You know what I hate most about online advertisements?
To be able to use the internet, you pay money.
Either for Wifi or for Data.
So what that means is:
If advertisements take up 60% of the website and take 100% more data to load, since "haha! VIDEO ADVERTISEMENTS on youtube and all other websites!!"
You PAY TO WATCH ADVERTISEMENTS FOR PRODUCTS YOU'LL NEVER FUCKING BUY!!!
I hate ads SO FUCKING MUCH. Ads are parasites. Ads are the pest of humanity. If anyone's gonna add an adblocker-blocker to their site, I would absolutely study Computer science and become a hacker just to take down the fucking adblock-blocker. And no! THERE IS NO 'Reasonable amount of advertisements' THE REASONABLE AMOUNT IS ZERO. NADA! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
I am so fucking done with it
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Randomly thinking about how angry the way Winter is treated in the narrative makes me
They show the real Winter and acknowledge who he actually is JUST to once again present him as the mean stuck-up prince??? HE GOES THROUGH SO MUCH DEVELOPMENT IN WINTER TURNING JUST TO BE SHOWN AS THE SAME OLD 'ANGRY RACIST STUCK UP PRINCE'???? IN THE NEXT BOOKS LIKE WHAT. TUI. PLEASE. I KNOW THAT WE AREN'T SEEING IT FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE, SO WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HES THINKING BUT. HE BARELY CHANGES AT ALL... LIKE AT THE END OF WINTER TURNING HE REALIZES THAT THE WINGLET IS HIS TRIBE AND HE CARES ABOUT THEM MORE THAN A RANKING AND A FAMILY WHO (mostly) DOESN'T LOVE HIM. THEN IN THE NEXT BOOKS HE'S BACK TO THE SAME OLD 'WINTER'. TUI.
I've seen people calling Winter 'nasty mean racist man' HAVE YOU READ THE BOOKS. DRAGON RACISM WAS SO RAMPANT IN THE BOOKS.... LIKE ALMOST EVERY CHARACTER HAD A MOMENT WHERE THEY WERE BEING THE DRAGON EQUIVALENT OF RACIST. WHICH OBVIOUSLY, ISN'T GOOD, BUT TO JUST PIN IT ON WINTER??? WHAT??? HIS HATRED OF NIGHTWINGS WAS FUCKING DRILLED INTO HIS BRAIN GROWING UP, HE GETS PAST THAT AND LEARNS TO NOT BE DRAGON RACIST. HE REALIZES 'OH FUCK. MAYBE THE THINGS MY SHALLOW HIERARCHICAL SOCIETY TAUGHT ME AREN'T TRUE'. DID WE READ THE SAME BOOKS, WHERE APPARENTLY, NONE OF THAT HAPPENED?? MEANWHILE DARKSTALKER, THE FANDOMS 'PRECIOUS MISUNDERSTOOD BABY' TRIED TO COMMIT RACIAL GENOCIDE BECAUSE HE HAD AN ABUSIVE DAD WHO HAPPENED TO BE AN ICEWING??? (And when Winter is upset about this he is treated as unreasonable by the guy who KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON (Qibli) )
I've been a Winter defender for so long, surrounded by a fandom who mostly hates him and now that I have emotional intelligence since I'm not nine (no offense to nine year olds 🙏) and I have a place to ramble where I'll be listened to I can finally defend my angsty ice dragon I will absolutely do so. This stupid ass garbagefire of a series has meant so much to me over the years and I'm passionate about so many of these characters. I adore Winter so much, reading through the books for like the 50th time is so amazing, like I used to immediately hate moon because she was called a Mary sue, Qibli because people find him annoying, Kinkajou because she was the 'annoying one', but now I love all of those characters. I can see traits of all of them in me, and they mean a lot to me. Turtle's anxiety, Qibli's Sociotropy, (needing to be liked by everyone) hypervigilance (I've never seen people talking about it, and to see it represented in my favorite book series makes me feel seen.), fierce loyalty, Winter's guilt, self-loathing, desperate desire to please his parents, Moon's social anxiety, nervousness, and love of reading, Kinkajou's desire to be a dragon others notice and remember.
This turned into a rant about a completely different thing I'm so sorry, I'm not even done I have so much to say about these guys
Please don't let this flop I poured my heart out about this book series for children
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Night Vale and the Power of Stories
So I’ve been losing my mind about this latest arc. Full hyperfixation. Studying for finals? Calling my parents? Enjoying other hobbies? Eating?? Who’s she, never heard of her. There is only the “#wtnv spoilers” tag.
Anyways, inspired primarily by this post, this post, and this post, I have been thinking about Night Vale as a place of stories.
Night Vale is a deeply weird place. It is a place where all the crazy conspiracies and contradictions and creepy crawlies can coexist (try saying that 5 times fast), and it is built on stories.
We know from “109: A Story About Huntokar” that Huntokar singlehandedly saved the town from nuclear destruction in 1983. This in and of itself is beautiful, tragic, terrifying and wonderful (I could write a whole essay on the lasting effects of the Cold War on the American psyche and how that’s impacted our media, but that’s not what this post is about). But what Huntokar says in describing this moment is fascinating: “ The people of Night Vale huddled, waiting for the end to their story.” The use of the word “story” here is so poignant and poetic. This was her town, a narrative she had lovingly followed since its inception, with an ever rotating cast of characters, finally seeming as though it would come to an end. And yet she managed to continue their story. The people of Night Vale, of every alternate universe Night Vale, are kept alive because Huntokar wanted to keep the narrative going. It is a town kept alive-- inverted and shattered and bizarre, but alive-- because someone saw the tale coming to an end and wasn’t satisfied with that. Night Vale is a place of stories.
And Cecil. Cecil Gershwin-Palmer is such a wonderful enigma. He’s a deeply troubled man, he’s the town’s beloved radio host, he is the voice of Night Vale. As the town’s only (?) regular source of news, he carries incredible weight in shaping the public’s perception of reality. It is his radio show that keeps the people informed through all of these earth-shattering events-- it is Cecil who, for as goofy and cringefail (thank you @bigcommunist for that phrase) as he can be, has been responsible for keeping his citizens safe. In “227: A Word With Dr. Jones,” Dr. Janet Lubelle notes that one of his traits is “town leadership.” When Cecil speaks, things happen. He rallies the people, against Strexcorp or the Beagle Puppy or Steve Carlsberg and his dry, dry scones. Hell, he says “weather” and everyone stops, or sometimes (Like in “204: Audition”) it literally saves his life. @lostboywriting raises a fascinating theory about Cecil having inadvertently brought the Faceless Old Woman into existence through his repression of his complicated relationship with his mother-- and while this contradicts with the backstory presented in "The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Inside Your Home," who’s to say that both origins can’t be true, with how splintered and fractured Night Vale’s existence (and especially relation to time) is? Perhaps Cecil, as the Voice Of Night Vale, is capable of changing the world more than he knows.
Either way, this is why Dr. Lubelle’s Explaining of the town has so much of a tangible effect on it-- because she’s coming in and using something “empirical” to change the narrative. That is why she’s so threatening-- because how do you argue with the facts? How do you argue with science? She is using logic to insist that her reality is right, that these stories and poetics used to keep the town alive are meaningless. That it would be better for them to not exist than to exist outside her narrative. She said it herself-- she cannot imagine that anyone thinks differently to herself about anything, and she is all to happy to provide any who disagrees with an Explanation. No matter the cost.
In 227, Cecil remarks that “Science is not good or bad, as language is not good or bad, as religion is not good or bad, because humans are not inherently good or bad.” This sets up a fascinating play between science, language, and religion that I think is perfectly encapsulated by Dr. Lubelle, representing science, Cecil, representing language, and Huntokar, representing religion. Whether she knows it or not, Dr. Lubelle is directly undoing all of the hard work of Huntokar, and attempting to use Cecil as the most powerful tool at her disposal.
And this works in conjunction with my distinction of the What vs. the Why. We can take the incursion point of November 7th, 1983, and view it through both lenses. From Huntokar’s perspective, we get the Why: Night Vale was in danger, and it needed saving, so she saved it. But from Dr Lubelle’s perspective, we just get the What: Night Vale was the target of a nuclear missile. Nuclear missiles are unstoppable by any force known to science. This is a town that should have been empty for 40 years.
I posit a world in which Dr. Lubelle reduces Night Vale to what it “should be:” A town ruined by nuclear destruction. The empirical facts, the anchors that held Night Vale down to reality, the threads that Huntokar broke-- Dr. Lubelle is seeking to tie them back together. And with the Voice of Night Vale on her side, Explained and ready to share the Truth, of course she can make that happen. Perhaps Huntokar takes center stage again to show that science is not the end-all-be-all. Perhaps Carlos steps in to replace Dr. Lubelle as the Scientist in this equation, to provide a good alternative to her callous methods.
Or I could be totally off-base with that prediction. I imagine the bodies being dug up in the sand wastes and the murals of flesh will play a major role in the finale. Maybe she’ll uncover the splintered realities of Night Vale and won’t know how to explain them away. Hell, people keep hyping up a Desert Bluffs return, what with the Sandstorm tapes and the talk of doubles-- Maybe Kevin and Lauren will be the “religion” in the triumvirate, and drive Dr. Lubelle mad with their unrelenting fervor. Who knows? I have my theories, but I’m just excited to see where this all goes.
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Also from a meta perspective, this is 100% harkening back to all those early-days fan theories that “Night Vale is a normal town and Cecil is just off his rocker” (Thanks @maxgicalgirl for that one!). Welcome To Night Vale is a show that has never been about continuity and tight lore-- it’s about spinning a fun narrative, it’s about the poetry, the music, the aesthetics; it’s about everything that Dr. Lubelle HATES. From a meta perspective, Dr. Lubelle is every theorist who tries to ruin the magic of a story, who nitpicks it endlessly because it doesn’t adhere to how the “real world” functions. She doesn’t care about why story elements are included, she just needs what’s included to adhere to her worldview. And I can’t wait to see her get taken down, no matter how it happens.
Thanks again to @maxgicalgirl, @lostboywriting, @eclipse-song, and everyone who’s been sharing their thoughts about the latest arc on tumblr. I would not be writing this without y’all!!
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