Episodes

Welcome to Deep Dream State, a full-cast serialized monster romance and desire horror audio drama with dystopian science fiction, dark romance, surreal psychological horror, and an expanding posthuman mythology. The first four completed seasons comprise 45 global episodes. The completed fourth season runs 18 episodes and just over seven hours.

Every season asks why people want unsettling things. The stories move through cosmic horror, reality television surveillance, dream research, advertising technology, intimacy, transformation, and the systems people build around desire. Season Five, After After, brings monster romance to the foreground without moving away from the show’s established desire horror. Queer desire has always carried an element of horror for the status quo; monster romance is the flip side of the same coin, turning the thing coded as monstrous into the subject and possibility of love. Listeners help decide what comes next by voting among the season’s extrahuman factions on Choose Your Monster, where a live server-rendered leaderboard keeps the current standings visible before client-side updates run.

The show runs in seasons, aka arcs. Episodes inside a season are grouped into thematic cycles. Cycles provide extra context, but listeners can navigate entirely by season and episode number. The arcs share a continuous fictional world called the Neuralverse, documented across the official NNPP site.

The Global Episode number, abbreviated GE, is the running count across the complete series. The same numbering appears on IMDb and MusicBrainz, while the official Deep Dream State site remains the primary guide to arcs, characters, lore, continuity, and episode navigation.

Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | RSS | Official Site

The audio drama is NSFW and contains sexual language and references. The official website and trailer are PG. That distinction’s intentional: Deep Dream State believes in intimate storytelling, but not blindsiding.

Created, written, produced, and directed by Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns. Assistant director: Bliss Blank. Creator identity: Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns | ISNI: 0000 0005 2877 6254 | IPI: 01346215468 | IPI: 01346215566

Jump to: Arc 1: The Chthonic | Arc 2: Incognitoh | Arc 3: Sitri Center | Arc 4: Vale Four | Arc 5: After After

Trailer

We made the original trailer late in the series. Things move on a different timetable in independent production, but I think it was worth the wait: watch the Deep Dream State trailer or visit the official YouTube channel. For the current monster romance era, visit After After and Choose Your Monster.

Arc 1: The Chthonic

A luxury cruise ship sails into an older ceremony. The sea does not forget.

More: Arc 1 Hub | Deep Dream State on NNPP

Maiden Voyage | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E1 | GE1 | Target Selection. A luxury cruise ship embarks under the banner of the Dagon Dream Group and begins identifying its first candidates among the wedding party. Maiden Cycle
Cringetide | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E2 | GE2 | Indebtedness. Debt and surveillance pull a crew member deeper into the ship’s true operations as the bachelorette party goes looking for the eldritch thing at the end of the corridor. Maiden Cycle
Veil | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E3 | GE3 | Ritual Initiation. A glacial archaeological excursion pulls the wedding party into stone corridors where the carvings recognize them. Ceremony Cycle
Asunder | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E4 | GE4 | Ecstatic Surrender. The midnight ceremony binds flesh and will in a covenant older than the ship or the civilization that built it. Ceremony Cycle
Shower | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E5 | GE5 | Ritual Selection. The crew redirects its attention toward the passengers who keep asking questions, while two others surface from shared dreams with no memory of turning the shower on. Cloud Cycle
Garter | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E6 | GE6 | Information Asymmetry. Sarah follows a planted note into the vault and is offered a controlled dose of what she’s been chasing. Cloud Cycle
Tessellated | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E7 | GE7 | Architecture of Belief. The ship has no outside. Holly has found another tile. Storm Cycle
Undergloom | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E8 | GE8 | Commodified Transcendence. The recording equipment was running the entire time. Storm Cycle
Spiralstorm (Finale) | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S1:E9 | GE9 | Market Entropy. The system encounters something it cannot commodify and tries anyway. Storm Cycle

Arc 2: Incognitoh

A reality competition that rewrites its players. The prize is influence. The cost is memory.

More: Arc 2 Hub | Deep Dream State on NNPP

Violet (Premiere) | NNPP | MB: S2:E1 | GE10 | Folk Horror. A wellness client follows her therapist’s instructions to a stone circle where a coven is already waiting. Ritual Cycle
Glass Houses | NNPP | MB: S2:E2 | GE11 | Pelco. Five contestants move into a fully transparent competition space where going private looks suspicious and transparency feels like a choice. Glass House Cycle
Uniforms | NNPP | MB: S2:E3 | GE12 | Behavioral Modification. The Glass House issues icon-coded uniforms and Madison discovers she can run Hannah the same way Bella runs the system. Glass House Cycle
Deep Fake | NNPP | MB: S2:E4 | GE13 | Frankenbite. Zarah finds a backdoor to the archive and builds a strategy around judge profiles left easy to find on purpose. Glass House Cycle
Winner Winner | NNPP | MB: S2:E5 | GE14 | Immunity Challenge. The floors aren’t optimized for upright locomotion and the uniform that reflects back at Madison isn’t a punishment — it’s a mirror. Winner Cycle
The Chain (Finale) | NNPP | MB: S2:E6 | GE15 | Participation Loop. The final challenge connects every contestant through a chain of haptic triggers and the prize is a permanent position inside the system she thought she was playing. Winner Cycle

Arc 3: Sitri Center

A secluded dream research institute where the experiment is always already running.

More: Arc 3 Hub | Lore Glossary | Cast

Drill (Premiere) | MB: S3:E1 | GE16 | Threat Simulation Theory. A dream research institute deploys its first experimental intervention and places a twelve million dollar wager on whose methodology is correct. Threat Simulation Cycle
Adapt | MB: S3:E2 | GE17 | Reward Loop. Construct 37 produces the outcome Meg predicted and Tessa writes her confession to the committee with the precision of someone trained to document. Threat Simulation Cycle
Incubator | MB: S3:E3 | GE18 | Sleep Paralysis. Elle Lawson enters stabilized REM paralysis and learns lucid dreaming protocols from a researcher who stopped applying them to herself some time ago. Sleep Paralysis Cycle
Gazes Back | MB: S3:E4 | GE19 | MILD and VILD. Elle Lawson’s increasingly intense dreams are opportunities. The Mnemonic and Visual Induction protocols stitch the boundary between research and conditioning until it disappears. When June Lowell questions the program’s efficacy, her solution is to put Meg Aerin in the chamber as a subject. Sleep Paralysis Cycle
Cusp | MB: S3:E5 | GE20 | Transitional Architecture. An urban photographer whose waking obsession with threshold spaces has become a recurring nightmare discovers her subconscious has been tracing the same places through variations of the same dream — and the researchers recognize them. Liminal Spaces Cycle
Descendent | MB: S3:E6 | GE21 | Sacred Geography. Meg and Tessa follow Lyra’s dream map through the service corridors station by station, extracting sensory memories of each location until they reach a soundproofed chamber at the end of the corridor. Liminal Spaces Cycle
Tether | MB: S3:E7 | GE22 | Folie a deux. Meg and Tessa realize the control is already operating on them. When Oona Reyes’ case file arrives, the architecture of her dream-linking retreats turns out to be indistinguishable from the institution. They’re back in the Freudian nightmare parlor again. Collective Dreaming Cycle
Artifact | MB: S3:E8 | GE23 | Server Architecture. The ancient temple turns out to be a blueprint. Collective Dreaming Cycle
Override | MB: S3:E9 | GE24 | Hive Mind. Meg and Tessa enter the Hive, where synchronized subjects run on a loop trading doubt for dopamine. Collective Dreaming Cycle
Center | MB: S3:E10 | GE25 | Mirror Test. Nyra receives Meg and Tessa in the mirror chamber and uses the lucid dreaming protocols they know as tools they didn’t anticipate. False Awakenings Cycle
Sync | MB: S3:E11 | GE26 | False Awakening. Every apparent resolution collapses into another layer. False Awakenings Cycle
Arouse (Finale) | MB: S3:E12 | GE27 | Medium as Mechanism. The medium was always the mechanism. False Awakenings Cycle

Arc 4: Vale Four (Complete)

An advertising technology company turns desire into data while rival factions fight over who controls the system.

More: Arc 4 Hub | Lore Glossary | Cast

- Refrain (Premiere) | NNPP | MB: S4:E1 | GE28 | Earworm. A remote island facility studies audio hooks on paid participants, and the hooks don’t stop when the lights go out. Hooks Cycle
- Hook Line | NNPP | MB: S4:E2 | GE29 | Neuromarketing. The music patterns spread beyond the lab and into the bodies of everyone within earshot, and the staff turns out not to be immune. Hooks Cycle
- Sinker | NNPP | MB: S4:E3 | GE30 | Involuntary Musical Imagery. Elle and Cael find something buried in the walls of Vale Four that shouldn’t exist: the document that could bring the whole IPO crashing down. Hooks Cycle
- Slowplay | NNPP | MB: S4:E4 | GE31 | Behavioral Economics. Vale Four deploys FaceTrace and the holdfasts inside the facility learn what it means to operate under a system that reads resistance before it surfaces. Tell Cycle
- Raise | NNPP | MB: S4:E5 | GE32 | Microexpression Detection. FaceTrace reads what subjects want before they can articulate or conceal it, and Ava asks for solo access so she can be honest without anyone watching her be honest. Tell Cycle
- Pot Limit | NNPP | MB: S4:E6 | GE33 | Behavioral Telemetry. Z reviews the complete FaceTrace profile on every subject in Vale Four and discovers the system has gone proactive. June thinks she’s positioning for a reveal. The system already had it. Tell Cycle
- The River (Finale) | NNPP | MB: S4:E7 | GE34 | Recalibration. The Tell Cycle ends where it always had to. Z clocked every tell, every steered session, every whispered instruction. June was the play. Ava says yes to something she doesn’t understand. The hands were the thing to watch. Tell Cycle
- Quiver | IMDb | NNPP | MB: S4:E8 | GE35 | Microtargeting. Vale Four opens the Valescape. The subjects get Kamas, get games, and lose three hours they do not remember losing. Blake sees the architecture. Nobody listens. Targeted Cycle
- Nock | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E9 | GE36 | Microtargeting. The Kama economy tightens. Blake names what Vale Four is doing and can’t stop playing anyway. The factions decide to let the system recruit her for them. Targeted Cycle
- Bullseye | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E10 | GE37 | Microtargeting. Blake (Naomi Biela) is out of Kamas, out of options, and out of time. She’s seen what Vale Four does to Piper. She’s seen what it’s doing to Gia. She knows exactly how the system works because she built systems like it. There’s a way out. There’s a way to bring the whole thing down. It requires Blake to trust someone inside the facility, walk through a door she can’t walk back through. Targeted Cycle
- Luna | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E11 | GE38 | Video Games and Augmented Reality. Hespa has fled the island, and Neuroplex sends the hunters after her: three teams into Snarecraft, the Assistive Reality Game Tessa insists is a crucible and not a game. Team Thorns hunts through brutality, Team Alchemy through calculation, Team Flowers through vibes. The maze was built by the person they’re chasing. Snarecraft Cycle
- Quintessence | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E12 | GE39 | Video Games and Augmented Reality. Astoria and Hilton scry the teams moving through Snarecraft, uncovering secrets about the Muppettes and Meridian A. When Z sees them watching, he turns the gaze back on them and trains Gia, Celeste, and Clara as Team Leash. Team Alchemy and Team Flowers cross raging waters, encounter the medieval origins of Midstream, and reach the Hidden Library they were told did not exist. Snarecraft Cycle
- Sealed | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E13 | GE40 | Video Games and Augmented Reality. Z preps his wolfgirls. Flowers bops around. The real focus, though, is Team Alchemy. They arrive at the most complete library either of them has ever seen. Meg wants what’s inside badly enough to agree to almost anything, and the woman running the place is happy to let her. What starts as a transaction slowly reshapes both of them, until neither one is entirely sure who’s choosing what anymore. Snarecraft Cycle
- Rubido | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E14 | GE41 | Video Games and Augmented Reality. In Snarecraft, Team Flowers discovers a library that reveals every game in progress, while Tessa’s attempt to dominate an adaptive forest turns her thralls and the world itself against her. Snarecraft Cycle
- Sublimate | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E15 | GE42 | Video Games and Augmented Reality. As Snarecraft reaches its climax, Elle and Porsche race through a magical library, Blake uncovers troubling truths about the game, and Z and Iris unveil what Vale Four really wants from its players. Snarecraft Cycle
- Radix | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E16 | GE43 | Astroturfing. Naia’s testimony opens the final Vale Four cycle as apparently candid production fragments blur fiction, surveillance, and performance. Tessa, June, Z, and Meg move through shifting layers of control while repetition and manufactured agreement become the pattern that matters. Grassroots Cycle
- Yield | NNPP | IMDb | MB: S4:E17 | GE44 | Astroturfing. The Vale Four trial reaches its payoff as Iris opens with an ad for Spotlight and Elle takes the fight to court. Whispered commentary, old clues, and manufactured performance converge as questions stretching back to the season premiere finally yield their answers. Grassroots Cycle
- Evergreen (Finale) | NNPP | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | IMDb | MB: S4:E18 | GE45 | Astroturfing | 18:08. Vale Four reaches its finale as Iris questions her place in the franchise and rival factions make their last moves around the collapsing company. Corporate sabotage, manufactured performance, and dark romance converge as Season Four closes and Deep Dream State turns toward monster romance. Grassroots Cycle

Arc 5: After After

Humanity is over.

After After is the fifth season of Deep Dream State and the clearest expression of the show’s current identity. It moves monster romance to the foreground, but that is not a shift away from desire horror. Queer desire has always contained an element of horror for the status quo; monster romance is the flip side of the same coin, asking what happens when the thing called monstrous becomes the subject, object, and possibility of love. After the end of Vale Four, Naia is in charge of what comes after humanity. Different extrahuman factions offer different futures, and each story set is a romance with chemistry, stakes, transformation, and the possibility of a happily ever after on the species level.

The season also makes the audience part of the structure. Choose Your Monster names and illustrates the factions, lets listeners cast one active site vote per browser, and displays a live leaderboard whose server-rendered totals stay consistent with the faction cards. Listeners can change their faction later, and the standings help decide what comes After After.

After After will also be part of the Intimate Audio Business class at Closing Credits, connecting the season’s production to a broader conversation about making intimate audio.