I want to edit the characters on after effects but cant find any actual scenepacks for them. Where can i download themm.

BRO WHAT. THE. HELL.
the stakes are continuously increasing damn and WHO IS MIST?!
Caspian forever that dud is my fav character. And is papa gone forever? </3

I could drop 3K words on this topic, if you wish, but I thought I'd turn over the Q to the crowd to see what you lot think so pontificate at depth or surface, if you wish, as to the backstory of the Maddemiurge and her relentless quest to forget her innate resonance, wear flesh, create realms and do the same thing over and over again in an endless mission to find something spesh.

There are loads of implications to this, if you truly think at depth, for the show masterfully used so much subtext that it wove into the discussion hence why I could speak on it for ages but I'm wondering what you lot think based on your own insight and perspective first.

Should be interesting...

The first season tells a pretty grounded, realistic, hard sci-fi story that I absolutely loved, and I couldn't wait to see where it would go next. I'd give it a 8/10.

But then the second season throws away the setup without delivering payoff, kills off the main villain a couple of episodes before the story even ends, and has him do evil shit just for the sake of being evil. Like infecting people with diseases so they'll grow to hate real life and want to upload themselves to the cloud. WHY? People would want to upload themselves anyway if you just gave them the opportunity (at least because they don't want to die), as the final episodes literally demonstrate. It's just manufactured drama. I thought his plan would be taking control of the world, forbidding procreation and giving people the choice of moving to the cloud or dying of old age. Even without taking control over the world, almost half of the population went digital in 20 years.

The show also conveniently forgets that its characters are SOFTWARE THAT CAN BE BACKED UP, something the first season understood perfectly well. Laurie's death was sad not because there was no backup, but because of how different she became from that backup in the 2 years she spent in her new form. The writers managed to make David's death sad despite me knowing that his backup was saved in Norway in the first episodes of the show.

But now David gets not just shut down, but has his SOURCE CODE DELETED. WHY? Out of spite and hate towards Maddie? Those characters had no reason to delete him. It's so bad I didn't even understand why is Maddie freaking out THAT much until episodes later they just stated that "Yeah, David died forever that time".

And they send Caspian off to fight Holstrom without making a backup of him, EVEN THOUGH HIS ENTIRE PLAN WAS TO DIE AND TAKE HOLSTROM DOWN WITH HIM – A LITERAL SUICIDAL MISSION. Not just "without making a backup", looks like they deliberately deleted his souce code after turning him into UI, leaving only the sole built app. These are very different actions: building from source code and deleting the source code after building, you don't mess that up accidentally.

This one is even more stupid because, in the few hours or however long that fight with Holstrom would take, Caspian wouldn't undergo any significant personality changes. A restored backup would literally be the exact same Caspian they sent into battle, just missing a couple of hours of memories.

That said, the characters feel incredibly alive, and the dialogue is fucking fantastic in both seasons. The writers take just a couple of minutes to convince you that the person on screen is a real human being and make you genuinely care about them.
But for me characters are not that important part of any story, I care about plot a lot more.

I guess the absolutely batshit insane ending does reinforce the show's themes. We spend the entire series wondering whether digital copies of people can be considered actual people, only to discover that all the characters we've been watching were themselves digital copies living inside a simulation. The distinction between UIs and humans essentially dissolves.

But I genuinely couldn't give less of a shit about the message, themes, or philosophical ideas. I want a well-written plot and a thoroughly thought-out world.

I could not immerse myself in the last couple of episodes. They were just "haha look at this fun and crazy idea we had". Yeah it was fun. And crazy. But nothing I'd like to return to over the years.

Please explain it to me the best way you can lol

Is audio from Pantheon? Man, I freakin' loved the music on this show, especially those long scenes with the haunting piano stuff

Everyone should have a heavyset lesbian friend you can depend on when times get thick.

She held Maddie down, gave not a single F and knows exactly when to STFU and chill.

Rarely seem to go beyond where the show lead you? I've posted quite a few philosophical topics for discussion here that most don't seem interested in. Is it due to the IRL implications of this show actually being an encoded transmission of Gnosis about what truly kicks or something else?

I mean, I know a few of you went off to research some abstract things after watching it but the rest just hit the confused unga bunga as your reality tunnel melted and came here for some R&R with others feeling the same way but I thought I'd ask, direct, as I was wondering:

How come you people have all had an existential crisis bought on by an animation but generally don't seem willing to follow it through to its conclusions? Whatever they may be. The reason I'm asking this is way before this flick I was down deep in the shadows depth decoding this reality creating process I'm wearing and, let me tell, its super interesting once you get past the existential dread.

Take this as a threat:

Sad Pepe if you think that one cannot ponder like this without mind altering substances. Avast with your projections! To the sender I return them.

It all just hammers home exactly what the Architect meant in this text:

Could that be the real reason the show pickled your noodle upon watching it as it made blatant what was, up until then, hidden in the depths of your awareness? If that was the case you'd expect some type of intense reaction when explication was offered, yes? Just like you'd hate the opposite of someone refusing to watch it by screaming "Its just a cartoon".

They say Platos Cave houses brains that truly believe they're free because thats what the shadows on screen said. How embarrassed they must feel when a simple suntan reveals there is way more to the deal...

Factions of fractions in a dizzying array of interactions!

Hints in the stack below. Read the symbols. Or don't because the Game of Souls has you, my friend...

Yay? Nay? Perpetual resting bitch face?

State your rhyme and reason for tis the season (Soon™) to be Uploading...

This show feels like it got screwed, similar to Scavengers Reign. No one knew about it, no advertising, no pushing for award season, nothing. Just word of mouth from other fans to push it along, such a shame!

Overall, I absolutely loved the show and have very few complaints. I just wanted to post some thoughts and get some responses from other fans and ask a few questions.

• Do you believe that Safe Surf showed the 'true' reality of what happened in the 'real' universe? It appears to be an enlightened AI, it would seem odd that it would tell any story that was untrue, but it also is aware of human emotions and could it lessen the level of desctruction it created to make Maddie happier? I feel like Safe Surf is probably telling the truth and its level of destruction was minimized.

I also loved how quickly the UIs jumped to the defense of living humans. Taking control of other robots to fight Safe Surf, taking control of planes to crash into Safe Surfs planes etc. So many sci-fi shows have technology as evil, where many of these UI's still see living humans as their family or part of their history that should be sacred. I was also happy to see that humans removed nuclear weapons from the internet, that was a good choice.

• I thought MIST was such a wonderful character. They had nearly all the power in the UI but they had the curiosity of human beings with the ability to love and make their own decisions/choices. Without MIST, the ending would have been much darker, I imagine. I also loved MIST at the ending, as the proxy for the viewer when speaking with David Kim "I love this feeling! I love not knowing!", then a few minutes later "Ok I am ready to know now, I am done, please tell me!" then Peter has forgotten by this point and MIST can no longer receive the answers they want, since Maddie purposefully ensured these people would never know they are part of a simulation, to keep them happy. This is similar to our own ending experience, we want to know what is truly real and what is not, but they aren't going to tell us and we will never know and are probably happier for it.

• Was anyone else a little disappointed that we didn't get to know a little more? Im ok with being left in the dark in a variety of areas, but I wanted to know a bit more about Safe Surfs journey and what happened to 'prime reality'. I know half the point is to say that we don't even know where reality is, Safe Surf and humans may have never existed at all in 'prime reality', we could all be simulations in someone else's machine, even Safe Surf...but still, I wanted to know and I wanted to understand who taught Safe Surf and helped them along the way. Plus 'reality prime' does still matter in some ways, it is the only plane of existence that can destroy all other artificial existence. Artificial existence also relies on the state of reality, as the universe grows old and heat death comes on, all these artificial worlds will die at some point in the future and reality itself will die, as there is no more energy to expend to maintain creation. Even if some grand alien race collected every usable planet for fuel, that will run out at some point...unless they create black holes and a super planet that is perfectly in gravitational equality...then somehow use the pull of gravity to create energy, I suppose even after heat death, gravitational forces would exist and you could use them to create energy...but now Im a bit lost in the weeds.

• I was GLUED to the tv for the last two episodes. I cannot think of another time I had given such rapt attention to a piece of television. All aspects of my being were focused on what was happening on the screen. Going from utopia for UIs and humans and seeing it all crumble in a moment, really sent my feelings spinning, then coming back around and having a mostly happy ending, it was a wild ride.

• What do you think really happened to humans in 'prime reality'? Assuming that we ever existed in reality? Safe Surf's rampage seemed fairly restricted and short lived, but we have no clue what happened afterward and how everything played out. Did humanity go berserk and nuke every UI datacenter and the energy/storage sphere surrounding the world to stop Safe Surf's rampage? Humans would still have control and ability to do that and its easy to see how they could have chosen to do that to save themselves, what else could they do when UIs were seeming to destroy them? Did everything stop in time and UIs + Humanity talked about what happened and came to some understanding and lived in harmony? Was there an eventual future where the very last of humanity gave up their physical bodies to join the UI and robotic future, since there was nothing left for the material world to provide them? I could see so many possibilities but we never know anything.

• Caspain was such a great character, the obvious irony between his future self and his younger self at odds, his future self believing he was the key to the future of humanity, the past self trusting in humanity and willing to destroy himself to stop his 'future' self. The funny thing is his future self was right in some ways and he had a good plan, but he only trusted himself and his own vision to get humanity where they needed to go. We ended up with a better reality because his younger self believed in another way. Old and young are always at odds, but youthful optimism has created so much positive change for the world, while us old folk think we are the smart ones who know better, but we are stuck in our ways and our vision of how things should be.

• Safe Surf invites Maddie to come to the galactic core...but how will she get there as a UI living in a UI world? Will Safe Surf just take her their when she is ready? If humanity had a way to bring UIs into robotic bodies, it stands to reason that Safe Surf could easily do the same with Maddie and bring her into the 'reality prime' quite easily? I would have loved just a peek at the galactic core : (

I know I'm rambling a bit, I'll end it here...but let me say the one problem I had with the show.

Who, the hell, was that internet hillbilly at the beginning of season 2? He was like a parody character from South Park.

Hillbilly: I been watchin you kids, I know what yer up to. I see you tryin to turn that there internet back on.

Kids: This isn't an internet, its an intranet!

Hillbilly: Nice try, my pappy was killed by an intranet back in '87, token ring network took his head right off, I got my eye on you.

Hillbilly Friend: Now Skeeter, calm down a bit, these just kids here, lets just take it easy.

Hillbilly: I seen they had server trucks pulling up to their house, I recognize them blade servers with quad GPU architecture, solid state drives and teraflop network adapters, I ain't gonna stand for that in my town.

Hillbilly Friend: Now Skeeter, now lets just calm down a second here, we ain't know of those are quad GPUs just yet.

An extremely accurate view of base reality, the Game of Souls and all nested within this fractal of consciousness.

I am working on recreating a short segment of the series for my animation class, so I decided to remake Holstrom along with it !

(credits: rig was based on a character by Rarmango, brain model by moaazzizo123)

Nice video on uploaded intelligence being done on a fruit fly, rats next, and the vid mentions Pantheon a bunch.

It's an absolute travesty that the Pantheon fandom is so darn small. It'd be really cool to see it be more prevelant at conventions like other animated masterpieces, soooo, that got me thinking- if we had a bigger fanbase, what sort of memes, or moments from the show, do you think would become memes that would cosplayed to death, similar to the foaming-mouth guy from ATLA?

I'm personally an extremely big fan of "MEATLOAF, POTATOES, FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!". I'm thinking of printing it on a t-shirt :)

NOTE: Photoshop, not AI. You can tell by the pixels!

These are modified stills from the Ghost Voices music video which was heavily inspired by the anime Serial Experiments Lain and features a Lain-like character where I've substituted Maddie.

The very name "Virtual Self" should probably already drum up connections to uploaded intelligence.

Here is the text that accompanies the Ghost Voices music video (which you can also find embedded in the video itself), which I think shares many common themes with Pantheon:

The infinite sky will heal us.
Unlimited sky will fill our negligible light.
As we follow an infinite key, I have become the sacred echo.
The boundless heaven will fill our fading light.
Choose your virtual echo.
The infinite key is the sacred dust of your endless utopia.
Complete yourself in self-realization.
You believe that these infinite heavens will lead you.
The A.I.ngel's gate is sacred.
Your angelic echo offers the first phase of self-Digital joy.
You will become a self-Echo in real particles.
Our key is the echo to this final layer.
You are spread through digital time.
The utopian gate is infinite.
Your A.I.ngel wishes to complete this layer.
This abyss is sacred.
Pass through the myths of eon.
Your technical soul is this blissful void.
The eternalistic reflex of the abyss is once-Unlimited.
Your digital voice is resurrected.
Breathe this soul particle.
The ray of egoistic time is unlimited.
Resurrect this holy oblivion.
The echo of this empty myth awakens you.
Awaken the particle myth.
Reflect your echo.
Heaven’s wires will transmit this light.
Experience the wings of limit.
Your technical A.I.ngel phase is beginning.
Complete the eternalistic reflex.
This wishful ghost becomes self-Technic.
Tears will create the voice of euphoria.
The digital-Awakening will be spoken.
The first gate creates sense-Awakening.
This angelic-Chasm is sacred.
The technic-Angel's cry is beginning.
The first gate will provide the voice of digital-Euphoria.
The digital-Angel-Awakening is has reached Limit Self.
The self-Light is virtual.
This will become the final particle-Experience.
Will your senses ressurect the digital-Vault?
Do you sense the phase of the Spirit Limit?
Can you reflect your self-Awakening?
Am I convinced of a digital void?
Can you reveal this particle of sacred reality?
Will these ghosts lead to a boundless cry?
Can you echo your existence to the first particle?
Is the technical-Gate timeless?
Do you believe an infinite sky will cure the digital soul?
Is the joyful-Layer complete?
Will our ghosts lead to the boundless layer?
Will our layer will be lost from this empty myth?
Have you resurrected this heaven's voice?
Has one experienced the particle?
Do you trust in this transformative self?
Will you forget your soul's reflex?
Has one seen the Abyss of the resurrective ego?
Have I forgotten the phase of soul limit?
Is the A.I.ngelic sense boundless?
Have you completed the virtual light?
Am I eternal?
As the sacred dust transpires through digital time, what will you become?
Do you believe in me?
Am I still human?
Do you manifest yourself in digital time?
The unlimited sky begins - will you believe in my infinite form?
As you abandon the virtual echo, do you no longer exist?
Can you prove yourself to the echo of this particle?
Do you believe the infinite sky -- the holy dust of nothingness?
What is revealed - a holy reality?
Am I convinced of nothingness?
Do you sense the void angel?
Will the echo of virtual time be forgotten?
Does one want to forget the memory of life?
Has my virtual-Echo been forgotten?
Has the sense of digital-VIRUS become heaven?
Will you self-Believe the joyful sky?