Director’s Notes: Episodes 268 - Head Office

Night Vale grows organically. This is not the same as it being unplanned, but it does mean that often we find things out only when the listener finds them out. There was no bible written at the beginning, explaining every aspect of the world yet to be written. That would have taken away all the fun of writing it. I get to be surprised and delighted by this world just as you are.

This year we are exploring Labyrinth, a word that after several years I have for the first time successfully spelled correctly on the first try. Labyrinth was first introduced in episode 13, A Story About You, although they did not have that name at the time. I could not have told you much about them at all. I was just interested in experimenting with a new kind of Night Vale storytelling, outside of the format we had only recently gotten comfortable with. I was chasing a vision in my head, of a dark planet lit by no sun, of the one person who could see it, of the image of two men in the desert, and one is holding a knife. These disparate visions became A Story About You and I was happy with it.

Over the years, we all together got to know more about Labyrinth, although they were not given this name until they played a major role in the novel The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, which solidified for us what this organization was for and some of what they wanted. You don’t have to have read this book to enjoy this current storyline, although I think it might deepen the enjoyment a little to have gone on the voyage of discovery along with our faceless narrator.

Today we come the closest we ever have to the heart of the Labyrinth, and together we learn who sits at its center.

I think when people hear that Night Vale grows organically, they take that to mean it is unplanned, and that could not be farther from the truth. It just means that we plan as we go. And I’m really happy with our plan for the end of this year.

Going in, our thought process was that we’ve had big seasons where the battle was over the fate of Night Vale, and this time we wanted something more personal: the soul of Steve Carlsberg. He is, in many ways, the conscience of Night Vale. Can he continue to do what is right? And at what cost?

Guess we’ll all find out together.

I’m also really proud of the Kool Aid ad this week. Not much to say about it, just that I think it’s funny.

-Joseph Fink

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