Welcome to David Behavior, a horror book review podcast. I'm Marie.

And I'm Beth.

And today's David Behavior is the homemade murder memorabilia museum in the barn. In today's episode, we are going to discuss the final girl support group by Grady Hendricks. This is an exploration of what happens after the slasher ends. The women in the support group are all survivors of massacres, basically real life occurrences of slashers. The final girls, the ones who killed their monster. Our narrator is Lynette Tarkington. She is the newest member of the final girl support group and she is still coping with the trauma and fallout of her own slasher movie. And the sequel From I think 26 years is the time gap since it happened to her. And I personally would recommend this book to fans of the slasher genre, especially those who prefer like meta takes and very referential send ups because it is extremely referential.

Yeah, for sure. I would definitely agree with that. I think I don't want to get too much into the review portion, but I would definitely say this is one of Grady Hendrix's sort of lower ranked books. I didn't really get why because I thought it's sort of perfect for fans of horror and the slasher genre. I was pretty excited to read it because I actually really like Grady Hendrix and I would say it's worth reading on those grounds. Just to put it out there, I do think it's worth reading even if you're not a fan of slashers.

Okay, yeah, that. That makes sense. This is actually my first Grady Hendrix. I own a lot of his books. He's been on my to read list a lot because he's very popular and he's been recommended by quite a few people. And I'm a little glad to hear that. This is one of like people tend to rank this one a little lower because that makes me more excited to read some of his other ones for sure. So if you listened to the very end of our last episode, you would know that this book is a resurrected from the DNF graveyard for me. I did attempt to read this probably about 6 months ago. Ish from the current date. And the first time I attempted to read it I got about 30 to 40% of the way through and ended up putting it down. At the time I kind of attributed that to feeling like the book kind of slowed down at a point and I just wasn't as excited to pick it up and continue going. Now that I have given it a second go and gotten all the way through. I will say the pace Is very good. Like it. It does keep up a good clip, like, through most of the book. Feel like you're on the go with Lynette the whole time. But I found myself getting bored quite frequently. And that sounds really bad. But it's mostly because I am the type of person. I'm one of those annoying horror fans who reads scholastic books about horror like Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Ben Schoff and Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clovers for Funsies. So I felt like a lot of the themes that were being explored in this were very similar to themes that I had already done a lot of reading on. So it wasn't new. And that's kind of why I think I felt a little bit bored in it. That said, I do feel like Hendrix was trying to propose, like, an alternate interpretation of a Final Girl. And his does contrast in a lot of ways with what Carol J. Clover has established way back in the day. But that I'm going to touch on that more later because it's a little spoilery to get into that.

Yeah, for sure. I would say I'm not a slasher fan. I don't really like that kind of horror, personally. I would call myself a Hendrix fan. I've read a few of his books. I really loved Southern Book Club, Southern Vampire Book Club, and My Best Friend's Exorcism. And we will not talk about Horror Store unless it comes up, in which case we might talk about it, but I don't want to talk about it.

I'm so intrigued by that.

I didn't watch a lot of horror growing up, so I already kind of knew going into it that a lot of these references would sort of pass me by. I think my sort of relationship to it would be more towards, like, the true crime genre. I was on that wave of true crime when Serial came out. Was that 2014?

Yeah, I feel like that's about right.

Yeah. So that sort of wave of true crime 2014 to, like, 2016. I would say I was listening to a lot of true crime before I kind of got a bit sick of it. I got a little bit sick of hearing the stories of the killers and having the victims not being centered in their own stories. And it got a little bit. I got a little sick. Like, just in general, it became sort of weird to be a voyeur in the worst thing that's happened to somebody. Yeah, it felt a little icky to me. And also just to, like, center these, like, awful people.

Yeah, no, 100%. And like, it's interesting. I have a. I have a weird relationship to true crime because, like, true crime, I think I got into true crime before I got into horror. Like, as a kid, I would read, like, the. The true, like, books and stuff, and I have a kind of weird relationship with true crime because I have lost a family member to violent crime. And so for me, I 100% agree with you. I hate how much it centers, like, the killers, basically the murderers rather than the victims. But I do appreciate the true crime out there that does center the victims, because in a lot of cases, especially unsolved ones, that's the only way that it's ever going to get solved is if people keep talking about the case. You know what I mean? Like, it's a weird. It's a weird relationship because in a lot of ways, I feel like it is a genre that can be helpful, but in a lot of ways, it mostly ends up hurting the family members of victims.

It can be really exploitative. And I feel like I don't want to put words in Serial's mouth, but I feel like that's where Serial started, was trying to center victims and trying to find out what happened and really, genuinely trying to help. And I feel like as things do, that kind of spirals out of control and people realize there's money to be had.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think that, you know, I agree with you. I think there's nuance. But at the time, because of the oversaturation of that sort of genre in podcasting, it became a lot for me personally to just hear about 100%, especially where it's not trying to help, it's genuinely just trying to exploit and trying to tell somebody else's story for them and then advertise for mattresses.

Yeah, exactly.

I do have a note in the spoiler full area about it being boring, and I have a theory as to why. Personally, I did get bored partway through. A lot of it did have to do with treading, not treading, new ground. But some of it also had to do with Lynette's story in general. And we can sort of get into that as we go. If we want to start into the spoiler area, I can kind of give you my theory and you can agree or disagree.

Oh, yeah, for sure. However, I do, I have to say there's something in the notes that is bolded and underlined that I would just love. I'd love to hear from you real quick before we get into it.

All right, so where a lot of the Boring does come from what I'm going to talk about in a second. I think I did find, even though I don't have the slasher background, I don't like slasher movies. I did find this book to be derivative. And I think it's because a lot of that discourse in like 2015, 2016, there was you just like kind of couldn't get away from it. There's a lot of discourse around it and I just feel like I heard a lot about Final Girls and there's so many books about it and even just being on the periphery, I feel like I just absorbed by osmosis a lot of this discourse already. So it kind of felt very derivative to me personally.

And I would agree with that. As a fan of the slasher genre or someone with more slasher background than you. I don't think it's my favorite horror genre, but it's one I watch for sure. All right, now let's get into this plot and the spoilers ahead. All right, as we've already mentioned, her name, Lynette Tarkington, is the main character and narrator of this book. She is a member of a support group for Final Girls. As the name might imply, there are six members of the group. There is Adrienne Butler, Heather DeLuca, Marilyn Torres, Danny Shipman, Julia Campbell, and Lynette herself. And in the beginning we do get some information that there used to be a seventh member, but Chrissy Mercer is no longer with them because she was a traitor in some way. But we don't get more yet. And I think to start off, I would like to quote because there, there's an interesting bookend quote that is at the beginning as well as at the very end of this book and it changes. And I think that that change is interesting. So at the very beginning, Lynette's going a little bit into Final Girls. Like Final Girls are the one who fought back, the one, that monster, the one who survives at the end of the slasher movie and on page five in my book. It might be different in yours, she says. Ever wonder what happens to those Final Girls after the cops eliminate them as suspects? After the press releases, their brace faced, pizza cheeked, bad hair day class photos that inevitably get included on the COVID of the true crime book. After the candlelight vigils and the moments of silence after someone plants a memorial shrub? I know what happens to these girls after the movie deal gets signed, after the film franchise fails, after you realize that while everyone else was filling out college applications, you were locked in A residential treatment program. Pretending you weren't scared of the dark after the talk show circuit. After your third therapist just accepts that he's your Zoloft dispensing machine and you won't be making any breakthroughs on his watch. After you realize that the only interesting thing that'll ever happen to you happened when you were 16. After you stop going outside. After you start browsing locksmiths the way other women browse the window at Tiffany's. After you've left town because you couldn't deal with the why not you looks from the parents of all your dead friends. After you've lost everything, been through the fires, started knowing your stalkers by their first name. After all that happens, you wind up where I'm going today, in a church basement in Burbank, seated with your back to the wall, trying to hold the pieces of your life together. And so sad. Lynette is still. She's in the depths of her trauma. It's been 26 years, like I said, since her first incident that happened with Ricky, which we'll learn a little later. She is still, in a lot of ways, like, stuck in that trauma. And, like, it makes sense. It was a traumatic thing to go through, obviously.

I think that she's definitely still stuck in that trauma, and I feel like it's a good place for her character to start because obviously there's a lot that she can accomplish. There's a lot of characterization that can happen. And I just want to mention that this is kind of where I feel like I got a little bit bored, because I think that we start here, and I don't know where else I would say this in terms of notes, but I feel like we start here where she's paranoid. She's, like, prepared for anything. She's practicing on her treadmill so that she can run if she needs to. She's got weapons because one is none and two is one is what she says. She's so prepared for everything. And we'll see later that that's, you know, that's not enough and that kind of falls apart. But I just feel like maybe I got a little bit bored because I wasn't seeing the progress that she was making necessarily. Like, I just felt like the whole middle chunk of the book, I think I expected from a first person narrative that she would express more of that thought process of going from being so prepared for everything to having her plans fall apart to something. And I think that's something. It's like, step one, be prepared. Step two, Plans fall apart. Step three, question mark. Step four, emerge as a new person. And I feel like that step three, we don't really. It feels murky. It feels cloudy to me, and I think that's kind of where the book lost me a little bit, is just having her floundering. And, I mean, obviously, we'll get into that later on, but I just wanted to say up top. I feel like, for me, that was where I felt kind of what was missing.

Yeah. And I definitely see where you're coming from with that. There's a big portion of this book. I feel like Lynette doesn't start to actually make progress in her, like, you know, character arc in her journey until, like, the back third of the book, if that, like, it is all right at the very end.

Yeah. And I think that's where we see her. She's sort of falling apart until that point. It feels like she's just kind of responding, and I kind of was expecting a response to things falling apart, and she's doing things and she's making actions and she's going through with plans, but it still. If she was responding to things falling apart, it just felt murky to me. It felt cloudy that we didn't get any sort of thought process towards that 100%.

I do have. There's a little nitpick I have a little later. I feel like the first person narration, the style in which it's written. Lynette is an unreliable narrator. She obviously has a lot of issues stemming from her experience, and there's a couple points that I want to address specifically later. But I think that's. That's part of it, is that we never actually really. Even though we're in Lynette's head and we're hearing her plans and we're seeing the things fall apart around her, she is so stuck in her, like, In. Like, this is the right way to do it. I need to pursue, like, my plan. Okay, plan A failed. I have to go to plan B. Like, she's. She has a methodology worked out that she's not acknowledging that it's not working. And I think that is a point of frustration at a point is like, you're.

You're.

You're reading it, and you're like, lynette, girl. Like, this is clearly not. This is not working. This is not gonna help you if you keep doing it this way. But she doesn't. She doesn't get there, and she doesn't acknowledge it in her narration for a long time.

Mm. And I'LL be clear. I kind of like an unreliable narrator. I think that it's fun. I think that it's fun that we are able to solve things before she does in a lot of areas. I think that it's fun. We'll get to. Again, we'll get to it at the very end. But there's the reveal at the very end where she realizes that she's got a metal plate in her head. I think it's fun that she realizes it in real time. I think that that's good. I like that writing. So I think my problem isn't with her being an unreliable narrator. I know you don't like it, but.

Well, no, it's not so much the fact that, like I said, it's the way that it's written more than the fact that she's unreliable. I find it difficult to believe that she would never think of some of these things until they happen. You know what I mean?

Sure. Yeah. Because her characterization is being prepared, is spending this. These 26 years preparing for an emergency. And the fact that she hasn't prepared for this is. Seems a bit strange to me. I understand that part for sure. Yeah. And I think that's where it starts. Like I say, it starts to fall apart a little bit for me at.

That point and get a little murky.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, so back to the beginning. We got into it a little bit. So as the novel opens, Lynette is, like you said, she's in her apartment. I love that she has a little plant and his name is Fine, which is short for final plant because it was the last plant that she got because she killed all her other plants. I love that she talks to Fine. I love that Fine talks back in her head. I think that's great. I think it's good to have a living object with you because Lynette doesn't have a lot. Her apartment's very spartan and it is focused entirely on keeping her safe. But as she is doing her daily running and getting ready to go to her meeting her group. They meet once a month. She sees on the TV that there has been a mass murder at Camp Red Lake. Camp Red Lake is a retreat for survivors of violence that Adrienne Butler, fellow Final girl, opened up. And there's only one survivor of this recent massacre, Stephanie Fugati. She's a 16 year old girl who was at the camp because she had previously survived her own incident involving an insane tennis coach at age 13. So this is a girl who has already been traumatized and she has just been re. Traumatized by a new massacre.

Yes. And I just wanted to say here that in the description of Adrian, Lynette is very reverent. And she talks about. She's reverent and resentful in the same sort of breath because Adrian is described as, like, the perfect victim. And I think that that sort of reinforces this myth that there is an imperfect victim. And I think that that sort of, again, is part of the theme of this book in general. And I actually really liked that portion of it. The description of Adrian as rising beyond her circumstances and creating this camp for people who have experienced this trauma and helping people out. And as we see as well, she reclaims the ownership of her movie franchise. Because in this world, the slashers are based on real people.

Yeah. And there's. It establishes pretty early on, there's these really interesting. And I did enjoy these quite a bit throughout the book. There are little, like, in world articles or books that only exist within the world of the book that talk about this, because obviously, it's a different world from ours. So Adrian won the rights for her story because I guess, like, a studio had made something based on the camp, Red Lake, and she obviously was not happy about it. And it established in this universe that the sole survivor of these events was the one with the rights to the films about these events, which I think is very interesting. And it's. I think it's part of Hendrix's exploration of, like, the connection between slashers and fans of slashers and true crime and fans of true crime and, like, the way that we think about and, like, absorb this media without necessarily looking at it, like you had talked about earlier, from the victim's perspective. And I feel like in this world, it's kind of. It's not perfect, obviously, but it is nice to know that the victim is in charge of their story, like, in. To an extent, in this. In this universe, for sure.

Yeah. And that's kind of where it mixes the universes, I guess, where, like I said, having the perfect victim versus an imperfect victim. And that kind of goes into as well, how Lynette looks at herself because we learn her story later, which I think we'll probably get into. But she doesn't see herself as a perfect victim. She still sees herself as the final girl. But Adrian fought back and Lynette didn't. And so that's sort of. She sort of puts Adrien above her in terms of victimhood.

Yeah.

And I think that's very realistic, and I think that it's an interesting thing to explore within this novel as well.

100%. Absolutely. After watching this news broadcast, she doesn't know if Adrian was at the camp when it happened or anything. Like, she doesn't know what's going on with Adrian. And so she heads to their meeting because hopefully Adrian will be there and she'll be able to figure out what's going on. Adrian doesn't show up, which already puts Lynette on edge. And then over the course of their meeting, Dani announces that she is leaving because she wants to spend more time with her wife, Michelle. Michelle is currently dying of cancer, and Lynette goes into a panic over it. Like I said, she was already stressed out because Adrian didn't show up. And this is where you start seeing some of Lynette's deflection. And like I said, she's an unreliable narrator. She goes into a panic, and she insists that the reason they keep meeting is because everyone knows if they don't, Heather is going to go back on drugs, which I like is such a. I don't know. That's such a funny deflection. And Heather obviously thinks that she's full of shit and tells her that she's not a real final girl. She accuses her of not being a real final girl. And like you said, this is. This goes back to what you were talking about earlier with her not being the perfect victim like Adrian was.

Yeah. With. It is very funny, the deflection onto Heather, because it's at that point that nobody says anything. Heather is like, no, it's for you. And nobody corrects her because it is. Everybody can see that Lynette is the one struggling the most.

Yeah.

With. With what happened to her. And she needs this group more than anybody.

Yeah. And we get into a little characterization of the different characters, and we'll get into their stories kind of more as Lynette talks about them throughout the narration of the book. But Lynette definitely is the one who. Heather arguably is not doing well. Heather is living in a halfway house, and she is a recovering drug addict, but the rest of them are doing better than Lynette. Lynette lives in her little apartment and doesn't go anywhere except for the support group once a month, really. But, like, Dani has her ranch with her wife where she rescues horses and trains them and stuff. And obviously, Adrian runs Camp Red Lake.

Marilyn is rich.

Marilyn is rich. Marilyn is the rich one. And she's doing really well for herself. She's a socialite. She's constantly throwing parties and Julia, who was paralyzed in her incident, is an activist who fights for rights for people with disabilities and other stuff. I can't remember specifically, but she's, in general, like, an activist who does a lot of work to, like, make changes on a law level. And Lynette lives in her apartment with her plant and is sad. Like, it's. It's a little sad. It's a little sad when Heather is like, no, it's about you. But it's true. And like, everyone. Like you said, no one says anything. I think that speaks the most to it is just the silence from everyone else about it. And then this whole time, as Lynette is having this anxiety attack, basically, Marilyn's phone is incessantly ringing. And finally she, like, snaps. Who? Heather snaps at her and says, like, just answer your fucking phone. Like she's so tired of it. And Marilyn does, and they find out that Adrian was found dead in her home. She had found the head of the original killer from her. Her incident at Camp Red Lake in her refrigerator, which is the opening of the second Friday the 13th movie, which, as you guys might guess, Adrian is based on. Or yeah, Adrian is based on. Adrian's story was the basis for the in book movie franchise Summer Slaughter, when she was a teenage camp counselor at Camp Red Lake. Somebody murdered her fellow counselors, and she was the final girl in that incident.

And I will say that the audiobook is narrated by Adrienne King. That's pretty fun.

It is pretty fun.

I think she does a great job.

Yeah, she does a really good job. And obviously to get in, like, a little bit more into the weeds with it. Yeah. Adrienne Butler is named for Alice Hardy, played by Adrian King from Friday the 13th. And, yeah, I love that they got Adrian King to do the audiobook. I mostly did the ebook, but I did listen to her in parts, and I think she did a really good job with the narration. And at that point, once they learn what happened, everyone scatters. Like, everyone goes home to be safe. Because Lynette starts freaking out even more at this point, I think. Right. This is when she starts becoming convinced that someone is going after the final girls. Like, someone is hunting them down.

Yeah. Because she goes back to her apartment and there's an incident there.

Well, let's talk about her trip back to her apartment, because it's a lot. It's like the whole chapter, the entirety of chapter three almost is her making her way home. And she, like, takes multiple bus routes. She keeps an eye on everybody's shoes to See if she sees the same pair. She memorizes, like, every out of state license that she sees, sees just in case she is just, like, swimming in her anxiety and depression. And at one point she sees, like, this dude who's just, like, on the bus not paying attention to anything around him. And I have it here on page 24 in my book. She says men don't have to pay attention the way we do. Men die because they make mistakes. Women, we die because we're female. And that's another running theme in this book is women as victims of violent crime and the fact that it does tend to happen more to women than other people.

And I think that that's, Again, it feels like maybe it's because I'm a woman socialized female. That's something that's sort of drilled into me from the moment that I step outside the door. So I feel like it, maybe it feels like part of the discourse, but I feel like it's kind of just a lived experience and it feels kind of strange to have that said out loud.

Yeah, it is, it is a little on the nose, so to speak.

Yeah.

And I, I was looking at other people's reviews of, of the book, and I found very interestingly that a lot of male readers did not like Lynette at all. And they did not like the tone of the book because they felt that Grady Hendrix was saying men bad. And sure, I, I, I think that they have discounted that. Once again, we're looking at a woman who has been traumatized multiple times by men in her life, and she, she's still struggling with that trauma. She's suspicious of every man that she sees because she has been betrayed by men multiple times, and she's still kind of stuck at that traumatized, like, position in our head. And like, like you said, when you're socialized female, you get told like, hey, A, don't walk by yourself. B, if you are going to walk by yourself, you better be keeping an eye out at everyone around you because at any moment you could get attacked.

Don't wear headphones. Don't walk in the dark. Don't walk on this street because it has a reputation. Don't go here because you know a L Because something could happen to you and it's. And if that does happen, it's your fault.

Exactly.

Because you did that.

I feel like you're right in that, like, it's weird to say that out loud. Like you said the whole thing about men don't need to. Men die because they make Mistakes or whatever. It is weird to say out loud, but obviously there are a lot of male readers who don't know about all of that stuff. So I think it's important. I think Grady probably said it for those people, like, the people who don't know those things.

I think it just struck me, like you said, as on the nose. And it felt like a sledgehammer sort of moment because I was like, well, yeah, of course. I sort of was thinking like, everybody knows this, but obviously not everybody knows this. And I think that's kind of where my reading of the story maybe is separate to somebody with a different lived experience, because it felt like there was the story and then there were the moments sort of congealed from that, where there are points like that. Like when Chrissy later on has this monologue about final girls that felt like a different part of the book. Like, it felt like, okay, here is my essay. And then it's sitting on top of the book. It's sitting on top of the story as a separate entity. It's sort of this, like, foam on top. That moment where Lynette is saying the thing that I think doesn't need to be said. It also feels kind of separate from the story. Yeah, but it's not. It's obviously something that she thinks about, and I think that it. I agree with you. I think that it's good to say, but. Yeah, it just struck me as very strange.

Yeah, 100%. I also, like, we'll get more into her view of, like, every. Every single man aligned person that she meets throughout this entire book because she. She has thoughts and it makes sense. But it's also so sad. It's so sad to see. But it's also very relatable in some ways.

That also felt like a sledgehammer. I feel like Hendrix said a lot of that stuff so explicitly. It was the thoughts that you think, and it's said so explicitly. And I feel like a lot of the characterizations were also caricatures. They were also very on the nose. No nuance here. We just see this man and he is very clearly bad. Like, I get it. It's fine. But it just felt like in this story, the men are the stereotypes. And I. Yes, it's because Lynette is telling the story and it's because that's how she sees them. And I completely get that. It's just kind of like. It felt very cartoony to me, 100%.

We go through this whole rigor moral. It takes her hours, hours to get home. But she does finally get back to her apartment, and she's finally, you know, at a safe place she can relax. And then someone knocks on the door and she loses it again. And it's Julia. And Julia, she doesn't see her at first, which I think is a fun little, like, thing. She looks through the peephole, well, the electronic people, because she has built a cage around her front door so that if someone comes in, they are trapped in a cage unless they enter the code or she enters the code or whatever, because she is a very paranoid woman. But she looks at the electronic people and doesn't see anyone because Julia, she's in a wheelchair, so she doesn't spot her. So when it knocks again, she uses the lower camera, realizes it's her, and is like, oh, fine, we just. We gotta be quiet. She'll go away. But she doesn't go away very long because she comes back being held up by the ghost, her killer from her series, her franchise, so to speak. And you find out that Julia's high school boyfriend and then later on her college boyfriend went on murder sprees. And she was the final girl in that scenario. They call it Slay in universe, which I think is very fun. It's obviously based on Scream name.

And even I got that one.

Yeah, even Beth got that one. And to get into it just a little bit, because Julia's is the. The only name that's a little bit weird. The rest of them are like, usually the first name. But I think that Neve might have been a little too obvious, even for Grady Hendrix, for reference. But Julia is based on Sidney Prescott from Scream, played by Neve Campbell. Her last name is Campbell. So I saw some people saying that the Julia portion of it may have been pulled from Neve Campbell's role. That kind of got her the role in Scream, which was Julia on Party of Five. I've never seen that. Have you seen that? It's Canadian, so I thought maybe I've.

Heard of it, but I have not. I have not seen it.

Okay, But. But, yeah, so. Oh, no, it's ghost. Lynette lets them into the cage, and she gets out her big ass gun and is gonna shoot the ghost because, oh, she's gonna do it. And then two things happen. A ghost pisses his pants and the bullet does not penetrate the cage, even though people like the guys that installed it told her that it would. And she realizes that it is a reporter named Russell Thorne, who, fun fact, is named for Russ Thorne, played by Michael Vallea in a Slumber Party Massacre, which. Double fun fact. Russ is the killer. Like I said in Slumber Party Massacre, which I find interesting for this character because this character is kind of a nothing. I find it weird to name him after a killer.

I will say sorry just on this situation. Extremely fucked up.

No.

They can clearly see that Lynette is going through it and she's having trouble, and to then show up at her door with a killer in her mind. What. How do they think she's going to react to that?

Yeah. And Julia knows from the meeting that Lynette is convinced that someone is trying to kill the final Girls.

So, like, in any circumstance, it's a betrayal of trust. It's. It's a betrayal of trust, and they could have done a lot of harm to her mentally. Like, what do they think she's going to do? I understand that they were thinking, well, she's going to let us in. But then what? What's your end game?

100%. I hated this part, honestly, like, when. When you discover, like, I realized pretty obviously early in the scene, Julia screaming at her, like, don't. Don't. It's Russ. It's Russ for sure. But, like, I'm right there with Lynette. I'm going to shoot this guy in the fucking head. Like, that is so wild. And, like, to. It was. I guess it was Russ's idea, according to Julia. Why'd you go along with it? You've been through a scenario like this. Like, why would you go along with this?

Like, exactly. That's what I was thinking. I'm like, if I'm Julia, I'm gonna say no. She's in a really fragile place right now. I think that this is a bad idea. And what if all she does is just call the cops?

Yeah.

Like, what if that's the outcome here.

Exactly. Speaking of the cops, though, the cops have been called by the neighbors as Russ and Julia are talking to Lynette. And this is where we find out that someone is writing a book about the final girl support group. Julia thinks it's Heather because Heather is always hard up for money and would write, like, an expose like this in order to get that money. Money.

Get her bag.

However, Lynette doesn't. Lynette doesn't think it's Heather. She doesn't explain who she thinks it is, but she doesn't think it's Heather. And as they're having this discussion, bullets start flying through the window.

Oh, my God.

Russ, I think, gets hit immediately and goes down. Julia also gets Hit and goes down. Fine. Goes flying across the room.

I just want to note one of my. Those sort of caricature moments with Russ where he pees himself and that makes him sit on the edge of the treadmill. I just thought that image was just so funny.

It really is.

It just made me laugh.

It was really good.

And the caricature moment that I wanted to point out was just that he's just kind of a weasel. From the first jump, he's like, he. First of all, he pissed himself, so there's that. But also just he's not providing any useful information or anything in this scenario. He's just like, there and doesn't do anything or say anything valuable.

I absolutely agree. I think what we find out a little bit later might attribute to why he didn't say anything else in this moment, for sure. But also, yes, I agree. I laughed out loud when she told him to get off her chair and sit on the treadmill because he had piss all over his pants. I just. It was very good.

Yeah, he.

And he is the one, too, that opened the curtain, to be clear.

Yes, that's right.

He caused this.

Yeah, he's the one who opened the curtain. I just think it's, like I say, it sort of reinforces that men as a stereotype, kind of through line.

Absolutely. Yeah.

In the book, for sure.

So bullets are flying. Lynette's pretty sure, like I said, Russ goes down. She's pretty sure Julia got hit. Fine goes down and is lying out of his pot on the ground. And Lynette flees. She leaves. She runs away. And she feels ashamed as she does because she is once again just running, just not fighting back, which is. Is what she has, I guess, been like. She's been training herself, like, this whole time these 26 years to finally fight back. And it's. It's tragic that she, once again, like her initial fight, flight or freeze, is, you know, flight. She runs and she abandons Fine and she abandons Julia, and she goes to step one of her plan, which is a car she has hidden in a garage, and all of her tires are slashed. So someone knows her plans. And she's getting more and more spooked. And she eventually, finally calls Dr. Carol, who I realized I didn't introduce at the very beginning. Dr. Carol Elliott is the therapist who runs the support group for these final girls. She is a shout out to Carol J. Clover, the author of Men, Women and Chainsaws and the originator of the term final girl. Her name that is Carol. But, yeah, so she calls like she has no one else, because like all her plans, it's. It's her car. And then also it's a storage locker with some money and stuff stashed away. And she notices that someone has changed the lock on it. So like someone has been stalking her essentially and figuring out all of her plans. And she doesn't know how they did it because this is all very secret stuff.

Was it clear that the bullets that came from the. That hit Julia through the cage where they.

Oh, armor piercing.

Right. So I think just to make it clear, that was not the cops because the cops were at the front door.

Correct. Initially, as she is fleeing, Lynette does think that it is the police that have opened fire. But as she does think about it more, she realizes that to come through the window the way they did and hit that, they would have had to be shot from the rooftop across the street. So it was a sniper. It was. It was someone in on this plan that she, for very good reason at this point, is becoming more and more convinced of that someone is planning to kill the final girls. I do have an issue with this too, because I hate how much no one believes her. Even though they've all been through these experiences and like the fact that all of this has been happening, they. Everyone keeps insisting that it's coincidence. That's so weird to me that these women who have been through these traumatic events would be insisting that it was a coincidence that all this stuff is happening. But yeah. So she calls Dr. Carol, asks her, I guess to stay with her for a while, and she goes to her house and ends up meeting Pax, who is Dr. Carol's 8 year old son, as well as sky, who is her 26 year old son.

That's right.

And this is part of that. When I was talking about Lynette, you can tell it's Lynette's damage that is like the view of these men. Even though Pax is like just an annoying little 8 year old, she's immediately suspicious of him. Like she does not trust him because he is a boy, he is male, and therefore he is dangerous in a way like. Like he is very annoying. He is such a little asshole to her when she gets there. And sky gets Pax to ask or to say nice rack to Lynette, which I think is supposed to be a catchphrase from her movie, which we learn more about later. But rack is a double entendre here in this here reference. Even after Pax leaves, Sky still asks to see her scars. Which I found really creepy. Like, I.

Very creepy.

I did not like sky from the moment of meeting him. I thought he was a weird little creeper.

Yeah, absolutely. He is another example of sort of a caricature, I think, to a lesser extent. Because I think that we're not supposed to be suspicious of him or we're supposed to.

We're supposed to attribute it to her paranoia.

Exactly.

And Lynette does show her scars. She kind of does it in a. What's the. Right. Like, in a defiant sort of way. She. She's doing it to scare him, and it doesn't scare him. And she's kind of put off by that because, like, usually, like, at that point, people would, like, leave her alone. You know what I mean?

Yeah. She's quite defensive from the get go, like you said of Pax, and then also of sky. And I mean, to a lesser extent, Dr. Carol. I mean, she trusts Dr. Carol. But I think that just basically anybody who is not herself or one of the final girls are really up for. Are really suspect. She's really prepared for betrayal from anybody.

Yeah, all the time. Like, I think Dr. Carroll realizes at one point that she brought a gun into the house. And, like, is like, either you hand over the gun or I don't want you in my house with a gun. And so Lynette finally hands over the gun and then goes and gets another gun out of her bag and puts it in her little. I love that she has a little fanny pack that she's wearing at all times with her little gun and, like, stuff inside of it. It's a fun mental image for me with that.

I love it. It's a great idea. But later on when she thinks that Dr. Kayle has betrayed her, it doesn't. I think that it doesn't faze her as much as it could because I think that she's just basically prepared for that. It would affect her more if it was probably one of the other final girls in group, but the fact that it's basically anybody else is really. It's fair game 100%.

And I do think that that. Because she's obviously been traumatized twice by her experiences in her Slasher and its sequel, but she has also been traumatized in regards to just relationships in general because she got involved with a man that we'll get into a little bit later, and he also ended up just abandoning her and betraying her. So I think that she's just ready to be abandoned and betrayed by anyone in her life at any point, for sure.

And that's such an awful way to live, to be honest. Like, it's such a terrible way to live your life, going through expecting that anybody could do you harm at any point. And there's something to be said for having a hard shell, and there's certainly some of that, but I think it's also just being on high alert and just having the tightest strings, just being ready to spring at any point.

Yeah, absolutely. But, yeah, so I don't remember exactly where it happens, so I just have it here. While she is at Dr. Carol's office or at her house, she breaks into her personal office as well. And she's looking for files on herself and the other final girls because she wants to kind of see what information someone could have gotten from them, I believe if Dr. Carol was somehow compromised. But she also finds a file on Stephanie Fagotti, the survivor from the opening incident at Red Camp. And I don't believe that Stephanie is a patient of Dr. Carol's yet, but it's pretty clear that Dr. Carroll is, like, gonna bring her in as a patient because she's gone through a similar experience to everyone else.

That's right. She has the file, and she's looking into it.

Exactly. So after the awkward scar scene and all of this, Dr. Carroll gets a phone call, and it finds out that Dani is in custody because she. She says because she shot at the police. We find out later that Dani fired into the air because she has extreme respect for, like, officers of the law, which is. I mean, you know, she's from the. She's from the 80s. It's fine. Dani is fine otherwise. But they came to find her because someone else confessed to Dani's brother's crimes. This is where we find out Danny's backstory, which is that she had an older brother named Nick who used to hurt animals and people. And so he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. And then when several of the inmates escaped, Nick murdered people on his way to Danny, and she was eventually forced to kill him. And the franchise based on her story is the Babysitter Murders, which in our world, is based on Halloween. So. And Danny is another one whose name inspiration is a little interesting. Her name is Danny Shipman. She. Her character is obviously very inspired by Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween. But the name inspiration is most likely based on Jamie Lloyd, played by Danielle Harris in Halloween 4 and 5. And Jamie, in the context of Halloween is Laurie Strode's daughter. So she's named after, like, Laurie Strode's daughter and also Just for funsies. Daniel Harris also played Annie Brackett in the Rob Zombie remake. So, like, she's been very involved in that, both when she was a small child and then also again as an adult, which is fun. Yeah.

And it doesn't seem like a coincidence that the character would be named Jamie and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Yeah. Yeah, it was named after Jamie Lee Curtis. Yeah. The daughter. Which is interesting because those are the, you know, the people Halloween fans are the most argumentative of. I'm joking. Halloween fans. I'm joking. But, like, there's so many timelines in that series that, like, there's a timeline that skips everything. Except for the first movie. There's a timeline, like, it skips over everything. And then the sequel came out in 2018. Like, you know what I mean? And then there's, like, a timeline where, like, it's a lot. It's a lot. Which I think might be why they named her after someone from, like, one of the sequels that kind of mush together the whole thing.

That makes sense. Yeah. It's kind of like the Fast and the Furious.

Yeah, it kind of is like Fast and the Furious when you get down to it.

It's all about family.

It's all about family, and it really is. Anyway, and also, okay, so, like I said, Danny is taken into custody because someone else confessed to her brother's crimes. And so Dani, obviously, in her sequel, is forced to kill her brother. And she's always felt a little guilty about it because she was never 100% sure if maybe she killed the wrong person because, like, when he approached her in that second incident, he wasn't wearing the mask. He wasn't carrying a weapon. He was just, like, kind of there, and she killed him. But I'm really confused about her having that plot point at all because it is found out later that the person who confessed is lying. Like, they. It was a false confession. But in her first incident, the killer was shot a whole bunch of times by the cops, and Danny herself, like, hit him in the eye with a coat hanger. So after she killed her brother later, wouldn't they just be able to, like, show in the autopsy that this guy had been shot a bunch of times and stabbed in the eye with a coat hanger. Like, I. I find it weird that there's doubt.

There's doubt in Dany's mind.

Yeah, there's doubt in Danish in Dany's mind.

Oh, yeah, I can see. I can see that it's not logical for sure, but I think that if you Already have that seed of doubt. And then somebody comes in and says, yeah, here there's proof that that seed is correct. I can see that sort of eating at your mind and wanting to, like, believe it, because there's also probably a part of her that didn't want to believe her brother was capable of doing those things.

That's fair. That is fair. It's another traumatic response, which makes sense because there's a lot of. This book explores a lot of different reactions to trauma, which I do appreciate. So, yeah, that. That makes sense. Emotionally, I guess. Just logically, I was just like, how. How would you not be able to tell that it was the same person? Like, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So she's been taken into custody because it. And it's. It's really fucked up. I feel so bad for Dani in the. Like, I. There's a part that makes me upset later on, but Dani doesn't want to leave her house because her wife is dying of cancer, and she promised her that they would stay at home and that she could die there at her home that she loves with Danny. And the police are like, you need to come in. Like, the FBI wants to talk to you. And she's like, no, my wife is dying. And the cops who know her are like, you know what? Yeah, that makes sense. What if we do the interview here? But, like, the FBI refuses to do the interview at her house, and that's why she eventually, like I said, shoots in the air to, like, say, you off. Get off my property, or whatever. But it's so fucked up that they wouldn't even, like, let this woman stay in her house with her dying wife. I'm so mad about it, and I.

Guess that's the point. I think I must have missed this when. On my. Listen, I was confused later on when they go to get Michelle from the hospital. I think I had assumed that she had been there the whole time, but.

Yeah, she got moved there because Dany got taken into custody. Yeah.

So that's also strange to me that. That they would do that. I think. I guess that's the other fucked up part. Maybe. Maybe it's not strange. Maybe I just find it annoying and that they wouldn't bring, like, a nurse.

Or something out and let her stay in her home. Yeah. It's a lot.

Yeah. To move a dying woman against her wishes and against Dany's wishes feels wrong in a lot of ways, but it does seem like something the cops would do.

Yeah, I just.

That.

Just that part just really.

Yeah.

Because the only reason she's taken into custody was for shooting in the air. And she only did that because they wouldn't let her. Like, it's just. It's so annoying.

I. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It was very frustrating for me. But, yeah. So Lynette learns about this happening and is, like, even more convinced that, like, this is. Someone purposely is doing this stuff to isolate them and put them in danger. Dr. Carol doesn't believe her. And so Lynette decides that she's not going to stay here because Dr. Carol wants her to talk to the cops the next day and basically turn herself in. And so Lynette decides to go see if Sky. Sky will give her a ride. And she walks in on him watching some adult videos and jorking it. And apparently they're really weird, messed up adult videos, which once again, in my brain, is another mark against Sky. But she's just like, will you take me back to my apartment? Like, I'm like, lynette, what are you doing?

Yeah, that. That's another thing where it kind of, again, also goes against her characterization because I feel like to go somewhere alone with a guy feels like, not what she would want to do.

Yes. And I think. So here's the thing, too, is, like, later on, when they. When they do go, she keeps mixing him up with Tommy in her head.

That's right.

And I. I think the issue is that he bears a striking resemblance to her boyfriend Tommy, who was killed in her first incident that occurred. And, like, she even. Yeah, on page 91 in my copy, she says if his shorts were high and tight instead of low and baggy, if his hair was shaggy and long instead of styled and close, he'd be a ringer for Tomi.

Yeah.

And she even keeps, like, switching the names, too. Like, she keeps calling him Tommy in her head. And so I think that's why she goes with him. But I don't like that. Like you said, it's against her character. But it also makes sense because Tommy, it seems like, is the only man that she ever thinks of in a way that isn't negative.

That's right. Yeah. She idolizes him regardless of his actual personhood, because he did defend her, which we learn later, but he tries to save her. So. Yeah, I guess I can see in the same way that you have this seed in your mind, like, Dany, of maybe it wasn't my brother. Maybe he didn't do it. Maybe Lynette has this seed in her mind of Tommy's the only good one. And if this guy looks like Tommy, then maybe.

Yeah, 100.

He's. He's also maybe has a seat of good in him if he has some relationship with Tommy.

Yeah, that was kind of my read on it. It's. It's. So to get a little bit into psychology, which I left after one semester of school, so don't. I'm not an expert, but there is a lot to say about traumatic events and kind of getting stuck at that mental age if you're unable to move past it. And there's a lot of ways that demonstrate that Lynette is kind of stuck at that 16 year old who was traumatized. And I think this is just one of those. One of those ways coming out where she doesn't trust men because men have fucked her over so many times. But Tommy was a good one. And this guy looks like Tommy. And even though it doesn't make logical sense, like in her traumatized brain, it makes a weird sort of sense.

Yeah. And I'm sure if she thought about it, if she was able to think about it rationally, she probably wouldn't go with him 100%. But he's the best option she has at the time. And it doesn't hurt that he looks like Tommy.

Exactly. The big reason she needs to get back to her apartment is because she has to find her hard drive. Because this is when we find out that the person writing that book, the book that may have like, exposed all these secrets and put everyone in danger, it's her. It's Lynette. Lynette's been writing a book and it's on her hard drive. And this is one of the parts where I was like, it doesn't make a ton of sense for me that she wouldn't think about it until right now. And it makes sense, like, story wise, like for the story. Beats to like, ooh, dramatic reveal. But I'm just like, really? You didn't like even. Even a little bit, you didn't think about it when Julia was screaming at you about a book coming out? Like, I don't know, it was weird.

Do you mean that she didn't think about it in the story, in her head, in first person?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that I see what you're saying and I do agree with you. I also think that I kind of like it that she didn't mention it because I don't think that she thinks it's that big of a deal. And the whole time she is minimizing it. So I think that if the visit had continued with Julia and Russell, obviously it would have come up and she would have thought about it, but I think that to her, it would have been more important to de. Escalate Julia than it would have been to even think about the book. Because I truly don't think that she thinks it's a problem.

That's fair. That is a fair read. That is a very fair read. I just. It's so interesting because, like, Julia tells her Russell told me that someone's writing a book. And we learn at this point that Russell knows that someone's writing a book because Russell and her were supposed to write a book together.

Right?

So I just. I don't know. I. I kind of feel like, why wouldn't she just assume the jig is up if Russell is sitting in her living room in his piss pants having told Julia?

I think because Julia didn't say, hey, I know you're writing a book. Julia said, I think it's Heather.

That's fair.

And I think you're saying that she's going back to get the book. I think that she's going back to find out who knows about the book. She's going back to get her hard drive to find out how somebody might find out about the book. Because it's clear that Russell didn't tell Julia. Otherwise she would have said, hey, I know you're writing the book.

That's fair. That is fair. That's very fair. Like I said, I just. I just found it a little weird.

It's more for damage control than for actually taking responsibility for writing this thing, which I personally agree with her. I think it's not a big deal because she never intended to put it out. From the very beginning, she never intended to put it out. It felt like to me, at the.

Very beginning, she intended to put it out. And then she was like, oh, wait, no, I can't put this out.

Okay, so at the very beginning, yes, she did intend to put it out, but once she wrote it, she realized that she wasn't going to. And it was more of an exercise for her, which I think she needs to do more of personally.

No, 100%, absolutely. But also, like, if you are a final girl who is in constant danger and stuff, maybe you shouldn't be downloading random links that install spyware on your computer. Because we find out that this is how the book has gotten out was that somebody sent a malicious link that installed spyware on her computer, and now someone has her book. Oh, I do love to rewind a little bit. They get back to the apartment. And obviously it's been overturned by the cops. The cops have taken her computer. I love that she has a dummy PC, like on her desk. And then the actual one is hidden in the drywall. Like that is just because. What's her thing? One is none and two is one.

It's also so funny to me that she thought to do that, but she didn't think not to click on random links in emails.

And I love. I love too, because sky is the one that's. He knows computers. He set up his mom's website and everything. Like, he's a computer guy. And so he's like, oh, well, did you download something? And she's like, I've never. I've never downloaded anything. And then her brain, she's like, oh, shit, I definitely have downloaded stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

But she takes it with her because she doesn't like. Sky is like, just leave it. Like, well, there's no point. Someone already has it and she doesn't want to because she's still, like you said, trying to. She doesn't want anyone to find out that it was her, basically that it was her fault that this stuff is starting to happen. And she asks sky to drive her. She doesn't tell him where specifically because she still doesn't trust him 100%, even though he looks like Tommy. She asks him to drive her somewhere and she. I found it that when he drops her off, I found that scene really awkward.

Yeah.

Where? On page. Page 97. She is getting ready to get out of the car and she thinks he has no armor, no protection. He looks like Tommy right before the doorbell rang that night. Suddenly I want to give him something. Something to keep him safe, something he can remember me by. Something that would be just his. That might make the difference if anything ever happens, happen to him that might keep him from churning into one of us. I lean over and he gets very still. His chest stops moving. I press my mouth to his ear and feel my warm, moist breath cupped by the coral pink curl of his ear. Don't ever let your guard down. It isn't much, but it's all I have. I push myself out of his car and I'm gone. And I find that both weird.

Yeah.

But I also find it very telling because I think that along with her trauma keeping her sort of tied to that event, her sexuality seems to be also very tied into it as well. Because I think that part of the reason why she might start thinking. Because she doesn't initially think about Tommy when she sees sky when she first enters the house, it's only after she catches him watching adult videos. And I think that there might be, like, a tie also between sex and the event for her, because she was about to, for the first time, go all the way with Tommy before the event went down. And so I think that maybe seeing sky kind of weirdly tied him to Tommy also in her head, which is like. Also like a pretty normal, like, trauma thing. Like, just all everything in that night became, like, tied into that trauma, like, you know what I mean?

So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because later on, she does have sex with the cop who saved her that first time. So it's all sort of tied together. And yeah, the fact that she was about to lose her virginity as well during that night is like. Yeah, like you said, it's very easy for that to become associated in your mind.

But, yeah. So he does drop her off, and we find out that she is heading to Marilyn's estate, like, straight up. Like, she lives on this huge, beautiful estate. So she gets dropped off near Maryland's, makes her way there, and she is thinking about Marilyn's experience that turned her into a final girl. And we find out that when she was younger, Marilyn went to check on her grandfather's grave because there had been some grave robbing in the area. And her family was worried about it. And she ran into the Hansons, a family of murderous cannibals. Marilyn survived, but a year later, when she was working as a DJ at a late night radio show, they came after her again. And this time she managed to kill the remaining Hansen family members. And that's how she became a final girl and married rich. I find her choice of husband very interesting. She chose to marry a wealthy prison owner. Like, I find that, like, a weird. I didn't know that that was a thing that you could be. You know what I mean?

Private prisons, Sure, I guess. Yeah.

But the movie franchise based on her story is in the book called Panhandle Meat Hook.

Wait, wait, I know it. I know this one. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right?

Ding, ding, ding. You got it. Marilyn Torres is named for the actor of Sally Hardesty in the first movie, Marilyn Burns. But there's also a little bit of inspiration of Caroline Williams, Stretch from the second movie. The whole DJ thing that came from Stretch in the second movie. So it's really interesting, too, because this kind of touches on Hendrix is kind of redefining what it is to be a final girl throughout the book. And we see more of it later. But in this specifically, he seems to Say that it's not just surviving one of these. It's also surviving a sequel. And so Marilyn is the only one whose source story is kind of tweaked within the universe to make her have a sequel. Because in the original. The original Sally doesn't get a sequel until much, much, much, much, much later, I think, after this book came out. So. So I just found that interesting that he kind of tweaked her story a little bit to give her the sequel.

Yeah. And it's worth noting, at the very beginning, he does set a definition for final girl. Okay. So he does define final girl at the very beginning, but like you said, I think he evolves it as he's going to include sequels and things like that. So the very first line is final girl, noun, the last and sole survivor of a horror movie. So that's quite a broad definition. And by that definition, Lynette is a final girl.

Yeah.

And so saying that she's not or giving her the perception that she is not, and also the other girls in the group think that she is not is very interesting because, again, that's sort of defining and redefining as he's going.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it does evolve, like you said, throughout the book. The sequel thing, I think he adds. I think it's in the first chapter still. I don't know exactly where, and I don't feel like hunting it down right this moment. Reader, you should read the book and find out where it is.

I mean, presumably they have read the book by this point.

Oh, this is true. If you haven't, we're not talking about, like, every single little thing that happens, so you might want to Just. Just so you know. So she goes to Maryland's because she's hoping to get a safe place to stay for at least a night. She has brought Fine with her, but once again, Fine gets abandoned in the bushes at this point.

Have you said what Fine stands for?

Yes, the final plant, because she killed three other plants before him, and she wasn't gonna let herself get another living thing if he also died.

Right.

I love Fine. I really do. I. I think it's. He's a very. There's a lot about Lynette that is very frustrating. And, like, it's meant to be. She's meant to be a bit of a frustrating character. I think that Fine goes a long way to humanize her in the beginning when she is being at her most frustrating. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. I love that she talks to him.

Yes.

And that he has a Gender. Yes. And that she, like, talks back to, like, that he thinks back to her in her head. I think it's adorable. I love it.

It's so cute. I love that he's giving her the silent treatment right now because she has him in a pot because, like, he's been laying on the ground with his little roots out, like, for a day at this point, and he's so upset, and I don't blame him.

Absolutely.

But so she. She gets here. She gets caught by security. She's trying to sneak in. She thinks she's going to sneak in, and as usual, her plans fail, and she gets caught by Marilyn's very good security. And Marilyn is just like, I don't have time for this right now, y'all. I have a charity for lions to run. She's raising money for lions, and so she just sends her to the. The pool house, basically.

Classic esoteric fundraising situation. I love it.

And we find out that Heather is already here. Heather has been missing for a while. Her halfway house burnt down a little bit earlier in the book, and no one's known where she is. Ends up she was crashing here at Maryland's, and she is pissed. She's pissed that Lynette has shown up because she's doesn't like Lynette very much.

And I think that Heather probably sees this as a. As a good thing, a good thing. Going to crash with Marilyn, which. I mean, she's correct. Yeah, it is a good thing.

It's a nice. It's a nice house. Like, it's very, very fancy. Like, they. They're in the pool house, and it's like the epitome of luxury. Like, it's bonkers. So obviously, Lynette does kind of make the situation worse. It's not really her fault. Heather tries to leave because Heather is being Heather, and they get in a tussle with security again. And Marilyn's like, that's it. Both of you get out of here in the morning. Like, I'm sick of your crap. But somehow Lynette manages to convince Marilyn, and it makes sense. And this is a little bit of the better side of Lynette. Lynette starts thinking about how the only person who is really exposed and in danger right now is Michelle, because Michelle's been taken to a hospice, and she doesn't have police protection. She doesn't have anything. She's just there on her own. And so she convinces Lynette, convinces Marilyn and Heather that they should go see Michelle at least and make sure that she's Safe. And then once they get there, she convinces them that they should free her from hospice, which I. Like I said, this is the part for me where Lynette starts having, like, these. These thoughts and ideas that make me connect to her more. Because, like, I, too, would be upset if one of my close friend's wives was, like, stuck in this shitty, horrible building when all she wanted was to be at home to die. And they can tell that she is dying, and Dani won't be out of jail for at least another day.

My point is just that they didn't look up where this ranch was ahead of time, which they absolutely should have done.

That is infuriating. Later on, another character, they try to ask Michelle where Dani's ranch is because none of them know what it is. And poor Michelle, she's like, she's dying. She's not all there. And none of them think to Google the name of the ranch, which is public record. And, like, later on, there's another part where they're like, let's go to Dani's. And Lynette's like, I don't know where it is. And the other character's like, I'll just Google it real quick. And it's like, girl, it was. It's Googleable. Like, I. I was under the impression at this point that it was, like, off the grid. Off the grid. You know what I mean? And so, like, I was more forgiving. But once we find out that it's not. I was so upset looking back at this, because, yes, they don't make it back to the ranch. Instead, they bring her to a park, which she wanted to die outside in nature, and they gave her that. At the very least, it was touching. But also, y'all could have Googled it. Like, I'm. It's so upsetting. It's so upsetting that they could have Googled it.

There are three people in that situation. One of them could have Googled it.

Yeah.

Or one of them could have looked. I don't know. Maybe her information was on the chart or something at the hospice. I don't know. Find the information before you put a dying woman in your car.

It's a lot.

That's my tip.

That's. That's my tip. If you're gonna. If you're gonna liberate a dying woman from a hospice, maybe look up her information first and know where you're going. So Michelle does die at the park, and she does die thinking that Danny is there with her and looking at flowers, which is what she wanted to do so like that. That's fine. Heather wanders away, and when she gets back, we find out she's gotten, I believe, a wino to hang out while we wait for the ambulance to come and retrieve Michelle. But also, she's called the cops on Lynette. She is done with Lynette's shit. Once again, nobody believes Lynette when she's saying there's a conspiracy. Which I do find a little frustrating because there's been so many things at this point that it's like something's happening, you guys.

I feel like with these movies being real, with the conceit that these movies are real and these tropes are real, somebody could have put the pieces together to believe her. She's not the only one who has gone through trauma, obviously. So I feel like somebody should have looked at what was happening and said, hmm, maybe there's some merit to her idea. Maybe she's not totally crazy.

Yeah, 100%. I I.1 of my least liked tropes in horror movies is the one where nobody believes someone that something is happening when there are, like, very clear signs that there is something happening. Like, I get the first time your kid tells you, mom, there's a creepy woman in my room, you don't believe them. But, like, the second time and after you yourself think that you saw a creepy woman, like, why are you still not believing your kid? And that's kind of what this felt like was like, that trope.

Yeah. There's just so many things. Julia in the hospital, Dany being taken. There's just too many coincidences. Heather's place being burned down. There's just too many things, especially Adrian being killed at the very beginning. Just so many things that I feel like anybody in their position should be putting those pieces together. And I agree with you, it's one of my least favorite tropes. I hate it. It's, like, so annoying.

So, yeah, so Heather has called the cops. The cops are here. Lynette gets her shit kicked in. Like, she does manage to break one cop's hand, which. Good for you, honey. And then she gets, like, tackled to the ground by, like, five others, but she gets arrested. And it's at this point that we meet my second least favorite character. Maybe least favorite, not sure. But we meet Garrett P. Cannon, whose name is a mystery even to me. I don't know where his name comes from. I couldn't find anything in my research, but he is. I see a lot of people referring to him as her ex husband. But, like, they weren't married. He was having an affair with her, to be clear. But he is someone who goes way back with Lynette. And this is where we find out Lynette's backstory. We find out that on Christmas Eve, she was with her boyfriend, her parents were out for the evening, and a person named Ricky Walker came to her house and attacked her. He put her on a rack of, like, deer antlers that her father had mounted on the wall. And she played dead. She played dead, and he proceeded to kill all the other members of her family. And it is. Oof. It is described. It's not. This is where I. I do credit Grady Hendrix because he doesn't give a ton of description, so it's not like the worst thing I've ever read. But he gives enough description where you can fill in the blanks of what happened to her family. And it is horrifying.

It's extremely rough to read it. That's kind of what put me in the mind of that true crime podcast thing, giving those details. It felt if it wasn't in first person, it would feel very exploitative to hear because I was listening to the audiobook. So it would be very exploitative to have on a podcast if somebody were to describe that crime. But having it in first person is worse in a lot of ways. Having her describe having to watch her family be tortured and killed in front of her, and at one point, having her little sister's head be put in front of her, presumably to watch her so she's face to face with the head of her little sister. It's. It's horrifying. And it was, at this point in the book was. It was kind of a turning point for me because up until this point, I was getting, I'm not going to lie, like, a little bit bored. But this is the point in the book where everything else comes into sharp focus, where there are tropes and, you know, then there's this. It's a first person account of somebody's horrible trauma, and it puts everything else into perspective. So you hear it in first person, you hear what happened to her, and it's so visceral and it's so real. And it's not a movie. It's a thing that happened to her, and it puts everything else that comes afterwards and everything that came before it into perspective. Everything that we will hear from Chrissy becomes so paper. It becomes so, so nothing. To have Chrissy talking about, you know, final girls and calling people by their trope name The.

The virgin, the jock, all that stuff.

Everything that comes after that, after this point is. Everything that comes after this point is just so different. After having read that. After having read that very personal account.

For me and did that work for you? Did it make what came after better or did it make it less?

I. I think that it's still, like I said at the top, I still felt like it was separated. The things that. The monologue that Chrissy says still feels like a separate sort of essay. Yeah, it didn't feel like it was part of the book necessarily. It still felt very sort of. There was a line between what was part of the plot and what Chrissy was saying. However, it did give me something to compare it to. So I was able to listen to what Chrissy was saying, and my brain kept hearkening back to this visceral paragraph of description. And it's like you can say all these things, you know, calling her whore, the virgin, the whatever, the whatever, but it means nothing when you actually get down to the brass tacks of the reality of the violence of what happened. Yeah, it's all very meaningless. And I think that's kind of where it was effective for me, because at this point, we're kind of talking about. The book is kind of talking in tropes in a lot of ways, and it's making references to movies and things like that. And even just the term the Final girl is obviously very referential. But, you know, having that. That thing to ground, it was very effective for me personally at that point. It became, I would say, a three star rather than a two star in my mind.

That makes sense. That makes sense. All right, so, yeah, so we get this very visceral description. And like I said, Lynette survives by playing dead. And eventually a police officer named Garrett P. Cannon, the same cop that we meet in the current timeline, kills Ricky and saves her. At that point, Lynette is 16, and then two years later, she is with a foster family. And we find out that Ricky's brother Billy had been serving time during the events. Actually, there's a quote about it, page 158. It says Billy was serving time in a locked psych ward for attacking his neighbor in a fight over what day they put out their garbage cans, which is important, believe it or not, to the work that is being referenced. But Billy, after getting out and learning of Ricky's death, comes after Lynette again and kills her foster family. And this is also extremely visceral when it's describing it because, like Once again, it's from that first person perspective. The cops, after he escapes, they do, like, put up people at the front of the house, but he comes in through the back. And so he kills her foster family, and then he is beating her in the head with a cast iron, like, doorstop and smashes her skull, basically. And once again, she survives by playing dead until Garrett, once again comes in and saves her and her franchise in the book is referred to as Sleigh Bells, and this one is a reference to Silent Night, Deadly Night, and its sequel. Lynette Tarkington is named for the character Denise, who is played by Linnea Quigley. So it's not a one to one like the others, but that's because Lynette's not a one to one with the others in terms of being a final girl, as we see in this event that is happening. She both times survived by playing dead and having someone else rescue her. And that comes into play. I believe in. In what Hendrix is trying to do with an interpretation of a final girl. She stands out in contrast with every other final girl around her. And we find out from fucking Garrett P. Cannon, who I hate, because after the second event, when, once again, Lynette is freshly 18 years old, this man, who is 41 years old, has sex with her right after she is recovering from a traumatic brain injury. And I do not like him. Once we learned that, I. Nothing he said could ever make me like, like him as a character. Even later, when he lets her go, I still hate. I hate him. I'm glad she kicks him in the balls later. Like, I hate him so much.

Well, and I think that he's also becomes a cartoon character in the same way that other men in this book have become cartoon characters. And I think that some of the framing is him being, you know, bombastic and egotistical and that sort of thing. And I'm like, he is so much more dangerous than that. He is so much more nasty than that. And I feel like 100% his characterization is. It doesn't go as far as it should, in my opinion.

I absolutely agree. He's a predator, just like a lot of other men that Lynette has dealt with in her life. And the fact that he is portrayed as, like, kind of goofy and, like, just a good old boy and, like stuff, it makes me angry.

Yeah.

But anyway, we find out from Garrett that the reason that the cops are after Lynette and want to talk to her is because letters have surfaced that suggest that Lynette was having sex with Ricky Walker before he murdered her family, and that she basically convinced him to murder her family via her letters. And it is so infuriating because even them just accusing her of that, like, she goes into shock almost immediately because she can't even, like, fathom the idea of sleeping with someone who killed her family. And it puts her in mind of Chrissy, actually, because Chrissy is a traitor. And, like, we find out that that's part of her traitor hood is the fact that she associates with the monsters like she associates with these men. And Lynette is so upset that people are gonna think that she does, too. And, like, I. I get it. I get where she's coming. If we know anything from True Crime. And once again, this. I think this is. This is Grady, like, pulling from True Crime as well as Slasher's inspiration. If you're not, quote, unquote, the perfect victim, then the way that people talk about women who have experienced violence, crime is horrendous. It's horrible because it's like you, we talked about earlier. It's. Well, you brought it on yourself, right?

Yeah.

And we do find out, because. Oh, my God. And also these cops. Oh, my God, they torment her. They put her in this cold room with a plexiglass wall, and they cover the wall with all these letters. Because, in truth, she was writing to Ricky Walker at a point when she was young. She was assigned a pen pal in class, and that was. I guess it was supposed to be, like, a less fortunate student because Ricky was, at this point, living in a. In, like, a child's home or something. And she kept. You know, she was writing to Ricky, and they were friends of a sort, and she would vent about her family. And there's also things that we find out in this. Like, I've only highlighted one. Like, one of the excerpts of her letter is talking about how her dad made Jillian scrub the shower with her toothbrush. And we know from the text that Jillian is, like, eight when she dies. So how young was this child where her dad was making her scrub the shower with her toothbrushes?

Wild.

To me, it's very clear that before the monsters in her life, Lynette may have dealt with a very abusive household, if not physically, then at least verbally.

And I think that she acknowledges that her dad wasn't perfect. I think that she also acknowledges that when somebody dies, you. They hold a complicated position in your life where even if they were maybe a negative influence, you hold them to a higher light. You glorify them.

Yeah. And I have the quote for it, too, on page. On page 164. She says, specifically, after Billy Walker, I sanded down our rough times and polished up Dad's halo until it's bright enough to blind me to the past.

I mean, I hear that toothbrush thing. I personally hear maybe that was, like, an imperfect punishment. I can. It's hard for me to believe that unless it's explicitly abusive that he would do that and make her clean the entire shower with her toothbrush. I feel like that's a teenager's interpretation, you know, dramatization of what the punishment was. That's kind of. My interpretation of it, is that she sees her dad as being unfair and she's complaining about something.

I am going to disagree with that only because of the line about after Billy, how she sanded all that off and refuses to look back at it. She. She has lifted him up in her head to be a better version of her father. I do think that there is a lot of implication in her letters, her real letters to Ricky, because we do find out that there are some that are fake, especially specifically the ones that are implying that she had sex with him. I also love that she realizes it because they're on slightly different stationery than the one that she had. Like, it has flowers, and the one that she had didn't, or something like that. But like, everything that she says, there is a bit of it, like I said, that is indicative of, like, a teenager venting to a friend, basically, in my experience, with the way that she thinks about the fact that she has kind of blinded herself to her dad's actions in the past, I do believe that he was probably, at the very least, like I said, verbally abusive to her and her sister, especially with the way that Garrett holds him up on a pedestal as well. And also, he was a cop. So, like.

I'm not defending a cop.

I mean, you're kind of long. No, no, no, I. I know that. I'm just. I'm saying that when she's rereading her letters, she specifically thinks, like, I remember thinking. Thinking that dad was strict, but I don't remember this much. And I think that she has kind of blocked that out, like that. That before time trauma, because she wants to see her family as, like, an ideal before the traumatic things happen to her.

Absolutely. And I can. I agree with that completely.

But, yeah, so she realizes that she is being set up, that the letters that imply that she had a sexual relationship with Ricky Walker and asked him to kill her family, that those Ones are fake, that they have been faked. And she starts begging for the cops to listen to her, and they don't, because they suck. And eventually, Dr. Carol visits her in jail, and Dr. Carol brings in a big old stack of papers, and Lynette finds out that someone has sent her book to everyone, apparently not just Dr. Carol, but to the other girls as well.

So this is where I have some issues. I have some issues with Carol's reaction to the book. She takes it very personally. And, yes, I was confused by this because she is a psychologist, and I think that we are meant to take some suspicion, as Lynette does. We're supposed to be suspicious of Dr. Carol in this moment, with how she is reacting, because Lynette is interpreting her reaction as too over the top, that maybe she knows something. And I think that's how we're supposed to read it. But in my mind, reading this just straight, if I don't have any suspicion toward Dr. Carol, her reaction seems very strange to me, because I think that I would read it. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist, but I feel like it's her job to look at things from a greater distance and not confront your patient in this way, in such a personal way. And to be so emotional and to be so angry about it, that's where I kind of got confused and a little. Yeah, that's kind of just where I got confused. Was her reaction.

No. And I agree, because I.

Okay.

If I'm giving Hendrix the benefit of the doubt in this and that this wasn't just written in this way to make us suspect Dr. Carol, my interpretation would be that she suspects who the real person is and she is trying to cover for them.

Yes.

But I don't think that's supposed to be what she's doing.

Yes. So I had actually thought about that. But we never really learn what Dr. Carol knows at the end.

No. She goes into hiding.

Yeah. So we don't really figure out if that's actually what's happening, if she's trying to cast suspicion onto Lynette, if she's trying to sort of reinforce that suspicion and to maybe deflect from her son, because if she realizes that it's her son, maybe that's why she's acting strangely. But we don't get that explicitly.

But yeah. Yeah. And well, that's the thing, too, is like, another thing that they note that Lynette notes is that there's too many pages as well.

Yes.

Like that there's way more pages than There should be for the amount of, like, words that she had written. And so it seems almost like a prop. And, like, she does note, too. Like, why would she have printed it out and brought it here? So, like, I don't know. Like I said, if I'm giving Hendrix the benefit of the doubt retrospectively, this is. This is Dr. Carol trying to cover for her child. But I don't know if that was the intention, because we never. We never learned if she did figure that out. You know what I mean?

Exactly. Yeah.

So it feels like. It feels like it's just there to make us suspicious of Dr. Carol.

Exactly. Because Lynette does say that it's suspicious that there are so many pages and things like that, and she keeps looking over her shoulder. And I will say as well, that Garrett, not being the explicit bad guy is pretty telegraphed. Like, it's pretty predictable.

Yeah.

I was like, yeah, it's obviously, Garrett is fine, so.

Yeah, well, you know, as fine as he can be. Well, they. They find out. Yeah. So Dr. Carol leaves after her after that, and the police officer whose hand she broke, who has been the one bringing her, like, her meals and stuff, he asks her, did you love him? And she's like, who? And he's like, ricky Walker? And she's like, no. And he's like, oh, that's too bad. And then he tries to kill her because oopsie. Find out. He's a crazed fan. This who time.

Yep.

And Garrett uses this. Like, he saves her again. And he uses this as an excuse to, like, transfer her to the jail back home instead of having her stay here in la. And so they head off, and like you said, he didn't believe the letters. Apparently, the whole time, he also thinks that someone is trying to do something and he wants a book deal. Of course he does. Because, like, this man has done nothing but use Lynette the entirety of their relationship, and now he wants to use her to get more money again. And he's like, you gotta make it look real when you steal my car. You gotta punch me in the eye. And she kicks him in the balls. And I'm so happy that she does.

Yeah.

But she takes his car. And because now she thinks that Dr. Carol might be the killer, she wants to try to save who she thinks might be another target, Stephanie Fogotti, whose file was in Dr. Carol's office, who is the most recent final girl. She gets to Stephanie's house eventually and uses one of her many fake IDs to pretend to be a colleague of Dr. Carol and kind of talks her way in before Dr. Carol shows up. And she manages to coerce Stephanie into leaving with her. And they head to Chrissie's. It's roundabout. They pretend to be selling. And this is why we find out why Chrissy has been shunned. She buys and sells myrtabilia, especially that of Final Girls. And so they bait her out with, like, a promised signed picture from Lynette of the actor from the movie, which apparently are very rare because Lynette refused to do more than a few of them. And then they follow her to her spooky freaking house out in the woods. It's horrible. And what happens? Lynette leaves Stephanie in the car with her tiny gun. No pepper spray. She gives her pepper spray.

Yeah.

And goes in and gets accosted almost immediately after stumbling across creepy doll art and other, like, spooky things. Gets attacked by a brick wall of a man who we find out is named Keith and is Chrissy's husband and is probably a murderer.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the sense that we get, is that he's. He's one of the monsters.

Yeah.

Yes. Quote unquote from Chrissy. I just realized just now in looking over my notes that a lot of Chrissy's speech, I understand that it is part of, like, the discourse.

The discourse.

And there's, like, the literary, you know, discourse around slasher movies.

Yeah.

I also just realized that the quote that I picked up that you wrote down for me.

Yeah.

Was murder is man's attempt to steal birth from women. She says, we make children, they kill them, we create life, they create death. It's the way it's always been. And that strikes me as. So Jordan Peterson coded.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And actually, this is. This is one of my. Like I said, there's. There's. There's an extent where it feels like Hendrix is trying to get into the.

Discourse and talk about it, but also mock it.

And also mock it. That's my thing. Is, like, this part of it specifically. I was like, okay, think with your logic brain. Does Grady Hendrix think that women are, like, defined by their ability to birth? No, I don't think he does. So I think he is, in this instance, like, mocking the discourse. Tm.

We're considering the source. Right. This is coming from Chrissy, who has been derided this whole time. Nobody likes Chrissy. And the fact that she has this Murderbilia museum in her basement. She has rooms dedicated to each of them and is talking about ushering Lynette into her Final girl status so much. It's very. To me, it's like, yeah, this is mocking the tropes and the discourse.

Yeah.

And I think that's why it feels very Jordan Peterson.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's so funny. That's such a funny way of putting it.

Well, I mean, because she's talking a lot. She's talking a lot. You're saying. You're not saying a lot, but you're talking a lot.

100%. Yeah. No, Chrissy is. Chrissy is a lot, period. And this is where we get to the David behavior, because Chrissy is like, oh, no, Keith, don't. It's fine. Leave her there. Why don't you come with me, Lynette, and I'll show you my museum, my murderabilia museum that I built myself in my barn behind the house. And it is so much. She has a room for every one of the final girls in there. And she has banonker stuff. She has the hanger that Dani used to stab her brother in the eye during her inc. Like, she has crazy stuff. She has scalps hanging down from the ceiling. I think those are meant to be from Marylands, like, because they were cannibals and whatnot. Like, she has all this stuff. But Lynette's room is empty, which I find so interesting, because she's not a final girl yet.

She hasn't been. She hasn't been baptized by blood. She hasn't taken her first blood. So she doesn't get a room yet. That's the whole. Yeah, whatever.

That's her whole thing.

I think it's interesting that Heather's room is this weird portal question mark.

We don't get to see Heather's room. Lynette doesn't describe it. It's very cosmic horror coded when she looks in there. So this is from page 245. It says she pushes open a chain link door and turns on the light. The two of us stand in the doorway, and I'm staring in horror. Horror. I want to cry. It's Heather's. She beams. I invited the Dream King here, and he built it himself. I had to sell all of my own memorabilia to pay for his services, but I think it was worth it. My brain can't wrap itself around what I'm seeing. How I start. The Dream King goes anywhere he wants. She says they'll find eventually that the man they have in prison serving his time had nothing to do with what actually happened. But he's a servant of the King, and he would Never tell. The Dream King is very careful about how he feeds now. It's shocking, isn't it? My mind tries to pick apart the howling insanity in that room. And if Heather were here right now, I would forgive her for betraying me. I would forgive her for betraying everyone. It's so much worse than she ever said. And I'm just like, I am. I desperately want to know more about Heather's story. Like, yeah, from what I read, give.

Us a Heather sequel.

Give. Oh, my God, please. Yeah, from what I read, the reason that we don't get details of her franchise is because while he was writing it, Hendrix realized that adding in that stuff made it a lot less grounded than he wanted it to be, and so he chose to, like, keep hers more obscured and mysterious. And I desperately want to see sequel of Just Heather, because also, at the end, it's implied that Heather goes to, like, fight the Dream King. So, like, I want to know more. Anyway, sorry. Obviously, Heather's story is the only one that includes any supernatural elements. She is the Dream King's final girl, and her franchise is Deadly Dreams. And if you can't tell by that, it is based on the Nightmare on Elm street series, specifically the first and third one. Heather DeLuca is named for the actress Heather Langenkamp, who plays Nancy Thompson in Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 3. This is just a thought. I didn't find anything online supporting this, but I almost feel like her room leans enough into the cosmic horror of it that I almost feel like there's some Hellraiser vibes that are brought into it as well. More than just Nightmare on Elm Street.

Yeah.

But, yeah, big spooky. Want to know more? Please. We don't get to learn more. It's like in Twilight when they'd mention something cool that one of the other characters would do and then refuse to talk about it because we had to see what Bella and Edward were up to instead.

It's like in Twilight.

It's like in Twilight.

Okay.

I knew that would get a reaction out of you. I'm so happy you. Anyway, anyway, said it so casually. I do love a lot of the things that Lynette says. Back to Chrissy in this, when she's going on her. Her rants about what it is to be a final girl and whatnot. I love the response.

Diatribe.

Yeah, her diatribe. I love the response that Lynette gives on page 243 where she says, you're getting very mystical with people's lives. I say, these aren't abstract ideas. These are actual human beings. And yeah, and I, that, that once again, I, I think that Hendrix is not only talking about slasher movies themselves, but also because in this world they're based on true crime. He's also talking about true crime. And there's a lot of people who talk about true crime in our world in a way that turns people into abstract ideas instead of actually focusing on the real people involved in a situation.

For sure. And I think that if this, if this were isolated and if we hadn't heard Lynette's story before this, I think that it would be less effective, but I think that it's reinforced because of what we heard beforehand. Like I say, that story ripples out through the rest of the book and acts as reinforcement for that, for what Lynette says at that point, that they are real people.

I agree. And so finally, because Chrissy, because Chrissy is so much her private office, the reason they walked through this murder museum in the first place, because her private office is at the very end of it. So they have to walk through this whole thing to get to her office because she has some emails that might help prove what Lynette is saying. So she shows her a series of emails between a buyer who is interested in some art from Billy. And in each of these emails there are. There's a code at the bottom and it's a number code. And they find out that basically Dr. Carol has been communicating with these killers and arranging for them to do all these things. Arranging for Billy to reveal the quote unquote location of these letters that have been hidden this whole time. Arranging assumedly for another prisoner to confess to Danny's brother's crimes. Like all this stuff is starting to come together. And as they head back to the house, Lynette finds out that Keith has captured Stephanie because Stephanie promised to come after her if she didn't find her, if she didn't come back within a certain amount of time. And that time has passed. And Keith is so creepy. He's so creepy with this 16 year old girl I hate. And it's very weird. And at this point, Chrissy says the one true thing that she says in the entire book, which is that Stephanie isn't a final girl, she's a monster. And obviously Lynette is like, fuck off. And drives her car into the living room to save Stephanie.

Yes.

And unintentionally kills Chrissy. And then they get in the car and they take off while Keith is stuck in a wall. I don't really get, like, what's happening with Keith. He's coming through the wall at the same time. Like, I don't know.

So it seems like the wall fell on top of him. Oh, he reached out and grabbed her ankle. Which is also very horror movie.

Yes.

And she gets him off of her, and then he's, like, pushing pieces of wall off of him and kind of rising up like a massive. I feel like it's an homage to some scene in some movie probably, but yeah. So they.

They get in the car and they zoom away. She saves Stephanie. She keeps calling her. Because we find out that Stephanie bears a striking resemblance to Lynette's little sister. And so she keeps calling her her sister. She keeps saying, like, you're on page 220. She says, I'm a big sister after all. Like, at one point, like, she keeps calling Stephanie her sister. And as we have learned, when Lynette's judgment is clouded like this with the past, she usually makes silly decisions on who to trust.

Just going back to Garrett, I think the part that got really cloudy for me was the point where Garrett believed her. It feels like she had been reacting this whole time. She'd always been on the back foot with everything going on. And she continues to be, because she's wrong about who it is. But the moment somebody trusts her, she doesn't know what to do. Immediately, Garrett is like, yeah, I believe you. Something's going on. What do you want to do? And she's like, I. I don't know.

Yeah, it catches her off guard every time, because like you said, she's. She's just reacting. She's just responding to things that are happening.

Exactly.

I don't think she's planning.

No.

And you have a note, an interesting note at this point regarding Stephanie.

Yeah. So at Chrissy's, I did start to suspect that Stephanie was in on it. I don't think I have any sort of textual evidence.

Specific thing. Yeah.

But it was kind of strange. She was acting kind of strangely. And the fact that Chrissy said that Stephanie's a monster. I think I was starting to. Again, if we're getting into sort of literary patterns, I was thinking, who could it be? And I'm thinking, if it's sky, he's not alone, for sure. There's gotta be something. And I think as well, there is a movie. Where is it? Scream. Where? The one of the Scream 4. Okay. See, I haven't seen it, but I do know through cultural osmosis, I know that there. That is also a Trope. Yeah, I would think I was sort of maybe tapping into that.

Absolutely. And when we get to the reveal in just a little bit here, I will go into. There's been. There's clues. There's some clues. There's some interesting clues in. In this, in this, throughout this. But right now, Lynette doesn't suspect anything because Lynette is busy feeling really, really, really horrible. Like, she's absolutely devastated that she has killed someone. She intended just to free Stephanie by driving into the house, and she accidentally killed. Kill Chrissy. And so even though Chrissy is. Is a traitor and has, like, sided with the monsters, quote, unquote, in this, she still is devastated by the fact that she has killed her, and she vows to never kill anyone ever again. And this is where I want to get into my. My interpretation of what I think Hendrix is trying to do in this book. Because like I said at the very start, a lot of this has felt very familiar to me because I am a nerd and I read a lot of discourse, and I think that this is Hendrix's move into the discourse. So we have mentioned Carol J. Clover as the source for the Final Girl terminology and kind of the definition that we still use today about what a final girl is. So in her work, she argues that slashers are mainly targeted towards adolescent males and that for such films to be successful, they need the surviving character to be a woman, to be female, because she has to experience abject terror during the movie's runtime. And many viewers, these adolescent males would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a man or a young boy. And she has a very fair point in that. I don't know if the listeners are familiar with the Nightmare on Elm street series, but the second movie introduced the first Scream King to honestly anything at that point. Jesse Walsh, played by Mark Patton, was written in exactly the same way that a teen girl would be written in a horror movie. He gets attacked, he screams. He is, quote, unquote, effeminate in his presentation of a victim. And a ton of people did not like that. They refer to Nightmare on Elm street, to Freddy's Revenge as the gay one for a very long time. Like the. You know, the horror, bro. The horror, bro. Phones of, like, horror. Just hated that, that movie. And it does kind of relate back to that. They need the victim who experiences that to be female for that reason.

Right.

And. But because of this, they start the movie identifying with the slasher and with the killer rather. And in order to shift the audience Identification over to her. The final girl has to undergo a transformation from the feminine to the masculine. And she does this via phallic appropriation by taking up a weapon and killing the killer. Like I said, that's all Carol J. Clover's definition of what a final girl is. It's paraphrased. Read her book. It's really good. Men, Women in Chainsaws once again. So in this book, in Final Girl Support Group, I see an attempt on Hendrix's part to respond to and share this definition. Lynette stands almost entirely in contrast with what a final girl traditionally is. Where others fight, she plays dead. Where others are virginal and innocent. In their source movies, Lynette and Tommy were about to go all the way before being interrupted. The others kill to protect themselves and their friends. And at this point in the story, Lynette has decided there's going to be no more death. But she still wants to save her friends. And I like that. I like what Hendrix is trying to bring into what a final girl can be and how it can be defined. I as someone who doesn't agree with the gender binary, in a lot of ways, I don't think that it's necessarily masculine to take up arms and defend yourself in that way, but working against the accepted definition, which is what Hendrix is doing, I can see why Lynette is written the way that she is, why she is more passive than you would expect of a final girl, for sure. And then the other thing, just randomly. A lot of critics read Diane Adams, played by Mary Woronov from Silent Night, Bloody Night, as a pioneering example of a final girl, but that's up for debate because she's often seen as too passive to really fulfill the trope. So I find that a really interesting connection. I don't know if Hendrix did that on purpose, but because of the similarity to Lynette's source material, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and the fact that Lynette is a more passive character who is a final girl. You know what I mean? I just found that interesting. But, yeah, that's my rant. That's my rant. That's. When I initially finished the book, I. I was not happy. I didn't think it was very good. I didn't think it was bad, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I was going to. But thinking about it more in the days following and coming to the conclusion that Hendrix was trying to respond to the tropes and shift them a bit, I think I like it more than I did before.

So I don't have the same slasher literacy as you do. I have an English literature background, so I'm looking for the hero's journey. I'm looking for that story structure as we're going through. So I think I'm looking for that, you know, step one, step two, step three, step four. I'm looking for that storyline, and I think this point is the transformation where she becomes her kind of final form in that way, in her characterization. And I think I was looking for the step three, and I think what it's supposed to be is the inciting event of killing Chrissy. So I think maybe that's where that is. And I think I was expecting it where she gets released by Garrett. I think that's where my brain expected it to be, but I think it's too close. There's an inciting incident, and then there's that sort of, you know, final form. And I think I was expecting a bit more of a buffer between. So being released by Garret is maybe not where it was, but I think it's kind of where I expected it to be. So she's still, like I said, she's still on the back foot when she gets released by Garrett, and she's still just responding to things. And I think that definitely is a next step in her chapter, but I feel like it doesn't progress her character the way that I wanted it to. Finally having somebody believe her, I feel like should have moved her forward, but it didn't. So I think that's. I'm glad that we had this conversation because now I can sort of put that into context in seeing her transformation from the not a final girl to sort of shifting the definition of even what a final girl is and pushing back on that definition. I think that's. That's really cool. And I think it's. It doesn't require context to go into this book, but I do appreciate the context because it does make that final transformation a lot more meaningful, because I can see that she has vowed not to kill, and I can see that that's different than typical slasher movies. Obviously, to become the final girl, you kill your monster. And I can sort of see that in a very shallow sense, that she's not going to do that, and she has vowed not to do that. But I like having the context of how it reflects on the very definition of what a final girl is and how it sort of pushes that. Pushes back on that.

For sure. For sure. And there's a couple other things too. That you have said that kind of tie into this for me too. Like you were talking about in the scene where it's revealed what she experienced and went through with her family's deaths, that if you had been reading or if you'd been listening to, like, a true crime podcast, it would have felt extremely exploitative. But because it was first person, it was a personal narrative. It was. It wasn't as exploitative feeling because of that. And I think that's also where Grady is pushing back against Carol's definition, because he is saying that. Okay, yeah, you're saying that slashers are for the male gaze, therefore these adolescent male audience members. Well, in my book, the gaze is Lynette's gaze because she's the narrator and she is speaking. So he's kind of pushing back against the very idea that this is intended for a male audience by making the entire narration female centric and first person. Yes.

That's a very intentional choice, and I think it's very effective.

Yeah, I agree. And you know what? The more we're talking about this, the. The higher the score is raising, because I do see what he was trying to do more and more. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Okay, so. And at this point when she's vowed to never kill again, this is when Stephanie is acting so sus. Like, she's like, well, if you're not going to kill, give me your gun. I'm. I'm going to out kill anyone. I don't give a shit. Like, Stephanie is being such a little weirdo.

And also, at some point in this interaction, they go to call Dr. Carol. She's not picking up.

Yes.

So Lynette's like, well, give me your phone. I'll call Sky. Because she knows Sky's number. And sky is like, what's going on? He doesn't. Isn't confused by a wrong number. And it's like, oh, very clearly. Yeah, they're in collusion. It's sky and Stephanie, so absolutely. I like that that's in the text as a first person detail that the audience can pick up on. But Lynette doesn't.

She just assumes, like, oh, clever boy. He realized that, like, a number he doesn't know would be me.

Right.

And it's not. But she asks him, like, what's going on? And she finds out that Dr. Carol is taking Pax and him and all the final girls, they're gonna go to Dr. Carol's, like, retreat that she has. I don't remember the name of it. I don't Think it's super important, because what matters is that. But she manages to convince Julia by calling her to not do that. Then she's like, I, you know, I know that you suspect me right now, but I don't care if you tell me where you're going. Just don't tell me. Don't tell Dr. Carol. I think Dr. Carol has something to do with it. Just go somewhere else with the girls, and if you can, get Dr. Carol's kids to go with you, too. And then she reads the comic that Pax wrote. She hangs up. Yeah, everything's sorted. Oh, this is so good. This is great. Dr. Carol won't be able to get to any of them. Then she looks at the comic that Pax wrote that he. He, like, bullied her into buying to cover the fact that she and sky were leaving the house. And I find it really interesting the way she describes it. So from page 269, as she's looking at this comic, she says, I'm looking at a page in the comic, and I can't answer. An oversized figure with his mouth open, full of jagged teeth and X's for eyes has sunk his talons into a lion and is ripping its head off. Red scribbles are everywhere. A wide open mouth is a sign of sexual abuse. Claws for hands represent possible violence, as does the oversized body in relation to the small child he looms over. Overuse of one color may be a sign of emotional imbalance. So are the X's for eyes and the fangs. But it's what's written on the monster's chest that takes my breath away. Sky. And this is where she realizes that the monster all along has been Sky. And she just told her friends to try to get the doctor's kids to come with her. Come with them.

Right?

And this comic is messed up, dude. Like, all of little Pax's writings in it, like, he writes, skyman is so evil, he tears the heads off cats. The caption reads, big cats, little cats are cats, neighborhood cats. Sky man hates cats. And I'm just like, holy shit. Sky is fucked up.

Which also does reinforce that maybe Dr. Carroll was covering for him, because how could she not know that her own.

Cat got its head torn off? Yeah.

Yeah. So that does, I think, reinforce maybe she was being suspicious in the prison, but it's because she knew that it was her son, not her.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm leaning towards more and more, especially because she disappeared anyway. Yes, I agree. And this is where I can get into more name stuff. Oh my God. So fun. Grady Hendrix has filled this book with so many references. So Stephanie Fugati, as you mentioned, in terms of slashers, good job. 10 out of 10.

Thank you.

She is giving us a bit of Jill Roberts, played by Emma Roberts in Scream 4. As far as her motivations go, we find out later that she is doing this because she wants to be famous on the news for getting this high body count and whatnot. As far as Ning goes, if you're a fan or a consumer of true crime, you might have clocked this, which is the fact that Carol Ann Fugati was the youngest person ever convicted of the first degree murder and is the accomplice of her much older boyfriend. Which the real Carol Ann Fugati was a teen who was an accomplice to a 20 year old spree killer or 23 or 25 year old spree killer. Which gives, as we find out, considering the fact that I'll remind you, sky is 26 and Stephanie is 16. And then Sky, Sky, Elliot. There are very clear Elliot Roger inspirations as far as the eventual misogyny that we hear about the fact that he has the manifesto that he has literally written in regards to his killings and then with the fact that Stephanie has that tie to Carol Ann Fagotti, it lends a bit to a Charles Starkweather reading for him because that was the name of the much older boyfriend who was a spree killer. But outside of being a creepy spree killer with an underage girlfriend, there's not much that ties them together. Like there wasn't a lot of commonality. Charles Skarkweather didn't hate his mother or anything. So, you know, but yeah, if, if, if people were a fan of true crime, they might have clocked that maybe if they were suspicious around those two, but if not, then maybe not. I definitely the Jill Roberts vibes were very strong with Stephanie, especially at this point because she's starting to act a little manic. She's starting to act a little like she's, she's like, we got to get over there. We got to go. Like, don't you have a credit card? And I am a little upset that Lynette still can't see it. But Lynette has a hard time, like I said, seeing past the people that resemble people from her past.

She's got a blind spot because she sees Stephanie as a little sister and she needs to protect her.

So Stephanie suggests that they go and ask Dani where the others would have gone because Danny, they find out is not with them. She. She has not left the ranch. And they head there, and eventually they find her setting everything on fire, burning all of her possessions. And rightfully, she punches Lynette right in the stomach because she left her wife in a park. Like, she stole her dying wife and left her in a park. And, like, Lynette does try to defend herself a little, and she's like, she wanted to be outside or whatever. And Dani's like, fuck it. Like, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

Yeah.

She tells them that everyone is going to Camp Red Lake. And Lynette explains that sky is going to try to kill all the final girls. And they convince Dany to come with them because Lynette is worried that if they don't, that the last thing thrown into that bonfire will be Dany herself because of her recent loss.

Right.

They get in the truck and they drive to Camp Red Lake. And once they arrive and get parked and they're getting ready to do everything, Danny gets out to go take. Take a quick pee, and Stephanie hits Lynette in the head with a sledgehammer.

Oh, my God. Yep.

It's so much.

Lynette, you're a mess.

Lynette is a mess. Lynette manages to fall out of the car and tries to warn Danny, but Stephanie then runs over Lynette's legs with. With the truck and manages to slam into Danny, who is thrown back into the bushes and is lying there. Lynette's on the ground, and she sees that Dany is still alive. And she's thinking that she wants to try to help, but she can't move. And it's. Once again, she's in a situation where all she can do is play dead. She can't bring herself to fight back. And she does think that she's just dying at this point. She's pretty sure that, like, her brain is leaking out onto the ground. She does see that. I think Danny manages to get away, but Stephanie takes off in the truck towards the camp. And at this point. And I don't. How do you interpret this? So at this point, Adrian appears to Lynette like, as a ghost, basically. Do you think that this is actually a ghost, or you think this is just her head, her brain?

So she gets shot right in the head?

Yeah, right in the head. Yeah.

So I think that. I think it's her brain, is my opinion. I think that she gets a little rattled up, and I think that she is just thinking, you know, what would Adrian say at this point? Because Lynette spent some time here at the camp, so I think that she's sort of hearkening back to those memories of her and Adrien together and thinking, well, how would Adrien get out of this?

Lynette is laying on the ground, like I said, after getting shot. I do think it's really funny too, that when she sees. Sees Stephanie throw the shotgun into the truck, that she's like, haha, shotgun. Riding shotgun, like she's. She's cooked.

Yeah.

And she does say, I wonder if Danny made it up there to tell everyone what's happening. I wonder if Steph is going to get there first and cut through them like a bullet. I lie there and I wonder who's gonna save the day. And blood pools around my head and I die. She's like, I am dying. And then Adrian appears. And the only reason I ask is because with Heather's stuff being supernatural and with later on Dany talking about seeing Michelle out in the desert, like, I just wondered if, like, maybe there is a supernatural something. Something happening. But I also agree that it could be just that bullet. But Adrien's ghost appears and basically says, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get up off your ass. You have people to save. And that's when Lynette remembers that she.

Has a metal plate in red, which I liked. I liked that. She's like, oh, right, yeah, no, I love that.

And she forgets. They did mention it.

We forget.

Yeah, exactly. She forgot. We forgot. And then we're like, oh, wait, yeah, she has a metal plate in her head.

Yeah.

And so she does get up. She manages to make it up to the camp. I think that Hendrik's right, writes this part really, really well. You can. You can feel through the text how beat up Lynette is at this point and how much she is struggling. But she manages to get up to the top of the hill. So she manages to find Julia first and then gets everyone else together, and she shows them something that Adrian had showed her, which is that these cabins are panic rooms. She locks it down. It is bulletproof. And so they're all stuck in here. And Heather makes a comment about, I guess I have to use my superpower and goes to sleep, which I know you don't get. We'll get there.

I mean, I guess I kind. Like, I get it in the sense that, like, what her deal is, like, Nightmare on Elm Street. Like, I get conceptually what the deal is. It's just kind of funny to me because in the context of what's going on Right now, it makes absolutely no sense.

No, absolutely not. Heather is just like. Well, for a reader who isn't informed about, like, maybe a little bit of that, they're just like, yeah, Heather's on drugs. Like, she's just not having a good time. So she lays down and goes to sleep. And then Lynette uses a escape hatch that is built into this panic cabin to go after Stephanie. And she's like, the very least that I can do, because Marilyn has a satellite phone. Thankfully, someone thought to bring a satellite phone, and she's called the cops already. So she's just like, I just have to distract her until the cops get here. That's all I have to do. But instead, she manages to run into sky, and she gets chased through the wellness barn, which is the funniest thing to me in the world.

Yeah.

And he is about to kill her when. Because she falls into a tub. Like, I feel so bad for her. Like, she's trying so hard, but she is so messed up at this point. She falls in the tub when out of nowhere, Heather appears and beats sky over the head with the toilet seat lid. Like, Or a toilet cover. It's so good. I love it.

It's. It's good. I liked it. I also liked that Lynette recognized Sky by his shoes.

Yes.

Because she'd been shoe watching. That's one of her things. Because the reason is. And it's actually very smart, is that people can change their hats or their clothing or their jackets, but they can't change their shoes very easily.

Yeah.

Maybe it's not smart. I don't know. But I think people maybe don't think about their shoes.

Well, and I, like you said, I like how that pays off. Like, we've seen Lynette's plans fail over and over and over, but, like, I love that she does get that. Like, she gets that win.

She gets the one.

Yeah. So, yeah, Heather hits him in the head and is about to kill him. And Lynette is just like, please don't. Like, think about it. That's Dr. Carol's son. Like, he's a horrible monster, but it's still her son. And I just. I don't want anyone else to die. And Heather, like, is like, okay, like, you're stupid, but, all right, I won't do it. And then Stephanie shows up, and she's about to shoot everyone. Lynette starts saying some things that Stephanie really, she does not like on page 324, she says, he groomed you. I say, he told you how evil we are because he hates his mom and he groomed you. And Stephanie is like, no, that's not true. Like, we're. We are in this together, like all this stuff. And eventually on page 325, Lynette says, you think it's about you and Sky? I ask. This is about him and his. His mommy. You're the sad daughter in law to his psycho obsession. A footnote in his case file. We'll get the memorials. We'll be the heroes. He'll be embraced by a bunch of sad little boys on the Internet. But you don't fit in anywhere. You'll be forgotten because all you ever did was say, yes, sir, no, sir, and pull the trigger. When daddy said absolutely facts, she is spitting straight facts. And so Stephanie gets tempted to take sky out. And using that as a distraction, Lynette manages to tackle her to the ground and wrestle the gun away from her. And the police arrive, like, that's. It's kind of the end of it. It ends at a little bit of a psychological standoff, I guess, more than a physical standoff, which I do like.

I mean, physical in the sense that now they're face to face, cheek to cheek.

She close enough to kiss. She also does note too, though, at one point, like, she's just a kid. Like, seeing her so close up, like, despite everything, despite the airs that she's putting on, despite talking a big game, she does note this is a child. Like, this is a child who has been manipulated.

Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. And I mean, she's right.

And then as time goes on, we get to the final chapter, and Lynette is on her way to visit Stephanie in prison, along with the other final girls. This part about sky really stood out to me because it. It is where kind of I. I realized more so about the. The Elliot Roger connection. On page 330, it says, Talking about Sky's lawyer. He held daily press conferences when he read extensively from his client's manifestation. Turns out he's a big men's right activist. And their plan is to claim that sky was the victim of an out of control feminist conspiracy. Sky's venom is getting amplified and re amplified all over the Internet. It would have been easier for Dr. Carol if I'd let Heather shoot him.

Yeah, that's. I actually didn't pick up on that Elliot Roger thing. I kind of thought, oh, yeah, this is very typical. But you're absolutely right. That makes me sad.

Yeah, it kind of does. It's. Well, and I think this is once Again, like. Like I said, that connection between true crime and slashers, that is happening in this universe, this is often the case. It's often the case that these. These killers end up glorified, not only in podcasts that don't talk about the victims and instead focus on the perpetrators, but also by like. Like weird fans of them that are taken in by their narrative, whatever their narrative might be.

Well, and like Chrissy, the memorabilia, they're taken in by that narrative. And also glorifying the items that they're using, they're elevating those to sort of a ritualistic status, to a religious artifact, which. Which does happen. And it's pretty weird and pretty gross, 100%.

And then, so, yeah, she's. She's bringing in the other final girls to visit Stephanie in the prison because, as she notes. And this just really stood out to me because once again, Stephanie is 16 in current events. And on page 338, Lynette states that sky spent two years seducing her, grooming her, transforming her into his perfect playmate, another girl to add to his list of victims. And so, in Lynette's mind, and I do agree with her on this, Stephanie is just another victim. She's another final girl who has been manipulated by this monster. And so she has brought the others here to kind of induct her into the Final Girl support group. And the others have all agreed with her, which I love. I love that they are like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, it makes sense for her to be here with us.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that it's a really nice way to end the book, having Stephanie be accepted as a member and having that community and giving her that community that maybe she lacks 100%.

And, yeah, because she had gone through something at the age of 13. She was already traumatized when sky started manipulating her at 14. Like, she didn't have that community at that time to protect her from predation. And as we look at the other Final Girl stories, like, even, like Julia, it at one point, it talks about how one of her boyfriends basically stole the rights from her at one point and stole all her money. And we have the situation with Garrett, with Lynette, how he was just using her to make money on her franchise. Like, it's very obvious that all these women have gone through trauma, not only in the form of murder, but just trauma that kind of comes with being a vulnerable person in the world.

Yeah. Giving your trust to somebody after you've experienced a trauma is very difficult. And Having that trust violated is even worse. So Stephanie is in the same position that they're in for sure. There's definite, definite parallels there.

And then I wanted to give of a quote from the end of this because like I said at the very beginning, Lynette poses the question, do you ever wonder what happens to those girls? And her response changes quite a bit at the end. And so on page 339, she says, ever wonder what happens to those final girls after all their plans go belly up and all their weapons fail? After their defense senses crumble and they've been shot in the head? After they've trusted the wrong people, made the wrong choices and opened themselves up to the worst possible moments after their lives are ruined and they're left at 38 years old with nothing in the bank, no kids, no lover, and nothing to their name but a couple of ghosts and a handful of broken down friends. I know what happens to those girls. They turn into women and they live. And I love that. I love that and I love that acknowledgement of them becoming women. Because in so many ways, like, we still, like, girl is a very, you know, infantilizing term when you're referring to someone who is an adult. Like, that is.

Yeah. And I think it's because they are teenagers, typically when these things happen to them, but you know, 20 years later, they're not girls.

Exactly.

So yeah, it is infantilizing. And I think the term itself can be infantilizing, especially when you're. When it's contrasted with the killer or the monster giving them that different role that like, gets me choked up a little bit, I'm not gonna lie.

Yeah, I actually, when I was reading that right now, I was like, oh, that hit me.

Because, yeah, like, you should just get to live after you experience a tragedy.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just nice to acknowledge that 100%.

So, yeah, that is final girl support group. And I think talking about it with you has elevated it a bit more at the end of this. Initially, this was a two star read for me and this was. And so in our previous episode we didn't get into ratings, but like, whereas Alien Covenant for me is a two star with a parenthesis of like fondness, enjoyment, like, you know, I love it even though it's two stars. This for me was like a two star with a parentheses of like, meh. Didn't really. It didn't. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't like it. But after discussing it more, I think that I. It's raised up a Little bit. I think it's raised up to a three star for me compared to before.

Yeah. I think I'd put it as a three and a half. I like doing halves. It was a three star at the beginning of this conversation just because of, like I said, that having that contrast, being able to, you know, that through line of reality versus the literary tropes and seeing people as real people having that was really effective to me.

Yeah.

And then having this conversation, getting the context to actually raise it up for me again, I appreciate it more. So I think it's three and a half for me.

Yeah. Awesome. That brings us all the way down to the Wheel spin to find out what our next book will be. And I believe it's your turn to spin the wheel, Beth.

Do I actually get to spin the wheel?

Yeah, spin the wheel.

All right. Ooh, interesting. Okay, so we have. We have a modernized classic that is fun. So my pick, because I have only a few modernizations on my list, is going to be einhallow by Tim McGregor. And this one was a Instagram recommendation and it has pretty high ratings, so I don't have any expectations going in. It's a Frankenstein adjacent book from what I can tell. So.

Yeah, that sounds great. I haven't heard of it, but I am excited to see what's got going on.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's gonna. That's gonna be it for us then. Thank you for listening. If you want more from us, our social media is in the show notes as well as a link to our discord, where you can join in on the conversation and even suggest books to us.

Get out there and commit some David behavior. Bye.

Is literally a monster.

Sorry.