S2E7 - Collapsing the Waveform and Whapping Scott with a Rolled Up Newspaper (in an entirely non-sexual way)

Haven't used since started up today and like. Oh, the audio interface drivers aren't installed. Let me do that.

That you might need for this.

Yep, yep. Oh, well, all right. Well, and hello and welcome. Oh, God damn it. That just didn't. That just went fully off. Welcome. Go full Scooby Doo on it. Hello and welcome to behind the Locked Doors, a podcast where we fuck around and find out sometimes. I am Scott Paladin. I'm working on a horny werewolf audio drama called It Takes a Wolf.

My name is Sam Stark. I'm working on as in west, the spin off of Unspeakable Distance.

What's up? I'm Jack. I'm also working on as in west, which is a spin off of Unspeakable Distance. I feel like we don't both got. Every time I think to say.

Hi, I'm Mike, AKA Interiority, and I'm gonna be in as and west to spin off of Unspeakable Distance and also working on my own stuff. But no one cares about that. It's fine.

I don't care about it. Shut up.

I care about it quite a lot. Yeah.

Looking forward to it. Okay, so as every week we're gonna start with our check ins on our previous goals. My brain's just totally frazzed today. I'm sorry. I think we're all in one of those modes, so apologies to the audience, except you guys don't have to listen to this. So screw you.

You don't have to be.

I think I said that I was going to, I'm working on the flashback episode and I was going to sort of outline my timeline for the, for what had what I'm covering and then try to identify parts where I could, what sort of like found media I could use or in, in universe media. So I definitely did that first part. I laid a whole big chunk of text in the It Takes a Wolf Den channel and I've been thinking about that second part and I haven't really nailed it. I made good progress, I think total overall, but I don't think I've finished that goal properly.

Well, and to be fair to you, you picked the hard route, right? Like you were like, I'm doing it hard mode. I'm doing the more complicated, more difficult option that we've laid out here. So no shade to you for achieving even the partial goal.

Right?

Yeah. And I, I, I'm. Well, we'll, I have the thing I want to talk about when we get to the actual, actual episode, when we, after our update so we'll. We'll go back into that.

So, Sam, maybe I was on a cruise, which also.

How was that?

It was good.

Yeah.

I'll talk about it. I'll talk about it a little bit in a little bit. But I was on a cruise for the last week that also sort of double a audiobook narrator workshop. And I didn't think I was going to get any work on azzawest done, but I think I might have actually casted my AI little bot thing.

Oh, cool.

Beautiful.

Yeah. So that's what I did.

Awesome.

Solid. Yeah, I. It took only 1,000 years, but I did drop into the chat the rough draft of the second half of the pilot. I think it's on the short side right now. There might be stuff we want to add. I don't know. But, like, there's a zero draft existent, so that's progress as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something you could build off of is always progress.

Yes.

All right.

I can't remember what my goal was, but I spent most of the past two weeks one, being jealous of Sam on a cruise that just ate. It kind of ate me up inside.

Fair enough. Yeah.

Like, you know, like, just all of my mental energy was just spent on that. And then kind of like Sam came back with amazing hair, and I'm just like, I can't be angry with you, dude, when you look that cool. Yeah, like, that's just.

It is particularly spectacular right now.

Beyond me. I've also had the pleasure of obviously reading kind of like the first part and the second part of the drafts for Asan West. And I can confirm, like, the interplay between the characters is delightful. It is everything that you want to read here eventually within it. It is. It is great stuff. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that the boys actual work that I've done has been minimal. I've done a lot of kind of conceptual, kind of, like, you know, like just moving some pieces around in terms of kind of like, plotting out and kind of figuring out what the next little arc is going to be. But a lot of the feedback I've been waiting for to come back from people reading it has been postponed in various ways, including kind of illness and people getting too drunk and then being too hungover to have a meeting with me. All these sorts of wonderful things. And, you know, and I also kind of like, mistakenly let Sam read it, so therefore, I'm now crippled with insecurity because I've now been seen and perceived by someone in the group and, like, you know, I don't know what he really thinks about it. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared inside.

Sam's making a whole face right now, listeners. I wish you could see.

Well, so it sounds like overall, we've all made at least some movement, if not real progress. Yeah, it's moving, which is great. That's better than some of our. There were some days in there on this podcast where we come in and nobody had done anything.

We sat around. We did fucking absolutely nothing. Well, we were always doing other things as the problem or other things were happening to us and preventing us from doing the thing.

I was networking at the weekend. I was meeting Magnus Protocol people. I was interacting with the highest levels of audio drama royalty.

Talk about being jealous. He just drops a picture of him and Anuja Battersby into our chat, and I'm like, excuse me, sir. Okay.

So I need. I did have a thing I wanted to. Oh, wait, actually, let's. Let's do Sam's update from the Screws, because I want to hear.

Let's go.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay. So just a quick overview of what it is. My vocal coach, Joe Frumkin, is a very respected, very, very prolific audiobook narrator, but he was also a. He was also a theater owner, director. Like, he's, like. He's done everything. And so it also happens that his husband works in travel and works with the celebrity cruise industry. And so. And they like to cruise. They cruise all the time. And so they started doing a yearly cruise where audiobook narrators can come, and they. They. They know everybody, too. So Joel just invites, like, the most incredible people on the cruise, and they do workshops, and they do, you know, panels and stuff. And then the best part about it is, is that all the narrators get a chance to read in front of these incredible people. So last year, I read in front of Steve Wagner from McMillan, and now I. I'm doing a Macmillan book and Penguin Random House and Scholastic. And it was really scary, but it was also really cool because I found out that I was already on Penguin's roster. I had no idea. And then. And then. And then Melanie from. From Scholastic was talking to me about possible projects in the future. So it's really, really cool. But the. The highlight of the trip, though, the absolute highlight of the trip, was I read a excerpt from a book that I'm going to be narrating in a couple of months, and it's actually written by my very good friend Megan Beals, and she does. If I could just. I'LL paint you a picture of what she writes. Okay, you guys ready? She writes Studio Ghibli. Like, that's just what she does. It's cozy, beautiful, whimsical, but like, also really kind of terrifying underneath it all, but in, like, a beautiful way. So I read. Yeah, so she's actually publishing this book. She's self publishing it, but I read it for Jesse Bickford at Blackstone, and when the reading was over, she was like, can you send me the manuscript? Because that was amazing and the idea is so incredible and I know somebody that might want to publish it. It's not for certain, but, like, can we see it? And I was like, fuck, yeah, you can see. So that, that was definitely the highlight, was maybe being able to help my friend to get her very, very weird niche. But beautiful book possibly published by. And not. Not like one of the big top five, but like a pretty well known, really, really well regarded publishing house.

Yeah, that's amazing.

That's really cool.

Huge congrats.

Yeah, I also got a really bad sunburn, but, you know, hell, yeah. What. What can you do when you have, you know, the whitest skin ever?

I think.

Yeah, I think we're all Feel that pain. At least at some point. We've been. I don't see any. I don't see any tanning people on the screen right now. I think we're all sort of.

I tan eventually. I burn first and then I tan. I am part Japanese, but not enough to protect me from the initial burn.

Yeah, I'm of that Northern European stock that's, like, vaguely transparent. And so.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I need y'all to. I need the metaphorical nose on a. Get whacked in the nose with the newspaper from y'all. Because one of the reasons why I didn't make as much progress this last week is that I am struggling not to go back to the episode I just finished and redo it. Oh, no.

Whack, whack, whack, whack. I'm whacking Scott.

And it's. It's one of those things where, like, I keep. I keep thinking about it. Like, that's one of the reasons it's like, I am. I haven't gone back and actually reread it yet, but I am. I keep thinking about how I. It's for audience members who may not be in the know. It's the episode where we get the final sort of confrontation between our two leads, the protagonist and the female lead. Like, some of the secrets are Unveiled. Unveiled enough for them to like have a big fight. And part of that is a sexy sword fight. Part of that is more of a hand to hand affair. And then it sort of culminates with them sort of getting together. And the, it didn't, when I wrote it, it didn't turn out how I had it in my head. And I keep thinking about, like, should I go back and make it more like what I was planning? And the, the I do not have the willpower sufficient. So like I said, I need yalls back up here to like, tell me this is the. That I need to like keep going forward. Right.

Well, yeah, here's the thing. Okay. You can always, on your second pass through this script, like on your edit pass, your, your large structural edit pass. You can always change it then, like, in order to maintain your forward momentum. Now I would probably, in your shoes, like, force myself to not return to that chapter until you've blasted through your rough drafts on the other ones. Especially if you're thinking maybe I need to just like, basically rewrite it, like the whole entire thing because it's functionally holding the place in the script of the thing you wanted to happen there, even if it's not happening exactly the way you thought it was gonna. And as long as that's not gonna, like, I don't know, totally change how the next couple chapters go, which in the case of the flashback episode, it definitely isn't.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Presumably. Yeah.

Then I would say blast ahead first, go back later.

Yeah. And I know that's the correct. I like, I know it. Right. Like that's the right way to do it.

Sighing and leaning back in his chair, like, I know you're right, but God damn it.

Well, like, you know, there's a. Well, there's that difference between, like, knowing cognitively, like what the correct choice of or answer is and then also like what you actually want to do, you know? Right. Because I just, you know, like I said, I keep thinking about what, what I would do differently with that. But you're right. I mean, there's no reason why I can't. There's already big sections of the script that are just going to get taken apart. Yeah, that script in particular, but then also just everything is going to get taken apart. So it would be inefficient to spend a bunch of time rewriting a section that I did already. And then two months, three months down the line when I'm writing further things or making additional changes to earlier episodes that I will suddenly find Myself having undoing some of that work or redoing it a third time. Well, you are right.

And here's the other thing. I'll say if you really think. If your brain won't, like, leave it alone, just make notes on, like, a separate document or a separate piece of paper about the changes you think you might want to make. And then when you go back and revisit it later, you can look at your notes and be like, do I still like these changes? Do I still want to implement these things? And then you haven't forgotten any of the work you think you're going to do, but you don't have to do it right this minute.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, you're right. Does anybody else have any input for me?

The problem.

That newspaper whacking enough.

Yeah, the. The problem with this particular problem is that we all write differently. And so I agree. I agree with most of what Jack said, but I also am. I don't remember what it's called. My friend Katrina had a really wonderful word for it. And it's where you. When. Wherever. When, let's say you're. You're writing and then you stop and you, you know, eat or go to bed or whatever. And then you come. You come back to it and you've got a little fresher mind. You go back a little bit and you edit and edit into a new bit of writing.

Sort of like getting a run.

Circular or. Yeah, it's like circular. Circular or something or whatever. And that's how I kind of write too. I always go back and, like, start from a certain place and then continue it. And if I. If I had the problem that you have, where I'm constantly thinking about it all the time, I wouldn't be able to, like, continue. I would have to go back and I would have to revisit. Like, why am I thinking about it all the time? If I'm thinking about it, that means I don't like something about it. And if I don't like something in the part that I've already written, I kind of have to go back and change it. Otherwise the rest of it's just gonna be like, you know, I won't be able to get my brain out of where. Where it's stuck. And I like what Jack said about the maybe putting the notes on a different piece of paper or. And there's always merit to plowing through and just getting the fucking thing done. I just personally am unable to do that, so I.

Totally valid.

So unfortunately, my advice is the exact opposite of What Jack said, which is not helpful at all. No, it's great. But I really think, I really think, though, that if it is something that is stuck in your brain and you can't move on, it is beneficial to go back and kind of look at it.

Okay.

And be like, okay, why is it that I'm so hung up on this that my. Why?

Yeah, there is something that I've noticed with myself, which is that with certain things that I already have, like, stopped myself from going back and doing, making, sometimes making the notes, like, sort of like what Jack's saying or just figuring out what it is that needs to change is sometimes enough so you can. Once you've identif. At least for me, you know, mileage may be over for everybody else, but I am reminded that there have been some things in the past while working on this particular project where I was able to go like, okay, I'll just use an actual plot, relevant episode or actual plot thing, which is that in the current version of the first draft of the series, I had a scene where we have our protagonist talking to the general and his right hand man, like in all in a room together. And like three episodes later, I kept finding myself thinking about that scene again and again and again. And I was like, oh, this is wrong. The general shouldn't be there. Or if he's there, he needs to be like, on a TV screen or something like that so that he's not physically there. Which removes the ability for like, our protagonist to have just like killed him right then, like, we could have just like the whole thing could have been one episode long if that. If that was what we're getting to.

Right?

And. But the moment that I figured that out, I'm like, okay, I know what the change is going to be when I get to it. I am able to then do a. To move forward. Once I made that note. Sometimes that sort of frees up the process, just identifying what the problem is. So maybe I should be thinking maybe there's a middle ground there of like, figure going back, finding out what it is that I'm missing and then saying, okay, now I can just move forward with the assumptions that I did that, you know, like, just like.

Yeah, right. As though I do it on your actual edit path.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you have any input for me, Mike?

I mean, I was gonna say kind of like, you know, it is a very shoddy builder who like identifies like a floor in the ground floor and then continues to build the stories of both. You know, I think kind of like, sometimes the kind of. The issue can be kind of fundamental. So I'd say, like, Sam's not gonna go far enough. I'd say what you essentially need to do right now, I think you basically kind of like hit a change in kind of your understanding of the project.

Sure.

Take like six to nine months. Take a wrecking ball to the whole thing. Start again and you'll feel better for it. You know, like, this is all about the journey, not the journ destination.

Let's chuck it in the bin.

Let's take the opportunity. Clean slate.

Let's go for it.

Make this the best you can. Make it, Scott.

Full pressure. Scott.

How did I know that was going to be.

Mike has the most eating grant on.

His face right now. There are times I'm mostly glad this is not a video podcast, but there are times when you know, the audience deserves to see the shit eating grant. Yeah, well, there was a topic that I just now remembered, like, while we were talking about this, I came into this episode today being like, I don't know what we're going to talk about, but I remembered last time that I had reminded. I was like, somebody remind me to talk about collapsing the waveform. And this actually is a. I think it's a pretty good lead into it because the thing I've noticed a lot with myself, especially on this particular project, and I wanted to see if it rung true with y'all. The idea that as you are working on any kind of creative art or anything like that, when you're in the planning stages and there are all these decisions that you haven't made yet. Right. So you get to say, you get to live in a space where both of those things can be true for a long time. Yeah. Especially as you were working on something for a really long time. I'm gonna. Again, I'll just use my own project. This, again, this is all spoilers territory. So sorry, folks, but my main protagonist, there's some thematic stuff going on with gender. I knew from moment one, the beast was he him. And then the. But the fool, the outside voice, the outside presentation was always kind of nebulous. In fact, I went very far into episode one before I decided to commit to he him for our protagonist as well. Just because I couldn't needed to write. So at some point I needed a line where I was like, can't a boy get a drink? Or something like that. Like, I just needed. I just had to do some version of it. But I was finding myself really reluctant to answer the question of what does this character go? How does this character present to the outside world? Because I liked both versions of it. I liked the version where that character was outwardly feminine or presented female, and then the beast comes out and now is male. That's a really interesting thematic dynamic. I would still love to do a story where that was kind of like that. But at some point I just had to say no, like, I have to make a decision and go this way, because I can't. I got to a point where I literally couldn't write anymore without making that decision. But that was a real stumbling block for me. And the. That. But that only decided that one section of it. So the next one was, is this character CIS or trans? Is a kind of a real way to put it, too. If I'm going to commit to a sort of, you know, expecting that, I'm using a trans actor to sort of expect this to be a central part of that character. Or do I, you know, make it to CIS men or make that a thing that you could read into. But not necessarily. It was because I'm finding myself on that precipice now of like, CIS or trans. Right. I think I've pretty much come down on the side of trans. But because it make. It makes the. The plot, I think, interesting, and those themes are already there, it's really cool. It was already a thing I was really open to. So this sort of just kind of made that decision for me. But that. That point where you have to make the decision, you have to make the call. You're like, okay, could this go one way? Could it go the other way? In my head, I always call that collapsing the waveform for reasons or for. In alluding to the Schrodinger's Cats experiment where you put a cat in a box with a cesium atom, if I remember correctly, that has a 50% chance of decaying or not. And if it does decay, then it releases poison that kills the cat, whole thing. And until you open the box, you don't know which one of these results has happened. And so the. The. Until you observe it and actually, like, you know, collapse the waveform and the cat is either alive or dead, because the cat can't be in a limbo state where it is both in my head. So when I come to these decisions, I was considerably collapsing the waveform. And I was wondering if this reluctance, if the sort of feeling of like, oh, crap, you know, I have to do this now, ring true with y'all as well.

Oh, like 100% yeah, yeah.

Like.

Like reaching a point where you. You can have to close off some of these fun possibilities that you've been kind of trying to explore and kind of like trying to weigh up, like, which one's better or not. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, that is. That is very much part of the process. And yeah, again, like, things, it's. It's hard. It can be difficult.

Yeah.

It can cause me to stall sometimes. I've had that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially if you have, like, multiple possible avenues that the story could go down and you're like, these are all good and interesting and could all result in a good story, but you cannot do them all simultaneously. You genuinely do just have to select one and proceed with the one.

Yeah.

And then you do have to sit there and, like, rack your brain and be like, okay, well, which of these all, like, equally good ideas is the one I actually want to commit to? Because we can't continue forward until we've made that selection.

Yeah. In a weird way, I've also seen the sort of reverse, is the reverse of this idea is something that fan fiction and fan works tends to do. They tend to un. Collapse a waveform and take decisions that were made in the original and make, like, what if we didn't do it the other way? And they actually, like, re. Expand the possibility space, which is really interesting. But during the actual, like, art creation process, it's this, like, kind of whittling down a little bit.

We're all nodding. Yeah. When listeners. We're just nodding. Sorry.

Yeah, everybody's nodding. So, yeah, like, Scott, once your podcast is famous and people are writing fan fiction of it, then you get to see all of the other uncollapsed waveforms that exist.

There is no. At least where I am now, there's nothing. There's no higher aspiration at this point than for somebody else to, like, make fan art and fan fiction and like, stuff like that is. That is the most. The highest form of compliment to me. Like, at this point, it's like the dream. Like, I don't care, you know, I don't care about money or, like, doing this for a living or anything like, at the moment. But, like, at some point, I just want other people to also enjoy the shit that I've got in my head.

You make other people feral about the Blorbos.

Yeah, that's the. Yeah, yeah, It's. It's. You're just trying to release a mind virus onto the other people where they're like, okay, I want this to entrap you the way that it has entrapped me. This is, it's a thing that, especially on this particular project, when I first started with this, it could be. It could be all of these different things. It can't be all of those things simultaneously though. So like there have been multiple points where it's been like, okay, I have to make this decision now. You know, I have to. You know, this is a thing that I am deciding to say, you know, with this idea. This is a, you know, a point where, you know, like my, my point of view, for lack of, you know, for lack of better my. My point of view has to start coming through at some point. And so that's. Hopefully that works out. But yeah, that's. That's been. And anyway, this is relevant to what we were talking about earlier because again, this is part of one of those sections where the fat. The flashback episode collapses. A lot of waveforms, not just the main character, whether or not they're. They're trans or cis, but certain things like, like I'm gonna have to go back in and say like who is Zev Malkhani to the main character. Right? Like, is it just a name that we're using? Is it actual a real person with like that they have a relationship with? Is it maybe just a name that was thrown around? It's like a, you know, it's a Kaiser Soze made up person kind of thing. All of these ideas and each of one of those things can say a thing in the world. Right? Yeah, I'm. I'm currently thinking about this idea of the interplay between a sort of non toxic masculinity in our. The platoon leader character. And then like that may that. That would set up Zelda Khannai to be an embodiment of the sort of like toxic masculinity. Is that a. Is are those themes better served by that character existing and being a real person that we can like see their behavior? There's also something really cool in that's a name. That's not a person. That's a name. It's a standard that no one can live up to in that way because they can't.

A thing we made up collectively.

We all made up this version of a character that is supposed to be all of these things that nobody actually could be because you know, nobody is. You know, this is just an identity that people assume that's actually really cool too. So these are the places where you like have to just kind of make these decisions and hope towards whatever one you pick is the Better one.

Yeah, well, and if you are going along thinking, oh God, maybe that should have gone the other way. Maybe that's the thing that you make the note about. Or if you're Sam, go back and correct right away and be like, yeah, we're not proceeding with this collapsed waveform. We're gonna briefly un. Collapse, go choose a different path and try that path instead.

Sometimes you don't know you've made the wrong decision until you've written a certain amount of the. The wrong path. Right?

You start going down far enough down the wrong path, you're like, ooh, the vibes are off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

God, that's the most painful thing in the world.

Well, like, yeah, it. You're like, okay, I better now undo all of this work. But like, you wouldn't. Sometimes you don't. There's no way to know until you've like done some version of it. And then you have to just go in and take a seam ripper to the threads and like pull it apart. Because the. What's. I mean, like the advantage we've been talking about the sort of pain of collapsing the waveform. But the benefit of it, the thing that you. The reason why it is. I mean it's the only thing you can do, but also the moment that you can't really properly react to something until it exists. This is a thing that I think a lot of people get into when they've got a long running project that lives entirely in their head and they've got all of the particular scenes planned out and they have the character arcs and they have the. All these ideas, but they haven't actually written anything and they the the truth again, this is when it's in that un. Collapsed state. That sort of superposition of it could be amazing. It could be so great. But I have to actually do it to know if it will be that way or not. If I'm capable of living up to it. But once you've done it, you do get to like, you get to interact with it as a person, absorbing the media as well. The way that you would react to something, even not completely, like if you were watching a show or reading somebody else's book or whatever. But you do finally get to see what is actually on the page and go, okay, how does this. What have I. I know what I was intending to do. What did I actually do?

What have I wrought?

Yeah, what. Yeah, yeah, what have I. What have I wrought? And yes, and go, okay, well now what? Based off of what I've Actually done? How did I, what did I do? What did I make and can I react to it myself? And sometimes, as often as. As often as not, you do something and you find yourself going, oh, I did that a lot better than I meant to do. That was even better than I had in my head, or it was a neat idea or something I wasn't planning on. But it is scary when you're like. Because when you are before, when you're making the decision and you're trying to cut things down, you only see the down. You're only feeling like you're losing possibilities. You forget that there's discovery in the actual process of doing it itself. Yeah, that. Okay, so psychoanalysis of the creative mind. Let us set some goals for the next two weeks or maybe slightly more than two weeks. I forget what Sam's schedule is. Anytime you try to get three adults who are busy together for a thing anyway, it's all like pushing. It's never a problem. Everybody's always like, I got other.

Never mind. When it's four adults, right?

Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. No, I was almost counting myself for some reason.

Scott, like the rest of you bitches, getting you guys in the room.

I thought that was a comment Scott was making about one of us specifically. It's three adults and one of you who I do not consider to be an adult. But I'm not going to tell you.

I forgot I was a whole ass person there for a minute. It was just like, oh, yeah, I'm talking to three people right now. So there's three people in the conversation.

So there's three whole people. Yeah.

Okay, so makes sense.

Well, we'll, we'll, we'll set some goals for when we next meet, which will probably be, you know, next month or so. I am, I'm committing to now not, not, not reopening that other, the other episode in terms of like actually rewriting it. You got, y'all have helped me. I am. I think I will go back and reread what I've got and maybe try to figure out what it is that I. That's bothering me about it. But sure, I am going to force myself to start, like work like collapsing this other waveform here. And I think I've got, like I said, I've made some progress. I haven't figured everything out on the structure of the next episode, but I think within the. Before we meet again, I should have some of it written. That's what I, that's what my goal is, to have some of it written. So there we go.

Okay.

Okay. So I don't know how much I'll be able to do since I have an extremely packed end of April. That's fine. But I think what I am going to try and get done is, Jack, you and I have to get together. And even though I have a very loose plan of how the episodes are gonna go, I do need to. We do need to get together, because I think there was supposed to be a stowaway, I think, on the. On the mail ship. And so we need to figure out how that's gonna work. And is the second episode going to be about that? Because that was your idea, and so I want you to write that one, so that would work out, too. If you're gonna. If you're gonna do the second episode, I can do the next episode, but we still need to get together. We need to talk about that, and I definitely have time to, like, put aside an hour or so to, like, chat with you. Yeah, so that's. That's probably my homework is chatting with Jack about the next. The exact next steps we're doing right now.

Yeah. If an episode is planned for two and you write it and it turns out that it needs to be pushed further in the season, you can always do that, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So I guess my plan is meet with Sam first and foremost, get our plan for second episode nailed down, and then if it turns out that I need to write that second episode, I will try and draft that out before we get back together at the beginning of what the hell month. May.

Yeah.

When is it? What is it? What's happening? Where am I?

What is time?

Well, yeah, I'm kind of hoping that I'm going to be in a position to stop, like, doing the planning and kind of, like, you know, passing out kind of like what the next arc is and actually make a start on writing. But a lot of that is going to basically come down to will I get the feedback I want in the next couple of weeks? Because I am. I'm in paralysis at the moment. Like, I gave my script to Sam, and, like, the. The roasting I got back, just. Just, like, the absolute kind of, like, lack of interest. It's just, like, knocked my confidence down to, like, a real minimum. So I kind of need something to boost it back.

Damn it, Sam.

No, no, I mean, like, just calling back to what we were talking about before. Like, you know, like, getting this first arc out of the way was a lot of. Kind of, like, making a lot of those, you know, collapsing the Way forward decisions and kind of like saying, what is this going to be about thematically? Where is it going to be? What's the tone? Which is the main thing, because I think a lot of people are expecting something a lot more comedic and I've kind of gone for something a bit more SW and possibly heart wrenching in there as well. So it's just whether that works. And I kind of need the feedback from people basically to say, yeah, that I can vibe with that. It seems to be going to a place that I want to follow along and see, because at the moment, yeah, I'm still a little bit unsure. I'm just, I'm just, I'm not quite ready to kind of go, okay, this is good foundation. I'm ready to build the next step. I. I just, I need to. I need to be sure before I can do it.

So, yeah, you're getting your foundations. The inspectors basically like looking at your concrete slab going, okay, is this something you can build on top of?

Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay.

So, yeah, if I get to a place where I can actually start writing the next script, I'd be very happy.

Yeah. All right, well, in that case, we will catch you all and we will catch the audience again May ish sometime. Probably you'll hear from us at some point. Just. Just watch the feedback. All right, bye.

Bye, bye.

Okay, y'all know the drills, like website, Patreon, Library of curse knowledge, you know, library, horse, all that stuff. And we'll catch you later.