Welcome to Night Vale.

Well, yeah, but it's not a human. We've been given no reason to believe that most people in the town look weird or have supernormal attributes, and if they do than it's crossing this line from overtly creepy to cartoonishly so.

Besides, as AHR mentioned, imagining Mayor Winchell going all Spider-Man on the dog park walls is a hell of a lot funnier if she's just a normal lady in a business suit.

Keep in mind there is a character who has two heads, so there is a precedent for the citizens to have weird, supernatural appearances.

I'm not saying it's necessary for your headcanon-Cecil to have a weird, supernatural appearance, but I can understand other people ascribing such to him.

EDIT:I believe it was I who mentioned that, actually. Could've been both of us, though.

edited 29th Aug '13 11:02:55 AM by Zarek

My school of thought on that matter was that if it happened particularly often it wouldn't be newsworthy. Like yeah, people may take shit like the town spontaneously growing subway tunnels in stride, but most of this stuff is treated the same way we'd treat record temperatures or museum openings, rather than the way we treat something like getting dressed for work. It's appearance on the news suggests that it may be unsurprising, but it's not something that happens often enough to make this one instance no big deal.

EDIT: Yeah, it was, actually. Sorry! You two had been conversing with each other and I conflated parts of the conversation in my mind.

edited 29th Aug '13 11:08:31 AM by Wackd

I was so confused and thought I was smarter than I really was for a second.

Also I don't find tattoos supernatural. They don't have to be supernatural. I always assume they're superstitious markings to ward off the apache tracker all the shit that might or might not exist.

I disagree with your opinion on strange appearances lending to much comedy to the town.

It's probable that the average citizen at least has the appearance of humanity, but you would probably draw more flack from painting your house a particularly ugly shade of green than you would from having more arms than most people do.

I'm not so much talking from a narrative perspective* so much as I am from the perspective of the tone of the piece. The weirdness needs a counterpoint beyond just Carlos, so most of the citizens being "ordinary" offsets that, as does the conception of Cecil as just a guy. Remove that, and it stops being unsettling and starts being just kinda goofy.

*That said, I think there's at least a little bias against folks with extra body parts in the town. Remember that a point of contention with Hiram wasn't even so much that he was a dragon but because of how many heads he had.

But this is all just my opinion. You're entitled to yours.

edited 29th Aug '13 1:57:20 PM by Wackd

So this is a thing, apparently. It's probably a coincidence, but if it is, it's a really cool coincidence.

So the show's title is "Welcome to Good Night"? Man, Cecil is the Master of the Mixed Message.

And every episode ends with "Goodnight, goodnight. Goodnight."

Man, this WTNV is really gaining some traction now. Just as I'm getting into it Xp (got the glowing t-shirt an everything). There's even an article on Tor.com

I hereby claim this thread in the name of Faction Paradox.

...Not sure if this means you actually listen to WTNV, or you're just here to spread the Faction to all corners of TV Tropes.

Both are about equally likely.

WTNV is actively painful for me to look at, as abbreviations go.

I mean, it looks just like a set of call letters. And Welcome to Night Vale takes place in the southwest. So I keep wanting to correct it to KTNV.

I know that's stupid and irrational but still!

Wait, is that cano — *remembers unnoun might be here* — uh, I mean, confirmed? I thought we didn't actually know exactly where Night Vale is, besides being in the USA.

It is, though I remember in an interview one of the creators complained that some article writer took "southwest" to mean "California".

EDIT: Misremembered, slightly; it is the southwest, but the state it definitely isn't set in is Texas, not California.

edited 31st Aug '13 3:08:03 PM by Wackd

I've listened to a bit. It's okay.

So this is totes an explanation of Welcome To Night Vale, and nothing else, with no ulterior motive on my part.

edited 31st Aug '13 3:08:27 PM by unnoun

New Episode guys!

So I started listening to this... show?

I haven't read any posts in this thread so as to avoid spoilers (I'm only on episode 8) but I wanted to be captain obvious for a second.

This show is so, very, very weird. It's amazing.

Isn't it? It's amazing and it's such a unique brand of weird also.

Hmm. I don't see the new ep. I guess they take longer to go up on Sound Cloud as opposed to the other mediums?

Never more than now have I wished to own an mp3 player...

...Wait, can mp3 players actually, like, download the episodes?

If the MP 3 player has internet access, yeah.

You could probably subscribe to itunes and download the rss feed?

I eventually got it from Lybsin I don't have an I-phone

Re: Vale = Goodbye:

Vale is a farewell in Latin, where it is pronounced WALL-A (or Vall-A in Ecclesiastical Latin). I don't think it has an anglicisation that is homophonic to the usual meaning. Cecil doesn't pronounce it the Latin way, so unfortunately the double meaning doesn't work.

Does anyone know what are the inspirations for the plots? I'd really like to know.