“Nowt as queer as folk,” as my grandmother often says. And it’s true to some extent - people can be rather peculiar. Spend enough time around them and you might notice it. Personally I much prefer to keep my distance. 

I’ll sit here, at my little writing desk, and glance out the window from time to time. Seeing all the people on the other side, wandering around aimlessly, sometimes shouting, often whispering. I’m safe here, behind the glass. My greyhound assures me this is all perfectly normal.

Tim is one of the few people I’ll make an exception for. He is a wonderful game designer (he’s really not paying me to say that) and friend. He really captures something in the worlds he builds - though what that something is can sometimes be hard to pin down. 

What is the emotion one gets from play-pretending as a demonic overlord in D666? Why are so many of us enraptured by the thought of Be(ing) Like a Crow? And why did I so quickly throw money at him when he told me I could, through All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl, immerse myself in the “fiction” of exploring the dark and weird corners of the world as an unemployed writer, desperately trying to get their voice heard? I live that.

From Punk to the People

Punk is Dead was a game that blew me away (and, in its fiction, most of the UK).  Tim had managed to create a vision so therapeutically bleak in its views of modern day capitalism and nightmarish class structure that, to me, rivals the greats of the genre - Fallout, Outer Worlds, Mad Max - it deserves to sit among the pantheon of the great creative end-of-the-world media. 

Where it really stands out is in the sheer level of hope that pervades its grim old world. The titular Punks aren’t doomed to die without leaving their marks on the world. They’re going to break it down around them. But then that begs the question: who is going to build it back up again? That all comes down to the ordinary folk of this world - in particular those who become Folk Heroes.

When I was approached to write something spooky for Folk, I was honestly terrified. I love the original game, I have a deep respect for Tim and his work, and a long lasting love for folk horror. I was certain that by agreeing to try and bring some (more) horror to this world that I could only ruin my relationships with all three. This is ultimately a good thing: I can and will use that fear.

The Problem With Folk These Days

Folk music is such a personal thing. It comes from generational history, or from the lore of the land. It’s something that could be ingrained in all of us, in our own different ways. Folk horror is, at its most exploitative at least, not that. 

It’s easy for these stories to come from the view of the outsider, looking in and critiquing that which they don’t understand, and painting those outside of the “civilised world” as backwards and dangerous. In short, the “folk” and their ways are to be feared. 

And it’s easy to see why that’s the way it is - it’s effective. Who doesn’t love The Wickerman, after all? Woodward, Cage or Maiden, I’ll take them all. The fear of the unknown is effective and powerful. Like I said before, there’s nothing stranger than people.

Folk Meets Horror

What I really want to explore is, if folk music channels the heritage of a land through the years 'til it becomes familiar, can folk horror do the same? It’s an interesting, if not the most easy to explain, question. I could wax on lyrically about this for a while, and really take you on a meandering stroll with my academic side. Or, I could just say this:

Let’s hit the £35k stretch goal, and find out together.

Adam