Writer Commentary: Memento Mori

Well, here we are! It’s been a good five months, and now we’ve finally reached the finale! If you’ve stuck around this long, then sincerely, thank you for your support. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have! I hope to continue making Roy Kaplan, and I’ve got plans for more seasons (a total of four for the series), assuming we get the support for that. If you want to see how you can support us (and get Season 2 to production), that’s a different post which should be coming in the next week. In the meantime, let’s talk about this episode.

One of the driving principles of Roy Kaplan is that just about all of the episodes should be able to stand on their own without needing any context besides the premise of the series, but each episode also contributes to a larger whole with regards to the setting and our understanding of the characters. Obviously, Memento Mori is an exception to this because a finale that follows through on the plot points from previous episodes is necessarily an episode that can’t stand independently. That isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a consequence of the way our show is structured. Hopefully, nobody’s introduction to this show is the finale!

So here we are, the conclusion of Roy’s psychic stalker plot, and the true introduction of Rem, our second psychic of the series. I don’t know how many people saw it coming, but I’m sure some people did. There weren’t really that many suspects to begin with, and I’ve done my best to point towards them–the sudden introduction of a new recurring character in episode 8 out of 12 might have tipped some people off, or the fact that both Rem and the mysterious psychic in Random Access Memory both are voiced by the same person, or the fact that Rem isn’t in Roy’s contacts and Wes doesn’t recognize them.

Back in the start when I was cooking up the plots to put in Out of Sight, I had the idea of having another psychic character who could act as Roy’s foil–namely, someone who was committing psychic crimes with a huge superiority complex and being generally morally bankrupt. At that time, the concept was more for a one-off appearance as the finale. As I mentioned back in Bait and Stitch, I had to think about how I wanted to handle the psychic thing, because if I introduce the concept of there being other psychics besides Roy, I’m obligated to give that some proper follow-through, but at the same time I didn’t want Roy Kaplan to end up just being about psychics.

Once I decided it was worth introducing the concept of other psychics and this other psychic character, I decided it would be kind of a waste to only have one episode where Rem causes problems and immediately gets their ass kicked by Roy, so I expanded out the influence of this psychic across multiple episodes as a sort of stepwise threat escalation. They’re obliquely introduced through Bait and Stitch, then confronting them in Random Access Memory and having Roy’s memory personally messed with, then finally getting straight-up kidnapped to Rem’s stolen murder mansion. Originally, this was the entirety of the wind-up to Rem’s introduction.

Around halfway through writing the episodes, Luna brought up the idea of using some metanarrative elements, like the frame narrative and using Rem as the announcer, i.e., implicitly presenting these accounts to the listener. To make that work, I ended up shuffling the episode order–Random Access Memory was moved up earlier, Rem was given an appearance in Sleep Well, My Darling (which wasn’t even part of the original episode lineup), and the direct reference to Roy recording these accounts was added to Doctor’s Orders.

Some of these metanarrative elements were lost after Luna dropped the project (and therefore no longer voiced Rem) since in the original concept, Luna was also the person doing the credit reads and the oft-repeated tagline, “I’ll see you on the other side”, which seems like just a cute tagline but is more sinister when Rem uses it to mess with Roy’s memory. The fact that Luna was, at the time, producing the show would contribute to the sense of Rem being the one who’s trying to shape this story to their own ends. The script remains as it was then, but those outside context elements have been lost since it really wasn’t reasonable for me to ask a voice actor to take on that role or to do credit reads.

One of the things I wanted to make clear throughout this episode is that Rem’s storytelling is not Roy’s–however much they may try to copy him. It’s not just that Roy’s theme (investigation light, either version of it) never plays in this episode, but Rem’s narration is wildly biased and often blatantly incorrect. You can even see points where they’ve been misled about the true sequence of events by things that Roy has said. Rem, unlike Roy, is very much trying to force their desires into reality, where Roy is almost always concerned with finding the truth, however unpleasant, and I think that’s reflected in their respective psychic powers.

Ever since I decided to give Rem memory powers, I knew I wanted their confrontation with Roy to involve using their powers to manipulate Roy’s memory, and the trust Roy has in Wes to be instrumental in overcoming that manipulation and defeating Rem. From a narrative and thematic standpoint, it’s important to me that Roy’s success never stems solely from his psychic powers–he doesn’t defeat other people because he has better powers, he defeats them because he’s quicker on his feet and keeps his head when things get rough and because he’s a kind person who’s doing his best. While Roy’s proficiency with his psychic powers play a critical role in his escape, it’s his sharp observations and trust in Wes, in combination with Rem’s overconfidence that leads to Roy’s victory.

I had a lot of trouble figuring out how I wanted things to play out in this episode–I needed to decide what crimes Rem was committing, and come up with a way for Roy to realize that Rem wasn’t who they said they were, and for Rem to get away without getting murdered by Wes. Even though this episode is effectively the ‘explaining the plot’ part of a mystery but for the entire season, I wanted Roy to find his answers (even if the slightly incorrect ones) before having Rem explain everything to him. So we have Roy connecting the inconsistencies and realizing that Rem must be affiliated with the psychic who’s been giving him hell, only for Rem to reveal that their powers over memory aren’t just in reading and erasing, but editing, and immediately kidnap Roy for the purposes of bringing him over to their side. Obviously, that doesn’t work because Roy’s never been interested in that kind of thing and he’s got Wes backing him up, but with Rem on the loose again it’s unlikely that things will be so simple. But for now, this is where Roy’s story ends.

It’s been a long ride making Out of Sight, all the way back since 2019 when I first had the idea and wrote the first couple of scripts with the intention of making a little home project. Sometimes, it all feels too short for the time we’ve put into it, but if you take a step back, the season as a whole clocks in just under 70k–a whole novel’s worth of text, and just under 7 hours of audio, which is not insignificant. This project is the first audio drama that anyone involved in production (minus the voice actors) really worked on before, so it’s been nervewracking to make sure we’re doing things the right way and making something that’s good and interesting enough to keep people listening.

I’ve got a lot of future plans with regards to Roy Kaplan–at the time of writing this blog post, I’ve sketched out most of the overall story. I’ve planned three additional seasons (and no more), and hope to delve into many of the plot threads I’ve seeded here in Out of Sight while still maintaining the episodic nature we’ve used this first season. Of course, putting in the time, effort, and money to see this all to fruition is contingent on whether there’s an audience to support it. If people enjoy Out of Sight enough to want more, I hope that some will offer some financial support so I’m not spending thousands of dollars out of pocket every season. If you want to contribute and make these future seasons possible, I’ll be talking about it in another blog post very soon, but the short version is that I’ll be offering a script book, art bundle, and higher quality season download for purchase. So if you want to read more essays from me about the making of Roy Kaplan, or you want to get a poster printed (or have an Out of Sight desktop background), or just have the whole season available for offline listening, that will be an option very soon (hoping to get that all set up by next weekend).

Regardless of whether we continue to future seasons, I hope you enjoyed Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight and these little commentaries. It’s been a lot of fun to work on and I’m glad to have written it and shared it with you all.

Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who’s made it this far. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side :)