#jonny and alex only do the story parts on guest written episode

[topleftfoodchest]

tmp fans REALLY need to start reading who is writing the episodes because I'm sick of seeing "oh silly Jonny Sims not being able to name people" or "hah classic Alexander j newall horror" when it is very clearly in the episode description or in the transcript that its a guest writer 😭

[jonnywaistcoat]

Hi Jonny! Re: your latest post, did you mean that guest writers are also involved with the metaplot portions (with Alice and Sam ans Gwen and the others), or just the case file/"statement" parts? Inquiring minds would like to know. Really enjoying Protocol so far!

So, the detailed answer to this is very complicated, as it's all about parallel production pipelines and varies quite a lot between guest writers, as they all had different schedules/availability. We'll probably dive into it more on a Q&A at some point.

Broadly speaking, the shape and story of the overall metaplot is all me and Alex. We'd have loved to get some of the guest writers involved for a bit more of a writers room feel, but time and logistics simply didn't allow for it. Once we'd sculpted the seasons, we sent out the episode briefs to the guest writers, along with a prompt for a possible case. Some of them used the prompts, others created the whole thing themselves. A few did a pass at the dialogue scenes, but most of these ended up being heavily redone by me and Alex when we were going through and weaving the story together and making the characterisation consistent (it was all being written pretty much simultaneously, so when drafting the guest writers really only had the pilot to go on in terms of writing the cast). Then there were a couple rounds of feedback/edits for the cases, and me and Alex adding in bits to tie the case into the metaplot a bit more and make the tone a bit more cohesive.

Like I say, it varied heavily based on the guest writer (and which of myself or Alex had the first edit pass on an episode), but if you're trying to guess how likely any given event/line was to be written by someone specific, the chances are generally something like

Overall story: 50% Jonny, 50% Alex

"Written by Jonny" episode: 80% Jonny, 20% Alex

"Written by Alex"episode: 80% Alex, 20% Jonny

Guest writer episode (case): 80% Guest, 10% Alex, 10% Jonny

Guest writer episode (scenes): 20% Guest, 40% Alex, 40% Jonny

To be clear, these numbers are purely illustrative, but they give you a rough idea of at least how it seemed from my end. April's been doing a fantastic job of organising the production, so apologies to her if I'm talking fully out my ass :p

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 23 Thoughts: Not Not NotThem

After quite the hiatus we're back with another guest writer. This time it's Harlan Guthrie of Malevolent fame. A show I likely won't ever get around to listening to but have heard nothing but good things about. So everyone go check it out if you liked this. This one is very obviously from a guest writer too. Its style and contents are pretty distinct from TMA. Which is not a bad thing by any means and it's a really great episode overall.

Spoilers for episode 23 below the cut.

There isn't a huge amount to dig into in the opening scene. I do like that the paperwork is a continuing process and it's pretty likely there will be some sort of pay of too it. Lena doesn't seem to be lying in this scene either. She really does seem to think that it's a prank. So assuming it's not a prank she doesn't seem to have as tight a grip on the office as she thinks she does. It's also interesting how engrossed it makes Sam but that might just be a character quirk rather than anything greater.

I really liked this incident but, honestly, I really don't have a load to say on this incident. I thought it was a really well written incident but quite explicit as incidents go and not a huge amount to dig into for larger puzzle pieces. It's also always tricky to know what's meaningful to the larger story when there is a guest writer. Jonny and Alex do give input but it's not like we know what that input is. Either way there is only two things I can think to mention here for it. The first is the time discrepancy in the post dates. The penultimate post comes a months after the final post. Which might not really mean much of anything to be honest. This is a doppelganger incident and those have typically had time discrepancies in them but the nature of this one doesn't lead to an easy explanation of that. So it might mean something, or it might be a mistake. I don't think it's a particularly important detail as of yet in either case.

The other bit in the mention of copper. Copper is a planetary metal, along with things like silver and mercury that have recently appeared, but the symbolic nature of those is a tricky subject to get into. Alchemy as a subject is mixed up with a lot of newer takes on things and so any its not always wise to assign too much in the way of importance to that. But that being said copper is the metal of Venus, both the planet and the god. Venus/Aphrodite obviously have some strong connection to this sort of incident. However part of the reason for copper being associated with Venus is copper's role as a metal to make mirrors from. That's a more compelling angle to this one for me. Alesis did pretty literally make their mirror double here.

Newman is a very on the nose name here too.

Sam and Celia's Institute sleuthing has not a whole lot of interest for me either if I'm honest. Basira and Helen are Basira and Helen, not much to say there until we meet them. The version of John and Martin Sam identified is weird though. It's weird in that it doesn't actually make any sense. He said they were "close to the right age" but that doesn't really track. It either means they were born at the right time, or died at the right time. But in either scenario it's sort of just nonsense. If they were born at the right time they died around 10. That's obviously possible but it raises a lot of questions about why Celia would be looking into some 10 year olds. If they died at the right age then they're offset by about 20 years which also doesn't track with anything else we've seen. The only other scenario is that she's not looking for TMP's John and Martin but rather TMA's as that could account for a time discrepancy but if that's the case neither of those ages are the right age. So all of that is probably a red herring.

Gwen and Alice opening up to each other is really nice to see too. Even though they do both hate each other outside of Sam and Alice they're the characters with the most history and it's great to see that having some weight. There isn't anything new here from our perspective, other than [Error] having too many eyes but that's not a big shock, but it's nice that the characters are actually talking about this stuff. It did seem pretty likely that they'd all be having their own insular adventures around the mid-season point but having them all come together like this is a nice thing to see.

I’ve not been “arsey”- bzzt

10/10

Great ep all around.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 3536 seems pretty normal to me on this one. The more data I get the less I feel like anything comes up that needs explaining in my theory. Beyond the initial shift from my conceptions of these groups as fears to broader thematic elements I think this is proving to be pretty rock solid now. I'll keep this section around but I do think there will be not much of interest in these at this point.

CAT# Theory: 13 is great for my "It's not People/Places/Objects" essay. There wasn't an object in this one. Coral are animals and so count as people, the host is person, the Not Not NotThem also a person. If you say that animals count as objects it creates large problems in the theory. I really should have a sit down to puzzle this one out.

R# Theory: BC is interesting because initially I thought that was a bit low as the most similar case to this format was RedCanary's and that's AB. But that also had a lot more interaction and photos included which would bump it up for my theory there. So this one does actually check out.

Header talk: Transformation (Dysmorphic) -/- Doppleganger (Infection) is very peculiar. Daria's incident has a very similar header but Dysmorphic was the crosslink and Full was the subsection. Hard to know if it means anything but it's interesting in some sense of the word.