Welcome to Night Vale Recap: Episode 12 “The Candidate”
Hiram McDaniels: Fiery change we can believe in.
If you’re behind, catch up on the other Welcome to Night Vale recaps!
We start with a complaint from the residents of Old Town Night Vale. (By the way, you should totally look up the fan maps that have been done of Night Vale. There’s some incredible stuff there.)The sunsets in Old Town have been extremely loud lately, though not anywhere else in Night Vale. The City Council took the natural step of blaming the noise on Desert Bluffs and their windmill farms. It’s a clever argument since everyone in Night Vale seems to deeply hate Desert Bluffs. But then the head protester, Walter Kincaid, upped the ante by pointing out that Desert Bluffs is too incompetent to create working windmills, so the sound couldn’t possibly be coming from them.
Kincaid plays a dangerous game speaking against the Council, but he plays it well.
At a follow-up meeting the City Council simply stared down Kincaid until his soul compacted to the size of a pea. Apparently even that wasn’t enough to discourage him, as he kept right on complaining about the loud sunsets that have caused numerous heart attacks and cases of muscular atrophy throughout the Old Town district, and have made Kincaid himself grow six additional eyes. As a result, the Council has scheduled a mandatory meeting at 4 AM the next day at the top of a high ledge overlooking Skeleton Gorge. The Council will reach it by helicopter. Kincaid’s only choice will be to try to climb the sheer rock walls and hope that he will be able to survive … unlike everyone else who’s ever tried.
The segment also quickly introduces Simone Rigadeau, a woman who is sometimes consulted about scientific issues. She is actually not a scientist but a transient who lives in the abandoned Earth Sciences building of Night Vale’s community college. She believes that the loud sunsets are “a simple case of celestial just desserts.”
But the main story this week is actually about the return of a fan favorite character. The fugitive Hiram McDaniels has recently been apprehended. Hiram, if you’ll recall, is a five-headed, fire-breathing dragon, who was wanted for insurance fraud. Cecil gets to see a photo of Hiram and is immediately struck by the dragon’s charismatic appearance. It makes sense. In Night Vale society I bet a lot of attractiveness is based on how much raw power it looks like you have.
After an announcement about a strange and ominous party coming up, we learn a bit more about Hiram. Apparently he has a blog where he writes his opinions about local politics. He’s even mentioned what he would do if he were the mayor of Night Vale. Cecil is definitely impressed and immediately willing to give Hiram his vote.
In other news, City Council will soon be voting on a measure that would make breathing a conscious action. Basically, everyone would have to constantly make the effort to breathe instead of just letting it happen. The Council thinks we’ve been taking breathing as involuntary action for granted for too long. After all, the Council learned to beat their own hearts and wet their own corneas. Why should we be special? After all, it’s the American dream to pull oneself up from literally nothing.
You guys? Somehow I think the City Council isn’t exactly human.
Next up is an ad which warns us about the hazards of immortality. After all, who would want to outlast all one’s loved ones? To eventually see the whole planet die as it is consumed by the sun? No one, that’s who! That’s why we all need to be careful if we get in a position to have our wishes granted. Thanks for the public service announcement, Direct TV!
When we get back we learn Mayor Pamela Winchell isn’t excited about Cecil’s endorsement of Hiram for her job. She points out that prisoners can’t run for mayor. Cecil only gets more determined and continues to champion Hiram as a mayoral candidate.
Then there’s a test of Night Vale’s new Emergency Dream Broadcast System. Cecil describes a dream where you’re running down the street you lived on as a child, but all the houses are grey cylinders. Someone is waiting for you, but you don’t know who. Suddenly there is a message in the sky, warning you about potential flash floods in the next few hours. (Sadly, it doesn’t advise you to head down to the waterfront recreation area to try enjoying it with some actual water.) This message is just a test. If the emergency were real, everyone would have spontaneously started dreaming, which sounds like it could cause some emergencies of its own.
Apparently this episode came out in December, because the next story is about how a no-show mall Santa has saddened children and angered parents. Except it turns out that the Santa was never supposed to show up. Actually, his absence was part of a performance art piece about the shallow nature of capitalism. It seems the mall staff is really artistically inclined. They already have plans for Valentine’s Day that include vivisected teddy bears and footage of beating human hearts. We’ll see how that goes.
This episode’s weather is “The Brightness” by Anais Mitchell.
Once we’re back Cecil reports that Mayor Winchell is still not happy about all the fuss over a certain multi-headed dragon. She points out that saying “If I were mayor…” on a blog is not the same as declaring oneself a candidate and then crosses a line by saying there’s no precedent in Night Vale for having a dragon as an elected official. Cecil immediately sees that as bigotry and shames Mayor Winchell for discriminating against Hiram just because he’s a fire-breathing, five-headed dragon. Those could be excellent qualities in a mayor!
So, to end the episode, Cecil offers his official endorsement of Hiram McDaniels for mayor and we get a new plot thread.
Stop by for our next recap, when things get a little more intimate. After all, the next episode is all about…you.
And now for the Conspiracy Tracker!
1. Angels are living with Old Woman Josie and the City Council wants to capture them.
2. There’s a house that doesn’t exist.
3. The Apache Tracker has changed into a real Native American and only speaks Russian
4. Time is weird in Night Vale and Carlos wants to figure it out.
5. Cecil wants to be swallowed by a giant snake.
6. There’s a city underneath the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex.
7. Literal five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels wants to be the next mayor.
8. Pets become perfect when you accept them…
9. What the heck is the dog park?
10. Russian=Weirdness
11. Cecil hates Steve Carlsberg for unknown reasons.
12. Night Vale has a surprising fixation on actor Lee Marvin.
13. The government can control the weather.
14. Two boy scouts are close to becoming Eternal Scouts.
15. The Apache Tracker and angels are watching the Desert Flower.
16. Night Vale is prone to duplication.
Alex Townsend is freelance writer, a cool person, and really into gender studies and superheroes. It’s a magical day when all these things come together. You can follow her on her tumblr and see her comments on silver age comics. Happy reading!
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