It's a Final Girl October!
Why I'm obsessively drawing Final Girls and what I love about this enduring horror trope
I’ve been distracted this month - all my October plans (Howl Pass) derailed by a singular obsession - final girls.
It started when I dug up this image I drew for Halloween a couple years ago and decided I need to update my one final girl drawing.
I made a new final girl - and another, and another. Before I knew it, Iwas creating a whole series of final girls to the detriment of everything else i was supposed to be working on (HOWL PASS!). Why did I do this? Because I was was having fun. In the month of October when we cozy up with scary movies, drawing final girls was a fun waste of time. I am obsessed with these bloody horror tropes - heroines from my youth of sleepovers and going to the movies (House of Wax, anyone?).
And its not just me! Everyone loves final girls! From Halloween to Scream, Alien to Jennifer's Body, our horror films are full of young women beating the odds and SURVIVING. Sometimes they are kicking ass (Ripley), other times they are weeping and barely avoiding the bad guy's blade (Scream).
Yes, they are a trope, often a problematic one - usually brunette and virtuous, paragons of morality and innocence. These are the rules that orbit the final girl. Our expectation of her survival is defined by how she plays by the rules of horror. Just look at Sidney from Scream, Laurie from Halloween, Alice from Friday the 13th, Julie from I Know What You Did Last Summer. But just because the rules exist, that doesn't mean the final girl always plays by them, as with Ripley in Alien or more modern final girls like Jennifer and Needy in Jennifer's Body, or Adelaide in Us. Can Chad Michael Murray in House of Wax be said to be a type of final girl as the bad twin to his sister's good? (I say yes) Then there's the endlessly delightful 2015 movie Final Girls, that takes a lot of joy in satirizing Final Girls. Even Toy Story's Toy Story of Terror (highly recommend) casts Jessie as a sort of final girl ("Jessie never gives up, Jessie finds a way!"). Final Girls can both embody a specific set of rules or shirk them. They either ARE the trope, or in more modern times, they subvert the trope. The trope always exists around the Final Girl, but it doesn't necessarily have to define her.
But there is one thing that defines final girls across the decades, across genres, across rampaging psychopaths, and that is this - the final girl survives. Whether she does so by her own ingenuity, by fate, or sheer dumb luck - she comes out ok in the end. Whether she’s a meek victim, a badass, or a monster in her own right - she never gives up. She always keeps going. I think that's the crux of why we love final girls - at least, I think that's why I do. She's not always the smartest, the strongest, the toughest, the prettiest. She's often just a regular person. The Final Girl offers EVERYONE hope that, no matter how terrible the threat, no matter how stacked the deck, how desperate the odds, how EVIL the force against you, you can still come out standing in the end.
So this Halloween, here's to the final girl! Do you have a favourite final girl?
Doodle
What I’m working on
I swear, even with all these final girls, I’m still making progress on Howl Pass! And am looking forward to sharing it in time for Halloween!
Unicorn Death Drive, the next book in the Zombie Shark Highway universe is almost ready for release! Just finishing up the ebook (man, ebooks are a lot of work to lay out). If you’ve missed ZSH or the next book in the series Lava Cat Cruise Ship, you can still access LCC for free or upgrade your subscription to download both ebooks!
In the mean time, I’m still thinking about how best to release my fantasy werewolf whodunnit, Wulfrun, on here. I want to illustrate some of it, but that would be a lot because I would need to deviate from my usual style and find a whole new one. So still trying to come up with the best plan.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on blue sky - the app seems to welcome more artists, writers and publishing folk by the day and my feed is suddenly very busy! If you’re over there, you can find me here!
What I’m reading
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix - Exactly what it sounds like. Excellent.
AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor - I keep seeing this one come up in articles about AI so I wanted to give it a go.
What I’m Watching
Scream Queens - Because of my final girl kick, my brother recommended I check out this show from 2015. A dark comic horror where a sorority is terrorized by a serial killer. How did I miss this at the time?!
Sing: Thriller - for the animation lovers, horror shy, and little ones in your life! This animated short of the characters from Sing taking on Thriller is THE CUTEST. My kiddos are watching it all the time and I just can’t get enough of how much they are nailing the choreography!!!
Til next time!
Your illustrations are great. Remind me somewhat of Hercules.
My favorite recent final girl is Tree from Happy Death Day, she gets to continually fail and grow into her final girl status and I’m there for it.