#wtnv 230

[karengillanslefteyebrow]

The pure comedy of Carlos wanting to be a marine biologist and then fucking off to live in the dessert forever is unmatched

[sentient-cloud]

[thesteamhunk]

Thinking about how having his trauma exposed without his permission will affect Carlos’ mental health.

Thinking about how he’s throwing himself back into work immediately because he’s highly stressed.

Thinking about how the last time he was there he didn’t feel like he belonged. Thinking about how he’s going back there because he doesn’t feel like he belongs now.

Thinking about Carlos cutting his hair because it’s the only part of him he can keep to himself now.

Thinking about how his new, happy life was taken from him by someone who had hurt him before.

Thinking about how he’s scared of oceans. Thinking about how he was a marine biologist. Thinking about what they must have done to him.

[pigeon-food]

first and probably last Lubelle art I will ever make <3

[insertfandomrefhere]

i've got to say, the fandom's reaction to Carlos' names has been....interesting, to me. see, while listening, i would have put money on most people continuing to call him Carlos the Scientist, with almost no acknowledgements of it except in larger metas.

that's not what i've seen, though. it's largely the opposite, actually. i haven't yet read a longer meta about the episode, but everything from the quick jokes to the single-paragraph meta posts seem to be fully embracing Carlos Dave Robles. posts about puns, and "finally he has a last name!", and comparing Robles to Palmer. but no one seems to be as....shaken is too strong of a word, but it's the closest one to correct that i have.

i've had a difficult time trying to articulate why i dislike this revelation so much. at least part is how it's revealed, i think, and who reveals it. just like with other things that Lubelle has explained away, Carlos' lack of other names has been part of Night Vale ever since its inception. it's simply part of how Night Vale works: the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep, and Carlos doesn't have a last name (or at least one that's mentioned on air). this? Lubelle revealing that Carlos does have--or, at one point, did have--a last and even a middle name? it feels like a violation to lose that mystery.

[disparition]

A note on the most recent episode of Welcome to Night Vale, #230

This episode was, I believe, the 11th anniversary of the show. This means it was about ten years ago I was on vacation in Wales with my wife, where I wrote the albums Madoc and Taran Wanderer. It was while on this trip - knowing I was about to lose my day job at a rapidly sinking book publisher - that I first received a communication from a fan in Brazil asking for my permission to use music in a Portuguese “fan translation” of the podcast. The fact that the show had reached so far away and inspired people to translate it was, in retrospect, one of the first signs of what was to come, which ended up completely changing my life. But at the time I simply thought it was neat and moved on, and we spent days tromping through sheep pastures looking at cairns and standing stones in a remote corner of Ynys Mon. While doing so, we encountered a rusty old farm gate that sang a particularly haunting song as it opened and closed, which I recorded. I thought it would be cool to use that sound in this season finale episode, and so it’s what I used (well, a small fragment of it) to play a new version of the main theme music. I thought the sound ending up working well atmospherically with the episode as well.

If you’d like to use that sound yourself, you can grab it here: https://freesound.org/people/earwicker23/sounds/193712/

Also, I’m not going to spoil the plot of the episode but it concludes in a rather dramatic fashion and required a specific sound design element. I’ll admit it had me stumped for a few days, but here’s what I did. I had a canvas sack filled with a few ice packs that had melted, effectively they were just little plastic pouches of water. I dropped this from a height of about eight feet, landing 1.5 feet from the microphone (an sm58). That’s source one. Source two was a ziploc bag filled with a mix of wet and dry cheerios, plus an egg, crushed by foot. The two sources were each slowed down very slightly and then combined, with the first source somewhat louder. So there you go, in case you ever need to do… that.

[smorpher]

[unmechanism]

I love being reminded that Night Vale invented Love

[w2nv]

Episode 230 spoilers without context

[asydicsydney]

This was what she did for work? Girl, stay under that cow.

[orca-in-disguise]

Actually crying at this last line here. I want this tattooed into my retinas I have never had such feelings of agreement with a line

[archivistofnerddom]

Well, what am I supposed to do now?

Carlos got full-named. I repeat, Carlos the Scientist, husband and father, has a legit last name (and a middle name, apparently).

It only took 11 years for us to learn that much.

[karengillanslefteyebrow]

Dr. Lubel lost all credibility the second she said “ALL of my hypotheses are proven!” Because ANYONE who has dipped a toe in the science world knows that hypotheses can’t be proven! They can just be SUPPORTED!!!!!

[enjoy-purple-skies]

If there is anything wtnv is doing to me, it’s motivating me to finish my science degree so I can explore a small desert community, get married to their ancient radio host, and outsmart a horde of scientists thru the sheer power of peer review

[ci-ah]

Dr. Robles used Quality Control!

It's super effective!

(the telegram sticker pack link)

[thestarmaker]

WTNV 230 "Carlos, explained" spoilers without context