S2: Asked & Answered

RAE: Welcome, everybody, to the Mail Room. This is the Q&A episode for Season 2 of The Night Post podcast. Sound off, post–post carriers, okay, I don’t know. (all laugh) ELIZABETH: Hello, my name is Elizabeth Rose Conkwright Lundberg, and I am the voice of Clementine, and I write one-third of the episodes of The Night Post pod. TYLER: I am Tyler Anderson. I also write one-third of the episodes for The Night Post podcast. I am the voice for Milo, as well as other miscellaneous characters as needed, and I help produce a certain number of the episodes. ETHAN: I’m Ethan Thomason. I voice Nicholas and write the original music for the podcast, and also maintain the web page for The Night Post. RAE: I’m Rae Lundberg. I’m the voice of Val, uh, a writer and producer, and if you’ve talked with the, uh, Night Post account on Tumblr or Twitter, that’s probably me. So, we’ve put out another, uh, fifteen episodes, and we’re here answering your questions. ELIZABETH: Your red-hot, fiery, burning questions. RAE: How we feelin’, posties? ELIZABETH: I mean, I just cannot believe that we managed to put out Season 2 while we were all starting new jobs, and moving across the country, and going through a lot of life changes in this mid-pandemic season. ETHAN: I know, whoever thought when we were sitting in y’all’s little living room planning this, that we would get this far? RAE: Shout-out to indie podcasters in a panini. TYLER: Yeah, shout-out to indie podcaster Kelsey Grammer. We see the hard work you’re putting in, and we appreciate it. RAE: So, speaking of a pandemic, and cross-country moves, and so forth, Gwen Jeronimo asks: how has the production process evolved for you over the course of the show? Have things changed since last season? Have you fallen into a different pattern, or have things stayed pretty consistent? TYLER: I mean, for me personally, every time I open up Audacity might as well be the first time I’ve opened up Audacity. Um, I can’t say that my process has changed any, but I’m slowly learning some tips and tricks that maybe aren’t making the process easier or any quicker–definitely not quicker–but it is helping me produce something that’s a bit more, uh, a bit more engaging. Adding sound effects, changing voices, dealing with background noise, which here in St. Louis is an issue. RAE: Yeah, we’ve come up against deadlines a little more closely this season than we did last season, just because of, you know, life circumstances. So there was a bit of stress involved there, but we made it happen in the end. We can always set, uh, goals for next season to have everything, um, done ahead of time, (others laughing) and-and we’ll see how that pans out. I mean, at-at the moment we don’t have a hard date set for Season 3, but stay tuned. ELIZABETH: If Tyler and I learned anything in college, it’s how to finish typing a short story– (Tyler laughing) –mere minutes before it must be printed and turned in to your workshop class. So I think that experience really prepared us for trying to finish the scripts this season. RAE: (Dr. Phil voice) Thank you for that. (Elizabeth laughs) Listeners, can you tell which episodes were written the day they were recorded? Let us know! ETHAN: (laughs) TYLER: Do not let us know. ELIZABETH: Do not let us know! (laughing) Do not let us know. But I’m sure next season, we’ll have had it all figured out, and everything will be recorded, produced, and ready to release. TYLER: Oh, yeah, we definitely plan to change who we are fundamentally as people between now and the start of Season 3, so stay tuned for that. ELIZABETH: So if Season 3 takes…some time, (Tyler laughs) just, just know we’re fundamentally rearranging our entire personalities and work styles. And we’re doing it for you, our dear listeners. RAE: This hasn’t started being done, but it–she sounds very confident about it. Um, a related question: what’s everyone’s favorite and least favorite–or you don’t have to answer both–favorite or least favorite part of the process, and if it’s changed from Season 1? ELIZABETH: My least favorite part was writing the episodes the day that they were supposed to be recorded, that was– RAE: You just outed yourself. Now we know it was yours. ELIZABETH: (laughs) Now, now you know it was one of mine. Uh, but I started teaching this year, and yeah, it’s very demanding and challenging. So, um, my episodes were being cranked out under a lot of additional stress, and that was my least favorite part. I guess my favorite part was just, um, my favorite part of Season 1, which was getting to work with people I love and people I care about. And telling stories, like, I just think that that’s one of the most wonderful things that we could do on this terrible planet, so. TYLER: Probably my favorite part of the production process now is, weirdly, it’s oddly specific, but–the layering of effects. I could have anywhere from a single track to eight, nine tracks. Have the spooky music, have creaking of floorboards, have a couple different types of footsteps going all at once–laying all of those, and then at the end getting to hear just how, for lack of a better word, how, like, lifelike or immersive it sounds at the end of the episode. I-I guess I don’t really have a least favorite part, but if I had to choose, it would probably be recording, unfortunately, just because I hate hearing my own voice. Trying to balance my nasally-ness and trying to keep it consistent (Rae laughs) across episodes is difficult, from time to time. RAE: I think what you said about audio editing would be, like, really relatable to pretty much anybody who does that kind of audio work. To me, it feels like, I just think of it as like, building the episode. It-it feels like I’m kind of bricklaying it, in a way. I don’t know, it’s kind of a thrilling feeling, even though it’s also very tedious and frustrating. ETHAN: My least favorite part has become one of my favorite parts. I used to hate recording the intro and outro, because I just felt like that was the first thing that everybody was gonna hear when they listen to it, and I thought I was gonna suck and run everybody off. But now I have a lot of fun doing it, because it’s fun to see the little blips that everybody comes up with for each episode, and, you know, we joke that I’m the voice of the podcast now, and, you know, I love attention, so. (others laugh) And my other favorite part is, uh, voice guest characters, especially Upton, because, I-I don’t know, I play Nicholas very similar to just my natural self, so it’s fun to, you know, jump into another character. RAE: Why did you let him in? ELIZABETH: He let himself in! TYLER: (gasp) Oh, no. RAE: Elizabeth let Leo in, and now he just, like, busts in here, pushes the mic over. (thumps) ELIZABETH: I didn’t– ETHAN: He said, I’m here. ELIZABETH: Okay, okay, so– TYLER: An intruder. ELIZABETH: He let himself in. I just was gonna say that Ethan truly is the voice of the podcast, and Tyler’s the personality of the podcast. Rae, of course, is the brains of the podcast, and that leaves me, the big naturals of the podcast. ETHAN: (laughs) RAE: You’re the heart of the podcast, under the big naturals. ELIZABETH: It is, it is an audio medium, so I know the folks at home cannot see, but now you know. RAE: Well, every time you hear like a, like a mic bump that maybe we missed or couldn’t edit out on one of Clementine’s lines, that’s her titties, so– (Tyler and Ethan laughing) –now you know. TYLER: Just rest assured that The Night Post production team, between the four of us, we do have the charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. ELIZABETH: So, there are two similar questions: who is everyone’s favorite character, either to write, hear, or act–or just in general? I guess I’m clearly biased, I do really, really love Clementine. In some ways, she’s similar to me, and in a lot of other ways, she’s very different from me. But I spend a lot of time thinking about her because I write the episodes that are sort of grounded in her experiences. I also really love Will because she is a new feature this season, and I had sort of plans for her all along, and it was nice to introduce the sort of like, bureaucratic, anti-hero love interest into the show. TYLER: It’s impossible for me not to say Milo because, coming into this, that’s the character that I basically created, it’s the character that I voice, it’s the character whose character arc I pretty much oversee. But I would say that my favorite character to hear, because of Elizabeth’s take on it, is going to be Serene. RAE: We love a valley girl cultist. ELIZABETH: (as Serene) Well, I’m just so happy to hear that! TYLER: (laughs) Yeah, it’s–when I was writing Serene, it’s not the voice I necessarily imagined, but I genuinely enjoy how it turned out, and it won’t be the last you see or hear of Serene. ELIZABETH: Oh, God. ETHAN: (laughs) Surprise! TYLER: A little foreshadowing. ETHAN: Well, I mean, I hate to just, like, jump on the stereotype of everybody saying their own character, but, I mean, I really enjoy Nicholas as a character. You know, being the kind of announcer for the series, and then just, the overall air of mystery into how he fits into everything that’s slowly unfolding is really fun to follow. Uh, seconding what Elizabeth said, I really enjoy Will as a character. That little arc, and having somebody come in and, being, you know, an ally who’s secretly, you know, a spy is a very fun trope that I enjoyed a lot. So I liked seeing that play out as well, because, you know, not being the writer to these episodes, I get to almost, you know, see every episode completely fresh, and be like, a standard audience member sometimes. RAE: I think my favorite character to voice is The Stranger, because I like doing their exaggerated accent. I mean, your mileage may vary on whether you think it sounds at all authentic, uh, but I have fun with it. I don’t know, I-I just get really over-invested in the side characters, I guess. Uh, I really like The Governor Themself, this like, super-charismatic politician who’s just also really out there and wins people over anyway. And we’ll see more of them in Season 3, so maybe people will get a chance to see why I’m, why I’m so invested. ELIZABETH: We took our time to introduce some side characters, like in Season 1, we really wanted to stay within the scope of what we were capable of, and we’re four people with four voices and limited acting abilities. So, like, now that we have the ability to have some guest voices, it’s, it’s nice to add to our cast a little bit. RAE: And we’re super grateful for the additional actors that we’ve had this season. Thanks so much to Lynn Anderson, who voiced Will–um, no relation to Tyler, actually–Josh Lundberg, who is my brother, who voiced The Governor Themself; Nigel McKeon, who voiced Verity; and Jess Syratt, who provided the voice of The Urban Strategist in the Season 2 finale. TYLER: Yeah, it-it would be really hard to have the story that we have without the people who have contributed their voices to it, so we really do appreciate it. RAE: Y’all, do you feel we successfully conquered “sophomore season syndrome”? Why or why not? Tyler, do you wanna–do you wanna explain what is sophomore season syndrome? TYLER: A lot times, critics and general audiences will be like, “Well, the second season was so much different, or it wasn’t quite as good as the first.” So, coming into Season 2, our production quality increased. Um, not because our equipment got any better, but because we were a little bit more familiar with what we were working with, picked up a lot of tricks along the way. We had gotten into the groove of writing a podcast in general, and we had a pretty clear idea of what the endgame for Season 2 was going to be as we went along. RAE: We came at this with more knowledge and more planning, plot-wise, like arranging more plot elements and stuff than we were in Season 1. ELIZABETH: Naturally, the goal is, like, every time you do it, it gets a little better. And it was just a matter of, I always call it, like, pulling the threads, or like, a sewing analogy, where we’re piecing everything together. (laughs) TYLER: Crocheting The Night Post narrative. ELIZABETH: Yeah, and hopefully when you take a step back, it doesn't look like a bunch of knots in yarn, it looks like something that resembles a story. Um, Rae, when you’re editing this, will you just take out, um, all the parts where I sound dumb? Even if it means that you have to cut me out of the episode, thanks. RAE: I will definitely be cutting out the self-deprecating comments. I have to cut out this stupid cat, this stupid, stupid cat. [A THUMP AND THE JINGLE OF A LITTLE BELL ON A CAT’S COLLAR.] TYLER: Jingle jingle. ELIZABETH: Season 2 started with the group being fractured, but everyone seems to be on the same page now. What are our characters’ motivations for moving forward? What’s their goal in Season 3, or their next steps? RAE: Well, season–the end of Season 2 introduces kind of a paradigm shift, and I mean, that’s, for me, a goal that I had with each season finale, was to make some kind of reveal that changes the way that the characters, and hopefully the audience, are coming at the whole story. There are still, you know, major mysteries surrounding “what is the Other” and “what are its motivations,” but we know now what the link is between the Other and the Post, so that changes everything for the couriers. And while they may have had their own individual agendas before, and they still do, they’re especially thrown together by this knowledge and the fact that they have to decide what to do with it moving forward. TYLER: For Milo, he’s briefly reunited with Ashley, only to lose him again. So, Milo came into Season 2 really appreciative of the friendship that he has forged between him and Val and Clementine. And going into Season 3, they have this knowledge now, they have a better understanding of what is going on around them, what their ties to each other and what their ties to the Post and the Other are, and Season 3 is going to be them utilizing that knowledge to…blankety blankety blank. ELIZABETH: For me, what Clemetine’s growth needed to be was learning how to stand up for herself, learning to command her own voice, like, learning to take action when action is needed. In-in my mind, the doppelganger was her call to action, her being forced to react because there’s something that looks like her that is taking action. In Season 3, like, I think the building of that, that confidence is definitely in her future. For Clementine, like, she just needs that, that push, right? She’s always been kind of dragged from one bad situation to the next, like I see her as, sort of, not necessarily an abandoned child, but whatever the Skelter equivalent of a latchkey kid is, like just someone who didn’t have a lot of guidance when she was young. RAE: Val tends to be very individualistic, she’s not afraid to cut her losses and just go whenever the situation looks like it’s out of control. And learning the-the nature of the ties between the Post and the Other and Gilt City, and how inextricably those are connected, has really changed her view on things. Now that she understands the depth of the situation and her connection to other couriers, she realizes this is something she’s gonna have to stick out and see through to the end. As for Nicholas, well…you’ll just have to see how that plays out. ELIZABETH: Unless you have any ideas. I mean, maybe you want Nicholas to retire to some tropical paradise. ETHAN: Bless him, he deserves it. ELIZABETH: And raise carnivorous plants, like, maybe that’s in his future. TYLER: Or he moves to a mansion on a small island and adopts a bunch of weird kids, and falls in love with the caretaker of said kids. RAE: That sounds like something that exists. TYLER: I don’t think. ELIZABETH: In the spinoff podcast, um, Nicholas’ Boarding School for– ETHAN: Unfortunate Children. ELIZABETH: (laughs) Unfortunate children, yes. TYLER: The followup podcast, The Mansion in the Green Ocean. ELIZABETH: (laughs) ETHAN: I’m sure. RAE: Nicholas–and then he realizes, “Oh my God…I hate children.” ETHAN: That is exactly what would happen. ELIZABETH: Um, I can answer this one: will Will be returning to the show? Yes! I didn’t spend all season in Season 2 introducing her and complicating her, just to force her away because she and Clementine are no longer dating. RAE: It’s nice to see a perspective of another part of the Post who’s not a typical pigeon and not from 103, so her viewpoint is pretty valuable in that regard, I think. ELIZABETH: Will is like, a little bit of a counterpart from Clementine, like their situations are similar that they are both conscripted, and they both inherited their, um, position from their families. But Will obviously comes from a little bit more, uh, privilege. She can just, um, be comfortable with the fact that her family has enough money and influence to buy her more like a, a regular nine-to-five than being a pigeon. TYLER: Where are all the animals in the Skelter and Gilt City? We got rats, a couple domesticated horses, but that’s all? What about a spooky wallaby? ELIZABETH: Where are the spooky wallabies? They’re in New Guinea. TYLER: New Guinea City. RAE: In Season 1, we had, um, a story about a strange possum. There’s, there’s definitely some more references to animals in some of our Patreon stories. ETHAN: Maybe the gang needs a pet in Season 3. ELIZABETH: Okay, I’ve been saying forever that Clementine needs a pet dog. And Clementine is convinced that it is, in fact, a dog, but everyone is like, “Obviously, whatever that is, it is not a dog. It does not look like a dog, it does not sound like a dog. Whatever it is is clearly dangerous.” And Clementine is like, “I love my little puppy.” ETHAN: I see it for her. ELIZABETH: I think maybe spooky animals, have-have a potential. I like the idea that, that we would have some kind of spooky gator or spooky croc. RAE: Not to keep referring to paid content or whatever, but the Patreon stories is where I tend to go into ideas like, “What if there was a really weird armadillo?” Because it’s not necessarily super plot relevant, but it’s just something that I think would happen in the setting. So it doesn’t come up in the show as often, but it’s definitely something that we’re thinking about. TYLER: Yeah, and I think this kind of leads into one of the questions that we have from Morgan, which is: will we get to see more of the landscape and environment of the Skelter in Season 3? In Season 1, I believe, we had a bit more of that. Um, and then coming into Season 2, there was just so much happening in the city itself, it didn’t lend itself plot-wise for them to be outside of the city quite as much. But in Season 3, I personally have some, have some ideas about exploring the Skelter, and with that, I’m sure they will be running across quite a bit of wildlife. RAE: In terms of how we envision the setting, it’s a pretty diverse space, ecologically, um, but nothing that’s super out there, it’s all things that you would find in the Southern U.S. You know, there’s swamps, other types of wetlands, forested areas. What’s important to me about the setting, um, is that the land functions as a kind of character itself. To me, that’s an important sort of tenant of southern gothic writing, the land and the setting has more significance beyond being where the action takes place. It’s a part of the action itself, and in the case of the Skelter, has its own kind of personality and agenda. Um, and that’s definitely something that will be coming to the forefront more in Season 3, as we develop and discover more of what the Other is and does. ELIZABETH: We keep referring to the stories that we write for our Patrons, but it’s a, it’s just an opportunity for us to, like, to give that extra background, that extra oomph–the description that would be, like, very strange to be said out loud, if Milo was like, “Val and Clementine, look at the illustrious landscape before us. I see many murky ponds and draped weeping willows.” (laughs) TYLER: “They ventured deep into the emerald bosom of the Skelter.” RAE: Ah. ELIZABETH: (laughs) RAE: Does anyone want to talk about, why did they get mystical powers, um, and seemingly mostly Milo? TYLER: In the case of Milo, um, there’s a couple times where Milo is like, “Oh, I’m bad at keeping plants alive.” But it’s referenced that Ashley, you know, has the green thumb. It’s a reflection of Milo’s growth, and a way of showing that perhaps Ashley is not quite as far away as Milo might think he is. RAE: The Strategist’s explanation would be that the Other changes its tools, um, to make them more effective. Uh, for-for what purpose? Perhaps not for us mortals to know. I mean, at this point, Milo’s powers–if-if you want to call it that–um, have been, I suppose the most dramatic, but we’ve seen, you know, similar kinds of changes in…Val can hear letters that she doesn’t actually have necessarily physical access to, and Clementine sees dreams or visions that provide information, if she can interpret it. ELIZABETH: I think we will continue to see each of the pigeon’s abilities shift and develop over the next season or two. RAE: Looks like we have just one question left, from Morgan: was there inspiration around The Strategist being in the physical state that she was? There’s a very real physical kind of hold on the couriers of the Post, uh, that enforces their obedience. We already learned that, you know, just willpower is not enough. If the goal is to combat these physical effects, whether it’s constant insomnia, or like, cell degeneration or whatever, it would have to be pretty extensive technology to, you know, completely support her life, when–with the other trying to destroy her. I guess if there’s a direct media inspiration–we love our-our mailmen, so if you’ve ever played Fallout: New Vegas, um, when you finally meet Mr. House, and find out that he is this wrinkled old man inside a tube–it’s kind of a similar moment, where you meet this villain and find out that their influence was all created despite their being physically trapped somehow. We didn’t actually say in the episode specifically, uh, what-what The Strategist’s state is, but I imagine she’s probably like, suspended in some sort of liquid, and her voice is being broadcast through a speaker, and she’s probably, you know, pretty damaged physically, by being affected by the Other and being kept alive by her experimental technology. ELIZABETH: I think that I’m excited for Season 3. I’m, as always, very happy to be a part of the project, and you know, maybe our next thing won’t be another podcast, but I-I hope when The Night Post concludes that we have something else to replace it, because it’s very important to me. RAE: Thank you so much to everyone who has listened. If you’re listening right now, you’re amazing, we appreciate you so much, and you’ve made four little gays very happy. TYLER: We-we genuinely appreciate the interest and interaction from listeners and readers. RAE: It keeps us going. ETHAN: Yes, it does. As an avid stat-tracker myself, for all media, not just media I create, it makes it so worthwhile just to, you know, see the number of listeners grow, and see that people are actually enjoying what we’re putting out there, so it-it, I mean, it really does mean the world to us. RAE: We don’t know yet exactly when Season 3 will be coming to your earbuds, but we will let you know as soon as we have that nailed down. We’ll be bringing it to you as soon as we comfortably feel that we can bring you the best product that we can. Thanks so much for sticking with us. If you’re looking for more excellent audio dramas to listen to, every one of our episodes in Season 2 had a promo for another show at the end of the episode, so if you haven’t been sticking around past the credits, you might want to consider doing that. This season, we had promos for: The Heart of Ether, Khora, Mnemosyne, Aurora Everlasting, The Weird, Patient 33, Dash, The Attic Monologues, Echobox, Gather Suspects, Micro-Cosmos, Lavender Evening Fog, Ritualistic, The Storage Papers, and Where the Stars Fell. ELIZABETH: And thanks so much for, um, each of those amazing shows for swapping with us. Being an indie program, we have to do what we can to help, help each other out. I think that that’s one great thing about the indie podcast community, and we definitely want to do our part in supporting our fellow creators. RAE: We’ve listened to all of these shows and can tell you from experience that they’re great, so. ELIZABETH: We’re four tired gays rapidly approaching our mid-thirties, so we’re going to have to go end our days with a delicious dinner and an early bedtime. RAE: (laughs) Bye, besties. ELIZABETH: Bye, besties! TYLER and ETHAN: Goodbye! ELIZABETH: Oh, Ethan, do you wanna do a fake outro for us? ETHAN: Thank you for joining us for tonight’s Season 2 Q&A. If you have more burning questions about The Night Post pod, please make sure you tune in for Season 3. Send a letter to someone who hasn’t listened to The Night Post yet, and ask them why.