Esther and Cassie Heppenstall were born to a Lutheran mother and a Methodist father and grew up in a tempestuous household. Their parents would often “have long, passionate arguments in the living room, followed by long, passionate makeup sex in the bedroom,” according to Esther and corroborated by Cassie. The twins declared themselves agnostic as early as age 4, for which their parents blamed each other loudly for half an hour before retreating to the master bedroom. When the twins were in high school, their younger brother ran away from home and joined a Buddhist monastery.

When the Lizard Apocalypse began, the twins dropped out of high school to work as war correspondents for the Washington Post. They both developed reputations for quality journalism and fearless commitment to their jobs. They accompanied the goddess Ishtar and reported on her single-handedly defeating all of the Lizard King’s three wyvern sons at once, on a train. They also attended a handful of Vampire Mike’s infamous parties.

Due to a disagreement that is neither fully remembered nor recorded, the Heppenstall twins parted ways in anger after creating The New New York Times. Esther continued to manage that paper, while Cassie went on to found The New New New York Times. The two papers spend four fifths of their pages reporting the news, and the last fifth lobbing insults at each other. The insults are posted within op-eds, and thus the journalistic integrity of both papers has remained largely respectable in the public eye.

In spite of the bad blood between the two, Esther and Cassie still go to family dinner with their parents and brother on Monday nights, because, “we’re not animals.”

Both twins used to say their favorite movie was Almost Famous, but when Esther found this out, she changed her answer to Jeepers Creepers. When Cassie found out, she said she didn’t like movies anymore.

The twins reached out (in separate messages) and requested to be placed on two different webpages on this website. They were each irritated to be associated with the other. I thought about it but it’s just not within the budget this quarter.