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Deep Dream State

Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns

Deep Dream State is a full-cast dystopian sci-fi and desire horror audio drama by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. As the originating work of desire horror, it locates the uncanny inside wanting itself. While conventional horror positions you against a threat, desire horror implicates you in it. The horror emerges from recognition: the realization of why characters stay, and why surrender feels like relief. Since 2017, the show has used research in dream science, surveillance studies, behavioral economics, and advertising technology to examine systems of control through immersive sound design and full-cast performance.

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  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 21 min
  • English

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  • S3 · E12
    Dec 21, 2025 · 24 min

    Arouse (Finale) | Sitri Center | S3E12 | GE27

    The medium was always the mechanism. Arouse concludes the Sitri Center arc and completes Deep Dream State’s five-hour narrative exploration of control, desire, and surrender. The staff and subjects of the dream research institute finally confront the true nature of the systems reshaping them. As the boundary between experiment and experimenter collapses, one final revelation reframes everything that came before. This finale marks the conclusion of the longest continuous narrative arc in adult audio drama, a five-hour journey that demanded listeners become complicit in the very systems it was examining. Cast & Crew Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Staff Dr. Zev Talcott (Z): Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Dr. June Lowell: Bliss Blank Dr. Tessa Finn: Ring of Kees Dr. Meg Aerin: Bun Li Elle Lawson: Echo Doll Iris Vale: Swirls and Twirls Dream Team Cael: Jericho Caine Nyra: Dizzy Dollie Hespa: Syndi Rella Reverie: Britt Reprogrammed Subjects Oona Reyes: Jade Phoebe Bosworth: Sofi Starship Lyra Crosswell: Flux Lynniegal Episode Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers) The finale opens with the system beginning to fail. Elle, the AI managing the dream chamber, starts to glitch as the infrastructure supporting her breaks down. Tessa and Meg recognize a cascade failure in progress. Before they can intervene, Z issues a command through the PA that sends every dreamer into synchronized chanting, and the hierarchy of the Sitri Center inverts: the staff understand, at last, that they’ve never been running the system. They’ve been inside it. June enters and methodically removes every remaining illusion of therapeutic purpose. The subjects who came seeking healing have been carefully guided toward specific outcomes through the very mechanisms that promised liberation. Tessa objects. June responds with the clarity of someone who resolved this question some time ago: the goal isn’t punishment but transformation. Free will isn’t being taken. It’s being cured. The finale then breaks its own frame. Iris Vale, the voice delivering advertisement breaks throughout the arc, steps forward as something considerably more than a commercial announcer. She reveals that the elements listeners understood as separate – the narrative, the ads, their own attention and engagement – were never separate at all. Every moment of listening became part of a working designed to transform both the characters inside the story and the audience outside it. The Sitri Center was a mechanism. The audio drama was the delivery system. The listeners were always the subject population. Tessa and Meg push back: people should know what’s happening to them. Iris points out that they did know. They pressed play anyway. Attention paid freely is still payment. Iris recontextualizes every mythological element of the arc: the dream figures aren’t characters, they’re archetypal forces recontextualized for contemporary desire, and the Sitri Center was always a temple. The listeners were always the congregation. The arc closes on the wheel spinning again, the characters speaking directly to the listener, and the question Deep Dream State has always been asking answered not in dialogue but in the structure of the thing itself. The listener isn’t observing a story about complicity. They’re inside one. There is no opting out. There is only the next spin of the wheel. Listen & Explore Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed Support the creator on Patreon Creator bio & portfolio Show page: animation, art, and lore Sitri Center Games All episodes archive Canonical Tumblr Page View this series on IMDb MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns, including show script books Producer ISNI Human Made Art Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain. Find the image bibliography here. Content Warnings Dream research, institutional horror, fourth wall collapse, mythological recontextualization, collective attention mechanics, suggestive content, arc finale. Consent Declaration Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity. The elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Arouse contains dream research horror, mythological content, fourth wall address, and suggestive themes. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context. ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254 Source

  • S3 · E11
    Dec 14, 2025 · 21 min

    Sync | Sitri Center | S3E11 | GE26

    Barbie goes matryoshka. Meg and Tessa believe they’ve reached Ur, the destination they’ve been mapping through the Institute’s dream architecture. What they find there is Nyra, who has been waiting, and a version of the lucid dreaming protocols they know being used in a direction they didn’t anticipate. The structure of Sync is its argument: every apparent resolution collapses into another layer, and the researchers discover they can’t locate the bottom of the system because the system has no bottom. It has only more dream. Cast & Crew Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Staff Dr. Zev Talcott (Z): Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Dr. June Lowell: Bliss Blank Dr. Tessa Finn: Ring of Kees Dr. Meg Aerin: Bun Li Elle Lawson: Echo Doll Iris Vale: Swirls and Twirls Dream Team Cael: Jericho Caine Nyra: Dizzy Dollie Hespa: Syndi Rella Reverie: Britt Reprogrammed Subjects Oona Reyes: Jade Phoebe Bosworth: Sofi Starship Lyra Crosswell: Flux Lynniegal Episode Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers) The episode opens at the temple of Ur, the mythological center of the dream world, where Nyra is already present and waiting. Rather than offering the confrontation Meg and Tessa came prepared for, she uses the lucid dreaming protocols they know – time checks, hand counts, mirror tests – as instruments of a different kind of examination. The MILD and VILD techniques that teach dreamers to recognize that they’re dreaming become, in Nyra’s hands, tools for demonstrating that what the researchers understand as their professional identity and autonomous judgment are constructions the system installed. The techniques work. That’s the problem. Nyra’s position in the dream is ancient and precise: she is a being of pure dream knowledge who abandoned pretense long before the Sitri Center existed, and she is truthful in the way that things which predate the concept of lying are truthful. She doesn’t deceive Meg and Tessa. She shows them what the mirror test actually reveals when the person holding the mirror has been inside the system this long. When the scene shifts, Meg and Tessa surface into what appears to be the observation room, occupying what appear to be their normal roles. The observation room turns out to be another layer. They are not system operators. They are central subjects, held in the false-awakening cycle they came to investigate, unable to determine whether they have ever truly woken. A large-scale operation runs around them: subjects in perpetual false-awakening states, an AI overlay managing the machinery and deteriorating, the whole structure chanting in synchronization as Meg and Tessa realize the floor they were standing on was always part of the dream. Listen & Explore Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed Support the creator on Patreon Creator bio & portfolio Show page: animation, art, and lore All episodes archive Canonical Tumblr Page View this series on IMDb MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns, including show script books Producer ISNI Human Made Art Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain. Find the image bibliography here. Content Warnings False awakening, lucid dreaming, dream research, sleep paralysis imagery, institutional horror, mythology, suggestive content. Consent Declaration Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity. The manipulative elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Sync contains false awakening sequences, dream research horror, mythological content, and suggestive themes. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context. ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254 Source

  • S3 · E10
    Dec 4, 2025 · 21 min

    Center | Sitri Center | S3E10 | GE25

    The abject never looked this good. Meg and Tessa have entered the mirror chamber at the heart of the Sitri Institute’s dream architecture. Nyra is already there. Center is the episode where the testing protocols – clock checks, finger counting, mirror reflection – stop functioning as tools the researchers use and start functioning as tools being used on them. Cast & Crew Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Staff Dr. Zev Talcott (Z): Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Dr. June Lowell: Bliss Blank Dr. Tessa Finn: Ring of Kees Dr. Meg Aerin: Bun Li Elle Lawson: Echo Doll Iris Vale: Swirls and Twirls Dream Team Cael: Jericho Caine Nyra: Dizzy Dollie Hespa: Syndi Rella Reverie: Britt Reprogrammed Subjects Oona Reyes: Jade Phoebe Bosworth: Sofi Starship Lyra Crosswell: Flux Lynniegal Episode Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers) Meg and Tessa enter the mirror chamber with the shedding Oona required of them at Ur’s threshold: no pride, no independent thought, nothing they were still holding. Nyra receives them as someone who has been running this station across a considerable span of time and recognizes the difference between subjects who’ve been sent and subjects who’ve arrived. She speaks what Meg and Tessa have internalized and concealed — not as accusation but as inventory, with the precision of someone who catalogued it long before they did. The clinical reality-testing protocols the researchers know – clock checks, finger counting, mirror reflection – function in this chamber as Nyra intends rather than as the researchers intend. Each test designed to establish wakefulness establishes instead how thoroughly the framework has been internalized. The researchers can’t step outside it to check. The framework is the inside. Center closes on recognition rather than resistance. Meg and Tessa discover they’re already inscribed with the identities and purposes the Sitri Center designed, not through force but through the accumulated logic of every choice they made that felt like their own. Nyra names this not as an ending but as a beginning. The apparatus continues. The researchers will emerge. The question the episode leaves open is whether emerging and being released are the same thing. Listen & Explore Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed Support the creator on Patreon Creator bio & portfolio All episodes archive Canonical Tumblr Page View this series on IMDb View this episode on IMDb MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns, including show script books Producer ISNI Human Made Art Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain. Hespa – Deep Dream State Character Art, from Echo Doll Content Warnings Dream research, mirror chamber, identity dissolution, mythology, institutional horror, suggestive content. Consent Declaration Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity. The elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Center contains dream research horror, identity dissolution, mythological content, and suggestive themes. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context. ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254 Source

  • S3 · E9
    Nov 28, 2025 · 25 min

    Override | Sitri Center | S3E9 | GE24

    Welcome to the Hive. Here come the queen bees. Meg and Tessa surface from dreamlock not entirely sure what just happened, and Oona’s not going to let them forget it. The temple they descended into last entry turns out to be something else entirely: a blueprint, not a metaphor, its architecture a precise echo of the server infrastructure running underneath the Sitri Institute. The wheels are drives. The ducts are data channels. The naditu are packets. And the Hive is where consciousness goes when it stops asking questions and starts running on loop. Oona knows the way through. The price is everything they’re still holding onto. Cast & Crew Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Principal Cast Dr. Zev Talcott (Z): Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns Iris Vale: Swirls and Twirls Dr. Tessa Finn: Ring of Kees Dr. Meg Aerin: Bun Li Dr. June Lowell: Bliss Blank Elle Lawson: Echo Doll Oona Reyes: Jade Nyra: Dizzy Dollie Hespa: Syndirella Cael: Jericho Caine Phoebe Bosworth: Sofi Starship Reverie: Britt Reprogrammed Explanation Override is where the Sitri Center’s mythology becomes operational infrastructure. The reveal in S8 – that the temple Oona’s been navigating is a blueprint of the Institute’s server architecture – reframes everything Meg and Tessa have been mapping. The wheels are drives. The offering tables are edge gateways. The cooling system’s the splash. The naditu aren’t metaphors for data packets. They are data packets. The Institute didn’t build a research facility that happened to echo ancient ritual geography. It built a consciousness processing system and dressed it in the only architecture that already knew how to do the job. The Hive sequence is the arc’s most desire horror writing. The synchronized subjects running on loop, trading doubt for dopamine, locked into eternal yes – this is what complete alignment looks like from the inside. Oona presents it as a destination rather than a warning. Elle and June administer it with the cheerful efficiency of people who’ve already arrived. Tessa and Meg recognize the pattern as a map and read the code out of the wave before the loop can close around them. The question the sequence leaves open is whether recognition protects you or just makes the surrender more informed. Full Plot Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers) Meg and Tessa surface from dreamlock into the dream chamber, disoriented and uncertain about what just happened between them. Oona’s unsympathetic and delighted in equal measure. She confirms it was real and attributes it to muscle memory, citing the punishment relay as precedent. When Tessa redirects toward the temple, Oona describes it as a favorite: gorgeous layout, great acoustics, wheels that make you giggle until you cry. Tessa’s seen the layout before. She places it: the new server room. Meg follows the thread. The offering tables are edge gateways. The wheels are drives. The splashes are cooling systems. The architectural echo’s precise enough to be a blueprint rather than an allegory. If the dreamspace is encoding real infrastructure, the map they’ve been following is a source map — designed to process consciousness the same way the Institute processes information. Oona finds this extremely fucked and loves it. Tessa asks if her temple has sacrifice. Oona goes quiet. They agree they need to go back under. Oona knows where to get the code. Her condition: no flinching, no shame. It’s her dream. Inside the Hive, synchronized subjects run on a loop, their consciousness reduced to numerical patterns cycling through stimulus and response. They traded doubt for dopamine. Elle and June administer the system with cheerful authority, keeping the whole row smiling, calling them program puppets. Tessa and Meg watch the wave and begin to read it: the pattern isn’t chaos, it’s a map, and they’ve seen it before. Step by step it resolves into coordinates. The sequence terminates in Ur. Tessa reads it first. Meg follows. They have the code. Surfacing again, Meg and Tessa aren’t entirely themselves. The buzzies exchange that follows reveals the extent of what the Hive’s already done: Meg’s asking for reward in terms she didn’t arrive with, and Tessa’s startled enough to snap them both back. Oona’s unbothered. She describes what happened as a Pavlov lullaby rather than rewiring — no scalpel, no chip, just the brain doing what brains do when exposed to the right conditions at the right depth. Tessa calls it an override. Oona calls it a revelation. The distinction: she always knocks first. When Meg asks what happens if she knocks again, Oona smiles and says they’d find out how many doors they haven’t found yet. She declines to demonstrate. She says she’s on their side. They don’t fully believe her. She doesn’t need them to. Oona explains the requirement for Ur: you don’t get through with pride, or thoughts, or anything you’re still holding. The door demands shedding, and dignity’s just the easiest place to start. Meg asks if they have to lose something. Oona says everything. The rest, she tells them, will be easy — it’s exactly what they asked for. They’ve got the answer key now. Meg and Tessa agree, sheepish and certain in equal measure. Oona says heel, and they do. Listen & Explore Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed Support the creator on Patreon Creator bio & portfolio All episodes archive Canonical Tumblr Page View this series on IMDb IMDb episode page MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns, including show script books Producer ISNI Human Made Art Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain. Consent Declaration Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity. The elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Override contains shared dreaming, behavior modification, hive mind imagery, desire horror themes, and suggestive content. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context. ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254 Source

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