Yeah okay so we all know Jon and Cecil would bond over eye stuff but that amounts to them just saying “exactly” back and forth, so instead have the comic that the ppl really want: Jon and Cecil working each other up over supernatural conspiracies and Carlos and Martin trauma-bonding over how dumb their supernatural boyfriends/husbands are
My old old Welcome to Night Vale fanart poster! I drew this back in 2014 to print for myself to get signed by the cast. This was back before there was a selection of wtnv merch other than the logo poster. My printed copy of this is professionally framed (lol by me, when I was a professional framer) and on my bedroom wall, signed by Cecil, Jeffrey, and Joseph. I still really love it! It keeps company with my signed poster from the 2014 2nd anniversary live shows (aka “Old Oak Doors”), which I was there in NYC for!
I don’t know who needs to hear this but people simply have to stop whitewashing Carlos from Welcome to Night Vale. He’s canonically described as dark skinned:
And yet I consistently see him drawn as light brown or even tan white. It’s not as much a problem as it used to be since the fandom has died down, but it still gets on my nerves. So here’s a reminder:
Obviously this chart is not a perfect representation of the spectrum of skin tones, and the line can get a little blurry between midtone and dark, but it’s a start. If you hear/read “dark” and automatically invision lighter brown shades, that’s because you subconsciously view white as the default and lump in any brown-skinned person under the same category of “dark”. And if you make him brown because “he’s latino, not black!” then may I remind you:
-Latino is not a race
-Afro-Latinos exist (and don’t even have to be multiracial)
-Dark-skinned indigenous Latinos exist (and don’t even have to be multiracial)
I am not latine but this is what I’ve learned from the indigenous and black latine community who face an extreme amount of colorism. If you think the above skin tones are dark, you don’t adequately understand how dark the spectrum of skin tones actually gets. Please draw and write Carlos with a canon-accurate skin tone ❤ Also while we’re at it some curly/kinky hair texture cuz not a lot of dark skinned bipoc have completely straight hair
-Sincerely, a lighter skinned black person tired of colorism
[ID: A WTNV comic featuring Cecil and Carlos. Cecil is a thin white man with an undercut, and Carlos is a thin brown man with curly hair. Cecil is sitting at his desk, he smiles and says into the microphone, “to be hosted by our town’s chief scientist himself today! Can you believe it!” He then nudges the mic to Carlos, who is sitting beside him. Carlos folds his hands in front of his face and inhales deeply. When he opens his eyes they are lens flaring. Cecil looks startled, and the mic gives feedback noises. The next panel is labeled as being two hours later, and Carlos is standing up and presenting a huge, messy board filled with papers and string that spread onto the wall and desk. He’s grinning and talking persistently into the mic and still got lens flares over his eyes. Cecil is leaning back with a blank expression and raised eyebrows. The view zooms on him as some of the falling papers hit him and he thinks, “We aren’t even on air anymore.” End ID]
Listening to the podcast I wondered why they never gave Carlos the science segment of the show, then I thought maybe they tried at one point and something like this happened.
[ID: A two-panel meme from Seinfeld. Jerry looks down with a bemused expression and asks: “You’re crying from Welcome to Night Vale #209” George looks down with a teary expression and says: “Canon confirmation that with his dying breath Cecil is worrying about Carlos and calling his name got to me.” Jerry says: “All right.” End ID]
What a joy to learn right before the anniversary :)
To celebrate 200+ followers I decided to share my Telegram sticker pack with you! (I hope you’re using the app so you can add them) Thanks so much for following me
This essay: a batshit crazy hc explaining some plot points and characters from Welcome To Night Vale podcast through physics and quantum mechanics. Quite a long one too
Caution: SEVERELY HEAVY SPOILERS. LIKE ALMOST EVERY MAJOR SPOILER THERE IS. Pls don’t read this if you’re not caught up or just started listening to the podcast.
Disclaimer: I don’t think the creators meant any of this so I will categorize this as a hc, not a theory. It’s raw, it’s often inconsistent. I absolutely DO NOT know all of the NV lore, I just binge-listened to the main podcast in February, never seen any live shows, haven’t read novels or listened to spin-offs. And mb I should’ve done all that or at least relistened to some core episodes before writing this but I don’t have time for this amount of analysis. Regarding physics in this post - though I am a scientist, I’m not a physicist and my knowledge of QM and theoretical physics is at the popular science level at best. Then again, I’m not submitting research to Nature here, just doing a fan theory, so
1.Some basics: Night Vale as a town that got snatched from a whatever original dimension it was located in first and shattered in process (this one is canon). What we are listening to in the podcast is just one of the Night Vales with rare occurrences of other versions. The original world around this (some other?) Night Vale got nuked to ashes in 1983 so the outer world some of the characters are visiting must also be from its multidimensional versions, often different and not in accordance with this NV dimension. See Kareem trying to visit his family outside of NV and finding the alternate version of it and himself. Logical explanation - NV world is originally a multiverse, and all the Night Vales became its weak spot that now gets to shift and overlap and disappear from dimensions.
2.Cecil. To my thinking, Cecil is some kind of a Spirit or an Essence or a Protecting Demigod of Night Vale. He is obviously non-human, omniscient, might be immortal. His first broadcast was at the very foundation of the town, it might also had been when he came into existence altogether. So as an inseparable part of the town, when the Goddess broke the multiverse while trying to save the town, Cecil got shattered too. Now he’s continuously stuck in this superposition where he’s actually many different Cecils at once so he himself and other people in NV and NV-related outer world dimensions can’t really comprehend how he looks. Imagine a perpetually fluctuating appearance or a shattered image if you must. That’s why he sometimes gets horrified reactions from others and has troubles with looking in the mirrors. It’s not that he looks like some kind of a chthonic monster, it’s just that no one can grasp what they are seeing and it’s disturbing.
3.The Weather. Throughout the podcast the weather is an instrument of making things better, solving problems and saving the town. Cecil himself is aware of this in canon, and actively uses it to resolve problems and conflicts. What I think is happening here is that within these 3 to 4 minutes Cecil finds a version of Night Vale or a path of history for Night Vale where similar problems are solved in a manner he likes and he just drags his Night Vale into that version of reality or history path. This thought is inspired by Feynman’s ideas so read on that if you are interested. с) Stephen Hawking: “[Feynman] proposed that a system got from a state A, to a state B, by every possible path or history. Each path or history has a certain amplitude or intensity, and the probability of the system going from A- to B, is given by adding up the amplitudes for each path.”
4.Desert Bluffs as the antimatter. In this concept, Desert Bluffs is not one of the NV versions, it exists in the same dimension simultaneously as the antimatter. Evidence 1: on spot violence between doubles upon meeting, somewhat reminiscent of the quantum annihilation (except the real QA is a process creating other particles while in NV it’s just one of the colliders winning and continuing to exist). Evidence 2: quick catastrophic event for DB when it got absorbed into NV, the QA again here. Bonus point: Kevin seems to have no problems with his appearance, at least it’s never mentioned, thus making me think he is just from this single dimension, supposed to be an anti-this-dimension’s-Cecil.
5.CarlosThe Observer. The Ultimate Outsider, if you will.
This part gets way more science-y and over the top crazy (as it should be), proceed with caution. I warned you.
The Observer as in The Observer effect - the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.
First, how I got to this idea. Carlos never ever mentioned that there’s something off with how Cecil looks. Now Carlos is not exactly great with social interactions and also wouldn’t shut up to save his own life so I don’t think he’s just doing it out of politeness or some severe case of heart-eyes. It’s canon that Cecil looks off in some unexplained way, and Carlos is observant and a scientist and wouldn’t miss a chance to research the matter. But he never even mentions it. So, I think he sees Cecil in just one way, he sees Cecil how he was supposed to look in this single dimension. Here comes the quantum mechanics. The fluctuation of Cecil’s appearance described previously in p.2 makes him like a wavefunction in a closed quantum-mechanical system (see Schrodinger equation), and Carlos, in order to see him in one way needs to collapse this function, make closed quantum system an open one. And it can be done only if he is an outside observer (see Belavkin equation). Completely outside, beyond even the multiverse outside. To be put very simple – NV and Cecil are the Schrodinger Cat and Carlos is the one who opens the box and sees whether the cat is alive or dead, making it definite. As the Observer Effect goes: once one has measured the system, one knows its current state; and this prevents it from being in one of its other states. So Carlos makes it to NV from the Outside and as an observer makes it halt in just one state. Yes, all this just because I think Carlos sees Cecil as a completely normal human. Yes it does sound unnecessarily complicated but unfortunately there’s more evidence to it.
More evidence: Carlos appears to be the rare character in the podcast who doesn’t experience troubles with travelling. The podcast still has zero explanation of Carlos’s origin, where he comes from, how has he initially arrived at Night Vale, how come that he can freely travel in and out of the town. People from the town have huge difficulties leaving, people coming in are usually exposed to some weird accidents, like they have a sudden urge to drive nowhere, they see the Invisible Titan whatever that is. Outside world has no idea that NV even exists, it’s not on any maps etc. And Carlos just … ignores all that. Going abroad to a conference? Sure. Coming back to exactly this dimension? No probs. Visiting the Big City on a vacation? Why the hell not. He has never stated any problems regarding travelling, and one of the latest episodes just confirmed that he has never seen the Titan. Being a complete outsider could explain that, he just doesn’t follow the rules of the closed system. But this brings in more questions about how the hell he manages to come back to this exact version of the town. To consider here: when his colleagues from the University came looking for him they did manage to come to the exact NV version he had travelled to, so maybe they are some outside of this multiverse scientists, Carlos included, who got some means of precise observation and travel.
Even more evidence: The Phantom Ocean. The suddenly appearing Ocean works perfectly within the shattered and overlapping Night Vale space-and-time locus, so it is kind of less probable that Carlos had encountered it at any other more stable location. This would mean that Carlos has travelled to other Night Vales loci before and encountered it there. This adds up to the precise means of travel concept.
Final evidence: Carlos appears to be a singular event for this entire multiverse. The podcast did quite a number of alternate episodes where our first hint to understanding that this wasn’t our NV was disappearing of Carlos from the narrative. Thus his coming to NV and having a family there is either a very rare event (not likely for an infinite multiverse) or he really is The One and Only Carlos there is, which he accomplishes by not belonging to the NV multiverse at the first place.
5.1 Counterpoints:all this would mean that this outer dimension Carlos is from is somehow very much the same with NV multiverse (same America, Europe, and also more precise things like the University of What It Is is also known to NV inhabitants). And that’s kind of too many layers of the same universe, not improbable but just on the verge of too complicated.
Also there’s Charles.If he’s the anti-Carlos then most simple explanation would be that Carlos does belong to this multiverse, because antiparticles don’t just appear out of nowhere to complement the particles entering the system, despite their dramatic name antiparticles are just particles with different features. There are two ways to preserve the Outsider theory though. First, Charles just happens to be like that, a normal ‘particle’ for this dimension and Carlos is just a suspiciously similar ‘particle’ from outside, very unlikely but why not. Second, Charles is also The One and Only, one of the particle-antiparticle pair created by something like Hawking Radiation and then pulled within the Event Horizon travelling to NV multiverse while Carlos remained outside. But c’mon they aren’t exactly particles, are they. At least DonovanandEsteban don’t complicate this matter any more, because they both belong to NV (most likely).
6. This point is just to congratulate you on reading all of this crazy stuff. Thanks! DM me about any of this if you like.
Today’s episode’s shopping scene got me thinking that Carlos only wears lab clothes because wtnv got some RPG-like class appropriate equipment restrictions
Seen in a couple “Somewhere Else is Nightvale” crossovers that have Martin get work as a lab assistant for Carlos which I LOVE both bc I think it’s sweet and bc I think it’d be funny for within the hour Martin to realize he’s probably OVERqualified bc he knows what the scientific method is
okay, I came back to drawing things finally because I will probably need to open commissions pretty soon, and my girlfriend made a request of that one art (also I’m out of money and my mom said I should sell myself by drawing furry arts but at this point I still have some self-respect left - not for long probably, though).
Nevertheless, have some sketchy pic of my fav fictional scientist.
[Image ID: a digital drawing of carlos from welcome to night vale. he is a fat latino man with long dark curly hair that is greying slightly. he has a beard of the same colour but with more obvious streaks of grey. he has dark brown eyes and is facing to the right. he has a happy expression. he is wearing a white lab coat with a black turtleneck. he has a small black earring in his visible ear. he has freckles on his face and neck and a small patch of vitiligo under his left eye. end ID]
Carlos is my usual go to but seeing myself as Cecil is definitely something new! Carlos badly needs to be updated too ahah the one on the right is technically a year old oops-
But I think it’s pretty neat how in the time of me cosplaying Carlos and cosplaying Cecil I’ve learnt so much about makeup and lighting and environment, I’m excited to see where I’ll be next year! (Listen I love my cartoony beard for Carlos but he deserves some realism)
