#wtnv 171

[aro-screams-into-the-void]

Hmm thinking about wtnv 171 has me thinking about Cale and mirrors. Like could y'all imagine if everytime Cale saw his reflection it was KRS? Or if he saw everyone he lost back in Korea? Imagine if everyone else saw it all too.

He'd cover up that big mirror in his room and avoid looking at his reflection as much as possible and obvi there's misunderstandings like "oh the young master is shy" "Cale must see how much he looks like Jour" "he's so humble" "ah he's making a point that appearances don't matter!" etc etc but like nah bro's just haunted

[faultyvessel]

Why are you crying about someone who doesn’t even exist?

Sometimes, the scientist isn’t always fine.

Both my “Lubelle bringing about the end of everything” post and my “go to the mirror parallels” post have been swirling about in my head, so it was only a matter of time until they converged into a singular and painful result. I love me a good mirroring quote and of course, Cecil angst.

Carlos can only run from the painful parts of his past for so long, and I get the feeling that if he doesn’t face them soon, things are going to change in a big, possibly drastic, way. With his loved ones in the crossfire.

Text:

(Top box) Cecil’s mom: Why are you crying when you don’t even exist?

(Middle box) Lubelle: Why are you crying about someone who doesn’t exist?

(Bottom box) Carlos: I’m sorry Cecil.

[bloopdydooooo]

go to the mirror?

go to the mirror? go to the mirror? go to the mirror?

[ID: the center is occupied by a tall thin humanoid shape with large wings instead of arms and a covered face. the top half of the face is obscured by a fractured mirror pattern which extends past a large halo of glass shards. the figure is lined and colored in pink. the figure is framed by purple trees which mimic the frame of a mirror. the space between them is filled with 'go to the mirror?' repeated over and over again. /End ID]

[landscaping-your-mind]

nooo don't go to the mirror again you're so sexy aha

[enjoy-purple-skies]

/slowly turns the mirror away from me

[igordumbra]

Now that we know a bit more about Cecil's Dad, Mom and his childhood with Abby, does it explain something about 171 Go to the mirror?

It is one of the best episodes and yet it's never alluded to again even though in like 16 episodes it will make 100 episodes since it released.

We have Cecil's mother leaving him while he's a teenager and telling him about something that he buried so deep in his mind.

The thing in the mirror which can also be the snake with human face screaming with countless teeth and expressionless eyes, and also sounds like a baby's cry.

The whole smashing the mirror and dimension hopping while the other one died screaming, and then the book with no known language in the drawer.

What the fuck does it all mean? Sure, you could chalk it up as Cecil being dissociating, he even says so, but narraively it doesn't make sense when we already have other instances of Cecil seeing things in mirror and dying screaming, or his mom covering mirrors.

I thought maybe the snake would be his dad trying to make him remember something, but Dad's imagery is completely different from snakes. In Murals though we have mention of a winged snake in a smiling cloud, which is probably a depiction of the Smiling God, but it also fits with the smiling serpent with human face, kinda.

Couple that with Cecil's everpresent hate for desert bluffs and also the It Sticks With You cassete where it's said four times that Cecil enters a tree that feels warm like the sun, and hears a incessant drone, like steam or a chainsaw, before seeing a cold light envelope him which he hates on sight and yet is familiar. And you might begin tracing a connection to The Smiling God.

I don't think it being the smiling god would be very interesting, but alas, with everything that's been provided until now, it's involvement does seem plausible.

I only hope it doesn't take too long, as most of the storylines do, to really show up. That's my biggest beef with wtnv to be fair

[felixcosm]

Episode 171 is my favorite episode, I listen to it all the time, but mostly when I am nervous or anxious or in a scary situation because something about the creepiness of the episode sort of evens out the scariness of everything around me.

But the problem is that it's given me insane echolalia.

Specifically "did she lean over your sobbing face and ask you, why are you crying when you don't even exist?" or "did you see the blood? or feel the pain first? is it tearing into your flesh is that why you're screaming?" or "how long is its torso? Is it some kind of snake, but with human skin?" or "But isn’t it strange that all about you on the floor are shards of the mirror you shattered, yet in front of you, the mirror remains, fully intact?"

And any other number of worrying statements like that

[agnes-come-back-challenge]

"I wore a black coat and had never existed." (209, "The Black Coat")

"Did she lean over your sobbing face and ask you, 'Why are you crying when you don't even exist?' […] Have you ever decided you wanted a lightweight wool button-up coat, all black?" (171, "Go to the Mirror?")

[lostwords-found]

Today on Night Vale thoughts:

Thinking about Cecil's tendency to look away from deaths he doesn't want to see. Thinking about Go to the Mirror?: Do you think disbelief in death will make it disappear? Are awareness and manifestation one and the same? Thinking about the crooked path leading to the Narrow Place, which Cecil now claims he has never entered, where he wore a black coat and never existed.

Thinking about how in Ghost Stories Cecil tells the story of his mother returning home and dying ten years earlier, when he was an adult. Yet in Go to the Mirror? he asks: When was the last time you saw your mother? It's been since childhood, hasn't it? Since then, I don't think there's been any direct acknowledgement on the podcast that he remembers her death. I could be wrong about this.

In Ghost Stories he says that he and Abby came back together, when their mom returned, to navigate that dark and narrow path of forgiveness.

But he's never been into the Narrow Place, where he wore a black coat and never existed.

You know something you wear black to? Funerals.

All of this is to say, what if somewhere in the last few years Cecil looked away from his mother's death so hard, maybe due to his fears over parenting Esteban and confronting his own mortality, that he subconsciously retconned it into never happening and now as far as he's concerned she's still Out There Somewhere? What if like @bulkhummus said, the traffic in episode 227 was about Abby, and she was going to see their mom? What if the reason everything was identical to how Abby remembered it from decades earlier was because Cecil's just kind of stuck their mom in some nebulous vision of Somewhere that never changes, because Cecil can't let it change, because letting it change would mean letting time move forward and letting what already happened happen, and that would mean letting her die?

Do I think any of this is where the story is actually going? Nah probably not. Am I having too much fun thinking about it to care? Yep thank you for coming to my TED talk

[spiraloftrees-w]

a drawing i did a couple weeks ago that i updated and reposted 💜

[night-vale-presents-described]

[ID: A digital drawing of Cecil Gershwin Palmer from Welcome to Night Vale. He is sitting cross legged in front of a mirror, facing away from the viewer. Reflected in the mirror is himself lying dead on the floor. Behind the dead Cecil in the mirror is a wooden table. The mirror is partially coloured by a red-purple blanket. The floor outside the mirror is a similar but redder red-purple, with shards of mirrors reflecting yellow, rather than the blue-purple of inside the mirror. There is a power cord running into outside the mirror Cecil’s lap. Inside the mirror the wall, floor, and table are purple. Cecil lies dead on the floor, pale yellow drool coming out of his mouth. In the top left, is the white moving text saying: “But isn’t it strange that all about you on the floor are shards of the mirror you shattered

“yet in front of you

“the mirror remains

“fully intact?”

Character design: The Cecil outside the mirror is all yellow. He has short hair with an undercut, is wearing round glasses, has purple tattoos on his back and arms, and is wearing a sleeveless top that says “NVCR” then the moon inside eye design from the Welcome to Night Vale logo, which is purple, then “PALM” presumably continuing on to say “PALMER.” He is wearing shorts.

The Cecil in the mirror’s hair is purple tinted white, his skin is pale and purple tinted. He has two sets of eyes, his second set of eyes underneath his first set, and his shirt is purple. /End ID]

go to the mirror?

[esteemed-excellency]

[landscaping-your-mind]

Hmnnrrr thoughts about Cecil saying that he’s been lying, but not actually lying, just spinning the truth in a way to form a narrative, and Cecil saying in ep 171 the whole “narrative is everything” and then Cecil saying that his mother died and it didn’t mean anything but it happened

There’s something there about Cecil being an unreliable narrator, and Cecil only being a narrator, and stories not being stories unless there’s someone to twist them into a narrative.

[enjoy-purple-skies]

thank you to that post i saw in passing that said to get a mirror while listening to wtnv 171 - go to the mirror? because now i’m Freaked Out

also cecil’s voice acting in this episode is *chef kiss* muah muah. he made me remember that i also used to be scared of mirrors & used to cover them with a cloth as well :) fun childhood days inside a haunted house aren’t they :)

[hoarding-stories]

Love it when the writers take a brief break from overarching plots to issue a not-so-gentle reminder that this is indeed a horror podcast

[symphony-calamity]

Actually I can see why Cecil hates mirrors. My man looks in ONE MIRROR and immediately has an existential crisis on public radio.