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Director's Notes – Episode 79
🕑 Added 2018-07-26 16:02:47 +0000 UTC (NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)This episode was written with Zack Parsons, who last co-wrote episode 40 “The Deft Bowman”.
Zack is someone I’ve known and occasionally worked with for over ten years, and I love having him write on the show. He absolutely gets the Night Vale tone, and brings something dark and wonderful to his episodes that is very different than what Jeffrey and I do on our own. I asked him to talk a bit about this episode for you all.
PS If you enjoy Zack’s work on our show, he has a number of strange and funny sci-fi novels and novellas that you should check out. His Amazon page here is as good a place to start as any: http://www.amazon.com/Zack-Parsons/e/B001JRV8PY
- Joseph Fink
I think it was about a year ago that I approached Joseph Fink with an idea of doing something for either Memorial Day or Veteran's Day that related to the Blood Space War. It was one of those great elements that was introduced in the first episode of the show that has only been slightly expanded upon over subsequent episodes.
I had a lot of ideas for what the Blood Space War might be and some of these we went back and forth on - a time war, a scam to send people to be eaten by aliens, some sort of heroic adventure - but in the end what I settled on was that simple message, not insanely original, that war is subtraction.
The specifics of the war don't matter. It's not giving a benefit to the people who see their loved ones go off to fight in it and the Blood Space War, like most wars, almost never makes sense.
I liked that idea of Night Vale being pressured by mores (and the Sheriff's Secret Police) to celebrate the Blood Space War, but nobody, not even Cecil, can explain what it's about or why it's happening. Nobody knows what winning would look like or if it's even possible. Meanwhile this parade is complimented by Basimah's story. You have this vibrant young woman, coming of age, becoming who she will be as an adult, who hasn't seen her father most of her life because he volunteered. She tries to celebrate him as a hero and it doesn't work. Maybe he is a hero, maybe he's out there winning the war and saving Night Vale, but what does Basimah care? She wants her dad.
And because it's Night Vale, she gets him back, even if it's only for the length of a song.
- Zack Parsons
December 1, 2015
Comments
Haleth
There is a small square with a fountain in the Old Town here that I sometimes cross when I go grocery shopping. It was there that I heard the ending of this episode for the first time and I remember the joy of slowly realising who the astronaut was. And now, whenever I pass that fountain, and see the street and the corner behind it, I remember Basimah and the astronaut and feel a little bit of that joy again.
James Bonnell
This episode has stuck with me since I first heard it in December 2015. I was putting up Christmas decorations outside my parents house on a cold, still night while listening to the latest from Welcome to Night Vale. I wasn't expecting to be so moved by a story about the Blood Space War, but the way Basimah's tapes were constructed the beauty of it sort of crept up on you. And as hung up glowing white lights in my own little slice of the darkness of the night, slowly the absurdity of the Remembrance Day Parade intertwined with Basimah's story. Before I was fully aware of what was happening, I was overwhelmed by the reunion of Basimah and her father and the testament to the primacy of Love over all other things. Listening to it in that strange liminal space that is a cold, still winter night where the darkness cocoons you in your own little world, it made the experience even more profound and when Basimah got to hug her father at the end I cried with such joy. I re-listen to this episode every Christmas season outside of my parents house in the dark hanging up Christmas lights and it remains one of the most moving stories I've ever experienced.
