For in the earth halls of the underworld, there is a palace made of skulls where the Queen of Sorrows sits on a throne carved from the dried salt of every tear shed in grief since time began.
– start of the trad. Hookland fairytale The Queen of Sorrows
Welcome to the first issue of the Hookland County Chronicle. While it functions as an emergency broadcast channel in case of extreme Musk, hopefully it will also provide some additional glimpses into the county. There will be extracts such as its ongoing bestiary, sometimes supplemented with small pieces by the likes of Emily Banting, C.L Nolan or the Rev. H.R. Fade. Some voices refuse silence. There will also be reviews, a quantum of fourth wall breaking as well as things that don’t fit well on Twitter. Eventually I hope there will even be guest posts. As is fairly clear, my soul is possessed by an Edwardian gentleman, so there may be technical glitches and a fair bit of ugliness while I learn this new platform. I hope you will stick with me and the Hookland County Chronicle as we both try to get better.
– David
You Beast You! The Haragrig
The standard Hookland bestiary includes many unlikely beasts. Winged-cats, Thorn-worms, the Ruffled-fox. However, among the mediaeval bestiaries of the Weychester Cathedral chained library, all marginalia madness and feral obscenities, are some of the most preposterous chimeras in the mythological eco-system. Owl-clawed rat, hairy pike, viper-tongued stoat and antlered dormouse all try to climb from its edges into common credulity. One that has escaped velum and iron-gall ink into the wilds of the imagination is the haragrig – a fearsome combination of hare and ape. Blessed with a hare’s head and powerful hind legs and the torso and arms akin to a Barbary ape. It also appears to have the communicative tail of a cat, but this is less often mentioned. Since the 10th century, the haragrig has been regarded as exceptionally rare, perpetually hungry and an augury of famine. Making the haragrig seem even more absurd are repeated claims from authors that it is a monotreme – a mammal that lays eggs. While commonly mentioned in the mediaeval period, it begins to disappear from telling after the second English Civil War, appears again to augur the English famine of 1727 and is seen intermittently during the 1830s and 1840s – which led to it being depicted in several famous anti-Corn Laws cartoons of the time. Aside from two patently ludicrous sightings of it in Hookland in 1939 and 1978, it appears to have become extinct in the collective consciousness of cryptids.
Light a candle for good Saint Birinus
Pray your secrets he won’t discuss
Light a candle for belusted Old Clip
Pray on your blood he will not sip
Light a candle for the Drowned Dead
Pray they’ll take another in your stead
– Trad. Hookland candle-lighting, often used in folk magic
Is It Worth It? Kraków Monsters
I never thought I would live in a time with a surfeit supernatural TV shows. This meant until recently I’d never contemplated just how dire such a profusion of the genre could turn out to be. Dozens of tepid, cliché reproducing exercises running on formula engine of teen actors and hackneyed tropes of eerie. For every joyous, novel series the viewer gets in this new era of streaming, a batch of hollow clones with the emotional depth of cappuccino froth and no sense of place follow, hoping to harvest an audience in its wake.
Which brings me to Netflix’s Kraków Monsters – a show with young cast, a surfeit of well-worn tropes and a delicious sense of both folklore and place. From the broken orphan protagonist to the overuse of rain and neon, much feels instantly familiar. The pitch is recognisably pathology procedural meets an occult X-Men. We even get it trying to pass off Grey’s Anatomy/Holby City during the zombie apocalypse at one point. Yet for all of this, it delivers things we rarely get on supernatural shows – working class characters devoid of cloying patronisation, a deep respect for traditional sources without any constraining fear of doing new things with them and as strong a sense of our common reality as the fantastical.
Kraków Monsters gives us a world where people drink too much, demons spit in your pints and sometimes, just sometimes, the gods of bars and drunks try to intervene. It is a world where people have a fair bit of ill-advised, rarely satisfactory sex, sometimes with demons, with extra realism provided in accepting that easy labels in this area are often unreliable. Most of all, it is world where we are not served anti-heroes, just ridiculously messy, complicated people who would often still be arseholes even if they were not fighting monsters. This is a painful mirror of human flaws as much as a telling of epic folkloric struggles.
For all its monsters – and the show is an excellent introduction to some of the Slavic bestiary – other horrors are offered. There is the cold neglect of tenement living, the fear and panic of student grant funding. Every episode is haunted by the warping gravity of loss, the manifest discomfort of modernity rubbing up against mediaeval Kraków.
While the main focus of the story is Aleksandra ‘Alex’ Walas played by Barbara Liberek, the true star it the titular city itself. You can feel the stickiness of its nightclub floors, the stench of its bogs. Its place told in graffiti, spills of light on rain-polished streets and the unsettling mix of church bells and sirens pushing passed the glass of dirty windows. The city seen through both spliff-smoke and the mythic lens. Its inhabitants caught between tourist commodification, redevelopment erasure and terror from its legendary past.
Kraków’s folklore flows through the show just as much as the river Vistula does. It’s famous spots such as the Wanda Mound with its drowned princess, are used with an apposite, graceful touch. Alongside the autopsies of monsters and demons, the layers of the city’s lore are cut open and exposed. History and myth as identity infrastructure below the scalpelled psychic skin. Beneath the concrete, not beach, but ghost soil.
There are issues with Kraków Monsters. The pacing is uneven. So is the some of the acting. Eight episodes allows it an indulgence it doesn’t deserve. At times it is like watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer with its funny bone removed. It often reaches deep for emotional resonance and ends up grasping soap opera approximation. While not problematic, there are intricacies to its plots. Be prepared to give it attention – especially if you are unused to the Slavic pantheon. Do not to expect the diversity of casting an equivalent English or American show would offer. This is Polish tale, made without care for catering to visitors and at least in terms of folklore, all the better for it.
A few months on from watching and it leitmotifs of rot and chaos told in mildew spread and flood contamination still linger. As does Kraków Monsters powerfulsense of old lost gods wandering a city imperilled by its forgetting of them. Despite the idea pushed by a few numpties that folk horror lives only in rural America, Scandinavia and Britain, some of the best film and TV in the genre currently comes from Korea, North Africa and Eastern Europe. Kraków Monsters is a reminder of that as well as folk horror is just as easily told in an urban setting. For all its moments of visual splendour, kinetic thrill and despite the hackneyed borrowing from Guillermo del Toro, what makes the show worth it is the rare treatment of folklore as vital psychic infrastructure rather than tinsel.
6.8/10 If watching, don’t mug yourself. View with the original Polish audio and subtitles, because the English language dub is awful.
Five-and-twenty Witch marks
Scratched upon a wall
Five-and-twenty Witch marks
To ward against the call
Baby twitch
Baby flitch
Baby crawl
Five-and-twenty witch marks
Bloody upon a wall
– Trad. Hookland rhyme which may be apotropaic or cursing depending on the intent of the person saying it
Notes From the Wyrd Lab
What’s going on with Hookland now that tepid Bond villain Musk owns Twitter?
Hookland from its zero moment, was all about re-enchantment, all about resistance. You know this, so it is no surprise to hear that in the short-term, Hookland will remain on Twitter in solidarity with all of those are trying and stop the app turning into a far-right hell-scape and hub of harm.
I am hopeful that the realities of owning Twitter might temper some of Elon Musk’s tepid bond villainy because the man is a narcissistic pisspuffin who imagines himself a forward-thinking humanitarian. Allowing Twitter to become a place where vileness wins is not good for his personal brand. Owning Twitter is also going to mean Musk is subject to an awful lot more economic reality than he is used to in his other state subsidised businesses. Practicalities may turn him into a half-decent shepherd – even if it is against his will.
However, the man has shown himself to be viscous and vindictive, so my hopes for his ownership of Twitter are not exactly mighty beasts. I and Hookland, will never be part of something that works to normalises slurs, bullying, doxxing and any form of ethnostate numptiness. If this becomes established as business-as-normal on Twitter under Musk, Hookland will go elsewhere.
Across a longer timeframe, I suspect that Musk will either realise being the king of hell isn't a good look for a deluded, self-titled humanitarian and will be constrained by narcissism. That or he will be restricted in his harm by the harsh gravity of legal, political and economic scrutiny. It’s all about how bad it gets for good folk before.
While we can keep on curating for kindness and beauty, keep on blocking, it’s no protection from your work and your personal reputation being destroyed by others. That’s what is threatened by the $8 per month to keep your blue tick. It’s a protection racket that means if you don’t pay, you’ll be at the mercy of accounts impersonating you while they spew slurs and incite hatred. That’s what good voices are worried about. I haven’t been verified and it keeps me up awake as I’ve more than a couple of malicious stalkers and enemies thanks to founding Folklore Against Fascism.
I am also increasingly sad to see so many of those I follow and value as good, beautiful and mighty voices leave Twitter. Each day the count ticks downwards. It’s little razor blade cuts against hope. You feel the nicks on your psychic skin. I really wish they’d leave forwarding addresses, I wish some of them had actually said goodbye.
Hookland has always been re-enchantment and resistance, so for now, it stays and fights. However, hookland has also always been about parallel realities, inclusion and being a safe space for all sorts of fully-grown changelings and marginalised folk. Things are afoot. My soul is possessed by an Edwardian gentleman and I struggle with technology, but things are afoot. While I remain, I will continue to curate for wonder, continue to police the borders of the county to keep out bullies fascists, misogynists and homophobes. My sadness and suspicion is that the pisspuffinry of Musk may force me off in the next few months. If and when Hookland manifests elsewhere, this will be the place where I will let you know.
Come dance with the Bone Horse my darling
Leap and step and ignore the Devil’s snarling
Come dance with the Bone Horse my deep dear
Oh my heart-held, there’s nothing for us to fear
– Verse from the trad. Hookland folk song Old Boney’s Dance
Hookland Roll of Kindness
Lee Ann Day
Gordon Peake
Sarah-Jane Farrer
Paul Wilson
In kindness there is connectivity, an impulse for good and a better world that is not denied. Kindness is a refusal of darkness. In its graceful light friendships have been found, lives saved and hope restored. – C.L. Nolan
“Despite the idea pushed by a few numpties that folk horror lives only in rural America, Scandinavia and Britain, some of the best film and TV in the genre currently comes from Korea, North Africa and Eastern Europe.“
I love this. More people should seek out other folk horror - so many cultures full of broad bestiaries and haunted history are overlooked.
Thank you for this and for all of Hookland. It is a pleasure to read your writing in this longer form. For what it is worth, I'm loitering on twitter for a little longer but I've had worse content promoted to me on multiple occasions in the last couple of days than I have in years. It wouldn't take much for me to go, certainly if you were to call it a day that would be enough.
Such a nice newsletter. I'm happy to receive it. My thoughts have been on the topic of reciprocity lately. I don't know if Hookland connects to other places via earthen tunnels or cosmic wormholes, but let me know if there's anything I can offer from Taiwan.
Thank you for Hookland, from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my bones.
This is wonderful; a haven of enchantment. Very many thanks, David.
Hookland in long-form. I love it.
This is everything I hoped it would be (Hookland, but longer) and I look forward to seeing how it progresses.
Thank you Adam.
So glad to be here. Powers, as ever, to your elbow.
Thank you Simon. Deeply appreciated.
It's great to get stuck into a Hookland read that's more than 280 characters. Excellent :)
Thank you Chris. This is something of an experiment, so the feedback is appreciated.
Congratulations on being able to break beyond the artificial bonds of character limits and fly with the wings of dreams.
This is marvellous and enchanting, I look forward to reading much more about Hookland and its inhabitants
I very much enjoyed the format and content
May Hookland endure
This convinced me to set up a substack account. Many thanks!
In a time of Extreme Musk, we all need an emergency broadcast channel.
This is a wonderful thing. Thank you for the long form Hookland. It is wonderful to inhabit it a while longer.
“Despite the idea pushed by a few numpties that folk horror lives only in rural America, Scandinavia and Britain, some of the best film and TV in the genre currently comes from Korea, North Africa and Eastern Europe.“
I love this. More people should seek out other folk horror - so many cultures full of broad bestiaries and haunted history are overlooked.
As ever, much love and admiration for your discovery/stewardship/guiding-beaconry of this remarkable place.
Not baconry. No. None of that.
Nicely done! And, yes, Hookland at greater than 280 characters is a treat.
Very enjoyable and informative.
Thank you for this and for all of Hookland. It is a pleasure to read your writing in this longer form. For what it is worth, I'm loitering on twitter for a little longer but I've had worse content promoted to me on multiple occasions in the last couple of days than I have in years. It wouldn't take much for me to go, certainly if you were to call it a day that would be enough.
Such a nice newsletter. I'm happy to receive it. My thoughts have been on the topic of reciprocity lately. I don't know if Hookland connects to other places via earthen tunnels or cosmic wormholes, but let me know if there's anything I can offer from Taiwan.
There is more Jack Rosehip coming on here.