Name: Caz
DW username: n/a
E-Mail: hobbitesque - at - gmail - dot - com
AIM: rianofski
Plurk: rianofski
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Kevin
Series: Welcome to Night Vale
Timeline: He's been thrown through a door, and landed in a desert. (A little bit post episode 49b: Old Oak Doors)
Canon Resource Link: whompCharacter History: Believe it or not, Kevin probably used to be a pretty good guy.
He's helmed Desert Bluffs Radio Inc. for longer than he or I can say. Back in the day, Desert Bluffs was pretty neat. It was probably never a
normal small town, any more than Night Vale is; but through rumour and implication we can guess that it used to be a little freer, a little less fake, and exactly as fatal (but for different reasons).
Kevin himself was probably a lot like Cecil is today. The podcast draws strong parallels between them, both directly and through foil/mirror comparisons. It repeatedly states that they're identical to look at, besides the eyes; the same hostile takeover that changed Kevin for the worse is attempted on Cecil. And when Cecil makes an impassioned speech about his hometown, Kevin remarks that he "used to feel that way about Desert Bluffs".
And then he tells the Parable of the Smiling God.
There's a reason Kevin is the way he is. There's a reason Desert Bluffs is the way it is. That reason is the Smiling God. It's an entity which came to that little desert town some years or decades or centuries ago, settled in like a mallet to the skull, and turned it into Galt's Gulch meets
The Stepford Wives.
Exactly when, and exactly how? Your guess is as good as mine. Kevin indicates that he fought to the end -- but in that end, as he describes it, "even the most resistant of radio hosts found his way to productive work, happy songs, and a wide, gaping smile." Nowadays, God is a good three-fourths slice out of the lemon drizzle cake of Kevin's brain.
As the beloved Voice of Desert Bluffs, he kept up the town's morale by any means necessary, may or may not have played the raw bellow of God as a regular segment, and brought everyone up-to-the-minute news on all the local sandstorms and spider plagues. Give his show a listen -- no really, listening is legally required. He was always upbeat and positive about Night Vale and the people there -- Steve Carlsberg, what a great guy! -- perfectly mirroring (hah) the loudly disgusted attitude Cecil displayed towards Desert Bluffs.
He's a narrator at heart. One word will never do when a hundred could do better; it might be the only inefficient thing he was allowed to hold on to. And as a narrator, he was already reporting on the plot before he began to really interact with it. The biggest early revelation about him came when he wasn't even there. He spent a whole episode building a picture of Desert Bluffs as a happy, neat, clean, prosperous place, full of laughter and song and people holding hands. And it was a questionable picture, sure -- but it wasn't clear just
how questionable until Cecil visited the exact same place, and described it as horror, and bones, and blood.
Even without a more trustworthy narrator dropping in, if you listened to his show for very long, you would get clues that Kevin enjoys some very strange things. Cute videos of kittens; cute swarms of desert tarantulas; cute maximisation of efficiency at the cost of basic humanity. People help him decorate his studio in the same way that a bucket of Dulux helps you decorate your house. He just loves kitten videos, and isn't it quietly hilarious that these floating kittens are going to die? He just adores his StrexPet, that big ol' vicious attack furby, and that's why he throws things at it and force-feeds it whole mice. Maybe the whole kit and caboodle is a front, even the stuff that isn't overtly fake. Maybe he doesn't know what he likes any more unless somebody's paying him to push it. Maybe he's being honest for once when he says that "I rarely feel anything at all."
Who knows? He's not being sponsored to say.
One day, well over two years ago, he finally found a break in his schedule to visit delightful little old Night Vale. Or -- well, it was more of a break in his wall. During a magical sandstorm, a shimmering portal appeared in his studio, linking it with its double at Night Vale Community Radio. Kevin was taken briefly to Night Vale -- where he wondered over its darkness, its old-fashioned technology. Cecil was taken briefly to Desert Bluffs -- where he gibbered over its brightness, its handsome coating of blood and teeth. And they met each other for just a second, halfway between portals. Kevin described their interaction as a hug. Cecil, who is a lot more truthful about these things, described it as a brief, murderous scuffle.
It wasn't the last time Kevin would find his way to Night Vale.
There's a company called StrexCorp, the Murdoch Corporation of the desert, which employed Kevin and everyone else in Desert Bluffs until it was recently bought by legally-indefinable beings. It was an expansive company with, not to put too fine a point on it, world-conquering ambitions. Having bought every building, every person, every grain of sand in Desert Bluffs, they set their sights on Night Vale and snapped up the whole lot.
For a while, Cecil was allowed to keep hosting his radio show in the increasingly sunny and productive Night Vale. But before long he got too openly rebellious, and Kevin was carted in to replace him. Working with none other than the vice-president of StrexCorp, Lauren Mallard, Kevin's soothing voice over the airwaves told people that they had everything to work for, and nothing to fear but bankruptcy and ostracisation as a moocher. This new radio show -- broadcasting across what used to be Night Vale, and was now an exciting new segment of the Greater Desert Bluffs Metropolitan Area -- kept everyone up to date about the sprawling and mandatory Company Picnic that quickly swallowed up everyone else in the town.
Kevin's coverage of the picnic was gushing and extensive, but like all his news coverage, it was... sort of seen through rose-tinted goggles. How about that statement from the mayoral candidates that was all 'economic prosperity' this and 'Smiling God' that? And how about those volleyball nets that may or may not have been electric fences in reality? Or the cheery descriptions of a picnic that may or may not have been literally, factually, non-cheerfully, a prison camp? Kevin and the truth have a strictly business relationship, and the truth is rarely the highest bidder.
On the surface, he had a bubbly and playful relationship with his co-host Lauren. Barely a hair's breadth underneath the surface, they utterly despised each other. Their joint broadcasts were passive-aggressive warfare. When they got into real danger at the hands of a girl with a book, Kevin's helping hand to his embattled superior involved 1) leaving and 2) leaving faster.
He's very firmly embedded in Desert Bluffs's culture of killing your old self to become a more useful and productive person. Oddly enough, this is what ultimately ruined his efforts to convert Night Vale to the same point of view. He made one too many comments about "fixing" Janice, a young girl in a wheelchair; and her dad, Steve Carlsberg, came back from the brink of giving up and shoved Kevin face-first through his own dread portal. Steve Carlsberg, what a great guy!
And so he was stranded in a fathomless otherworld desert: hot, huge, hinted to be the origin point of the Smiling God itself. Eventually he found people -- but not in this timeline. In this timeline, he found Eway.
Abilities/Special Powers: The ability to see without eyeballs must count as a power. Possibly, also, the sheer grossness of his smile. Basically I am saying "please may I have slime and baby spiders dance out of his teeth with reckless abandon".
I like to think he has a weirdly high heat tolerance also? Partly because of my headcanons about Strex religious rituals, and partly because his patron is a colossal ball of gas, burning at temperatures beyond our comprehension, which has an MO of twisting and altering anything it sees to suit it better.
In canon I picture him having some clairvoyant ability, but I also imagine that when the Smiling God took over, it was taken into a back alley and beaten up and replaced with divine knowledge and spy networks. So: he definitely wouldn't be clairvoyant on arrival. But the Smiling God isn't in Wonderland, and I have thoughts about how that might affect him in the long term, so he might start getting a little clairvoyance back in the faaaaar future if that's okay.
Third-Person Sample: There's no shade, here in the other-desert, and God is hissing and buzzing on his darkening skin. There's no spit in his mouth, only sand, and wherever his eyes might be, they're probably glad they aren't here. He stopped sweating an hour ago.
"If the desert seems endless," he says out loud, "restructure your definition of 'endless'."
His voice sounds like air forced out of an oven, but he injects it with cheerfulness in an attempt to pep himself up. The moving, shimmering listeners are only a mirage, but he tells himself the needn't be. He keeps putting one foot in front of the last. He imagines being paid by the step. God is unforgiving on the back of his neck.
Kevin checks the time on his phone. The clock on the thing has gone haywire; now it's saying he's been here hours, and ten minutes ago it was saying he'd been here days. He hopes being thrown into an alternate dimension didn't void the warranty. But hey, at least the battery hasn't run out. That's kind of neat.
Two dollars a step. A company car if he reaches a thousand. It keeps him walking a bit longer.
"Always think of the bright side," he mumbles, an hour or a week later. "Most things have a bright side. Most things here have
only a bright side; the sun is greater than the sky and there is nothing at all with a side that is not bright."
The effort of speaking out loud makes him sway like a tenement building coming down to make room for a Starbucks.
The Smiling God is right there, baking him alive. Not extending any kind of assistance. Perhaps it's angry with him -- that thought is too frightening to really acknowledge. Would it kill it to help him? --
that thought is presumptuous at best, downright blasphemous at worst, and as soon as it swims into his head he realises there's a door.
An old-looking, oak door.
It swings softly open. There's a dark room on the other side which he does not recognise.
God is good, he thinks, and as if the doorway might vanish at any second -- which, let's be honest, it might -- he drags up his remaining strength, and barrels through it into the shade.
First-Person Sample: [ The camera in one of the Mansion's rooms turns on when somebody bumps into it.
At first he's just a blur, because the room is kind of dark, and the guy is literally half an inch from the camera. But then he backs off several steps, blinking in confusion. You'll be able to get a good look at him now. He's neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin; his smart shirt is tied loosely around his head; and his sunburn is beyond polite description. His eyes are -- no, let's not talk about those bottomless pits, let's please talk about anything else but that. His mouth is open, beaming, infinitely relieved to be... wherever the heck he is.
He looks a hell of a lot like a radio professional who used to live at the Mansion. ]Oh my goodness, a room this dark should not be allowed!
[ ...but he doesn't sound like Cecil at all. His voice is higher, with more of a giggle to it. And, currently, it sounds as raspy as a dehydrated salamander. ]This is not a joke!
[ he continues in the same lighthearted tone. He swings around, arms out in front of him, clearly not sure where he's walking. It's not that dark in the room, is it? Then again, he's just walked out of some pretty hardcore sunlight, and hasn't had time to adjust. ]Legal action should
literally be taken against this r--
[ His grasping hands find a doorhandle; he opens it; and he's buried underneath a tidal wave of brand-name bottles of water. Kevin's found the closet. ] ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
