or is huntokar sketchy af?
(spoilers for “a story about huntokar” and, below the cut, “all hail”)
- like maybe it’s because i just saw gotg 2, but i do not trust anyone who kicks around the galaxy for a few million years and then goes “yep time to go influence some sapient life”
- “I was, of all of us, the only good one” said no one who was actually good ever
- “Every action that endeavors to improve only causes more suffering and terror.” i wonder if that’s because these improvements include a subway advertised by roaches and creepy-ass children that made people disappear and the 12:37 train to red mesa, which featured, in case you forgot:
“Some people wearing deer masks are gathering by the train, distributing roaches to bystanders. The roaches all have phrases printed on them, things like ‘Business in the front, knife in the back’ and ‘#NotAllTrains.’”
“The figures in deer masks, looking like the same transit lovers who built the Night Vale subway system three years ago, are in an inverted V formation out in left center field, their shoulders and heads bobbing as if in silent laughter”
“She leaned in, insects scuttling across her long brown snout. ‘I am the destroyer. They take our buildings. They put them in crates. Their interests are furthered. I am the destroyer.’”
- “Cecil. Sweet Cecil, who I tried and tried to guide toward the truth.”
i was like “when have mysterious forces ever interacted with cecil (that wasn’t caused by something we already know about)” and then i was like “oh yeah, the weird stuff from ‘cassette’/‘filings’, you know, WHEN HE DIED” so like. that’s not ominous.
- “I came across a valley, dry, almost lifeless. Save for a few brave people who had worked out how they could be sustained there. And I chose them, I guided and taught them, and gradually a town grew. Night Vale. The one place in the world that was truly mine. I am the Creator.”
pro tip: calling yourself “the creator,” much less of a place that already existed and supported life, is not so much a white hat move
- “Worship of me started, as they became aware of my kind presence in their lives. Their love gave meaning to the passing of my years and in exchange, I gave them a better and better world. They developed ceremonies devoted to me, wearing soft meat crowns and building what would become known as bloodstone circles.”
SO MANY ALARM BELLS. who goes “wow, my goddess has such a kind presence! better start worshipping her with BLOOD AND ORGANS”??
- also, everyone knows lee marvin is the one who founded the town and demanded worship: ”One of the arrivals, famous screen actor Lee Marvin, who just turned 30 today – Oh, hey! Happy birthday, Mr. Marvin! – said that they were immediately proceeding to found a town. A town they will call Night Vale. A home for themselves, complete with all the things a home needs: secrets, dread, omnipresent government, and areas that are forbidden! He then donned a soft meat crown as the other newcomers bowed to him.” – [Best Of?]
how dare she try to take that away from him? it’s his birthday!
- meanwhile, the underground city that does still remember worshipping huntokar responded to carlos’ incursion with ALL-OUT WAR. night vale, which has about as much self-control as a toddler on a sugar high, managed to avoid all-out war even after they were actively invaded by desert bluffs.
- “What once was tribute is now a series of gestures, as human and meaningless as they were before I came along.”
so human stuff was meaningless before she came along. that’s a normal thing to say.
- “Night Vale is shattered. But for now it’s still here. Hmm. Time is startlingly persistent in that way.”
- “The other gods were attracted to the site of my teetering domain, but I was able to arrange truces with them. They did not do anything that would upset the balance by which my world barely hung, and in exchange, they could poke their heads in, look around, maybe take a few versions of my Night Vale to turn into playgrounds for their terror-filled delights.”
“terror-filled delights,” she said casually. “no big.”
- “But now the five-headed dragons in their grief and anger have pulled all of the other gods into this situation” …says the person who had previously pulled all of the other gods into this situation. i’m not saying this isn’t true, but… we’ve only got her word for it. we haven’t seen proof of it ourselves.
- “I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells.”
meanwhile, in ‘the registry of middle school crushes’: “Before everything, before even humans, there were stories. A creature at a fire conjuring a world with nothing but its voice and a listener’s imagination. And now, me, and thousands like me, in little booths and rooms and mics and screens all over the world, doing the same for a family of listeners, connected as all families are, primarily by the stories we tell each other.”
huntokar sees stories as furthering her own interests; cecil sees them as connecting humanity.
- at the very least, huntokar is a VERY unreliable narrator and we can’t take her at face value. personally, i think she’s trying to manipulate people (especially cecil, for unknown reasons) into sympathizing with her and doing… what? guess we’ll find out in two weeks.
- bonus spoiler point from “all hail”:
annaxmalina
ellievsbear
izzy806
vaporwave
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
