The Magnus Archives - The Magnus Protocol Season 1 QnA

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Alex and Jonny sit down to answer your burning questions about Season 1 of the Magnus Protocol.Content Notes- Spoilers through Season 1 of The Magnus Protocol and the entirety of the Magnus ArchivesProduced by April SumnerEdited by Nico VetteseMastering by Catherine RinellaJoin our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillX: @therustyquillEMAIL: [e-mail] The Magnus Protocol is a derivative product of the Magnus Archives, created by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share alike 4.0 International Licence.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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for more information. Have fun and see you later. Hello everybody, guess who it is? It is us! It's me and Alex. It's your spooky boys. We're here, hello. If you want to listen to this, then presumably you have listened to the first season of Magnus Protocol. If not, you're starting to continue the wonderful trend that is jumping on at just utterly random and pointless points. So kudos to you. I wouldn't recommend it, but to each their own. I have actually done that before with a podcast. You jumped on a Q&A for someone. Accidentally.

I got about 10 minutes in and I was like, wait, hang on, this can't be right. Turns out I was correct. Well, that is unacceptable. Nonetheless, we shall treat this as if it is your first. So with that in mind, why don't you introduce yourself and then we'll go from there. Hi, I'm Jonathan Sims. Johnny, I am one of the writers and one of the voice actors for The Magnus Protocol. And I am Alexander J. Newell, founder and CEO of Rusty Quill, the people who make the

show, and I do some writing with Johnny, direct, and do some voice and do some produce because I am a glutton for punishment. And today what we're doing is another time on a tradition which is Q&As, by which I mean a team has gone through thousands of questions and a lot of them are summarised to basically everyone asks and we're going to be answering questions about primarily protocol I assume? I mean one assumes. I don't know maybe people are like really into asking about like your skincare routine or something Johnny, we got a lot of that in archives.

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

You look fine. Exactly before I looked amazing right? Okay, we're gonna go through some questions So I have the list here which I'm coming at cold but I can at least see who asked what. Now a lot of these are from quote unquote loads of people. Should we take turns in like being loads of people? Sure, alright, I'll go first then. This is from Loads of People. While writing the story of the first season, did you originally plan to have as many of the TMA characters that appeared in the season

from the start, or were they put in as the story progressed? The number was pretty much consistent from the start. Which ones is the bit that was pretty hotly contested and we went back and forth on a lot. I really like the idea though that we're just like, episode three, ah chuck one in there. Episode seven, ah chuck one in there, why not? There was a plan! We just hit episode 18 and we're like,

but what's going on with Helen? We just don't know! We did have a plan just to be clear, but there were substitutions where people weren't available or timings didn't work out and things like that. So I'm happy to say I'm really, really, really happy with what balance we've struck. Genuinely, I'm like, yeah, this works really nicely. It's not like we were in dire straits or anything, but at the same time, we were careful to make sure that the structure was built in such a way that, I don't know, let's say that Imogen just categorically couldn't be here as Helen.

Okay, we have other options for who we could have subbed in there if we had to and stuff like that. We were very cognizant from the start that this was not going to be, let's check up on every single Magnus Archives character because there were a lot and trying to get the balance of the show so that it feels in conversation with the original without being too fan-servicey was a constant discussion. You may think we erred one side or the other, but at the end of the day, the Archives characters that we definitely wanted to revisit in a significant way have remained pretty much the same since original conception but there is a sort of kind of a tier two where we were like well at some point because

of the role Celia gets to play we can check in on our alternate reality versions of some of the Magnus archives characters and which ones those were that was what we were like had a lot of discussions about. We knew that we would probably be checking in on like, I don't know, three or four of the Archives characters, but which ones? A lot of that came down to who was available. I fought for more than Johnny, I think, in that, left to my own devices, I turn everything into a Dickensian mess of everyone's accidentally each other's grandmothers and stuff. Johnny would have a lot more restraint than me. I had to be like, no, that's too many. Cut them. No one will ever know what happens

to this character in the alternate universe, and that's good, probably. I'm gonna pass across to next question. This is a good example of what's probably going to come up a lot. This is from Riley and Dear Teleport. Where did Jack, Celia's baby, come from? Essentially, did Celia get pregnant and give birth to a baby after finding herself in a strange new dimension? Or did Celia take over Jack's actual mum since she's got severe stranger danger going on from the last episode? I understand if this can't be answered, but I'd like you to know I got the red string out so many theories. I fear this is going to be one of a few that's a non-eer business.

No, actually, you know what? This one. Like, there's a lot that I'm like, ah, no, spoilers, but this one, honestly, I'm quite comfortable answering, because it's not a plot point. It's not a plot point, it's just, be patient is my stance, like, you'll find out. I'm happy to say, yeah, Jack is Celia's kid. When Celia says she had some wild years over the last few years and ended up with a baby that she loves, she's not lying. I'm quite happy to say that, like it doesn't feel like a reveal to me. I mean it's not. It's just a confirmation I guess. To me a lot of the theorising and the red stringing about Jack is indicative to me that

it's like, oh no, we weren't quite clear enough. The baby's not a mystery. I think the timing fell a bit oddly where we ended up with some Celia scenes tying in too closely to like Demon Baby script. Oh yeah. So as a result that steered people down a route where don't get me wrong like I get it but as a general rule if Johnny and I were going to be doing horror stuff that centres around a baby slash toddler as a plot point. Like that's really hard to do well and not kind of cheap. It's a tricky one. I'm going to be honest, I would have stayed clear of that even if that was on the cards because it's just, it's messy. It's messy. But it's one of those things where Jack to me is all about emotional stakes for a bunch of different characters. So I'm quite happy to sort to demystify

him a bit so he can serve the plot function that I want him to. And I just wanted to have one character who wasn't footloose and fancy-free. Because they're always footloose and fancy-free, everyone always sneaks investigations in around their job and I'm like, how? How do you balance your responsibilities? Ah, you don't. After you've been writing for a while, you realise why so many protagonists are like orphans or like don't really have any friends or are like cut off from society. Because every time you're like, okay, no, this protagonist isn't going to be like an orphan. They're just going to they're going to exist in the world.

And so much of your story is like, what do their parents think about this? Because people have noticed. It's inconvenient but that's kind of why I like it. Another question from Loads of People. Why alchemy and not a continuation of the fears? Was there anything specific that sparked your interest in alchemy this season? I love how aggressive your loads of people are compared to mine. I think you should start with this one because this actually technically bore out from your

criteria for what protocol had to be. The big thing is like, why not a continuation of the fears? Because you all know about the fears. Or let's do a horror mystery podcast but we've had 200 episodes explaining what the core mystery is already. It kind of stops being a mystery podcast and starts being a glorified Pokedex, doesn't it? We didn't want to just be writing Magnus Archives again. The fears are great, but we've

done them. So we wanted to do something a little bit different. We wanted to explore different ways that the metaphysics of the Magnus universe could work. What I did was I sat down and said, hey, Alex, you get to decide on the metaphysics for this particular reality. Because I've already done my metaphysics of fear. I could try and do another one, but I'm much more interested in what you're going to come up with. So Alex went away and came back with a system that can be accurate to three decimal places. And then I got a text message from Alex saying, hey, I'm looking into alchemy. Does that

sound like an interesting avenue? And I was like, I mean, I love a bit of alchemy. About 10 years back, I got really into looking into it. And I didn't remember everything, but I was like, oh yeah, alchemy, that's fun. A lot of cool symbols, a lot of like mystery, a lot of historical stuff going on there. And I was like, yeah, alchemy sounds good. And then our next meeting, Alex turned up with a full notebook. Well, yeah, you gotta do your research. 60, 70 pages, very close written notes on this intricate alchemical system.

I think like maybe five to 10% of it has actually made it into the podcast. So far. I keep pushing, I keep pushing. All this stuff is, no one's gonna, okay, we can just pretend these 70 pages are how it works as well but actually it's these first five pages that we're going to be dealing with mainly. Johnny just takes Umbridge because as part of it I insisted that he watched a video on fifth dimensional vectors and then he was

like this feels a bit much and I was like what? God, I think I watched it in the end. Totally hamstringing me dude. I know you didn't, because I referenced it and you were like, what? I don't, what? In Johnny's defense, I set myself two goals when given that, which was one, it needed to be compatible in the, like Jenny says, it has to be in conversation with the previous, it can't just be like, now it's all aliens, all the way down! The metaphysics are different, but also the same? Yeah, they connect, they have to function around one another. And the other one was that Johnny explained very articulately in a way I'm going to bastardise now, which was, by definition, because you did all of the metaphysics for

archives, anything that you make is going to feel very archives-y unless you have a different foundational scaffold to work from, to mix my building metaphors a bit. So I was rather explicitly not going into it the same angle that you did. So I actively was turning down options in my head going, no, that'll be too similar, that'll be too similar. And I from day dot wanted one that was, I always think of like if archives is like what happens if history got weird this one's a little bit more like what happened if other fields of study went weird and I don't know whether it's worked yet but that

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

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

The end result is fine, but conceptually, needles is dire. I didn't so much veto your veto as like, you vetoed needles, and I was like, okay, but like, needles is kind of what I got. What have you got for this role, for this episode, because it needs to serve a very specific function? And you didn't come up with anything in time, so I was like, I'm on veto in this. That's not how I remember it at all. And then you were like, can you make this? I was like, I'm taking this as a challenge.

And then I won. That's not how I remember it at all. I got good. No, you got lucky because you had a very, very skilled performer manage to polish a very specific met- It's a bit sharp, it's not a bitch for a monster! Man made of needles, mate!

It wasn't even like, oh, maybe he's interested in blow-dryers, like, why if he's like needles? This is like late stage, you know, three in the morning, drunken Stephen King, like, oh, like, needles, I guess. It is never not funny to me how immediately and viscerally you hated it because it was such a square brackets idea. To my eyes it was so obvious like you know probably not actually this but it's just an idea to sit in this position until we come up with something better and it was because you were so angry at the like the placeholder idea that I'm like it's no longer a placeholder. I need you to know two

things. One, whilst I admit that it has worked and I will confess that I still hate it. Yeah oh yeah that's fair. And two, needles is just what happens when you've committed to the bit and are willing to put my professional life and your professional life on the line for the bit. That's what needles is. Alex we are both always ready to put our professional lives on the line for the bit. That's what Needles is. Alex, we are both always ready to put our professional lives on the line for the bit. It's maybe our Achilles heel as creators. Little bit. We should probably actually answer the question that's asked rather than just me using this as another chance to tear you down. Well no, like I honestly think Needles is kind of my favourite external, largely because

of this. Christ. I will do what I do which is never answer it straightforwardly which is, my actual favourite despite everything is Bonzo. Cause it's just f**king weird and it's come out nicely. I think the one who's arguably the most interesting is Inxol. In terms of like, my writer hat on for a second. I'd be like, oh yes, Inxol is an interesting examination of blah blah blah. Or as Bonzo, there's something to be said for just like, what is he? Big and scary, anything else? No. Like the opposite of needles, not sharp, but still manky. I feel like Bonzo is great, but I feel like we can't really take as much credit for Bonzo

as all that because like… Oh no, oh, oh, oh! It didn't say which we were most proud of, it said which is your favourite. I feel like I'm not gonna have a favourite that I'm not like, properly proud of. And like, I think Bonzo's come out brilliantly and like, April did some amazing work on the actual design design. But Bonzo is broadly us like, surfing the crest of the wave that is Mr Blobby's return, because

Mr Blobby has been back in the cultural zeitgeist for, oh what, a couple of years now? I mean he only just got confirmed as an official like has a show coming. Oh really? Oh yeah, we did it again. So we basically went, wouldn't it be messed up if Mr Blobby came back? There's a blast of nostalgia that no one... Oh right and then a record breaking deal was just signed with the creator months, months after we reveal Bonzo as a character.

We were very much like just surfing a zeitgeist wave with Bonzo, and I think we surfed it with some real style, but at the same time I don't feel like we can take a huge amount of credit. Whoa, what an off the wall idea! Never said that, just said I enjoy. And you know what it was specifically, I can pick the moment where I'm like, oh it's worked and I like it. It's when he crushes the car on the way out of the house.

Just that crunch. Be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be- Yeah, alright. And I'm like, that's such a dick move Bonzo! You prick! You absolute unnecessary prick! Well the thing is, Blobby always was a prick, that's the thing. That's why I like Bonzo, it's just that being a little bit of a prick. Unlike Needles, who is too much pricks. He's all prick. Yeah. Next question Johnny, go for it.

Because of how he's made of needles. Yeah, no, I get that, yeah. From loads of people. How different was it writing for the season with a whole roster of guest writers contributing? Did you have to make any adjustments to their material to make it fit into a wider narrative? Have the guest writers had influences on the greater story? So that's three questions. We should probably do those one at a time. The short answers are very yes and no, or rather not a lot in that order, but to go into a little bit of detail, it's very different with the guest writers. From my point of view

at least, because the whole structure of it is different. I mean, to be fair, Protocol, like it's not just the guest writers, Protocol's writing structure has been very different to how Archives worked, because it's not just the guest writers, it's also- There is a structure? I mean, yeah. Yeah. Like, the structure of Archives was, hey, Johnny, recordings tomorrow, do you have the scripts ready? Yes, of course I do. They're in this box that only I can see.

See you tomorrow with the scripts that I absolutely have. Whereas with this, because anything I write goes through Alex and then back to me and then back to Alex. Anything Alex writes goes to me then back to Alex, etc. Anything that's guest writers goes through both of us and like so there's a lot more of a pipeline, a lot more hands are touching pretty much every script. The guest writer aspect to me has felt part of a wider shift in how the pipeline has gone writing-wise. I think probably worth explaining what the

process is very quickly for people just because that'll probably answer the questions better, which is effectively for how it worked is we generated out a series bible we then generated an abridged series bible with all of the really interesting bits cut out by johnny because quote i'm sorry alex but at some point alchemy just gets boring that's then provided to the guest writers and along with that we provided a list of prompts and basically said listen you can either pick a prompt from here or suggest an alternate that hits the similar kind of beats as this prompt so that that way we're not you

know having a complete tonal shift or whatever. A lot of people pitched their own of those, some got them some didn't and then blah blah blah they all get allocated out then they wrote their episodes of separate with us answering questions in terms of like how's it interact and so on. Generally speaking there was a slow trend towards people preferring just to focus on the cases rather than whole episodes which makes sense. It was a sort of bit of a back and forth, a bunch of writers did scenes but like, asking people to write plot-heavy dialogue scenes late, like halfway through an ongoing season, it's an almost impossible ask.

So then what happened after that is once we've got that in, if there's scenes missing, generally speaking we've been trying to flip out who's dominant in an episode between Johnny and myself to spread the workload, but generally speaking Johnny's been the one who's been focusing more on editing the cases, and I've been the one who's been focusing on editing the scenes a bit more, and then like Johnny says, if it's a guest one, guest provides their materials, additional materials go in and then it passes between both of our hands, then I'll do a final pass as a director, but the director's pass is more like, how am I going to record this as opposed to is it working as a script? It's going to be more like, oh, I'll cut this line, why? Because I know that,

I don't know. Billy can't say that word without fumbling it. I'm picking an arbitrary example. This is really from Billy Under the Bus. Well no, I was just thinking because Billy had this huge thing about is it Choco-Leibniz or Leibniz and we have to get this right and it was a whole thing. Oh really? As a director what I should have done is just cut it out and gone Chocky Bicky done. That's very funny because I say both randomly. I eat them a lot and I don't think there is

a correct one. This is the thing, right, so that's the kind of thing a director would be like, this feels like that might waste huge amounts of time, I should cut that instead of, I'm going to just leave this here and eat up a good hour of April's time based on chocolate biscuit branding. But yeah, effectively it is different working with guest writers, adjustments to fit into the wider narrative, yes and no. There wasn't really much in the way of people just going in the wrong direction or anything like that, it was a lot more like detail orientation,

so it'd be stuff like changing a name here or a place there and stuff like that. Often we would need to slightly tweak the ending to archivist statements, because those had to be much more directly tied into the metaplot. In terms of, like, guest writers having influence on the greater story, not directly. The season planning meetings are me, Alex, and April, and that's where we sort of hash out how we want each season to work. There were a few bits where we're like, oh, this thing from guest writer's statement worked really well, it resonates really well with X or Y theme. We can pull that out and add it into Season 2 in this bit or this bit. We might be like, you know, there's a through line to a few of the different guest statements

actually. So we can do something in Season 2 that actually is working with the theme that they've sort of set up and started developing. Yeah, I think for me there was most of that where you'd look at like two or three and be like actually thematically once you pair this with one that say Johnny wrote or whatever there's fertile ground there so rather than it just being like and now part two of this case most of them it was interesting there's something here that can expand on. Because we've not got as many episodes to work with in Protocolers Archives.

We're doing a lot fewer like, Part 2s. I always laugh that it's like, as right as it's like, we only have 92, depending if you include bonus stuff, 110 episodes. How do people live like this? How could anyone tell a story in this format? And then the director in me is like, I already know what a hernia feels like, I don't want to know what a cardiac arrest feels like.

This is fine, this is sufficient. I mean the thing is, it's not that 90 episodes aren't enough to tell a story. It's 90 episodes building a really intricate world. Also because you don't have season 1 in Protocol. I mean obviously you have season 1 of Protocol. But the thing about the Magnus Archives season 1 is that it is functionally just an anthology show. Yeah, that was odd. That was weird.

Like the metaplot is very slow burn being introduced, which means that all the focus is on the stories, is on the statements, with little bits of characterization being gradually drip fed in for the actual characters that are going to continue through the story. Protocol, that's not an option, because we've got a shorter runtime, so if people are going to be invested in the characters, we need those characters to be front and centre quite early. Also, because you can't uncheck the big meta-narrative tick box. Once you sound the gong that says huge metanarrative, you can't then go back to being like, oh but maybe it's just a bit of an anthology series, because

people would get really impatient and it would be a much harder ask to get rolling. And again, with a shorter runtime, you're burning time that you need to establish these characters and to tell your actual story. I have found it fascinating and I suspect you've seen it as well. I've seen a little bit more of the fandom for Protocol than I did for Archives just by virtue of, I guess, the nature of my work being a bit more remote than it used to be, but it's the exact split to my eye of a third of people going, this is moving far too quickly, far too quickly compared to Archives, a third who are like, yeah, this feels right, and then another herd

who are like, this is agonisingly slow, this is killing me slow, which means that we're striking the balance right, and I can't help but notice that the people who think it's going too fast are the ones who were there for like, week by week release for years, and the ones who were like, this is slower, the people who came to it later, in general. I will bet you any money the people who are saying this is going too fast are people who were like there for season one or like there for the and the people who are like this is way too slow are people who binged all of archives in like a weekend. Almost certainly it seems to be the

trend but it is just fascinating to see. There was a piece of advice I was given by a writing teacher years and years ago which is if everyone is irritated but not angry you've probably done it right. I'm not over everyone! I'd like some people to just be like I am enjoying this podcast thank you. I don't think that's an option Johnny so... Oh well. Alright next one is from... Loads of people were writing the last season of The Magnus Archives. Did you already have ideas brewing for sequel or for either case files or character arcs? How did you come up with a storyline

for Demagnius Protocol? Inspirations? I don't think we had any of the specifics of Protocol in mind when we were working on the last season of Archives. We knew the mechanism that would be available to us. We knew that what we were doing at the end of Season 5 was essentially opening up a multiverse. We were just leaving a door open, a crack, and putting a little doorstep in there and then just... Yeah, there were and remain all sorts of like other Magnus stuff in the works. That it is really useful from a sort of a meta-narrative point of view to be able to go,

there are infinite Magnus universes, this can take place in a different one. The risk of making it a bit unglamorous and showing how the sausage is made, as a production company for a moment, it's a very different prospect, say, trying to work with a third party to make an RPG, and then being able to go, look, you can pick what you want rather than you have to have memorised basically five years worth of constant work before you can even begin to touch this as an idea. It's untenable unless you give a cheat of some kind. The RPG is a really good example that people are saying, oh, the art in the RPG is that canon.

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

Yeah, we're good at being the last person in the door on stuff, I think. We're the last cool people to do multiverses. Oh yeah yeah cool that's what I meant cool yeah. Did we already have ideas brewing or character arcs or blah blah blah? Not really. No but here's the thing is we did sit and like informally natter and like you could see which strands just led off if you'll pardon the sort of mixed metaphor a little bit but like you could see which ones led through but we didn't sit there and go right let's start work immediately

like you gotta remember this finish and then you could not have nailed me down near to archives for at least six months just by virtue of I know writers get it trust me directors get it worse like you hit a point of like I can't look at this for X amount of time, I can't. For Rush Queue Gaming, which predated Archives, it was something like two, three years before I could even look at an RPG again. Yeah, something like that. And Archives wasn't that bad, but it was still the same thing where it's like, I'm kind of done, I'm done for a little bit, I'm gonna go do other things.

It was conversations about how we could conceivably do a sequel that sort of worked us into a shoot of actually doing it. But what's fascinating is looking back, the conversations that ultimately convinced us to do Protocol, almost none of the ideas from those conversations actually ended up in Protocol. Yeah, I have noticed that. Soon as we made the decision, no we're actually doing this. We kind of just sat down and did it from first principles. Yeah, because I was originally pushing for something that was a lot more corporate, whereas

we ended up with like civil service. And to be clear, like all of the good bits from the prior things have made it through, but Johnny's 100% right, because I was always in my head going, hell, we'll do it as this weird corporate thing, whereas like what happens if capitalism gets all mashed up with it. We had a lot of ideas for organisations, basically none of whom have actually ended up in protocol. Which is fine, like we took all the bits we wanted but I think it was Johnny that originally proposed civil service actually. Probably I was at the start of working on Burnout, which also has a character in the

Civil Service, so I was very Civil Service brained at the time. That makes sense. All of it comes out from having lived with someone who worked for the Civil Service for a few years. Yeah, yeah, same. I have publicly said this and I'll say it again though, which was it was computer game Control that pulled the trigger on me. Yeah, Control was you coming to me and being like, we need to do this.

Johnny recommended the simmy, I played it, and then I went, ahhhhhh! Johnny's mentioned this before, literally years ago, God World. You were talking about filling the tank. The tank is like inspiration that comes from other people. I think of it as a soup these days. Yeah, sure, a gumbo. Effectively, my tank was empty at the end of Archives, where like, you have ideas and mechanically you know what to do, but it's a really bad idea to pursue stuff at that

point because you're running on fumes. Weirdly enough, I know that it was the game control that triggered for me that oh the tank's full and I know what to do. I prefer to think of it as a soup because a soup can have chunks in and I think that in terms of inspiration and like you know that mess of ideas and thoughts, sometimes you have chunks in them, you have certain ideas or certain things that are thicker, a bit more lumpy than others. Your tank metaphor implies that all ideas and inspirations are sort of equally filtered and of equal consistency, which I simply don't agree with.

Because you're not distilling your ideas properly. I also just noticed that April's telling us to hurry along and I shouldn't be breaking the frame in this way, but I'm deliberately now lingering just to annoy Producer April before moving on, so is there anything else you want to share about Gumbo before we move on Johnny? I fear April in a way you do not. You should, I'm just foolish. So a question from Bloody Baroness Cosplay.

In the cast list of episode 10, Mr Bonzo has been listed as uncredited. Can you tell us the reason for this and will we ever find out who voiced Mr Bonzo? No, it's because we got Mr Bonzo in. He's expensive. It shouldn't say uncredited. It should say as himself. Someone with the legal department meant that it ended up being listed as uncredited rather than as himself. Oh yeah, there was a bit of a mix up there. No, the problem is, is that we had to sort of take certain bits back after he trashed the studio. I mean, we knew he was going to, so we used a decoy studio, but nonetheless, like, you know, that stuff casts and so we

had to punish him in some way, otherwise he just keeps doing that kind of thing, you know? Yeah. I don't know, actually. I'm not involved in the production side of things, so. Do you want to know? Do you want me to dish? Do you want the tea? I'll be honest, everything I've heard in the industry sounds like Mr Bonzo's are pretty professional. You would definitely have heard that from certain parties, yeah, but all I'm just gonna say is...

Oh really? The thing with Bonzo, right, is he's got two sides. Oh, okay. It's all happy fun time unless people aren't laughing. Then the anger comes out and it's a whole thing. That's fair. I think we've answered that then. Oh actually no, carry on from sentient forest orb. Is Mr Bonzo happy with his job? Does he get good benefits and can I apply for that job as well?

So that's a good question. Is he happy with his job? I mean presumably? Yeah. On the whole? Yeah I think so. Does he get good benefits? He gets better than I get. I can tell you that. Better than any of us. Like you know we, we're all self-employed, aren't we? Not all of us get the big bucks like Bonzo, and can you apply for that job as well? What, being a different person? I suppose are they asking, can I be a voice actor? No.

I think they're talking about within the fiction, so Strip Club Murderer, I think, is the job that they're asking for. Live your dream. I mean, I haven't seen many listings on LinkedIn for strip club murderer. Live your sexy murder dream. Moving on. Seeking murderers host must provide own cleavers. Ok, loads of people. Beth Eyre plays the Archivist in Protocol but also Lucia Rides in Archives. Is there a connection there? Is Era slash the Archivist someone that we know or someone new altogether? What were you looking for when you cast her? Did you consider bringing back a character from TMA for the role instead?

Again lots of questions, after you Johnny. This one's like we're not answering most of those questions because it's a spoiler. In terms of what were you looking for when you cast her, like why did you cast Bear Fair? Broadly speaking, because Bear Fair rules. Did a really, really good audition. Yeah. Very good to work with. The problem is, it's not just having worked with people before. There's a reason that you'll see some of the same people coming up and that's by virtue of like, really good to work with, very reliable, thoroughly recommend, and that's not a put down on the people who aren't because availability shift. I'm not going to go into the story reasons like Johnny said

because of be patient but it's odd that people feel the need of why we need to justify it. She's really good! She's a fantastic voice actor and you know. Next one then is from Robin Rider. Oh I need a new voice. I was immediately wanting to do my daffy duck and I'm like no one's going to be able to hear me. Trans woman here, what made you want to write an explicitly trans character for the Magnus Protocol? Why will, or why won't, Alice's trans identity ever be important to the story? I write a lot of trans characters, so does Alex.

We like writing, our lives are full of loads of different people, a lot of whom are trans, and we want to see that reflected in the fiction that we create. I mean, it was a day one point as well, actually. It was literally, it was like the second thing that Johnny was like, I'd like this. Yes, I think that is a good idea. Yeah, and also, Alice's trans identity will not be important to the story. Because broadly speaking, I always think that everyone deserves to be able to see themselves in the fiction they consume without needing to feel an urge to justify their presence. There doesn't need to be a story reason that

Alice is trans. I'm not really necessarily the one to write the story about being trans, but that doesn't mean that trans people don't exist in the worlds that I imagine, in the worlds that I write. I can't think of any situation I would want to hang plot off a section of someone's identity like that, because it kind of abandons the idea of intersectionality entirely, which is weird to me, and I find it really hard to conceive of things like that. It's like with archives, no one's asking like, hey, what made you want to write a dude

main character? Nothing made me want to, I just, you know. Flipped a coin. Actually no, what made me want to is my voice. Yeah, that's not a good example. For basically, for the rest of the characters, it was a coin flip half the time. In fact, we have actually, not even due to logistical things, just as we figured it out, we've either gender or sexuality flipped a few characters whilst you iterate on the story for protocol. Yeah, because sometimes it's rarely like for plot reasons, but often like thematic consistency. I don't mean we've sexuality flipped anyone, but we've definitely gender

flipped a few people for voice acting reasons. Well the problem is, it's hard to say sexuality flip because basically you and I both pretty much write everyone as bi all the time and we'll pay attention to it if it comes up. Yeah. Sometimes thematically or for plot reasons, or because two characters just feel like they've got a vibe, you're like, they should go together. You don't want to be like, oh yeah but we decided this one was straight for some reason. No.

I very much have come to realise that at least in any world that I write every character is bi they just might not have met someone sufficiently sexy of a specific vibe. We are very much of the everyone's bi because we're lazy writers. Screw you. Okay, okay, okay. I think it's you question now. Morgan Mitchell and Marceline Gaming You've mentioned your influences for the horror aspect of Magnus in previous Q&As,

but does anything specific inspire the comedic slash satirical aspect of the show? After avoiding making TMA a workplace comedy despite a fan outcry, but this show has ramped that up. Why the change? I dunno, Magnus Archives was pretty funny. I have been told that I may be pushing the comedy satire a little harder so the fact that I'm a little bit more involved on the writing on this one means it might be coming through a bit more but I think it's underestimating Archives quite a bit there. Archives is a really bleak humour. I think the thing is that you write jokes more than I do.

I think archives is very funny, but it is very much my sort of sense of humour, which is not… There are very few things you could point to and say like, oh, that's a joke. Whereas in protocol, you've got a much bigger presence in the dialogue, and I think you're, like, how you tend to write that same tone. Well, I came up through comedy. It influences you. Yeah, you are from a background of jokes. It's just sometimes in the jokes that people die, and then you have horror. Yeah, and so, like, I think that the comedy is a lot more obvious in Protocol.

I think it is more readable as comedy. With archives, the number of times I've had people come up to me and be like, it's dreadful but I actually find XOR wiping very funny. And I'm like, yes. But the number of people who'd be like, you know what, I actually found Monster Pig quite funny. Yes! Because of how it's very funny! Because of how I'm very funny! Archives still has my favourite funny moment to date of anything that's Magnus related, which was, what are you gonna like cut your eyes out, beat? Fuck off.

Like that's not- Because the thing is, that's not a joke, but it's funny. I'd love to give some like, here is the specific references for comedic satirical, but no. Structurally, unintentionally, it often follows sitcom structures by virtue of office environment, which means that there's a reason that office sitcoms follow a specific shape and there's probably an unconscious element of following those but it's not a specific like oh it's like the office but or anything like that. Unless you've got anything specific, I genuinely don't

have a specific point I go to for it. It's tricky, like bringing up specific examples I think overstates the importance of like that specific show or book or whatever. Like I think that we are both very influenced by the shift and flow of comedy in British comedy, like Peep Show. I don't think there is a lot of Peep Show in Protocol, but I think that that slight style of like… it's not awkward comedy in the way that something like Peep Show really leans into, but it's got that slight bite to it, that slight edge. See, I'd argue it wasn't intentional, but I think there's a dash of the thick of it. Yeah, the thick of it. Well, thick of it is an evolution of the peep show style into a more

realistic, into a different format. This is what I mean when I say that we are heavily influenced by the currents of British comedy because that is a scene that we have both been in for most of our life to one degree or another. I think it'd be safe to say though it's definitely a UK vibe, not a US vibe, although people always ask you to to say though it's definitely a UK vibe not a US vibe although people always ask you to quantify that and it's tricky to do it seriously I genuinely it's quite hard to quantify but it's definitely more UK than US but I think that's the best I'm going to be able to manage. Weirdly if I had to pick like specific influences I'd probably reach for a handful of like sketch comedy troops I saw six to seven years ago at the Fringe that no longer

exist. There was this one, what were they called? Casual Violence? Was that the name? Oh no, I don't think so. I think it was whatever was really successful was the ones. Just to explain that little digger at Alex's, Alex used to direct a sketch company called Casual Violence. I have directed many things, they were amongst them. Okay, Charlie B and a non. What made you decide to create a guy in IT and then make him scared of machines? I love it.

Is Colin actually being tormented by the eye, or is he just having a breakdown due to being an overworked, under-supported IT manager during late-stage capitalism? I mean, for a start, that is a false binary. But also, this is a very easy question. Every single person I know who works in IT is scared of machines. Well, yeah. Every single one. The more that you know about them, the more it's like, oh no. The one that's the scariest is the internet. That is a cough away from imploding. If you think you understand machines and

you're not afraid of them, no you don't. You know what? That's as pithy as you're gonna get. I am happy to move on because that is bang on. We're just writing realism. It's just realism here. After you, Johnny, for the next one. This is the RQplebs Discord Kath and Jarrod Sage. I really hope they call themselves the RQplebs and that someone hasn't just been really mean in RQ when writing up who did this. RK's DPHWs, Categories plus Ranks, things that we as listeners are able to work out given current information. Also, why did you do this to us? When determining the case info

for each episode in production, not in universe, do you look up in a master spreadsheet based on the theme slash sub-theme, the way Alice describes, or do you pick the appropriate DPHW, cat and rank for each episode, knowing what those systems mean? I think you should definitely answer this one, Johnny, since you're so utterly au fait with all of the nuances of this highly specific system. Alex just kind of makes it up. This is a chunk of that enormous Bible that Johnny was alluding to earlier. DPHW

categories and ranks absolutely have meanings. They are not arbitrary. Well, they are arbitrary in so far as they reflect the numbers that we would personally ascribe to these things. They are workoutable at this stage as well. Categories and ranks should be pretty simple. If you can't work out categories and ranks yet, What are you doing? Come on. All right, calm down, Johnny. Calm down. You fools. All of them fools. Yeah, categories and ranks pretty discrete. The DPHW you should probably be able to... No, I don't know about should. It is theoretically possible that you could work it out. I have become aware of a couple of people who have like danced around it a bit but I can't stress enough like to have worked it out at this stage is proper

sleuthing. This isn't something that you just passively be like it's probably this. I will also say in something that is very very funny to me what you have to remember is the DPHW, the categories, the ranks. That is how the OIAR defines these things. Which means, whether it has any relation to the actual world, to what's actually going on, who knows? Who knows? There's a non-zero chance it doesn't matter at all. But it could! But it all connects together. And that's the same thing as objective truth, right?

If a system's coherent. So yes, it is a coherent system used by the OIAR. We don't have a big book of categorisations. We vibe it a lot more. We have a book of previous mentions and stuff that has to be, but that'll be like, for consistency. Yes, so if we have something that's similar to an earlier episode, we can look at the DPHW from the earlier episode and be like, ah, maybe adjusted a little bit. But our way of categorising them is the same as the OIARs, except ours is more vibe-based.

I mean, let's be honest, the OIAR is also vibe-based, I reckon. It's just the vibes are dreadful. Especially because deliberately in the show notes, we have the first few ones that Sam's done, and they're just either wrong or barely a thing, because ultimately their entire system relies on someone going, I think this? Just with bells and whistles. Yeah. Fatal Drum asks, okay, I need to know what kind of dog was in the Newton statement. I've heard Newton's favourite dog was a Pomeranian, but he's giving me terrier vibes in the

statement. Thank you. You need to answer this one because you wrote the statement and you know more about Newton than I do. What was Newton's dog? To answer things in an order that will help people. Number one, Johnny was rightfully reticent to include Newton at all. I wasn't pushing for Newton as something I was obsessed with, it's just that if you do anything to do with alchemy, you can't not Newton. If you're doing alchemy, you can't not Newton. All roads lead to Newton. It actively makes things go really weird historically

if you don't include Newton because he just sort of sat at the middle of everything being a bit of a dick. In terms of like, the dog, I'll be honest, I can't even remember the breed off that's on my head. It is whatever it is historically. Do you want me to just literally on air google Newton's dog? Go for it. I wrote it whilst looking at some wood cuttings of the burning down of his, I think he called it the lab, I can't remember. And it has images

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

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

that. I just wrote to that. So whatever that is. It's claiming he was a Pomeranian. Alright, if it existed then it's a Pomeranian. I'll be honest, you're right, does have Terrier vibes, but eh, your mileage may vary. I'm happy to move on with, sorry I looked at a picture and did it off that, cos I knew there wasn't much data on it. To be fair, given that this is our own universe and we can change whatever we like, I might declare… St Bernard's

St Bernard, yeah I was thinking of a St Bernard. Just a big slobbery St Bernard. Just a huge, unnecessarily massive St Bernard. St Bernard. I was thinking of a St Bernard. Just a big slobbery St Bernard. Just a huge, unnecessarily massive St Bernard. Yeah, basically the dog from the movie Beethoven. Just lolloping around. That scene changes so much when you do that. Just lolloping around Sir Isaac Newton's workshop.

It's a Beethoven then. Johnny, this is the last question which is from Anon, appropriately enough. What's something you wished fans knew about making the show? It's really hard. All the bits you think are easy are really, really hard. All the bits you think are hard are just a bit hard. Like getting it to sound accurate that someone has sat in a chair is exhausting and agonising, painstaking work.

And it's something that you'd just be like, oh, they probably just sat in a chair. Sometimes, just to punish Alex, I'll write the words, the character leaves, closing the door behind them. Which is why I have the director passes. No, actually even worse, even worse, there is brackets at the start of a dialogue tag while leaving. Oh, that's a no- oh, that's a- the one that really, really annoys me with Johnny, which is- and I know you do it to mess with me, because I have a pet peeve which is irrational,

which is you'll write something like, um, there is the sound of, and then a description, and I'll immediately wade in and start editing that because I'm of the opinion that you should never in an audio script write the word there is the sound of. It should always be like a knife is dropped. I mean you're not wrong. But yeah honestly it's just it's the bits that you think are easy are really hard. Genuinely like the editors are actual miracle workers at this point in a way that you'll never, never appreciate. And I think that we have successfully answered the more than 1000 questions we have received in that time. I think we're good. Yeah, if anyone has any other questions, then...

They're bad and should feel bad. They're wrong, they're incorrect. They don't actually. We've answered that question. Oh, they're incorrect. Yeah, they're mistaken. They think they have questions, but actually... Look, it's a mystery show, but there's X amount of mystery and beyond that it's just noise. Yeah, after a certain point, they don't... that's not a question they have. They just think they have. It's a mirage. See, the funny thing is, I have no idea at all what the selection criteria is for questions.

So, like, we are chucking vast streams of people under the bus with no understanding of context. Yeah, I'll do that under the bus you go If you're like, oh my question wasn't answered under the bus stop busing the fandom get under the bus See they all mocked me when I said it was bus in little did they know? Oh no. Oh god I didn't even clock. Oh, I didn't even clock. What was that? Talk to you all soon. Bye! Bye! distribution non-commercial share alike 4.0 international license. To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail

at RustyQuill.com. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, it's Shahan, voice of Sam in The Magnus Protocol. Today I'm here to advertise Soul Operator, a podcast just launched on the RQ network. Soul Operator is an actual play blended with narrative storytelling where solo TTRPGs are adapted into brilliant audio dramas. Soul Operator follows Tessa Whitlock as she navigates these new and interesting worlds for better or for worse. Each bite-sized episode is perfect to keep you company on your commute and are created

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