They would have said something <| sep |> I like the way Magic does it , you have X amount of time per game 30 min in Magic for a best of 3 and you can use it as you wish , but if it runs out you lose . <| sep |> Dark harpu c <| sep |> Hau is a precious cinnamon roll . <| sep |> Okay , there is a lot to go through here . Who did you base Tulip on , if any ? She ' s an amalgamation of various friends I have . I would say most characters in shows have traits of people that the writer knows or the writer themselves . If you can ' t recognize yourself or your friends in a character , then they ' re probably not a very relatable or real feeling character . Were her personality something you find easier to write for or do you write her that way because you find it interesting . I love her nerdy monologues btw . This kind of thing can get kind of messy in writing . Characters are interesting because of the way they ' re interacting with their world . If you have a super crazy world , it helps to have a character that can react to that in some way . Tulip is sort of the natural foil to a train that is full of improbable things . If you have a world where every train car is completely different , where laws of physics might change or where animals talk , who would be the person who would have the most trouble dealing with that ? A super straightforward , closeminded , logical person . So that ' s who the main character becomes , the person that is least equipped but has the most to learn about what is going on around them . About creative process , do you just go with whatever comes into your mind and then finding a juxtaposition later , or do you try to plan everything out ahead . I guess I ' m trying to get at how static or dynamic the writing process is , can something that has been planned been changed along the way for example . I come up with some ideas on what sort of interesting things could happen in the episode , then how those things would affect the character . First try to figure out the internal journey that the character has to go on , then figure out what external pressures can get them there . It all sort of happens at once , but I never start writing scenes without knowing the structure of the story and where it ' s going first . How long has the concept of IT been on your mind , like , have you always been meaning to do this , or is this just a spur . Since 2010 . I thought of it while flying from China to the US at one point . I didn ' t put a lot of extra thought into it until I started itching to make my own pilot and ended up using this one . So it was spur of the moment in that I haven ' t been thinking about it nonstop since 2010 , but it ' s been in the back of my mind since then as a possibility and only in 2014 did I find something I could do with it . And lastly , how long do you think until someone comes up with a theory that Tulip is in a coma and the train is purgatory and the Steward is death ? Sounds like you just did !