Witness… The Farcical Beasts and Where to Find Them

I’ve never been a fantasy person. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the genre immensely, but I’ve never been one to engross myself in all those epic tomes telling tales about might-as-well-be medieval times with clear cut examples of good vs. evil and an assortment of mythical creatures from dragons to orcs. I was a big Potter-head, and technically, I guess I still am, though She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is a TERF piece of shit, which kind of spoils the whole thing, and the Fantastic Beasts series has been, oh, what’s the word, crappy. Although, Harry Potter isn’t exactly the kind of fantasy I’m talking about, even though it kind of fits the bill of such epics like The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire (maybe it’s more “kiddy” than those and that’s why? Some kind of unconscious bias at play there). Speaking of those two sagas, I’ve read all the Song books so far and watched Game of Thrones, and I, of course, saw the LotR films and treasure them greatly, but beyond those and a brief stroll into The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind is fantastic and I one day will read The Wise Man’s Fear), my fiction-intake hasn’t really ever officially reached these levels of geek.

And knowing myself, I’m really surprised it didn’t and still kind of hasn’t! I consider myself a proud geek— a dork, even!— and have always had the likes of Dungeons & Dragons in my peripheries. But I’ve never truly indulged. I think I’ve only had one D&D session, and that was mostly character-building and no real adventuring, and it was during playtime at an after school daycare thingy, which means it was probably hard to pay attention with all the other kids running around, being the little chaos agents that kids are. I remember wanting to take part in a game that was being held at Steve & Kate’s Camp one summer, but I wasn’t there the day they did their character creation, so I was forced to just watch the game being played on a tiny stage without much room for the players, let alone an audience. One kid was misbehaving during the game, so much so that the counselor who was acting as DM kicked him out of the party. But he didn’t replace him with anybody, despite the fact that I was standing right behind the troublemaker and was making sad puppy dog eyes the whole time they played. Boo.

I respect D&D, though. Immensely. The amount of creativity that goes into crafting an adventure astounds me. Not to mention, it’s a long form improv game! Quite possibly the longest of long form improv games! I know there’s nothing holding me back from getting into something like this now, but as of this writing, it hasn’t happened yet. So if y’all know anybody looking for a mage or cleric or something. . .

Anyways, if I’ve never considered myself a fantasy nerd, what provoked me to write a story like “The Noble Steed”? Well, because I like to take a stab at different genres for this podcast. Was that not obvious? We’ve had ghost stories, space disasters, superhero shit and romantic comedies. How was fantasy not going to be on my fucking radar? Who am I angry at here? Jeez, calm down. . .

I think what inspired “The Noble Steed” outright was just casually thinking about how every battle tends to start with some epic speech, something meant to hype up the army/armada/what-have-you to the point of not really giving a shit that they’re likely going to cease breathing in ten minutes time. It’s a weird motivational pick-me-up, but then again, I’ve never been in a situation where I was facing down a horde of mean looking dark elves or something, so maybe some words of encouragement would keep me from wetting myself, heel-turning and scampering off into my exile as a coward.

But then I started to think about the horses. Do they know what they’re riding into? Horses aren’t stupid; in fact, I think their more empathic than we are. They know what danger feels like, and I doubt they want anything to do with it. But then they seemingly don’t have a choice because some armored dingbat is on their back, whipping the reins on their backside, doing his darndest to make King Daddy proud, all at the horse’s expense. Like, that doesn’t seem fair. So what if the horse decided, nah, fuck this, and galloped off away from the violence. And what if that horse could talk!

Before writing the script, I knew I needed to have some idea of what this fantasy country would look like. I could have gone into it just making shit up as I went along, sure, and that’s what I do most of the time with these scripts. But I felt it would be easier to have some sense of the geography of the place that would eventually be called Gwantar, just so I could have an idea of where people could go and what they would talk about.

The map of Gwantar.

It’s in tiny handwriting, but check out the names of all the places. Some are mentioned in the episode and some aren’t, but it was a ton fun coming up with them all.

Lo and behold, it was a good choice to make. It honestly didn’t take much prep work. I literally just drew a random shape and began “pinning” important landmarks all across the space, giving them irreverent names and whatnot. And as I did so, lore began to take shape. I began to imagine who this Queen Kelsey was and why she was on an island “Refuge” that bore her name. I started to imagine that animals in our world would be different in this one, more dangerous, even, like newts and walruses (although, yes, walruses are dangerous in our world, too, but you know what I mean). The whole world began to flesh itself out, which not only helped to provide history, but also backstory and stakes for the characters, primarily Queen Fayora and Lord Devock. They say it helps to create a map to lead you in the proper direction when writing a story. Well, sometimes you gotta take that literally!

And so, writing went smoothly. Fun fact: I’ve been holding onto the name “Jadaida” as a character name since I was probably nine, and now I’ve finally gotten to use it. Woo!

Casting was a fun yet difficult process. I wrote the rolls of Spark and Devock with Kalia Armbruster and Scott Meyer in mind, respectively. Part of me even considered making this another episode featuring The Recchia, just like S1’s “The King of Sheep,” only this time Kalia would be a part of it (she was a late edition to the team after I had already completed the script). But there were also so many other improvisers that I thought would be good fits for some of the roles. Not only that, but a couple of the named speaking parts had very little airtime, so I felt kind of bad about potentially casting great talents in bit parts, even if I did give them trolls and citizens to voice as well. But I have a sort of rule for this series: if someone is cast in a small role for one episode, I will give them a bigger part in a future episode. I hope that’s a fair trade off.

In any case, regardless of role size or whatever, everyone killed it during the recording session. I was glad we were able to pull it off, as this was an globetrotting affair, with Michael Williams in New York (or Atlanta? I forget where he was, but either, way, East Coast), Josh Mahoney in London and Jo Olivera in Australia. Time may be a flat circle, but that doesn’t mean it’s a cinch to line up so it works for everyone. (I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand the whole “time is a flat circle” thing and doubt I’m using it in the right context, but whatever, Rustin Cohle was drunk when he gave that speech).

Clockwise from top left: Scott Meyer (Lord Devock), me, Julia Szatar (Queen Fayora), Kalia Armbruster (Spark), Jo Olivera (High Priestess Mildrine), Michael Williams (Grendeel), Josh Mahoney (Prince Jadaida).

Yes, I’m wearing a Tyrion Lannister shirt.

This was also a first for WiYW…, as the first ever IN PERSON recording took place. Kendall Detweiler, who plays Sister Whistle, was unfortunately unable to attend the Zoom recording session; she had construction going on outside her apartment and couldn’t make it to the studio Scott has set up in his apartment in time. So instead, she and I met up at Endgames Training Center South in the Mission District of San Francisco an hour or so before I had to teach a class there. The rooms there are not the most ideal when it comes to recording audio; they’re echoey and the building is on Mission Street, so a lot of hustle and bustle can be heard, even from the back of the building. So to make do, I placed my Macbook on a chair and surrounded it with thick, black, velvet curtains that were hung up in the room to cover the windows for privacy. For the most part, I think it worked. I’ve noticed I’ve regrettably become more perfectionist when it comes to audio quality, even though I know not everyone has the equipment or circumstances on hand. I need to keep reminding myself that audio quality isn’t as important as story and entertainment quality. I want this to be a professional-sounding podcast, but remember, I’m doing this with no budget, so considering all that, I think it sounds pretty damn good.

Anyway, this was another sound effect heavy episode, which is always a lot of fun for me. Creating the opening battle sequence, finding the appropriate howls for the newts, and, my favorite, having Sister Whistle’s “sand curtain” actually sound like a curtain were especially fun to create. Honestly, the whole shebang was a blast, from inception to final product. I’m supremely proud of every part of this episode, so much so that, maybe, one day, we might return to Gwantar in the future. . . A boy can dream, or. . . fantasize. . . I’ll see myself out.

—Andy

This was during the pickups when Scott delivered Devock’s version of reciting the alphabet backwards.

No, Michael is not asleep.