Director's Notes – Episode 98

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

We generally write the podcast well in advance, assuming that we haven’t gotten horribly behind, so we had no way of knowing that this bummer of an episode would happen on this bummer of a week.

But maybe that’s ok. Maybe sometimes art shouldn’t be about escapism but about focusing the feelings that are overwhelming you, and giving you an outlet in which to really feel them. I hope so anyway, because it was too late to change what happens in the episode.

I’m writing to you from London, where my wife and some cast members of Night Vale have been doing a show called Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. I’ve been walking around the city. I went and saw Cursed Child thanks to a very kind friend who had ticket she couldn’t use. And mostly I’ve sat in an apartment, trying to catch up on all the stuff I’ve agreed to write. 

Because of that, I’ve felt disconnected from my country a bit. It’s been almost 50 days since I was in the US, and so all of this chaos has been happening only on twitter, on tv screens. I wish I could be there in the crowds. I wish I could be with my friends, looking them in the eye. But here the geese swim by in the canal. Every day is a little rainy. No one can decide which side of the sidewalk to walk on, because British people are terrible at that. That’s my day to day reality. 

Soon I will be back. I don’t know what comes next. Except in Night Vale. One of the benefits of having a universe you completely control is that you are never left staring at the blank fog wall of the future. 

I can’t say for sure what will happen next in my country, only that it doesn’t look good. However, in Night Vale, there are brighter times coming. We have been working diligently on episode 100, and I think it is a celebration of everything wonderful about the community of Night Vale. 

Not everything about any community can be wonderful. Sometimes mistakes are made, bad decisions cascade into more bad decisions, and innocent people get hurt. Or innocent dragon heads, in this case.

- Joseph Fink
November 15, 2016