Show Notes
I know exactly what you are. You’re trade.
Evergreen is the finale of DDS’s fourth season, Vale Four. Every DDS season looks at something through the lens of desire horror. That means it asks why we want unsettling things.
This season looked at ads. Each linked set of stories, or cycle, was about an advertising phenomenon. We did earworms, facial telemetry, microtargeting, and gaming. We wrapped up with astroturfing: fake grassroots that makes it unclear what’s real.
The whole season followed a corporate sabotage plot. One faction tried to tank Vale Four before a massive IPO.
In the finale, we’ll find out if that whole plot was real or theater. You have to listen to find out that answer. I can give you some hints, though.
Yes and no.
If you want to fully decode this, check the cycle finales: Sinker, The River, Bullseye, and Sublimate.
These texts matter: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, any Greek myth guide, A Star Is Born, and The Lesser Key of Solomon
It was a dark romance the whole time. It’s on you to figure out who was romancing whom.
A post-credits sequence with the Muppettes explains the show’s transition into monster romance.
State Of The Dream
The Deep Dream State is NSFW. It’s certainly rated R, containing sexual language and references. The website and trailer are PG, as is the Season 4 opener Refrain. That’s all by design; we believe in intimate storytelling but not blindsiding.
I am the showrunner, sound designer, publicist, writer, director, and a voice actor. That’s a lot, but “adult stories are real stories” is my bit, and I’m fully committed.
Season Five, After After, is under supported development. We recently crossed 60,000 downloads despite a very unclear niche, so we don’t intend to stop now. Auditions for Season Five are open. Email [email protected] if interested.
Season Five will be resolved by audience voting. The setup will be clear, but the ending isn’t. Listeners choose the faction they want to hear more from.
Cast & Crew
Written, produced, directed, sound designed, and publicized by Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns.
ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254
Assistant Director: Bliss Blank · IMDb
Chavito as Mr. Beefcake | Syndi Rella · IMDb as Hespa Sports | Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns · IMDb as Z | Ring of Kees · IMDb as Tessa Finn | Swirls and Twirls · IMDb as Iris Vale | Dizzy Dollie · IMDb as Naia Anderson | Bliss Blank · IMDb as June Lowell | Tickled Panda · IMDb as Hilton | Dakota Dream · IMDb as Astoria
EPISODE LINKS
Evergreen on NNPP | Blubrry | MusicBrainz
Evergreen is the eighteenth episode and Season 4 finale of Deep Dream State, a monster romance, science fiction romance, and desire horror audio drama by Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns. It concludes Season 4: Vale Four. S4E18 / GE45. Duration: 18:08.
SHOW LINKS
Deep Dream State | Trailer | YouTube | Vale Four | DDS Glossary | Cast | Scripts Index | Neuralpedia | Support the Show on Patreon | Deep Dream State on IMDb | Deep Dream State on MusicBrainz | Wikidata | TV Tropes | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | RSS
EXPLORE THE NEURALVERSE
Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns | NNPP IMDb | NNPP MusicBrainz | NNPP BookBrainz | NNPP ISNI: 0000 0005 2877 6254 | NNPP IPI: 01346215468 | 01346215566
Human Made Art
The poster image for this arc is from Sunrise Forever on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Layer art overlays are used to vary each iteration of the image. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.
Consent Declaration
Deep Dream State is a monster romance, science fiction romance, and desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets And Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, desire, and complicity. The elements depicted are fictional and intentional. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.
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.
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.
Hubris becomes a game mechanic as every team begins to get exactly what they deserve. Team Alchemy remains in the Panoptic Library. Z keeps Team Leash ready for the hunt, with Gia fully settled into her darker concubinded role. Team Flowers watches from the Second Secret Library, where total visibility means they can see everything and cannot look away. In the forest, Team Thorns learns that every vine and every thrall Tessa cuts down comes back stronger, until the balance of power begins to reverse.