Yo what's this night vale thing and should I get into it? Thank you for your advice, o sage master of all brilliant pop culture
Should you get into it?Short Answer: YesLong Answer: What are you waiting for? I already said yes.
What is this night vale thing?
You, my friend, have just opened a can of worms. A can of giant, fanged, flying worms.
Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast. Not a boring podcast, though. Really, it’s a radio show but you can download all the episodes for free from iTunes.
Basically, think of a community radio show for the small desert town of Night Vale, where the host discusses upcoming events, news, local sports, that sort of thing. There are short commercial breaks, segments on traffic, on the weather, even on financial news once or twice.
Night Vale is a really strange town though, and there are a lot of weird things being taken in stride: there is a five-headed dragon running for mayor, the town is full of angels who “lie and don’t exist", there are hooded figures with unknowable powers who frequent the dog park and which you are not supposed to look at or even think about, occasionally giant glowing clouds will pass through or packs of feral dogs who spraypaint graffiti everywhere.
The host is named Cecil and he is really eager and earnest about everything and really we don’t actually know much about him other than the fact that he is in love with Carlos, the new scientist who just arrived in town. This means that he can look almost however you want him to. (My favorite was when a part of the fandom decided “white? why on earth would he be white?" and made him Native American, while another part was giving him tentacles, another gave him a third eye, and another decided he had moving tattoos. Then people started sticking all of these headcanons togthet, and, well…)
Carlos is this wonderful, beautiful POC scientist who is basically running around trying to apply the laws of physics to Night Vale and getting really confused and worried when they don’t and when no one else cares. Cecil finds this all absolutely adorable.
In summary, the show is very mundane about very bizarre events, and it will shock you into laughter every so often when it just goes completely off the rails for a brief moment. You should try it out. I had sold my soul to this show after four minutes, but really just listen to the first episode and you can decide for yourself whether or not to risk the Sheriff’s Secret Police dragging you away as you listen to Welcome to Night Vale.