We drank the Substack Kool-Aid

Dear Bloodletter Community,

We’re interrupting the usual, um, blood flow to share an exciting new development to our newsletter. We’re on Substack!

Here’s how this affects you:

• To keep getting Bloodletter news, you don’t have to do anything. You’re still freely subscribed for essential updates.

• To keep getting full access to our LIFEBLOOD column by gothic it-girl Claire Orrange, upgrade your subscription.

For $5 a month (or the cost of your booch, matcha, flat white…), this upgrade also opens up A) curated lists of lit mags and film festivals that we think you should submit to…plus submission waiver codes 🤫 B) exclusive access to interviews with renowned feminist horror filmmakers, and C) other freaky stuff we’re dreaming up (not porn).

You know you want to 👇

UPGRADE

See you next month for all these latest premium resources—as well as the imminent release of Issue 5: Rage, coming to a screen near you 😱

And now, one last free LIFEBLOOD for the road…

Claire here. What does it mean to live according to the aesthetic principles of feminist horror? Over the past year, I’ve sought out the answers to this very question while creeping along an ever-expanding highway to hell—punctuated with thematic pitstops: The Femme Fatale, Facism, Freud, Divinity, and a whole lot of Dollhood. But today, I write to you at a cross-roads, where the fun we’ve had together has met with the reality of churning out regular incisive commentary in 2025. These two avenues have finally merged into a carpool lane called, you guessed it, Substack.

After all, I’ve never been one to offer a glimpse into my viscera (of my mind, that is!) without a fee, and it’s high time I extend that rule to benefit the hardworking horror fanatics here at Bloodletter.

To most concisely answer the question I’ve been continuously posing, I say that feminist horror instructs us in the art of going from exorcizing to exercising our power as human monsters. This power is both intrinsic to us and projected onto us from those who don’t understand and thus fear us. And fear, as any Machiavellian will tell you, is a tool. Fear is a tool used by fascists to coerce us into hiding the most cherished parts of ourselves from the public sphere, to cast these intimacies in shadow. Period blood, girl dicks, pre-colonial matrilineality, the radical Left… All have been victims to this world-historical campaign of erasure, of exorcism. However, perhaps counterintuitively, feminist horror instructs us to surrender to this self-fulfilling prophecy as a means of fighting back. Because the fact of the matter is that assimilating into patriarchy, white supremacy, and late-stage capitalism is the easy way out.

What is far more difficult, and far more rewarding, is to concede that there is something horrendous within us, something that should be feared, something we can harness to our own ends. Like an illusionist uses light to make their hands loom large as shadow puppets over a red velvet curtain, we use our inner reserves of monstrosity, paganism, feminist solidarity—the very things which instill fear in our adversaries—to project outward the appearance of far greater power and agency than we are actually afforded as women, femmes, or trans people.

Feminist collectivity is our goal, artistry is our raw material, and fear is our means of transformation. I think we underestimate how intimidating we are to the powers that be. Far before there was God, there was the Feminine Other, and deep inside every fascist lies an atavistic fear of this Other waiting to be reawakened by the very art we bloodletters have come together to worship. When they attempt to exorcise us of this power to terrorize, we close ranks. It’s a brutal process, often quite gory, but we aren’t afraid to get drenched in a little pig’s blood.

So what does this have to do with our transition to Substack? Everything, of course. In order to realize our modest plans of world domination and feminist retribution, we need to shore up our self-sufficiency as an independent literary magazine specializing in topics that alienate those with a weak stomach. For the small price of $5 per month, you can help us maintain this self-sufficiency and expand our ranks.

But you need not rely on the goodness of your heart to support our cause.

Those of you who join us on Substack will get access to LIFEBLOOD’s ongoing exploration of feminist horror. And believe me when I say we have yet to scratch the surface of this chimera of a topic. Our hands are ready and rearing to contort into ever more grotesque shapes, forming yet more shadow puppets to inspire fear in the public at large. I, for one, know I have a few more tricks of the light up my sleeve. Care to see?

Until next month,
Claire Orrange