She Kills Monsters

The play’s structure of alternating between the real world and Tilly’s fantasy world illustrates Agnes’s growing acceptance of the conventions of Dungeons and Dragons and in turn, her acceptance of Tilly’s identity and tragic death. At first, Agnes’s interactions with her colleague, Vera, reinforce the belief that the role-playing game is a venue for the social outcast. Agnes doesn’t dispute Vera’s belittlement of Tilly’s treasured game and admits, “I honestly don’t see the appeal. It’s actually kinda mundane” (25). Agnes’s initial assessment demonstrates her unwillingness to keep an open mind and use her imagination. Though Agnes’s opinion of the game is not as derisive as Vera’s, both women’s lack of respect for fantasy role-playing reinforces Tilly’s status as an outcast.

When Agnes is involuntarily thrust into the fantasy world at the end of Scene 4, she must confront both the trauma of her sister’s death and her guilt about how little she truly understood Tilly in life, an inner conflict implied in her earlier comment to Vera, in which she states, “I know it’s stupid, but…I’m just curious why Tilly liked it so much” (25). The antecedent for the pronoun “it” in the phrase “it’s stupid” is ambiguous. The phrase can refer to the game of D&D itself or more poignantly to Agnes’s desire to recoup some form of intimacy with Tilly by playing the module. Agnes plays the game to cope with her loss, yet in a public setting, she feels the need to qualify that such longing is “stupid” rather than a natural stage of mourning. As Agnes struggles with the push-pull dynamic of wanting to remember her sister while wishing to forget the pain of losing her, the boundaries between the real and fantasy worlds become more blurred. Agnes’s time in New Landia thus becomes an opportunity for her to fight her own monsters of grief and guilt.

Scenes 4-6 also highlight the idea of looking beyond appearances. Orcus attempts to use his demonic appearance to convince the party that he is dangerous, when inwardly, he is tired of playing the villain and simply wants to stay at home and watch television. Farrah’s delicate exterior leads Tilly’s party to misjudge her ferocious strength, an error that almost costs them their lives. Most importantly, Agnes learns that her sister was not the awkward and incompetent teen she imagined but instead a fearless leader. When she learns that Tilly fought Tiamat and was the only adventurer who lived to tell the tale, Agnes remarks incredulously, “You fought that?” (30). Realizing that she had underestimated her sister, Agnes reevaluates how she perceives the game and begins to play the module “correctly” (27) by fully immersing herself in the world. Rather than repressing her guilty feelings about not knowing her sister well, Agnes chooses to delve into Tilly’s world on Tilly’s terms, and in the process, “levels up” both in the game and in the stages of mourning that ultimately lead to acceptance.