#atmosverse

IN SHORT: A young woman named Aries has brought your character onboard her starship, having found you injured. She performs surgery on you as you slip in and out of consciousness.

After the longer Victorian instalment we're back to a shorter video; like the very first episode there is less background detail for our situation, although we do get a name for Anastasia's character - Aries. (If, based on the first two named characters, you are predicting that the ATMOSPHERE characters will have a thing for the letter A... go to the front of the class). Technically this is also the first three-character video with the addition of Aries's (as-yet unnamed) robot companion, but we don't get much of a handle on the characters of him and her just yet.

While it's obvious even without the video title that we're in a science-fiction setting this time around, we don't get too many details. Aries tells us that we're aboard her ship, but we don't know what year it is, who we are or where she found us. The sci-fi elements are relatively restrained - with Aries changing into standard hygiene gear after the introductory sequence - but are sufficiently suggested by the digital background elements and robot. Again, based on just the first three videos, you'd be justified in skipping over Anna's disclaimer in the description of each ('This is part of a story. All the videos and characters are interconnected.') and assuming that she was like most ASMRtists, who tend to jump between settings for their roleplays simply for the sake of varying the vibe.

Here we see another classic ASMR trope being folded into the universe; medical roleplays are incredibly popular amongst the subculture, involving as they do a mix of personal attention and methodical explanation. Again, the sci-fi trappings are relatively surface-level - Aries might be using magnetic instruments and an 'electric sewer' to treat our unfortunate point-of-view character, but you could replace those elements with mundane ones and still have an effective medical care sequence. This is the first time that Anastasia has played around with our viewpoint, though; our character's lapses into unconsciousness serve multiple purposes in emphasizing their wooziness, adding a gentle rhythm to the sequence and covering the edits.

This is also the most dramatically our character has been inserted into the narrative. In the first video we were just chilling with our mage friend in the forest, in the second we were similarly relaxed in the carriage when Anna joined us. Here we're coming in on the aftermath of some personal calamity; we're still a silent, passive presence but because of our physical infirmity rather than our placid observer status.

IN SHORT: Lady Anna - having returned to her manor home - catches up on her missed correspondence, reading through her mail before penning several replies.

So yeah; pretty simple, right? It's still handsomely presented, with another fabulous outfit for our new friend Anna and a table full of quality-looking props situated within a digital room that we only see in a couple of establishing shots. There's no POV Character in this one so we're not in conversation with Anna; it's just her reading, writing and speaking to herself. But the devil, as they say, is in the details, and it's the details that I'm going to be spending most of our space on this time.

In the seven previous videos the information has been pretty simply and openly presented - it's all been easy to spot on screen or spoken in dialogue, so as long as you don't actually fall asleep (always a danger with ASMR videos, of course) you're pretty sure to take in everything Anastasia has included. This one's a little different, and how you come to it is gonna epitomize the kind of relationship you're going to have with the whole series. The main thrust of the episode is still simple; following on from the first Victorian video, it's about Anna returning home from her travels abroad and catching up on what she missed. You can watch it as part of the ongoing series and appreciate how it moves her story along, or you can watch it in isolation without knowing who this woman is and just enjoy it as a relaxing ASMR experience. But then there's the letters... ah, the letters...

See, it's here where the level of detail that Anastasia puts into her work adds another layer of experience to the series. What I mean is that all the letters that Anna reads and writes are fully written out, so if you're a certain kind of fan (raises hand shyly) you can pause the video and try to make out the handwriting; you can twist your head round to try and read the upside-down letters. It won't radically change your experience of the narrative, but you'll find out about things like Anna's Uncle Henry apparently being her closest relative, or a certain club, or the Royal Ball. So whaddaya know, now we have three ways to enjoy the ATMOSPHERE videos: as an ongoing narrative, as an isolated experience, and as a trove of detail.

Now here's where I'm gonna do all that yapping about my thoughts on this, which can be pretty succinctly summed up by the phrase 'The lore is not as important as the art.' Now I know what you're thinkin' - "wait, aren't you the weirdo who's written a hundred episodes' worth of continuity notes? AND a really long synopsis for the whole series? AND these Tumblr posts that we're reading RIGHT NOW? Where the HELL do you get off, jerko???" Hey, simmer down there, friend; cool your jets, I'll explain.

See I think the world that Anastasia has built (and is still building) is fascinating, and I think it's a fun side activity to spot clues and hints and details that add to that world and its mysteries - she puts them in the videos to notice, and it's another level of appreciation for all her hard work. But the 'lore' isn't the POINT, as far as I'm concerned. The point is the art itself - all the wild creativity and gorgeous craft and the relationship between work and audience that the art creates - and I think that you're well-served always keeping that in mind rather than getting too lost in the sauce.

I wrote the first iteration of what would become the Atmosverse notes purely for myself, because the series was around the fifty episode mark and I wanted something to help me quickly find the exact videos I wanted to rewatch. I shared them in case anyone else might find them similarly useful, Anastasia was kind enough to pin them on the videos, and the rest, as they say, is history. I've always tried to be conscious of the risk of 'analysing all the magic out of something' - for want of a better analogy, you don't want to end up like the kind of sci-fi fan that can no longer enjoy a perfectly good episode of their favorite show because a character pressed the wrong button on their console or something. Hopefully I'm still managing to thread that needle and those of my fellow fans who read them see them in that spirit.

Which is all to say that in my opinion, someone who isn't following every detail of every video but always luxuriates in the lush visuals and incredible sound design is probably enjoying the series on a richer and more fitting level than someone who's watching for the hidden clues so intently that they miss out on the actual art itself. There's a reason that my first watch of any video is never done with the notes in mind... Anyway, tangent over - I'm not really here to tell you how you HAVE to watch the series, I'm not the ASMR police (not until the new statutes pass, and we all pray that they will); just a reminder that lore is fun and neat but it's not where you're gonna form the most emotional connection with the work.

I've kept you here listening to my nonsense so long that I haven't left much room to talk about the ASMR in this one. That's a'ight, there'll be plenty more episodes to do so in. I'll just say that while it's *tapping* that seems to have become the ASMR cliché it's never done much for me compared to scratching, whether it be fingers in hair, nails on wood or the gorgeous sound of a quill on thick paper as heard here. Paired with Anastasia's whispering and the flickering candlelight, this is an intensely relaxing instalment.

Anywaaaays, nice to see Anna make a second appearance even if I spent most of this post rambling about Temple's Theory of Art Appreciation or whatever. Good to get it out of the way now, though, because as the series continues we're going to see more of these 'optional' details filtering in and it's a good thing to keep in mind. In many ways, these longer Tumblr posts are a way for me to talk about the things I find most important about the videos - their craftsmanship, their use of themes, how the narrative is affected by being ASMR and vice versa.

IN SHORT: A view from inside an abandoned lakeside cabin; a rowboat can be seen pulled up at the dock outside. A ghostly figure makes several appearances as the night wears on, disappearing again before the break of dawn.

So here we go, the first entirely ambient episode of the series, which in the context of ASMR means a video consisting almost purely of audio triggers over a simple visual environment. There will be a few of these episodes sprinkled throughout the series, but far more common will be presentations like we saw in the previous episode, in which an ambient section follows the narrative portion of the video in a way that serves to relax the viewer more deeply after they have had to concentrate on the story. Episode 7 being all-ambience means that this is the first we've seen so far without any dialogue or Anastasia appearing on-screen; instead it relies entirely on a layered soundscape over a static-camera digital location.

Which is not to say that the video is entirely narrative-free - we know that we are back in the medieval fantasy timeline because we are clearly inside the fisherman's cabin that our mage friend was taking us to the last time we saw her. The boat we took is tied up outside and the same lantern is now on the table inside. And anyone choosing to watch the fairly static visuals (as opposed to listening to the video with eyes closed) is rewarded with several appearances by the spirit of the fisherman that the mage spoke about as he wanders back and forth outside the cabin before sitting in the boat to fish. It's made abundantly clear that even if this isn't a story-based video, it is still taking place in the universe established by the series so far.

So let's talk about ambient ASMR videos generally and this episode as an example of such. There are plenty of ASMR channels built entirely around ambient experiences, so there is obviously an audience for such material. And it's easy to see why; a lot of people DO prefer to experience ASMR as a purely or almost-purely audio experience, either because they like to listen to them as they drift off to sleep or because they have them on while they're reading or otherwise engaged. That places pretty much the entire onus as an effective ASMR vehicle on the provided soundscape, which tends to be rich and layered as here; the point is not to focus on anything so instead of an isolated sound in an otherwise-silent environment, you get a blend intended to be experienced holistically. Throughout the video you get rain, the creaking of the cabin, the lapping of the lakewater, the wind outside, crickets, wolves, owls, a rooster and even the phantom sounds of the fisherman. Because the mix of these elements is always dynamic with no one sound dominating, it becomes a lulling background blend that actively discourages the drowsing mind from sharpening its attention. This is Anastasia's first attempt at the experience, and when we get to the others you'll see that they only get more sophisticated.

IN SHORT: Aries explains the POV Character's situation in more detail - how she found them in the wreckage of an apparent battle and how she and her robot companion Ronnie are under orders to take them to the AI who govern that part of the galaxy for identification. The ship lifts off, leaving the planet and soaring through space.

Although the actual acted/interaction portion of this 21-minute video is only five minutes long - the remainder consists of a constructed soundscape over fairly simple visuals - we get a heck of a lot of context and background information packed into it. As with the fantasy and Victorian strands, the video makes it clear to the audience that this is not a generic science-fiction setting but a specific universe with its own history, and likewise the characters have existing lives that we the audience are joining in progress.

We now have a lot more information about the POV Character's rescue; while their situation remains mysterious due to their amnesia - what was the battle, and why were they the only survivor - we know where Aries found them and how they were probably injured. We also finally get a name for Aries's floating robot companion Ronnie (even if he doesn't appear in this episode) and a little of their history together. That this part of the galaxy is governed by AI, with Aries apparently the only human present, is both intriguing and also handily explains why she's probably going to be the only person we see in these sci-fi videos - another example of the series working the traditional format of ASMR (which usually has a single person, the ASMRtist, interacting with the screen) into the narrative rather than fighting against it. The POV Character might be a "guest who can't leave" but Aries's informal and friendly approach takes the sting out of the situation, because active antagonism would not be conducive to relaxation, after all. Perhaps the most intriguing detail of this episode is the Rubik's Cube that Aries found on the POV Character's person. Now, the Cube is a motif that's going to recur throughout the series so I'll be talking about it in a lot more detail as we continue through, but in its first appearance it is a *very* noticeably 20th-century object to find in the far future, to the extent that it is completely unknown to Aries (note that she still manages to solve it, though). So another mystery: why would the POV Character have one?

The majority of the video, then, is spent on the ship taking off from the planet - accomplished through the movement of the landscape in the viewing screen - and then sailing through space, another example of the part of the episode that requires the most focus being frontloaded so that the audience can then wind down into the relaxation portion of the experience. The visuals are fairly simple so the onus of the ASMR triggers falls on the soundscape that Anastasia has constructed. There's a school of thought that holds that all the sounds in an ASMR video should be as quiet and soft as possible, but she does something a little more interesting here: we have the growing roar of the ship's engines layered over the bleeping of the vessel's instruments, then a series of whooshes and deep groans as it leaves the (heh) atmosphere, and finally a long stretch of faint crackles and muffled sounds as the starfield fills the screen. The sound section recreates the whole video in miniature, beginning with more noise and fading to less, and includes a variety of volumes, tones and phonetics that actually work to push the audience into the relaxed state more completely than a collection of purely muted sounds would do. It's clever work.

So there we go, two sci-fi episodes in a row and that plot strand's ticking along as nicely as the other two. Presumably the order in which we move through the strands is mostly according to a master plan as regards the plot, but I would imagine that to some extent it's somewhat open to modification depending on the costumes and props that Anastasia has made or procured, what she particularly feels like working on that month and whether she's suddenly had a great idea for something new and unexpected.

IN SHORT: Following their surgery, Aries and her robot companion continue to treat the POV Character, who is apparently suffering from amnesia. She informs them that she will be taking them to an AI base to try to resolve the mystery.

In many ways this is a similar video to the first sci-fi episode - in the same location with the same characters and once again consisting almost entirely of an extended medical procedure. However, because our character is now largely conscious we get a slightly different dynamic and more importantly, increased interaction with Aries. More on that later, but more dialogue means that we learn a little more about our futuristic hosts and the world around them.

We still don't get a name for Aries' floating robot buddy but there's enough of them giving each other the business to gather the basic shape of their dynamic - informal and comfortably playful in the way that only extended collaboration brings. Our character having lost their memory is the first of many mysteries that the series will introduce and yet another sign that the videos are intended as a long-form narrative. Unanswered questions are one of the three pillars (the others are affection for the characters and appreciation of the experience) that will keep an audience returning, especially important for a YouTube channel which relies heavily on viewers subscribing. Anastasia starts to throw in more details of the world - the AI base that we will be heading to, names of drugs like Quadro-X, places like the planet Savia. They're important not so much for adding any important knowledge but for indicating that the constructed universe of the fiction extends beyond just what we see in the videos.

Even more so than the surgery video we're seeing the classic medical exam ASMR trope in play. Usually, as here, such videos consist of sensory tests and gentle treatment - the act of watching an ASMR video tends by necessity towards a passive experience rather than an active one; we are incapable of direct interaction and so the fictional situation must construct an experience that requires no participation on our part. (Of course, certain ASMR videos and certainly the ATMOSPHERE ones still create a somewhat involved role by encouraging the viewer to actively interpret the narrative, but that's a larger subject that I will return to in a future video discussion). Here our physical helplessness combines with the tabula rasa of our memory loss so that Aries explaining everything - the procedures, our situation and the world - forms a narratively-justified and natural presentation. The digital sets and effects are still relatively muted because the emphasis is on the sensory experience rather than on impressing the viewer with a spectacular setting.

The projected starfield that ends the video (a relaxing device in-fiction as well as out) is another example of the previously-discussed ATMOSPHERE trend to wind an episode down at the end; this has been a relatively dialogue-heavy instalment that encourages the viewer to pay more attention throughout, so the final fade-out is both necessary and acts as a reward for making it to the end.

IN SHORT: We join the same mage from Alchemy in the Forest as she takes a magically-propelled boat across the lake, explaining her purpose on the way.

So here we are, our first recurring character! We still don't get a name for our magical friend, but from the forested landscape surrounding the lake we're still in the same location as the last time we saw her. In these early days of the videos we were still a way off from Anastasia using the WorldAnvil site to post maps of this world, but we're already slowly expanding it. We also still don't know the exact relationship that we, the audience, have with this character, but the explanatory way that she speaks to us suggests that we don't ourselves have the same gifts or knowledge of the area that she does.

This is another relatively short video, but we do get a little bit of character and world building alongside the ASMR triggers. As she talks about her upcoming task and her dislike of talkative people/liars, we get more of an idea of who this mysterious woman is. She's straightforward and fairly no-nonsense, but is clearly someone that the local people can trust to investigate their supernatural problems. There's also a hint that our presence as someone she's spending an extended period of time with (and patiently explaining herself to) is a rarity, and it leaves you wondering how long 'we' have known her.

In terms of construction, the video uses a similar blend of techniques as the first fantasy episode; Anastasia's costume and the single prop - the lantern - grounds her as our focus amidst the digitally-realized boat and lake. It's already slightly more ambitious than that original outing, though, syncing the filmed elements to the movement of the boat in a way that sells the idea. Notice how that movement subtly changes as the boat leaves the dock, crosses the lake and approaches the opposite shore - it's an attention to detail that's going to be one of the hallmarks of these videos.

In terms of the ASMR experience, this is a conversational and environmental piece rather than featuring personal attention or overt trigger use. You have the soft speech (because Anastasia recorded a dub then layered it over the video her words are very slightly out of sync with her lip movements, but rather than detract from the episode it actually helps to create a dreamlike atmosphere that works with the mood) over the soft background noises of the water and the magical boat. Then, once the conversation is over, the rain is brought in to take over as the primary auditory trigger. It's essentially an ASMR video of two halves, the first more focused and the second forming a calming 'downward slope' to the end.

The way that the ATMOSPHERE videos slowly ease the audience into their worlds is so measured and restrained; Anastasia is taking her time to build to what she's envisioned rather than immediately making a bold statement as to what these episodes are going to become and what her aims are. There's no THIS IS WHAT THE STORY IS AND HOW IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN, there's just a gentle demonstration with this fourth instalment that having introduced these three settings, she is going to return to them so that we can spend more time with these characters.