Emily C. Hughes
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emilyhughes.bsky.social
Emily C. Hughes
@emilyhughes.bsky.social
8.4K followers 1.5K following 4.1K posts
Bram Stoker Award-winning horror bitch. Writer, critic, listmaker. HORROR FOR WEENIES on sale now. Reviews etc in the NYTBR, Reactor, Vulture, Slate, & more. She/her. 🍉
readjumpscares.com
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emilyhughes.bsky.social
i would rather eat shrapnel, thanks!
screenshot of an email from my optometrist's office. subject line: Use your FSA on Oakley Meta! body of the email has a graphic of a punchable-looking bro holding a football and wearing those horrendous glasses with the text "performance AI glasses, built for life, made for movement"
November 17, 2025 at 8:13 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
Frankenstein (2025)
The dril candles tweet but instead of candles it’s gas cans
November 8, 2025 at 5:24 AM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
also @mollymcardle.bsky.social wrote about it for the late, great BK Mag www.bkmag.com/2016/01/08/l...
The relative anonymity of the people who write all these tweets obscures the IRL, personal relationships that help shape their digital, professional conversations. When @PenguinRandom and @MelvilleHouse got in a Twitter fight in October 2015, it got its own Twitter moment as well as coverage in four different media outlets. It even made a Newsweek list of the best fights of 2015. But what many of these stories don’t acknowledge, and likely don’t even know, is that @PenguinRandom’s Emily Hughes, and @MelvilleHouse’s Liam O’Brien… are dating. They live together! “Professionally, we met when we worked together at another publishing house, and I deeply respect him as a fellow brand tweeter and the person who coined #brandter,” Hughes says of O’Brien. “Personally, could you remind him to pick up some cat food on his way home tonight?”
November 7, 2025 at 3:31 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
Nicholas Hoult as Nux in Mad Max Fury Road saying “oh what a day! What a lovely day!”
November 4, 2025 at 1:13 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
weenie season is year-round
a copy of Horror for Weenies on a building stop, leaning against an iron railing
October 31, 2025 at 4:14 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
bonus photo that always makes me cackle because of the huge tinder ad behind us
a couple in wedding clothes walking down the middle of a Brooklyn street. Visible behind them: a taco truck, a personal injury attorney billboard, and an ad for Tinder that says “single never has to go home early”
October 20, 2025 at 6:55 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
seven years today 🥰
black and white photo of a man and woman in their wedding clothes. they’re standing on a Brooklyn sideway looking at each other. color photo of the same couple standing in front of some street art that looks like neon wings. He’s in a gray suit and she’s in a dark blue gown with stars and moons embroidered on it in gold. close-up of two hands clinking together two Smirnoff ice bottles as our lovely, evil officiant looks on the couple kissing during the ceremony
October 20, 2025 at 6:37 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
just a heads up, horror folks, this is not Nathan (Nathan, via @tanyapell.bsky.social, confirmed he is not on bsky and says “that is cheesy as fuck” lol)
Screenshot of a profile pretending to be author Nathan Ballingrud Screenshot of a DM from fake Nathan Ballingrud saying “There's a strange kind of peace in wrestling with words. Like arguing with an old friend you secretly adore,” which doesn’t even make sense
October 15, 2025 at 11:25 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
stop! cici time
a man’s jacket is lying inn a pile on a blue sofa. a fat gray and white tabby is lying in a pile on top of the jacket.
October 14, 2025 at 7:11 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
we’ve lived in this house for almost six months and as of today FINALLY have all our books shelved and accessible (they’d been in boxes due to shipping delays on the bookcases) and I could truly actually cry I’m so happy (this is two of the seven ☠️)
two tall white bookcases absolutely filled with books
October 5, 2025 at 8:47 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
all the press around the Ed Gein show seems to insist that Robert Bloch used Gein as the inspiration for Norman Bates - it’s become the accepted narrative - but here’s the thing: he didn’t!
screenshot from robertbloch.net (Audience question regarding the aspects of the Ed Gein murder case as they have supposedly, "historically" applied to Psycho. This otherwise cliched question rates inclusion here because of the breadth of Bob's definitive answer.) BOB: First of all, I didn't know anything about those aspects when I wrote Psycho. I did not use Ed Gein as a basis for Norman Bates at all; I used the circumstances, which were: somebody could live in a small town, where everybody knows everybody else's business, and conduct a series of murders without anyone suspecting. But people don't like this. They like to believe the legend. When you get right down to it, Ed Gein did not run a motel. He killed nobody in the shower. He did not preserve the body of his mother. None of those things were part of Mr. Gein's background. I invented a character at the time which, not having read the details, which were not being printed initially or immediately, because they were very prudish in most cases. Life magazine and a few other publications later came out with a great deal of stuff, but I would not have used it even if it had been available, because it didn't meet with my particular plot requirements. But the legend persists, and will continue to persist. A little over two weeks ago, I think, a network show called Hard Copy asked if they could interview me regarding Psycho. I said I did not want to be interviewed; I didn't want to go down to a studio. They said, "We'll send a crew out." I said to myself, well, if it's good enough for Ackerman, it's good enough for me... screenshot continued They came, and throughout this interview they kept asking, "Didn't you think of Norman Bates because of Ed Gein?" Didn't Ed Gein inspire the characterization, and blah-blah-blah. I kept telling them what I just told you, and the interviewer and crew kept looking sadder. And sadder. I said to myself this isn't going to happen. Sure enough, the show came on, and they'd gone to Plainfield, which had been Gein's home town, and they did a very nice broadcast regarding the case, and they used some dramatization footage which I swear was probably part of a documentary that had been made at the time, because it was in black and white instead of color, and was not aired because it was undoubtedly too strong for audiences then. They salvaged that and put together this program. And I was a non-person. I didn't exist. My name wasn't mentioned, and I certainly did not appear onscreen. Obviously, if I had, they would not have had a program, because their title was The Inside Story: The Truth About the Ed Gein Murders! And my denials were the exact antithesis. This is a horrible lesson in how easy it is for media, today, to distort by omission, or by any kind of editing, what actually happened, what occurred. What I'm citing is trivial; it doesn't mean anything one way or the other. But think of the implications-how this sort of censorship and willful distortion affects so called "news" reporting, and so-called documentaries, on various topics that are of social or historical importance to an audience. And that's something that scares me far more than the activities of Mr. Gein.
October 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
no no the publishing industry is doing fine, why do you ask
A screenshot from Publisher's Lunch: Jennifer L. Armentrout and Hellmann's In a promotion designed for BookTok enjoyment, Jennifer L. Armentrout’s just-published THE PRIMAL OF BLOOD AND BONE is available in a special, limited-edition "garlic-scented copy, infused with Hellmann’s Garlic Aioli to create a one-of-a-kind, Craven-proof book." They explain: "This exclusive edition is printed with garlic-infused ink, designed to ward off Armentrout’s bloodthirsty monsters, the Craven. While humans may dread garlic breath, Hellmann’s has cleverly transformed this social faux pas into an unexpected – and delicious – form of supernatural protection."
October 2, 2025 at 3:25 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
Cici had her annual vet visit and managed not to draw blood from anyone so we’re counting that a great success
a mad old tabby on a scale at the vet’s office
October 2, 2025 at 2:27 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
made two new friends today
a white woman in black shorts and a gray tshirt holding hands with the 12 foot Home Depot skeleton. She has a big smile on her face and is waving excitedly at the camera. the skeleton is also grinning. close up photo of a woman’s ankle with a fresh tattoo: a rabbit-like critter with red eyes and a pointy tail with a bigger, creepier shadow behind him
September 30, 2025 at 11:09 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
if I needed the EMTs and this is what showed up I would assume I was already dead
a white ambulance parked in front of a garage with lettering on the side that reads “ambulance. CHRIST medical transport.” There’s a caduceus and a drawing of a dove.
September 27, 2025 at 5:51 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
Vince McMahon reaction meme paired with increasingly devastating quotes from Chotiner’s interview
September 24, 2025 at 12:43 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
guys I know it got chilly last night but this is ridiculous
Three cats - one orange, one tabby, and one black - snuggle on/around a woman’s legs, which are covered by a yellow blanket with an eye motif
September 10, 2025 at 1:00 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
yeah im into BBW
the logo of weyland-yutani corp with the text “building better worlds” below
September 10, 2025 at 1:28 AM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
oh I think I'm good, actually, thanks!
photo of a horrible little fish in someone's hand with the headline "get to know the ratfish and the forehead teeth it uses during sex"
September 9, 2025 at 7:11 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
excellent essay from @thelincoln.bsky.social on the potential futures of literary criticism in the age of LLMs: countercraft.substack.com/p/criticism-...
The most common complaint I hear about book reviews is that they focus on plot summary with a minimal amount of critical evaluation. Perhaps there is discussion of the political, social, or cultural meaning of the surface-level content. But there is often little focus on the aesthetics of the work or the actual experience of reading the text. This is even more the case with book publicity, which often tells potential readers nothing except a bullet point list of tropes. Add to this the common feeling that "style" is pretentious and that good writing is "invisible prose"-as if the actual medium of the work was irrelevant and all that matters are the plot points that can be summarized on Wikipedia-and it often feels like discussion of literature has little to do with literature at all. Maybe we can focus less on content and more on execution? Perhaps value new ways of creating story instead of formulas and tropes checklists that any LLM can reproduce? Think more about the experience of texts than the trappings? And maybe we can celebrate very visible prose-sentences that writhe and shine and sing with the individual behind them rather than the generic averaging of terabytes of training data (and that even if they were made in conjunction with an LLM would require intention and intervention from an artist's mind and not be reproducible by mere prompts)-that is after all the substance that novels are made from? Or maybe not. I don't know. But sometimes it is nice to be an optimist.
September 5, 2025 at 5:38 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
some signs I saw today
“Free Luigi 🩷” written in white on a roadside fence “Girl dick summer” written in black on a boulder a yellow roadside sign that reads “psychic fair 11:00 - 4:00” with an arrow pointing right A metal utility pole with various graffiti, including a small red “fuck trump”
August 30, 2025 at 8:36 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
screenshot of an Instagram post of M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks holding a copy of the book they wrote together still from Barbie: Margot Robbie says “do you guys ever think about dying”
August 29, 2025 at 2:50 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
ma’am????
THE CUT “I was running out of energy from taking care of my sick partner day and night while also taking care of the logistics of both our lives and trying to keep our romance burning at its original fever pitch. And Rayya was depleted, too.“
August 27, 2025 at 2:54 AM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
garden: late August edition
Garlic chives blooming: small clusters of star-shaped white blossoms on tall green stalks a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar on a green background: it’s orange, black, and white with long tufts of fur sticking out in all directions a morning glory in bloom, white with interrupted stripes of hot pink two ovoid green baby tomatoes hanging from a tomato plant that sprouted in the middle of my damn perennial bed
August 26, 2025 at 1:27 PM
emilyhughes.bsky.social
Tony soprano holding up his hands and saying “I can't have this conversation again.”
August 24, 2025 at 1:31 PM