
Show Notes
Before the cameras rolled, there was Violet.
Violet Verdier follows a trail of half-remembered ritual into a stone circle where a coven is already waiting. The grounding techniques she learned turn out to have older origins than Lilly Ekimmu let on.
In this work of folk horror, the initiation began before she arrived.
Cast & Crew
Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Co-Directed by: Bliss Blank
Principal Cast
Violet Verdier – Flux
Lilly Ekimmu, Therapist – Bliss Blank
Bella, Coven Leader – Dizzy Dollie
The Coven
The Lady Aurora
Bun Li
Cupcake
Ella
Geek X
Jade
Kitten Azazel
Vampy McVampface
Steampunk Sarah
Tinsel
Full Summary
Office
Violet Verdier arrives for session 48 with Lilly Ekimmu, a licensed professional at Deep Dream Wellness in New Milford. Violet is anxious, fractured, convinced her past is visible to everyone around her. She keeps referencing a Pink Room she can’t fully describe and a person called Ash she can’t fully explain. Lilly guides her through the 3-3-3 grounding technique. It works. Lilly sends her outside to touch grass. It’s all part of the process.
Stones
Violet follows Lilly’s instructions to a historic stone circle, recording a voice memo as she goes. She’s trying to be normal. The birds sound wrong. She runs the technique on herself and it works again, mostly, until the footsteps start and the drums begin underneath everything and the exercise starts to feel less like a coping mechanism and more like a preparation.
Ritual
The stone circle is occupied. Bella, the Coven Leader, greets Violet using Lilly’s exact language. The technique now functions as a ritual induction. Violet recognizes Lilly in the circle. The drums build. Violet finds that everything feels right again.
Integration
Back in the office, Lilly records an updated progress note. The session closes with both of them counting together, Lilly and Violet in unison, the same rhythm from the stone circle now fully reframed. Lilly says they’re the offering. They just have to stay grounded.
Listen & Explore
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Support the creator on Patreon
Creator bio & portfolio
All episodes archive
Full cast & crew list
View this series on IMDb
This episode on IMDb
MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Explanation
Violet is the Incognitoh arc’s origin story and its thesis statement delivered in one movement. The arc that follows is built around the machinery of observation, performance, and identity rewriting. Violet establishes where that machinery comes from.
The horror of Violet is that the tool and the ritual induction are formally identical. Lilly and Bella use the same language because they are running the same operation.
The Incognitoh arc will build a much more elaborate architecture of observation and performance on top of this foundation. Violet is where the foundation gets poured.
Human Made Art
Series artwork is hand drawn by Echo Doll. 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. The manipulative elements depicted are fictional and intentional.
Violet depicts the 3-3-3 grounding technique, a real evidence-based anxiety intervention, within a fictional context in which it has been weaponized as a ritual induction tool. This depiction is not clinical guidance, not a critique of grounding techniques, and not a representation of real therapeutic practice. If you are experiencing anxiety or psychological distress, please consult a qualified mental health professional. The fictional frame here is intentional and total.
All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.
ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254
Source
More from Deep Dream State
After After is the monster romance fifth season of Deep Dream State. Naia takes control of humanity’s next step, seven extrahuman factions make their case, and listeners vote on what comes next. Monster romance, desire horror, queer posthuman desire, and a species-level happily ever after.
I know exactly what you are. You’re trade.
Yield kicks off with a very normal ad for Spotlight, assuming your definition of normal includes performance conditioning and Iris Vale enjoying the attention a lot too much. Then everybody goes to court, where Elle tries to win a serious legal case while the rest of the cast provides the world's least helpful whispered commentary. Long-running jokes and suspiciously specific phrases start paying off in ways that suggest somebody has been planning this for a while. By the end, the legal question may be settled, but the show is still very interested in asking whether all of this was theater, which is exactly the sort of question you want answered one episode before the finale.
The Deep Dream State enters its final Vale Four cycle with Radix, a story about astroturfing, manufactured agreement, and the illusion of control. Naia, Tessa, June, Z, and Meg move through competing layers of reality as candid conversations and behind-the-scenes fragments become part of the experiment itself. Everyone thinks they understand who is watching, who is performing, and who has the clicker. They're all wrong.
Z releases the eager wolfgirls for the hunt while Elle and Porsche watch Tessa’s subjugation through the library’s magical surveillance system, only to realize the approaching wolfgirls are real and flee deeper into the stacks.