She Kills Monsters

Tilly Evans is Agnes’s 16-year-old younger sister and an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. As one of the few female players of the popular role-playing game, she represents imaginative joy and youthful, nonconformist energy by refusing to allow mainstream conventions or even the expectations of a subculture to limit or define her. The narrator introduces her as a rare “girl-nerd” (7) to emphasize Tilly’s unique presence in the typically all-male subculture of high fantasy fandom. Tilly’s enthusiasm for role-playing also helps her to cope with the hardship of lacking recognition and acceptance in a society that alienates her for being a lesbian. Through her role as a world-building Dungeon Master, Tilly creates and narrates her own adventures and finds a space that gives her agency over her identity and a community to share her voice.

The play begins after Tilly’s death, and she only appears on stage as either an ambiguous blend of ghost and memory, or as her D&D character, Tillius the Paladin. The character of Tillius, although she is always represented onstage by a specific actor, is understood to be “run” by the Dungeon Master, Chuck, who controls her physical actions and decides what her dialogue will be during each session, based on the late Tilly’s module notes. This complex dynamic between fantasy and reality is implicit at first and is only directly explained in Scene 10, when Chuck temporarily halts the action of the game and refuses to engage in role-playing that he feels will insult Tilly’s memory.

Throughout the play, Agnes encounters versions of Tilly in both the fantasy and the real world, and Tilly’s omnipresence in one form or another represents how haunted Agnes feels by her loss and guilt. As a projection of Agnes’s deeper feelings, Tilly’s ghost/memory externalizes what Agnes represses. When Agnes defends Miles and says she loves him, Tilly asks, “Then how come you’re not married to him?” (61). Likewise, when Agnes vows in the game to never forget her, Tilly retorts, “You did when I was alive” (57). Tilly’s words echo Agnes’s buried hesitations about her romantic commitment to Miles, as well as her regret for dismissing her sister in real life. When she learns that Tilly experienced bullying, Agnes desperately tries to “talk” to her via role-playing and refuses to accept Chuck’s assertion, “I’m not her” (49). As a specter and a presence in the play, Tilly always seems the most real when Agnes is the least ready to confront her grief.

Only at the end of the play does Agnes accept Tilly’s death, analogized in her successful completion of the Quest for the Lost Soul. Solemnly but assuredly, Agnes affirms, “You’re not real. You’re gone” (82), and the admission provides her with closure. For Tilly, her main concern was whether Agnes enjoyed herself. She asks, “Did you have fun? That’s the point in all this. Did you have fun?” (82). Effervescent and imaginative, Tilly provides Agnes with the inspiration to broaden her perspective and bypass her judgments to try something new. By engaging with and honoring Tilly’s memory through imaginative play, Agnes comes to learn more about her sister and herself.

Miles is Agnes’s soon-to-be live-in boyfriend and functions as a character with both flaws and good intentions. In the beginning of the play, Miles appears insensitive, competitive, and prone to jealousy. While Agnes is packing away Tilly’s belongings, Miles scans her bedroom and inconsiderately comments that Tilly was a “slob” and “into some geeky shit” (13). Rather than regard the packing as a potentially difficult and emotional moment for Agnes, he offhandedly insults her deceased sister. Similarly, when he meets Chuck for the first time, his jealousies and insecurities spur him to mistake Chuck for Agnes’s lover and feebly attempt to wrestle him. Although Miles’s misunderstanding creates a comedic exchange in which he plays the buffoon, he is genuinely eager for Agnes to move in with him and spends most of the play waiting for her. Throughout the play, he repeatedly entreats her to come home to “OUR new place” (13, 63, 54), and the emphasis on the word “our” demonstrates his desire to share his life with her.

Miles is also mischaracterized in two opposing descriptions by Vera and Tilly, a dynamic that forces Agnes to defend him and reevaluate what he means to her. Vera dislikes Miles for not proposing to Agnes after three years of dating and thinks he is avoiding commitment. Conversely, Tilly hates Miles for always being around and engaging Agnes’s attention away from her. Agnes disagrees with these assessments as she has no desire to marry at her age and feels Tilly has been unfair for figuratively and literally demonizing him. When Miles appears as The Gelatinous Cube and The Doppelgänger in the game’s Big Boss fight, Agnes reminds herself, “You’re not actually him—you’re not actually him” (58). The encounter reminds Agnes that Miles is not an enemy in her real life and suggests that she has harbored hesitations about the next stage of their relationship because moving in with Miles means moving out of her family home and potentially leaving her past behind.

At the end of the play, Miles proves himself to be a patient and supportive boyfriend who wishes to help Agnes heal from the tragedy of her loss. When he accepts Chuck’s invitation to play Tilly’s module, Agnes is surprised, revealing how little she understood her boyfriend’s desire to be closer to her. Miles prioritizes Agnes’s feelings and assures her, “This is important to you and I want to be part of it” (64). His compassionate actions allow Agnes to see him as a figure of comfort and trust, and thus he helps to deepen their relationship by aiding her with her private grief. 

Chuck is a high school boy and the Dungeons and Dragons afficionado who helps Agnes play Tilly’s module. Described as a “nerdy teen dressed as a Grunge Rocker roadie” (10), Chuck provides comic relief as the quintessential nerd who is adept at fantasy games but socially awkward, especially around girls. Often overcompensating for his lack of “coolness,” Chuck speaks mostly in slang and fixates on his perceived sexual appeal. He brags, “[M]y D&D IQ is plus three hella high!” (10), and when Agnes comments that he’s odd, he responds, “Odd as in hot, right?” (10). Chuck seems oblivious to how others perceive him when he disputes, “Were you expecting some nerd? ’Cause I’m no nerd” (11). Like Shakespeare’s oft-cited line, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Chuck’s self-conscious denials serve to emphasize just how much of a nerd he really is. However, Qui Nguyen depicts Chuck’s nerdiness with sympathy and affection and contrasts the character’s attempts to raise his self-esteem with the disparaging comments from Agnes, Miles, and Vera, who initially see him only as a social outcast and a “D&D dork” (53).

As the play continues, Chuck develops into an empathetic friend and mediator. As Agnes’s Dungeon Master, he has an intimate understanding of Tilly’s voice and strives to represent her story as best as he can. When Agnes accuses him of enhancing the module’s sexual tone, he admits, “Okay, so there’s definitely a certain amount of improv involved, but I swear this is the gist of what Tilly created” (18). As a narrator, Chuck is also a stand-in for the playwright in his parallel function of storytelling. Like Nguyen, Chuck uses both outrageous humor and earnestness to captivate his audience and bring Tilly’s adventure to life. Not only does Chuck facilitate the game, but he becomes a figure of mediation and healing by bringing Miles and Agnes to a better understanding of each other and helping Agnes overcome her grief by introducing her to Tilly’s friends.