As an experiment I asked the following question on Twitter:
Right: you are all characters/professions/creatures in my vision of a post-apocalyptic England after the Dark Dream has come, where a new society is slowly being built that is a strange mix of pastoral and future-modern. So what specifically are *you*? (send answers via @ or DM)
(warning: by answering you may find yourself in my next series of artwork)
starting point: Take Derek Jarman’s "The Last of England" and mix with "The Wicker Man", combine with the Planet People from 70s TV version of Quatermass, and drench heavily with English myth and folklore as required.
I wanted get a sense of the collective imagination, and see where it would go. I wanted input from the people who might buy something of my next series of artwork included in the artwork itself. The replies - in just the first 3 hours - have been fantastic.
Public replies so far from non-locked accounts (in chronological order)
Replies via DM or from locked accounts (unless permission was explicitly given to share) have been excluded from this list, because they weren’t posted publicly, but I am very thankful for those as well.
- @catvincent - Cunning man. So, same but it matters more generally.
- @StarDoG23 - An itinerant teller of tales and -medic dispensing virtually instant cures via nano bot tech to the outcasts of society.
- @DeeDeeChainey - Dibs on the Snow Queen, who has to gather all the pieces of the shattered dark mirror that embeds evil into people's souls across the world…
- @AntiochGrey - A tax collector but what is taxed is your soul.
- @alysdragon - I guard the border between forest and furrow. For whom? I will not tell you. How? Pray you never have cause to know.
- @Psycho_Kylie - Guardian of The Music.
- @dumbsupper - River pirate me the hell up and there are biscuits in it for you.
- @lokisfool - Grave digger, body burner, bone carver.
- @TheatreSean - Necro-alchemist who raises the ghosts of Future and Past.
- @a57998 - I'll quite happily sit as a judge in the Revolutionary Tribunal; @Ingeranna is already a great tricoteuse.
- @nellegremont - Woodland seer with cunning drawn (in disguise) from running the local brothel.
- @HooklandGuide - I dare to ask.
- @dedbutdrmng - I'd quite like to be a wanderer, dependant upon the kindness of strangers as I take news from settlement to settlement. [with Antlers, ofc]
- @BohemianLaxity - I am the one who Greets the Dead. I am paid in tobacco and fresh chicken - which I then turn into gumbo and share with you as you wait for wisdom. Just don't touch the bowl on the left. That's for Someone Else.
- @DriedInkRibbon - Previously a man of science, he stands hunched over a clearing in the forest. Dressed in white lab coat, but also donning leather cap & thick goggles with a leather satchel at his side. He is spreading spores from this bag, his hands caked white. He is fabricating faerie rings.
- @psychcomm - Council Druid, the organic interface between the soil and the stars. Overseeing Town Planning to make it is at maximum sympathy with the local Urban gods/spirits and the inherent energy lines. Landscapes tuned to the above and below.
- @Nova_Hycgan - The Googleist. Keeper of the town records. Weather Watcher, teller of tales and Finder of Facts.
- @scampyspiro - I liberate the dead’s spirits from their bones.
- @lizking2006 - The one who arrives at the Hunter’s Moon to kill the pigs for winter. A hand-forged iron blade kept sharp as truth, paid in blood and sausages.
- @TamlynRogers - Can I be an honorarily English for your post-apocalyptic society? If so, I'm the mad woman whose ramblings contain ineffable truths.
- @AbjectObjects - Transataumancer, liar, and fool.
- @eric_fennessey - Acid-Mathematician: visioning the lines, angles and shapes we need to mark the landscape with.
- @shadowfirebird - Probably I'm a contract progr-- excuse me, hedge wizard. You hire me to fix things when you fuck up. I've seen it all before; I saw Y2K. (Only, if you're having faerie problems, don't expect me to take your side…)
- @teigngardener - The Hermit Book Collector
- @Bridge_DepEd - Tinkerer, scavenger, hawker of artifacts, liar. I claim the wisdom of the ancients, scrying in old mobile-phone screens & selling loom-band charms to the gullible. I fence the forbidden. I regard myself as a cunning old cynic but I know not the true worth of my stock. Others do.
- @mjpcuervo - Angry Morgan Le Fay.
- @robertdee - Chief Haruspex
- @catherinemary_ - Bagsy Queen of Woodland Shadows. I still have my lichen crown (somewhere!). Friend to those who are lost in the wildwoods that have sprung up from the bones of abandoned towns and cities.
- @sharonxmartin - I'm bell ringer and pull the lamp lit cart collecting bodies in the miasma. My beaked mask and tattered cloak hides my features. Midnight ravens ride with me. Or is that all a bit cliche these days?
- @DoctorMju - Some Welsh guy wondering why you still haven't all gone home to New Saxony
- @catherine_hann - I'll be a village school mistress who teaches the kids about folk traditions and how to make lotions and potions
- @T_Artifacts - Armored plague doctor, with more of a full street medic loadout. Working on the femme version of the armor already.
- @writeradrian - Tale harvester. Stories linger to decide whether they trust me, based on others I've known and what's become of them. The aim is a collaboration that honours us both.
- @rawsin_ - Can't I be some sort of hysteric-psychoanalyst-witch?
- @khawes - Wise woman/hedge witch
- @GirlsandGoblins - Book collector
- @WildWoodSteve - Seer
- @blueastronaut1 - The liver harvester and bile distiller, sideline in warm smiles.
- @FazeyPie - That lone woman out in the forest who nobody knows but that doesn’t stop the gossip. Permanent resting bitch face and will reluctantly supply weapons and/or tonics & ointments etc to the unworthy locals in times of emergency.
- @HeeleyJo - I'd be a poppet-maker, someone who twists wool, words + melons.
- @Reynolds - A nurse, roaming the lands seeking redemption for being part of the ‘kill krews’ who visited the housebound sick and elderly, euthanising them and marking the ones who could be safely turned into food. Still wears the medieval doctor’s plague mask the krews once wore to hide their identity, but now wears it as sign of his guilt. Given Brexit, this may not be too far from the truth.
- @kirstymhall - Well obviously I'm The Death Of Roses. She's not from Hookland but she sometimes visits. https://kirstyhall.co.uk/2017/04/10/introducing-the-death-of-roses/
- @CitrineWB - She who is Seldom Seen. Wandering healer, lunar priestess and other things if the right people ask the right questions.
- @regcrawford3 - Toad Laser operator.
- @john_f_leonard - Could I be a bone ant whisperer?
- @wayswithweirds - What I always am: the undertaker.
- @bengrahamwriter - Portal seeker. Sometimes when I find them I try to open them; sometimes I have to try to close them.
- @TarotOnTheHill - Lady Bracknell. As usual. Someone has to set standards, Gwendoline.
- @clipperride - The Heckling Hermit, content alone in my cave yet prone to shouting surreal nonsense at any who venture too close. Usually humming Bonzo Dog. "The first to count from one to ten, never regrets the number three."; "A Happy Yak Needs no string"; "Follow your broooom" &c...
- @atarbuck - Small healer, hidden away, whose potions and poultices help but whose listening ears help more. And clever, clever hands. Keeper of several animals and lots of secrets.
- @thewayofnight - I would have to be the darkest of librarians amongst the strangest of books.
- @SmicklShaun - A futuristic Stygian Puddleglum. I will be your guide through the land's cheerless marshes.
- @EvilStevieB - Still a librarian, sticking together random pages to try and construct a narrative.
- @_psonice - I suspect I’ll be building the systems that let the producers sell directly to the consumers in a manner fair to all, thereby eliminating all the middle men, profiteering, monopolies etc.
- @MinxMarple - Comet that’s understood to be a sign, but no-one knows of what.
- @Rafotron - The confessor of crows
- @RoxyG100 - Landscape witch, finder of pure water and spinner of spider silk, I lead the tribes to fertile ground amid the fetid wastelands.
- @boffingirl - Keeper of skulls and spinner of wools
- @UrbanF_ - The Bookbinder: personal items are given to me by writers to make the pulp that turns into the board and paper that covers their stories, calligrapher of text, ink of her own blood, one day they find me dead in my copper boiler.
- @BLCrawshaw - I guess I would be a wanderer who is dressed in a long coat of dish rags and carrying a staff which is actually a dustmop. The only sound you hear is the jingle of my keys. I figure the Dark Dream would occur when I am at work. I am a school caretaker.
- @cat4lyst_Ma - I'll be a malter, brewer -- and in good times, a discreet distiller. Even in hardship, alcohol's usually in demand. #Cynical?
- @RabTDog - Itinerant Calvinist minister, but atheist. Named Peden. No forename, just Peden.
- @MsJayneH - Botanist, night-walker, and teller of tales.
- @ClareRogersArt - I will live in a beam of sunlight in the middle of the woods. I will be a continual planter of trees. As well as balancing CO2/oxygen, my trees will exude compassion. The compassion will spread on the wind and prevent social and political injustice.
- @cour13r5 - a gryphon, but raven + large black cat. light scintillates off feathers & pelt in rippling purples & greens. i can be seen (by cunning folk, or un/lucky others) suddenly appearing in sites of ruin & decay, sifting salvage, and departing with shiny objects. at some point someone/s is skilled & kind & sharp enough to befriend me, and i begin to show them ways-between they've never seen, and caches of useful tech & beautiful objects. i don't stay in one place for long, flow is my default.
- @Goggolor - Probably get back into the family business of being tubercular dirt farmers. Maybe with a dodgy prosthetic nose or something.
- @CoastlanderO - The Fern Maiden: peacekeeper, profit and muse, mentor for broken and orphaned children
- @ScornaLott - Swamp witch. Part swamp, part witch.
- @TheSacredIsle - Then I’d like to be some dirty old hermit who lives in a cave. I’d like to have been there so long, on my own that I’d forget who I really am and I make friends and family out of straw.
- @maximpetergriff - Hmmm - suppose I could go back to making gravestones. I'll be in charge of monuments, official and unofficial!
- @JonCain_Camden - Dark Digger. Part of a network of groups, to create small rural communities that work the land and share the commonwealth. We are armed and won't give in to those who seek a return to private property.
- @Farrel_Raven - I would be a cunning man of a village surrounded by an ancient forest. I would spend my time healing, creating artwork, music and nurturing a herb garden containing all kinds of plants. I might turn my hand to local building projects too. My future is very sparsely populated ...
- @grazulis - Flesh mixed with metal fashioned as armour laced with arcane circuitry holding me in stasis while I stand guard on a hill imagining I am still with my children, half broken with axe and sword in hand.
- @TheLutenist1 - Cockroach Charmer
- @coyote_borders - i borrow things. from here or there. from you or them. whether you give permission or not & i gift these treasures of coin or cloth - of wood or steel - life or death to those i chose.
- @CursedSummon - Hissing Wraith/Gaseous Noise
- @_DaveKnowles - A fae liaison, who locates those swapped by the Gentry and returns them to the Hedge. Part itinerant judge, part feared Inquisitor, no town wishes you, but none will deny your entry.
- @Triskerslake - One of the regional Solomons, a decider who helps resolve social and familial disagreements, land rights and civil crime reparations.
- @mattneilhill - Hermit bibliomancer. Sideline in reading the exposed entrails of dead technologies. Happier around woodland creatures, but willing to regale the new generations of human folk with tales of the pre-apocalyptic world if bribed with homebrew or beard shampoo.
- @trini_naenae - Solution maker. Comes up ideas for whatever isn't working. And overall creative/artsy human. Apparently the idea of having zippers in back pockets is a genius idea. Etc.
- @anaslake - UnicornAstronaut
- @AuspiciousJinx- I am the younger sister of Jenny Greenteeth, waiting at the edges of quiet pools of shadow on street corners to snag people who are too preoccupied with technology to be wary of their surroundings.
- @brotherurth - The Keeper of The Stones.
- @balladofvodopan - Some sort of wretched, soul-swallowing healer, living alone in a nest fashioned from concrete and barbed wire. I help people - if I think they're worthy - but will always Take Something In Return.
- @ScreenSelkie - Archivist of the old world. I keep a library of found objects and fragments of print, analogue and digital ephemera.
- @BelmontHouse1 - Keeper of an archive. Safeguarding the lore that others write. Oh and Shepherdess to the Wood Sprites....if they'll have me
- @Bridge_DepEd - I just wish today's world was as full of hedge witches and wizards, psychopomps and other strange characters. One day someone totally ordinary is going to turn up in this future ("I'm Les, I like knitting and I'm on the PTA") and they'll be hounded out as freaks and monsters.
- @WitchOfLeeds - Evil witch lurking in the shadows, exacting poison and curse revenge on the inevitable bastards that try to take advantage of the situation.
- @LyonMerriman2 - Journeyman forager, purveyor of all manner of “herbes, fleshe and snake oils”.
- @scruffy_jack - Snakestone
- @ManOnThe100 - You'll all need light, so I'll set up as chandler. No, I won't explain why the candle's scent sometimes gives you a headache, but it won't exactly be a secret. And no, I definitely don't know about the shapes you see in the smoke as you blow them out.
- @Daz_Woodcock - Drone falconer / mapper - hunting for lost geocaches of canned goods with an ever dwindling supply of batteries
- @weargoggles - Herder of transgenic swine that incubate individually-immune-compatible organs for the local geronto-/aristocrat nob. Tossup whether the pigs with his eyes or the pigs with his cock are creepier
- @mattstanhope71 - Could I be an elegantly dishevelled wandering musician, who alternates between strumming a battered ‘72 Thinline Telecaster and swigging from a hip flask?
- @Ketherbound - Corvid aide and community dronomancer; avian/audio shaman. Tattooist. Ego shepherd.
- @Phoenixra - A priestess who takes in abused and mistreated women. On the surface it looks like we spend our days tending our garden, sewing and reading about the old ways but our poisons will wreak revenge on all who have done us wrong.
- @ElsieTrubshaw - Keeper of the Ritual Objects. Few know their significance. I don't claim to. Theories abound. But they are in a locked chest the size of a shoebox and must be Kept. We'll know when they're needed.
- @paul_clarke - I map the paths of the cats, to avoid the strongest areas of The Effect
- @LuluAllison77 - I make rope from horses’ tails and reclaimed high tide flotsam
- @mrvi - the bearded, crippled cunning man figure in a wheelchair who recieves his news via a flock of crowdrones festooned with bone-charms that clatter in the wind. A black tablet serves as my shewstone as I videochat with my sabbatic colleagues hovering in blue neon in the sky
- @WendolphRed - A lost soul who sits crouched among the dead trees, so disconnected from the people that she has become invisible to them; she is of the trees with skin mottled in bark and moss. During rainy nights she dances and brings life. #hookland
- @sneezysnooze - I am a herbalist and mycologist. Sometimes I cure people. It's untrue that I have ever deliberately or accidentally killed a healthy person. Sometimes people die. It's their time.
- @ksader - Guardian of lore and friend to Fey, Cunning-folk, and Wanderers in the Back of Beyond
- @effluviah - I am a Cleric. I listen to the seasons and the whispers between bands of light reflecting from between trees and the rows of crops, and I foster an altar to those whose ghostly fingers pull up the sprouts from the seeds and wave clouds in to pass by overhead.
- @typejunky - A field ghost, pale mist and faint sound, haunting the furrows.
- @Sue_Jonze - The Watcher on the threshold
- @ThoseOther - Innkeeper. Always the first business to open. People need a place to meet. Innkeepers know everybody. Is there any crime where is there is no law?
- @andrew_keuma - Divinatory musician who sits in only one place off a beaten trail, although many claim to have seen me elsewhere, I have not moved.
- @RMilaschewski - I make cheese.
- @noorminded - I would be negotiating with unionized, self-aware tractors
- @LiamGarriock26 - I've just seen this; I rather fancy myself being the "mad" poet and rumoured sorcerer who envisioned Albion's fall decades before, but was killed by a superstitious lot for my troubles; now I am a magically-endowed ghoul who appears to the living in nightmare visions.
- @AWhisperofTrees - The See - er - She crafts masks from the skulls of the dead, human and other animals. Binding them about with witch plants she dances them to awakening once more and through their eyes she sees the dreams and memories of the land. Nomadic she walks the Witch Ways, sharing the stories and tales by firelight. She is a Seeress and a healer. But those who destroy the sacred places will find her skull face turned full upon them and their lives cursed.
I may keep updating this blogpost if more replies come in.
Last Updated 23rd December 10:55am GMT