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I’m mesmerized by the photo on the Soska sisters’ “About” page. It’s compelling in a gory, expected way; Jen and Sylvia Soska take up the left half of my screen; their shiny, stick-straight hair and pale skin are both completely splattered with blood. They’re identical twins, so it’s a mind trip of sorts, their piercing eyes stare at the camera-— one sister gives that vampy look while the other sister looks like she's thinking “All in a day’s work.” The Soska sisters are gorgeous and tropey, everything you’d want in horror film stars—or in their case, horror film directors.

I spoke to Jen and Sylvia about the difficult task women have breaking into the male-dominated horror film world (not to mention the male-dominated film world), some of their favorite female-driven horror films and what it feels like to be the recipient of a boatload of misogyny. READ MORE

People’s reactions to my announcement became a Rorschach test that was fairly accurate at predicting the length of time we’d be in touch after graduation. It sounded cool enough to a few of my closest friends who decided to do the same, and we all began to prepare ourselves for a great migration out West. We dreamed of open skies, a chilled-out vibe, and the space to become fully realized, whatever we thought that meant. It wasn’t much of a plan but it felt like a better plan that most people had, which involved getting a regular office job. But by this time, my grassroots publishing class had begun to work its way under my skin, and I liked the way it took root there. I pictured myself running a similar enterprise someday. We published a magazine each semester, and planning out the issues, the front-of-the-book stories, features, and profiles that we would include was exciting in a way I didn’t even know was possible. In those classes, the beginnings of an idea took shape, if only I could figure out how to finance it. The reality that I had spent the last four years doing everything but studying literature, writing, and reading started to weigh on me, even though all of those areas interested me the most. But I figured I would stockpile cash, leather jackets, and skinny jeans, move to a city, live in a one-room apartment, and work and intern for free in exchange for experience points. Simple enough, right?

I really loved this essay on waitressing and post-college anxiety by Jenna Wortham, particularly the above excerpt; working a service job while your friends and peers pursue more education or entry-level office jobs really is like a Rorschach test for compatibility. I have a bias operating in the other direction, I think, where I don't trust people who don't or haven't worked some kind of service job. My background is retail, but anything where you deal with customer service and get paid to be physically present by the hour counts. I just really believe—in my limited, personal, biased experience, sure—that people who have worked in restaurants, retail, or customer service in general are often better collaborators, friends, co-workers because of what they learn in those jobs. That's what I see in their...inkblots? Human inkblots? I don't know, you get it.

Whenever I have an idea for something funny to write on the Internet, I have to make sure that it isn’t just something I’ve subconsciously ripped off from writer/webmistress Mallory Ortberg. If there is a joke to be made about anything, chances are Mallory’s already made it, in a both subtle and absurd way that will seep into your brain and stick with you for months.

On November 4th, Henry Holt is publishing Texts from Jane Eyre—a collection based on the series in which Mallory sums up the entire canon of Western literature in a few textual exchanges with great accuracy and even greater lols. Believe it or not, Texts From was spawned on THIS VERY HERE SITE. Buy a copy, then read this interview. Or read this interview and buy a copy. Buy a copy, read this interview, then buy another copy for best results. Anything else you were planning to do today can wait. It was probably dumb anyway.

Mallory!
Hi hi hi!

Are you READY? For some harrowing questions that will make you look deep within yourself?
Let's DO THIS. I'm ready to get controversial. READ MORE

Auto-tune poster child T-Pain just blew everyone's minds yesterday with his performance at NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert, where he taught us all that he can saaaaang.

The New Yorker's Culture Desk had an interview with him earlier this year: his association with the pitch-correcting device marred his attempt to be a considered a "real artist" and to be taken seriously, both by consumers and his peers, sending him into a depression. An anecdote from the article: after inviting T-Pain in to consult on 808 and Heartbreak, "Kanye wrote a song about how dumb all of T-Pain’s ideas were. He then proceeded, T-Pain said, to make “everybody in the studio join in with him to sing, like, "T-Pain’s shit is weak."'

People always tell him it makes no sense for someone in his position to care so much about idiot teen-agers posting comments on social media. “People are, like, ‘You’re rich!’ What’re you so worried about?’ ” he says. “And I’m, like, money ain’t the issue here. Yeah, I can buy shit. But I want people to like me, too! God damn!”

Hmm, what advice would you give him? How about his own!!

You already have all you need. Nothing in life worth having comes without sacrifice and/or struggle. Do not alienate the people around you. Use the negative things that happen to you as motivation to push forward. As long as you continue to believe in yourself nothing can stand in your way. Times often get rough, which is the nature of life, but your self-belief and how you view yourself will guide you through any problem.

Singer T-Pain, please listen to Advice Columnist T-Pain, and know that everything is going to be fine (as long as you drop that acoustic album real soon).

Jazmine Hughes is the contributing editor of the Hairpin.

Jazmine Hughes is the contributing editor of the Hairpin, a digital magazine.

Jazmine Hughes didn’t know the Hairpin was an digital magazine???

Jazmine Hughes trusts Matt Buchanan.

Jazmine Hughes is contributing editor of the Hairpin, a digital magazine, and the main contributing eater of the cheese in her shared refrigerator. READ MORE

Cordelia: Here's a chocolate...Oh. I don't think I need the loony-fringe vote.

Buffy: Well, I-I don't even *like* chocolates…

Drusilla: Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She's a bad example, and will have no cakes today.

Xander: Yeah. It's a delicious, spongy, golden cake stuffed with a delightful creamy, white substance of goodness. And here's how you eat it.

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There’s this thing I’ve done since I was a kid that I rarely talk about—mainly because it’s embarrassing. Anytime I’m alone, I'm probably scripting scenarios in my head of how my life should go. Not the kind of fantastical daydreaming that encompasses what would happen if the fates were ever to align and I finally got to meet my pun-loving idol Dave Coulier; actual, real-life situations ranging from romantically tense showdowns with men (that never actually come to fruition), to the mundane small talk I practice to ensure I’m the most charming customer in the cramped waiting room of my local auto body shop.

Maybe it's a childhood tic, born out of severe unpopularity coupled with an overactive imagination. Maybe it's the machinations of a subconscious pushing me to become a writer long before I ever realized I wanted to spend my life putting words on paper. Whatever the reason, it’s something I still do, to this day, almost to the point of obsession. I’m rarely living in the moment because it’s a veritable television writer’s room in my head, with a million self-contained voices pitching different narratives, joke arcs, and real-time admonishments to their leading lady: me.

The thing that each of those scenarios have in common? In each and every one, I am always right. I am always the best. Even when spurned, I am always the most downtrodden heroine who will rise again, likely by way of a cleverly crafted monologue filled with dated references and verbal cues worthy of an Amy Sherman-Palladino television program. After all, when you’re constantly crafting your own narrative, you’re never the villain. But that’s the thing—it’s just a narrative. In my actual world, I rarely stick to the script, and I’m the villain far more often than I’d care to admit. READ MORE

Self-soothing with this on repeat, all day, every day.

The Hairpin has a strong, well-documented stance re: women should wear whatever they want. We also have a strong, well-documented stance against pants. Here is an article that, if you squint hard enough, covers both stances.

The girls’ bathroom of Jefferson Elementary School was a creepy place: bodies of dead bugs dimmed the fluorescent lights, cracks exposed darkness beneath the floor tile, and the radiator sputtered and shrieked irregularly. But it was exponentially creepier as a second-grader, cowering in the corner, while a classmate I’d only just met stared into the mirror and chanted: “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary…”—a pause, during which I looked up at the mirror and saw her eyes fill with fear, then she finished in one breath: “BloodyMary!”

I heard screaming and only realized it was mine as the two of us tore out of the bathroom and careened into the hall, where Mrs. Rollins asked to see our hall passes. I assumed she had no idea what we doing, but she’d probably played Bloody Mary before. In the middle of the twentieth century, in the thick of the Cold War, versions of the ritual popped up simultaneously in disparate locations. All around the world, girls were suddenly summoning female ghosts in bathrooms, with different “rules” for each one. In the United States, Bloody Mary is typically the ghost of an angry woman who’s dismissed by flushing a toilet. Hanako-san is a less threatening schoolgirl ghost in Japan. Svarta Madame is the Swedish variant, and Spanish girls summon Veronica, who, according to one paranormal website, “asks you to guess the date of death. If you do, she will give you a favor. If not, she will kill you for having called in vain.”

I remember my first Bloody Mary moment with clarity even in my twenties, but it’s not fear that’s made the memory so lasting. By second grade, I’d been afraid before: of aliens, burglars, and, more concretely, of starting a new school when my family moved. Invoking Bloody Mary stuck with me not because of fear, but because of the realization that certain fears were pleasurable. The realization that fear was a feeling I could create for myself.
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