker_02
This is a Leary equivalent. This is going to be, this is, yeah, and I'm excited to talk about that in a second.

01:16:16 Speaker_00
I think it's time to talk about season five.

01:16:19 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:16:19 Speaker_00
Can you tease a little bit of it for us?

01:16:22 Speaker_02
Yeah. I want to tease the vibes. I want to tease the intentions. I want to tease the feelings.

01:16:31 Speaker_01
The mood.

01:16:32 Speaker_02
Yes. Season five is going to be so much more like season two in the vibes of solitary, in the vibes of fantastical.

01:16:42 Speaker_02
Um, if you've seen movies like the last unicorn or like, you know, like an era of fantastical medieval England, uh, where it's very dark, you know, flame lit, very grotesque, but very monster infused.

01:16:58 Speaker_02
I have this personal, very fun, not real, but this fun kind of belief or idea that all of these dragons and goblins and trolls, you know, existed at one point many, many, many hundreds of years ago.

01:17:13 Speaker_02
And because there's no, you know, video cameras or even really solid written record from, you know, 700 years ago. that these legends just kind of faded away because all of these creatures either died off or did whatever.

01:17:26 Speaker_02
But imagining a time where these things are more potent, more real and more exciting and manipulative and dangerous is the realm that we're playing with.

01:17:38 Speaker_02
You know, if I were to envision, if I were to envision season five, it would be a dark green mossy rain covered summer night, with growling in the distance and rumbling underfoot. And the darkness of the Dark Ages is prevalent.

01:17:55 Speaker_02
And even though it's slightly after the Dark Ages, but yeah, I want people to enjoy the ride of season five. I've talked many times about losing people because I think season two, I was fearful of losing people.

01:18:10 Speaker_02
But it was clear that the setting was fantasy in terms of what's been written.

01:18:15 Speaker_02
I think season five could lose a lot of people because the way I'm going to be delving into season five medieval era is going to be more fantastical than I think a lot of people might enjoy. know, I'm not talking about dragons or anything like that.

01:18:29 Speaker_02
But I just think army of darkness, like if you've seen army of darkness, that's the tone and the vibe I'm going for where it's like, yeah, you know, these castles and keeps and, you know, sword fighting, but also like skeletons and fucking demons, you know, pit creatures and that kind of thing.

01:18:50 Speaker_02
So you know, if you're, if you're into enjoying a show and having a good fucking time, I think season five is going to go hog wild and that shit really enjoyed the more grounded, you know, plotting out New York map route.

01:19:04 Speaker_02
That's not going to be season five's vibe as much. So I think that's where I could lose people. But in my mind, I've envisioned as hell. Well, so, and I've said this to you and I've said this to multiple people, like I've envisioned

01:19:15 Speaker_02
this has always been the path for season five.

01:19:17 Speaker_02
And people who have seen the Call of Cthulhu games know that this has been the path, you know, even Liz has been like, well, this is where it's going to go because said it, you know, if you watch the games, it's not a secret.

01:19:28 Speaker_02
It's always been the plan to kind of head there. This is where the Blackstone is. This is what Kane wants. But I think the way that that world is going to come across is going to be really fucking fun and scary.

01:19:41 Speaker_02
A lot of scary, a lot of horror too, like a lot more horror in this season, I think. Yes. Well, because horror in my mind is a large part isolation. You know, it's like being alone and it's so tough to have that horror in New York.

01:19:53 Speaker_02
And again, I succeeded at the vibes I wanted to do for season four. I have no regrets. I am so proud of season four more than any other season.

01:20:00 Speaker_02
And I think I'll be more proud of season five than I am of any other season because I want to play with different stuff now. I want to play with

01:20:08 Speaker_02
You know, and to a degree, like, Devisor came out during season four because I needed more horror in my stream. And yeah, I definitely, I definitely foresee a lot of blood in season five.

01:20:21 Speaker_00
Excellent, excellent. I'm looking forward to Arthur saying, good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.

01:20:26 Speaker_02
Exactly. Well, it's funny, too, because I was like, man, there's so many characters in season four, and there's gonna be less in season five for many reasons.

01:20:31 Speaker_02
But one of them also being it's like, there's only that many versions of English characters I can play.

01:20:39 Speaker_00
Yeah, but it's Harlan Guthrie's England, so maybe they all have different accents. Who knows?

01:20:43 Speaker_02
That's true.

01:20:44 Speaker_00
Last question related to season five. What's the biggest question Arthur is going to face next season? And what's the biggest question John is going to face next season?

01:20:54 Speaker_02
I think the biggest question Arthur is going to face is what to do with John. You know what I mean? Here's an entity that he's time and time again come back to. okay, like, like, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll help you, I'll help you.

01:21:10 Speaker_02
And this latest betrayal is such a, another, you know, it's like another fucking throw it on the fire of, oh my God. And I think Arthur is really going to struggle with the idea of like, how do I, how do I fix something this broken to a degree?

01:21:25 Speaker_02
And I think the biggest question John is going to face is who am I? What do I really want out of this? And I think this is season five,

01:21:35 Speaker_02
in my mind is going to be, especially at the beginning, because I don't want to tease it the whole season, but leaving season four the way we have with Jon's character, I think season five beginning is going to be a lot of Jon being like, what do I want?

01:21:48 Speaker_02
Like, who am I? I need to, I need to figure it out now. And if it goes according to how I'm hoping, season five will be a solidification of Jon's character before, you know, everything blows up in season six.

01:22:01 Speaker_00
I look forward to it. When does season five start for patrons?

01:22:06 Speaker_02
Season five, chapter 201, uh, will start February 21st. No stopping, no breaks.

01:22:14 Speaker_00
Amazing.

01:22:15 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:22:16 Speaker_00
Chugging along.

01:22:17 Speaker_02
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. To me, to me, it'll be one of those things that, and you kind of said it, you know, people binge it anyway. Like I'm happy to keep it going. I love the commitment and the pressure and I thrive on it at times.

01:22:32 Speaker_02
And realistically, in five years when people re-listen to the show, there won't be any waiting anyway. So what's the difference? You know what I mean?

01:22:40 Speaker_00
Exactly. Harlan, everyone listening is already a fan of Malevolent, but what other projects would you like to shout out?

01:22:46 Speaker_02
Oh, definitely check out Devisor. If you haven't heard that already, that's going to be one of the things I'm most proud of the last year. Uh, it's a seven part horror sci-fi little series about the horrors of AI. Um, I really like it.

01:23:01 Speaker_02
It's about the length of a movie. So you can enjoy it in one long sitting. Uh, also Dice Shame. I also produce, act in. and edit a actual play RPG show with my wife and our friends called Dice Shame. And I'm extremely proud of it. It's a lot of fun.

01:23:23 Speaker_02
I play a very different character than Arthur or John or any of the characters you see on Malevolent. And it has well over 200 episodes at this point. And it is a great story to get attached to.

01:23:37 Speaker_02
If you just love, you know, following zany characters along their journey, four characters who are tasked with basically saving the world from the uprising of giants who do exist in the world.

01:23:55 Speaker_02
And these four characters are more or less given this quest from God And along the way they, you know, defeat giants and make friends and some of them even pass away. So definitely check that out. DiceShamePodcast.com. You can check it out.

01:24:10 Speaker_02
Like I said, I edit and do sound effects on it every week. So it's, it's my other big show. And then of course, uh, anything new that comes out would be a patron exclusive first. So if you're not already a patron, consider joining that.

01:24:24 Speaker_00
As for myself, you can find me on Substack, Twitter, and Instagram as Mythoscopes. That's Myth-O-Scopes, like the old Aromascope. I've got a book coming out in June called Strangers on the Shore. It's a queer found family spy thriller set in 1963.

01:24:40 Speaker_00
And if you'd like to know more, you can read the first chapter on my Substack.

01:24:43 Speaker_02
It's amazing. Give it a read now. I highly recommend it.

01:24:46 Speaker_00
Thank you so much, Harlan. I'm so- Thank you so much.

01:24:49 Speaker_02
Are you kidding?

01:24:52 Speaker_00
And I'll see you on the Discord.

01:24:54 Speaker_02
Yeah, I'll see you on Discord. Thanks everyone for listening. Have a great one.

01:25:03 Speaker_00
Ugh, that's stupid. Never mind, I'm gonna cut that.

01:25:08 Speaker_02
Fourth year running, I think? I think so.

01:25:11 Speaker_00
Fourth year running?

01:25:13 Speaker_01
Yeah.

01:25:15 Speaker_00
Hold on one second, my cat is losing her mind.

01:25:18 Speaker_01
Okay.

01:25:20 Speaker_00
Speaking of children who don't have For real.

01:25:24 Speaker_02
I mean, you can cut this, but you can cut this from the show, but he says, hint, hint, but cut that. Here, I'll clap.

01:25:34 Speaker_00
Give it a mouth so we can talk. And I was like, what does that mean?

01:25:41 Speaker_02
definitely some of the things he says echo my feelings at times. Not the mean stuff, probably.

01:25:47 Speaker_00
No, never the mean stuff.

01:25:48 Speaker_02
Never the mean stuff. No. Definitely like a voice for how he feels about Larson, like as Larson, as me, being like, you fucking worm, you fucking nothing. Hold on one second.

01:26:04 Speaker_00
Oh, hi Marie.

01:26:06 Speaker_01
Okay.

01:26:08 Speaker_02
She's just walking by fussing. Nap time.

01:26:14 Speaker_00
I have to find the question that I have.

01:26:17 Speaker_02
Sure.

01:26:18 Speaker_00
Arthur.

01:26:19 Speaker_02
Arthur.