Compiled by Lark Enjoyer on the Beacon Discord
Q: Which came first, Felix's love for time puns or his Timekeeper career?
Sara: A baseline facility with time puns is a prerequisite to becoming a Timekeeper, so Felix was probably punning his way all through the application process.
Q: How did the bocular man idea come about?
Matt: The origins of the Bocular Man are twofold: 1) Wanting to include a capable assistant for Merlin on the expedition, and 2) Because it’s fun to anthropomorphize robots! There’s a long-standing tradition in Sci-Fi stories to include some type of artificial person (Data or Seven of Nine from Star Trek, Ash or Bishop from Alien, etc.) and we wanted to try our own spin on it! The jump in time and technology from Midst to Unend felt about right, and Bocular technology is just SO damn versatile: Whatever it is, it c a n happen! If you’re referring specifically to the idea of the … lightbulb moment, there’s more to come on that in tomorrow’s Roundtable 👀
Q: Are there any plans for further crossovers akin to Moonward and the Unend S1 interlude? On the flip side, might we see any of you guesting outside the Cosmos?
Xen: We'll have to remain mum as usual about future crossovers, but we've definitely begun to dabble in some non-Midst guest roles! Eagle-eared enjoyers of Midnight Burger might detect three familiar voices in a semi-recent episode of that podcast, for example.
Q:What has been your favorite part of the Cosmos to build out in Unend, especially since Midst wasn't about The Cosmos in the same way that Unend is?
Sara: So hard to choose! I really do love the Un oasis, though. The Un has been presented as such a harsh, barren place, so it was wonderful to explore the Un’s version of a lush natural biome. I was really inspired by Caño Cristales, a river famous for its bright red aquatic plants, which led to the idea for the red algae stuff in the oasis.
Xen: I'm really enjoying digging into what the hell is going on The Mothers! Cosmological exploration is cool and all and I'm very interested in knowing what's out there, but ever since we met those spooky guys down in the Lazaretto in season 2 of OG Midst I've been wondering what their Whole Deal is. So getting more into the Mothers' deep lore in Unend is proving to be VERY fun.
Matt: Oh of course the Delta. It’s been at arms-reach for so long, and has developed such an in-cosmos reputation, that to finally GO there was SUPREMELY satisfying.
Q: Both Dot and Artifice have given advice which indicates they are trained in some flavor of meditative/contemplative tradition. How did you decide that mastery over thought was a step along the path of becoming a Mother? If someone from the Un were to spontaneously find Realization on top of a mica berg, would they still spiritually connect with the Fold? Love the show!!
Xen: It's been insinuated throughout OG Midst that Fold and thought have some unknown and ill-defined interconnection -- so we knew pretty early on that Mothers would relate to the fold by way of their own form of spiritual mindfulness and thought mastery. It's been fun to explore and define that further in Unend! More to come.
Q: What was the factor behind making Midst and Unend two separate entities as stories? Was wanting to explore a different story style, the shift of focus to other aspects of the Midst Cosmos, or something else entirely?
Xen: Midst was very much its own distinct 3-season story with a definitive end. We wanted to communicate a clear completion of that original tale and signal that Unend was very much its own thing with its own new scenario and new style, so we chose to launch Unend as a new show rather than continue Midst with additional ongoing seasons.
Q:How are Fiona and Jacob doing? What are they up to now?
Sara: They seem to be doing just fine in their brief cameo in Episode 1! Funny thing, that was recorded before I’d even decided who my Moonward character was going to be. I like to think that they managed to recover from that ordeal and return to a mostly normal life. Fiona probably became a full-fledged bocular mechanic, and Goe might have even handed over management of the Garag to her at some point. With Fiona’s full support and participation, I’m sure Jacob has found his own calling in life, too. I wonder if they ever gave a romantic relationship a go. Are they married now? Perhaps even… divorced?
Beacon Boc: NO QUESTION I JUST WANT TO EXPRESS MY LOVE FOR MOTHER ARTIFICE, THE PERSON I MOST WANT TO HAVE IN MY REAL LIFE
Mother Artifice Xen: RELEASE CONTROL. ACCEPT THE JOURNEY. YOU WILL FIND THE WAY.
Q:In the finale, Dot finally speaks in something other than their usual ASMR whisper. Was it tempting to make Dot raise their voice at earlier intense moments, such as when their life was in danger at the firmament or in the depths of the fold, or did you know from the start that you were saving it?
Xen: Oh, Dot DOES raise their voice during earlier episodes! (i.e. E7) But they're so habituated to their whispering lifestyle that even their most urgent shouting is basically just a slightly louder whisper. I did know that the season 1 finale would feature Dot's most total breakdown to date, and that Dot's particular version of full-on screaming would occur at that time. But I didn't know how much (or little) of a whisper it would be, or how much they would struggle to raise their voice, so that exact vocal quality was a bit of a surprise in the moment. Dot's voice (and their relationship to the habit of whispering) is evolving throughout the show, and the way their voice sounds will continue to be an illuminating feature of their journey.
Q: In Ep 10, Zoron's cadence/inflection sounds similar to Moc Weepe. If you're able to answer this question -- was that an intentional choice, perhaps to establish a "Fold" accent? Or just a weirdly wonderful concoction of vocal qualities?
Xen: Excellent eagle ears you've got there! Definitely not a coincidence, and you're definitely onto something by picking up on the similarity. I'll have to leave it at that for now!
Q: Are there "personal" pieces of lore? That is to say, lore that is not known to all 3 of you.
Xen: I have lots of solo background stuff I created for Moonward that still has not been shared entirely with Sara and Matt! And I do have quite a few personal instincts about some deep Mothers lore that I haven't entirely articulated to the rest of the squad. But I tend to think that if it hasn't been discussed or agreed on then it's not cannon, so any solo lore we may be individually holding onto isn't "real" until it's been vetted by the rest of Third Person.
Sara: Kinda sorta! We rarely keep things from each other intentionally, but there’s plenty of stuff that I’m sure we’ve all mulled over in our own heads that there just hasn’t been an opportunity to discuss yet. Backstory details, far-flung locations, stuff like that. When I do my own Midst/Unend sketching just for fun (as opposed to for “content”) it almost feels like generating personal lore.
Q: A lot of time has passed since Midst and Moonward. How do you keep track of everything and tie it into Unend without things getting too complicated?
Matt: We muse about this often, particularly while digging around in the chaotic mess of folders and documents we spend our time in. I’m relieved to hear it’s not “too complicated”, yet! Generally, it’s a mix of reminding ourselves and each other of variously established things! No secret sauce or elite organizational tools I’m afraid.
Q: In a recent episode of Midst Messages, you shared that each of you "have" a secondary main character. With the example given that Felix is Sara's, I assume Xen's is Everett and Matt's is the Biological Man.
What inspired you to have an additional main character? What this motivated by the creation of the Biological Man as a character?
Xen: For me, having additional characters is a necessity because I have too many ideas for characters I wanna play, and mandating that we be trapped solely as one "main" character is pretty limiting. So we just keep tacking on additional folks! Dot is great, but I didn't want to solely whisper and creep around for the whole season, so Everett was born out of a desire to enjoy an opposite side of that character spectrum. Artifice was originally going to be my main character, in fact, but we transferred him to "NPC" status when the granddaughter emerged as a more successful main character concept. I do tend to play Artifice a LOT during the show, and that's partly because he secretly remains a "main" character for me even though he's become fair game for Matt and Sara to play as well. But I love him and he still feels kinda "main" to me, so I often snag him. Can't resist that shouting voice!
Q: Is the creature at the top of the firmament called an UNviethan or a leviathUN?
Sara: We actually do have our own term for it, purely for internal use. (It’s a very silly name. Maybe we’ll share once the series is all over.) For something like that, right on the limits of human comprehension, giving it an official canon name felt counterproductive. All this to say… for now, the name is entirely in your hands! LeviathUN has a nice ring to it.
Q: What are your production schedules like? Do you record all episodes before starting post-production? And how has this process changed since the beginning of Midst?
Xen: Our process has remained pretty much the same over the years: we have a planning phase (for writing and outlining the structure of our season), a recording phase (for recording dialog only), a dialog editing phase (for editing the raw dialog into its final form), and then a SFX/music phase (for sound design and music scoring). We continue to follow that same rhythm! The main change in partnership with CR is now that we are on a regular and consistent schedule, whereas in our fully indie days when Midst was a side hobby we just kinda did stuff whenever we had some free weekends or evenings (which wasn't that often). Now it's all Midst all the time!
Q: It seems like Xen has done the majority of voicing Artifice, was that intentional or just a side effect of the way the story telling has shaken out this season?
Xen: Mentioned a couple answers back, Artifice was originally going to be my main character in Unend, and I came up with him (originally a nonbinary character simply known as The Mother) long before Dot was created. It eventually came to pass that The Mother developed an apprentice, and we all realized that this apprentice was a much more intriguing and successful main character to play, so Artifice became an NPC that we were all invited to perform. But I spent so much time developing The Mother and preparing to play their character that I kinda hog Artifice to this day, and in some ways Artifice still feels like an additional main character to me.
Q: Does Midst can the bread from their tearror-induced eternal bread oven, and is this where the references to canned bread in UNEND originate? How has the breadmoss industry been affected?
Sara: Unfortunately, canned bread is a real thing in the real world. We didn’t KNOW that when we originally mentioned it in Midst – we thought it sounded too ridiculous to be true. Now we know better. Stationarians never have to suffer canned bread again thanks to Patricia’s bread oven, but I can see them perhaps exporting it. The Un's breadmoss industry is far enough removed from the marvels of the infinite bread oven that it probably hasn’t been affected at all, though I’m sure they’d love something like that in such a difficult-to-farm place. Gotta take weird Fold risks to get weird Fold perks, though.
Q: How far in advance was The Naturalist’s reveal planned?
Matt: We KNEW that the Naturalist was who she is from the jump - and for a while we flirted with NEVER disclosing her identity! Over time, though, we kept dropping hints for our own delight, that it didn’t make sense to keep her concealed. And with the mega trimming of the crew in S1E15, it felt like the right time for the reveal.
Q: I know the episodes are a mix of scripted and unscripted content. Did the Interlude play by those same rules?
Xen: The interlude was fully scripted, however Sam and Matt did riff on it a bit and inject some organic back-and-forth to it! I'd say about 20% of what you hear in the final interlude is improvised dialog or some form of reinterpretation of the actual-factual script.
Q: What was your favorite episode to record?
Matt: S1E15 Last Call was a HOOT for sure! Bertrand Pesto is an exquisite slimeball, and it was such a delight to get SO into this guy and his horrible place.
Sara: I loved recording Episode 9, "Kinship," because I have romance disease
Xen: I'll answer this from the other side of the editing desk in terms of episodes I loved recording new and unusual SFX and music for: Unsmoke was a blast to make! And E7 was a maelstrom of VERY unusual sound and music that was very crazy and liberating to explore. I had a lot of fun trying to break every rule of audio drama and sound production I could think of with that one (Ep 7). Doing the music for Brocheroug was fun too; I got to play with a baroque instrument called a clavichord to record the antique, out-of-time tunes for that one.
Sara: And I LOVED doing the old-timey announcer voice
Q: Sam Riegel was originally intended to appear in Moonward but could not. But, he appears as Kanneken in the Interlude. What's it been like bringing him into Unend for that? What was the creative process behind bringing in someone else for any character for the audio drama works, something that's new and different from Midst?
Xen: We were thrilled to work with Sam! He and Marisha have always been two of CR's biggest Midst champions, and obviously we got to absorb Marisha into the cosmos with Moonward, so we've been awaiting a chance to give Sam his opening as well. Originally we were going to voice Kanneken ourselves, but when we realized that the interlude would be an in-universe audio experience with no narrators we realized we needed a non-Third-Person voice to perform Kanneken -- and Sam was all in! Recording with him was a blast, and he brought a charisma and credibility to Kanneken that takes the interlude to the next level.
Q: What would happen to Merlin if the biological man were to die? Would it be similar to the situation with Saskia?
Matt: HMM. That is an interesting question indeed! Because the fates of many Unend Characters have yet to be realized (see what I did there?), I’m afraid I shall have to refrain from divulging TOO much, but I can confidently state that the Biological Man and Merlin are definitely two (2) different people, as opposed to Saskias’ one (1).
Sara: Would you like us to kill him so we can find out? 😈
Q: Was the reveal (or at least the cosmological implication) at the end of Unend S1 something that had been discussed prior to writing the season outline or is it an artifact of the worldbuilding nature of the season?
Sara: Oh it was ABSOLUTELY discussed prior. You'll hear us talk more about this if you tune in to the Roundtable tomorrow, but basically it was looming in our minds for the entire season.
Q: In S1 EP15: Last Call, Papa refers to Cleo as "Jellybean" -- what on earth is a “Jellybean” in the context of the Midst Cosmos??
Sara: Probably like a funky little squid or something. A... bean-shaped squid. That comes in many different flavors... Yes…
Q: Across the length of this first season, we learn a lot of the crew's names. In episode 2, it is mentioned that the total crew count is "just over thirty", but the named crew we know so far only comes in to a total of 21 (not including Omelet). Did you have the entire crew planned out name and backstory-wise? Can you share any of the names you didn't have a chance to explore?
Xen: We do maintain an official crew roster that itemizes (and names) each and every person on the ship as well as their titles/roles, and there are indeed 30 of them! We discovered quickly that it was overwhelming and disorienting to bombard the audience with a constant parade of crew NPCs, so we had to make a lot of tough choices about who to feature and who to merely insinuate. And we originally had even more crew that we had to trim down; we originally had a doctor's mate named Buttercombe who didn't make it into the final edit (though his name lives on as one of the Barons!) and a Master-At-Arms named Franco Par Agramont, who similarly was cut.
Q: Who's teaching Merlin's classes in his absence, as he's a professor? Is this considered a sabbatical for him?
Matt: I should like to think Merlin’s courses were distributed between some existing faculty friends (probably his more advanced courses), and some new adjuncts (for the more intro-level stuff). Got to keep the cycles of academia alive and thriving! This expedition is definitely a sabbatical for Merlin, though. You’ve got to LIVE LIFE in order to teach it!
Q: I loved Unsmoke. Any plans for either more Unsmoke or more things in the vein?
Xen: I love Unsmoke too! Extremely fun to make, though admittedly VERY labor-intensive. You'll just have to stay tuned and see what might come next in the Sherrif's disembodied head adventures.
Q: How long would it have taken Cleo to get back home if she had decided to leave when she was supposed to? Would her family likely have noticed she hasn't made it back, yet?
Sara: We avoid assigning exact numbers to stuff like time and distance whenever possible, because we don't really want to define the exact size of the cosmos. As always, it's more about vibes. But I still feel confident in saying that Cleo's journey from Brocheroug to Guilemoth would take longer than the Ship's journey from Brocheroug to [their present location], so no, they likely wouldn't notice. They're also not great at noticing Cleo in general, so. 🤷
Q: Any chance we might be able to enjoy some wonderful new character portraits for Unend Season 2?
Sara: You bet! I’m already working on them!
Q: As someone who worked in television (ages ago), I know the effort that goes into producing a single episode. How long would you say it takes to produce one of these episodes?
Xen: If we break it down: writing a single episode probably takes about two days. Dialog recording takes one day, and SFX/music usually takes about 1 week. So a single episode of Midst/Unend cumulatively takes roughly 1.5 weeks to create, start-to-finish. Though certain very huge episodes have taken up to 4 weeks. None of this is done back-to-back per episode, however; we work in phases, so each part of episode production happens separately over time. So in terms of literal actual time spent, we may record an episode than then 3 - 6 months later final audio production is completed and the episode is fully wrapped. And in the case of OG Midst (especially season 1), we recorded the dialog of most episodes literally YEARS before audio production was completed.
Q: What was it like to reimagine Stationary Hill 30 years later? Were there any big ideas specifically as to how its development would shake out?
Sara: We talk about this in the Roundtable too, so I don't want to retread TOO much ground... but it was really rewarding. We love Stationary Hill, and it was pretty emotional imagining its bright future. We mainly wanted to depict a lot of growth and a lot of optimism -- the happy future they deserve after the events of Midst.
Q: What has been your favorite tearror change?
Xen: Giselle getting her personality replaced with frogs is still a favorite of mine! Classic.
Q: Matt has discussed researching various subjects for worldbuilding -- have there been any new favourite areas of research done for Unend?
Matt: As a cosmos-spanning adventure, of course SPACE would have to be at the top of the list! We also got to drill into a wide range of expeditions (doomed and otherwise) while we were preparing.
Xen: I'll chime in on this to say that I had a lot of fun with ship, aircraft, and aviation research when designing the main ship as well as the Stagecoach. We get into this again in tomorrow's roundtable, but I did a LOT of real-world aviation research for the stagecoach, especially, that was extremely fun. Research included creating tons of models and mockups for both ships. I modeled the ships in VR, in fact, and have spent a lot of time walking around inside them (especially the stagecoach). That kind of development brings a lot of character and realism to the ships that I hope translates into the vibes of the show!
Q: How do you come up with all of the "distortions" caused by fold? (Story wise as well as for character drawings)
Sara: It's surprisingly challenging! Any time we need to depict a big smorgasbord of randomness, our brains usually stall out for a moment. We try to evoke a variety of different senses, and not repeat similar tricks too often. Try as we might, we are still humble human narrators trying to describe something that kind of defies description. (A problem of our own making!)
Xen: I'll echo Sara's reply to this: it is surprisingly hard to imagine things you can't imagine! For all the weirdness and randomness the Fold supposedly generates when tearrorized, we are often surprised by how sorta normal our tearror mutation ideas end up being even when we're trying to be as BizArRe as possible. And there's a fine line between sorta "cool" surreal randomness and randomness that is so unhinged that it basically just devolves into meaningless garbage that loses all emotional/narrative impact. It's tricky!
Q: Sara, you mentioned the romance disease was back in full force for 1x9. Were there any major inspirations for the budding friendship(?) between dot and cleo?
Sara: The basic inspiration was “What if the introverted goth one and the extroverted girlypop one made each other FEEL things??” Very unique, I know. Once I learned what sort of character Xen was planning with the Granddaughter, my job seemed clear.
Q: With Midst, it sounded like you had most of the major beats laid out in advance, and the three-season arc set. How has the process of creating Unend compared in that regard?
Matt: With Midst, we had YEARS to be as fussy as we liked. Unend is happening at a WILDLY faster rate, and as much planning as we might try to do in advance, the truth (more often than not, it turns out) is that we can never really know what’s going to happen, until we press RECORD. There are some story beats that we’re aware of and generally trying to work toward, but the magnitude of any given story decision always seems to boil down to the moment at the microphone!
Q: What's it like working with Jared as a lore keeper, especially after managing the lore yourself for the first two seasons of Midst?
Xen: It's been amazing! Jared is KING, and we are contantly floored by his accurate and detailed knowledge of all the insane bullshit the three of us have cooked up. It's hard enough for us to keep track of our own cosmos, so to now be connected with another person who's managing to successfully and expertly keep tabs on our wild-ass, largely improvised nonsense is truly mindblowing. Jared misses nothing and will often ask us astoundingly sharp questions about very miniscue details in our shows, and we are in awe of his elite lore-o-vision. Jared is host of tomorrow's roundtable, and we are HYPED for you to enjoy his many VERY insightful questions as we discuss Unend Season 1! Jared Rules!
Q:How do you decide when to stop an episode? Some of the cliff hangers are exquisite
Xen: Usually we know when to quit when the moment feels extremely infuriating and full of unrealized potential! Like now, for instance. AMA: concluded.
Q: Was there any event or story beat in Unend that turned out quite different from what you initially expected?
Xen: Oh yes, and we will describe one of those best moments in tomorrow's Roundtable! We've got a story about the bocular man and Merlin that's quite the kicker with respect to this question.
Hey Yu!
by Trever Cameron