Remembrance: Series wrap up

Journey with me through the complete series recap of Remembrance, where we unravel the digital tapestry that connects human memory with ancient technology. This finale episode pulls back the curtain on every thread we've woven throughout this story—revealing character motivations, plot connections, and even the alternate ending that nearly came to be.

Discover how Unathur evolved from my original concept into the mysterious system that captures echoes of reality. I share the pivotal revelation that makes our protagonist special: he and the system are one entity, creating a powerful symbiosis where "whatever happens in the system happens in him, and whatever happens in him happens in the system." This connection explains why he alone could fulfill the role others couldn't.

During this candid discussion, I open up about how personal tragedy informed episode seven's emotional hospital scene. Recreating my own experience of losing my mother to cancer seventeen years ago made this perhaps the most challenging sequence I've ever written, requiring dozens of takes to record through raw emotion. These authentic moments ground our fantastical digital universe in very human experiences.

Perhaps most fascinating is my revelation about the story's almost-ending—a darker conclusion where our protagonist would have crumbled under pressure, allowing the Red King to take complete control. I explain why I ultimately chose a different path, one where balance prevails over total victory. "In life, in systems, in everything, there has to be a counterbalance," I reflect, considering how a known enemy creates more storytelling possibilities than an unknown one might.

Ready to join me for the next adventure? I'm developing a new series called either "Silver Spoons" or "Golden Spoons" about someone who receives everything and what happens to their life as a result. Connect with me through the podcast chat feature, email at anthony@gentsjourney.com, or on Instagram @my_gentsjourney. Remember: you create your reality.

"True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Remembrance Recap

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Gentleman's Journey podcast. My name is Anthony, your host, and today we are doing this complete series recap of Remembrance. I do this pretty much twice in a series, one in the middle of it and one at the end. So let's go ahead and let's get into it. First off, I want to say thank you so much. You made it Okay, not just through the threads, not just through the recursion, but through the part of the story where most people stop remembering. You know, this is the final recursion, the place where everything gets revealed. Right, there's gonna be a lot of stuff we're going to go over, and this is where we kind of turn around and look back and realize how far we've actually come. So what I want to do is I want to kind of go through episodes here and kind of explain to you how this all starts. So episode one was called the Link and it all started with a message from the dead. You know a friend who was long gone, you know sending a link he shouldn't have had time to send right and with it something ancient opened up which was called Unather. So to kind of give you a background about Unather, this is something I've been having for a while, right, a character or a system I didn't know how to put into essentially a series. Right, when I originally came up with Unathur, it was going to be actually completely different, and it still might be. It was going to be a completely different series, talking more of like not left-handed paths but very mythical, ancient discussions about magic and power and those kind of things. Right, and that still may happen. But that's kind of where it started. But as I started this, it just fit into him being an ancient technology and it just worked well. So that was kind of episode one. Right Now with episode two, like the signal through the static right when now we're going into, where essentially the voice are being repeated, words are being recorded, stuff that shouldn't be recorded or happening is now happening. Right, you know this is about his childhood, this is about where she's knocking on the door, you know with. You know they're giving him access to future events and you know one of the things we start to figure out, or what you'll see later, you know, as it unfolded, is that the signal wasn't coming for him, it was coming from him. And that's what I always like to do is like when you start to read these again, or read these, watch, or listen to these again. I send these little clues to where, when you go back, like, oh my gosh, okay, so he was actually telling us right in the beginning. Now, this nickname right, episode three this is where the threat appears. Now the nickname only his, you know mother used. And this is where we start talking about you know, remembering right, because what was happening is that you're starting to notice is that there's echoes in the system and echoes in him that him and the system were one in the same. That's what made him the chosen one, right. And obviously, when you go back and listen, you're like, oh, okay, so whatever happens in the system happens in him, and whatever happens in him happens in the system. They're one in the same. That's what made him so powerful. Okay, now you see me, I got to talk about this character, so we had to give him somebody that was real right, because his friend dies.

Speaker 1: 3:56

He's at a job he hates Well, two jobs that he hates really, and he's not really. I mean, he has the mental breakdown, right, we talked about that in the beginning where he has the mental breakdown. He had it all, loses it all, but then you figure out. It's just a part of the process, right, so you have to have some kind of love interest. Also, this guy is just one of those guys sitting with too tight of a T-shirt and no pants hanging on his mom's bedroom. You know what I mean. That's the kind of character he could become. So, you see, me is kind of his motivation, right, to kind of get up and keep going, right, and then, with his mom getting sicker, it was the same thing. Events were happening to where he just couldn't sit back and lull in his depression, right, and that's why you start to notice that towards the end he's not vaping as much. Towards the end, there's a lot more movement in the story where he's not really going to his job anymore, right, because this is taking anything and everything for him to do, right, so that's like the biggest thing.

Speaker 1: 5:14

Now, episode five, section four Arilla Moss right, this is where she really comes into play. Now, as I was writing this, right, something I was doing I always say this on every series, but I don't, I don't like to write weak women. That's just my personal opinion. Right, they have to have motives, they have to have reasoning, they have to be able to stand on their own right as a character. And with her, you know and we start to reveal this later she was the chosen one. She did everything like think about it. She did everything correct, correct, and she still, they took it from her and obviously you find out later that that was the Red King's fault. But with Arella Moss, what I loved about her is her tenacity, the fact that she was willing to go to the end. And when she found out that she wasn't chosen, what did she do? She, yes, she's obviously upset about everything, right, but she still did the right thing. That was the biggest thing for me.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Now let's go into, uh, six or actually no, it's because we already talked about six. Let's go into seven because we were really just five and six were kind of the story of Aurela. Now, episode seven, the collapse. Right, this is where the mom collapses. She goes to the hospital, all these different things, and then everything fractures right Now. This, right here, I'm going to be honest with you guys. This right here, was one of the hardest things for me to write and for me to play out, because a lot of what happened there with his mom collapsing, having cancer, that was pretty much my life 17 years ago. You know, have my mom, um with cancer, her collapsing suddenly and then two weeks later she's gone. You know, and that was really hard for me and you know there there's points in time where it that that episode really fought me, because there's probably 30, 40 takes in that episode. You know, cause I'm really, I'm literally dealing with it myself when I'm going through, when I'm, when I'm talking, you know when I'm going writing this and then playing it out. You know it was I was like I was really there because that that stuff really happened.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Now, episode eight, and was was really when the echoes began, you know, really waking up, right when unithur begins rewriting stuff, right when his little hacker world, you know zero trace, starts to split. You know the glyph is crowned. You know reality is really converging into one truth, right, and that kind of goes into. You know Orilla Moss and how the Red King really screwed her right. And then you see that Unithur up until that point was scared of Red King. You know, because, realistically, the Red King, what I love about his character in general is that he's very conniving, he's straight and to the point, but he's just quote, unquote one of those guys. He's just an asshole, I mean, I don't know how else to say it, but that's just what he is. But at the same time, you can understand why he's pompous, he's crude, but he was also the first. He was the first. And Unathur let him be who he is now. And, if you think about it, that's the Red King, the reason why he exists, because Unathur couldn't step up.

Speaker 1: 9:40

And then, when we go into 9, this is where this kind of ties everything up together the Red King rewrote Moss. She was broken on purpose. She was rejected because, realistically, if the Red King didn't do that, moss would have took him out. If she would have become the one, moss would have had the gall and essentially balls to do it, and that's why he intervened to make sure that she wasn't granted unither status. That she wasn't granted unither status and you know, realistically, you know, you know tying them up like in episode 10, part one of part two. This was okay. I'm going to be honest with you guys. Right, this was the hardest thing, because what I originally had was going to do is I was going to have him fail. And let me show you where, how that was going to work. I'll. I'll read it to you actually.

Speaker 1: 10:45

So here was the alternate ending for Remembrance, right? So he doesn't anchor the system, he folds, he forgets, he deletes the memory folder, he ignores the voice, he blocks out ICU-93, moss wins Section 4, 4 rises and the red king ascends right and in that he corrupts unithr. Zero trace is gone, obviously, and remembering becomes illegal and hackers essentially like everyone in this, they're hunted for restoring memory and echoes become weapons and I was just going to have them really just become like a footnote in the recursion that now loops that. The Red King, a moment in our life where we know exactly what to do and we don't do it because we're tired, because we fought so long and so hard and we just don't have it in us. We've all known that person who, let's say, made $150,000, $200,000 a year for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. Then all of a sudden they have a nervous breakdown and they never get to that point. They end up working some menial job or you know worse, they just kind of fall out of existence. That's kind of what this was going to be in the beginning. Can this guy really handle the weight? But realistically I couldn't do that to him not in this. That's how, originally, this was all going to end. He was just going to crumble under the pressure and the Red King was going to ascend to everything and have complete, 100% control. But I think I chose the better ending. But yeah, that was the biggest thing. Also, too, him choosing remembrance and not just choosing one or the other, but actually doing both, was such a big thing to me because I wanted to show him as in he could take on anything, because all he needed was confidence. And what gave him that opportunity was the fact that ICU 93, yes, she was real, but she wasn't, but it gave him the confidence to do it. That ICU-93, yes, she was real but she wasn't, but it gave him the confidence to do it. And now he can. Even though she's just an Echo, he can go visit her at any time, and that's why I left that open-ended. But the biggest thing was the fact that he didn't destroy the Red King.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Now let me tell you why I wrote it that way. Because in life, in systems, in everything, there has to be a counterbalance. If there's good, there's got to be evil, because you don't know one without the other. That's just how it works. One without the other. That's just how it works, and what he said there is that a known enemy is better than an enemy that is unknown. The reason why he says this is because he knows all of Red King's tactics right. He has them contained. He knows all because he holds all the threads right. So even if Red King tries to do anything, he's going to be one, two, three, four, five steps ahead of him right. And it also, too, it gives it an open-endedness If I want to come back into this series, as he's opening up people and let's say he opens up a corrupted person and Red King was able to corrupt this person that it creates another whole new series. So that's another reason why I did that too.

Speaker 1: 14:50

But, like I said, this was just such. This was probably one of the hardest series I've written so far, to be honest, because A there's so much dialogue, there's so much conversations, there's so much conversations, there's so many things. You, you know we have to wrap up and but we did it and I'm very, very, very proud of this work and I'm just so grateful that you guys knocked out of the park with you know your listenership, and I, I just I can't tell you how much I, your listenership and I I just I can't tell you how much I, how grateful I am, really just how how grateful I am. So the next thing, the next series we got to talk about this really quick is going. It's either going to be silver spoons or golden spoons. It's going to be one of those two. Right, it's a I don't know what title is going to be. It's going to be one of those two. So essentially, this is what it's going to be and obviously this will be way laid out more, but it's essentially someone who's given everything and what happens to their life. So, but, guys, we made it to this and you know I'm recording this on a Sunday, so Monday you'll get the new series coming out there.

Speaker 1: 16:09

But again, I just want to thank you so much for listening today and if you want to get a hold of me, you want to talk about this series, or you have some serious ideas, or you're going through some stuff. This is what I'm here for. Okay, there's three ways to get a hold of me. First way is getting through the chat feature on the description of this podcast. You click on that. You and I can have a conversation. Second way is going to be through email. My email is anthony at gentsjourneycom. And, last but not least, you can always go to my Instagram. My Instagram is my gentsjourney. So again, thank you, so, so, so, very much for listening today. And remember this you create your reality. Take care Bye.