#punkrock furiosa listens to wtnv

[punkrock-furiosa]

Did I already say that I love Mayor/Emergency press conferences director Pamela Winchell? Because I do. I love her very much.

She’s half Night Vale personified and half someone who takes precisely zero shits, and I am HERE for it.

[punkrock-furiosa]

I’m deeply entertained that Cecil’s utter and complete unwillingness to deal with emotions or realities he finds unpleasant or running counter to his worldview is only outmatched by Cecil’s irrepressible need to talk about them nonstop.

Honestly though, after 53: September Monologues and learning more about Steve Carlsberg, and after the town nearly chased away the scientists who came searching for Carlos, and who Cecil saw “for the first time not as friends or fellow citizens, but as a dangerous angry mob,” (quoting form memory here) I’m thinking the next plot will force Cecil to confront his worldview, patriotism and faith in Night Vale. He accepts a lot of things that he shouldn’t as totally normal, and that was half the trick of making Night Vale entertaining, and it served him well against Strex. But right now he keeps encountering things which are less than ideal in his town, and we keep encountering things he apparently swept under the rug in order to conform.

So right here and now, I’m putting my bets on the fact that he will need to learn how to stand up for what’s right or true rather than for an establishment that’s good because it’s his.

[punkrock-furiosa]

Special big Parade Day - Old Oak Doors impressions post

((I recently discovered @cecilspeaks, who transcribes WtNV episodes, so now I don’t have to quote everything from memory. They appear pretty well-known but in case someone out there hasn’t seen them, give them a look!))

Here are my thoughts while listening to the Strex takeover plotline finale! Written down for myself and anyone interested in reading it.

- Cecil’s mournful speech in the Parade Day half broke me. I believed in Night Vale, he believed in Night Vale, Tamika believed in Night Vale and yet... If you aren’t part of the change, no change may come. It stung.

- What followed were the two Strex episodes and I hated Lauren and Kevin’s guts the whole time. They’re so. Insanely. Irritating. They giggle all the time like high schoolers (or, more accurately, like high schoolers never actually do) and it nearly makes my ears bleed0. Both are so fake. And the Bluffs guitar tune annoys me to no end, since the melody starts as the normal Night Vale theme but then it abruptly cuts to something entirely different than it was building up to and it hurts my brain. And “Desert Bluffs Metropolitan Area”? Now that’s just wrong.

- Also on the subject of music, I’ve never ever imagined the show theme could sound this badass. The way Lauren and Kevin started slowly realising something was wrong, but it was unclear what, they kept trying to figure it out with increasing alarm, and then it would suddenly dawn on you what was going on and the theme started playing quietly in the background but growing louder until...

“He is holding a cat.”

“Thank you for bringing me here, Erika. And while whatever happens next happens, I take you, Night Vale, to the weather.”

HELL YES.

- And the weather. Oh god the weather.

“There's a big storm comin' And I don't care There's a big storm comin' And I don't care So ooh, baby Just gimme my ticket to hell.”

You could feel the asskicking that was almost certainly going on. Weather that aligns with what’s happening is the absolute best weather of all.

- I keep wondering what exactly is the hierarchy of Strex representatives in Night Vale. Lauren seemed in charge, apparently being Vice-President of Strex and all, and I thought both Kevin and Daniel answered to her. But at least Kevin is either far higher up the hierarchy than it seemed or somehow outside of it (or Vice-President is a less important rank than it looks). “I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask for your feedback,“ is not how you talk to your superior.

- I saw a few posts treating it as given (based on exchanges such as these) that Kevin and Lauren deeply despise each other and I disagree. They had minimal issues cooperating when they led the radio station together. I think that they simply didn’t really have any particularly strong feelings towards each other and were primarily united by their common purpose, and both are by default variably malicious asses who occasionally try to poke each other’s buttons because Desert Bluffs. When things went sideways, then they both got snappy, snarky and cooperated mainly to save their own necks. That’s not really “I hate you and your presence and your personality.” It’s much more “Somebody sure fucked up, and it wasn’t me. [side-eyes the other]”

- TAMIKA FUCKING FLYNN. Beat up Lauren with her own Employee Manual and talked shit about Strex the whole time. It was amazing.

- STEVE CARSLBERG GOT SO ANGRY HE YEETED KEVIN INTO ANOTHER DIMESION BECAUSE HE IMPLIED JANICE WAS BROKEN. THE LIGHT WAS ALREADY GOING THROUGH BUT HE OVERCAME IT BECAUSE YOU WON’T SAY A THING ABOUT HIS LITTLE GIRL. HELL YES. IN THIS HOUSE WE LOVE AND SUPPORT STEVE.

- The revelation that the Smiling God brainwashes its worshippers was HUGE. I thought worshipping it was just something Desert Bluffs did, but knowing anyone who stares into the light will eventually succumb to seeing things its way changes everything. Neither Lauren nor Kevin were really the bad guys, just puppets:

Cecil: “And this is our town! And it is terrible. But it is ours. And we…we are fighting for it!”

Kevin: “I used to feel that way about Desert Bluffs. ... [But] even the ones that resisted the most at first soon found that they loved the Smiling God more than anyone. Even the most resistant of radio hosts soon found his way to productive work, happy songs, and a wide, gaping smile.”

I felt bad about that for days afterwards.

- I initially thought Kevin was hugely overrated. I saw fanart of him all over, but he was the last of Strex officers to arrive and seemed infinitely less relevant then Lauren (who barely seems to get any art at all) or show us anything much that we haven’t seen yet. But he was Cecil’s evil twin and had a particular kind of villain aesthetic, so I guessed that would make him disproportionately popular. Then the above bit happened, and now I completely get it - especially since, if we’re to use Cecil as a point of reference on the account of them being doubles, Kevin probably did succumb as one of the last. Dear god, he didn’t deserve this. None of them did.

- I’m probably going to write it as its own post but I’m not terribly comfortable with how Lauren seems viewed by the fandom. She is just as brainwashed as Kevin, and therefore not wholly responsible for her actions - or can be assumed so until proven otherwise. Yet she gets frequently mentioned as the one person you can unproblematically hate no matter what. Why?

- I cheered for Night Vale a lot, but the whole time I was also thinking about Desert Bluffs. They need help just as much as Night Vale! They need to be freed from Strex and what it did to them. We are going to help them once the celebrations are over, right? Right???

All in all, I’ve got to say those were some excellent episodes. The whole finale was such a thrilling conclusion to something that was brewing for a long time and I loved it.

[punkrock-furiosa]

My brain, for the last few days:

I think Cecil has a tendency to bury or ignore that which he finds uncomfortable, or if he’s unable to do that, he rejects it with overwhelming force, such as with Steve Carlsberg. You can also see it in the way he gets up to all manner of counter-productive bullshit now that Carlos is away to feel a bit better but insists it’s not about that and he’s fine, really (”Wear your old high school clothing that you haven’t worn for years! Re-enact situations where you failed! It will go differentily this time, it sure will!“), and he is willing to repeat essentially all of City Council et al.’s obvious propaganda without a trace of scepticism. I think that’s a character flaw he has.

56 Homecoming:

Earl Harlan: Cecil, do you remember the year we graduated?

Cecil: Of course! I remember our graduation party. We drank an entire case of warm orange milk, and told dirty jokes about the moon, until we were frightened off by the sunrise.

Earl: What year was that? Cecil? What year did we graduate?

Cecil: ...

Earl: You don’t remember, do you, Cecil?

Cecil: ...

Cecil: ...

Cecil: ...

Cecil: SO ABOUT THE TIRAMISU.

My brain, at that exact moment:

[punkrock-furiosa]

I just got back from the dentist and once again possess the full command of my lip muscles. (Which is great. Drinking while being unable to feel your face is. Hard.) So with that settled, let’s get into Welcome to Night Vale!

(My thoughts under the cut because this got long.)

- First off, I thought it was written Nightvale, and labelled all my corresponding folders that way. I was so annoyed when I discovered that I’d listened to 40 episodes and didn’t even notice how it’s written.

- Hilariously, through the whole beginning of the show, I thought Carlos of all people was somehow the weird one and his perfection was some sort of magical glamour. Cecil narrates his arrival with such deep suspicion, and makes the “He was perfect,” sound so absolute. I genuinely expected his devastating beauty to lead into a “There’s something wrong with that man,” subplot but no. The guy’s just really pretty. And Cecil’s really gay.

- When I listened to Kevin’s side of the Sandstorm, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it kept not dropping. There must be something terribly wrong, surely? But no -- the constant mentions of productivity seemed iffy and the “why would you ever want to leave this town? It can’t possibly get better than this,” set off about 3 different alarm bells, but it let nowhere. Desert Bluffs genuinely seemed as strange as Night Vale but infinitely nicer. They were making sand angels! Hugging! Helping each other! My exact thoughts were “Sorry, Cecil, I love you guys, but given a choice, I’d live in the Bluffs, no question. They don’t solve all of their problems with attempted murder.”

And then, of course, the switch happened.

It was inevitable, right? But I honestly didn’t think so by the time it came. I’m pretty impressed the creators managed that. That’s no small feat.

- Cecil is either the best or the worst at covert resistance and I’m really not sure which. At first he was quite subtle, but later I was just surprised Strex didn’t kick his butt out sooner. As in, waaay sooner.

- Ah, Fey. I’m so sorry for her. Will she show up again? They wouldn’t devote an entire episode to her if that was the last we’d seen of her. Right? Right?

- The Man in the Tan Jacket seems... cool, actually? Discovering he’s probably pretty nice and benign was the exact opposite of how such things normally go. It was a nice surprise.

- Also what the frick are librarians? I probably don’t want to know, but I also do want to know.

- “Suck it, newbie omnipotent entity!” is one of my favourite quotes now. The whole bit was gold.

- The initial stage of Strex takeover was both intimidating and really funny.

“What are those new helicopters? Did they abduct our children?”

“We, scary black helicopters are here to say we did not abduct your children.”

“We, scary blue helicopters are here to say we also did not abduct your children.”

“We, scary bird helicopters are here to say we also did not abduct your children this time. Oh come on. Sheesh. It was just once. And we gave back almost all of them.”

- On the other hand, Old Woman Josie’s light going out as the yellow helicopters descended was genuinely terrifying. I am so glad she turned out to be alright eventually.

- Also, Tamika is insanely badass. But I was still incredibly worried about her. There’s an advertisement at the end of some episodes where Tamika’s voice actor (Symphony Sanders) says: “Listen [to a different podcast] to learn more about Cardi B and my exact wishes for the disposal of my body when I die!” and like... bold of you to assume Tamika Flynn can die.

[punkrock-furiosa]

After Strex got run out of town, it feels very strange returning to mystery-a-day format after such an epic conclusion. The angoran rabbits episode was funny and all but I had trouble caring, considering it was such a small catastrophe it was barely one at all.

Also, Carlos is from a university that’s... let’s just put it this way: I assumed only Night Vale and surrounding areas were supposed to be weird as hell.