Episode 88 - The FAceless Old Woman Who Not So Secretly Lived in my head

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There was a weird comfort in knowing that my local neighborhood, independently run bookshop was still able to get me the book I had pre-ordered afor long before the local shut down but that also came out during the shut down. I mean, sure I had gotten into a twenty minute conversation with the bookseller about how excited I was, but he does not remember that. And also, sure, it took a little longer to get to me., but I still got it. And that’s… Well, I’ll be the first to tell to that it wasn’t a super important thing. It was just super comforting. 

So… Link in the show notes if you want to buy a copy of the book I’m talking about from an independent and cooperative bookstore. The Seminary Co-op is a real treasure so get your book needs filled there. And not… Well, emphasis on “independent and cooperative,” I guess.

But, yeah, because we’re all hungering for some human interaction and personal connection, I’m going to put a confession of sorts into this opening. It’s relevant, I promise. (Pause) Is a phrase I say way too much on this podcast. But regardless, you know how I love Welcome to Night Vale? Not that vast array of Night Vale Presents productions that now includes Our Plague Year which has been fairly cathartic in an unexpected way. Well, yes, I love that network but also I mean specifically, Welcome to Night Vale: the podcast that can be seen as the one that started it all, though the actual nature of “it all” might be up for some soft debate.

Even if it’s not intended, I do see a lot of insightful and profound points in Night Vale and its various citizens. Despite the potential intention, which I can’t obviously know. And this is a point I’m fairly dedicated to. This is not so much a death-of-the-author situation, in that I don’t care what the creators intended or think like I used to say in the beginning of this podcast. Thanks character development! 

But now it’s more like, well, it’s more like I’m starting to believe that there’s always something to be learned or gained from the people or places or stories around us. Each interaction is a drop of water brushing against a rock wall. Changes may be gradual and hard to see, but as a kid from Arizona, let me say that the Grand Canyon is a giant hole in the ground created by a lot of water. It just turned out to be picturesque. 

In this case of this podcast or in the case of me, I think it’s more recognizing the insights that come from interaction. Because I am not a rock. I am a sentient person. And my favorite podcasts and characters are things worth considering.

And well, on that note, who do you think my favorite character is? Hint. It’s not Cecil.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 88.

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My favorite character of Welcome to Night Vale is The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. Not fair of me to try and make you guess that because… Well, there are a lot of citizens of Night Vale, and she wouldn’t necessarily be high on the list of citizens that immediately come to mind. Until your shoes are burning in the trash can. Or all the chairs in your home are glued to the wall or ceiling. Just little chaotic things like that. 

In those cases, it would probably be The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home doing those things. She even came on the radio to tell you that she did it. You know how they say that the eyes are the window to the soul? Well The Faceless Old Woman does not have eyes. So she had to find other ways of being direct. And she does. Also she tries to run for mayor.

She's chaotic, sure, but that's why I loved her so much. It was the absurdity of it all, or of her, that really won me over.

Now, Welcome to Night Vale is the sort of show that's choked full of such interesting chaos. The community of Night Vale is made up of many different and seemingly impossible beings. But definitely not angels. Wink. Wink. But there's a glow cloud, a sentient patch of hazy, a fully formed, grown man's dismembered hand, a five-headed dragon. Etc etc. But out of all these characters, The Faceless Old Woman was the only character that--to me--truly represented a sort of unmitigated chaos. And by unmitigated, I mean not a chaos bending towards nefarious intent. Not a chaos that was sent out to do the biddings of the elite or mysterious forces at the expense of others. The Faceless Old Woman is just unbounded chaos. She does what she wants.

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Just an fyi, I think the best explanation for why she resonates with me so much might be connected to or partially explained by the fact that this sort of unhindered chaos is my play style for table top role playing games. I’m not even talking about being a chaotic good or chaotic evil. I mean, chaos for the sake of chaos. Like I change my chaotic alignment to somewhat chaos clash with the the alignments of people in the group. It all demands on what is necessary to achieve true chaos. And that might seem counter to the point of the game, but this play style is surprisingly consistent with the different reasons or approaches people bring to the board.

Wish fulfillment? I’ve spent my entire life being the good kid who never stepped out of line. Now, I’m playing as a character who can’t seem to see those lines. Or that’s what she wants you to think. In reality, she deliberately chooses to disregard norms and expectations just because she thinks it’s funny. Encounter lock door? Don’t even attempt to pick the lock. Climb through an open window on a completely different floor that doesn’t even take you to the conversation you were supposed to be eavesdropping on. 

Escapism? Well, burning down a tavern to kill the bats inside to make two gold pieces makes no practical sense in the slightest, but that’s the real world. In Dungeons and Dragons, I can do whatever I want--assuming the dungeon master permits it. So find someone with a very good sense of humor and go wild. Literally. 

Having fun? Well, I think this is fun. Spurring on creativity? I’m finding new and elaborate schemes to foil literally everyone, even my party members.

And on that note, it’s a wonder I have not been banned from the table yet. That’s the main reason why you should not pull the stunts I do in DnD. If you undermine the DM’s planning or your fellow adventurers, they may not want to play with you anymore and will rightfully not play with you. That’s a fair reaction, even I’ll admit. And that thought has been enough to rein me in a bit. But still, even in this current state of affairs, I have not gotten a reprimand.

I’m sure an aspect of that is tied to the fact that we are all friends. And you know, that would make things awkward if I was kicked out of a long running campaign that I was very invested in. But unless I hang out with a bunch of really skilled actors--and that would open up a can of a whole variety of potential conspiracies--they’re genuinely happy to have me around and find my many stunts humours. I guess I do keep things entertaining or interesting. But I’m definitely not the best part of anything. That’s the weird sexual tension that comes up between some of the players. Why this came up? Or how? I don’t exactly know, but we’re all running with it.

And that’s just it, there is something fun about absurdity and chaos. In the face of it, we want to laugh. And while that action is a way of releasing pent up energy not just expressing an emotion, repeated re-engagement seems to suggest something positive attached to it. Like there’s a reason I haven’t been kicked out yet. There’s a reason we like things that are (quote) “so random?”

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Or there’s a reason why it makes sense for the creators of Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, to make the third installment of the Night Vale book series about The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. And to title it as such.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m reading into a situation that was actually just convenient. More like a ‘oh hey, here’s a character people make really cool cosplays of. They must like her. Let’s make a book about her. Also, she’s super interesting. I mean, being faceless and all that.’ That would make sense, and it would be a good reason to write a book. But for me, there’s no way of knowing. What I can know and what I do I know is that I was super excited to get this book. This was a book about my favorite character of Night Vale. Of course I would be excited. In fact, I was more excited about this book than I was about the two that came before. And in some ways, that makes sense. I mean, I had the other two so completionist impulse but I also knew they were good books.

However, there was more to it than that. The best way I can explain it is like this. It was almost like in the early state of a relationship where you get super curious, and you want to know more about this person that you feel a strong connection to. You just want to know more, right? You want to achieve the sort of intimacy that can only come with more knowledge. There are other types of intimacy, sure, but you aren’t all there yet. You just want… More. You’ll take anything. You want to know more. You want to know almost everything.

(Music cuts) And then, you find out that they were consumed by an elaborate plot that just kept evolving over time. But was initially born from an inflicted darkness and evil. And suddenly, you… you have to question a lot.

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And yeah, I suppose that no one makes through life completely unscatched. But that’s… Well, I’m not going to spoil the book, but it’s a lot. Maybe you even expected a lot because of how intense being a faceless old woman who secretly lives in someone else’s home just is as a default state of being. Like that would require quite the journey. Which makes for a great read, FYI. And a sort of existential crisis for someone who was drawn to the character because of what seemed like a purposeless absurdity. Because… Well, there’s always a purpose to it. And maybe I needed to realize why.

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But to avoid spoilers, let me go back to my Dungeons and Dragons game. Storytime: I once sidetrack a campaign for an hour of real-life time trying to devise an epic poem for a beetle I got distracted by when I failed a perception check. His name was Billy Bob Joe Engforth the Fifth because I am really bad at naming things. And his journey started when his wife beetle had sent him away because she was having an affair with the mail beetle. (Pause). Like beetle that brings you your mail. Line in a beetle town, community. Not m-a-l-e. Although he was m-a-l-e. I mean, m-a-i-l. And you know what? Just bear with me because I never said it was a good epic poem. I just said it existed. 

But anyway, being rejected like this, Billy Bob Joe Engforth the Fifth sets out on this journey of self discovery. And at the end of this, his eldest son, the sixth of the poorly named lineage, finds him and they make peace. And then the son beetle was then eaten by a bird. So… There was that.

It might have been a fun time, but if you can think past that absurdity, it started when I failed a perception check. And if you’ve never played DnD, let me tell you. You do get frustrated when you fail a perception check in an environment that you as a player knows is important to the campaign. It’s not just that you did not get your way, but now you have to worry that you’re going to be ill-equipped going into a major battle or that you’ll miss an important hint, sending you in the wrong direction on a campaign and forcing your DM to do a lot more planning that they wouldn’t have had to do if you just had better luck. 

In many ways, that fun romp through the beetle poem was almost an apology to my team. Or it was the lemonade made from lemons. 

Getting distracted like that, though, was completely in line with my playable character. Just like the past adventures of The Faceless Old Woman are completely in line with who we know her to be from the 26th episode of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. 

I can’t speak too much for her without spoiling the book, but there is a sense of consistency that demanded a sort of reflection about how we--or me, more accurately--got to where I was. 

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Now, there’s a lot about my playable character that needs to be unpacked because once I started opening this can, the worms came out in full force, but the absurdity and the frustration is the part I want to focus on.

Because, you know, Surprisingly enough, I don’t have that much patience. It’s not a deliberate choice so much as it’s an extension of my more anxious nature that--if my therapist is right--stems from my father’s poor health throughout my childhood until he eventually died when I was a teenager. In such a situation, waiting for news or results meant finding out if my dad was going to live another month or a couple years. In other words, it’s not that I feel entitled to an instantaneous result, but I’m worried what the result is going to mean and want to rip the bandaid off sooner rather than later. 

That isn’t exactly news. It is, though, is a different way at looking at what I’ve talked about before. 

I’ve spoken a lot in the podcast about how I escaped into stories as a way of coping with the stress of losing my father young or of evening just anticipating it. Because I can never remember a time when that wasn’t an aspect of my reality. Sometimes a mental redirect was the only option I had, so it was great that it kind of worked out for me. 

This wasn’t anything I didn not already know about myself, but recently, as a result of reading this book and realizing that my favorite chaos agent wasn’t the chaos agent I assumed she was, I’ve had to interrogate the play style I use in Dungeons and Dragons, something that I consider to be one of the ultimate joys in my life right now. And that is, that in this game, I deliberately choose to reject what makes me anxious in favor of being the chaos agent who takes a certain type of control by doing the thing they really should not be doing. In other words again, anticipating a rejection by the dice or by the world, I preempt that by diverting the story until the initial anxious impulse can subside on its own.

Or in a third set of words, my questionable actions--much like lighting shoes on fire--aren’t being done because I wanted to burn the shoes. That’s the surface reason, yes, but there’s a more long term plan going on. Once again, not going to spoil what the Faceless Old Woman wants to do, but I am still reverting to the sort of reaction that I feel fairly confident will keep my world together. Rational or not. 

And emphasis on that last bit. Because another underlying theme of the book is that… Well, rationality is not always going to hold. Sometimes we want to just get a cathartic release, even if that is not in our best interest. And while that’s an inevitable impulse, it’s not one that comes without its risks. Like losing all that you are. Your soul in many terms. A soul that can be manifested in different ways, to skirt the issue.

That’s the part that this novel made so readily apparent. And probably a lesson I really needed. Because--frankly--getting kicked out of a DnD game really isn’t that big of a deal, this impulse has the potential of spiraling. And that maybe why I have so many podcasts, but you know, I’m still always working on more. 

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