Weekly Update

Kristy Swanson as Buffy Summers in 1992’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, before Sarah Michelle Gellar went on to redefine the role in the late-’90s/early-2000s TV series.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the movie that would be basically scrapped and rewritten to launch one of our favorite horror franchises, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Creator Joss Whedon was sour about the film for years. It disappointed at the box office, and he just wasn’t happy with the way his vision came out. And the film still has bad green splats on Rotten Tomatoes and a less-than-stellar 5.6/10 on IMDB as of this writing.

Well, we don’t give a damn! Buffy’s a fun movie, and this Horror Movie Sunday, we’re rewatching the first iteration of our favorite vampire slayer — in this case portrayed by Kristy Swanson, rather than Sarah Michelle Gellar, whose name has become synonymous with the role. Actually, for us, one of the most fun parts of watching this film is tracking the characters who would go on to inspire the Buffy, Giles, Spike, Angel, and Cordelia we all know and love today in what might still be the most beloved television series of all time among academics (Joss Whedon drama aside).

Apart from watching horror movies and doing our dumb, boring day jobs, we’ve been grinding away over here at Casa de los Other Folk, and we’ve got some small announcements of upcoming stuff: that Judgment we promised last week and a couple upcoming Fables, along with the long-awaited conclusion to our Dissection series on animated horror. Plus, Eric wrote another nerdy roleplaying game thing. Let’s start with that.

A humble writer sits at their desk, pilfering tropes channeled into their imagination from the eldritch beyond, AKA the entire creative history of humanity.

Credit: Legend Keeper

The Trope Thief

Eric wrote an article for our friends over at Legend Keeper, makers of the best worldbuilding tools the web has to offer for tabletop roleplaying games. In the article, he talks about how to steal ideas and images from horror media when running TTRPGs. In the process, he also has a lot to say about art, archetypes, tropes, and idea theft in general — namely, as Steve Jobs said Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Suck an egg, intellectual property laws.

Daniel Kaluuya, Brandon Perea, and Keke Palmer in Nope.

Credit: Universal Pictures

New Judgment & a New Planned Dissection: Nope

We promised this was coming up, and here it is! We were very impressed with director Jordan Peele’s third entry in the horror genre (fourth if you count his cowriting on 2021’s Candyman), so much so that he made us want to write a Dissection. Expect that to come right after…

Mima covered in blood.

Credit: Rex Entertainment

Upcoming Dissection: Perfect Blue

This is the film, directed by Satoshi Kon, that made us understand just how disturbing and artful Japanese horror can be. Kon’s work has been cited as a major influence on other artists and filmmakers, from David Lynch to, believe it or not, Madonna. Not Daren Aronofsky, though. He says 2010’s Black Swan was definitely not basically a shot-for-shot remake of Perfect Blue. Okay, Darren. Whatever you say.

New Fables for the Dying

We’re hard at work on not just one, but two new Fables. And we’re still mulling over a couple other candidates. Keep sending your work!

This series has turned out to be one of our favorite parts of The Other Folk , and we’re in preliminary talks about doing some pretty cool stuff with it. Mums the word on that until we have more details, though.

For now, look forward to a little horror-romance and a bit of realist psychological horror in the next couple of months.