#but again when i tried to get into wtnv all i could think about was how i could be listening to music instead

[iveneverbeenmorestressedinmylife]

I don't understand people who listen to podcasts tbh. I would much rather listen to the same song on repeat than some guy talking to himself for an hour.

[vvanillavveins]

On the WTNV finale:

Look, i like Brinknor. They helped me fall back in love with Night Vale when i was feeling particularly uninspired. It's hard to put it into words; i have adhd & i struggle to remember big intricate plots unless something reoccurring has really grabbed hold of my attention, and before Brinknor, i was struggling to sink my teeth into anything attention-holding, so to speak. I guess i was becoming less enthusiastic in Night Vale's storyline as time went on, even though i couldn't really work out why. I just couldn't stop tuning out. But, with Brinknor, there came a bunch of shiny new plotpoints- at a faster pace. The show could actually hold my focus properly, and my wtnv fixation was suddenly up & running again.

All this is to say that i know it's just my impatience talking when i say that i wish that the loose ends of those new, interesting plotpoints had been tied up a little more by episode 250. I adore the way they write about Cecil's childhood and his family, and i want Kevin & The Boy's arc to be given the same amount of love, and attention, and time that the Palmer siblings' arc got. The same goes for Tamika. And Carlos. And Lauren, actually. Yes, i know she was a central figure in the last 2 episodes, and i loved that because she's one of my favourite characters. I fucking adore eldritch Mother Lauren. But still, it was all too vague to really learn anything new about her or the desert otherworld. And, above all else, i can't help but think of how wonderful it would've been if Charles and Donovan were included in the finale- especially Donovan.

When Kevin first came back in 2023, one of my silly little hcs as to why he was apparently in the Smiling God's bad books (and why he didn't mention Charles or Donovan) was that because Charles & Donovan aren't from Desert Bluffs they haven't devoted themselves to the Smiling God like the rest of the townsfolk. They wouldn't "smile" properly. One of my darker ideas at the time was the possibility of Kevin having to choose between making them part of his faith, i.e., making them "smile" like the rest of Desert Bluffs (which i doubt he'd go through with after his mudstone abyss arc), or having Charles & Donovan leave town (which i doubt they'd go through with), or, doing neither & keeping quiet about his life with them to avoid drawing attention. If he chose the latter and then got found out, it would make sense that he'd stop being the Smiling God's favourite. Obviously, i never thought any of that was correct- i was just having fun- and i was excited to find out the real story further down the line.

But that didn't happen, and we still don't really have many answers. Everything to do with Kevin, and Lauren, and The Boy got wrapped up in about 10 minutes flat. We've already had an emotional Fatherhood themed episode with Cecil & Abby; we didn't need another one just for the sake of it.

With the context of what we already know about Kevin's father, the ending of episode 250 was just uncomfortable. Sure, Kevin's talked about his father positively before, but that's always been in contrast with the actual content of his memories. It's always been made clear that the script/the writers disagree with Kevin's sunny outlook, and therefore the listeners should too. Those moments are there to demonstrate just how fucked up Kevin really is, and that his positivity is just a coping mechanism. But this time Cecil spoke for him, so we didn't get Kevin's usual sing-song rambling. It was calm, and collected, and matter-of-factly. And this time there were no sugar-coated descriptions of abuse, only genuine praise. We were actually supposed to agree with him this time, and it made the whole speech (and ending) sound hollow and forced.

I really didn't like this episode. It felt rushed. It tried to cover far too much far too quickly, and it failed. But, despite all that, i am hoping that future episodes will bring some sort of clarity about what happened. And hopefully some closure about Kevin and his family, too. I want loose ends to get tied up properly and i believe that maybe, with time, the important ones will be. Slow burning subplots are kinda quintessential to Night Vale's writing at this point anyway. Brinknor definitely missed the mark with this one, but they're still incredibly talented writers and i'm not ready to give up on them like some of the other fans on here.

Besides, i think that some of Night Vale's worst episodes are still incredible pieces of writing in their own right. The bad episodes are only bad in comparison to the dozens upon dozens of absolutely phenomenal episodes that make up the rest of a show that is, for the most part, a joy to listen to. So, here's to some hopefully better episodes in the future, i guess.

[firstmatedville]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by my wife @dxppercxdxver (although I really don't consider myself a fic writer these days lmao)

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

5 (and 2 orphaned)

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

22,856

3. what fandoms do you write for?

considering I have at maximum 2 fics per fandom. you could say none! although my most popular fics were broadchurch and good omens

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

the first is an orphaned batman/joker fic (does anyone remember that era of this blog? I'm so sorry lmao)

she - broadchurch

i love to live so pleasantly (lazing on a sunny afternoon) - good omens

Blueberry - IT (2017) (an incredibly cringe fic I wrote as a teenager for the love of god please don't read this)

i just want to be held (by your cold hands) - broadchurch

5. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

occasionally! if there's something that like. needs a response I do try to give them but otherwise I am very bad at getting back to comments. I do read and appreciate them all though!

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

it's the IT one tagged above lmao due to the like. 15/16 year old me projecting. I'm not very good at writing angst!

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

probably either of the broadchurch fics due to. trans joy and also gay domesticity

8. do you get hate on fics?

not actively? during my batman/b*tjokes years (bearing in mind I was about 14) I used to get occasional hate on tumblr due to trans/gay headcanons but that wasn't necessarily fic related. I also once had a pretty big b*tjokes writer comment on an old fic (like three or four years after I'd written it, when I was no longer In The Fandom) claiming I'd stolen their ideas and needed to either remove my work or credit them despite. only having read a few of their works very briefly. the work of mine in Question being a prompt fill. and me just following a lot of the trends of the fandom at the time? like sorry you don't actually have a trademark on hurt/comfort sick fics buddy it's a Fairly Popular Concept. anyway yeah that's about it.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

nope <3 I've never tried and frankly I don't think I'd be very good at getting any ideas I have Across in a way that reads as sexy or hot enough to warrant actually writing it lmao

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don't think I've fully written or published any crossovers, however! every character I've ever liked has been thrown into a killjoys au in my brain at one point or another (including but not limited to: the scooby doo gang, the penumbra pod gang, the eos 10 gang, Cecil and Carlos wtnv, ect). myself and jon plotted a whole magnus archives/mst3k au that I Wish one of us had written, and another mst3k/the mechanisms au that started as a joke and become so insanely important to us it sincerely helped us get together as a couple. we also had an overall eos10/penumbra podcast crossover that I personally never wrote anything for but I think jon Started some unpublished fics that never got finished.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not as far as I know!

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

again, i dont beliebe so, but people are more than welcome to do so as long as im credited ofc

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

I class at least the first of my broadchurch fics as partially co-written with Jon bc he was a Huge Help in that fic getting written, and as you might be able to tell from above we've Plotted a lot of fic ideas together (another includes a very goofy villain-decay bill cipher gravity falls fic) but basically none of them ever actually get written

14. what’s your all time favourite ship?

argh I can't choose one all time favourite. jonmartin themagnusarchives are insanely dear and important to me, jongerry / jonmartingerry are closely behind that. poly scooby doo gang. vince/howard from the mighty boosh. these are all just sentimental ships if I'm honest. also I became ridiculously attached to mine and Jon's crackship of jonny d'ville themechanisms / Mike mst3k

15. what’s a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

honestly I'm kind of past the point of hoping to get back into writing due to. complete lack of willpower. but I wish I'd gotten round to writing the third trans Hardy fic I had planned at one point </3

16. what are your writing strengths?

idk!! I think I'm good at capturing like. very specific moments of domesticity and comfort. and I think when I'm imagining A Scene I'm quite good at getting the vibes of that scene across. but other than that I'm really not sure

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

oh god uhh. actually writing. linking scenes together. Plot other than just vague "here's two characters hanging out and existing". the list goes on

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't think I've actually attempted it myself? due to most characters I've written have been. incredibly British. I will say a pet peeve of mine in Reading a fic is when it is a fic in 99% English that'll have a large chunk of dialogue in another language, without a translation available somewhere for it. like a word or two is fine but if there's some actual plot in there and you're expecting me to Google translate it, that feels kind of the same as when subtitles simply say (speaking french) or whatever instead of Telling Us What They're Saying

19. first fandom you wrote for?

embarrassingly and horrifically. h*rry p*tter (I was 11)

20. favourite fic you’ve written?

it has to be she simply due to the Amount of trans love and support I got to hear about in the comments of that fic :,)

I'm not tagging anyone bc to be completely honest I don't remember which of my mutaks actively write <3

[10moonymhrivertam]

*pushes my Hazbin doc titles at y'all*

Adding Words to these is escaping me but maybe talking about them would help? Anybody wanna ask me about them?

Alastor Discovers WTNV

Stalled out for logistics reasons (either I couldn't decide how they were getting Earth media or felt I was underestimating how much Alastor has picked up about modern tech against his will)

Alastor Forced to Wrangle Tweens

I got hyper-aware that three of our main cast lived through the 20s and I like time travel, lol I think I just ran out of dopamine to chase here, but there was gonna be a thing where Angel and Husk attempt to summon Lucifer partly to see if he can put them back where they're supposed to be, partly to piss Alastor off.

Charlie v the 20s

Really similar to the above, but starts differently and has more than just the main cast remembering. Specifically, I had a bit of dialogue between Angel and Alstor's Mom occur while I was driving and wrote around it when I got home.

Helluva-Hazbin-Grand-Reopening

I just wanna mash them all together like action figures but writing the introduction has eluded me. Probably I just need to skip forward but I haven't tried yet. Main vehicle for the smashing together is: Blitz and Stolas are invited to the Grand Reopening separately (by Fizz and Charlie). Vague intention to set it after Stolas has given Blitz the crystal, so there are two angles I could write it from - so far I've only tried it on the 'they pulled their heads out of their asses' angle.

Molly Charlie ep 6 Meeting

This predated the Pentious fic, so they share some vibes, but I could see them being different if I expanded this one properly.

Pentious-Molly thing

The Pentious fic! I've made four drafts for the third installment but it isn't budging. I probably just need a new angle but I desperately wanna bring Alastor's Mom into the fic. Then again, I did imply in the first installment that his parents were in Heaven and then didn't touch that again, so maybe I aim for that instead. Or address how self-conscious I'm becoming of the fact that Heaven has the ability to contact Hell. I kinda wanted Hell to be oblivious to redemption but that's not super in-character for Emily. I guess Sera could block her... (can you tell I've worked on this one the most, lol? This post itself may be acting as a Coding Duck to help me start working on stuff again, we'll see. I'll still take questions if you've got some tho ❤️️ I'd love especially if there's anything you'd like to know about the drafts that may be DOA)

Why Am I So Bad at GC Fics

I dunno if it's the dialogue-only, the screen-names, the jokey atmosphere, or what, but I am in fact bad at group chat fics so this one may never happen even if I have really good ideas. ANYWAY! I wanted to do something with Vox being more powerful than anyone (even he) knew, and Hell's cell signals reach all the way to Heaven and they find out Pentious is redeemed when he responds to the group chat. I also love me some Alastor but would be forced to exclude him for OOC reasons. Maybe I could have him reading over Niffty's shoulder or something...

[your-mom-friend]

I've been listening to WTNV and just finished Triptych

Holy shit

No seriously. Holy shit

Okay so this probably isn't going far beyond my blog, so to my followers who do see this and know nothing of Welcome To Night Vale, let me give you some context.

Obviously, spoilers if you plan to listen to WTNV, or haven't reached this episode yet (Year 4, Episode 73)

Night Vale in and of itself is a friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and myseterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep

It's a strange place

The podcast is in the format of the community Radio Show, where you're a citizen listening to the news as narrated by Cecil Palmer

Bear in mind, that WTNV, for all the wholesomeness and absurdity that exists in it, is also partly a horror podcast, and you'll occassionally get descriptions of gore and violence that are graphically detailed.

Early on in the series, you're introduced to Desert Bluffs. Night Vale's sister town that is sort of implied to be populated by doubles/dopplegangers of the Night Vale Residents.

Desert Bluffs has also been taken over by StrexCorp. A corporation that is basically Amazon if Amazon was allowed to publicly violate the Geneva Conventions and brainwash their employees. And have it be part of their publicity.

Desert Bluffs has their own Community Radio Station, with host, Kevin. To give you a sample of what Kevin sounds like, he says “Wow. What a perfectly wonderful, wonderfully perfect super day! I could not be more thrilled. The Smiling God blessed me with Its presence once again." In the most cheerful voice you can imagine. No, more cheerful. Bordering on forced-through-torture-by-Joker-venom cheer.

Cecil hates him with a passion. He is the opposite of everything Cecil is and stands for

In later episodes, StrexCorp takes over Night Vale and Kevin becomes the Radio Host with co-host Lauren Mallard. Here we see him being super passive aggressive towards her

Lauren: Sure Kev! Can I call you Kev? Kevin: hahaha, no, Lauren, by no means. (she deserved it though)

Anyway this hints he isn't super happy with Strex actually but is still on their side

Fast forward, Strex was defeated in Night Vale, things go back to Normal, Kevin takes up residence in the Desert Otherworld blah blah blah

Which brings us to Triptych. roughly a year after Strex is defeated.

Cecil hosts his show when suddenly a radio signal connects him to Kevin. Kevin from the past.

Not just any past, but Pre-Strex past.

This Kevin is...unsettlingly like Cecil. They like the same things and have almsot identical views. Most jarringly, this Kevin hates Strex. He assures Cecil that he and the rest of the Bluffs are making sure they stay a small local company. He sounds like a regular cheerful person instead of...whatever he'd become alter

It reconnects to a recent-past Kevin. This Kevin was from when Strex had recently taken over Night Vale. He reveals, rather cheerfully "Can you believe it? I actually tried to stop them from buying it [DB Radio Station]. I tired, very hard. I put my own body, this fragile thing, in between the Strex Representatives and the entrance to the building. But they forced their way past me using ethically brutal methods that left me forever physically changed!"

Again it reconnects, but to a future Kevin, who is old and withered and lives in a desolate area, who is (i think) now freed from Strex's control. He's tired, alone, and regrets that Cecil never got to meet the Pre-Strex him. They'd have gotten along splendidly.

Cecil then tries to reconnect to the first Kevin, and succeeds. Kevin asks him about the future. "Do we succeed? Does everthing go as right as right can be?" And Cecil...lies. He says that their revolutions against Strex will be successful, that he is happy and lives his life.

The signal is lost.

Guys this episode left me sad in ways I didn't even know I could feel. Because everything else you hear of Kevin makes you kind of loathe him. The way he talks and the things he says (think toxic positivity on steroids and trying to kiss corporate ass) makes your skin crawl and you WANT to hate him but

He's brainwashed. He was bright and young and passionate and hopeful and fearless and Strex did unspeakably horrible things to him and just...broke him. There's barely anything left of the guy he used to be. He smiles and cheerfully talks but there's nothing behind it. It sounds like it's been beaten into him till it's all he knew how to do. He doesn't know or say or do anything that Strex doesn't want him to and it's just so profoundly heartbreaking. He was once willing to give up his life to protect the sanctity of a free radio show where he could report and Strex turned him into a puppet for their own needs.

I just want things to get better for Kevin

[somehow-progressing]

WTNV 182 / 132 Connection

So this isn't the first time Cecil's mother and trees have been connected.

In 132, exactly fifty episodes previously, her bedtime story was about a boy who turned into a tree.

I reviewed this episode to look for connections and..

Oh, boy.

So, first off, the boy's interest in science obviously reminded me of Carlos, right? But then the similarities stop there.

And start leading towards Cecil.

(The rest under the cut)

We now know that there was a time where Cecil's father was in the picture, although it may have been when Cecil was very, very young. The family dynamic in 132's story matches his exactly: a mother, a father, a sister, the youngest son.

My first thought was, "Well, this can't be a parallel to Cecil's family. They're far too loving, which doesn't match up with what we know of Cecil's mother at all." But then I looked closer.

The boy's parents are verbally insistent that they love him, to the point where it comes off as "I'm your parent so I have to love you, it's my job to do everything for you." Putting pressure, and a sense of guilt, on the child while never actually living up to their word.

"He knew he would never need his father to give his life for him. He just wanted his father to show concern for his health. He knew he would never need his mother to give away all of her belongings for him. He just wanted his mother to show interest in his curiosity." - 132, Bedtime Story

His parent's love is very idealistic, while not being one that they actually show or.. Possibly, feel. They don't show concern for his health, or value his interests. He's their son, but he's not anything more.

"My mom seems really proud of me too! She hid from me for three days! Like, the longest ever! And she’s covered all the mirrors in my house. I’m not sure why, but I think it must be because of pride. Being proud does all sorts of things… to a… um… to a person." - 33, Cassettes

Cecil's own experiences parallel this. He interprets her love through ideals, to fill the void of it in actuality. When you're a child, you think that a parent is supposed to be loving. They're supposed to care. When they don't, or they leave you alone in your house, or they ignore you, or they tell you not to cry after you've been injured because "you don't even exist," your brain doesn't know how to process it. Like he did with his memory loss in 182, Cecil tries to rationalize it. Mother abandoned me because she's proud, because she cares about me- because she's my mother and she has to.

The boy's relationship with his sister parallels Cecil's as well.

"His sister would tell him, “I hate you, brother.” But their parents would instruct her to be nice and so she would say sarcastically, “I love you, brother. I would climb the tallest mountain for you." - 132, Bedtime Story

"He knew his sister really loved him. He knew he would never need his sister to climb a mountain for him. He just wanted his sister to believe him that mountains were real." - 132, Bedtime Story

As mentioned in Ghost Stories, Cecil has had a very difficult relationship with his sister.

"See, my mother disappeared when I was only 14. Abby had just started school, but she had to drop out to return home and raise me, and I thought that Mom would be back at any moment, like maybe she was away on business. Our out for a walk. Or just hiding.

But Mom did not come back, not for my entire childhood. And I was petulant and subversive, and Abby was reserved and controlling and she blamed me for having dropped out of school and I blamed her for just… not being Mom.

But in our adulthood, my mother did return home, sick and sorry to two children who barely spoke to each other in the morning." - Ghost Stories

Which would match up with the sister's animosity with him.

The difference here is that, out of the entire family, the boy knows that his sister actually loves him. And in Cecil's life, his sister is the only one he has made amends with. No matter how she treated him in the past, they are part of the same family once again. (As of 182, at least.)

Here, a direct parallel to Cecil is established. This boy's life mirrors his own.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Just as Cecil enters the tree, the boy is transformed into one

"He spent a lot of time in those next several months watching his family, their grief at his loss. His parents’ happiness at his sister’s education." - 132, Bedtime Story

There has been a lot of theorizing that Cecil's mother may have been covering the mirrors and leaving flowers because she was mourning Cecil, and not just his father.

"What was it your mother said before she left home when you were a teenager? Did she tell you she was an oracle?" - 171, Go to The Mirror?

It's entirely possible that Cecil's mother knew what would happen after she left, or had enough of an idea to subconsciously work it into a bedtime story.

It's possible that this is a glimpse of a timeline where Cecil really didn't survive entering the tree. His parents mourn, and his sister is allowed to pursue the education she wanted.  (Which, in all honesty, a pretty cruel burden to place on Cecil's shoulders. It's not his fault that their mother disappeared, leaving Abby to take care of him.)

Next, we watch the boy slowly lose his humanity as his awareness widens outside of himself.

"Time slowed for him, and his knowledge grew so vast and so expansive, human triumphs and pains became only a small sliver of his interest. There were much larger systems to comprehend than humanity." - 132, Bedtime Story

Cecil is canonically one of the people in Night Vale that time slowed down for. Like Earl, he has been stuck at a certain age for a long, long time.

"He had forgotten what he used to be." - 132, Bedtime Story

Cecil has canonically lost large parts of his past. He no longer remembers them.

"Later that spring, the woman and the man and the child brought a picnic and some games, and the tree was happy, but could not comprehend why. Nor did the tree intend to. The tree was simply happy, and this was a feeling that existed. Years later, the family wore black again and cried. And the tree felt sad, but it did not connect this feeling to any kind of narrative. It was simply sad, and this was a feeling that existed." - 132, Bedtime Story

The boy tree is becoming incredibly distanced from his family. (A woman, man, and child, just like Abby, Steve, and Janice.)

"You know, Cecil and I first met at one of these things. Seems like we should have met earlier than that. I had dated his sister for a while. But Cecil’s busy, he- he serves his community. He really gives himself to his community. Who do you live for, you know? Who do you give yourself to? Those are questions we should all be asking ourselves." - Steve in 100, Toast

Steve confirmed that Cecil was distant from his family and the people around him before Carlos came along, burying himself in his job.

And then an angel cuts down the tree.

"Over a few days, the tree and the fruits and the separated stump died. But the tree retained everything. As its body was planted into boards, as its twigs were ground into mulch, the tree felt the knowledge of each seed it had planted across the valley, each creature it had nourished with its fruits, and each piece of lumber built into a home for generations of humans to come.

The tree felt its branches burned in a fireplace, and it rose up as smoke and dissipated into carbon across the sky, coming down in trillions of molecules to build more soil, more trees, more creatures. The boy could truly learn everything now, cell by cell." - 132, Bedtime Story

Cecil has given himself to his community. This boy, this tree, has been divided and used up as a resource, to serve the community in which he lived. Not to mention the fact that Cassettes Cecil died before becoming the Voice, like this boy/tree was cut down before he could serve/understand his community.

"Cecil, sweet Cecil. Whose life lies directly on the fault lines of this broken reality." - Huntokar in 109, Huntokar

Patching together:

- this quote from Huntokar that gives off the impression of Cecil as the glue keeping the fractures together, and

- the way that Leonard Burton, a deceased Voice, is brought back the moment that Cecil left town, filling the vacant spot, and

- the way that Night Vale fell apart when its citizens rejected their reality, and began to be patched back together along with the narration of their Voice

It all leads to:

The Voice of Night Vale is a significant, needed position.

 It’s possible that he holds the fractured town together, in a way, his words reminding the citizens to keep their will and hold onto what is in front of them. (In the case that the cold light is the Smiling God, this gives it a motive. If it takes out Cecil, the town is left vulnerable for it to devour.)

Just like the tree, Cecil is used by his town.

His mother knew that he would become the Voice one day- it was prophesized. That’s the reason he was given the tape recorder, that’s the reason she told this story.

We still don’t know what was in the book in the table.

Then, this very interesting quote from 182:

“I’ve been in this job for a long time. Probably longer than I’ve been alive. I mean: you’ve been alive.”

He says the truth for a moment, then backs up because that doesn’t make sense to him. Coupled the way his mother’s story parallels Cecil’s, with boy becoming the tree, becoming a resource that serves the town and seeing all of it (similar to how Cecil knows what’s happening in the town and what its citizens are thinking without leaving his studio. See: every traffic report and episodes likes A Story About Them.) and Cecil mentioning the odd nature of his job in 182..

I think we’re about to learn exactly what it means to be the Voice.

[odd-kid-42]

5, 10, and 15 :V

Thank you for the ask!

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true? If I ever completely outline a story, I won’t write it. Maybe it is because I feel like I’ve already written it by that point and maybe because I will become overwhelmed at the details of it all. I have an unposted, very long ASOUE/WtNV crossover fic that I lost all motivation in as soon as I started trying to keep track of ten characters each hour of the story’s day. Maybe outlining too much/getting bogged down in details is more the problem lol

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you? For whatever reason around 2014-ish, it felt like each fandom I read in had a highly kudo’ed fic where the main character died slowly and painfully of cancer. I have no idea if that was just a wider trend or what, but the work that haunts me specifically had one character mercy-kill the other and all the build up that led up to it. It landed far past sadness into repulsion and left a weird taste in my mouth about manufacturing tragedies in stories that don’t have one and then giving no comfort for the hurt. My old writing on FF.net reads like a sixteen year old wrote it, which one did, so it doesn’t haunt me.

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends? I don’t judge people who write in their own books. The logical part of me knows there are so many copies of books, and destroying a commonly found book isn’t huge. That said, I loathed English classes where we had to annotate our copies of fiction books for tropes/metaphors/context clues/etc. Loathed. I tried sticky notes on each page. I tried writing in pencil to erase later. I had a teacher directly ask what my deal was with it. I just hated it because all those little details that added up, I could mentally keep track of better than defacing the inside cover of a book by listing the pages when this metaphor appears or having a note on 'this is symbolism!'. If I was terrible at literature analysis, that would be one thing, but my timed essays were always very good while my annotations read like someone who hated writing inside a book and planned to erase it later. Because I am thinking about high school English class again: I genuinely remember my senior timed essay where we had a list of the five books we had read that semester and ninety minutes to write one essay from possible questions listed. I saw the question “Describe how beauty is used in two of the books from this semester.” I fumbled for about ten minutes trying to outline and list what I would do before giving up and zoning out to write an essay on how Nick is in love with Gatsby in The Great Gatsby based on all the symbolism in light and true names and isolation when they are alone with the presumptions dropped away. Then swiveled to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon to talk about how Pilate (MC’s aunt who lives in an old house and makes liquor for money) is beautiful to Milkman, the main character. I cannot recall all the metaphors and symbols that I used, but the emphasis was on how, like Nick with Gatsby, he truly saw her and saw her as beautiful, and seeing her allowed him to love himself and others in turn enough to be freed from the nickname assigned to him and his family history, hitting all the similarities between the two books about the main characters just seeing someone with love and become changed for the better. And I left the class certain I got a B- because I abandoned following an outline. I made an A instead and the teacher couldn’t understand why I was surprised after getting Bs in annotations throughout the year. Anyway, hate writing in my books but only my books because I want them in a home library one day.

Thank you again for the ask! I look forward to reading your reply for mine :)

[ghirahimbo]

Fanfic Review

tagged by @petite-neko

How many works do you have on ao3? 17

What’s your total ao3 word count? 283,239

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Three on ao3 (Legend of Zelda, Danny Phantom, and Welcome to Night Vale), though I think my ff.net account might have some old Yu-Gi-Oh stuff.

Are there any new fandoms you want to write for? I could imagine writing for the Wheel of Time show, maybe, and I had a thought for a Good Omens oneshot once, but really I'm happy where I am :)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Pinesong Blind, But Now Offers Made in Moonlight All That Bleeds The Importance of Being Link

Which of your fics do you want more attention for? Ohhh Crystalline probably. I'm in this weird space of liking that one while at the same time feeling kinda insecure about it ^^;;

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I do eventually! :D I got really behind on it during quarantine when Pinesong kind of exploded, but I'm pretty much caught up now. It's a fun way to make connections with readers :)

What sorts of things do you normally write? Slow burn? Humor? Angst with a happy ending? Some adventure? Emotionally loaded conversations? XD Not really sure what genre I fall into, actually.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Uhhh it's gotta be Echo & Narcissus, I think. WTNV Strex Corp bad ending oneshot ;-;

What’s a fic that pushed you out of your comfort zone? Probably Blind, But Now, because I did a lot of research about writing for a blind protagonist, and it's probably the closest I've come to writing longfic.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Not usually. I'll read them sometimes, but prefer to write characters in their own worlds.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Somebody's translating Pinesong into Chinese right now, actually! I could probably find the link if anyone's interested :)

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Ha ha, started to once with a Yu-Gi-Oh fic, but we only got about six chapters in before my partner drifted away from the fandom.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? lol I don't like saying that I'll never finish a wip because I tend to pick them up again after a couple years away XD That being said, I doubt I'll ever get The Importance of Being Link all the way through the Ganon fight, but I never really expected to, either.

What are you currently working on? Blind, But Now's last chapter and a revalink secret santa oneshot :) After that it's back to Arbiter and Better, and after that I have a longfic idea I really want to do... plus some random oneshots and maybe TIoBL thrown in there, I'm sure.

What are your writing strengths? lmao you tell me XD I guess I've heard it's characterization.

What are your writing weaknesses? Consistency.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Most recent? The first I published for was Danny Phantom, and most recent is Legend of Zelda.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Depends on my mood. I guess I usually enjoy rereading The Importance of Being Link because I never really tried to be serious with it, so I felt less pressure for it to be "good"

What fic are you most proud of? Blind, But Now, mostly because I'm proud of myself for not giving up on it XD

Tagging: @coconi, @tirsynni, @heleentje (if you want! no pressure!)

[alchemist-shizun]

The Eyeless Cat

Part of the Welcome to Night Vale AU

Ts taglist: @whizzie72 @sapphire-knight @burningpersonflapsuitcase @softanxiouspatton @royallyanxious @kim-argent-moon @lance-alt @suffering-is-my-comfort-zone @sometimeswritingsometimesdying @pushussmollworld @mylifeisadeceit @spooky-scary-virgil @angstyfanfiction @artissijam @logicalberry (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Word Count: 2,195

Characters: Deceit, Virgil, Roman, (Logan is mentioned)

Pairing(s): implied Loceit

Warning(s): eye injury, stitches mention, injured animal (please tell me if I missed anything)

Summary: Beware, the town's mascot appears to have found a new peculiar feline! Does it come for war or peace? Does it come aware of its conditions? Does it come? Does it at all? How many cats is Night Vale going to be filled with? Follow the subsequently solved mysteries with our two favourite beings.

A/N: Did someone order Deceit being excited about cats? The Night Vale aura might be a bit more off than the last fic but e h I'm trying my best. As well as Deceit might seem a bit ooc too as apparently I thought all of his dialogues in Cecil's voice (did I almost write Cecil and Carlos instead of Deceit and Logan? yes). I swear I will actually bring you Logan too, just you wait for me to write the 100th episode. That being said hope you enjoy! (Not all the events are actually taken from wtnv)

✾

❝ I'll morph to someone else

Defense mechanism mode ❞

« It was admirable how suddenly our favourite, and of course only, station cat was able to move from his spot. It did already happen once, back then when that ... devilish company unleashed an unharmful-looking beast that attacked him. » Deceit's voice lowered in a mix of repressed rage and regret.

Despite being in the past, memories would always come back to haunt you; sometimes they found you in a dark alleyway, sometimes they hovered over you when you pretended to sleep.

The black of the night seemed to be the most efficient medium to reminisce.

But other times all you needed was a detail, it would grasp your mind and never let go until you experienced second hand feelings from your past self. Everything at once in a matter of milliseconds.

When Deceit had seen Khoshekh's, or, rather, Virgil's cat body half bitten away by that horridly misleading creature, oh how deeply he had wished for his hands to be able to crush the toughest material.

The anger had soon left his skin and made way to concern and worry and that sense of impending doom impossible to ignore which set on the pit of his stomach.

It was one of the scariest days of his life, scarier than that one time he had almost died.

« And then he just … jumped out! I wasn't going to stop him, everybody knows cats can survive jumps from great heights. Like that one time Jasper,  Derek's cat, had jumped from the tallest building of Night Vale and landed on his paws without a single scratch. That, of course, was thanks to the enormous wings attached to his body, which we learn that cats tend to grow around the age of five months old. Adorable! »

The fondness of Deceit towards said animals could be touched between the radio waves. He straightened his posture in his seat and leaned over his microphone.

« I simply looked out of the window, bending slightly towards the outside to witness what Khoshekh had in mind. And, listeners, you will never believe this. » Deceit smiled through the anticipation. « There was another cat right next to him! His fur was of a soft orange alternated with whiter stripes, but, sadly, I wasn't able to catch the eye colour. I couldn't believe myself when I saw them interact; Khoshekh made his first friend and we will celebrate this and welcome this new friend in our community with the warmest greetings we've gathered in our hearts. »

A shuffling of papers was heard while his tone shifted again. « More on the possible blossoming of a beautiful friendship as soon as we get more news on the matter. Let me take you to the weather. »

And the blasting of guitars started.

Deceit wasn't sure how long that weather was going to be: lately they had carried on for hours, almost forgetting about the passage of time which stretched and renewed with every instant, giving it no purposeful meaning.

This could only hold one significance: he was safe to visit Virgil once again, to check on him and see whether there were updates on the stranger cat or not.

It had been a long day.

Their search for a new intern hadn't yet been resolved; it's not like none desired to undertake the task, but they were literally still looking for their newest intern who had just applied.

It was a pretty young boy who had just moved to Night Vale for the sole purpose of working in the radio's internship so he could be more comfortable in the upcoming play he was going to star in. But, ever since he had applied, he had never been seen, nor he had ever shown up.

Deceit had been moving as if on autopilot, his body did the exact same trajectory for as long as he had wanted to check on Virgil.

He would make his way to the bathroom, wait for his friend to feel comfortable enough to appear in anthropomorphic form, talk to Virgil and then go back to make his last recording before finally going back home, unless the weather lasted for more than four minutes.

But this time he found himself out in the pavement next to the station's building, observing Virgil's moves.

The younger boy was in his cat form, staring directly at the corner of the station, as though he had been expecting something to happen for hours and hadn't yet gotten any sign.

« Waiting for someone? »

Virgil turned, his black fur like a speck of void sitting in the air. In a moment, a pale face was glancing back at Deceit, dark circles linked the white skin to the colourful tones of his left eye.

« There's something odd. » he mused with his arms crossed over his chest, the same spot he had gotten stitches on some weeks earlier. Deceit shook off the memory for the second time that day.

It was okay, nothing had happened.

« Isn't there always? What is odd, anyway? »

« I know, but- this is another kind of odd. »

Deceit let out an amused huff and walked closer. « You're starting to sound like Logan. »

Ever since the bio-machine attacked Virgil, he had stayed at Deceit and Logan's place to recover his broken bones and … trying to readjust to his previous life while dealing with all the injuries, the missing right eye he was now covering with his bangs …

And that was where he had started to pick up their habits, on a brighter note. They both found it delightfully precious.

« It feels different when he's around. »

« He? »

« The other cat. The orange one. » Virgil gestured to a spot, but Deceit saw nothing else other than a bench. « It's like he holds my own aura, he's more like me than he is like other cats. Not like Jasper, or Copernicus. »

« You think he can shape-shift like you? » Deceit tried to follow his connections.

« I'm not a shape-shifter. » Virgil had repeated for the millionth time, followed by a quick “Of course you aren't.” of his interlocutor. « I simply appear. » he added, scrunching his lips to the side afterwards, eyes narrow as he stared ahead of himself again.

He couldn't quite put his finger on that newcomer yet.

Now the newcomer was standing right in front of them, a few meters away, looking at- well, actually …

« Oh, those are some pretty red eyes! » Deceit approached, careful not to upset the feline, which at first backed away, but was far more comfortable when he sensed the soft and measured movements of the man.

He crouched down to him and looked at two little pinkish eye sockets. Deceit turned to Virgil.

« This poor creature doesn't have eyes? » he gazed back at the cat's face, which seemed to be able to capture where the man exactly was even with the lack of sight.

« Yeah, but that's not what's off about him. » the other clarified, while Deceit had already befriended the cat and had started petting its head, cooing at how cute he was.

The cat seemed to soften under his gloves' touch. « Oh, I think nothing is off about this gorgeous little buddy. » a wide ridiculous smile spread on his lips when he turned to Virgil. « Come here, he's very nice. »

Virgil rolled his eyes and complied, kneeling down next to them. He tentatively raised a hand and slowly caressed the back of the cat's body.

« We should name him. »

« Oh, please, you would end up with absurdities- What even is Khoshekh? »

« Excuse you? First of all, it's wonderful and second, you definitely love it- »

« I do not. »

« -You do. Now, who shall this new pal be? »

Virgil promptly picked the cat up without any other warning, surprisingly getting no other response from him other than a mute “Oh, alright, I'm being lifted off the ground I suppose. Neat.”

« I'm not going to stand here and watch you ruin his reputation for the rest of his days. » he started to back away, subtly amused.

« You're so dramatic. » Deceit snickered as Virgil clutched the animal to his chest.

« Thank you, I took that after you. »

« Come on, he can't just be “that orange cat”. »

« Why not? »

« He deserves a proper name. »

« You don't give proper names, Dec. »

« Then what would you think a proper name would be? »

The cat in Virgil's arms abruptly disappeared.

Instead, in them there was now a boy around his age, just a little taller than him, and just a little too close for Virgil's personal space.

« Uh … » he didn't move, not free from the other's arms yet. « How about “Roman”? »

Virgil blinked once, then twice and three times, disbelief still washed over him as he let go instantly after regaining his composure.

« You're … » just like him! « … the new intern? » Deceit questioned, remembering how familiar that name sounded. Pieces were all coming together: of course people couldn't find him, they hadn't been looking for the right creature.

« Oh! Yeah, that. I apologize, I might have missed the first few days but- » Roman cut off, looking down at his own body as if that would have explained his absence. « I got stuck. I had no idea I could do that. » despite his composed tone, confusion and mild agitation were still accompanying his face's features. A face with eyes, differently from his cat form.

« Oh well, there's always a first time as they say. Maybe Virgil could help you control that so you can still work for us? » Deceit regretted his own words the second he captured Virgil's death stare at the new citizen.

Trustworthiness of rare beings of your own kind coincidentally moving to your town wasn't going to be an easy effort. Especially when it came to him.

« Mh? » the new intern looked at the boy in question and put on the friendliest face he could muster. « Charmed to meet you, I'm Roman. » as he was extending his hand for Virgil to shake, the other began to walk back to the radio station's bathroom without a single word.

Words, in fact, were more Deceit's thing than his own.

« Aw, don't mind that. » he chirped, clasping his hands together. « Walking away from conversations is an open invitation to seek your interlocutor's company once again. I learnt that at the social interactions course in the community college. »

All he gained was a perplexed glance from Roman. « That's rather odd. »

Deceit tilted his head to the side, eyeing him cautiously. « Where … did you go to school again? »

« Uhm, New York City? »

New York City? he thought, that's not a real place.

Deceit brushed it off as Roman simply wanting to impress him. « Well then, new yorker, I guess, you might as well follow me inside; I'll show you around the place so we can get started. »

They stopped right before the entrance. « Ah, do not be bothered by station management, they will stare at you until their necks aren't able to turn anymore, which is normally around 437,27 degrees. » Deceit showed Roman one of his most encouraging smiles. « It's their way of greeting you, you'll get used to it. »

Roman blinked multiple times before he was able to process the information and follow Deceit inside.

✾

« Listeners, I have such exciting news I can't wait to share! » the pitch of Deceit's voice increased slightly. « So, in the past few hours where the weather took place, I had the pleasure to meet our newest intern, who's taking the place of our latest, as the passage of roles requires. » he waved at his current colleague. « His name is Roman and he's from … a place. A place on the earth, smiling at the sky with the same intensity as our desert town is yelling at the moon. Sorry about that, moon. We're trying to be better. »

Deceit shifted in his seat. « As well as we're trying to look out for any comforting sign the stars, any soothing sound in the wind or any pacifying rumble in the ground. But the important thing is: you're here and you're trying. Whichever option flows your way, bound yourself to it and let it hypnotize you into the eternal slumber of vigorous impetuosity. »

He let his temple rest on his hand. « Stay tuned next for quiet yelling and boisterous nothingness. » a smile crept on his lips when he realized he was very close to returning home to his boyfriend. « And as always, goodnight, Night Vale. » the smile grew wider.

« Goodnight. »

[nichknack]

About a year ago I stopped being interested in fandom. Something happened in my personal life that made it so that whenever I tried to get into a fandom and especially when I tried to write fanfiction I felt physically sick and started to panic. I know it sounds stupid but I still feel that way sometimes and I fucking hate it. I want to be more active with fandoms again, I want to put the past behind me and move on because I no longer find joy in writing and I fucking Loved writing. All it makes me do is panic. I miss it, but at the same time I don’t know how to reignite my love without thinking about what happened and freaking out. 

Over the past year I’ve had moments when I think I’m alright and I think I’m getting back into the swing of things, having fun, and then something will happen that reminds me and I’ll be pushed back to square one. I hate it. Writing was the only thing I’ve ever been any good at and now, being unable to do it, I feel like a limb has been cut off. I have no fucking motivation and I’ve realised it’s starting to effect my relationships with my friends. I’m not longer as active because I basically banned myself from any form of fandom interaction for a while. 

I miss my WTNV days where I could just write a 20,000 word fic that was pure and utter trash and it didn’t matter. It was fun. I miss fun. 

But at the same time, I don’t know how to fix it. I want to keep writing. I want to get back into fandoms and fandom culture and feel that same excitement that I used to feel but I just don’t know how. 

[intheseautumnhands]

I have no work so pre-NaNo ramblings under the jump as I try to sort out if I’m starting anything new for it, feel free to click through or ignore entirely. 

All fic, because I have no idea what Im doing with any original stuff right now. Most of it is TUA fic. Because I am currently Having An Obsession.

- Speaking of Having An Obsession, primary goal is definitely to get turpentine and patches (the pre-S1, “Diego and Vanya and pregnancy and dealing with trauma by being determined to be better parents than Reginald and finding something else to live for, technically a kidfic I guess even though it probably ends right before or right after the kid if born” fic) finished. Or close to it? Just... to work on it. 

(I’m stalled right now because I’ve written through what my brain termed The First Part, and I have an idea for The Third Or Fourth-ish Part, but need to figure out what The Second Part is going to be in a way that’s interesting to write about. Right now in my head it’s just “?????? Dealing? Somewhere in here we deal with the Question of Doctors, but not The Question of Medication, they need to be closer for that. also in here is where Diego effectively moves in even if they don’t really register that fact til later.” I may write the attached one-shot to The Third-ish Part in my head first, see where the emotional states land, and write towards that? That might work. Or maybe I’ll just put Braille on repeat and go to town.)

But I am not Proper NaNoing -- for one thing I don’t think the above is going to be 50k, especially not on top of the ~7k I have already? I could be wrong, but we’ll see. So other thoughts:

- I would like to get some more words on the Allison-is-born-in-Night-Vale story(/ies) done, because right now that exists as a decontextualized collection of paragraphs, some from the base fic, some from the series of spin-offs where she meets the various Hargreeves (mostly the one where Luther starts getting her show on the moon and falls in love with her from afar). And it’s just fun. I think I need a WTNV refresher, so I may make a point of listening to some of my favorites this week. It’s also good Halloween noise and I can work to it, so.

(Should not just listen to Desert Bluffs episodes. But may do some of those too. Because I love Kevin more than is probably healthy for me. One day I’ll go as Kevin for a con somewhere and have way too much fun.)

- I appear to have lost the bare: a pop opera/TUA crossover file somewhere in my docs? I need to dig it out again and go back to that as well, but I need a refresher on what bits I have scrambled down, because I think that’s also pretty piecemeal.

- ..... I don’t have that much oomph for my other existing WIPs right now, which is dissapointing. Some part of me DOES want to turn the series of Abigail/63!Will ficlets into somethign more than A Series of Kinky Moments, but I don’t know what to do with that, so it’s probably not happening yet.

I may make an effort to work on the eldritch-Sigyn-time-loop fic though. Because I love it and i feel like it’s going to end up just languishing. Or maybe that will be my wind-up to NaNo, since I don’t know what to write lately?

- Things I’d like to start but need to do research for:

-- That fic where Abigail survives but is mute, the metaphor becomes text and in her lack of voice becoming text she finds a way to reclaim her voice and her power, because I still have STRONG FEELINGS about Abigail Hobbs apparently. Like. A lot of them. Like, it’s almost a problem, but not surprising.

However, to write it properly I’d really want to research throat wounds and healing, and I am A Chicken about gory images, so I have to figure out how to research it without risking running into pictures.

-- I ALSO need to research throat wounds and healing for the fic where Diego crash-lands into the 60s a couple of months after Allison, they’re assumed to be married, and they just kind of roll with it. Also, racism in the 60s, and specifically how it affects marriages that are different races but nobody involved is white? Because literally every source I found on my first go-round was only about interracial marriage when one part was. 

(That, or I need to throw up my hands and choose to declare this fic not reality complaint, but I feel like this one I should definitely at least TRY to research first. But goddammit I just want to write fake-married-and-worried-about-everyone-else turning into actual-relationship(-and-still-worrying) [and also somewhere it developed a plot where Diego tries to get into boxing because he has no ability to keep jobs and ends up running into Luther and possibly evolves into threesomes and also collecting their other siblings several months before Five shows up? I don’t know how but it did].)

- Shorter contenders if I need to find something else to think on for a bit include: 

-- The fic where Ben slowly becomes possessed by the Horror.

-- The series of AUs where each member of the Academy ended up being the last one left behind.

-- Luther viewing Vanya as their father’s left-hand team leader to his personal right-hand team leader and coming to her to keep her in the loop and ask advice, which eventually morphs as they get older into a habit of going to Vanya to confess everything he feels he’s done wrong and her giving him a kind of penance

... Do I even have anything else that’s not TUA left? I feel like I should but I Have A Fixation right now, it’s a problem. I need to go back to the Magicians and see if that creeps in. Or maybe something else, but this will work for NaNo, I think. altogether it’s definitely more than 50k, though I’m not planning to write it all at once this coming month, just, it’ll be easier if there’s a plan for me to look at while I’m going ‘but what do I wriiiiiiiite’ than if there’s nothing.

Not even sure I’m really going for 50k, but just. Writing in a Substantial Amount would be nice. For once I think I can do it! It’s been 14 fucking years since I’ve won (or even gone over 10k I believe)! So let’s see how it goes!

[dragimal]

Longform Audio Creepypasta Recs

hey TMA fandom! as a new TMA listener but looooongtime creepypasta fan, I find it rly cool that ppl who aren’t into horror are getting into TMA! I’m hoping this will help bring fresh blood (hah) to the horror fandom, so if you’ve realized that you rather like audio horror but don’t know what else to look into, I’m here to recommend my favorite longform creepypasta narrations! 

this is far from an exhaustive list of long creepypastas, but I just want to introduce some of the stories I consider to be the best of the genre. and while I’m just reccing longform in this post, there are plenty of short one-shots I could rec if anyone wants to ask me abt a specific theme/Entity or even a specific ep of TMA (there are several MAG eps that brought me straight back to a specific creepypasta or two, lmao)

also, I’ll just be linking to MrCreepyPasta’s narrations b/c I’m heavily biased so I mostly listen to him, but there are plenty of other great narrators out there like CreepsMcPasta, CreepypastaJr, etc. (most of their names are variations on a theme asdfgh). and if u just want the text version of any of these, every video I link has a link in its own description back to the original text posting of the story

THAT outta the way, here are my recs! I’ll try to remember all the trigger warnings I can, but keep in mind I tend to be p hardy to most horror content, so there may be some things that slip past simply b/c they don’t register to me. also it’s been a minute since I’ve listened to some of these, so some have updated or I may have just forgotten some aspects. I’ll also update this if ppl find it useful and I find more good long pastas~

Penpal (2.5 hrs, complete)

op recounts some of their odd experiences as a child, all of which stem from an elementary school project involving a pen pal. as he recalls these experiences, a horrifying picture of his past begins to emerge...

easily my favorite pasta of all time-- and that’s saying something, considering there are some damn good recs here. it’s one of the first I read so long ago, and few have come close to what this one made me feel. op does an incredible job of capturing the nostalgia and childhood wanderlust of youth, and the last few lines of each chunk of the story hit like a goddamned truck-- esp "Friends”, I cry like a baby every time, it just.... hits something tender in me...

TW: stalking of children, subsequent kidnapping and child abuse at the end (and while it’s not necessarily *confirmed*, heavy implications of child sexual abuse, for that last bit). implied cat death. some graphic description of the victim of a hit-and-run

Search and Rescue Woods (~5 hrs, ongoing?)

op recalls several of the strange and disturbing experiences (their own and quoted from coworkers) of working search-and-rescue for an unnamed national forest in the US

y’know that feeling u get when u see photos lawn chairs just sitting at the bottom of the ocean? even if there’s a perfectly good explanation for why they’re there, it’s still haunting b/c it feels wrong to see them there, in that context? that’s basically this entire assortment of stories-- the obvious example being the stairs, of course, but even a lot of the human elements feel so out of place and wrong. if you’re a fan of Spiral-type horror w/ a hard edge of Stranger, this is the story for u

TW: generally clinical but graphic descriptions of mutilated bodies. use of the r-slur against an nd individual (it’s during a story that the main character is quoting from a different one-off character, so it thankfully only happens the one time..). child death, in certain stories. some wild animal death

Borrasca (2.5 hrs, complete)

Sam moves to a small mountain town with his family after his father’s job relocates them. he hears some spooky legends about the town, but doesn’t think much of them... that is, until his sister disappears. as Sam and his friends dig deeper into the town’s history to find any clues to his sister’s disappearance, they begin to realize there’s something deeply deeply wrong with their quaint little home

I’ve always loved horror that’s ‘mundane’ enough to be done by regular humans, but vague enough that it could actually be supernatural, under the right circumstances-- and this is one of those mysteries that keeps u guessing until the VERY end. my mind felt like that Pepe Silvia corkboard meme the first time I listened to this, I was losin’ it. this is also prolly one of my favorite examples of MCP’s talent as a narrator, b/c he adds in his own subtle foreshadowing with his voicework, and it blows my mind every time I listen to it again

also worth mentioning there’s a (3.5 hr) sequel! since the horror/mystery is basically done after the first one, the sequel is mostly suspense/thriller and character closure. if ur just here for the horror/mystery and the gut-punch of that first ending, then the sequel isn’t necessary. but if you want more closure for our dear sweet cast who deserve so much better, then by all means!

TW: the ending involves heavy sexual abuse (involving underage girls, no less), part of which is graphic. like I know I joke abt having to take breaks after reading emotionally exhausting stories, but I genuinely had to take a couple days of recovery after this one-- and that’s from someone who’s p hardy to all kinds of graphic content. do NOT take this warning lightly if this is a sensitive topic for you

Tales From the Gas Station (10 hrs for free, otherwise ongoing)

Jack works at a gas station at the edge of a middle-of-nowhere town. Strange things happen at the gas station-- bipedal deer stopping by for a drink, dark gods leaving vague messages, fingers growing from the ground out back, sudden lawn gnome appearances-- All just a part of the daily grind, right?

so if I wanna be totally fair, this is more a rec for Night Vale fans than anything (tho the TMA/WTNV overlap seems to be p significant). the comedic, nonchalant tone taken towards everything supernatural and horrific is p much 1:1 WTNV. I’ve genuinely cried laughing at some of the fuckshit that happens, esp anything involving Jerry. not to say that GST doesn’t have its heavy-horror moments, but the frequency is more comparable to Night Vale’s approach-- dark comedy definitely takes center stage, here. tho this also varies by the POV-- the “Finding Vanessa” arcs are told from the perspective of a more serious character, so the heavy parts are far more frequent and hit a lot harder

as for the time estimate, here’s where it gets a littleee bit complicated. the first version was put out for free, and read for free by MCP (among a few other narrators). this came out in several different parts, and the one video I linked above has compiled *most* of volume 1, but not the Halloween story, featured here. HOWEVER, the author has taken a second go at v1 and beyond, which is currently ongoing and available to buy as books or audiobooks ALSO narrated by MCP!

as for deciding which version to listen to, I’ll just try to describe the differences here. the first version was written entirely via Jack’s online forum posts, which were subject to more direct reader interaction and Jack’s scatterbrain. thus, the first version leaves a LOT more details up to reader interpretation/theorizing, straight up doesn’t have or explain certain plot arcs yet, and is very disorganized in terms of timeline all due to Jack’s canon memory issues. this all, personally, made it v fun and silly to follow, but I’m aware that’s not for everyone. the second version is written from a more standard first person narrative from Jack’s perspective. while Jack’s memory issues still make him an unreliable narrator (often *upsettingly* so in this version), the actual narrative is far more organized, complete, and easy to follow. the fun thing is that the first version can still be considered canon material to the second version, as Jack references making those very forum posts within the second version narrative. so, personally, I consider the second version to be the core cohesive story, while the first version is supplemental, fun material that provides more context for a few of the strange bits that happen in the story (like Jack’s ‘secret admirer’ makes more sense if u’ve listened to the first version). either way, the second version is the only way the story is going to continue (as far as I’m aware), so if you’re ONLY going to listen to one version of the story, listen to the second version

TW: for the first version, there are some uncomfortable jokes/implications at certain points-- associating villains/assholes with fatness and/or personality disorders is unfortunately a running theme, and a few off-color jokes are made abt some of Jack’s conditions (general mental health and his brief use of crutches). there’s also a point at which it’s implied that a specific one-off arc is a ploy to rape Jack, tho nothing actually comes of it beyond awkward scheming (but just in case, that story is specifically “Death at the Gas Station” at the very end of that long compilation, if u wanna skip it). for the second version, I believe the author was made aware of these issues and either straight-up removed or fixed most of them in some way. there’s just one point where an intentionally-questionable character uses the g*psy slur, and a few points where a regular commenter on Jack’s forum posts has w*ndigo in their username

in terms of gore for either one, uhhh maybe some descriptions of injuries? body horror? this one’s a lot harder to call for me, b/c the comedy softens the blow on a lot of the horror

Accounts From a Lonely Broadcast Station (5 hrs, ongoing)

Evelyn is the new voice of a small mountain town’s local radio station. her job is to take calls, play music (ALWAYS play the music), and broadcast emergency warnings whenever the fog rolls in from the surrounding forest. pretty standard stuff. she tries to make the most of it-- if only that damn crow with human eyes would stop watching her...

this one’s similar to Gas Station Tales with its heavy reliance on dark humor, but it takes itself a bit more seriously, with a more even split b/t genuine horror and comedy. also MCP brings in wonderful extra voice talent w/ this one, I RLY love Evelyn's va ;w;

TW: graphic descriptions of mutilation and body horror

My Friend Has Been Living in an Alternate Reality (4 hrs, complete)

op’s eccentric friend, Clint, turns up on op’s doorstep unannounced after several years missing. Clint vanishes again just as abruptly, leaving op with a journal detailing a horrifying, dangerous journey that’s almost too bizarre to believe, yet...

so this one’s more like an action/thriller with horror garnish, tbh-- very exciting and suspenseful! I love the weird, apocalyptic world Clint describes in his journals, and the societies that have cropped up around these hostile circumstances

TW: graphic descriptions of mutilation/injury

My Name is Lily Madwhip (~8 hrs, ongoing)

Lily Madwhip sees things before they happen. they’re usually horrible things like deaths and injuries that she wishes she could prevent but often can’t. at least her best friend-- an angel possessing one of Lily’s dolls-- is around to provide advice

this one’s from the perspective of a little girl, and it leans into dark humor enough to soften at least some of the more traumatic moments. Lily’s young enough that she’s somewhat removed from the full gravity of the deaths around her, but the fact that it’s happening so frequently at all seems to be warping her perspective towards death to be more... casual? is that the right word? it’s just a rly interesting perspective to see for horror. also we’ve got another rly great guest va here for Lily~

TW: brief descriptions of injury, but they’re not graphic. frequent animal death.

The Showers (2.75 hrs, complete)

op recounts a scary story he heard from a teacher back in high school about a vague location and a terrifying encounter. he later ventures to find this location to see the truth for himself, but is it worth it?

this one’s a classic-- I think it was of the first creepypasta I listened to? not this version, but I wouldn’t be able to tell u which narrator it was at the time. I won’t say that this one’s the most unique story out there, but something abt it has always stuck with me?.... idk, I think the premise rly hooks me

TW: oh god it’s been a while, but I don’t remember anything particularly triggering? maybe body horror?

[elftwink]

What are your feelings about wtnv condos?

WELL, since you asked: 

for one i think most everything has been said about cecil calling carlos perfect prior to condos and imperfect after it. i agree w/all that, i think its beautiful and it makes me cry and also it’s so cohesive and such a good character development thing BUT like i said, it has been covered so i won’t waffle about that. but i will waffle about the way that perfection is presented in and of itself and how that presentation is tied to night vale’s larger themes. namely, this line:

“I understood that the cubes are perfect! I understood that this is how we become perfect. I understood that what I was seeing was the way to perfection. And I don’t know how I understood this. Thinking about it now, nothing about it seems good, let alone perfect.” [bolding mine]

night vale is far from the only media around that covers the idea that perfection is a myth that people spend their whole lives chasing. i think what it does that works so well is that it never portrays perfection as completely unattainable— in fact, the plot of the episode hinges on the fact that the character can access a perfect existence— but rather as alien. so far removed from a real human experience that looking at it from an outsider perspective, as cecil does after the weather is over in that line, makes it very nearly incomprehensible. 

and moreover, the people who are “perfect” within the context of the episode are not, in any tangible or understandable way, “better” than they were before— which, as far as my personal media consumption goes, is a fairly novel twist. off the top of my head i can think of several stories or plot points that revolve around a protagonist being offered a perfect existence and refusing. basically any media that involves omnipotent beings will have a plotline like this or similar and stories about human beings refusing like, divinity or power or wealth or skill or whatever it might be are kind of a staple of like, every genre. HOWEVER the idea tends to be that they have something to gain from that; power or wealth or status or knowledge or something, something that might be massive and that they could never hope to achieve or accrue on their own.

the condos offer no understandable improvement. they don’t even offer the promise of improvement. the demonstrations of perfection and the examples we are given as an audience are not glorious or grandiose but foreign and terrifying, something that the characters openly admit. 

“Janice Rio (from down the street) saw a city. A lost city. A dead city, nestled in a jungle – the kind of jungle that only ever existed in books written by people who have never seen a jungle. The city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread, its doors were open jaws. Its windows were open jaws. Its roads and avenues were gaping mouths and open jaws. That dead city teetered. It rotted in its jungle tomb, but…it was not empty. And she started to run. Run through the thick foliage of that absurd place, she shouted and ran.”

“Roger Singh (who had been able to buy a condo with the spine) saw a cave, underwater, in an ocean far to the north. And the water around him was dark – so dark! – that he wasn’t sure even which way led to the surface, to life…and which way led down only to the deep silent. He gasped, but found he had no breath…and no need to breathe. And there was this cave that smoldered with a light, a light that was charged and alive. And shadows moved against the light, cast by…what?…within the cave. And then he swam towards it, uncertain whether he was guest, or sacrifice, or invulnerable dreamer. And he heard a song from the cave, and he knew it, and it was perfect. And he sang along, but at the same time, he had never heard that song before in his life. And what was life? What made it his? It all seemed so small, part of the world that didn’t exist anymore.” 

and like, to some extent, so what, right? who cares if perfection is seen as desirable vs unknowable? what difference does it make? well, i will tell you/theorize about it abstractly. i find that this framing of perfection makes it much much clearer that wtnv intends imperfection to be celebrated rather than tolerated. 

the order of events is not imperfection is human -> being human is good -> imperfection is good, but rather, imperfection is good -> humans are imperfect - > being human is good. cecil says pretty much this when he says: “And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and the cracks into which our out-sized love can seep and pool. And sometimes we are annoyed, and disappointed, and that too is a part of how love works. It is not a perfect system, but… Oh, well.”

and i mean, even in and of itself that’s a deeply moving thing to say. this post could end here with me saying that night vale’s framing of imperfection as not just necessary but integral to experiencing life in a way that is worthwhile makes for an incredibly powerful story. 

but condos is part of a larger story. and i’ve talked about parade day & old oak doors before, and briefly mentioned all right in that post. one of the most oft quoted night vale bits is the candle wax spiel from a memory of europe (the “time is like wax” speech). with these, and with countless other moments across the show, over and over again, wtnv is about the value of right now. of action. of effort. of choice.

what actually sets night vale perfection apart is that above all else, perfection is stagnant. the people in the condos float motionless and frozen. fading away. even when cecil says that they are able to be contacted, the action is still taken by the people left behind, imperfect: “Walking through where the condos once stood, you can hear their voices — but distantly, faintly. And if you reach out when you hear that voice, if you reach out and feel for them, you too will get a vision of some far-off place, a place that is, in its own way, in a way perhaps that can never be explained, perfect.” these people no longer do anything. they no longer live, even though they are presumably alive, in their own perfect way. the reason the condos offer no improvement is that improvement is growth, it’s movement, it’s action. improvement and perfection are antonyms. you improve for the sake of improvement, for betterment, rather than to attain perfection.

when cecil escapes from the condos, he does so through resistance, through fighting, through choosing imperfection actively. throughout the show, things happen because people try. they do. they live and they grow and they change and they discover and they fucking try. and when they don’t it’s to make a point about inaction, to show you that being static is easy and nice but that even in the face of all that, it’s important to try. and you try knowing you could fail. and you try knowing the odds are stacked, knowing that the world is chaotic and things don’t always happen for a reason. you try if it doesn’t personally affect you. you try if you have never tried before or if you couldn’t or didn’t last time. 

i promise i’m almost done but i couldn’t mention all that without saying something about how community is tied up so tight with those values that you can’t tear them apart. the way in which things happen is rarely because cecil does something on his own but because the town does something, together. relationships are built on communication and effort and trying, from one-on-one to city wide. the entire show is fundamentally built on balancing your inclusion in the community of night vale with your independence and ability (& sometimes duty) to act as a single person. you can stand alone, and if you must, you should, but you shouldn’t have to. and hopefully you don’t have to. 

disclaimer that i’m way behind on wtnv so i could be contradicted by more recent episodes and also this isn’t nearly long enough to really get Into It(tm) and also the wtnv has covered such a variety of topics that it’s very hard to make generalizations like this, but even so, i hope i’ve done it justice. also shoutout to cecilspeaks for all the quotes, here’s the full transcript for condos if anyone wants/needs it

anyway, on a final note, i think cecil really says it best so:

“A perfect place that you will never visit. And that is the best news of all. Listeners, I send you now back out into the night. And it’s dangerous out there, and it’s lonely, and it’s not perfect.

Goodnight, all of you here, goodnight, all of you listeners, and goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.”

[grouchythefish]

The 2010s, year by year.

I was inspired by @puzzled-dragon on twitter but but would rather do this here. I did not realize this decade sucked so hard. I put this under a read more because it’s long and sad af. I did not INTENTIONALLY make this depressing but thinking to each year these ARE the things I think of first. There’s a happy ending though, I promise. If this is too long, just read the first and last year and you’ll probably get the picture. (tw: depression, self-harm, death, suicidal thoughts, car accidents, sexual assault):

2010: Went on my first plane ride to visit my brother in San Francisco! Went to my first show that summer (warped tour - Sum 41!), then My Chemical Romance in December. Started volunteering with the Teen Advisory Board at the library. This was the year I first started realizing I had some mental health issues. My grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away. I was dealing with depression and self harming and learned I have ADHD. Started questioning my sexuality.

2011: The year of the January mystery evacuation! My strongest memories of this year are the summer. went to Warped Tour again (Motion City Soundtrack and Paramore!), joined Tumblr in July. I took 2 months of summer school by choice that year during which I read the Handmaid’s Tale and had a bit of a feminist awakening. Gwen and I started our band and started doing shows together. Started questioning my gender.

2012: Started IDing as asexual. Got into urbex for a little while. Graduated high school. Went to Warped Tour for the last time. Saw Mindless Self Indulgence and had my first serious panic attack. Started a visual arts degree at York. Lived on campus and lost a lot of weight REAL fast and got VERY sick. Now that I was 18 and no longer living with my parents I finally started getting treatment for my ADHD. Realized I was agender.

2013: Started playing quidditch and getting involved with York’s Harry Potter club (Ministry of Magic) where I met @ominouspotato and @puzzled-dragon​. Realized I was bisexual. Got my first job (tim hortons) then my first apartment (A complete disaster) My depression and anxiety got real bad towards the end of this year. I did go to a lot of shows though. (Fall Out Boy and Motion City Soundtrack come to mind) Started listening to WTNV not knowing that this would absolutely be a gateway podcast for me. 

2014: Moved in with my aunt Bev (not really my aunt) in Scarborough for the first half of the year then my parents for the second half. Bought my first binder. Became a Ministry of Magic exec. Saw WTNV live. Met my (now) ex at a PATD show in Feb, we started dating in Nov. Took the via rail for the first time.  Was sexually assaulted on my first date (I have never told anyone this until right now). Rode the go train a lot. Started trying to change my major to Digital Media.

2015: Moved back in with my aunt Bev and lived there for the whole year. (At the time I hated it but in retrospect she was real cool about a lot of stuff) Saw Motion City Soundtrack for the third and final time :’(. This is the year @ghirahims-left-shoe​ and I met Frank Iero and Gerard Way (who said my drawing were awesome!!!!!) Moved into the Forest Hill apartment (a mistake). Realized university was going nowhere for me. Saw WTNV live again.

2016: Dropped out of York and started at Seneca for Interactive Media Design. My (now) ex moved in with me and my roommates and shit hit the fan which resulted in us packing up and moving back to my home town (Cue the worst 3 years of my life) Got my G2 and started driving regularly, got in my first car accident. I worked 6 different jobs this year. My tax return was hell. I started getting really into podcasts this year.

2017: Started off real fucking depressed over the US election and somehow ended up turning to mbmbam to cope (a mutual on tumblr suggested it and I wish I remembered who so I could thank them for changing my life). Commuted to Toronto 5 days a week this whole year. Got engaged. Bought my first car in August (a beige impala). Had my first car written off in November when someone rear ended me on the 400. Bought my red elantra that I still have now. Joined the MBMBAM Gaming Server when I was at a very low point that fall and it was a god send - met some really really good friends though this. Joined roller derby. First realized I was in an abusive relationship.

2018: Got in another car accident. Quit my job in Toronto because I couldn’t handle the commute anymore after getting in 2 accidents in the same winter. Traveled to Detroit to see mbmbam live. Went through a YMCA employment program, which is how I got the most soulless job ever - but it was a short commute, looked great on my resume, and paid okay so I sucked it up. My depression and anxiety got worse and worse and I kept ignoring it, kept thinking if I just acted like things were fine they eventually would be (fake it til you make it is bullshit btw). Tried to leave my fiance a handful of times but never could. Tried and failed many many times to pass the roller derby minimum skills test. Started isolating myself more and more from my irl friends. My laptop kicked the bucket in August and I couldn’t afford to replace it.

2019 (Jan-Aug): In March I both got my dream job and went on my first big trip (New Orleans to visit my brother)! Got my first tattoo in July. My depression didn’t go away, though. I quit roller derby. A few doctor’s visits and many different ADHD medication trials later I found myself at my lowest point. I wasn’t sleeping but I also struggled to get out of bed. I felt like work was the only thing I could do so it was all I did and my anxiety only fueled this further. I thought that there was no one in the world who cared about me. I saw myself as a problem to the people around me. Something that needed to be removed. I was researching what pills I could overdose on and how many it would take and I started making real plans to kill myself in September. 

Spoiler: I didn’t! 

2019 (Sept-Dec): I saw a new doctor, took a break from work, and started on anti-depressants for the first time ever. Everything changed. I traveled to Buffalo to meet friends from the mbmbam gaming server and had online friends come to Barrie to visit me. I reconnected with my university friends after 2 years of self-isolation and we see each other regularly now. I went on my first solo trip to visit Gwen in BC and we are starting a podcast together (!!!). I found out my friends are also doing podcasts! I started working on having a better relationship with my siblings (we’re not there yet but making progress). I started coming out to people irl as agender for the first time and requesting they use my chosen name and pronouns. I replaced my laptop and started making art again! I applied for a bunch of zines and got into one! I finally worked up the strength to break up with my fiance for real. Just in these last few months I’ve made more new friends and spent more time with them than in the last 3 years put together. (If you are one of those new friends, I’m sorry if I’m weird or awkward, or say too much or too little or just the wrong things, I got used to not having friends and genuinely don’t remember how to be around people. Please be patient with me, I’m trying to get better.)

2020: I just had the first new years eve in a decade where I felt I was ending the year better than I started it. Things aren’t perfect (I still need my ex to move out, I still live in a town that makes me depressed, I’m still not out to my family, I’m still looking for a therapist) but for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the future.

[notanrp-wow]

for that writing prompt thing you posted: Kevin and Cecil from wtnv?

With pleasure. Though I hope you know that it's gonna be HEAVY in canon divergent headcanons. Because unfortunately I'm me. XD

It got stupid long so accept this Read More. Sorry. Hope you enjoy this chaos. <3

Jet Pack Blues by Fall Out Boy

I'm the last one that you'll ever remember

And I'm trying to find that peace of mind

Behind these two white highway lines

When the city goes silent

The ringing in my ears gets violent

There were precious few hours to sleep. In a 24 hour period Kevin worked 14. When you added the time into the radio station and the time it took to get back to his apartment it was closer to 16 most days. Everyone was so NICE. They always seemed to want to stop him in the hallway to chat. Especially Lauren. Lauren was always so. Friendly. Particularly in the evening. When he wanted to go home. Then there was the time it took to make dinner, feed his Strex Pet, throw sticks at his Strex Pet, hygiene. He was lucky most nights to get 4 hours of sleep. A low level of constant exhaustion more than permissible to make sure that the best little town that ever existed had a pleasant voice on the radio to listen to while they worked.

Point being, that he really should be paying more attention to sleeping. He even already had his Strex Smile Improvers in. Moving to the bed seemed to be a problem though. How funny.

The hollow-eyed man stared out of his window. Even at night there was a low level of cold brightness to Desert Bluffs. The Smiling God was always watching. It made him grind his sharp teeth. His hands itched for knives. He could feel the darkness of his room pooling unnaturally. A soft lavender glow from his forehead that he had long ago learned to ignore. No reason to think about things like that. It only caused pain. The shadows coalesced, twisting and forming into jagged, jerking tentacles. There. But not.

It was in the not-quite-darkness that fragments of not-quite-memories seeped in. Tainting the edges of his love for his town and his God and his job.

A boy. His age. Who looked like him, but was not him. Not tall and not short. Not thin and not fat. With eyes like his, but not like his. Not black and hollow. White and empty. The same. But not the same.

A woman. Older. Who sometimes looked at him and sometimes looked through him. Who spoke in riddles and nonsense but who held him like she never wanted to let him go.

Darkness. Honest darkness. Lights in the sky. Not the Smiling God. Different. Similar. But different.

Kevin closed his eyes, trying to let it all go. Things that weren’t and had never been. They didn’t matter. He was Kevin. He was the Voice of Desert Bluffs. He loved Strex and he loved the Smiling God. He liked to decorate, and he liked to paint his nails. He was Kevin of Desert Bluffs. He was Kevin. Kevin. Just Kevin.

Cecil sat on the edge of his bed, trying to be quiet so he didn’t wake his boyfriend. Boyfriend! It was wonderful and strange and not perfect. Perfect only in that it was imperfect. Night was dark in Night Vale. The lights over the Arby’s glowed as they always did. The small red lights of surveillance blinking now and again as special agents listened in or turned them back to record. Night was peaceful most of the time. Quiet. Newsworthy things tried to wait until the day when there was someone on the radio to report on it.

White eyes looked at the window. The curtain was drawn. Tonight they weren’t scheduled to be watched. It was fine to close the curtains tonight. He glanced over at the vanity. Mirror covered in a dark cloth. Like always. Like his mother warned.

In the light of day it was all so obvious. He had a mother. He had a sister. He had a niece and a brother in law. That was his family. All it had ever been. In the dark of the night, it wasn’t so clear. Thoughts like memories creeped in.

A boy like him. But not him. Laughing and going to scout meetings. The boy like him who wasn’t him holding his hands while they focused on a blood stone circle. Trying to contact… something.

He reached up and brushed one corner of his third eye. Blood. When he tried to focus on the not-quite-memories he always bled slightly. Something didn’t like that he was trying to think of things that had never happened. Couldn’t have happened. The something was cold. He could feel it when he tried to focus and look. Cold and terrible and hungry.

Cecil looked back down at Carlos and smiled. It was fine. He’d push the thoughts away. He’d ignore them. Try to forget whatever had already been forgotten. It couldn’t have been that important. It FELT important. But he’d ignore that feeling in favor of enjoying the life he had.

She's in a long black coat tonight

Waiting for me in the downpour outside

She's singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears

While the rhythm of the rain keeps time

Years ago, back when Cecil was still young, a woman stood on their porch. No one was sure why. But then, she did many things people weren’t sure about. She spoke in riddles and nonsense. She had lost her mind, at least part of it, years before. It was bound to happen. It’s what she got for her love. She was lucky really. Her children had helped her regain any of it. She was one of the few, perhaps the only, who could feel it. When the children would shift reality. They didn’t mean to. She knew that. They assumed and believed and did so with such inhuman conviction that the world bent to accommodate.

But that was before. She was missing one now. No one else seemed to remember. Even her son didn’t remember. Knew something was wrong. Knew that something was missing. But didn’t know what. That’s how she’d gotten a daughter. A lovely daughter who she loved as much as she loved her son.

It was wrong though.

It shouldn’t have been her. It should have been him. She could see him still sometimes. In the dark. In the rain. When her shattered mind cut her open. She could see her other boy. The one with dark eyes. Who was quiet but clever. Who saw more but believed less. The older of the two, if only by minutes. When her mind was right she couldn’t see him anymore. Reality didn’t allow it. He’d been erased. But not. Just gone. Taken. Lost.

In the dark in the rain when her mind was in pieces, she silently begged him to come home. She wailed to nothing. Words that no one else seemed to understand. Crazy. That was all. Howling into the night. They couldn’t see him anymore. But in her fractured memories she still did. She remembered and she mourned his absence.

[dontcallmecarrie]

Fic Idea: WtNV/Twilight crossover

Wherein Bella hails not from Phoenix, Arizona, but from a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead on a regular basis.

 And dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park.

Fandoms: Twilight (books, probably movies too? Haven’t seen them), Welcome to Night Vale (podcast)

Warnings: everything Welcome to Night Vale-related. [So, cosmic horror, Librarian-caliber violence and gore, etc.] On the other hand, at least there’s semi-healthy relationships, here? Semi-unreliable narrator, because growing up in Night Vale makes for a skewed reference frame re: what is and is not sane and/or impossible.

Under the cut because of reasons. [You know why.]

 Bella's mother and stepfather were a bit whimsical about where they'd end up living, and chose the classic 'throw a dart on a map'.

In one life, the dart might've landed near Phoenix, and the rest would have been history.

In this one, however…Renee's (I think that's what her name is, it's been years since I last touched the books) aim was slightly off when she threw the dart.

Bella still visits her father regularly, of course.

 So she knows some things are slightly off, but thinks it’s Forks that’s pretty weird. She only visits for a few months out of every year, though, so she shrugs it off.

 The older she gets, the more she realizes some things are lost in translation; it's her father that recommends she join the Girl Scouts, but seems to think she's joking when she talks about earning her Controlling Plants with Minds patch., and by the time she's gotten her Radiation Immunity patch she's given up telling him just what her troop gets up to.  

The camping trips, where she befriends Jacob Black and shows off her Surviving in Nature badge skills, merely net her some weird glances, but…eh. Could be worse, though explaining just where she'd gotten her machete from had left everyone involved with more questions than answers.

 Not to mention the Summer Reading Program—the first time Bella survived it, she'd left for Forks not a week later. Charlie had congratulated her for her reading chart, and left it at that.

So she doesn’t really talk about it. Or her Unmodified Sumerian classes, or the bloodstone circles, or…

  Time goes on, and Bella's visiting for less and less time, because the older she gets the more things pile up, and by the time she's reached high school her internship at the radio station means she's busier than ever, running errands for Station Management and Cecil, and simply surviving.

 It's not until StrexCorp shows up, however, that Bella deems it a good idea to visit Charlie again.

Well…it's less her idea, and more 'StrexCorp bought their neighborhood and is working on shutting down Night Vale High and instating their own charter schools in time for her class to graduate and fuck that noise'.

Plus, it's not like she had much cause to stick around, not when Phil and Renee had been planning on doing something for his job prospects [which, incidentally enough, had been something StrexCorp could slightly respect. Go figure].

So, really, between the choice of attending a Desert Bluff school [ugh], or Forks High, it was really a no-brainer for Bella.

 Even if Forks was a kind of weird place.

 …it's been a while, actually.

Turns out, distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, it just makes things less weirder. 

[Seriously, just how did younger her not notice some things?]

It's been years, but Bella's still vaguely terrified by how green everything is. The Whispering Forest was five minutes from her house, after all. She wholeheartedly approves of the rain and the various clouds [even if none of them glow here. Weird].

Fork's high school isn't that bad, but Bella sorely misses her Unmodified Sumerian credits.

And she's vaguely confused by everyone's complaining about PE. [It had some very good real-world applications, what was the big deal? Dodging fireballs invoked by black magic was easy, compared to Chad Steinbeck's throwing arm.]

Kinda weird how nonchalant everyone was about their librarians, though by now she's almost used to how everyone laughs whenever she talked about the killer Summer Reading Program. [Younger her had merited a few curious glances when she'd clung to her backpack, as if carrying duct tape and several days' worth of food and water wasn't a perfectly rational thing to have in a library. Weird.]

 And her dad's Police Department must be having severe budget cuts, if his patrol car can't fly and he doesn't even have a balaclava. [So, very, weird.]

She's still fascinated by the Cullens, of course. That's a fundamental constant.

 Except here, Bella's not infatuated, or obsessed-- or, at least, not in a "love at first sight" sort of way.

No, here, Bella still sees the predatory gleam in the Cullen's eyes, and their ethereal beauty. But instead of growing warily curious, she instead feels a pang of homesickness, and resolves to befriend them. [That blonde in particular really reminds her of Jessica Simmons in fifth grade, back before she forgot to check her harness when their Girl Scout troop was earning their Paragliding and Divebombing patches.]

 That Edward guy was more of an afterthought than anything else, actually. Though it was also a new record, too: not even five minutes and he hated her guts, when her personal best was four hours and thirty-seven minutes for a budding blood feud.

 The Cullens, meanwhile, don't know what to think of this new arrival.

 Bella Swan had, in the span of five school days, gone from "flavor of the week" to "what the fuck is she on, or is she just trolling?" with alarming speed.

 Her father had made it well known she had an eccentric sense of humor, but that still didn't quite prepare everyone for her incredible deadpan, or her reactions to the most random things. [Like her incredulity about wheat-based products: what kind of weird diet was she on?]

They’re seeing this eccentric newcomer who smells of sand and mesquite and desert wind [though Edward doesn't know why it's so enticing to him], and are even more confused. Because of their enhanced senses, they can tell Bella's confusion is genuine, and why was she so terrified when Valentine's Day was brought up?

Alice's the one that puts them on alert: trying to see Bella's future gives her a migraine, and flashes of something great and terrible that she can't quantify, a black abyss and yet not and what was she?!

 So, of course, Jasper's equally alarmed, because for something to unnerve his was-committed-to-an-asylum-as-a-human girlfriend…plus her emotions when someone talked about Homecoming should not have been that extreme... 

Edward's fascinated, but also questions his self-control as time passes and Bella's slowly smelling less and less like her former hometown, and more and more appealing to him. On the plus side, at least she's not…overly interested in him? She doesn't smell like it, at least. Huh. [That he can't read her mind is but secondary, at this point.]

Rosalind is so, very befuddled with Bella's fearlessness: she's tried to scare her away, but each time she tries, Bella just springs up and mentions something about scouts and patches and what the hell?!

Emmett's the one in the parking lot, when the accident nearly happens. He's very amused by it all, and has a running bet as to why this new chick's gravitating towards them so much, when he sees Edward gear up to save— holy shit did the new girl just backflip away from the SUV? She did. And talked about summer reading programs being good practice. [What even.]

 Carlisle's also highly interested in the mystery that is Bella Swan. Even ignoring what his family's been saying, he took her vitals after the almost-accident, and the machine broke. Or, at least, that's the only logical explanation as to why the readouts say her blood's irradiated AND poisonous, and carrying trace elements of...something he'd never seen before. [Bella, meanwhile, thinks the orange juice just doesn't taste the same. What was this sugary swill? Orange juice was supposed to be imaginary, with an acrid tang and a sharp aftertaste. Forks was so weird.]

 The Port Angeles thing had Edward very confused, because the would-be rapists' thoughts went from 'easy target' to 'WHERE THE HELL DID SHE GET THAT MACHETE FROM?!' and 'am I seeing things, or is she really throwing textbooks with a slingshot?!' with almost-alarming speed.

And when he pulled up, he couldn’t see it, nor where she could even make that fit.

Huh.

 Bella and the Cullens become friends, and when the vampire thing comes up, she doesn't so much as bat an eye.

 "Hey, Old Woman Josie's got a houseful of Angels. Even if the hierarchy's classified by the City Council. Not to mention Hiram McDaniels, he's literally a five-headed dragon. At least you're not from Desert Bluffs, right?"

 …that's a new one.

Bella's more than happy to answer their questions, too, and that's how the Cullens learn that somehow her cooking was bad enough to get her banned from Desert Bluffs [though why that last one was said with a distinct note of pride, they still didn't quite get].

Her questions, in turn, aren't quite like the ones they'd answered in the past. Carlisle doesn't want to know where Bella got the term Lizard Kings from, or why she thinks he knows where Franchia is [which…what?], or…the list goes on.

Overall, Bella's slightly strange, but perfectly friendly.

[Alice has yet to decide what she makes of Bella's talks about the Monolith, though.]

Edward is actually getting slightly interested in her, but Bella doesn’t exactly have romance at the forefront; she's more than happy to talk about her efforts in helping Night Vale's local Children's Militia[?! Wow was the town creative with names], though, and the first time she touched an oven in their household was  also the last. [How the hell she'd managed to recreate Greek fire was something to ask at a later date.]

 Plus, her strange smell wasn't the least of it, not after what Carlisle had ascertained. Bella's apparent confusion about regrowing appendages aside, turns out her inoculations included stuff for 'Blood-Space War botulism' and 'Librarian-based diphtheria' as well as the usual chicken pox and tetanus.

  Time passes, and things are going well.

 Sure, she smells slightly weird as time goes by, but that's probably because of her unique upbringing, plus it's a gradual thing so the Cullens get used to it fairly easily. Even if the scent of something scorching was slightly off-putting, but then, there was a reason nobody let Bella cook.

Bella's pretty weird, but she's also pretty cool, so it balances out in the end.

Some things just get lost in translation, though. Even now.

The baseball game was…interesting.

Bella's comments about Night Vale's annual Sheriff's Secret Police vs. Firefighters game left everyone looking at her in horror, but it was the nonchalance with which she caught the 120 miles-per-hour baseball that let her into the game.

When the new vampires rock up…hmm. I can't decide.

 Option A: 

Bella smelled not only of mesquite and desert wind, but also an underlying tang of something Other, something not of this world. She was the only one alive to have earned the Blood-Space War patch in her troop, and when they tried to attack she smiled and let the tang of dark magic sear the air warningly.

Option B:

Bella smelled of something Other, and since these newcomers hadn't been there when her smell had gradually changed, the Cullens are wondering why they're freaking out. 

“She smells of monster!"

"What the hell are you talking about?”

Option C:  

She smells more like a local than not; a year out of Night Vale, in a rainy place, meant its distinct aroma had gradually faded. They try to attack, and Bella's ready to go to bat, but no dice.

“I could've taken them!" She mutters petulantly. Bah. Overprotective vampires. Just when she'd been having fun, too.

They're insistent that she flee. Eh, it's been a while, might as well check up on how Renee’s been doing, or if they managed to evict StrexCorp. It's adorable how Edward's so concerned for her health, but really.   

 Their first hint Something's Up is when she pulls out the bloodstone circles.

Specifically, "What the hell are bloodstone circles."

Bella returns to her hometown, at the Cullen's insistence, she might add. It's been a while, and… oh, shit.

"What's the big deal about—mmph!" Edward manages before Bella claps a hand over his mouth.

“Watch your words, it's Street Cleaning Day tomorrow! C'mon, I think I remember a bunker we can hide out in."

"What."

They glimpse the vampires trying to get to them, but then…

"Fuck it, time for the big guns. Let's go the library."

"What."

"Bring a machete, orange juice, and I hope you remember at least some Jane Austen, it might very well save our lives Mr. I Lived A Hundred Years." 

 "What?!" 

 "We have no time, just run!"

Hiding out by the Dog Park is also an acceptable one; the scent means the poor fools try to take on the Hooded Figures, which yeah.

After a crash course as to everything Night Vale, Bella's slightly reluctant to go back to Forks, meanwhile Edward's more than a little freaked out, while the rest of the Cullens are in no better shape. The trip back is in almost complete silence. Bella's asleep, because the library always required a lot of energy, meanwhile the rest of the car's eying her a lot more warily than a few days ago.

She's nursing a sprained wrist from staving off a Librarian, a broken leg from landing the wrong way after sticking an illegal pen on one vampire and a loaf of bread on the other [and thus siccing the Sheriff's Secret Police on both], and a concussion on top of that. Still intimidating anyway; just where had that assault rifle even come from?!

Ah, the joys of having earned her Concealed Weaponry patch during seventh grade…

And that's the end of the events of Twilight.

During New Moon, Bella's not desperately seeking death once the Cullens go MIA.

Either she goes 'welp, getting kind of bored here, oh hey, Jacob! Want to cliff dive?...okay this is actually kind of tame, but at least I'm not as homesick now, thanks!'

Or, she'd go 'my only friends are gone, StrexCorp fucked off from Night Vale, screw it I'm coming home'.

If she were to meet the Volturi, she'd immediately light up and go 'oh hey do you have any relation to the Large Brotherhood of the Small Chamber? Or Night Vale's City Council?' which, in turn, would cause some…interesting reactions. [A facepalm here, a 'oh god I thought we were done with you guys' groan from there, etc. The Cullens are both curious but also don't want to know.]

At some point, an ancient vampire shows up, and Bella’s practicing her Unmodified Sumerian and ignoring everyone’s stares when they realize it’s the human who’s just blasé and talking to this guy in his mother tongue. She’s not fluent, but it’s enough. 

 Where did this idea even come from? Who knows? [Dammit brain]