We have seen where Welcome to Night Vale started, why it started, and how it’s affected us since then– but what affected the creation of Welcome to Night Vale, and its social media platforms?
Environment
Podcast
Regarding the podcast form of Welcome to Night Vale, we see limitations already very clearly that affect the way the story is told. Most noticeably, the podcast is, well, a podcast. This affects several aspects: mostly how the story is told, and how we view the story.
How the story is told
The nature of the podcast allows for a special type of storytelling, through vocal infliction and the need to keep a listener’s attention without the aid of a visual aspect. We, as listeners, are captured by the pure base of the story and music, rather than any visual effects such as animation or art style. This is, of course, disregarding the fact that Welcome to Night Vale is written as if it were a radio show, which gives an entire formula (of sorts) that the podcast is forced to follow.
How we view the story
As said above, Welcome to Night Vale is a story without visuals– which leads to no solid descriptions for many characters, or key elements that don’t come in until much later on in the story. This allows the fans the chance to allow their creativity to flow– giving us many different versions of the characters in the story.
Social Media
Not only does the podcast itself show effects from the environment it was created in, so do the social media accounts created under Welcome to Night Vale’s name. The twitter account, for example, is stuck within a character limit, due to it being on twitter. However, while being restricting, it may be both a blessing and a curse, as the low character limit boils the tweets put up down to the very essence of Welcome to Night Vale’s mystery and strange allure.
