On June 15th, 2012, Welcome to Night Vale dropped its first episode. A collaboration between Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, who met through the New York Neo-Futurists theater collective, Welcome to Night Vale hearkened back to traditional community radio shows but with a specifically absurdist, Lovecraftian edge. The fictional news broadcast was set in the eponymous Night Vale, a desert town in which the City Council would really like the citizens to know that dogs are not allowed in the dog park, and that they should absolutely not look at the hooded figures. The weather report was a piece of music, and the episode ended in a smoothly-voiced mantra: “Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.” Voiced by Cecil Baldwin, the host of the radio show, also named Cecil, straddled the line between ominous and comforting–as did everything he explained or described.
According to Cranor in the 2017 PodCon Panel “Serial Fiction Storytelling,” Welcome to Night Vale started with a “$65 USB mic” and a love of radio, but it’s become one of the defining podcasts of the medium. Welcome to Night Vale is far from the first fiction podcast ever made, but it was one of the first modern audio fictions to gain widespread attention and notoriety. As podcasting has become more emergent, Night Vale Presents–the eventual network spearheaded by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, and later collaborator Christy Gressman–has grown and changed, becoming much more than just one show about one desert town. Navigating the world of Night Vale will lead you not just to interesting listens, but also telling moments from podcast culture throughout the years.
Welcome to Night Vale
Welcome to Night Vale had some early fan dedication, but its popularity quickly grew with the addition of a new character in the plot: a scientist named Carlos, someone not from the town but instead there to observe it, someone whose beautiful hair captivated narrator Cecil. As Cecil broke his NPR-esque demeanor to ruminate on his undying, ostensibly unrequited love for Carlos the scientist, fans quickly took to the sweet, positive depiction of a gay romance. This was especially refreshing to LGBT+ fans in 2012, a year in which GLAAD reports only 4% of TV characters were of non-straight identities. The podcast was especially popular on Tumblr, where a fanbase quickly expanded. The podcast’s Twitter also became known for its memorable doses of absurdism, landing it on the fringes of Weird Twitter largely popularized in 2012 to 2013.
FOOTBALL FACTS: If the score is tied at the end of regulation, everyone on the field and in the world will eventually die.
Its first year, concluded by the episode “One Year Later,” documents the growing romance between Cecil and Carlos. While the initial episodes are episodic, they laid the groundwork for returning jokes and characters, as well as long-spanning, slow-building plotlines. While episodes of Welcome to Night Vale can usually be listened to without their surrounding context, the depth of the characters and the world does benefit from starting from the beginning. Welcome to Night Vale also gained fame from its travelling live show, with each tour featuring a different story that usually incorporated some form of audience participation.
The timing of Welcome to Night Vale‘s early success, especially with younger listeners and its prominence on Tumblr and Twitter, helped draw audiences to audio fiction as a medium. Earlier this year, I ran a Twitter poll asking for peoples’ first audio fiction. While the poll is imperfect, the stark difference in numbers is indicative of how much Welcome to Night Vale introduced an audience to fiction in podcasting.
For #AudioDramaSunday, I'm curious? What was your first audio drama? Here are the big ones I can think of for peoples' firsts, but if it was something different, leave it in a reply!
Welcome to Night Vale helped fans explore audio fictions like The Bright Sessions, ars PARADOXICA, Wolf 359, and The Once and Future Nerd, all of which began in the years closely following Welcome to Night Vale‘s debut, and all of which are considered some of the great founders of audio fiction alongside Night Vale.
In its 37th episode, “The Auction,” a book deal was announced for Welcome to Night Vale for a standalone companion story to the podcast, Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel. This book deal made Night Vale the first of its kind to be adapted in another medium. Following in this tradition, book deal would later be offered to audio fictions Limetown and The Bright Sessions (as well as, later on, Night Vale Presents’s own Alice Isn’t Dead, but more on that later). In the case of Tor’s Steal the Stars, the audio fiction and novelization were written concurrently, but it’s hard to say whether partnerships like these would have existed, or at least existed as easily, without Welcome to Night Vale‘s early success.
Welcome to Night Vale has continued its now six-year run, usually starting a new long-form arc every year. Welcome to Night Vale has since gotten a second companion novel, 2017’s It Devours!: A Welcome to Night Vale Novel, as well as script books for its first and second seasons. Night Vale is also slated to produce script books of its third and fourth seasons, and is also being adapted for TV with FX. In this case, though, Night Vale didn’t pave the path but instead walk down the pavement; in 2017, Amazon had already picked up Aaron Mahnke’s Lore, and independent audio fiction The Bright Sessions had already been optioned earlier in the year.
The Beginning of Night Vale Presents
In 2015, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor formed Night Vale Presents, a network of “independently-minded creators and listeners” who are new to podcasting. In its first year, Joseph Fink launched Alice Isn’t Dead, Jeffrey Cranor launched Within the Wires, and the two brought on Christy Gressman and musician Julian Koster for The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air). The Orbiting Human Circus was Fink and Cranor’s first foray into partnerships with new creators, a trend that would continue to grow throughout Night Vale Presents’s following years.
Alice Isn’t Dead
Beginning March 7th, 2016, Alice Isn’t Dead was the first new podcast for the Night Vale Presents. Created by Joseph Fink, this audio fiction follows a narrator named Keisha, played by Jasika Nicole, who drives a cargo truck around the country for the purpose of finding her missing wife, Alice, who she believes–shocking, I’m sure, given the title–is not dead. The tone of the podcast weaves between a casual American Gothic, ruminating on gas stations and open fields and roadside attractions, and horror, as Keisha finds more clues connecting to her wife.
Like Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead gained a dedicated following not just for its representation of lesbian women of color, but also from its sharp imagery and darker tone. In 2015, a trend of posts describing types of “Regional Gothic” started trending. These posts would take aspects of a region within (usually) the United States and make it hyperbolic, turning it sinister or at least ominous. Whether by coincidence or by design, Alice Isn’t Dead fit into the culture of these posts perfectly, playing on the strange and specific nuances of the states and raising their stakes.
Like Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead is being adapted in both a novel, coming this October, and a TV show, which is set to be released very fittingly on USA. Alice Isn’t Dead is still running, and is currently in its third and final season.
Within the Wires
Within the Wires, Night Vale Presents’s next project, debuted on June 20th, 2016. Ostensibly taking a departure from using the audio form to take a character story, Within the Wires instead leaned heavily into the form: the first season was framed as relaxation tapes that slowly unraveled into a story about one woman trying to help another escape from imprisonment in a sci-fi facility. A partnership between Jeffrey Cranor and co-writer/actor Janina Matthewson, the first season did feel like a gateway for fans to explore other audio fiction that played with form. Speaking anecdotally, Within the Wires was the first podcast that made me realize that Welcome to Night Vale might not be the exception to the rule when it came to audio fiction but, instead, a good example of the many fantastic works I could enjoy. The fandoms for indie audio fiction like those mentioned previously were booming. Its experimental format, unnerving tone, and shockingly emotional performances and writing felt like a revelation that led many of us to more and more audio fictions.
Each season of Within the Wires focuses on a new story with a new narrator. Its second season focused on guided museum tours, the narrator an artist giving her commentary on the works of (and her complicated, tumultuous relationship with) an artist featured in several museums. The second season was not completely distinct from the first, though, and the two did eventually tie together in subtle ways.
The third season of Within the Wires launches on September 4th and will be ” a political thriller set in 1950s Chicago told exclusively through dictated letters and notes from a bureaucrat to his secretary.”
The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air)
The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air), or OHC for short, was the first Night Vale Presents project to be produced by someone other than Fink or Cranor. The first episode was released on October 11th, 2017, though the idea stems back to creator Julian Koster’s 2002 album, 2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking. Koster is a veteran of cult-classic indie bands Neutral Milk Hotel and The Music Tapes, and his ideas for OHC were brought to life with the help of co-creator Ellie Heyman and Producer Christy Gressman, who would later become one of the forerunners of Night Vale Presents. OHC was also the first Night Vale Presents project to bring in celebrities, such as John Cameron Mitchell, Charlie Day, and Tim Robbins.
OHC is a whimsical, perhaps magic realism audio fiction that follows a janitor named Julian who cleans up the Eiffel Tower after broadcasts of a live radio show within it, also called The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air). While OHC does have a plot, it works much more off of its characters, its tone, and its auditory aesthetic. Performers recorded lines with authentic vintage microphones, and in a panel at 2018’s Podcast Movement, Christy Gressman noted that at least some of the audio was recorded, pressed to vinyl, and then recorded again to achieve a certain texture.
Like the Night Vale Presents podcasts before it, OHC feels very indicative of its time: in 2017, there had been a cultural push for more tender, whimsical media after years of focusing on gritty, edgy stories. Children’s shows like Adventure Time and Steven Universe had become part of the zeitgeist; introspective and artistic animation like Kubo and the Two Strings and Paddington were gaining critical acclaim. OHC played off of these conventions but blurred the lines between what makes media specifically for children or adults.
OHC has been on hiatus since releasing 2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking was released on its feed. However, it will be returning this year for its second season, this time in partnership with WNYC.
Branching Out and Partnering
After the success of Night Vale Presents’s first four shows, the network decided to branch out in two distinct ways: first, by adding nonfiction podcasts to its lineup, and second, by partnering with the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). PRX is an organization that helps distribute and monetize podcasts, also helping train podcasters on best practices. PRX is also partnered with podcast network Radiotopia, individual podcasts like This American Life and The Moth, and services like RadioPublic. The partnership between Night Vale Presents and PRX was announced on January 29th, 2018.
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor also helped found PodCon, a convention “for creators, industry, and fans alike,” alongside Hank Green, Travis McElroy, and Justin McElroy. PodCon took place January 19-20th, 2018, in Seattle, Washington, with a lineup of events that included “live shows, comedy, workshops, panels, performances, mash-ups, meet and greets, and more.” PodCon 2 has been announced and is currently running a crowdfunding campaign.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me
Conversations with People Who Hate Me was the first nonfiction podcast on Night Vale Presents. Hosted by Dylan Marron, voice actor for Carlos on Welcome to Night Vale, the series focused on Marron having personal, patient conversations with people who had left him hateful comments on social media platforms. The podcast launched on July 31st, 2017, and was met almost immediately with critical and fan praise. In a culture that had just recently faced the intense schism of the 2016 election, the podcast set a tone of open conversation, reminding the listener that “there’s a human on the other side of the screen” when they use online anonymity to comment on something hatefully.
The podcast is currently in its second season, in which Marron facilitates conversations between other creators and the people who have left them hateful messages.
It Makes a Sound
Another venture into people outside of the early Night Vale sphere being brought on to produce a Night Vale show, It Makes a Sound is a realistic fiction audio fiction by actress and writer Jacquelyn Landgraf, who also performs with the Neo-Futurists. Debuting on September 23rd, 2017, It Makes a Sound follows a woman who desperately wants to find the lost music of Wim Faros, a musician seemingly only she remembers.
It Makes a Sound feels distinct from the other Night Vale Presents audio fictions in its genre. It is the only Night Vale Presents work of fiction in a realistic setting with no speculative fiction elements to date. It does, however, feel congruent with Night Vale Presents in the way it weaves together a strange, off-kilter story with deeper ruminations–here, on memory, mortality, and family. The series was a limited run that ended on January 20th, 2018; however, the end of the final episode did suggest potential further expansion, and an album of the show’s music is in development.
I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats
On September 27th, 2017, Night Vale Presents premiered its entrance into fancasts with I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, though in true Night Vale fashion, with a twist: while most fancasts feature a few hosts discussing the works, one of the hosts in I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats is John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. In the podcast, Darnielle and co-host Joseph Fink discuss “what it means to be an artist, to be a fan, and as many people are, both at once” with a guest.
I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats marks Night Vale Presents’s entrance into a more standard style of podcast, showing a reverse timeline for most networks. Traditionally, networks will begin with nonfiction conversational podcasts like fancasts and maybe eventually bring on audio fictions, while Night Vale Presents has done the opposite.
Pounded in the Butt by My Own Podcast
After Welcome to Night Vale‘s success on the fringes of Weird Twitter, Night Vale Presents’s partnership with popular bizarre erotica novelist Chuck Tingle comes as little surprise. Not only did Chuck Tingle enter the zeitgeist for his erotica novels such as Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt and Pounded In The Butt By My Book “Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt”, but also for his presence on Twitter:
sometimes it is buckaroo way to battle the void and its devils head on, but sometimes you can just sip on chocolate milk as devils destroy themselves, calling others dogs and shrieking as they are confronted with reality that they are made of ooze and everyone can see it leaking.
Each episode of the podcast features a guest reading one of the stories–also called “tinglers”–to some form of an audience, whether it be a group of people or just one person. The podcast features some minimal sound design and includes an intro and outro by Chuck Tingle.
Sleep with Me
Sleep with Me is a long-running nonfiction podcast hosted by Drew Ackerman, who uses the podcast to tell rambling, uninteresting stories with the specific and unironic goal of helping people sleep–and at least my anecdotal evidence shows it succeeds. Sleep with Me originally partnered with the Feral Audio network; however, when allegations of abuse came out against Feral Audio’s Dustin Marshall, Ackerman quickly left the network and was subsequently picked up by Night Vale Presents. Sleep with Me is the first podcast that was acquired by Night Vale Presents versus being originated on the network. Given the unique, quirky, and massively successful nature of the podcast, there is a chance the acquisition of Sleep with Me is an outlier with Night Vale Presents versus signifying an upcoming trend.
Good Morning Night Vale
As of writing, Good Morning Night Vale is the most recent launch for Night Vale Presents, having debuted on June 6th, 2018. Good Morning Night Vale is an episode-by-episode deep dive recap through Welcome to Night Vale‘s archives, hosted by Welcome to Night Vale actors Meg Bashwiner, Symphony Sanders, and Hal Lublin. Good Morning Night Vale is akin to The Good Place: The Podcast in concept, and the two launched in close proximity, with the first episode of The Good Place: The Podcast uploading just five days before the first episode of Good Morning Night Vale. The idea of creators analyzing their own work on their own network initially seemed novel and perhaps strange, but when broken down to its essentials, podcasts like Good Morning Night Vale are largely taking the concept of a commentary track, breaking it away from the time constraints of a typical commentary, and putting it on an RSS feed versus a DVD.
The further step into fancasts helps solidify Night Vale Presents as no longer a network of primarily fiction, but a network of podcasts that are doing something strange and innovative, even if–and perhaps especially–working with a concept that has already been well established in some way.
The Future of Night Vale Presents
It’s yet to be seen how the current booming culture of podcasting, and specifically fiction in podcasting, will affect Night Vale Presents. However, its two upcoming audio fictions give some lens into how Night Vale may have been influenced recently.
Adventures in New America
Coming September 28th, 2018, Adventures in New America is a “sci-fi, political satire, Afrofuturistic buddy comedy, serialized for New Americans in a new and desperate time.” While the cast and crew list for Adventures in New America have yet to be released in full, having a podcast that is specifically a work of Afrofuturism indicates a move towards further representation within Night Vale Presents. Afrofuturism is a genre that’s been around for some time, but is finally receiving more attention with successes like Black Panther or Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer. Adventures in New America “follows the escapades of two mismatched African-New-American best friends — fat, lonely, curmudgeon IA and lesbian sneak-thief Simon Carr — who take on a series of increasingly wild heists to get quick cash to pay for IA’s medical treatment while attempting to survive the wilds of New New York City… and a secret cabal of Tetchy Terrorist Vampire Zombies from outer space.”
Dreamboy
So far, Dreamboy sounds like a return to the classic Night Vale Presents feeling–one of an off-kilter subject, strange occurrences, and a dose of whimsy. Launching October 23rd, 2018, Dreamboy will be a serialized audio fiction about the color of nighttime changing in Cleveland, Ohio. The story will center on “Dane, a spun-out musician spending the winter in Cleveland, Ohio, [who] has two main goals: keeping his job at the Pepper Heights Zoo and trying not to waste all his time on Grindr. What he doesn’t expect is to get swept into a story about dreams, about forevers, about flickering lights, about unexplained deaths, about relentless change, and about the parts of ourselves that we wish other people knew to look for. Oh, and also a murderous zebra.”
Ever since Welcome to Night Vale debuted in 2012, the works of Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, and their Night Vale Presents collaborators have helped shape the climate of podcasting, but have also been shaped by that climate. Credit is often given to Night Vale Presents for its success with fiction in podcasting, while so many sources focus solely on nonfiction–but even Fink and Cranor have expressed much of their success being dependent on being in the right place at the right time, regardless of how high the quality of their productions are.
With several podcasts, books, adaptations, and touring live shows under their belts, it’s exciting to see the creators’ growing praise of smaller, independent audio fictions. Jeffrey Cranor recently talked up the audio fiction Greater Boston, and in a PodCon 2 planning livestream, Joseph Fink said he is hoping for a larger audio fiction presence at this year’s convention.
Night Vale Presents will, almost definitely, continue to grow and help the shape the landscape of podcasting–but podcasting’s effect on Night Vale Presents will be an interesting progression to continually unfold.
Welcome to Nightvale was definitely the first podcast that got me excited about Audio Fiction and podcasts in general. Although over time it lost it’s appeal to me, every so often I will listen to the run of them from beginning to “One Year Later” as it is not only joyous to listen to but reminds me of old memories. Sitting in the car in a dark driveway listening to Cecil talk about John Peters (You know, the farmer?) while we all giggle pretending not to be creeped out.
I like how they unfolded their business ideas but always kept in touch with independent artists. It bodes well for creators of new media.
1 comment
Welcome to Nightvale was definitely the first podcast that got me excited about Audio Fiction and podcasts in general. Although over time it lost it’s appeal to me, every so often I will listen to the run of them from beginning to “One Year Later” as it is not only joyous to listen to but reminds me of old memories. Sitting in the car in a dark driveway listening to Cecil talk about John Peters (You know, the farmer?) while we all giggle pretending not to be creeped out.
I like how they unfolded their business ideas but always kept in touch with independent artists. It bodes well for creators of new media.
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