@Thenomain said:
@il-volpe said:
[..] magical realism [..]
I looked this one up and I have to say that it's kind of a dumb term.
Also, a splash of surrealism? Do not look too deeply into the dog park.
The term itself?
The below is not really relevant unless you, like me, get all happy about granular taxonomies. I do rabbit on.
The idea, eh. Surrealism addresses issues about cognition, how the subconscious informs ones perceptions, blurred lines between dream and reality, sanity and madness, that sort of thing. Magical realism addresses how culture informs our perceptions about what is uncanny and what is mundane.
Welcome to Night Vale is a work of surrealism if you consider yourself, the listener, to be the primary character -- are you dreaming this radio broadcast, WTF? But few of the other characters (so far as I know, I've not listened to every episode) appear to find themselves to be living in a distorted reality or to find any of the weird stuff that happens to be outside of the realms of the canny and cult. There's only Carlos, and he doesn't take it that hard either.