Welcome to Night Vale is a surreal fiction podcast set in desert town of Night Vale that has been airing twice a month since 2012. The podcast is told in the style of community radio updates from the station's host, Cecil Palmer.

While WTNV has many arcs that utilize long-form storytelling, most individual episodes can standalone as their own contained narratives.

Listeners will be begin recognizing recurring background characters, running jokes, and mysteries that are constantly alluded to.

so many reasons. but organzied thoughts coming soon.

When WTNV entered the podcasting scene in 2012, fiction podcasts simply weren't around. If you wanted to listen to a story, you listened to audio books.

When Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor created WTNV, they created an entirely new genre of podcasting.

Welcome to Night Vale was a trailblazer for fiction podcasts, one of the first of it's kind to gain traction and popularity. Long form fiction podcasts today would not be around if not for the creation of WTNV.

Additionally, WTNV should be praised for trailblazing LGBTQ+ representation in a casual yet completely impactful way. In 2012, queer characters were few and far between. Gay characters were generally underdevloped side characters that were killed off for shock value, and gay representation was not yet mainstream enough to be considered profitable for major sudios.

Night Vale's radio host, Cecil, is revealed to be gay in episode one, when he proclaims his love for Carlos, a visiting Scientist. There is no grand coming out. The way that his sexuality is introduced to the listeners is completely casual, simply a fact of life. While this may not seem groundbreaking today, in 2012 such representation was quite frankly unheard of.

WHile Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor have done a wonderful job writing inclusive and postiive queer storylines in WTNV, it should be noted that Cecil's voice actor, Cecil Baldwin, is the one who pushed for his character to be openly gay like himself.