String

References

• Monty Python’s Flying Circus
  • String sketch
• Hansel and Gretel
• Evil Matriarch
• Wonder Woman
  • Lasso of Truth
• Red Thread of Fate
• Moirai
• Jay and Silent Bob
• Timer
• Scrubs
• Boy Meets World
• Psych
• Buyer’s Remorse
• Ryan Reynolds
• Aristotle
• Queen Elizabeth I
• William Shakespeare
• Adolf Hitler
• Bitcoin
• Non-fungible Token
• Bored Ape
• Circumcision Intactivism
• Missed Connections
• When Harry Met Sally…

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Can you get two strings? I mean, 17% of people don’t get any string, but what happens if you get two? And that asshole, he’s got like a whole tapestry coming off of his pinky.

[Thomas]
It should be vanishingly rare, though.

[Shep]
He’s super rich.

[Emily]
It’s Ryan Reynolds. Come on.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and today on the show, we’re coming up with a movie about string. Tied to my apron strings are, as usual, Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And we apologize in advance. I’m getting over a cold, and it’s been, like a month since we’ve recorded. Do we remember how to do this?

[Shep]
I definitely do not.

[Emily]
I don’t.

[Shep]
I was hoping there wouldn’t be a quiz.

[Emily]
I barely know how to do it week to week.

[Thomas]
Right before the break in our recording, I had come up with a new setup for all of my gear. And so tonight, when I went to set everything up, I was like, “How did I do this?” But I remembered, so here we are. Also in trying to come up with pitch ideas for string, the first thing that I thought of was Monty Python’s string sketch, where a character inherits 122,000 miles of string, but due to bad planning, it’s in three-inch lengths, so it’s not very useful. So in the sketch, he’s trying to hire an ad agency to help him get rid of the string. And the ad man keeps coming up with all these wild ideas. And really, the whole sketch kind of reminded me of how our show works, actually.

[Shep]
Yeah, cause he would say, “Not that,” and then the pitch man would say the exact opposite. “It’s waterproof.” “It’s water resistant.” “It’s water absorbent.”

[Thomas]
“It’s super absorbent strength.”

[Shep]
“Away with floods.”

[Thomas]
“You just said it was waterproof.” All right, well, I will pitch first this week. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. And my pitch, I have one. A child comes across a piece of string tied around a tree while playing in the woods. The string leads off into the forest so far that the other end isn’t visible. The child follows the string, which is one long, unbroken piece. Where does it lead? How did it get there?

[Shep]
It leads to a witch’s cottage. And the witch is currently fishing for children who can’t fight their innate curiosity. Works every time.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t have to be a child. I suppose it could be a cat.

[Emily]
I was just thinking that.

[Thomas]
We could do an animated thing, and there’s, like, a humanoid cat that’s “OOH string.”

[Shep]
Sort of stereotypical, but okay.

[Thomas]
So is a child wandering into a witch’s house in the woods.

[Shep]
I mean, don’t mess with the classics.

[Thomas]
They’re time tested, tried and true.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
They stuck around for a reason. She’s probably a mother-in-law. Get all the tropes in there. That’s my idea for this week. Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
A strong, charismatic woman carries with her a golden string imbued with the power to compel men to only tell the truth. My real pitch is you tie a string around your finger to remember something. One morning, a young woman wakes up to find a string tied to her left ring finger, only she doesn’t remember putting it there. As she goes about her day, she halfheartedly tries to figure out why it’s there. Finally, exacerbated by her own forgetfulness, she tries to remove it, but it won’t untie or budge. There’s a knock at the door and a driver is standing on her front step announcing her limo is there to take her to her wedding. That’s what I got.

[Shep]
Does she know that she’s getting married?

[Emily]
She does not. That’s why the string was tied to her left ring finger.

[Shep]
I did not get that detail.

[Emily]
I put in the work and nothing.

[Thomas]
Yeah, Shep you’re usually pretty good at foreshadowing, too, so.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yup. It’s almost like I’m out of practice.

[Emily]
That’s what I got. How about you, Shep?

[Shep]
All right, so everyone knows about the red string of fate, right?

[Thomas]
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

[Emily]
Are we talking about like the Fates and they cut the string like in Hercules?

[Shep]
No, no. The red string of fate that ties people together. Ties the fates of people together, usually tied to their pinkies.

[Thomas]
I haven’t heard about this.

[Shep]
Comes up a lot in East Asian media. There’ll be strings references or actual strings tying pinkies together. So the red string of fate is like that’s your destined person. And it sometimes goes through time. Sometimes the two people aren’t in the same time even though they have this string of fate, sometimes intangible, metaphysical string, connecting them. So here’s the pitch. In the future, science has advanced to the point where one’s string of fate can be manipulated. Now, you can’t change your fated partner, but you can sever your string of fate, if you do it while it’s still white before it turns red. Turns red when you meet your fated partner. So your string will manifest and it’ll be white for a while. You’ll feel it tug sometimes when your fated partner is somewhere nearby. And you can follow that tug or not. But if you sever it, it means you will never find your soulmate. But your severed string will now connect to your future self. So now imagine it turns blue. It’s indicating that you’re connected to your future self rather than someone else. So since the strings of fate can go through time, you can now send messages back to your previous self about regrets or ask questions of your future self. So a man’s string of fate begins to manifest and he has to choose which path to take. And he starts to feel the pull of that thread, his soulmate being nearby. So he chooses to sever it before he accidentally meets them. And he does so, he severs it. And the first message from his future self is “You shouldn’t have severed it.”

[Thomas]
Oof.

[Emily]
That’s sad.

[Shep]
Well, that’s the basic pitch. It doesn’t have to be exactly like that. You could make this a romance. You could make it a rom-com, you could make it… You could have a string of fate that manifests, and it’s two straight guys and it’s like “But neither of us are interested in the other in that way.”

[Emily]
Not sexually, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be soulmates.

[Shep]
Yeah, heterosexual lifemates. Jay & Bob.

[Emily]
They fulfill each other.

[Thomas]
What’s that rom-com? It’s sort of similar to this, where you get some sort of thing implanted. There’s like a timer or something and then it counts down to when you’re going to meet your soulmate or something like that. God, I saw this years ago. I don’t remember. I’ll have to look it up. But anyway, it reminded me of that where there was some sort of external force that knows when you’ve met your soulmate or when you are going to.

[Shep]
Timer.

[Thomas]
That sounds like it.

[Shep]
I think I remember this. I don’t know if I’ve seen this. You can get the timer implanted and if it just stays blank, it means that your soulmate doesn’t have a timer.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Shep]
You need to both have it.

[Thomas]
Well, which of these pitches do we like the sound of.

[Emily]
I’m really intrigued by the soulmate one, but that one’s going to be so hard. There’s so many different directions you can go.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Is it heartbreaking? Is it bittersweet? Are we saying that soulmates are bunk and you can be your own soulmate, or-

[Thomas]
One of those yes.

[Shep]
Yup. Or something else.

[Thomas]
Or something completely different. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, because I feel like you get that nice existential question of: can you be complete without your other half?

[Shep]
Yeah. What about people that don’t sever their string and meet their soulmates, or their supposed soulmate, but for some reason don’t get along with them and don’t marry them and don’t get in a relationship with them, or try, but it doesn’t work out, and they end up with someone else who’s not their supposed fated partner, and they’re much happier. And now they can’t sever their string because they’ve already met their supposed soulmate, so they don’t have the opportunity to speak with their future self or their past self.

[Thomas]
How does the string manifest?

[Shep]
Just sort of starts to appear. It’s intangible, right, like, you can feel it and you can kind of see it, but it’s transparent.

[Thomas]
Can other people see my string or can only I see my string?

[Shep]
That’s a good question. It could go either way.

[Emily]
I think it would be only you can see your string.

[Thomas]
You and your soulmate can see each other’s, presumably.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it’s just the one string.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because they connect, but it’s not visible all the time. So only when they’re close by or-

[Thomas]
Sure. Maybe the closer they are, the more visible it appears to be. It’s sort of faint and disappears quickly off of your finger. But then if they’re closer, like we said, it appears to be less faint and you can see it extending out even farther.

[Shep]
So if you can send messages down the string, I’m sure you guys have also experienced when you’re friends with someone long enough, you can be at a party, whatever, and someone will say something, and you’ll look at each other and think of the same joke and laugh even though you didn’t say anything.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s kind of that kind of thing where you’re sending that message down the string.

[Thomas]
It’s like pseudotelepathic.

[She]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Shep]
So imagine the people that have the fated string but don’t become partners, but maybe remain friends.

[Thomas]
Oh, interesting.

[Shep]
How awkward it is for the guy’s girlfriend who doesn’t get his jokes. Because they’ll be hanging out or whatever, and he and his supposed fated partner will laugh at some secret in-joke. It’s got to be very frustrating for her.

[Emily]
It’s every bromance. It’s Turk and J.D.. It’s Shawn and Cory.

[Shep]
You know that’s right.

[Emily]
I was thinking, what about the person who is born without a string?

[Shep]
You don’t get it when you’re born. It manifests later in life.

[Thomas]
So the person who never gets their string.

[Shep]
Oh, sure. 17% of people never get their string.

[Thomas]
This feels like one of those movies where we’re focusing on three or four different people-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And sort of how their lives interconnect via the strings or lack of strings.

[Shep]
Interconnect via the strings.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I see what you’re doing there.

[Thomas]
So we’ve got the person who doesn’t have a string but wants one.

[Emily]
The person who severs their string and immediately regrets it.

[Thomas]
Right. The two guys who are just really good friends, and of course, the girlfriend of the one who’s frustrated by that.

[Shep]
So it’s more of an ensemble thing, not like a rom-com with two main characters.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So she’s dating him and he and his best friend, they’re their soulmates. She has a string-

[Shep]
Does she?

[Emily]
Or is she one of the 17% that doesn’t because then yeah, okay.

[Thomas]
Or has she severed hers? Maybe they were dating and she severed hers as, like, an act of commitment.

[Emily]
And his has been read since he was seven. Because that’s what he met that dude.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, maybe that’s a good point, actually. Like they’re best friends from childhood, and they’re both clearly heterosexual. They have no attraction sexually or physically to each other. They just get along ridiculously well. And so she’s not threatened by him from a relationship standpoint, and so she’s very happy with him in their relationship. And so she says, “Well, I’m going to sever my strings so that we’re together.”

[Emily]
And then she gets the message that says “You shouldn’t have severed it.”

[Shep]
Or she gets a message that it’s fine. Like, if she doesn’t get a message that it’s a regret, then she’ll have an idea that it works out. Now that I’m thinking about it, wouldn’t you always sever it? Because then you would know whether a relationship is going to work out or not. Because whether you get that message of regret or not.

[Emily]
Okay, but if you sever it and then you get the message of regret, what then? Now you live with this giant regret for the rest of your life of what could have been.

[Shep]
Well, that’s the risk.

[Emily]
I suppose that’s the metaphorical risk of partnering for life with one person.

[Thomas]
Is it too story-breaking to be able to send messages back in time? Why wouldn’t I just sever it and become the richest person in the world?

[Shep]
How are you going to become the richest person in the world?

[Thomas]
Send messages back to myself.

[Shep]
How clear can the message be?

[Thomas]
If it’s clear enough to be a message that says “You shouldn’t have severed it,” or is that just coming across as a vague feeling of unease? I guess that’s my question. Like, how accurate?

[Shep]
I’d say you’re not getting, like, specific lotto numbers.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
It’s more of a feeling.

[Thomas]
Not even just to feel like a certainty.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“I’m certain I have made the wrong choice.” But could you be certain? I feel like if it were me just knowing how my brain works, I would sever it and there would be that feeling of, “Oh God, I’ve made the wrong choice.” But is that me from the future telling me that, or is that just buyer’s remorse?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Thomas in the present, being all panicky like, “Oh, God, what if I’ve made the wrong choice?”

[Shep]
These are all great things, great conversations that people, characters could have in the movie about this. You could have an older woman talking to the girlfriend of the guy that still has his red string, but not to her, talking about she severed her string and it said that she would regret staying with the guy that she was with, but she stayed with him anyway, and it worked out later, eventually. And so she’s like, “You don’t know when that regret is coming in because you’re connected to all your future selves and they’re not all going to agree.”

[Thomas]
Sure. Relationships change and evolve over time. I could absolutely see a period of strife in their relationship that is later mended.

[Shep]
Yeah. So I guess the string doesn’t help at all. It gives you nothing.

[Emily]
I like the idea of the older woman and having severed it, but also talking about how in her generation that wasn’t… she was one of the first to do it or something. Like you just didn’t do that.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Men did occasionally, but women would never do that.

[Shep]
Right. But she is a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What happens to your string when your partner dies?

[Emily]
Good question. Does it just fade?

[Shep]
I don’t know.

[Emily]
It would just turn black-

[Shep]
Very sad.

[Thomas]
Or just disappears? I mean, imagine you wake up one day and you’ve got the string, and it turns red, and you’re in a crowd. You don’t know who it is. You just know it’s someone here. And then you’re all excited, like, “Oh, boy, I’ve met my person somewhere. I know they’re nearby.” And then all of a sudden your string is gone one day and you’re just like, “Oh, shit.”

[Emily]
And you know, they couldn’t have severed it because it had turned red.

[Thomas]
Right! That would be crushing.

[Emily]
I was thinking, what about you check the string every chance you get. Every time there’s a tug or whatever, you can see it. You’re hoping this will be the time it turns red. And then it just turns blue and you get a message that says “It’ll be okay.”

[Shep]
It turns blue before you sever it.

[Emily]
No, the other person severed it.

[Shep and Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
I didn’t think about that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You’re also making a choice for someone- Good thinking, Emily.

[Thomas]
Holy hell.

[Emily]
Yes. You have a person who’s just like, “I have my string, when it turns red, I’m going to have this happy, like, this is going to be great.” And then their string turns blue.

[Shep]
Oh. Maybe that’s what happened to the older woman. Because, like you said, guys-

[Emily]
Guys could do it.

[Shep]
Would go and sever their strings, and so that happened to her. She didn’t get a choice.

[Emily]
And she got the message. “It’ll be fine.”

[Shep]
This is turning out a lot deeper than I thought it would be.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And the more it’s like, what happens if you get two strings? Can you get two strings? I mean, 17% of people don’t get any string, but what happens if you get two? And that asshole, he’s got like a whole tapestry coming off of his pinky.

[Thomas]
It should be vanishingly rare, though.

[Shep]
He’s super rich.

[Emily]
It’s Ryan Reynolds. Come on. Can you follow your string?

[Shep]
Yeah, you get kind of an idea of where it’s pointing, but you don’t know how far it goes. So don’t wander into traffic and then get hit.

[Emily]
I like the idea of it turning red. Like you’re on a subway or something, in a subway car or very crowded, packed subway car. So you’re in the proximity you need to be for it to turn red. And then the person goes, but it’s still red. And you’re like, “Wait.”

[Thomas]
They were out on the platform.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
I imagine a scene where the woman whose string turned blue against her will is walking down the street and there are two people whose strings turn red and they meet each other right in front of her.

[Emily]
Like, right after her string turns blue.

[Thomas]
You know, that happens all the time.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s like, “Just get a room.”

[Thomas]
And they’re so excited to have found each other.

[Shep]
They’re trying to introduce themselves to each other, but they don’t speak the same language.

[Emily]
She bumps into his produce cart in downtown Rome.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Imagine being on vacation.

[Shep]
Right. So who is our main character? Who are we following?

[Thomas]
Well, that’s why I imagined it would be like three different characters and we sort of follow their stories intermittently.

[Shep]
I think that we should follow the person that works at the clinic where they have the strings severed because they’ll have lots of stories about the people that come in. Not everyone’s coming in to get their string severed. Some of them are coming in just to ask questions, or some of them are coming in for whatever. I don’t know. What string ailments could there be?

[Thomas]
Is this a character who works at the string center, but the framing for the story is them talking to their psychiatrist who specializes in string related-

[Emily]
Trauma.

[Thomas]
Issues and trauma and whatnot?

[Shep]
I have no idea.

[Thomas]
I mean, is this like a thinly veiled abortion thing? If we go down that direction, it’s a person who works at the String Severing Clinic and talking about how difficult the job is. And it’s such an emotional decision for people to make.

[Shep]
It’s got a lot less funny.

[Emily]
Yeah. Deep allegory, I mean-

[Thomas]
There would be people who would be morally opposed to string severing.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because God gave you that string.

[Thomas]
It’s not your decision to make.

[Shep]
What about religious people whose string is connected to atheists?

[Thomas]
Oh, man.

[Shep]
Adam and Eve are the first to cut their string. That’s how they left the garden.

[Thomas]
That goddamn snake.

[Shep]
Convinced Eve to cut the string.

[Thomas]
Okay, I don’t know why I’m actually bothering to think about the logic of this story. Their string was red, obviously, because it’s the two of them and that’s it.

[Emily]
Yeah. They have no other choice.

[Thomas]
And so the snake convinces Eve to cut the string, which is still a possibility at this point in time. And so God expels them from the Garden of Eden and makes it so that once your strings are red, they can’t be cut.

[Shep]
Yes, that’s great. I like it like this because it implies that the strange thing has always been part of the world. It’s not a new thing. It has a long and storied history. There could be historical references to who so and so’s string was connected to. Aristotle’s string connected to his friend. “And they’re just good buddies.” That’s what historians say.

[Emily]
Queen Elizabeth’s string was connected to Shakespeare’s or whatever.

[Thomas]
Or people say shit like that. They’re like, “Oh, well…” “Yeah, you and 1000 other people make that same claim with no way to check.” “Hitler severed his string. That’s all I’m saying. Look what happened.”

[Emily]
“They didn’t even have the technology back then. It was impossible.”

[Shep]
Yeah, it needs computers.

[Emily]
It would be a fun way to explain a lot of European aristocracy and how those marriage deals were made and why it wasn’t necessarily just about power structure, but their strings were connected, so they had to be married.

[Shep]
See, that’s what they kept saying.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s what the history books say. But you really look into it, their strings didn’t connect. They claimed that it connected.

[Thomas]
Right. Because only the two people whose string it is can see it.

[Emily and Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So they just have to be like, “Yeah, we’ve got a matching string. Oh, I can feel her tugging. Yeah.” How long has humanity been able to sever the strings?

[Emily]
Two generations.

[Shep]
Yeah, fairly recent.

[Thomas]
So it’s like kind of like World War II-ish, postwar.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. It was a postwar development.

[Shep]
Invented by the Nazis because they were severing everyone’s string. So it’s also kind of got that history.

[Thomas]
Right. So it was invented in the 30s or 40s, around that period of time. Had this really negative connotation. So immediately after the war, there was strong string intactivism.

[Shep]
That’s glorious.

[Thomas]
And then more modern sensibilities are like, “Well, yeah, the Nazis used it in a really shit way, but they were forcing that on other people. And-“

[Shep]
Are we going to be “yay, Nazis” in this?

[Thomas]
No no no.

[Shep]
Okay. Just making sure.

[Thomas]
But now we have a better understanding. Which actually I like that argument because then it kind of goes back to the whole you’re not making this decision alone, you’re forcing this on somebody else who may not want that.

[Emily]
Yeah. I like the idea of that being a preaching moment from others that are like, “Remember when you decide to cut your string, you’re cutting someone else’s too. You’re affecting their life as well as yours.”

[Thomas]
But then you have those people who their string was cut against their will.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
They didn’t decide to have that happen. But their lives turned out really good. They had really good, strong feelings from the future about investing in bitcoin or I don’t know, whatever.

[Shep]
Not bitcoin. We’re not pro bit… Bitcoin wasn’t invented in this alternate timeline.

[Thomas]
Okay. But you know what I mean.

[Emily]
NFTs obviously.

[Thomas]
Right. They got the first Bored Ape, and they all took off from there. They got out before the market dropped. Something like that. Right?

[Emily]
They all have these positive experiences. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Some of them, yeah.

[Emily]
Or there’s enough positive experiences to-

[Thomas]
That you couldn’t definitively say this is objectively a bad thing to do.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
There are plenty of people who say, “I’m glad this happened. It worked out really well for me. I met a really great person. My life is really good.”

[Emily]
“I didn’t live my life based off of this string and where it could take me.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“I made my own decisions. I was empowered on my own.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
People who feel that they had more free will as a result of this decision not being part of their free will, right?

[Shep]
I would say there are people that would argue that the strings connect to random people and you’re not really fated for that person.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s just people feel like they are, so they make it work even when people are incompatible.

[Thomas]
Because we don’t know why the strings exist, where they came from. This is an explanation that man has created.

[Shep]
Yeah. Based on no evidence.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And there’s no way to say that because my string was cut before I made the choice that my bad decisions and my poor outcome of life was because of that.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because look at my grandparents. Their strings were red and they stayed together and they were miserable.

[Shep]
Because that’s what you did in their generation. You didn’t cut your string and you stayed with whoever you were connected to.

[Thomas]
Oh, man. Red string divorces…

[Shep]
That’s rough because you can’t cut that string. So you’re always going to be getting those vague feelings from your ex-partner when they think of a joke or when they’re happy.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Emily]
Or when they’re miserable or sad.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I was going to say, does it work the other way? Like, if someone’s super depressed, is that going to drain you as well?

[Emily]
I like the idea of just any strong emotion comes across.

[Thomas]
Wow. Well, I think we’ve got a really solid start here, some amazing ideas. So let’s take a break, and when we come back from that break, focus a little bit more on the actual story that we’re trying to come up with.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. We talked a little bit before about having a whole bunch of different characters. I think it would be good to figure out who it is we’re following. I was thinking during the break, I like the idea of maybe following a family because there’s a good excuse for all of them to be together and interacting and you would get some nice cross generational stories and whatnot.

[Shep]
I think we should pick one or two characters to be our main characters. So is our main character a man or a woman?

[Thomas]
Well, it could be a two hander again, where we’ve got a male lead and a female lead, and they’re sort of equally important characters.

[Shep]
Okay. So you could hang family characters off of these characters. So you have the male who is considering severing his string, which is recently manifesting, and you have the woman who works at the clinic that he’s going to, and she’s the other main character. Her string was severed, but not by her. But she comes from a string oriented family. Her parents are fated partners, her siblings have fated partners. She’s the only one in her family that has a severed string. Because she was raised as a string… what term did you use?

[Thomas]
‘Intactivist’.

[Shep]
String intactivist. String intactivist family. And so her mom accuses her of having her string severed because she’s the only one who doesn’t have it. And she’s like, “No, sometimes someone else will sever their string.” But she grew up in, let’s say, the south, and people down there don’t sever strings. So who was her fated partner that had their string severed? Wasn’t anyone of their neighbors. So you have her string intactivist family, her siblings, her parents. You have the male lead who’s considering having his string severed. We don’t have names for any of these characters yet.

[Emily]
It’s a really dumb name, but I’m going to throw it out there. Pearl.

[Shep]
Why is that a dumb name?

[Emily and Thomas]
String of pearls.

[Shep]
That’s not dumb.

[Emily]
Very old fashioned.

[Thomas]
All the women in the family are named Pearl. It’s a familial name.

[Shep]
Right. She goes by her middle name, it turns out her actual first name is Pearl.

[Thomas]
Yeah. She’s part of a string of Pearls.

[Shep]
Yes. That’s what you’re going for?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because it’s a name handed down.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Her mother was Pearl.

[Thomas]
You never explain that. You just let people go “Heh.” What about twins who were born already connected?

[Shep]
They’re connected to each other?

[Thomas]
Yeah, they are perfectly matched for each other. They have that twin connection.

[Shep]
If people are thinking that strings are romantic attachments predominantly, then having siblings that are attached to each other is going to have endless accusations.

[Thomas]
What if it’s only identical twins? It’s never fraternal twins. There’s not a known case of fraternal twins being connected. And not all identical twins are connected, but like, it’s a 50/50, maybe.

[Emily]
You just have this, like, series of twins living together being weird.

[Thomas]
So normal reality then. Yeah.

[Shep]
So not only are they siblings, but they’re the same gender.

[Emily]
Right, if they’re identical.

[Shep]
If they’re identical, they have to be, which I thought was another rare case. So it’s a double rare case.

[Thomas]
Sure. But because they’re twins, it’s like they’re the outliers on the graph. Everyone sort of discounts, like, “Well…”

[Shep]
“It doesn’t count when they’re twins.”

[Thomas]
Twins are weird. It’s a strange case.

[Shep]
That’s why when people meet those two guys that are matched, they’re like, “Oh, are you guys twins?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Because you don’t look the same.”

[Thomas]
That’s good. I like that.

[Emily]
I also thought her bringing up that hers was severed not by her choice, and being from a string intactivist family, she would be devastated at first, traumatized even, when the string is severed. And talk about how she struggled to get over that and what it meant in her family, rejection and all that stuff. And then he kind of, like, starts to think about-

[Shep]
He starts second guessing his decision.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s like, “I’m not making this decision just for me, but I can’t meet my other person and ask their opinion. Because once we meet-“

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. You literally can’t meet the other person and ask their opinion in any way because then it would turn red and you’d be stuck.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
You wouldn’t get a choice.

[Emily]
You either meet the person and now you’re stuck with them in some way forever, or you sever it and risk traumatizing them.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Or not.

[Shep]
Or not. Maybe they like-

[Emily]
Maybe she brings up, “If it hadn’t been for my family, it might not have been that big a deal. I probably would have been like, oh, that’s weird, and move on with my day.”

[Shep]
Oh, so if this isn’t an allegory for abortion, but it’s an allegory for circumcision-

[Thomas]
That makes the whole intactivist thing, that takes it to a whole other level because that’s actually a thing.

[Shep]
Yes. So for circumcision in America, everybody gets circumcised.

[Thomas]
More or less.

[Shep]
It’s just the thing. And it’s becoming less now, but for a while that’s just what you did. So we can’t have that, because if this is set in America, you can’t have everybody getting their string severed. But let’s say in France, everybody gets their string severed. It’s just what you do when it starts to manifest. You go in and you get it severed. And you lead your life and you’re happy and you’re not tied down to anything. You make your own choices. They’re very pro freedom in France.

[Emily]
And then in Spain, you have to live with your person and you have no choice.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It is, that’s your person.

[Thomas]
I like the idea that we’re following Pearl, that it’s Pearl’s story, and maybe we’re hearing about her life from the time around the time when she was maybe a teenager or something, early 20s, her string got severed against her will, and sort of seeing her life over the years. But the way that we’re getting that view into her life is she is talking to a guy she’s met at a party or at the clinic or something along those lines. And so he is the audience surrogate for her story.

[Shep]
I figure he’s coming in for pre severing counseling.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because you can’t just go- I mean, you can, but-

[Thomas]
State mandated. You have to watch a video and talk to a person. You got to wait.

[Emily]
“It’s highly recommended you go through this therapy process before severing your string, because we’ve had too many lawsuits of people regretting it.”

[Shep]
It’s permanent. It’s permanent immediately.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So, yeah, be extra absolutely sure that you want it done before you do it. It’s not like a tattoo that you can get removed later. There’s no retying the string. That’s not a thing. So I didn’t imagine that it was just Pearl. I figured that it was a two hander. And the main other guy is one of the guys that comes into the clinic. But like you said at that time, he is the audience surrogate. And so you have Pearl’s stories about her experiences.

[Thomas]
And working in the clinic, she’s going to have more string related stories than the average person.

[Emily]
A lot of last minute ditches. They were certain, they went through all the training, they screened for all the positives.

[Thomas]
Is this sort of a series of vignettes? Are we just sort of peeking into how this world works? Or is there an overarching goal or desire that one of our characters has? What is the conflict of this movie?

[Shep]
I say make it a romance film because I like romance films. And it’s a romance between the main character, the male main character, and Pearl. And he knows that he’s not her fated partner because his string is manifesting and her string has been severed. But there is an attraction between them.

[Thomas]
Are there string based dating apps or dating parties where you get together with just a ton of people in the hopes that your person will be there?

[Shep]
You can register, like, a contact tracing app. “I felt a tug on 42nd street at 03:00 P.M…”

[Emily]
“I saw you” type columns and newspapers.

[Thomas and Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Missed Connections.

[Shep]
I mean, literally, it must be missed, otherwise the string would turn red. Or, “My string turn red at the L Street station on Saturday.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“So if you were on the platform…”

[Emily]
“And your string turned red. Call this number-“

[Thomas]
How did our characters meet?

[Emily]
At the clinic.

[Shep]
Well, yeah, he goes to the clinic.

[Thomas]
She wouldn’t be allowed to date him.

[Emily]
Not until after the procedure and not until his final decision.

[Shep]
Bringing logic into it.

[Thomas]
She’s living in a different world than he is. He still has his string. So, I mean, it sounds like we’re kind of guiding him toward wanting to sever it. Okay. Yeah. He’s not sure what he wants to do yet, and so he wants to dip his toe into the world of severed people. So he goes to a special dating night for people who have had their strings severed to meet people who have also had their strings severed because he wants to see what’s it like. And of course, there’s no way to tell, right. Only you can see your string. But he’s honest. Maybe it’s like a speed dating type of thing. So they end up matched together and he says, “Well, actually, I want to be honest with you up front. I still have my string, but I’m thinking maybe getting it severed. I wanted to sort of see what it was like.” They’re chatting and she’s like, “Oh, well, let me tell you my story.”

[Shep]
Okay. I can see that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she doesn’t work at a clinic because we don’t need that as a framing device. You have them meet and that’s how you have her stories.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So the big conflict then is twofold: it’s will they get together and will he sever his string.

[Shep]
And could they get together if he doesn’t sever his string? Because he feels the pull of it sometimes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So whoever is on the other end of it is somewhere nearby. So if he doesn’t sever it, there is a good likelihood that he’ll run into them and it’ll turn red. And how is that going to affect his current relationship?

[Thomas]
Do they start dating in the course of the film? Our two main characters?

[Shep]
Sure. I don’t see why not.

[Emily]
Yeah, I think they should and she should- maybe we change it and she’s encouraging him about, “Well just get it suffered and then you don’t have to worry about this.” Because he keeps thinking, he keeps bringing it up. And she’s like, “It doesn’t matter to me, but if it worries you, why don’t you get it severed?” And he’s like, brings up arguments that it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a romantic relationship. It doesn’t mean-

[Thomas]
Like, “Take my brother. Him and his best friend from childhood are…” And so that’s how we bring those two guys in. Could be some other dude that really likes Warhammer. I don’t know.

[Emily]
And she’s like, “But what if it is a woman? And then you get to feel, we’re more emotional…” Don’t know if I want to go that route where she’s like, “We’re more emotional. You’re going to get more messages.”

[Thomas]
But I think that she has a really good argument in favor of-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I see both sides. Basically, she’s concerned that it’s going to be the sort of traditional view that people have of it being a romantic connection. He’s going to meet this woman and whether it’s deserved or not, because of the connection, he’s going to want to pursue that relationship. She’s really happy with the relationship they have, apart from this one aspect of it. But basically she likes the way things are. And her fear is that it’s going to change and she will get hurt and that this time will have been potentially wasted with somebody who was never going to be with her.

[Emily]
Right. Maybe when they first meet, he’s being honest and upfront is like, “Well, I still have my string.”

[Thomas]
Because he’s a good guy.

[Emily]
Yeah. And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t date stringers. I just don’t. I can’t.”

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
And he’s like, “Why? And she goes on the thing about, well, I’m not going to put myself in a position-“

[Thomas]
So this is When Harry Met Sally, right?

[Emily]
A little bit. Yeah.

[Thomas]
They’re not romantically interested or entangled at all at the beginning. They’re just a couple of people who ran into each other and have this basically platonic, they view it as being a platonic relationship, and it is for quite a long time.

[Shep]
So they meet at the dating thing, but they don’t start dating.

[Emily]
Because she doesn’t date stringers.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because she doesn’t date stringers. But they do have that spark. So they do like, “We’ll just be friends.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. And so she’s not worried in that case because she just has this blanket policy. So she doesn’t even think about it that way.

[Emily]
And then maybe later on he’s like, “I could cut my string and we could date.” And she’s like, “No, that’s not how this works.”

[Thomas]
Right. She thinks he’s being flippant.

[Emily]
Yeah, maybe he is. Maybe he does it while he’s drunk. Maybe he says something drunkenly like.

[Shep]
They’re not going to cut your string while you’re drunk. Oh, he says it while he’s drunk. I see.

[Emily]
Yeah, he says it while he’s drunk.

[Shep]
He can’t show up to the clinic drunk and go, “Cut my string.”

[Emily]
He’d just be like, “I could just cut my string and you and I could be together. That would be amazing. We’re amazing together.” And she’s like, “You’re drunk, go home.”

[Thomas]
Is it a drunk conversation or is it him realizing that he has feelings for her and he’s trying to figure out how to make this work?

[Shep]
I think that he has always had feelings for her, but because of her policy of not dating stringers, he’s like, “Oh, that’s fine, we could just be friends.” But he still got that attraction and it doesn’t go away.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s like, exploring hypothetical situations of, like, “What if I cut my string?”

[Shep]
Right. But she’s not pro severance.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because she’s from a string intactivist family. That’s how she was raised.

[Emily]
And she’s like “And it was semi traumatic when it happened. I would never want to do that to another person. I would not want to be responsible for that happening to another person.”

[Thomas]
“It’s selfish.” Yeah. “I don’t want you to do it for me because you’re going to hurt somebody else because of me.”

[Shep]
So is the happy ending that his string gets severed by the other person that we never meet?

[Emily]
Too convenient.

[Shep]
Too convenient. Okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah. But what’s the alternative? He severs it and then lies to her. We don’t like that ending. He severs it and tells her the truth. She doesn’t like that.

[Shep]
He goes in to get it severed, and the person who’s going to sever it is his match. And then, “Oh, no, I came in for the opposite of this!”

[Thomas]
So I was thinking about that earlier. That has to have happened at some point in history, right?

[Shep]
Has to have happened. I don’t know if we want it to happen to our characters, but it’s “I heard a story where-“

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Emily]
It could be a news story that they see on TV.

[Thomas]
No, this is a myth, an urban legend that keeps getting spread around. “They don’t hire people whose strings are intact to work there for exactly that reason.”

[Emily]
I like that.

[Shep]
That’s good, because it immediately disproves the urban legend.

[Thomas]
Right. But among the intactivist Facebook nutters who don’t do any research at all, they believe, like, “oh, this could happen. You don’t know!”

[Emily]
“They could lie. You can’t see other people’s strings. You don’t know what they have.”

[Thomas]
Right. I mean, people could lie, though. How would you- They only hire people who don’t have strings intact.

[Emily]
But they have to be able to sever them. So there has to be a way to detect them.

[Shep]
Right. There’s got to be some sort of equipment.

[Emily]
It’s just not a visible thing. But there is some way to detect them.

[Shep]
But it’s like a big MRI that you stick your arm into.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right right right. Yup. Okay, we scienced it.

[Emily]
What if his string does turn red, but it’s like a little old lady? He’s clearly not-

[Shep]
What?

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Shep]
What are we going for?

[Emily]
Because it doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual. That’s the point. Maybe you’re fated to this other person, for some reason you’re connected, but it doesn’t mean you have to be in a relationship with them. And then-

[Shep]
That’s why it’s called the string of fate, not the string of romance.

[Emily]
Right. Or maybe the person… It could turn black and the person died.

[Shep]
It’s very convenient.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s a cat.

[Shep]
Yeah. I was thinking it’s a dog.

[Thomas]
Ultimately, she has no way of knowing, no matter what. He could say anything, and he has no way to prove it.

[Emily]
Unless she takes him to the machine.

[Thomas]
Even then, it’s just detecting the presence, right?

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
It has to know whether it’s been severed or not.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You can’t keep getting it severed.

[Emily]
That’s why it’ll detect whether it’s been severed or not. But that’s it.

[Thomas]
But it’s a binary. There is a string that can be severed. There is not a string that can be severed.

[Emily]
It doesn’t say-

[Thomas]
That’s what the machine can detect. It doesn’t know anything else.

[Emily]
No, because if it can’t be severed, it’s either either been severed already or it’s red.

[Shep]
Or it hasn’t manifested. 17% of people never get a string.

[Thomas]
So the question I guess then, is, does it detect the presence of a string and that string’s severability as two separate data points? Or is it purely just, there is a string that can be severed or there is not a string that can be severed.

[Emily]
That’s how things have been changing and progressing, because since they’ve been doing it, the technology has improved and they now know that 17% of people don’t even have a string.

[Thomas]
So originally it was just that binary, but now we have the two data points. There is a string or there is not a string. And if there is a string, it can be severed or it cannot be severed. All right. How does our story end? Do they get together?

[Emily]
Yes. Because it’s a romance and they need to.

[Thomas]
So how does that happen? She seems pretty… I mean, we could put her back working in the clinic. She fits the bill. That’s not where they meet. But she would have access to the equipment to prove that what he says is true.

[Shep]
What is he saying? Is he saying that he got it severed or that he’s getting it severed?

[Thomas]
Okay, let’s kind of work the other way around. The only way she’ll get with him is if his string is severed, right?

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So it has been severed. Whether he did it or someone else did it or the person died, it has been severed.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So which of those is it?

[Shep]
I don’t think this has helped at all.

[Thomas]
I think it’s added clarity, to, like.. We have to figure this specific thing out.

[Shep]
Okay. If he’s not the one that makes the choice, what is the lesson of the movie? Just wait and things will maybe work themselves out. That’s the whole fate argument. That’s the string intactivist argument.

[Thomas]
And it’s not an action that he took. Or is the action that he took persistence?

[Emily]
Does she want him to?

[Thomas]
Well, no, because-

[Emily]
Do we need to go further back and… No, because I like the argument that she doesn’t want to be that person. She doesn’t want to put that other person in that position.

[Thomas]
Right, and she was raised as an intactivist.

[Shep]
Right. Although she only dates nonstringers.

[Emily]
They never even had one. Oh, no.

[Shep]
Well, that’s a much smaller, as she gets older, it’s harder to find people that have never had strings. Maybe that was her thing when she was younger. First she dated a guy, but his string manifested, and then he found his fated person and they broke up, and she was heartbroken over that. So she’s like, “I’m just going to date people that don’t have strings.” And so she in college, dated a few people whose string hadn’t manifested, and that was fine. But as she’s getting older, it’s harder to find people that have never had a string. If she’s only going to date people that don’t have a red string or don’t have a white string, then it can be people that have never had a string or people that have severed their string.

[Thomas]
How traditional is her family? Does she date?

[Shep]
Her family is super traditional, but they sort of ostracized her when her string got severed.

[Thomas]
So did she date prior to her string being severed?

[Shep]
No!

[Thomas]
“You should only date your soulmate.”

[Emily]
No, yeah. You have to wait. You have to wait.

[Thomas]
There’s no point in dating other people.

[Shep]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But her string got severed while she was in college, so that’s kind of why her mom thinks that she did it. She was away at college and she comes home and her string was severed. “I knew sending you to college was a mistake.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“That’s that liberal indoctrination.”

[Thomas]
She probably did it for some boy.

[Emily]
“Those professors don’t know anything. I can’t believe 17% of the population doesn’t have a string. That is impossible.”

[Shep]
“God has a plan for everyone. Not, uh… 81% of the people.” 83%?

[Thomas]
83.

[Shep]
I don’t know how to math. It’d be funnier if she says 81%.

[Thomas]
Yeah, actually.

[Emily]
So we’re still back at the point where does he want to sever it for her or is he on the fence? And she’s like, “It’s… I can’t.” And so he’s-

[Thomas]
Based on the conversation we’ve had, the impression about him that I get is he’s been just sort of like, “Whatever.” He’s not making an effort to find his soulmate. It’s just like, “Hey, if this happens, cool, but I really like her.” Maybe he’s a little torn.

[Emily]
That’s why I think it would be better if it does turn red and it’s like something that you’re like, obviously-

[Shep]
If the majority of partners are intended to be romantic partners or appear to be romantic partners, then it’s quite an amazing coincidence that this very rare thing happens to him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
But his brother and his brother’s best friend, or they’re just the weird outlier…

[Thomas]
That makes it even less likely.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Well, how Hollywood ending do we want to go with this?

[Thomas]
Well, I think that the lowest low, the end of the second act is that he severs it. He makes the decision, “I love her, I want to be with her. I’m going to sever it.” And she’s mad at him. She’s not happy about it. He goes, “Look, I got it done.” And all she can think about is you screwed over some other person.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He doesn’t discuss it with her first. He goes and does it to surprise her.

[Emily]
And then she gets mad.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And then, can he actively resolve it by putting out the ad to say, “I severed my string at this time-“

[Shep]
Oh!

[Emily]
To find the person.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Shep]
That’s really good. I didn’t think about this, because we already talked about registering on an app or whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah. So he thinks to make it up to her, he’s like, “I will find the other person and I’ll make this okay.”

[Shep]
“Severed connections.” Yeah. So he registers on there, “I severed it at (whatever time).” And he gets contacted by who would have been his partner. Now they don’t have that connection. Even if they meet now, they’re not going to feel that pull towards one another. They’re not going to feel the emotions of the other person. They’re not going to get those little hidden inside joke messages.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re just two strangers. That would be great. They could meet and have like that speed dating conversation and realize “We’ve got nothing in common.”

[Emily]
“I’m a lesbian artist that lives in Soho. This is not going to happen.”

[Shep]
It was not going to work out.

[Thomas]
Or is it somebody who he does really connect with and now he has this decision to make and he ultimately chooses our main female character. Is it too easy for him to get off the hook if the other person has nothing in common with him? Because it’s an even stronger gesture then that he chooses Pearl.

[Emily]
They could have stuff in common. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
It could be that they did have a lot in common and that it might have been fan-fucking-tastic, but that emotional connection isn’t there. And he’s already built that with Pearl.

[Shep]
So how does Girl B feel about this? They get together and they meet and they still have all these things in common.

[Thomas]
Maybe she’s like low key relieved. There was a lot of pressure.

[Emily]
Maybe she’s from a string intactivist family, and-

[Thomas]
There’s a guy that she likes.

[Shep]
But he doesn’t date stringers, so they could never be together.

[Emily]
Maybe she was raised similarly to Pearl and it’s her duty to be the wife and mother to her fated partner. And now she has opportunities.

[Shep]
I would say that they’re probably not living in that sort of area because Pearl being ostracized from her family and because of tight knit communities, wouldn’t be comfortable in that area. So she’s living in a more liberal area. So it’s unlikely that Girl B was also raised that way. So maybe she was on the fence about it but didn’t want to get it severed because it affects someone else. But he severed it, so it’s probably fine? And they met to see if they had a spark. And they have a bunch of things in common, but not a spark.

[Emily]
Yeah. But she gets to have this closure that Pearl never got to have.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And so she’s like, “I’m not exactly happy about it, but at least I know. I know who you were. I know why you did it.”

[Shep]
Is she single or she in a relationship?

[Emily]
Maybe she is in a relationship and she’s just like, “Well, at least now I know I’m not just out there hanging.” And that’s part of Pearl’s problem, is she’s just out there hanging.

[Shep]
How do we get Pearl to come around.

[Thomas]
I was going to say, sell that to Pearl now.

[Shep]
Right. So Pearl and Girl B have to meet at some point.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Absolutely. So Girl B becomes our guy’s wingman then.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because when they meet, she’s like, “Oh, my God, my boyfriend is so relieved.” And he’s like, “Yeah, there’s this girl that I like, but she won’t even date me, and I did this for her, and now she’s, like, super mad. And that’s why I wanted to meet you, because I did feel bad. But you’re cool with it, right, and maybe you can help me out?” And she’s like, “Yeah, totally.”

[Emily]
So I think her and Pearl then, she meets Pearl and has the conversation of, “I got to know. I mean, I know that you didn’t, and that’s unfair, but look how great your life is.”

[Shep]
I’m just picturing the main character and Pearl and Girl B and Girl B’s boyfriend having, like, a dinner party together. And while main guy and Girl B are talking, Pearl and Girl B’s boyfriend are, like, eyeing each other because they have all these things in common. Right. They’re not trying to be jealous, but-

[Thomas]
But they really get along quite well.

[Emily]
And it’s uncomfortable.

[Shep]
Right. At the end they’re like “Let’s never do this again. Have a good life.”

[Emily]
Is he one of the 17%?

[Thomas]
Actually, I think that’s a really good idea because that gives Pearl an ally in that uncomfortable situation or in that nervous situation to show that her feelings are justified. And she gets to see there’s, like, a low stakes, low pressure environment for the guy and Girl B to interact, with Pearl watching so she can see the connection they have. And then at the end of all of it, he’s like, “I don’t care about her. I want you.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“She’s funny. I like laughing with her. We think the same stupid jokes are hilarious, but-“

[Shep]
But they don’t have that history.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The history is as important as the traits.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I think there’s a good speech there where she was too focused on the future, on a hypothetical future, and he’s focused on the known, demonstrated past-

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Thomas]
That they have together.

[Shep]
That’s good, because opposites attract.

[Thomas]
Right. All right. Is that our story? I think we’ve got it pretty much.

[Shep]
I think we’ve got it.

[Thomas]
I mean, I like this a lot. I want to see this movie now.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That’d be fun, because there’s so much just the little details you can put in and just-

[Thomas]
Well, it’s a romantic movie, which we all like.

[Shep]
Yes, my favorite.

[Thomas]
And it has a lot of really, like, thinky philosophical type of stuff that, again, we all like.

[Shep]
It’s scratching several inches.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Get a little Sci-Fi metaphysical thing.

[Shep]
What Emily was pointing out or suggesting that Girl B’s boyfriend be one of the 17 percenters that don’t have a string, I think that’s great because it’s not uncommon enough that nobody would have it.

[Emily]
Yeah,

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We got to have some character that hasn’t manifested their string, which Pearl could be like, she doesn’t even date people that haven’t manifested their string anymore because there’s still that chance that they’ll manifest it and it’ll end it heartache again for her. She only dates people that have severed their string. I think we have it.

[Emily]
I think we do.

[Thomas]
Yeah, we got it.

[Emily]
I think it’s great.

[Shep]
We only came up with one name of all the characters, but.

[Thomas]
Hey, there was Girl B.

[Emily]
Bianca-

[Shep]
That’s her name? B?

[Thomas]
Bea, yeah.

[Emily]
B E A, Bea.

[Thomas]
That works really well because Pearl is kind of like an older sounding name. Bea is sort of maybe older name. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Have we got the world on a string, or did we just string you along? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Have you left a five-star rating for us on Apple podcasts?

[Shep]
FattyFaye has. They said, “Highly entertaining. I absolutely love the refreshing and unique concept of this podcast. And they sound good and execute it well. I love shouting my plot ideas at them as I listen and wishing they could hear me. Overall, IΓÇÖve found each episode entertaining and theyΓÇÖve got great humor and rapport as well.” Thanks, Faye. You should leave a comment instead of shouting at your computer, and then we will hear you.

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Well, if you leave a five-star review for us on Apple podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. Emily. Shep, and I will return on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]