Welcome Back, Desert Bluffs

Podcast
Title:	Welcome Back, Desert Bluffs
Created by:	Ren Connolly
Date(s):	2015
Focus:
Fandom:	Welcome to Night Vale
External Links:	on YouTube
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Welcome Back, Desert Bluffs is a fan podcast.

Synopsis

Description: Welcome Back Desert Bluffs is a fan cast based on Welcome to Night Vale, which is the intellectual property of Commonplace Books, Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, etc. The voice of Terry is Ren Connolly. It takes place in Desert Bluffs, and uses creative commons licensed music for all backing tracks and Climate Reports. Email [email protected] with questions, concerns, stone tablets etched with mythic prophecies, suggestions, et cetera.

The series ended after 6 episodes.

Action from TPTB

Screenshot of an email from the Welcome to Night Vale staff

In September 2015, Ren Connoll received a curt email signed "Welcome to Night Vale":

We notice that you put your fan fiction podcast on iTunes and other major podcast apps. This is not OK with us. Please remove it from iTunes/Stitcher/etc. right away.

Screenshot of Fink and Cranor's statement on permissibility of amateur fanworks in the Night Vale FAQ. It says "Noncommercial fan projects are fine by us. Please keep it free and let us know how it goes!"

Citing the alleged open policy toward free fanworks in the Night Vale FAQ, Ms. Connolly posted the following on the Night Vale discussion on Reddit:

Before I began recording and releasing Welcome Back Desert Bluffs, I consulted their FAQ. Seeing those two sentences made me feel confident that what I was doing would be okay with Night Vale. I had never heard of Night Vale attempting to stifle any fan projects, in fact due to the robust fandom Night Vale boasts I thought they were the type to foster these sorts of endeavors.

I’m going to be honest here. The email I got from them scared me. I struggle with anxiety and storytelling is my outlet. I’d never felt confident enough in my stories to publish them online before, and now that I had, and that it was going pretty okay, all of a sudden I got notice that what I was doing was ‘not ok’. I feel bullied. I feel betrayed. I feel like my stories are not welcome in the Night Vale fandom.

I emailed them back later that day, in order to ask if there was anything I could do so I could leave my podcast where it was. I asked if the email meant they were changing their position on non-commercial fan projects. I wanted to know what I had done wrong, and I wanted to fix it.

I haven’t heard back from them yet [As of May 2016, she still has not.], but I’ve already made my decision. I’m ending Welcome Back Desert Bluffs. There are a lot of loose strings that I won’t be able to tie up for all of you, and I’m sorry about that. But I can’t keep making this podcast within a universe owned and controlled by someone who doesn’t want me here. I can’t tell stories to silence, and removing my podcast from iTunes and Stitcher would make it harder for me to have an audience.

But my stories aren’t going to end, I’m just leaving their universe. I’m going to move on, tell my own stories, and use the skills that I’ve developed making Welcome Back Desert Bluffs to make it even better. To quote Welcome To Night Vale: “It was the first thing, and it will be the last.”

I’ll make sure to keep all of you updated on where I end up, and I hope you’ll let me keep telling stories to you. I hope you’ll remember that the reason I ended this podcast is not because I wanted to—I ended it because I was pushed out of the universe it resided in. I’m angry about it, and I hope you are too. But I get it if you’re not. In the long term, this is probably for the best, anyway.

Thanks for listening.

Comments to Ms. Connolly's post speculated that Fink and Cranor feared a kind of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fanfiction Controversy. Some were skeptical that the email had actually come from the creators at all, especially since Ms. Connolly received no reply. Ms. Connolly added, "I've sought some informal counsel, he says it's a 'soft' C&D. With this email sent they could contact the folks who host my work and have it forcibly removed. The tone sounded off to me too but the lack of response for three days has me stressed out enough that I don't even want to do it any more."

Robert York, the creator of Blood Space Armed Forces Radio, known as Captnq on Reddit, posted the following:

I'm just going to write this because if I second guess myself I'm going to back out.

I contacted WTNV and got a response. A poor one, but a response. It was off the cuff, curt, and in some ways, rude. However, maybe it was some over worked intern. Maybe it was Joseph Fink himself. I dunno.

I'll sum it up:

We don't trust you on sites that let you charge money for downloading your podcast. Anywhere else is fine.

Several fans, including York, posted their decision to stop listening to the show as a result of Ms. Connolly's experience. York also stopped working on his podcast Good Morning Night Vale Tonight and maintaining the Blood Space Armed Forces Radio Network, which curated Night Vale fan audio, as a result of this incident.