Director’s Notes: Episode 261 - Brought To You By Flakey O's

When I think of a Night Vale episode concept, the process that follows goes one of two ways. I either write a bunch of notes (and eventually a script) that follows that original idea pretty faithfully—or, like this ep, by the time I’ve written the script, it has become a completely different concept altogether. My original idea for this episode was an off-format story about someone finding something strange in a box of cereal. It was loosely based on a true story of me finding a cocoon (!) in a package that was shipped from China, and then that cocoon hatching (!!) on the table in front of me after I poked it, and an unidentified buggy guy of some kind (??!) emerging from it in a little blob of green slime. 

So I was thinking about that (I think about that a lot), and also about cereal box prizes (I think about that a lot), and also about Night Vale (I think about that a lot), and started writing a Night Vale story about a cereal box prize that was alive. But once I dug into the backstory of Flakey O’s, Night Vale’s signature cereal, and realized they had been acquired in a hostile takeover by Kellogg’s in an episode over six years ago (which I either didn’t know or had forgotten), I became way more interested in the story of a Flakey O’s uprising and liberation and subsequent partying spree. It was so fun to write; I love the story that it became, and I hope you do too. 

But if anyone is interested in process-based behind the scenes stuff, here’s the original intro I wrote to an episode that will never be:

In our top story today, Kendra Wetherby has found something in her bowl of cereal. She was pouring her second helping of Honey Nut Frosted Parallelograms when an object fell from the box and landed in the milk with a splash. It is still there now. It floats, kind of. She stares down at it in amazement. She has of course heard stories about the olden days when cereal boxes used to contain prizes. But those are just legends. Things like that don’t exist anymore. 

She gives the object a nudge with her spoon. It glides away as if alive. She tries to scoop it up this time, but again, it floats away in the milk. 

“What are you doing?” her roommate Jack asks, coming into the kitchen for coffee. Roommate is a generous word. Kendra sleeps on the futon in his basement for free. 

“Did you eat all the cereal?” he asks, frowning slightly.

That’s it, that’s as far as I got! Still could be a fun idea, but I lost the momentum on it. So if anyone feels like using it as a prompt, please add more to the story in the comments! 😄

-Brie Williams

February 1, 2025

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