#janice lubelle

[julius-underscore-caesar]

I finally caught up with the wtnv episodes and i genuinely think ive felt this feral since the strexcorp arc. In fact, i PREFER kevin to blake jones. And also carlos as a fellow scientist (if you count stem majour as scientist) i feel the boredom and the pain.

Also imagine if bill nye was in night vale at this time

[mississpissi]

the thing about Steve Carlsberg is that by not being Cecil or Carlos he has less plot armor and that frightens me

ok yes but it’s so juicy

what happens if lubelle tries to explain steve?

steve isn’t prone to violence unless you’re going to mess with his family, but let’s say they meet under innocent circumstances. what if he tries to explain to her what he knows? what if he tries to show her the beauty of the inexplicable, the beauty of night vale? she can’t see it, won’t see it- so what then?

so she does try to explain steve, explain his intricacies, explain why he can see and understand what no one else does- what then? does he cease to understand? does she understand more?

what is the reality of the lines and arrows in the sky- are they really there? does steve actually see and know what he says he does? or is he simply seeing things that don’t exist like everyone else has told him his whole life?

if, in the worst case scenario, whatever she explains becomes true and steve suddenly is just hallucinating, or a conspiracy theorist, or however she explains away what he says- what changes for him? if lubelle tells him the same thing everyone has been telling him for years, does it do anything? his own wife brushes him off when he tries to share with her, his step daughter is uninterested, he’s been blasted on public radio by his brother in law.

maybe it’s naive of me, but i think steve would be okay.

would night vale survive, though? would huntokar? the messages in the sky, the truths that are mapped out, would those cease to exist? cease to be true? i think that’s more concerning than whatever lubelle could try to do to steve. he might be a bit hurt, but what would it mean for what he actually did understand?

and what if she is unable to explain steve? what if he is able to stand his ground because of his experience with being dismissed, with being told he is crazy? it wouldn’t be new for him, people trying to explain to him why what he sees isn’t real. maybe she moves on to threatening his family, to threatening janice, or cecil and carlos. maybe then he stands his ground, fights back. maybe he pushes with aggressive compassion and helps her understand, helps her see that night vale is what it is because of all that can’t be explained. maybe they both explode! idk but i just. i think steve is in such a unique position here no matter what she does, a unique position no one else can come close to. it’s kinda fun!!!

[agnes-come-back-challenge]

ok so i needed some time to process that last episode but i know im not the only one who's fucking losing it

lauren mallard threatened to hurt carlos (and janice and koshekh) in order to control cecil way back when. why do i feel like dr lubelle is gonna try to make carlos do "proper science" again by threatening to explain cecil?

[kerink]

i can't stop thinking about these bits from it devours

in relation to the newest episode, about the different types of science and the relationship between science and the logic of night vale

i think both nilanjana and carlos express janet lubelle's values in these scenes and give us a richer idea of what the culture of the university of what it is is like.

nilanjana spends the entirety of it devours feeling like an outsider even after living in night vale for four years. her arc is not only about learning to make a home but also about expanding her view of what science can be. she's the only member of carlos' team doing what we, the audience, would describe as real science. luisa and mark do science within the rules of the wtnv universe, things that are nonsense with no practical value or application except to be a deus ex machina later in the story. nilanjana says their type of science is what wins awards and grants, but she does her work because "She simply wanted to study the nature of the world." who does that sound like? the reason nilanjana doesn't feel at home in night vale is because she's operating on the rules of the real world rather than acclimating to the rules of night vale. carlos even tells her: "Maybe it’s not about them accepting you. Maybe you have to accept them first.”

carlos spends the story single-mindedly devoted to his experiment. carlos has a moral code that structures his work, focusing on doing good and minimizing harm. he doesn't want to kill the centipede until he feels he has to, specifically to protect his family. (it's interesting when nilanjana wants to kill it to protect the town he avoids that conversation, and it's not until janice is threatened that he changes his mind, something to consider further later.) but carlos also spends the story shifting blame around, first he blames the city then the church then the city again. it's only after everything's said and done he's able to see that it was him all along causing harm. it was him and his science that was threatening the town. but carlos is unable to see his own hypocrisy, saying of the city counsel that its "placing its secrecy above our safety, pretending it’s trying to protect us" - carlos, aren't you pretending you're trying to protect people when really you're trying to bring what's secret into the light? and who does THAT sound like? carlos believes that anything that can be studied can be fixed and anything that can be fixed can be made safe.

night vale is an "unravelable knot of mistruths and misdirection" that can never be fully understood and appreciated by people who believe "in simple scientific truths." carlos said the first step towards him accepting night vale was accepting their world view: "But it wasn’t that he didn’t see the things that I saw, he just interpreted them differently. I was afraid of him and all the people of Night Vale because of that." this is something nilanjana struggled to do and something lubelle seems uninterested in doing.

it's been said before that it's likely carlos left for night vale in the first place because he didn't fit in at the university and was open to investigating a rumor. he built his own team, and given that luisa and mark seemingly adapted easily to the rules of wtnv's universe and nilanjana eventually came around too they were also a bit atypical for university staff

however, while the team was able to adjust to the town using carlos' ethical standards as a framework, carlos isn't without his own university cultural holdover. carlos is an avid workaholic who believes in scientific import above all else. his perfect self and perfect reality as express in the condos liveshow was: "endless rows of Erlenmeyer flasks, and every one held a liquid, and all of the liquids were bubbling, and before each one was a notebook of numbers, and above was a dial with more numbers. I saw all of this, and I understood—I need to get to those flasks. Each liquid was bubbling. There were numbers. I’m going into the condo. The condo is perfect. It is perfect, and I understand." a reality in which he can endlessly do science and, most importantly, understand

carlos' value of do no harm is the only difference between him and lubelle and, ostensibly, the university as a whole. he has the same drive to study and understand that lubelle has, but stopped his experimentation once he realized he was the one destroying the town. even so, it took getting to that point for him to stop even refusing to hear nilanjana's perceptive about what science should be.

[eonian-nightmare]

***WTNV Spoilers***

Look, I understand how cool it is that WTNV is using dumb common sense to explain mysteries. It says alot about cryptid culture and religious hysteria- honestly I could write a million essays on this. But like- can we talk about Cecil Gershwin Palmer's derealisation issues and how the current arc fucks with that? (Written by someone who suffers derealization)

From early on, Cecil's perception with reality has been warped, we've seen countless examples of him struggling with his understabding of what is real and what is not. Many things contributed to this, from his mothers psychological abuse, to his fear/confrontation of mirrors, to his general mental health: essentially he is constantly struggling with delusionals and paranoia.

Then along comes this scientist determined to explain everything, and she starts poking holes in his reality. The things he was sure were real; his job, his friends, his town, suddenly start falling apart, and he's suddenly at this point that where he can't differentiate what's real or not.

And now, rather than him just questioning his own existence, he's questioning the existence of those around him, and the fear of loosing them grows to something more. Before we know it, he will start fearing the existence of his child, start fearing the existence of his sister, of Janice of Steve, and most of all of Carlos. And Dr Lubelle will be able to use this to break Cecil apart.

I do not know how long nightvale plans to run for, but i truly believe there is possibility for a great and powerful end with this concept. Watching your reality unravel is greater than any fear, and the fact Cecil could be undone by such simple logic, is a fear in itself. I would love to see this avenue explored more, for us to see where the doctors explanations bring her, as she continues to destroy others lives.

But the idea of nightvale banding together, to possibly bring Cecil back to reality, to make him real once again Is something close to my heart. And even if not directly expressed, any scenario where nightvale wins against the university we are essentially seeing that. I don't know. There's just something beautiful in trusting the unexplainable when you can barely trust yourself. And I hope that Cecil is able to recover from whatever doubt is starting to fester once again within himself.

[ishipgenfics]

A quote from the book Who's A Good Boy, in the introduction to Episode 75 "Through the Narrow Place" that I would like to pass along to Dr. Janice Lubelle:

There is, I think, a misunderstanding about mysteries. And that is that they are usually meant to be solved.

[niceferatu]

uncensored:

Dr. Janice Lubelle, Head of the University of What It Is, killed the fucking Glow Cloud! She explained them away! I'm livid. what the fuck

What happened???

██. ██████ ███████, Head of the ██████████ ██ ████ ██ ██, ██████ the fucking ████ █████! She █████████ them away! I'm livid. what the fuck

[screaming-into-my-void]

Welcome To Night Vale characters as memes I have saved on my phone

Cecil

Carlos

John Peters (You know, the farmer)

Mino

Telly (Vile, Vile TELLY)

Tamika Flynn

Janice Lubelle