Director's Notes – 144 – The Dreamer

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

The Blood Space War was a passing joke in episode 2 of Night Vale. That was nearly 7 years ago. This was also the first appearance of the Community Calendar.

Throughout the next 140+ episodes, we occasionally referred to the war, most heavily in episode 79 "Lost in the Mail," but we hadn't ever truly delved into what the Blood Space War is.

And what the Blood Space War is is a war, which is to say, we cannot be absolutely certain what it is. Last year I watched all 10 hours of Ken Burns' Vietnam series. I've read half a dozen books on the same topic, the best of which is David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," not to mention semester upon semester of history courses detailing the dozens of textbook-worthy wars throughout humankind. Yet, while I can recap many components about the Vietnam conflict, I cannot wholly convey the tragic absurdity of why we destroyed the people of that small country, as well as hundreds of thousands of our own.

We're all in constant flux about our understanding and instruction about what a war really is about. (As late as the 1990s, I can tell assure you that Texas schools taught that the Civil War was about "states' rights," and they may still be teaching this for all I know.)

As history devours the present, lives and events become anecdotes or they become forgotten, and the structure of our knowledge crumbles away into ruins. And the further we get from the who and why of war, the more we must rely on these small stories to help inform how to rebuild a logical narrative, which replaces what actually happened.

And here in "The Dreamer," we find Eunomia. For you, the listener, and even for the fictional town of Night Vale, to understand what the Blood Space War is really about, we have to go back to what we perceive as its beginning, or at the very least, the beginning of Night Vale's part in it.

In Eunomia's story, and that of Cristina Alfons and her daughter Yasmin, I wanted to explore not just the Blood Space War (this will be a 5-part series, by the by) but also tell a short horror story, akin to those of "A Story About You" or "Deft Bowman" or "A Carnival Comes to Town."

In the next episode we'll explore what it means to return home alive from the Blood Space War.

- Jeffrey Cranor
March 15, 2019

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