Happy Birthday to Me

Kids, guess what! Today marks some kind of "Holy shit, everyone is old" milestone in the annals of Final Girl, for she is now ten years old. Ten! Years! A decade! Baby's growing up so fast, the next thing you know she'll be taking murderous revenge on all the people who made fun of the limp she had in 6th grade.

(In the interests of history and also for the record, I did not have a limp in 6th grade. But that was the year I got glasses, braces, and chicken pox all within about two days of each other, so trust: a limp would have been vastly preferred. Although I have to say no one made fun of any of it, so I'll have to take murderous revenge for some other reason, I suppose. Hooray?)

Oh man, ten years and I still can't catch a break from that guy!

For real though–yes, for REAL–a decade is a long time to have a horror blog, so I'm sure that says something about something. Do people still have blogs? Does anyone read them now that Facebook...is? Or does everyone just "jack in" to some kind of "cyber reality" and "hack the mainframe"?

In the ten years since I started Final Girl on a whim and a prayer (to Satan), oh how the world has changed. Remember when remakes were just starting to be a thing and we were all simultaneously stunned and outraged? Remember the Asian horror invasion (come back, Tartan Asia Extreme, I miss you so much)? Remember the days before Blu-ray, when rare horror movies were only available on, like, shitty bootleg CD-Rs of VHS copies? Remember the time we had that gum? Remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitos and the killers? We've been through so much, what a ride, does this look infected to you, etc etc. We've loved and lost, and loved again and lost again, and loved again and lost again, and I guess you could say we've sort of alternated on those.

You know, I'd never written anything for public consumption before I started Final Girl. I'd never considered writing at all, it was never my thing. I didn't keep a journal or write stories or any of that, outside of whatever I had to do for school. It's because of this dumb horror blog that I've discovered one of the greatest loves of my life, and one of the reason I kept this dumb horror blog going is the readers. I mean, I write to write, not because people sometimes say nice things (though that always brings about good feelings) or because sometimes people say mean things (though that always brings about a laugh). "Visitor stats" and numbers don't mean anything, but a reader leaving a recommendation in the comments, or the discussions that get going, the writers I've been introduced to...those mean something. Y'all give Final Girl life!

So whether you've been coming here for ten years or for ten seconds, thanks for reading. I can't tell you how great it feels. (It's a secret.)