S2 Creator Q&A

IAN: And on that note, folks, welcome to the Creators Q & A for season two of Fawx and Stallion. Thank you so much for being with us here. Uh, hopefully you've already listened to part one where we interviewed some members of the cast, um, by interviewed, I mean, we asked them questions that you sent in.

LAUREN: We didn't write the questions, you did. Um, the same way that we are not asking any of our own questions today, I don't think-unless we sneak some in there. 

IAN: Nope. That's what dinner's for. Um, but in the meantime, uh, my name is Ian Geers. I am, uh, one of the, uh, co-writers, co-directors, co-producers, and I play McMurphy on the show. My pronouns are he/him. 

LAUREN: Yes. And I'm Lauren Grace Thompson, she/her, I am co all of those things and I play Sarah Fletchley. Um, yeah, you can already tell this is going to be much more, uh- 

IAN: We don't have anybody to impress. 

LAUREN: Yeah. We are much more loosey goosey than the actor ones. We're already a little bit sillier in this one, so, um, yeah. I don't even know how we wanna start this. Do we wanna address our fans? 

IAN: Hopefully our fans. 

LAUREN: Hopefully you don't hate us. If you are listening to the creator q and a, that would be really weird of you, but sure. 

IAN: Yeah, I wanna address things. How dare you? Um, no, I wanna, first of all, we said this a lot in part one. Um, we'll kind of front load it here, but I'm sure it'll come up throughout these questions. Um, just really thank you to everybody who's listened to the show this season. It's really been phenomenal to get feedback on it. We, I mean, we are kind of throwing this into a void. We, as creators always are kind of just putting shit out there and seeing if anybody likes it. And the fact that we have gotten so much vocal confirmation that this is, you know-

LAUREN: That there are people out there 

IAN: Yeah. That there are people out there you exist. That this is, you know, improving your time, folding your laundry, or improving your commute or whatever. Like, all of that really means a lot to us. Um, so we just wanna take this time to say thank you to everybody who has listened, who has told friends to listen, who has drawn unbelievable fan art, who has. Come here with crazy questions. 

LAUREN: We got a lot more questions than we were expecting for, for both Q and As frankly. Yeah. Um, so we are gonna try to tear through as many of them as we can. Uh, knowing that Ian and I both like to talk, so we're gonna try to be better about it. 

IAN: Yeah. But don't worry because we are also both not sympathetic or emotional at all. 

LAUREN: No, we're very cold people. 

IAN: So we're here to shit on your questions. All right. Lauren, what do we got? 

LAUREN: So, um, we are starting with two, uh, quite similar questions. So I think we can address both of them at once. The first one is from paperleef. “How did you come up with the idea of 22Fun B Baker theme park and memorial?” and then from Robin: “what was the inspiration behind the season taking place in and around an amusement park?” So we're starting right out the gate with talking about, uh, our sort of centerpiece location and setting of the season. Uh, 22Fun B BakerMerriment Park and Memorial–'cause it's merriment, not theme park–we changed that during recordings. Uh, 

IAN: That was literally gonna be the first thing I said. Yeah. Is that we-

LAUREN: sorry, I stole it. 

IAN: We cannot say theme park. It had not been invented. No, the term had not been invented. But like all things in the world of Fawx and Stallion, because this isn't the world of Sherlock Holmes. This is the world of Fawx and Stallion. Um, we do try, we genuinely do. try to be historically accurate to what the resources available to these characters would be. That is something that, like a rule that Lauren and I are incredibly strict about.

LAUREN: Um, it did not have to exist itself, but the means to make it, should there be an innovator like James Stallion around . Could have existed. So there were merriment parks in this time, uh, but they did not have things like log flumes or dark rides. But they could have, which is why you notice our dark ride sounds not very well made. 

IAN: Not very safe.

LAUREN: Not safe as we establish within the text. But. The materials were there and, uh, if 

IAN: they had wood, 

LAUREN: they had wood. They had, they had, uh, 

IAN: they had gears. 

LAUREN: They had gears. Um, they had, they had, 

IAN: uh, amplification devices, 

LAUREN: rudimentary amplification devices, and they had water. You could, 

IAN: They did have water.

LAUREN: You could ride a log flue down the side of a cliff. No one would've stopped you. It's just that no one was crazy enough to fucking do it. 

IAN: No one's stopping you from building a log flume. 

LAUREN: No one's ever, ever, ever, 

IAN: No one was stopping cavemen from building a log flume. They just didn't fucking do it. 

LAUREN: They didn't have the gears yet!

IAN: These idiots. Um, okay, so how did we come up–That's not-

LAUREN: Neither of those answered your question. 

IAN: How do we come up with the idea for 22Fun B–um, uh, a a couple things. Number one, um, Lauren and I are big fans of the 2002 live action Scooby Doo film, which entirely or not entirely, but for the most part, takes place on a theme park called Spooky Island.

LAUREN: It is big for both of us. 

IAN: Yes. However you may feel about that movie. It is very important to both of us. And the idea of a theme park is something that, uh, Lauren grew up in Florida. Yeah. I grew up in Southeastern Virginia, which you would not think is very big for theme parks, but we do have Busch Gardens Williamsburg there.

LAUREN: Both of our hometowns had Busch Gardens, 

IAN: And so theme parks have been big. For both of us for a long time. And it, it, you know, does exist as this kind of, uh, space out of time. Normally, they are trying to replicate a different time and place. Um, so there is something, a little magic and off kilter there. But something that we really wanted to, uh, hone in on this season was the idea of craven capitalism. And that there is no, uh, better way to do that in this world and with these characters than to create a theme park for a dead man. Um, it just kind of felt too. Too prescient to not do. So it's like, yes, it kind of fit two purposes of being a fun setting for a lot of the mystery and for a lot of the events of the season, while also, um, serving as a metaphor for really what these characters and what we as a society are kind of up against all the time, which is the fact that people are continually trying to make money off of people that did not give their consent to be taken advantage of.

LAUREN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The only thing I think I would add to that, 'cause I think that is, that is wonderful. Um, I think the only thing that I would add is when we were first coming up with the idea for the season, it was, uh, around the time we were finishing making season one and it was around the time the Queen died.

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: Um, and I think that we were both taken aback and I, this has happened many times, but, but that the similarities between the commercialism of when the Queen died and everyone standing in line for multiple days–nd there were jokes about rolling the casket down the, you know, down the street so that everyone could see it faster, uh, which is a joke that is in the season–ut the fact that there was merch being sold for, for someone who died, who was, it was a public figure and, you know, probably would've consented to that. Um, I guess 

IAN: they're on coins. 

LAUREN: Yeah. You know, you're already on a coin. What's a plaque? You know? Um, and 

IAN: or a t-shirt. 

LAUREN: Yeah. And the combo of that. And then when Sherlock Holmes, the character died when the original stories came out, people were wearing armbands and took it very seriously and it felt like it wasn't a huge leap to connect the two of them. I think originally, Ian, your pitch was the–it started with the pitch for the Hard Rocks Cafe. Because we wanted to set the season right after Holmes died and our guys shooting to the top. And originally it started with what, what if James made a Reichenbach themed cafe and dinner theater called the Hard Rocks Cafe, which we thought was so fucking funny. And then we were all doing that, the Queen had died. We were like, that doesn't feel ghoulish enough. And then we also watched Defunctland, this amazing YouTube series– 

IAN: Shout out to Defunctland. 

LAUREN: Um, and so, and I think it really just kind of came from there. And I, and then, you know, once we jokingly pitched I–truly, it was just this moment of beautiful synergy of what if it was 22Fun? 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: B Baker. Uh, and it was a theme park. And I think once, once that pun was said and we started coming up with the other puns, it was really a point of no return. Yeah. And it's such a fun place to set a murder. 

IAN: Yeah. It really is. Like, I mean, theme parks really now that when you think about it there is no version of altruism in a theme park. It is pure uncut capitalism. Yes, it is pure uncut. Give me your money for something that costs half this price outside of these doors. And yet even us two people who do not have money to spend on $250 lightsabers or what have you, would consider doing it because of the novelty of being in this place. So there is a weird spell that theme parks put people under that we are not. Uh, we are, we're not better than. And so it was also a little bit of calling ourselves out for, you know, the ways that we take part in these. 

LAUREN: Also knowing kinds of things and knowing if there was a Sherlock Holmes theme park, I'd go to it.

IAN: We would both in a second 

LAUREN: I would go to 22Fun in a second. I wouldn't ride the log flume, but I would be there. I would go to Sandal in Bohemia and I would, I would have a great time 

IAN: I'd adopt an animal from the Pound of the Baskervilles. 

LAUREN: There's two, two hundred and twenty one of them. You gotta get one 

IAN: Next question.

LAUREN: Yes. Uh, “what led you all to jump further in time when writing season two?” 

IAN: Uh, Lauren, I think you just answered this. We wanted to set this season right after Sherlock Holmes canonically died because we knew that that was important for our story. We also knew that we could only really sustain the whole, like not having Sherlock and Watson really in the world of this show for like one season before people were gonna kind of either be like, okay, put them in the show. Or we're just never gonna get it. So we were like, cool, let's just address it now. And we both, this idea essentially for the thrust of this season with Holmes and Watson was something that I'm sure we'll talk about later on, but something that you and I had been thinking about for a long time,

LAUREN: I wanna say that we had talks of a five season plan for this show and for a while, I think the idea for this one was the third season.

IAN: Mm-hmm. 

LAUREN: This was gonna be our third season, but the more and more we sat with it and had more ideas about it and cracked more about the characters and stuff we were passionate about, um, that was when we were like, I think we saw some really great writing advice from, I wanna say like Matt Parker and Trey–

IAN: Trey Parker and Matt Stone,

LAUREN: Yes, sorry. Um, they were talking about if you have a good idea, just write it now. Don't save it. Another good idea will come later, but don't wait to write the thing that you're passionate about. Just do it. Uh, and so we were like, let's do it Now. That did involve logistically a time jump, but I do think we also probably would've done a time jump anyway, because I do think we wanted to, we love seeing what characters become. In a time jump. And I thought it was really important for the journey to these characters that they had had two years to, in some ways evolve and in other ways stagnate in a, in a slightly different way. To, to, to evolve but also discover new problems that they were stagnated in, stagnating in that were different than their season one's stagnation modes.

Um, and so that just felt necessary in addition to it kind of lining up with the parts of Canon we wanted to intersect with. Uh, so next question, uh, from mookar Amazing Art, we called you out last episode, but it was great. Yes. Thank you. Um, “do you have any tips for writing comedy? What is your process for comedic scenes like?”

I don't think that I, I can't speak for both of us because I think we both have different approaches. I don't think that there is a wildly different approach between writing comedic scenes, dramatic scenes, or something in between. They're all scenes. Yeah. Um, it's just, you know, you add a certain level of heightened energy to it, or we just think of a funny idea.

We, we, Ian and I like to think of it in terms of Ian. Ian taught this to me beautifully, that every character has a game. Um, every character has a thing or a way of communicating that is in and of itself funny. And that by playing those off of each other, you innately kind of create scenarios that just play and snowball and, and everything.

But, um, I'm much less kind of trained in comedic writing than Ian, who has much more of a. An improv comedy background. And I think you, you approach, and especially the two of us as writers, we approach it as kind of like extended improv scenes where we're just throwing out fun ideas and seeing is that fruitful?

Is this fun? We're just like walking around, running exchanges to ourselves or to each other. 

IAN: Yeah. I don't have a ton more to add. I think that you're exactly right. I think that it all stems from improv. I was literally watching a thing yesterday that was talking about writing comedy and, and writing drama and it, and you know, it. Talked a lot about the idea that every time you're writing, it's an exercise in improv. You're, it's an exercise in you Yes Anding yourself. It's you Yes Anding your characters. Yes Anding you, you know, you some, some writers really do go with the idea of like, the character is talking to me and I'm writing down, and I'm kind of a conduit for that.

I'm not here to have an opinion on that. That's, that's not exactly how I write. Um, but I do think in terms of the comedy of this show, one, it's this, that I find these characters delightful and funny. And so I want to see them put their foot in their mouth, or I want to see what happens when Madge, you know, doesn't know this person's name and how she would respond.

Everything always has to come from a place of emotional honesty for the character though. And so it, it really is like, if a character is going to say a sassy comment or be funny or do something like that, it. It's gonna be 10 times funnier if that is rooted in what emotionally that character is going through at that moment.

I, I always like to think specifically in this season, James has so many one-off lines that are so silly, and Chris Vizurraga, the actor who plays James, is so funny at delivering them, but they're all really funny because I'm watching Chris in the recording session, still stewing in the anger that he felt from being slighted at a page earlier.

Yeah. And so it's always rooted emotionally in what's happening for them. And comedy, at least in my life, is often used to either cope with something that's tragic or to just kind of get through the uncomfortable bits in my day. And these are characters that are constantly living in the uncomfortable bits of their day because I think that they're all a little uncomfortable.

I think everybody's uncomfortable. And the thing that endears these characters to me is that they all deal with it through humor, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Um. Yeah, I hope that that answers the questions. It's just like, write Emotionally honest characters, and I guarantee you that like, something funny will come from there.

And then it's just like, you can think of like silly, like Lauren 

LAUREN: Just put them in situations. 

IAN: Yeah. Like Lauren pitched the idea of like the, the log flume being the, the murder weapon. And I remember when she said that and I was like, please walk me through what you mean by this. And she–

LAUREN: I was like, I'm happy to, 

IAN: –and she explained it to me and it's like, that's just a funny idea. Yeah. And again, to go back to the previous question we were talking about the theme park, it's like you put your world in something that's inherently funny, then you're gonna find little funny things in there. If you put yourself in a world that you understand and that you know, the reason you know it and understand it so well is because you're familiar with it.

And familiarity is the first step in really kind of like finding those little details that are gonna be, that are gonna tickle you. 

LAUREN: Yeah. The, the really, the only final small thing that I would add is that. Find people that you think are funny. Mm-hmm. And write for them. Write for them. Even if you don't have the person, pick someone like an imaginary person that you find funny. Yeah. And just start writing things that you think you would be tickled to hear them say. 'cause that's 80% of what we are doing when we're writing joke lines. It's just like this would be, I just wanna hear Chris say this. I just wanna hear these words come out of Rob's voice or, or like, I just wanna hear how Katie approaches this line three different ways.

IAN: I know what dialect Jeremy is using for Flexton Jones. It's funnier for him to say these words instead of these words. Yeah. Like things like that. 

LAUREN: And so many of them are just like playing it out in your head and just like, and I also, that's the biggest tip for writing comedy is just writing stuff that you think is funny.

IAN: Yeah. A hundred percent. 

LAUREN: You write Write for yourself first. Yeah. And, and honestly only because you can never guarantee anything past that. Ian and I, for the most part, we are lucky in that we are able to. Write a draft and then sit next to each other and read it out loud. And trade and just see what makes the other person laugh.

Yeah. And if it makes us laugh, then it's usually staying in the script. This is from Sara Ghaleb. “Besides Sherlock Holmes, which detectives or mystery series would you say are influences on you?”

IAN: Scoobert. Doo. , 

LAUREN: Scooby-Doo, it's really, I'm the number one with a bullet is, is Scooby-Doo. 

IAN: At least for me, Lauren is much more well-versed in detective and mystery, uh, than I am.

LAUREN: Still number one. 

IAN: Scooby-Doo is number one for me. Uh, we, we've both read a lot of Christie, we've both obviously read a lot of ACD. 

Both laugh

Um, it's crazy. 

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Nobody's talking about ACD these days. Um, but we, I, I, my, the ones, the ones that I read in my kind of like, uh, especially in college, I got really into Raymond Chandler. So a lot of those kind of like. Very moody noir mysteries I like, but a lot of those don't tend to have a satisfying ending. Yeah. Um, so they're not as, uh, useful for more of a traditionally structured mystery like Fawx Stallion. 

LAUREN: Yeah. I would say, um, I grew up reading, my mom would read me Nancy Drew before bed, so like a lot of the Nancy Drew vibes have just kind of seeped their way into my brain.

I, again, really, Scooby-Doo is non, ironically, genuinely huge, even though their mysteries are so not the point. I also think that our mysteries are so not the point to a great degree. Um, trying to think of other detectives I grew up watching, uh, David Suchet's, Poirot Ian mentioned, like Agatha Christie. I always love an Agatha Christie.

I do. I I weirdly have been doing a lot of Agatha Christie on stage now. It's weirdly like a thing for me at this point. Um, but I think recently the giant wave of mystery comedies on screen have been huge for us, in more than anything else in showing us kind of. That there's an audience for that type of stuff.

Because really in a lot of ways, I think the Raymond Chandler of it all, and the Agatha Christie of it all, it's, it's us combining two things that we like. These, like this historical comedy and mystery, but we just had never really done them together. And then there's, you know, things like knives out, there's things like only murders in the building recently, the Residence and like the, um, uh, what was the one, the after party?

Yeah. There's just like a huge wave of the, or even like the murder mystery movies on Netflix, which I think we both think are 

IAN: Underrated!

LAUREN: Absolutely delightful. Um, has shown us that like, oh, there's, there's a way to combine these two. And those have been really huge for us. It's one of our favorite genres to do.

Um, so I don't think there's any, any one, but I think it's as, as with anything, the things that you create are just an amalgamation of everything that you've watched and read and consumed. Yeah. I've read so many One-off like murder mysteries and thrillers throughout my time, so I don't think any one of them is huge other than Scoobert.

Um. Number, but I love them all. Number, number one. Number one, absolutely.

IAN: My king. 

LAUREN: Uh, now from Kat, “I love how all the relationships between the characters in the show are portrayed, especially Madge And Hampton, how did their dynamics and relationship goals change the way the story is written? And do any of the relationships mirror real life in any way?”

IAN: Uh, yeah. Thank you, Kat. 

LAUREN: That's beautiful question. 

IAN: That's a really nice question. Um, yes. The, the answer is yes. Um, the, 

LAUREN: to all of them. 

IAN: To all of them. Um, the thing, especially, I think this is kind of fruitful 'cause Lauren and I spoiler alert are into writing season three. 

LAUREN: Mm-hmm. 

IAN: Very recently. Very recently.

LAUREN: Like as of two days ago, 

IAN: -yesterday, pretty much. Um, but we had been coming up with some ideas, uh, but one of the first questions we ask before we come up with what's the mystery of the season before anything is what. Lessons do the characters need to learn mm-hmm. This season? What is the emotional arc of the crew gonna be?

What are the individual emotional arcs going to be? All of that is really the first step of everything. Mm-hmm. With this, with season two specifically, we knew the story of Holmes and Watson that we wanted to tell. Mm-hmm. And so then it became how do we mirror these ideas of partners and misunderstanding your partner and misreading your partner and all of these things romantically, uh, uh, platonically professionally. How does all of that pertain to our crew? Um, and how can we use our, our folks to either be, um, foils for Holmes and Watson or to mirror them. Um, so all of that is really where we start. We always start with that, and then the mystery kind of comes. A little bit later, especially once, once we figure out emotionally what the story is gonna be for the season.

Cool. What mystery then would force these characters to interact with that emotional, tho those emotional, um, you know, kind of goalies that, that they can get past, so, mm-hmm. Um, 

LAUREN: It's a whole season full of foils and that's something that we, 'cause we very intent, intentionally wanted, we wanted the season to be about partnership Yeah.

And what we owe to our partners and our loved ones and people who are both, um, which, you know, Ian and I, you know, spoilers. Spoilers are, we are both partners and loved ones. Um, and I think we wanted, once we had kind of figured it out, I think we were developing the kind of the Madge journey around the time we were developing the Holmes Watson journey.

Mm-hmm. And it became very clear that that was a parallel. And then we were kind of figuring out what James and Archie's plot line was going to be and realized like, oh, that also, that theme weaves through all of the stories. So how can we mirror all of that throughout that, not only mirror that, but are there ways that.

Each of these duos can observe and learn from their foils. Um, and so that, that weaved its way all the way into our mystery, which is also about, you know, Weatherby and Lucius as –not partners, as failed partners. And even, you know, Dennis and Thomas Rake, who are brothers, who are also loved ones in a different configuration that it's all about throughout the entire season. We wanted it to just be like doubles and duos. And partners, um, failed and, and, and that everything kind of revolved around Madge and Hampton in a way that it is about either the, the partners that they're afraid of becoming, or the partners they could be or failed versions of that. Um, or what are the ways in which this partnership is stronger than this other one?

They, they thought they were weaker than, um, and so to answer the, the, you know, the back part of your question, like, uh, like how did that, does that relationship mirror real life? I, I think there's no way for it not to mirror real life. I think there was no way. To write a season about partnership and the intersection of your personal and professional life's lives.

For Ian and I, who are people who work together professionally and personally, there's no way that we are not going to be every single set of those duos in, in, in slightly different ways. There was no way of avoiding that. And I think there's, there's a certain point you just have to steer into the black ice, and in some ways it's, it's more overt and some days it's a little more subtle.

But, that's also all about, I think the second question that Ian and I always ask each other when we're writing a season, which is like, what is my way in? 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: What is, like, this is what the journey for the character is. Is that something that, you know, I have not literally experienced in my life, but is this something that I have experienced to the extent that I am intellectually or emotionally curious. About this? Um, and so I think that's part of the reason that it, the season felt so, so personal to us is because all of it was stuff we were interested in or connected to. Either individually or, or as a couple. 

IAN: Yeah. I, I, I actually kind of want to go immediately into the next question, yeah.

Because I think it's kind of a part B to this. 

LAUREN: Oh, please. 

IAN: The next question we have is, are you always in total agreement about what's going to happen next or are there certain plot points you had different opinions on or changed your mind? Um, it is impossible to be in a collaborative relationship without collaborative and artistic friction.

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: That is good. It is good to have that because you're gonna challenge each other. Lauren challenges me all the time. I challenge her all the time. To, you know, interrogate where this plot point's coming from. Is this something that we're doing just for a bit because it's funny, or is there a way for us to kind of add that extra emotional, uh, layer to this, or perhaps a plot layer to this?

So there are a lot of, um. There were a lot of things that we were in very much a total agreement on. Yeah. In terms of kind of the overarching plot of like what stories that we want to tell, I would say in on a no, 

LAUREN: we're very lucky in that Ian and I also, I, we recognize how lucky we are as creators that, like tonally and vision wise, I feel like we are uh, uh, more than usual in, in very much agreement over what story we are telling and how we're telling it.

IAN: Yeah. I would say that, um, there's a lot that will then come, like, uh, uh, there's very few large scale ideas for seasons that we've written that we have not been in 100% total agreement on. Um, that's just luck. That does not always happen. Um, the parts that we disagree on typically are, you know, we, if you're playing this like travel, it's like we both know we wanna go to Boise. We both really wanna go to Boise. 

LAUREN: A sentence that has never been said. Yeah. Sorry. To Boise. 

IAN: The difference though is maybe Lauren wants to drive and maybe I want to take the train. 

LAUREN: Mm-hmm. That's a really great metaphor. I like that. 

IAN: Yeah. And so, but it's like we're both gonna get there. We both know that's the end goal, but the way we get there could be slightly different. And how do we compromise? We're gonna drive and we're gonna pick up this, you know, thing here, whatever. I'm losing the metaphor. But, um, the, the basic idea though of um, you know, there will be some things Lauren and I have, have a, um, a rule with each other where if the other person is not kind of on board with an idea that somebody is pitched, um, usually we will ask that other person to be like, cool, write it. Show me. Show me it working, because right now I'm not, I'm not seeing it based on how we're talking about it. And I will say about nine times outta 10, once it's been written out, it's like, oh, I see what we're doing here. These couple tweaks make it make sense. There's one specific example of there was a version of episode four without the Baker Street Irregulars.

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Um, where essentially Fitzy kind of helped them solve everything that they needed to solve. We didn't have Wiggins, we didn't have any of that stuff in there, even though we had talked about it, and it was in the outline. When I was finishing up the first draft of that episode, I found a way in which we didn't have to do it.

And my producer brain got excited because I thought, oh, goody less people to have to pay less, less large group things that we have to do. And Lauren rightfully was like, we were so excited about the idea, let's just try it. And so I begrudgingly. Capital b begrudgingly– 

LAUREN: –and it was purely from like a structure point where it was like, no, this episode is missing an Event–

IAN: Yeah. It's missing a Thing. 

LAUREN: It was missing like this–there's something that, there's a, there's a center point that is missing. Yeah. That we just like, can we try anchoring it in this thing and seeing how it goes? 

IAN: Yeah. And so I remember going back, uh, into the office coming out and we had written kinda the first draft of the Wiggins character and everything like that. And it was like, “Congratulations Lauren. I love this now.” Um, and so sometimes it really does take that Where it's just like, I had come up with another idea. I was really excited about it. The other thing was Right. Yeah. Um, and it just takes a certain amount. And I'm not saying I'm perfect about this. Neither of us are no creator is, but, you know, uh, it it, it takes just a sense of kind of like taking a step back and going, this isn't about you, this isn't personal, it's just about what's gonna be better for the story. 

LAUREN: Yeah. The same way that there was a, uh, in the opposite way. There was a bit that I had written for I think episode 9. Um, that was, uh, between Hampton and Madge was the scene where they're, they're hiding in Lucius's office and there's a little bit of it still left, but it was the, the bit of like, what if we kissed? And then they, they kind of had this like extended bit where they're doing very similar to season one, where they're creating this backstory for the two of them of like, why they'd be kissing and why would, why would we be kissing secret relationship going on behind James's back that I, that I loved.

And Ian was like, “I think it's too long.” And I was like, “can I just do it?” We did it in the reading and we made ourselves laugh and I was like, “yes, it's working.” And then we recorded it, we recorded it, it, we cut it together, it went to design. And at every point Ian's like, “okay, let's do it.” Like, I was advocating for it 'cause I thought it was, thought it was funny. And the actors did such a fantastic job with it and we heard it in the final edit and it's just like, “I don't see why the door wouldn't have opened by now.” It doesn't make sense. And it deflates the entire stakes of the scene. And I had to have this real moment where I sat down and Ian had to just like.

I knew that it wasn't working, but Ian had to lay out like, it's just because of this and like really talk me through it. And it was just–but I felt so embarrassed 'cause I was like, I asked you to believe in me this whole time. And I was like, it's gonna work. It's gonna work. But we still had to come to the point where it was like he let me discover for myself and we found it together.

And sometimes you try things and they don't work the same way that–so it happens on both ends of things and there's disagreement, but I also think sometimes there is a benefit to–you and I are talking about this today to just like. “I have an idea, can I just fucking try it even if it doesn't make sense right now?”

IAN: Mm-hmm. Um, “I need to, I need to see why it doesn't work for myself.”. I'm going to be much happier with putting this bit out to pasture if I know it doesn't work, rather than somebody telling me it doesn't work before I've tried it. Um, but I do think with the kissing bit, that is like a new thing that we found with that, um, silver lining here to go like, cool. There are some bits that are episode four bits and then there are some bits that are episode nine bits. That it's like at a certain, this bit would've been great when the stakes were not as high. But like, you know, just because of when we wrote it, whatever, it may come back in the future, who knows?

Anyway, next question.

LAUREN: This is from, uh, Sophie. So Sophie asked, “how do you go about building the mystery or story from a broader point of view? How do you decide which characters will have, which revelations about the case or be kidnapped, et cetera? And I noticed in loved how this, in how in this season a lot of the mystery revelations were tied to character plot lines. Do you come up with the character beats first and put in the mystery points later? Or do you mystery first and then find good stories for the characters in that?” 

IAN: Uh, I feel like we answered a lot of this. No, no offense to Sophie. I think that's a wonderful question. Incredibly well thought out. Um, but yeah, 

LAUREN: I, the only thing I would add to that is something we talked about in the first season q and a, is that really when you're writing a mystery, it's finding out, it's deciding what happened.

It's deciding the beginning of the story and then everything between that is just figuring out how it takes longer to get there. It's how to take the train or the, or. It's then from there it's all do we take the train? Do we take the car? Do we take a parasail, do we take, you know, a hot air balloon?

Um, and in those different pathways it's really just like, “how would these chuckle fucks figure it out?” And from there, your character journeys really kind of lay out Yeah. Where it is. And we really, the only thing we knew at the end of the season was that we wanted Hampton, Madge, and James to all figure out one part of the mystery.

And that was really all that mattered. And from the rest of it, it was just tracking those threads of what we wanted them to discover. And sometimes that was just getting them into the right place at the right time. And other times it was getting them to the point where they could focus on the mystery.

Someone like James, where it's like he was in the right place, but also was in, dropped in enough and in the, and like in the right headspace to then understand the meaning of what he was seeing. 

IAN: And um, and similarly with Holmes, it's like this person that's having a massive identity crisis and kind of having like emotional ED mm-hmm.

Uh, for most of this season. he's literally spending most of his time in a theme park that's dedicated to him about how great he is. So like, it, it is ultimately a combo of both. But I do think that it's like, you know, like we said earlier, the mystery, the theme park, none of that would've come about if we did not know what the emotional story with the characters was going to be that we wanted to tell. Um, yeah. 

LAUREN: The setting is like the scaffolding and the character arcs are in place at the beginning, and the mystery at various points is just there as a catalyst to keep pushing them forward. Yeah. Um, and that's, that's kind of how I would contextualize our process with it. Yeah. 

IAN: Great question. Yeah. Next question, “with such a dynamic cast as well as the addition of Holmes and Watson.” Thank you–

LAUREN: –Oh my God thank you–

IAN: “How difficult was it to find a way to have so many plot lines going at the same time? What challenges did you find when it came to interweaving them?” Uh, no challenges at all it was a breeze! Next question, and–um, no, it was difficult. That was difficult. There's a lot of plates spinning this season.

LAUREN: We did more outlining this season than we've ever done before. I think we've been very loosey-goosey in the past. This is the first time that we've really had to sit down and be like, what happens each episode? 

IAN: Yeah. And um, and I'm glad we did that. Oh my God. Um, and so I, I would say, um, with this, the Holmes and Watson of it all, uh, Lauren was much better than I was.

LAUREN: I don't think that's true. 

IAN: Well, no, I, I feel like I was always a little bit like “this is becoming too much about Fitzy. This is becoming too much about Holmes. This is becoming too much about Watson. This is becoming, you know, we're forgetting our guys, we're forgetting these things, whatever.” And Lauren had a much better kind of, I think, grander vision of what's going on to where when I listened to the episodes, uh, in full, I realized that that was not the case. I think it was just because Fitzy slash Holmes slash Watson, uh, are new to this season. It felt like they were taking up a larger seat at the table, but that's just because they weren't sitting at the table last time when in reality it's, they, they weren't they? I think that they're in this season a really–they're in the season as much as they need to be. Uh, but yeah, I, I, it was, it was really tough to balance that, and we did have to kind of keep each other in check a lot to kind of be like, how many, you know, how many emotional revelations has Fitzy slash Holmes had as opposed to Madge Hampton or James? Um, you know, to kind of continue to make sure that like for every revelation this person has, we wanna make sure this other person is either on the way there or has a, backs a backslide or something. Um, it was a lot of editing, a lot of rewriting, and like Lauren said, a lot of outlining.

LAUREN: Yeah. And I think at a lot of, like–we have a chalkboard in our home, so it was also like putting each character on a, like on a line. Yeah. And being like, cool episode one, this is where this person is episode like, and really getting to see, okay, not everyone is having a, an emotional revelation in the same episode, but everyone's kind of chugging along and really tracking those types of things.

Um, and then really like, and then like highlighting their connections to each other of like making sure that when, when someone has a revelation, it is either with or caused by another character. So we are kind of being a little more utilitarian in that way. That it's like, cool, Madge and Hampton are having this happening together and you know, Fitzy and Madge are having this happen together, and then Hampton is having that with Weatherby and really kind of trying to spread the love in, in that particular way, and also show that, that these characters are affecting each other's lives and not just a bunch of people who are out in the void having their own journeys. Um, but it really was a lot of plates to juggle and a lot of that was just charting and outlining and rewriting and going, oh, we just realized that kind of like this person didn't do anything, this episode. What is happening here? And can we, can we make sure that we touch base with them at some point here? 

IAN: It's also important to know, at least for us, and this was a conversation that we did have to have where it's like. There are some characters by the sheer fact of the way that this season is structured that are not going to get as much play, and we need to be okay with that. Um, and we need to also remind ourselves that this is, you know, we're building this ship to last several seasons. This is not all leading to this season. It's not over yet. So it is okay if some characters get a little less to do because we will give them more to do in the future. Yeah. Um, so that was important.

Yeah. Um, next question here. “How long do the separate steps of the process take writing? Recording, cutting. Well, um, writing for this season ended up taking about a year and a half. Um, yeah.”

LAUREN: It took a, it took a while. It took, took one of, it was one of our longest process. It was a lot of stopping and starting for–

IAN: That was my fault. 

LAUREN: No, I, and not at all. I had back surgery in the middle of it. Um, we had a lot of acting gigs that were coming around and then we got engaged and we were planning a wedding.  And so there was a lot of, there was a lot of life, a lot of life happened while we were writing this, this season.

And like we said, there's so many–we also really worked really hard on getting all of the, the balls in the air and so that it was, we did a lot of rewriting and working on this season because we knew that if we were gonna pull it off, it needed to be kind of precise and, and we were trying a bunch of new stuff for us.

So I think it did, it did take longer than our scripts usually take–than I even think the process is going right now for season three, but I think it was worth it so that, you know, that was about a year and a half. And so if it takes you a long time, it takes you a long time. It's also, we're we're only two people writing the whole thing. 

IAN: Yeah. So we started writing the scripts for season two in the fall of 2022. Mm-hmm. So that was like around the time season one was coming out? Yeah. Um, we had started on that. 

LAUREN: RIP the Queen. 

IAN: Yeah. And, uh, and we finished writing. I remember vividly, we finished writing the first draft of everything. Um. New year's of 2024. 

LAUREN: Yeah. It was this hugely snowy day. 

IAN: It was a very snowy day, but we gave ourselves, like, we go, we can go until December 31st. And then we're done with the first draft and then we started doing, um, readings. The readings. You know, that takes a little while to organize anyway. So we essentially will do readings for the first half of the season and then readings for the second half of the season a couple weeks later.

LAUREN: That was in January, February. 

IAN: Yeah. And then we do the rewriting stage and we try, um, to have, not try, we have all of the scripts locked before we're going into recordings. We started recording. 

LAUREN: We crowdfunded in April. 

IAN: Crowdfunded in April. Started recording in May. We recorded for most of the summer. 

LAUREN: Yeah, I think we wrapped in– 

IAN: –we gave ourselves some time.

LAUREN: Yeah. 'Cause the first season, I think we recorded everything in like three weeks and it was so fast, really hard and we didn't get a chance to really enjoy it. Yeah. And we wanted to enjoy it a lot more. So we spread out recordings for the season over, I think we wrapped in September. Yeah. 

IAN: And then there were like little odd like, you know, bobs and ends and stuff like that. We were, we were getting. Throughout, like, I think there was some of Allie's Weatherby stuff that we didn't get until like late October, November. Yeah. Because Allie was away on a contract. And then– 

LAUREN: But we were also cutting together the first, I was doing the dialogue edits for the first couple episodes. Right. Like when we were still recording. I was, I was starting to cut things together by about late July. Yeah. Um, and though that was when I would start, well we tried to record all the first couple episodes 'cause we had all the people in studio while, you know, while we were waiting to figure out scheduling with, um, some of our actors in the UK who we couldn't schedule in until August because of when overlap happened.

But we also knew that was fine because those actors didn't come in until later, which is when we became really happy that like Watson doesn't come in until episode five. And. So we, I also cut them together. Out of order, I think. 

IAN: Yes. 

LAUREN: So I cut together like episode one, then I think episode three, then I think I jumped to four and then five, and then went back to two.

IAN: Mm-hmm. 

LAUREN: Um, just because of how things went. And then we were able to go kind of in order, 'cause we had all, everything together. So

IAN: We also talked a little bit about this on the, uh mm-hmm. Actor q and a, but we wanted to try and wrap Fitzy before we got into the Holmes stuff. So–for Rob's brain, but also for, for, for the emotional arc of where our, our characters are kind of in that storyline as well.

So we did try, we tried to kind of record an order, but just by sheer necessity of timing and everything like that. We also had a lot of ensemble members this season that, you know, had the, you know, they're in eight episodes, but maybe they have like a line or two in eight episodes and whatever.

So we ended up getting a lot of those kind of more ensemble tracks done first, I remember. Because the first people we recorded were like, I think Hannah who plays Iphy, was the first person we recorded, and we did that on like a Zoom call in like two hours. 

LAUREN: Yeah. She was literally the first one of the year. I think that was in June even. 

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. And then Julie, who plays Prudence and Madame Delledonte was like shortly after that, but like, we can get these folks done in like a session. And the good thing about that–I would not recommend it for a first season–because we had done the first season, so there was a very easy way of being able to be like, if you haven't listened, here's an episode, get the tone, whatever.

We knew what the main, uh, the, the core ensemble was going to be doing. Um, and so it was easier then to be able to calibrate these other uh, variables. Yeah. To that because we had a feeling of what was gonna. What was gonna be doing, uh, there? Um, that's a long answer. So, uh, and then cutting. It took, what, like four or five months?

LAUREN: Yeah, four or five months. I don't think if we, if, if we had had all of this stuff recorded and just like batched, I could have done it in a month and a half probably, but we did everything out of order. We also have, you know, there's, there's so many different workflows that are in place because some of it was going off to our designer and then getting scored, like getting music on it.

Some of it went to our designer with music. So we, you know, our music designer, uh, was studying for the bar for most of it. So we were also doing some stuff where we would get sound design set, but then mixing and mastering was not getting set because we were waiting on music to come in. So like, episode six was designed and ready minus music for a while, um, before that came in.

So it's like, you know, where like if everything was in place that, that could have taken Sarah, our fantastic designer probably could have. She knocked stuff out so fast. Like in a week. It's like a week. It's crazy. It's crazy fast. Um, and she's doing so much. She was doing so much. Hire her for all your stuff.

Yeah, she was, she was doing so much incredible, like extra work too, like, and doing all this like auto, like this panning and she was mixing it in Dolby. It was, it was crazy. Yeah. Um, that was way too long of an answer for a question where you mostly wanted numbers. I, it sounded like. Yeah. So, um, I'm so sorry.

“I was wondering about something in the Case of the Filched Fork, the speech Peppermint gives to Watson about giving Holmes to the world and the world not wanting to let him go really made me think the whole situation with fans not accepting the death of ACD Holmes and forcing him to resuscitate Holmes. Was that the intent or am I just reading too much into it? Thanks again for this wonderful season.” 

They pause each assuming the other is about to answer. 

IAN: That's, yeah. Well, I–

LAUREN: I just looked at Ian, like, Ian when I didn't even–

IAN: think. I think, I think that it, uh, I don't know how directly it was. I know Lauren, you took a lot of the first, uh, especially the first pass of this episode. Um, I don't think it was necessarily an, uh, an intentional, uh, reference to that to fans not accepting Holmes's death in, in ACDs work. I think it's more of just a, a way of 

LAUREN: Addressing parasociality. 

IAN: Yeah. And addressing the fact that it's like as creators, once you put something out into the world with the impulse of sharing something or creating community or whatever, it ceases to be 100% yours anymore.

And other people will put a headcanon on it. That was never the intention. Or they will. You know, co-opt a symbol or whatever in it for, for a purpose that may not be, uh, intentional. And at the end of the day, it's, it, it, that, that is a, a question that does not have a definitive answer. It's one that is completely subjective, kind of who owns a character, does the public own them or does the writer own them?

And that was a conversation that Lauren and I were interested in having this season. 

LAUREN: And also, what would that look like if that character, you know, quote unquote is, was a real person, was a real person if you had created this, if you'd taken this person that you love and made them into a character that the public loves? Does that then mean that, that the public gets to treat them as a character that they own, like it is a piece of fiction? Yeah. Um, and how might that, you know, what guilt would that make you feel and what anger would that make you feel? Um, I think that, that those were the, the ideas that we were pretty interested in there.

And, and just the, and more just like the specific tragedy more than any type of metaphorical meaning I think. It was more about the specific tragedy of this particular situation. 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: And it was much more about Watson than it was any like, macro idea of parasociality that it is part of. But I think that episode to me was just about, you know, the tragedy of what it could be like if you are a creator and you take this person you love and make them into something for public consumption. 

IAN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a conversation that is honestly, incredibly interesting to me. Mm-hmm. And I'm, I sway to either side of the pendulum very often, and I really do think it's a case by case basis. Um, because a lot of times fictional characters are inspired by real life characters.

And it's like, at what point when, you know, we even have merch advertising, like, ask me about Sherlock Holmes entering the public domain, which is our cheeky way of mm-hmm. Of kind of introducing some of the ideas and themes of Holmes that we wanted to play with this season. That if ACD was alive. Maybe he would take a lot of umbrage with what we did. We don't know. Um, and it's not saying that what we did was right or what other people have done is wrong. It's, it is really just like, it's a tricky, tricky question and something that we wanted, we felt like was important enough to build an entire season around.

Um. And so it's like while yes, we are being cheeky with like a piece of merch like that, I do also think that it is coming from a place of deep, deep consideration for what the ramifications of any version of answer of that may be. Yeah. 

LAUREN: Um, and again, like what if like, you know, I think what if they're a real person?

Yeah. I think it's, it's so much of it's about celebrity culture I think. Really. 

IAN: Yeah. And parasocial relationships. Exactly. Um, next question. “Hello my brother and I love your show so much. Thanks. It was really fun. Gaslighting him about Fitzy and then–”

LAUREN: same dude 

IAN: “--seeing his reaction when the twist came.”

LAUREN: It was fun for us to gaslight. 

IAN: “My question is our honor, what was up with Lucius? Was he secret? Is he secretly 80 years old for no reason or will it be further explored to future season? Did I miss something where this was explained all the best. What is Lucius Peppermint–”

LAUREN: Those are two separate questions, but similar, 

IAN: but similarly, “what is Lucius Peppermint’s skincare routine?” Um, no, there's no reason behind it. We just let it be funny. Um, I think that there's something in mysteries, one of my favorite things about any mystery is a red herring. Um, and so having something and with Iphy specifically that she is somebody who notices these fine details. Somebody that had been right before, yeah, you know, with the, the, the poison and everything like that, and just that.

The, the things that she notices may not be the things that other people notice. Um, and they may not even be useful. Yeah. The main thing, the commentary, the satire of him being, you know, in his late eighties and, and looking like he's in his, you know, mid forties, is he, maybe he is in his twenties and just had a really hard life.

I, I think the main satire is that the rich get access to ways of taking care of themselves that the rest of us do not have. Yeah. Um, that's never explained. It really didn't need to be. Um, I'm so glad that that detail tickled you though, because it tickled me. And, uh, sometimes in mysteries there are silly little red herrings or just little details that delighted us.

LAUREN: Yes. And will it be explored in the future season? No. 'cause he is dead. 

IAN: He's dead. Spoilers. 

LAUREN: RIP. What's his skincare routine? Ian, would you like to answer this? 

IAN: The skincare routine of any man in Victorian England. You know, he takes a fish, he slaps it on his face a couple times. He takes some malt beer and he dunks his face in it. And then a nice long steam with some eucalyptus sleeves. 

LAUREN: Ooh. I feel like Mercury is involved somewhere. 

IAN: Yeah. He breaks a thermometer and drinks it. 

LAUREN: And so much cocaine. Yeah. Uh, great. This is from starrygeek. “What made you decide to go with the decision of making Sherlock and Watson have a romantic relationship in the end? Also shout out. I really enjoyed the flip of the season, having Hampton give the life-changing talk to match to get her shit together versus first season when it was match giving Hampton the life changing talk.” And then we also had, uh, another question which is similar, which is “what made you decide to write Holmes and Watson as a romantic instead of a platonic, queer platonic or any other type of relationship?”

Um, God, where to start? 'cause there were, there were so many little things in there. Um, I don't think that we ever really considered not– 

IAN: No. 

LAUREN: –having them be together. I think we had, that was–

IAN: –that was the reason to do it. 

LAUREN: We had really considered a lot of, like, I think there was a lot of question about like, how centered will that story be?

IAN: Mm-hmm. 

LAUREN: Is that something that we are, you know, we had talked about like in the first season, there's a lot of implications of maybe they’re a couple, but, you know, we're just not really paying attention to them. Um, and so I think that that, you know, I think that was the expectation on our show from a lot of our listeners, that they're together but not really Here.

Um, and I think that we thought when bringing them in that it was never an issue of whether they were gonna be together. It was just whether or not they were gonna be together when we met them. And I think that we thought it would be a wasted opportunity to have them already be together and that would, that would make them too similar to James and Archie, who already are kind of a permutation of an option for Holmes and Watson.

We've talked a few other times about how basically every relationship in our kind of like Core Four as we call them. It's a permutation on, you know, as, as this wonderful second question mentioned, I think a queerplatonic relationship where this is kind of like soulmates relationship between Hampton and Madge that is not romantic or sexual.

This kind of like just friendship between Hampton and James and then this like very settled in love, like domestic version of them that James and Archie have. And we were, we were thinking about that in relationship to if we're gonna have Holmes and Watson on on the show, we don't want them to be there just to teach our characters something.

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: That was the thing that we always felt very strongly about. So we were really thinking about what do our characters have to teach them? And really it's just showing them all of the permutations of what their relationship could be and forcing them to kind of decide what they want that to take because they're two characters that really have spent 10 years not deciding what they mean to each other. So I think it was never really a–again, it was never really a question, like we always wanted to do it. It, it's, it hasn't really been done nearly enough– 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: And it's more than enough. Again, it was never really a question, but I think it was, it was kind of a given. And so much of the story that we came up with, one of the original pitches was that this was a love story in the end.

Ian, do you have any, anything to add while I'm still kind of thinking about how to kind of talk about our process around it? 

IAN: Again, it's, it's interesting because like you said, we, we never, we were never not going to do this with them. 

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Um, I think you and I both as huge fans of ACD's work and specifically–

LAUREN: Every time you say ACD is just really funny 

IAN: –specifically of SH and JW, but we, we were, it's something that we've always jokingly been like other adaptations are too cowardly to do this whatever. Um, which is not entirely like -

LAUREN: It's definitely more, it's more nuanced than that.

IAN: It's more nuanced than that, studios are fearful. But, um, I, I definitely think that. When, like you said, we were really kind of like putting the mirror up to them to say, you have all these different versions of yourself that you could be, who do you want to be?

But uh, the way that we talked a little bit about this on the actor Q and A, and this is genuinely how I feel about all of this and about any character in the public domain, and this comes from Lauren and I having a big background in classical theater, is that there is no definitive Hamlet.

There is no, “this is how Hamlet could and should and must always be played.” The Lawrence Olivier version is not the definitive version. It is a version. It is a great version. But it is not the version. And I think the beauty of when a character permeates the culture enough to enter the public domain, uh, and to then be, you know, used in several different ways, it's because there are so many different people that see so many different versions of that character.

And so this is a version of the Holmes and Watson relationship. If you don't like it. Great. There's the Moffatt version, there's the, the Guy Ritchie version. There is the Granada Holmes. There's so many other versions of Holmes that you can have. Um, there's Will Ferrell and John C Reilly 

LAUREN: Don't watch that one.

IAN: You can, don't watch that one. 

LAUREN: Don't do it. Please. 

IAN: But it's like, you, you, like, there are like, there are those other versions. So for, for us, when we were talking about bringing them into our, to, to this world and what that would mean, we needed to justify it. You know, well, what do we have to say about these characters that other people have not already said?

LAUREN: And you, and you felt very strongly about–”we're not bringing these characters into the story unless we have something to say that is, that is 1) in relation to the journeys of our characters, and 2) not just a retread of what other things have been done. 

IAN: We need to have them there for a reason. And so I think, like Lauren said, the idea of having them learn from our characters. And our characters obviously have so much that they need to learn from Holmes and Watson. Um. The thing that really excited me was this idea of different generations of people learning from each other.

Whether or not that is how I feel about the world, I think that that's an important thing that we, you know, that we wanted to put forth. And I also think that there is a lot of satire in this season. There's a lot of, you know, craven behavior. There's a lot of really, um, our characters are certainly not always politically correct.

There's always a lot of, uh, you know, stuff going on there that we really did want–Lauren and I both at the end of the day, are big softies and we did kind of want a big, beautiful love story at the center of this. Um, because I think what we, what we spoke a lot about was that the one thing our characters have that it seems like not–no other characters that are in this time period have, is that they have no problem telling each other that they love each other, whether that's platonically or romantically. Um, I don't think any of these three, uh, four, including Archie have any, anything holding them back from saying that. It's like they may be more emotionally advanced than anybody else in this time period. 

LAUREN: They have other problems, but that's not one of them. 

IAN: Yeah, exactly. That they have other stuff that they have to deal with. 

LAUREN: Well, and also this idea that maybe them being in the shadows has allowed them to be that–

IAN: Yeah, has allowed them to gain that. But maybe the idea, you know, when we're talking about Holmes being such a public figure, what has being a public figure prevented him from doing? And when we cracked that it's prevented him from being himself, we really just kind of expanded that as to like, well, in what other ways is he not able to be himself?

LAUREN: And that's really what, what crafted our, like his Fitzy persona is like, is really this idea of Fitzy as this person that like–the idea that this incredibly interesting, charismatic like loud person that does incredibly impressive things that like his, maybe the person he wants to be when he gets to like dissociate and go into another state is just kind of like a boring guy who, who puts that he's gay on his sleeve, you know, like, maybe that's it? I'm sorry I cut you off–you were, I, I apologize. 

IAN: No, that was pretty much it. I, I think that there's, it's a larger conversation.. And it's one that I'm sure requires a lot of nuance and one that I'm sure we'll be continuing to have, um, throughout, you know, the kind of postmortem of this season.

Um, but it's one that, that we, we consider a lot and something that we, we are both really interested in exploring. But it's one of those things where we both felt it, we both knew that it was going to be the case, and we both felt so passionately about it. That we kind of didn't turn back, we interrogated it because when you're dealing with, you know, somebody's identity and relationship, you do need to interrogate that.

And as a character, even as a character in, in a, in a, you know, silly audio fiction. Like, we do think that it is important for us to interrogate every choice these characters make at the writing stage and at the performance stage. We wanna be able to help our actors. We wanna be able to help you, the listener, be able to meet this version of this character.

Um, and we were really, at the end of the day, we wanted to create a version of somebody you've met a hundred times that we were so excited for you to meet. And so it's really been lovely to see people's response to Fitzy and kind of response to Holmes in that as well. I'm, I'm glad people have, have enjoyed that.

And I think that if I can do anything else now with this long, rambling answer, it's just to shout out Tom and, uh, Rob who played Watson and Holmes, uh, respectively. I, I just think that they were so on board with this version of these characters and brought so much emotional honesty to it. And I mean, to talk a little bit behind the scenes, we had Tom for like three hours–

LAUREN: Yeah. We talked about that a little bit in the actor q and a. Like it was really a very brief period of time. Just because of scheduling. 

IAN: Just because of scheduling, not because of anything else. 

LAUREN: Like, truly just like summer vacations. Like he was truly, like Rob went on vacation, I went on vacation, everyone was just like taking consecutive vacations.

Yeah. Um, um, which was hilarious. And then time zones, but he, like, he came in and like–

IAN: So prepared, so professional. 

LAUREN: Both of them did just like, and then it was only their first time meeting each other. 'cause the, the fun fact, the minisode in the first season, they both were recorded separately. 

IAN: Yeah.

LAUREN: And we just, we just spliced them together in post. So they really both came in and just threw themselves into it. And, and it was only because of their dedication that I think the chemistry comes across the way, the way that it does. Um, and, and I know this is already a really rambling answer, so I will only add just like. One thing. Um, and it's kinda bringing it back to that idea of like, does any of your, you know, real life seep through, and finding your own way in? I think that so much of the journey that, that cracked open for our characters is, you know, we've talked about like for many different reasons that the season took a long time to write.

And it's because burnout is a real–like the thing that we haven't talked about that is a huge thread of the season is Burnout. Um, and I think that the thing that really cracked open for us and the thing that we realized was that the core of this relationship and that was really necessary for them to be in love and to love each other in, in some way–not necessarily romantic, but that, that love was at the center of this. It was that I think we've all, in a relationship, gone through periods where things are hard and burnout is tough. And you have those moments where you don't understand each other and you're, you're, you are asking people like, “I wanna do it right.”

“I wanna do things right by you,” and you're misunderstanding each other. And really you have to have that tool of stepping back and saying, “Hey, I love you. This is a loving relationship–at the core of this, that is it.” And so much of that relationship between the two of them was just this examination of this question of: What if you didn't have the ability to say, for whatever reason, “I love you?” Like in your relationship, the Conflict Toolbox. And how powerful being able to have the words or the understanding of Love in conflict, especially when when one person is struggling and having trouble reaching out, which Ian and I have both been that person and both known that that person outside of our relationship, and it really did feel like that had to be the unsaid core of that relationship in some real way.

Yep. Um, that was really our way in for that relationship. Um, and that's all I wanted to add. 

IAN: No, I think that that's great. Yeah. Thank you so much. That's a great question. Yeah. Um, next question here. I've just, this is from Blueberry-Puffin. Love it. Love that name. “I've discovered and re-listened to Fawx and Stallion three times in a matter of two weeks.” Wow. 

LAUREN: Oh my God. 

IAN: “Just what did you put in it? And is it Sherlock's cocaine?”

LAUREN: He's clean for two years. 

IAN: “Be honest. Uh, now onto the actual, extremely serious question. What is the tea on Mrs. Hudson? Is she coming back in a Madge’s love life with a steel chair (negative)? Kindly share or tease what you can. Thank you for the wonderful story.”

First off, thank you so much. That is so sweet. I'm glad, I'm so glad that you like the show. I'm just, I'm glad, 

LAUREN: I'm glad that it holds up to re-listen. 

IAN: I'm glad anybody's listening to it. That's, yeah. 

LAUREN: Truly, it's a miracle. Every person that listens to this show feels like a miracle. 

IAN: Um, we did put cocaine in it, um, but, uh, no.

So. The Mrs. Hudson question. Um, I don't want to answer this. 

LAUREN: No comment. We like to keep our options a little bit open on that one and like to keep that one a little close to the chest. 

IAN: Um, the only thing that we can share is that Mrs. Hudson is a fucking fox. She's a stone cold fox. 

LAUREN: So fucking hot. 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: Because you know that she had to be for Madge to ruin her life for multiple years..

IAN: Madge is way too shallow at the time at which she was dating Mrs. Hudson–she would not to not have dated anybody other than a stone cold 12. 

LAUREN: Yeah. To the point where she does not know what Sherlock Holmes' face looks like despite being in that man's home. Yeah. That's how hot Mrs. Hudson is. Yeah. Our Madge can fucking get it.

Yes. No further comments. 

IAN: Uh, no please respect our privacy. 

LAUREN: Alright this is from Cheska. “What was the decision behind having Lottie as Watson's wife? Was it just because Mary was too obvious a name? And how did she and Watson meet?” Um, 

IAN: Lauren, uh, 

LAUREN: I'll only answer one part of this question–

IAN: Yeah, because the other part we can't--

LAUREN: –which is that at one point we did bring up the idea of her having the name Mary. Uh, and then we decided we were not going to have another character with an M-A name because we cannot have Madge and Martha and Mary. It's too fucking confusing. So we said, no, we're going another route.

She's. We..haven't decided, uhmm. Well, or we've decided we just haven't told you. 'cause we're probably going to explore this in a certain future. Yeah. 

IAN: We've got some ideas for 

LAUREN: As for, for how it came about, I wanna say it was something 

IAN: Lauren, Lauren pitched it, it was one of the last things added to that episode.

LAUREN: We were kind of redoing a lot of her scenes with Madge. 'cause I think that she was originally a much more utilitarian character–

IAN: And I would say once we knew, once we cast Beth, Beth Eyre, the amazing, Beth Eyre as, as Lottie, we kind of had a, um– 

LAUREN: –we started to revamp it for like in, and then once we were revamping we, it, it was like four revamps where like she did the first change. Then we, we started writing it like kind of unconsciously for Beth. We got Beth. And then we started another revamp. 

IAN: Yeah. So that, that was all I was gonna say. Yeah. Is like we, we wrote to a voice of somebody that we were excited about writing for. 

LAUREN: Yeah. And. That was partially, I think in the early stages because we just needed to tie up that plot line one more time. And we were like, how do we get her in? Um, and that be, and I think I pitched that almost as a joke. 

IAN: It was a joke, and then we were like, let's put it in there and see what happens. 

LAUREN: And I, and then we kind of, it was one of things where we pitched as a joke and then we laughed about it, and then we sat with it for a minute and we were like, wait, 

IAN: Why not?

LAUREN: That actually makes a lot of sense in retrospect and makes her not knowing the name a thousand times funnier. 

IAN: We also thought on a deeper meta level. Um, and I will say this kind of, this, this does go into structure a little bit. Yeah. Because the daughters of the knitting circle were originally not as big of a part of this season.

LAUREN: No. 

IAN: They were kind of only in episode three. Um, and then we just had so much fun writing it and Lottie became, uh, a much more interesting, 

LAUREN: -vibrant- 

IAN: -fun character to write that we were like, let's put them in a little bit more and kind of have them be this eternal foil for the public persona of Madge.

Um, but it also was a nice, fun, uh, meta joke for us because so much of the Daughters of Knitting Circle is asking you to be like, accept these women as human beings and not just as wives. And then at the end being like, yeah, but because you did that, you didn't ask who her husband was. Um, so it's, it was her way of having our cake and eating it too.

LAUREN: And also like one last thing where you're like Madge really went through all of this like character development and if she had just paid attention when they were doing names or been there, they probably could have solved the mystery three episodes earlier. Yeah. Um, and we just thought that was really funny. And then we went back and kind of really revamped a lot of the stuff to add little hints and stuff and. It was just such a fun character that it was just like, it really opened up a lot, uh, for her. 

IAN: Yeah. I will also say we've had a couple people ask about the timeline. Why wouldn't Madge have seen Lottie while she was dating Mrs. Hudson? 

LAUREN: Mrs. Hudson is a 13 out of 10. 

IAN: Yeah. Um, first of all that, second of all timeline wise, yes. Um, they would've broken up, uh, the events of season one would've happened before John had settled in. Yeah. Um, so they got–

LAUREN: We have a mention in season one that Watson just got married during the events of season one. Um, so technically they would not have met each other. She was past the point of caring. Um, so they have been married for about two years. As for how that went down, no comment because we do have a very strong idea. Of what happened there. 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: That may be a little different than what people are assuming.

IAN: Yes. 

LAUREN: Um, uh, and so we wanna keep that one a little close to the chest. 'cause I think that maybe we'll get into it. 

IAN: Yeah. But great question. I'm glad that, I'm glad that that was, yeah. Exciting for you. Um, great. Next question here. This is from withasimplelobsterhat, “Could the 2 2 4 B gang solve Cain's Jawbone?”

LAUREN: So I didn't know what this was, and then I looked it up. So, for anyone else who does not know what this is, this is actually fascinating. Uh, it, it is a puzzle. It consists of a 100 page prose narrative with its pages arranged in the wrong order. To solve the puzzle, the reader must determine the correct order of the pages, and also the names of the murders, murderers, and the victims within the story. The story's text includes a large number of quotations, references, puns, and other word games. The pages can be arranged, uh. In a, oh my God, 9.33 times 10,157 to the factorial of a hundred possible combinations. But there is only one correct order. The solution to the puzzle has never been made public. So I'm sure as everyone can, in our audience can agree, um–no.

IAN: NO. No!

LAUREN: They absolutely wouldn't. 

IAN: In what fucking world, withasimplelobsterhat– 

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Would our idiots be able to solve Cain's Jawbone???? 

LAUREN: I think Hampton would spend, uh–

IAN: His life, his LIFE– 

LAUREN: His life. Yeah.Trying, trying to, and failing. 

IAN: Oh my God. It'd be the biggest waste of time for him! 

LAUREN: Fun fact about this that I did learn in researching is that one of the people who, um, has since solved it, one of like only a handful of people who has, was the, uh, radio writer John Finnemore, who wrote Cabin Pressure–

IAN: Holy Shit. 

LAUREN: During the pandemic, solved it. 

IAN: Wow. 

LAUREN: You have to like send your solution in in like an official route and then they get back to you and they're like, yes. Correct. 

IAN: Who, who? 

LAUREN: I dunno. The people who do it. 

IAN: The people who do what? When this is over–I'm gonna do so much research on Cain's Jawbone.

LAUREN: I knew I couldn't share this with you ahead of time because I knew you would go down a rabbit hole and I don't want that thing in our house because it was, it was so dangerous. We cannot have that in our house. We cannot do it. 

IAN: Lauren, I quit season three. 

LAUREN: NOOO!. Oh no. Uh, it's gonna take another year and a half for season three to be written. And you know why, withasimplelobsterhat. I hope you know, you fucking did this.Thanks for nothing. Next question. This is from MindYourPsandQs.

“If they could listen to them, what would be Hampton, James and Madge's favorite audio dramas?” I love this question. Okay. Okay. 

IAN: Um, I know for a fact James doesn't listen to audio drama. He only listens to, um, like

LAUREN: Lifestyle podcasts, 

IAN: Lifestyle podcast, but not what you would think. It's not like economists or anything else.It's all celebrity gossip. He listens to like, um, Jam Session. 

LAUREN: Oh God. 

IAN: He listens to like Perez Hilton's podcast Betos and tells anybody about it. Yeah. Um. Stuff like that. Um, he listens. Does Andy Cohen have a podcast? 

LAUREN: Probably 

IAN: James is listening. 

LAUREN: I gotta imagine 

IAN: If not James is banging on Andy Cohen's door asking him to start a podcast.

LAUREN: I think James is the type of person that would say that he listened to some of the mainstream ones. He would say he's listened to every episode of Night Vale, but he would not know any of it. No. Just because he heard the name Welcome to Night Vale, like all of the standard ones. He'd be like, yes, I've definitely done that.

But he would not do any. Um, I think that Madge would probably do. I'm trying to think. I think probably anything with lesbians in it. So I definitely think like Where the Stars Fell. I definitely think like Starship Q Star. Yeah, Um, like the really, like the really probably think like probably would do the Juno Steel Penumbra series.

IAN: That's a good call. 

LAUREN: Anyone? Yeah, anyones that, that have like sex. I think maybe like a Brimstone Valley Mall. I also could see for Madge. Yeah. Um. Kinda like a more like fun like comedy punk rock situation. I think I can definitely see all of that for her. I think Hampton is the trickiest because I–

IAN: Bright Sessions,

LAUREN: Bright Sessions. Oh yeah. 

IAN: I think something like Bright Sessions. Something like uh, something that's got a deep lore–Amelia Project. 

LAUREN: Okay. Yeah. Oh, Amelia Project people. Because Amelia Project is technically at a certain point, a history lesson. 

IAN: Exactly. 

LAUREN: Especially their current run. 

IAN: And Hampton's gonna try to be like, this serves this purpose and this person purpose– 

LAUREN: Oh my god Madge, Strange Case of Starship Iris. Oh my god, absolutely –lesbians. Yeah, sorry. 

IAN: Um, yeah, so I, I would say that for, for Hampton I also think, think is would also is probably a Night Vale guy also. 

LAUREN: He's probably a night vale guy. I think he would probably do like an Unwell situation. I think he would do, um, oh God, like some science-based ones. I think you'd probably do. Um, 

IAN: What are the science-based show that the McElroy's have? They've got some show I that's like them, like saying science shit at each other. 

LAUREN: I think you're really literally big, like he would do for like a really good backlog. I'm trying to see Hampton. It's all of the ones where he could, 

IAN: Oh, he's a My Favorite Murder bitch. He's a Murderino. 

LAUREN: That's not an audio drama though. 

IAN: But it's still, that doesn't matter. He doesn't, it's a podcast. He's still a Murderino. 

LAUREN: Yeah, that's true. I'm trying to think. I think Hampton would get annoyed with My Favorite Murder because I think he'd think there weren't enough of the facts on there.

'cause that's more of like their riffing on it. I think that he would have an issue with My Favorite Murder and how much they riff at the beginning. I think he'd be like, can you get to the murder? I wanna try to solve it. Yeah. But they don't share enough of the evidence for him to actually be able to solve it.

I think they'd probably go more on the route of something like Morbid, um, which would be like, which is much more–

IAN: or Criminal 

LAUREN: –fact based or criminal. I think that would be good. But again, we're straying away from audio drama, as far as audio drama at Hampton. Oh fuck. I think we just, I think he'd like, I think he'd like, like a Mockery Manner, which is also a mystery.

IAN: Oh, he'd also, I think he'd, he'd be very tickled by Victoriocity. 

LAUREN: Oh yeah. I mean, they all would like James, I think actually think James would fuck with Victoriocity. 

IAN: James would fuck with Victoriocity. He would, he's downloaded every episode. He's never listened. I think he would s– 

LAUREN: –but if he ever listened, I think he would severely, severely fuck.

IAN: Yeah. Um, I mean, Archie huge WTF-head, 

LAUREN: I mean Archie is like low key named after a character from Victoriocity. So we–we have not officially ever officially confirmed that, but he is, yeah. Small world. 

IAN: Great question though. That's fun. 

LAUREN: Yeah, I think he would, if he gave it a chance. I think that Clara from Victoriocity and James would hang out so much.

IAN: Next question. Were there any side storylines or characters you wanted for season two but couldn't fit them in? 

LAUREN: Well, my bit in episode nine, 

IAN: Um, the answer is yes. Next question. Um, no, that there, there are definitely some, 

LAUREN: There's always stuff that we don't fit into the season, but usually it's like, 

IAN: We left, we left most everything on the floor with season two.

LAUREN: I feel like we, we really put everything in there that we, that we could. There were some ideas that were like early pitches in, like in the writer's room that just were like, so that were funny but were not relevant at all to the story we were telling. Yeah. So we talked and that I don't wanna like talk about because we may just like recycle them in a different form, but there were characters that we had ideas for that just kind of like there's not room for this or like. Thematically, this is funny, but not, but a divergence from the character journey. Like, we had a, I don't wanna say what it was, but like Archie and James originally had a little fun subplot. 

IAN: They had a fun subplot. 

LAUREN: It was so funny. But I do think we're gonna probably bring it back at some point.

IAN: Um, and there were some other ACD characters that we were considering playing with that we decided to hold off on until future seasons. 

LAUREN: Yeah, there's one big one we're holding back for, I think season, probably season three. 

IAN: Um, but there's, yeah, so it's like, there was definitely some stuff that we, we held off on.

LAUREN: Um, but there was never like a Moriarty in the season. There was never like a huge, no. 

IAN: No that bitch is dead. 

LAUREN: Yeah. There was never like a huge cut from the, like, from the season I think it was pretty. We had, we had a pretty strong outline and, and there was very little like, major cutting. 

IAN: Yeah. I will say again, to kind of go back to what we've been talking about this whole time, it's like once Lauren and I kind of created the thesis for season two, any pitch we came, kind of always would end up under that magnifying glass of like, what does this say to either support or refute the thesis of the season.

And if we couldn't figure out. What it said, then it's like, cool, maybe we save it for something else. Um, but I will say that we, there season one was really about introducing you to these core characters and what this version of the world looked like. Season two, there was a lot of stuff where we had to be okay with, um, introducing and then leaving on the field in case we wanted to use them again.

So characters like Iphy or Wiggins or, um, Thomas Rake, like a lot of those characters we decided like we want. To keep them around because we want our crew to start, you know, developing a, you know, who's their network. 

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Um, they're big enough now to have a network and we didn't want to just always be playing with Holmes's network.

Um, “do you know how much joy y'all create?” I don't know why I read it like that. Sorry. “Do you know how much joy y'all created this season? Spoiler. It was a lot.” That's unbelievably sweet. Thank you so much. Um, sorry I didn't read your question well.

LAUREN: Um, I think that we are very lucky and that people have been very, um, kind in telling us about the joy that we created in their lives.

And, um, you know, given how long we worked to make it happen, and the fact that we had fans in Season one, by all means, like we still had people responding to it, but, you know, it's still, this season feels like an overwhelming Yeah. Like influx. Yeah. In, in a, in a way that we, we as creators. Have never experienced.

Um, you know, we do a show usually in the theater and we go out and we get, you know, clapped for, um, and then we're kinda like, I dunno, I think people liked it or maybe they were just being polite. Like, yeah, it's very rare that you get people telling you at such length sometimes on like our Tumblr, about the impact that we've had.

And I think that we, you know, for a long time we self dismissed the show as a very, like, oh, we make the, like when we kind of tell people, like strangers, you know, we meet, we're like, oh yeah, we make this like silly little comedy about like in the Sherlock Holmes world. 'cause we're, you know, both very insecure about that shit.

Um, I don't think we ever really imagine that it could have this type of impact and it's really genuinely moving. Uh, and I don't think we can ever really truly articulate what that means to us as like, yeah. As in such small indie creators. Ian, do you have anything to add? Uh, how much, do you know how much joy you've created?

IAN: No.

LAUREN: Right now 

IAN: No. 

LAUREN: For me, sitting next to you, 

IAN: Stop it. No, like Lauren said, it's, it's kind of overwhelming sometimes, uh, to, excuse me, to like, you know, Lauren will, she's much more plugged in and, and spoiler alert. Usually if you're interacting with us on social media, you're interacting with Lauren.

LAUREN: No, my mystique! Sometimes it's you. No, it's not. It’s me. 

IAN: Sometimes it's usually, it's sometimes I'll be like, “Hey, say this.” Um, but, um, but genuinely, um, like the, the fan art, the questions, the comments, like hearing people's reaction to the end of the Filched Fork, 

LAUREN: –like every two weeks at least we get another post in the tag that's just like, “holy shit, episode 16.”

IAN: It's like as, as creators, and I know that this sounds incredibly self-indulgent, blah, blah, but genuinely. It's very easy for a lot of people to stop doing this if they're not receiving feedback that it's being received. And I, I don't know if we would've even considered doing a second season if it wasn't for some of the responses we got from season one.

I don't know if we would've considered doing season three if it wasn't for the responses we got from season two. So it really is like when, when you all comment or you spend your free time creating absolutely beautiful fanart or, or creating, you know–

LAUREN: –or donate any amount to our, like, crowdfund–

IAN: –or doing any of that, it's like– 

LAUREN: –like you also monetarily support us–

IAN: Like, that's also like a huge thing. Yeah. It, it, it really is. Like I, I'm, I can't even really put it into words effectively how much it means. That, that you, that you are vibing with this. And that you're seeing something in it that you respond to. So we really do, for as much as we joke and as much as we do downplay it, um, just thank you.

Yeah. Thank you so much for all of it. We are so happy that it is bringing any amount of entertainment or joy into your life. Um, great. Next question. “Please share some pun named menu items from a Fawx and Stallion themed restaurant.”

Pause

LAUREN: Ham-brosius. 

IAN: Fuck. 

LAUREN: It's a roasted ham. 

IAN: Oh, God. It’s not a roasted cat? 

LAUREN: No, absolutely not! Absolutely not. Nothing will ever happen to that cat. And you can put me on record. 

IAN: Yeah. Oh my God. I don't know. I'm being put on the spot now. 

LAUREN: Yeah, come on. 

IAN: I know. But all those other puns took months, 

LAUREN: You don't wanna, you don't wanna eat the, the McMenu? The McMurphy McMenu?

IAN: The McMurphy's McMenu. Um, let's see.

LAUREN: Um, you can't do Ham-pton because we already needed Ham-brosius. 

IAN: That's true. But you can do a little bit of an Archibald Cart-bite, which is just like a little, that's Hors d'oeuvre. It's just a little Hors d'oeuvre. A little amuse bouche. 

LAUREN: I love it. 

IAN: Um, um, that's good. Ambrose-bouche, there's something. Oh fuck that. Is that something? Hey folks, is that something?

LAUREN: Ambrose-bouche and then we can do Ham-pton. 

IAN: The Ham-pton sandwich. 

LAUREN: Oh man, I love that. Oh God. Hold on. Um, we had these questions in advance and we just waited until now to start doing it. 

IAN: I think in my mind, I read this was like, and my brain went to like, “what were the puns that we didn't use?” And it's like it's, we left it all in the field, dog.

LAUREN: No, no, no. Yeah, we left it. Um, yeah. Um, no, this is fully for ours, for our theme park, our characters. Oh my God. Uh, Stall-buns?. Stall. Stall- buns. 

IAN: Stall buns. 

LAUREN: That's not my best work, 

IAN: Lauren. I love you very–

LAUREN: Okay well, what do you have? What do you have, Ian? 

IAN: Um, I've got a, uh, craft cocktail called the Sazerac, like the craft cocktail.

LAUREN: That's not a pun that's already called the-. You can't, if you already named a character after food, you cannot then just do the cocktail. 

IAN: I didn't name a character after food. I needed a character after a drink. 

LAUREN: We used all of our best pun names for the Tony's two days ago. 

IAN: That is true. Um, 

LAUREN: The Just in Thyme cocktail. Ugh, that was amazing. 

IAN: It was Just GIN Thyme. 

LAUREN: Just GIN Thyme. FUCK. 

IAN: Excuse. 

LAUREN: Because it was thyme.

IAN: Excuse me, 

LAUREN: It was gin with thyme. Fuck. Um, um, fuck. Wait. Again, we have the chance to think about this

Pause. 

IAN: mean. The 22Fun b Bakery is like right there. It's right there, but it feels easy. Which would almost would sell like the Wat-Scones and the Beryl Cornettos.

LAUREN: Yeah. But it almost feels too easy, you know? Yeah. I feel, you know, we don't really have anything better than that. 

Pause

IAN: Um, I don't know if we do. 

LAUREN: Yeah, I think the, we could go to the names of the cases, which is what we did for Holmes and Watson, but I just don't. I don't have the juice. We spent so much of today working on season three.

I don't, I don't have the creative juice right now. 

IAN: I mean, there's like, you know, you go to the grocery store and get yourself like a little pouch of the Crimeria family juice packs. So you got that Definitely won't kill your parents if you drink. 

LAUREN: No. Oh my God. Oh my God. 

IAN: Yeah. I don't know. 

Pause. 

LAUREN: Um, we gotta move on.

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: This is embarrassing. 

IAN: I'm just, I just thinking. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. This is embarrassing for us. “Do you already have a plot for the next season figured out slash Can you give us a little hint about what season three is going to be about?” 

LAUREN: Mm. What can we tell Ian? 

IAN: Um, 

LAUREN: season three is going to be a little different in a few different ways.

IAN: Yes, I would say, I will say that Lauren and I felt very strongly after season two. That we did not want to try and one up ourselves. 

LAUREN: We don't wanna be Supernatural season six, you know? Um, 

IAN: We don't, so, so we decided in lieu of that–not to say like season three, we decided to– 

LAUREN: –give it u– 

IAN: –just fucking to phone it in, to just fucking give up. No. But we decided to kind of explore this world through its slightly different lens, um, and through a slightly different structure. So I'm ex, that's kind of all I'm going to say. Um, but I am really excited with the stuff that we have been coming up with and the outlines that we've been doing. 

LAUREN: Um, I think you can expect more theater jokes as always, more theater jokes.

IAN: You can expect a lot of silliness. 

LAUREN: I think you can expect little pops of like the Holmes canon appearing here and there in slightly unexpected ways. Mm-hmm. Um, you can expect, expect our core four back. Yes. Easily. Absolutely. Uh, easily on some, some slightly different journeys. You can expect a, maybe a little mini time jump. Maybe not as big as the last one. 

IAN: Yeah. But we definitely wanted to continue this trend that the characters grew between seasons one and two and they learned new things and they learned new skills and they became more confident and sometimes they learned the wrong things from the lessons that they got.

Yeah. At the end of season one. 

LAUREN: Or maybe they course-correct a little too hard. Yeah. So it's like, I think it's one of the, maybe the ideas we played with is like, find new ways to, even though you advance, you then stagnate or, or go too far in one direction and then need to find balance again.

IAN: I'll say this. Lauren and I are firm believers that progress is not a straight line. 

LAUREN: Oh, absolutely not. 

IAN: And I think that knowing that that's how Lauren and I stand about life. Just know that's, that may be reflected in the characters and the stories that we write. 

LAUREN: And it's not always two steps forward, one step back.

Sometimes you take a step to the right, you take a step to the left, you do a little turn, 

IAN: Take it back now y'all.

LAUREN: You slide to the left slide. Right. Slide right. Crisscross 

IAN: And walk it by yourself. And crisscross, crisscross. Everybody clap your hands. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that's all we're comfortable saying because all the rest of it could change.

But if there's, okay, I'll do this because this was one of the questions we had before. Yes. Uh, in the last q–in the Creator Q and A last time. “If there is one word you can give as a hint to season three?”  'cause last time I said Spy Kids 2. And I would like to explain, for those of you that didn't know, Spy Kids 2 begins where folks?? At a theme park.

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: Boom. It was all there for you. 

LAUREN: And I think I said something stupid like “partnership” 

IAN: It was also true. It's not true. That's thematically true. 

LAUREN: Yeah. So we took two different, different ways to get there. Um, I would say “content.” 

IAN: Hmm. That's good. That's good. Fuck, that's good. I'm gonna say “flash mob.”

LAUREN: “Crowdfund.” Yeah. Yeah. 

IAN: “Crowdfund”'s actually. Great.

LAUREN: “Crowdfund” is a good–alright. 

IAN: Uh, take us home. What do we got? All right. 

LAUREN: Uh, “what are you the most proud of in this season, other than making Holmes and Watson canon finally heart emoji,” um, what am I most proud? I'm pretty proud of that. Are you? I'm pretty proud of that.

IAN: I am

LAUREN: I'm proud…of Hampton. Um. I'm genuinely really. Yeah. I said that as almost as a joke when it came up, but then I said it and I realized it's true. 'cause I think that he doesn't have the flashiest arc in the season and I think–I'm really proud with how he gets to that final moment in a way that doesn't feel like all of his progress happened at once.

IAN: Hmm. 

LAUREN: I feel like he learned in really subtle ways, and Jeremy crafted a really cool journey for him in relation to fame and his place in the world in a way that still feels melancholy. I, I don't know. I, I really love, I, I don't know, I just really–there's so much that I can't even articulate about how much I just always, when I re-listen, the thing that always gets me like genuinely emotional every time is, is listening to him give that final speech and realize that he's the first one to call it “Love.” 

IAN: Mm-hmm. 

LAUREN: That he really does. His whole journey is getting to a point of looking at a person that he genuinely fucking hates and still being able to say, “But they're loved. And I see that and I respect that.” And in doing that, being able to accept that he's loved himself, um–makes me really emotional.

I feel like we kind of stumbled upon it and it always really makes me emotional and I'm really, really proud of where we leave him. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? What are you proud of? 

IAN: Um, nothing. 

LAUREN: No, nothing. You actually regret every single part of it. This season sucks. Just the fact that Holmes and Watson kissed-- a fact that you, but you, you, um, you really rode for. Fun fact. I don't think there was a kiss in that scene. 'cause we were like, we don't know how to do–

IAN: Yeah, but then I balanced out by also riding for ending the scene with “Gee Robinson.” 

LAUREN: Yeah, that was great. 

IAN: So– 

LAUREN: I think originally we were just like, uh, a kiss is really hard to do in audio medium–

IAN: They are so gross on audio.

LAUREN: –so hard to do an audio medium we're like “maybe we can imply that it happens and like not actually stage it” and then you rode really hard for like, “no, no, we have to try it. We have to try it, They have to kiss. We're gonna figure out a way to do it in an audio medium.” And you are so fucking right. 

IAN: Some people, myself included, have been waiting for these two characters to kiss for over a hundred years. 

LAUREN: We need to act, it needs to happen. And you were so right. 

IAN: Let's do it.

Um, um, what am I most proud of? I do–a couple things. Um, one internally in the story. I am genuinely really proud of the James and Archie plot line. I'm really proud of. We have now done two seasons of them having conflict in their relationship that has never threatened their relationship, if that makes sense.

LAUREN: Yeah. 

IAN: And I like that because I feel like, especially in sequels, it's very easy to up the stakes to like, is this something worth breaking up over? And I love, and this partially goes to just the performances as well. I just think that the, the nuance that Shawn, who plays Archie and Chris, who plays, uh, James, found in their um, in their performances is something I'm really proud of. And then on a larger level, the main thing I'm, I am really proud of because I know how long the season took to write and I know how difficult all of that was, uh, internally, just in terms of like, you know, our own mental health and our own timeline and our own burnout that we were dealing with while we were writing this. I'm really proud that this was fun. Yeah. I'm really, I'm really proud that like–

LAUREN: It was so fucking fun. 

IAN: I hope that I, like, I, I'm so glad people have been enjoying it and I'm so glad that the, that that the fun and the joy, uh, that we had writing it, editing it, recording it, you know– 

LAUREN: We laughed so much. 

IAN: So–we laughed so much, and at any point we, we were really trying to always make sure that if we were having fun, if the actors we were working with were having fun, if the designers we were working with were having fun, then hopefully the product that would come out would be one that was kind of bathed in light and laughter.

Uh, and, and I think, you know, to me, whenever I listen to these episodes, um, I'm, I'm smiling pretty much the entire time, and I know that that doesn't always happen when you're forced to interact with work that you have created. Um, so I, I am very, very proud that this thing that took a lot out of us at the risk of sounding overdramatic, um, feels worth it to me.

Um, and I'm, I'm really unbelievably proud that anyone, anyone has had any enjoyment listening to this. 

LAUREN: And I'm, and I am really proud that we tricked a good percentage of you. That's something that also needs to be said–is like a lot of people figured it out, and you know, congrats to you. But I am really proud that even the one of the people that figured it out, they still really enjoyed the reveal. And that a good portion of people were genuinely tricked. 

IAN: Hell yeah. 

LAUREN: That genuinely brings me a lot of joy. That there are people who had no fucking clue, uh, because we lied to your faces and that– 

IAN: Fucking gotcha.

LAUREN: You, we fucking got you guys. Um, that brought me a lot of joy, genuinely sitting there the day that the episode released, which was the day after my birthday. Um, it was a beautiful little gift seeing everyone react in various shades of “Oh my God, I had no idea” to “I fucking knew it.” It was, and seeing people that like gathered in groups to like do the finale!

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: Uh, I that I just, this has been even the parts where it was hard, it was a fucking joy. And I had so much fun. And as Ian said, it's just like, if you can, if our audience can get 10% of the joy listening to this that we had creating it, we have done more than we could have ever dreamed. 

IAN: Yeah. 

LAUREN: Um, so yeah, that's really, I think that's the final thing, the final note that we should leave it on.

IAN: Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. Friends. Uh, you know, if, if you have people in your life that have not listened to it yet. Continue harassing them until they listen. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but no, just seriously, word of mouth is still probably our best form of marketing as, as many artistic directors say before shows.

But it's true. It's true. It said for a reason. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for creating, uh, and, and, and messaging us for asking these questions. Um, we are so excited to come to you with season three. We're gonna keep working on it eventually.

LAUREN: We don't have a date on any of this. Don't have a date. This, it is such early, early days. 

IAN: Um, but please continue sending us asks. We'll continue answering them and, um, you know, we'll, we'll see. We, we have a couple other ideas for some things to tide you folks over in the meantime. Yeah. 

LAUREN:Yeah. There may be a holiday thing. 

IAN: There may be a holiday thing, there may be some commentary stuff. Who knows. Yeah. Um, but thank you all so much and, uh, have a great. Summer, stay safe out there, y'all.