Welcome to Night Vale.

Oh man, Frances fucked up bad!

Just listened to that tonight while driving home and honestly seems like Nasir's the screw up. All Frances seemed guilty of is bad timing.

Also I was driving tonight because I saw the "All Hail" live show. Started out with a half hour of music by Mal Blum, who also did the Weather, followed by a story in which the Glow Cloud ^note All hail has begun hovering over the station for reasons unknown. Along with Cecil we got appearances by Deb, the patch of sentient haze that handles advertising, and Tamika Flynn.

Aw sweet! I'm so jealous. I hope I can afford to go to a live performance some day. (And deal with my utter hatred of driving around in the city. I swear to God those things were made by Satan.)

Anyway how was it?

Fun. Cecil is very energetic in person, gesturing and moving and such, though that might be precisely because he was on stage. There was some audience participation as Cecil led us through multiple oaths of fealty to the Cloud, and he'd call our for people of each sign during the Horoscopes and had us join in for a bit of Children's Fun Fact Science Corner.

It's all its own self contained story so being a bit behind on eps like I was (I was in All-Smiles Eve last) doesn't hinder enjoyment

Also right there with you on the city driving. Theater was in downtown Boise and on top of the numerous one way streets to navigate there was road work to boot.

edited 17th Apr '18 10:13:15 PM by sgamer82

The audience participation stuff is probably a lot of fun live, but it's the cheesiest parts of the recordings.

So who's decided to listen to Good Morning Nightvale?

I'm disappointed it's not a chipper morning chat show set in Night Vale, but then, there wouldn't be much difference from WTNV.

Hm, that would be something to hear. Wonder if they'll introduce any more station employees later on.

I dunno, I don't really attend conventions or anything, so I'm liking that they have this show that discusses Nightvale.

So I'm semi binging It Makes A Sound right now. Three and a half episodes in and I can already tell there's some serious stuff going on in the background.

An episode about Desert Bluffs. And Kevin's crushing on Carlos's counterpart.

Edited by RhymeBeat on Oct 1st 2018 at 7:37:16 AM

A year long necro!

So I finished the Year One episodes.

This is a darn cool series. I've never came across anything like this, although this is probably like the old timey radio serialization.

There are probably a lot of serial dramedy podcasts out there now, even ones not on the Night Vale Presents banner. Wolf 359 scratches a lot of the same itches for me.

Edited by TParadox on Feb 6th 2020 at 12:57:32 PM

There's also TANIS, The Black Tapes, and RABBITS, for less comedic tastes.

Does anyone listen to this show anymore? I feel like i'm the only one who is adding new tropes.

Speaking for myself I haven't listened for a while. Somewhere just after the attempted execution of Hiram McDaniels or so, when the episodes at that time started becoming more full stories about individual Night Vale residents rather than the regular news radio formula. Still interesting, but wasn't hitting me in the same way.

Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 2nd 2022 at 11:21:22 AM

I've been feeling the show eating its own premise for a while, developing long-running jokes that didn't need an explanation into their own stories that ended by making Night Vale a little less weird. The Angels' lawsuit was maybe the earliest sign, but I really noticed it with the arc where Huntokar ended up letting time work normally in Night Vale again, which among other things let Lee Marvin finally continue aging. So of course now they have a story specifically about the unfortunate results of explaining Night Vale too much.

Edited by TParadox on Oct 2nd 2022 at 3:48:00 AM

I honestly thought Season Five was a great way to go out. Didn't care much for Season Six, so I dropped it.

By all means, lemme know if I'm missing anything.

The Strexcorp/Smiling God arc was the best the show ever was. I did enjoy the Silas the Thief series in the current season, though that meant Explaining Khoshekh.

One of the plot threads they have going now is the real Joseph Fink being stuck in Night Vale, which is now no longer just a story he co-wrote and always has been real. Which has obvious meta-commentary implications.

Edited by TParadox on Oct 2nd 2022 at 5:44:51 AM

Hard disagree. It's incredible, looking back on it, just how much of Season Two is positioned as a victory lap. Season One did all these dumb one-off jokes and Season Two consists solely of spagettiying them into a heroic narrative that fans can cheer for. An indefinite string of "here's this character you liked from that one joke, doing an action-hero thing! Here's this joke from earlier, but now it's paying off as a plot point!" It's, like, bare basic rewarding the viewer for liking the show.

And, like, I'm not necessarily saying that's why you liked it, but it sure felt to me like that's why they wanted the audience, writ large, to like it. And it bugged me because it's kind of throwing over the core conceit of the show—that Night Vale is a nightmare. You can't do a story about saving Night Vale from an outside force, because Night Vale's problems are wholly internal. Giving them a nemesis feels exculpatory, especially when one of Night Vale's core issues is intense xenophobia.

It's also just not very satisfying, honestly.

Seasons Three through Five have, like, actual character conflict, and drama. Past elements still come back, but rather than being for their own sake, it's to problematize them. Past characters get recontextualized and given actual drama. Cecil and Carlos stop being squee-fodder and become, like, an actual couple with challenges and problems to overcome. And Cecil actually learns and grows, and we examine what exactly it means to be a patriot living in a nightmare, which, y'know. 2014. Maybe a little prescient.

I loved the Season Five finale because it's finally pushing the status quo until it snaps. It forces Night Vale to change. And like, yeah, that involves a little exposition, but after five years, it was definitely time to let things go and plumb new territory. What does Night Vale recovering from its conspiratorial fascist nightmare state look like?

And then Season Six tries to go back to lighter, jokier stories, but also...do serials? It was a bad combination, pacing-wise, and didn't quite work. Like putting aside my own desires to see what a Night Vale that's trying to be a halfway-pleasant place to live looked like, or if that's sustainable, the stories that weren't about that also weren't really about anything. Fine for a half hour, but at ninety minutes spread out over a month and a half, they were just interminable.

And now we're on Season Ten and there's a full half of the show I just haven't listened to.

Maybe I should fix that.

I confess I have no idea what sections/episodes you're talking about because I never thought of Night Vale in terms of seasons.

Is there a list of which episodes are which season for sake of reference?

Wikipedia's "List of Welcome to Night Vale episodes" has them sectioned, thankfully.

When I started listening to Night Vale, it was pitched as something like "just community radio broadcasts from a seriously weird small desert town", so for whatever reason I assumed that it could be listened to in any order, and started with the earliest episode on the first page from the most recent. I got maybe three episodes through and then I heard "There Is No Part One, Part II" and yes, the whole point of that episode is well, in the title, but it's also a Rube Goldberg machine of Chekhov's and Schrodinger's Guns and I actually had missed a lot.

Another much prodding by Tumblr I'm now listening to the first episode of this podcast

Incidentally, assuming it's not the prodding you're referring to, I got an email from Tumblr congratulating Cecil on winning Sexyman 2023

I never get emails like that from tumblr!

also

Carlos and his perfect hair

Edited by Ultimatum on Jan 30th 2023 at 6:48:54 PM