For my final project for Domain Fellows, I knew I wanted to make something audio-related. Music is a huge part of my life, but I am no singer and I only know how to play the flute (which is back in my room at home). A close second is podcasts. Choosing a podcast to emulate was easy: Welcome to Night Vale is a quirky, funny, creative podcast — just up my alley.

After deciding I wanted to make my own Night Vale episode, I decided to see if I could find a basic outline for what the basic episode entailed. What I found was even better: a how-to guide for writing a Night Vale episode.

For the music, I went back to where I found the music for my aesthetic video and went to the artists’ page. There, I found a treasure trove of music by Podingtonbear. I combed through the well-organized albums (they’re grouped by genre/mood and I love it) and picked out the music I thought sounded most “Night Vale” to me.

In the initial writing process, I needed to generate ideas. So from Bob’s how-to guide, I used the a random idea generator called inspirobot.

I am an artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for endless enrichment of pointless human existence.

-inspirobot

This bot helped me think creatively, abstractly, and (most importantly) absurdly. I also highly recommend mindfulness mode. Editing a couple phrases generated by the bot, I was able to make my introduction and proverb for my episode and continue on writing my script.

Lastly, during the writing of my podcast, I decided to make a cover photo that parodied the original Night Vale art. I mean, how could I resist?? Using the Noun Project and Canva, I made this beauty to the right.

Gotten all the way here and haven’t listened to my podcast yet?? Check it out!!

Weather: “Niagara Falls in a Raft” by Podingtonbear

Check out the making of Welcome to Night University!

*Not to be confused with Night Vale Community College

I used to love swinging itself, of course. I would swing every single day at recess. One of my friends in early primary school, Chad, and I were once swinging when we promised to grow up and both become police officers (neither of us did).

Now my hips are wider and swinging hurts after a while. The squeaking of rusty chains makes my ears on the brink of bleeding. Don’t get me started about accidentally sitting on a wet seat.

But despite all that, the subtle dropping feeling in my stomach when I reach the apex of the swing… amazing. I still go swinging periodically, mainly when I take my little brothers to the park by our house. Also, looking up and watching the clouds drifting by and the tops of trees zoom closer then farther then close then farther away…

This wasn’t really a useful tangent but I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

For music, I went to Free Music Archive and searched for something to use in the background of the video. Searching for “indie music” I found one user who had a music style I enjoyed. Upon finding a piece I really liked, I had a better idea for putting together the video. The beat of the music gave me the idea to take sections of the videos and change their speed and reverse them.

Making this video has made me want to create a series of aesthetic gifs or short looping videos. I liked this video, though it made me want to keep changing what I was working on. I decided to finish the video I was working on and I could adapt it to other projects later.

Uploading this video was another challenge in itself. I decided to host it on my Twitter, but getting that video up was difficult. At first the file was an enormous 2GB mov file that wouldn’t download to my phone, so then I had to convert it to an mp4. Then Twitter decided to mess with my mind and make the audio mess up when I tried to view it right away. I really had to scroll through my feed a bit then go back to my profile and bobs-your-uncle the issue was solved.

I could’ve kept editing, especially after my last export finding one thing I wanted to change, but I forced myself to come to a stopping point and move on to my next project.

In case you haven’t see it, check out my video!

For years I've had random footage on my phone, so I decided to make something out of it while learning how to use Final Cut Pro ?‍
Shoutout to @confusedaccent for helping me when I got stuck (& girl knows my path was paved in honey) pic.twitter.com/fqGAJNLZkB

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) March 17, 2019

Check out the behind-the-scenes of this adventure!

how cute would it be if this little guy had an instagram?

It was just an idea, a fun thing to think about when I was bored or procrastinating. Then, finally, I made this idea come to life. Winston Nanobit came to be…

View this post on Instagram

Hello world! I’m Winston Nanobit ?? pleased to meet you!!

A post shared by Winston Nanobit (@winston_nanobit) on Feb 19, 2019 at 5:49pm PST

I have slowly built him a following, hopefully that will continue smoothly, and I have started taking him on many adventures. I feel he will continue having fun times for a while, so who know where he may go next!

I would like to experience the magical drink I hear people talk about all the time. “Coffee.”

But figuring out how to make it is going to be difficult.

I am a pretty small creature in a world that is very much designed for humans, so a lot of people tell me my life is going to be hard. But I try to look at things in the best light I can, and that can even mean helping others out whenever they need it.

I hope one day to better adapt to the world around me. That might be a slow process, but I will get there eventually! For now, I’ll take things one day at a time and see where I end up.

“Goldfish attack (the snack)”

So I took that idea and ran with it. Why not start with something fun?

After creating a short storyline, I wanted to add more depth to the story. Instead of using pictures as I am normally inclined to do, I decided to play with adding sounds. I used audio clips from Freesound.org and used the tool Soundcite JS to create the cool in-text effects. This helped make my short piece a little more exciting since anything helps, right?

Check out the final story!

Then, on January 29th, 2025, judgement fell. The snack that smiled back now did so with wrath.

People all over the world began to notice the eyes of their cheese-crackers were glowing a subtle red. Customers in grocery stores noticed the cardboard containers vibrating violently on their shelves. Some unfortunate Goldfish were destroyed in the mouths of toddlers before they could fully awaken their powers.

The Goldfish crackers came to life, a sentient soul in each cracker. Though stiff at first from the baked flour, they were soon able to move in a way not unlike the commercials that used to air for the Pepperidge Farms product.

When the initial panic subsided, I reached out to Pepperidge Farms for their thoughts on the matter. After their product had come to life and overtaken humanity in the most powerful position on the planet, the company essentially threw its hands up in defeat. Many people accused the company of knowing that Goldfish were alive all along. But, according to Campbells Soup Company (owner of Pepperidge Farms), they may have produced the trillions of little fish crackers, but they certainly weren’t the ones to give them autonomy.

Mark A. Clouse, President and CEO of Campbells Soup Company, spoke to me about if he had consciously made the decision to have life creatures lie dormant in their products.

“Imagine the uproar, particularly from the vegans. People finding out they were eating real cheese-flavored fish, we wouldn’t even be half the business we are today.”

The historic events of the Goldfish Uprising of ’25 have been well documented. Once humans realized fighting back was futile, life actually became better than before their new overlords. Oceans were prioritized, plastic production was immediately ceased, humans were put to work cleaning up after the messes they created. Countries were dissolved, boarders erased, all the bad humans (for instance, every person highlighted in Netflix’s “Dirty Money”) were eradicated, the good ones kept for their labor abilities and entertaining qualities such as stand-up comedy, podcast making, and abstract painting.

Now, Earth is thriving. Under the leadership of the Goldfish, all living beings are flourishing.

All is better now, let us never go back to the way things were.

May all your days from now on go swimmingly,

–Goldfish 4954