incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

My third live Welcome to Night Vale show. I still like the experience of "The Librarian" best, but the audience-participation part of this one was way more to my personal taste than "The Investigators" (and pretty self-evident from the title).

Unfortunately the big climax didn't quite land for me, but that's because I liked it better when (redacted) did it. And I do wish they wouldn't mix the music and sound effects so loud. But on the whole it was a very enjoyable 70 minutes.

Guests, which change from show to show, as I understand it, so not really spoilers, but just to be safe: ( tonight's guests )

The music was Erin McKeown, previously heard on the weather with "The Queer Gospel".

Finally, Cecil's pants really have to be seen to be believed.

So I have come home from the latest live Welcome to Night Vale show, taken some Tylenol, given it time to kick in before I stuck my hands in hot water because it's my night to do the dishes, and done the dishes, which means it's time to briefly write up the show so I can go to sleep.

As the above may have suggested, I had a terrible headache through a good deal of the show. Note to self: you are 5' 3", literal front row seats before a raised stage are not a good idea. Between the neck strain, and some confluence of the speakers and the bass output of the opening musical act that had me feeling like a glass of water in a Jurassic Park movie, well, not so good.

Also, have an extremely vague description of part of the show, so vague that I doubt anyone who hasn't seen it will know what I mean: ( so, so vague )

But the guests were delightful and clearly having a ton of fun. If the guest list counts as a spoiler to you, avert your eyes ( now: )

Finally, a fanwork rec:

Open & Notorious (45 words) by fleurrochard, Torra, Rhea, cantarina, bessyboo, Verbyna, anotherslashfan, jedusaur, knight_tracer, argentumlupine, regonym
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale intro segments
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Joseph Fink
Additional Tags: exciting news, existential quandaries, your linen closet, socket wrenches, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Multiple Voices
Summary: We are all, in our own way, Joseph Fink.

This multi-voice podfic takes Joseph Fink's (and "Joseph Fink"'s) intros and runs with them; it is amazing and if you like Night Vale you will like it—even if you don't like the intros, because it makes them entirely Night Vale-ian instead of only occasionally so. The scripting and editing is impeccable, I laughed out loud at least twice, and basically it's just super-cool.

And the only thing I have to say is that I haven't made tiramisu in a very long time and should maybe think about scaling that recipe down (since Chad is the only one who eats it) and giving it a go sometime.

My second panel of the day, and last programming thing of the day.

Description:

The podcast Welcome to Night Vale exploded in popularity in mid-2013. It's a pastiche of community radio set in the US Southwest, in a small town where all the conspiracy theories are true, the dog park is forbidden to both dogs and humans, and no-one bats an eye at Cecil, the radio host, rhapsodizing over Carlos, a new scientist in town. This panel will discuss the nature of reality in Night Vale; how the show's long-term plotting is working out; the good and less-good ways the show treats characters from underrepresented groups; the traditions it works with, and its counterparts in other media; and the panel's favourite moments, characters and quotes.

Douglas Spencer (m), Jesi Pershing, Zalia Chimera, Kate Nepveu, Tanya Brown

(No Glow Cloud, but three Hooded Figures with signs about the Dog Park.)

I've talked extensively about WtNV here, so I'm only mentioning other things.

At least one person found the live show I went to, "The Librarian," more funny and less scary than the podcast. I had exactly the opposite reaction (well, still funny. But not much of the podcast actively gives me the creeps and the show came close.).

At least one person didn't get a very American vibe from Night Vale because it was so unmoored from a larger political context, which seemed to be a minority view; I said I put it down that down to the genre and was perfectly happy to believe it was somewhere in an alternate American Southwest, as did most other people.

I gave my spiel about disability in WtNV, now updated for Old Oak Doors! People generally agreed that those episodes were not very satisfying on lots of levels. Note to self: next time, be sure to preface by saying that this is what you understand from listening to disabled activists, but you are able-bodied and do not speak for all disabled people, who are indeed not a monolith. This was particularly awkward since there were two people in wheelchairs at the panel; I at least had enough sense not to appeal to them during the panel for validation. (They thanked me afterward for saving them from saying it, but still, I should have done better and next time I will.)

Someone asked whether the writers were going to have to keep making things weirder and scarier because the audience was getting acclimated. I & at least one other person on the panel were not wild about that idea: hard for new listeners who don't go through the whole backlog, and instead we get some pretty explicit reminders that Night Vale is a horrible dystopia, it's just _their_ horrible dystopia.

Uh. I asked about whether Tamika's name and Dana's mother's natural hair came across as signifiers that they were at least part African-American to non-Americans, but I'm not sure I got an answer. I attempted to formulate a theory on the fly about who gets last names in Night Vale, and failed.

. . . all the other things I can think of I'm pretty sure I've already written about before. But we can talk more about it!

Assume spoilers in comments for . . . everything except today's episode, let's say.

Several months ago, I dumped a bunch of songs into a shuffle playlist and called it "Transformative Weather": things that reminded me of Welcome to Night Vale in some way, things I'd just been listening to then, a couple Dylan covers that I really like and that had come up on shuffle again recently, and some other things that just seemed to fit.

I later refined it into an actual listen-in-this-order playlist, and in celebration of catching up on my episode reactions, I've put it on YouTube, because that is a thing one can do these days. As usual, I have only watched snippets of most of the videos, though I have optimized the start and end times for music-in-background as opposed to video-watching purposes. If you like the songs, support the artists, please.

1. "Hard To Make It," by Tracy Grammer (could only find a live version; volume is very low)
2. "Bad Luck," by Langhorne Slim & The Law
3. "Tallulah," by Company Of Thieves
4. "Fire In the Canyon," by Fountains Of Wayne
5. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," by Miley Cyrus
6. "Calamity Song," by The Decemberists (Infinite Jest fans, you need to watch this video; volume is very low)
7. "Call Me Up," by World Party
8. "Radioactive," by Imagine Dragons (yes, I used the WtNV trailer version for the YouTube playlist, because the official video does weird things to the song)
9. "That Old Black Hole," by Dr. Dog
10. "Long Time Coming," by Delays
11. "Gimme Sympathy (live)," by Metric
12. "Chloe," by Grouplove
13. "With God On Our Side," by K'naan
14. "Sleep All Summer," by Crooked Fingers
15. "Love Will Save Your Soul," by Grouplove
16. "Anna Sun," by Walk the Moon
17. "Bottled In Cork," by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
18. "Living in Colour," by Frightened Rabbit
19. "Graceless," by The National
20. "Make It Always Be Too Late," by Del Amitri

(The last song is (a) the one I would pick in a heartbeat if the Night Vale folks showed up on my doorstep and asked me to introduce the weather; and (b) so obscure that last time I looked I couldn't find it on YouTube, only live covers that lacked the instrumentation that gives it the full feel. So yay it being up now.)

I am pretending that the most recent episode doesn't exist, because if I keep waiting to listen to the current episode to write up my notes from the last ones . . .

So this starts with the double live episode, Episode 49, "Old Oak Doors," and then goes back through the older ones. I should also mention the live show I saw a while ago, which I will put in a separate post since that episode is not online yet.

And now, the spoilers.

( Episode 49, 'Old Oak Doors' )

( Episode 48, 'Renovations' )

( Episode 47, 'Company Picnic' )

( Episode 46, 'Parade Day' )

( Episode 45.5, 'The Debate' )

( Episode 45, 'A Story About Them' )

( Episode 44, 'Cookies' )

( Episode 43, 'Visitor' )

( Episode 42, 'Numbers' )

( Episode 41, 'WALK' )

( Episode 40.5, 'Condos' )

( Episode 40, 'The Deft Bowman' )

Reference: transcripts.