Cecil Gershwin Palmer

In the show, Cecil Palmer works as the newscaster for the Night Vale community radio station. and mostly reads the local news, though sometimes serves as a witness or otherwise takes parts in local happenings. He is the main character and driving voice in Night Vale; no characters apart from Cecil speak in the show until episode 16 ("Phone Call"), and he is in every episode until episode 47 ("Company Picnic"). His delivery is deadpan, He is an unreliable narrator and often interrupts his broadcasts with tangents and speeches about his personal life, and expressions of disgust for neighboring town Desert Bluffs These personal asides form the basis for much of the story. Very few aspects of Cecil's physical character are revealed to the audience. He has hair and eyes, but his race and age are unknown and he is described in the show as "not too short or tall, not fat or too thin". the character does, at times, seem "telepathic and able to scry listeners’ thoughts" and is "implied to be capable of withstanding worrying amounts of radiation". In the books, Cecil is either not depicted or is heavily obscured to the point no physical characteristics can be discerned. He is the doppelgänger of Kevin, the radio host from Desert Bluffs, who is similarly left undescribed. Cecil's relationship with Carlos is treated as unremarkable by other characters, except for brief moments where they find their love comforting. In initial episodes, Cecil idolizes Carlos and his appearance, but comes to understand that he is "even better" as "he is imperfect". They marry in episode 100 ("Toast") He remembers very little, if anything, from his childhood. He has a sister, Abby, and a niece, Janice. One of the few things he remembers about his mother is her prophecy that he will be killed in a manner that shall "involve a mirror". There is a lack of a "functioning time stream" in Night Vale. Cecil's first broadcast occurred before the invention of radios, when Night Vale was being colonized by white settlers. As a resident of the town, Cecil regularly experiences memory loss and experiences fictitious memories. == Character ==

Creation and development (left) as Carlos and Cecil Baldwin (right) as Cecil in a 2015 live performanceWhile initially just the radio host who introduced the audience to the world of Night Vale and represented the town's "weird and bizarre", He was given the last name "Palmer" in late 2013, after the screenwriters and Baldwin discovered that the fictional Cecil outranked the real Baldwin in Google search results. The name itself is a reference to the American drama Twin Peaks, which has characters Laura and Leland Palmer. His physical appearance, like the appearance of many Night Vale characters, was intentionally left ambiguous by Fink and Cranor. According to Fink, he believe that it was "not really what’s important in [the] show". Cecil does not have a prominent role in the Welcome to Night Vale novel, though several of his monologues are included. Voice and delivery The character of Cecil is voiced by Cecil Baldwin, and his vocal performance is a major part of the character. Cecil, like Baldwin, has a deep "radio announcer" voice, yet also a feeling a nostalgia for the audience. The story is presented with some distance between Cecil and the plot; he is often reading from a script or recounting earlier events, which places distance between the reader and the events. However, some stories are presented as if they were live. During these segments, which are typically more urgent and dangerous, Cecil becomes more emotional and less filtered. Most of the show is recorded at Baldwin's home studio, and segments requiring interaction with other characters are recorded with the use of Skype. He directly interacts with the audience, addressing them as members of the Night Vale community and using roleplay and call and response segments. == Reception ==

Fandom Cecil is a popular character within the Night Vale fandom; and Cranor has attributed much of the show's popularity to the pairing. More generally, he was described by Wired as being "at the heart of [Night Vale’s] enduring appeal" to fans, and the Journal of Radio & Audio Media said that Cecil's delivery of the script, or more specifically, the parts where he broke away from the script, "endear[ed]" him to the audience and, like real talk radio, allowed for the audience to grow closer to him. Few aspects of Cecil's physical appearance are revealed to the audience and, Artists often depict Cecil with similar attributes; he is white, wears glasses, who wears sweater vests, suspenders, and some form of tie. Cecil is also frequently depicted as an abled-bodied white man; this has caused contention within the fandom. The common fan imagining of Cecil has led to Cecil's doppelganger, Kevin, who is voiced by African American actor Kevin R. Free, being drawn as white as well. In The Iconography of Fanart, EJ Nielsen argued that drawing Kevin as white could be seen as whitewashing within the fandom. Drawings depicting Cecil as non-white do exist and are looked on favorably by Baldwin. Critical reception and analysis In Critical Approaches to Welcome to Night Vale, in reference to Cecil's openness and his relationship with Carlos, and the town's nonplussed reaction, Stobbart described it as "refreshing and heartening for a work of fiction to display a society where homophobia seemingly does not exist". A Berkeley Technology Law Journal article argued that Cecil, through his online popularity, had likely "attained the characterization and the cultural and economic value" needed to be considered copyrightable in the US as laid out by DC Comics v. Mark Towle, but said it was "unclear" whether Cecil had enough of a physical presence needed to qualify for protection. In the 2014 and 2015 Audio Verse Awards, Baldwin won "Best Actor in an Original Leading Role" and "Best Actor with a Leading Role in an Original, Long-Form, Serial Production" for his role as Cecil. ==References==