Happy Monday Obscurians!  Before we start, some introductions!  My name is Brittany Aufiero and I am the President and Editor-in-Chief of Obscura, the Literary and Arts Magazine of Lehman College.  I’m double majoring in English creative writing and in Media Communication Studies, and expect to graduate in Spring 2021.  I’m a 24-year-old, bisexual, cisgender woman.  I have a fiance named Jason, a Russian Blue cat named Baby, and an enthusiasm for espresso that far surpasses my ability to afford it.  

This summer, we have a whole line-up of staff bloggers ready to keep you entertained every day of the week, Mondays through Fridays, until the fall semester starts.  Every Monday, I’ll be posting a new blog as part of my Queer Media Mondays series.  If this sounds familiar to you, there’s a good reason!  Last year I attempted to kick start this series on Obscura’s old WordPress website.  Subjects ranged from tokenism in the Harry Potter series to an in-depth look at corporate attitudes towards producing queer media content.  I analyzed movie scenes, reviewed books, and used my unique queer perspective to reexamine the media we know and love under a critical lens.

The project failed at the time in part because I was simply too busy to keep up with writing for it, and in part because I realized I didn’t have the foundational knowledge of queer studies necessary for me to do the topic justice in my blogs.  This time will be different!  I’ve outlined all of my blogs for the summer thoroughly enough that I know in advance what I’ll be covering each week.  This benefits you guys too, because you’ll have a head’s up about what to expect next Monday.

Since this is the first blog of the summer, I won’t be starting us off with any heavy discourse on queer theory.  Instead, I’d like to recommend one of my favorite podcasts: Welcome to Night Vale.

Official podcast cover art for Welcome to Night ValeWelcome to Night Vale first premiered in 2012 and gained a strong fan following within months.  Narrated by the local radio show host Cecil Palmer, the show tells the story of a small mid-western desert town called Night Vale – a place where, in the words of co-writers Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, “every conspiracy theory is true.”  The town dog park does not permit dogs, nor people, and is instead home to shrouded figures who should not be approached.  The Sheriff’s Secret Police, as well as agents from a vague yet menacing government agency, are watching residents’ every move, and librarians are dangerous, vicious creatures that should be avoided at all costs.  All eight years of the show can be found on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music, and anywhere else podcasts are found, for free, and new episodes are released on the first and fifteenth of every month.

Welcome to Night Vale is the focus of today’s blog because it has demonstrated on multiple occasions its commitment to providing accurate and inclusive representation for both racial and sexual minorities.  Radio host and protagonist Cecil is an openly gay man who, throughout the series, courts and eventually becomes romantically involved with Carlos, a newcomer and scientist who finds the mysteries of Night Vale scientifically fascinating.  Cecil and Carlos’ relationship is well-developed and multi-faceted.  The two have distinct personalities and character flaws, and  grow and change both independently and as a couple over time.

Carlos and Cecil’s relationship is just one of many instances of positive queer representation throughout the podcast.  In Year Two of the show’s run, a company called StrexCorp attempts to buy up all of the businesses in town and transform the desert community into an aggressively-capitalist, corporate stronghold.  Cecil, Carlos, and a host of other townsfolk fight back, using every asset available to them.  Central to the fight is a mysterious masked army of warriors who reside in a desert otherworld, accessible through a pair of old oak doors in the dog park.  Leading this army, as we later learn, is a warrior named Doug and his partner, Alicia.  According to Carlos, Alicia is “not a man or a woman, and has a dog.”  Neither is Alicia the sole nonbinary character, her existence a mere token or act of fan-service.  Characters of varying importance don they/them pronouns throughout the show, and Cecil narrates their tales with the same cool, deep baritone voice that he would anyone else’s.

In Night Vale, diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are accepted without question, assumedly because the townspeople have much bigger things to worry about, such as why helicopters depicting elaborate murals of birds of prey kidnapped their children, only to return them soon after.  Listening to Welcome to Night Vale is a calming experience that I look forward to on the first and fifteenth of every month.  The podcast creators, along with the main voice actors, take their jobs very seriously, and know the impact that fictional representations can have on fans.  I don’t trust many writers with queer characters, but these guys have got it figured out.  If you’re running out of ways to keep busy during lockdown, check out this podcast – it’s creative and funny, and there are some great moments of social commentary thrown in.  Episodes are approximately half an hour each, and there’s loads of bonus material (and several books) to keep your Night Vale appetite in check for the foreseeable future.  

If you do check out Welcome to Night Vale, let me know what you think!  Follow me on Facebook @Brittany.Aufiero, or on Instagram @Casqueraded.  What podcasts have you been listening to during quarantine?  Is there anything in particular that you’d like to see me cover in these weekly blogs?  Let me know!

Tune in next week to read about the history of fanfiction, and why it’s so important to LGBTQ+ fan communities!  Stay safe, Obscurians, and Happy Memorial Day!

Yours, 

Brittany Aufiero

President, Obscura