tw for various death related ramblings and blood this contains spoilers for welcome to night vale (currently 106 ep. in, not much progression this school year i've been busy) also my references and citings to the episodes may be off since most of this i listened to a year or so ago also a lot of this is probably not very profound realizations i just felt like ranting Throughout the series of Welcome to Night Vale, Cecil Gershwin Palmer has obviously been alive for quite a long time. In "Best Of?" (I believe), there are recordings of his radio broadcasts dating all the way back to before radio was invented, with him mentioning the scientist he is implied to be seeing at the time (not Carlos) is trying to invent a way to broadcast with the radio. He has been broadcasting on the radio since before settlers came to Night Vale. It is heavily implied by these episodes that he is immortal. However, though he has been broadcasting for as long as the world can remember, he was apparently once an intern. There are cassette tapes of him from when he was a teenager where he mentions his internship at the Night Vale Community Radio station under current broadcaster Leonard Burton (I believe that is his name.) So there must have been some time before he was the broadcaster, when there was a different voice of Night Vale, even though it seems like he has always and will always be the voice of the small town. To make things more interesting, Cecil himself does not remember being an intern. He does not remember anything about his childhood or teenage years, and does not even remember having a brother. These cassettes he finds confuse him, as he does not remember recording them. Next point, the dark planet lit by no sun. In "Condos", when Cecil goes into the condo, his idea of perfection is this dark planet that is lit by no sun and is said to be covered with vast mountains and rivers and the like. In the episodes "A Story About You" (and similar episodes featuring the characters from this episode), the dark planet is heavily implied to be some sort of analogy for death, as when the character reaches up toward it they cease to be alive. This planet is described as being just out of reach to Cecil. But why is it perfection? In another episode, where death is made into something you have to legally earn, Cecil says he is always working towards it. He's been alive for so long, experienced so many things, except for death. That is the one thing he has not done. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think he particularly wants to die, I just think he can't die of natural causes. It would have to be some otherworldly horrors or something to kill him. Which brings me to this-- mirrors. His mother tells him that when he dies, it will have something to do with mirrors. She covers all the mirrors in the house, and when Cecil does look in a mirror he sees a sort of flickering movement. While looking in the mirror at the radio station, he says "I think the radio station is fun. I think the radio station is hidden. I think the radio station is like a dark planet lit by no sun. I think, therefore I soon won’t be." But in this instance, why is the radio station the dark planet? He could be comparing the radio station to perfection, or to death. Hard to say which. But this quote is interesting as it also appears later, in episode 106, "Filings". Cecil has gotten a new intern who has not spoken to him. The only interaction with this intern was when he screamed at him after adult Cecil asked him to buy him lunch. When he goes searching for this new intern, he finds this intern's wallet. The drivers licence inside reveals that it is Cecil's, and the new intern is a young, 15 year old Cecil. When he finds the intern, he is saying this. The scene is identical to the end of the cassette tapes. When he looks at the flickering movement, he looks right at his adult self. Then he appears to die. "Then he screamed. Then I screamed, only again no sound came out. He fell to the floor, and for a moment I remembered. I remembered blue lights and blood in my throat and a dark planet lit by no sun. And then I forgot it, or at least what it looked like, only that it was. Or never was. Or still is." This raises interesting questions. Did Cecil die as a radio intern? If he had, how has he seemingly always been the radio host? Perhaps he is stuck in a sort of loop. It was apparently prophesied that Cecil would take over the radio station, and if he died before achieving this, maybe he is doomed to live out forever as the host. Reality in Night Vale is strange enough already, and reality is failing us. Cecil's memory has already shown to be faulty. And it is certainly possible for someone's life in Night Vale to change completely overnight, such as with Earl who suddenly went from a young adult to a middle aged father. Perhaps he is dead as well. I have no way of currently knowing.
Night Vale is some sort of isolated alternate reality. They have different states, different laws of physics, and different ways of being. Just as time works differently in Night Vale, so might death. In the book (of which I have only listened to the excerpt), customers of the pawn shop die briefly as part of the process of completing a purchase. Night Vale itself definitely has a very interesting relationship with death. There may be different kinds of death, some permanent, where you actually reach and touch the dark planet, some not so permanent. But what actually is the flickering behind Cecil? It could even be himself, as he looked directly at his adult self before he collapsed in death. Or some other worldly horror, creating the glowing slash in the bathroom wall Cecil could see after witnessing his own teenage death. It is also possible that Cecil could be living all this in his own mind, or again, as some sort of strange afterlife dream sequence. He is constantly wondering if he is the only person in the world, or if anyone else is even hearing him. He could be a ghost, or everyone else, could be, or something stranger. Who knows. Whatever the case, there's no denying he certainly has a complicated relationship with death, between wanting it, experiencing it, and being unable to experience it. Whether or not any of this is accurate, or even if it made sense, that is the one fact of the matter that is obvious.
