I’m all in for women’s rights just as much as I’m all in for women’s wrongs, which is part of what inspired the theme of this month’s Table Manners column at Macabre Daily. Specifically, the column looks at Final Girls turning the Final Girl trope on its head.

Kitchens, meals, and digestion are often used as backdrops and battlegrounds in horror—and the Final Girl is often a set piece. Academic Carol J. Clover describes our girl in “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” (1992) as the saint who abstains from sex, drugs, or reckless behavior until she finally turns the killer’s weapon against him. Not that this has anything to do with gastrohorror, but I loved the way “The Cabin in the Woods” (2011) set up the Final Girl trope for what it really is: less male gaze-y virgin goody-goody deserving of being saved for her purity, and more societal sacrificial lamb that doesn’t do women any good in the end. Granted, we all become the meal in that film, so maybe it has more to do with gastrohorror than it seems, no?

I have to tell you–doing this column has been an incredible amount of fun! I’ve been really enjoying delving into horror in more of an academic way, and not just because I’m in the midst of a masters of philosophy program, concentrating in gastrohorror. I recently did a tiktok about the idea of taking stock of what brings me joy in publishing. Not in writing, because there’s a big difference between writing and publishing–and I enjoy writing. It’s all the other stuff that goes with it that can be really infuriating and frustrating. Right around my birthday I decided to log every day for the next year about how I feel about publishing… and then at the end of my 365 days, if I discover I’ve been negative about it more often than not, maybe I’ll… change tactics.

I’m not really sure what that looks like, but writing academically just seems fun and new to me, in a way that writing fiction seems… not as fun (entirely because of all the stress around publishing). But it’s more than that: I don’t think a lot about publishing when it comes to academic writing. Maybe if I do start to think about it, it’ll become more stressful. I dunno. There’s also the fact that I’m in my mid-50s, though. Would it make me happier to be traveling more or being lazy more?

Maybe I’ll just keep writing about gastrohorror!