Should you ever find yourself in a fairy tale, try your very best not to become a merchant (tailors and traveling soldiers usually have better luck). Should you find becoming a merchant unavoidable, avoid having any daughters. Should daughters arise despite your most strenuous efforts, never bring them any gifts when you go on a long trip. It will inevitably prove fatal. Making promises in a fairy tale only ever ends in heartbreak, child abduction,…

Ever After: A Drew Barrymore Jawn has a complicated relationship with my brain and my heart. The year it came out, I was 12 years old with a dedicated subscription to Seventeen and its monthly updates on what all the cool public school kids were wearing while me and my Catholic school uniform looked on in envy. Seventeen ran ads and features for this weird Cinderella movie with the girl from Scream, and it looked like it would…

Hans Christian Andersen, it cannot be denied, was one sorry motherfucker. The first story he ever wrote was about a candle that did not feel appreciated, which is fairly representative of his output over the course of a lifetime. Charles Dickens almost certainly based the character of Uriah Heep on him after an overlong and profoundly uncomfortable stint as his houseguest ("Andersen extended a brief visit to Dickens' home into five weeks, to the…