She Kills Monsters

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Scene 3

Scenes 4-6

Scenes 7-10

Scenes 11-13

Scenes 14-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Scenes 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Scene 7 Summary

Scene 7 returns to the real world where Chuck waits for Agnes at her house to resume the game. Agnes’s boyfriend, Miles, enters, and in a round of miscommunication plagued by double entendre, he mistakes Chuck’s role as a Dungeon Master and thinks he is actually Agnes’s sexual partner. He awkwardly wrestles Chuck, who outsizes him, and when Agnes enters the room to show Chuck a new pair of leather gloves that will help her stay in character, Miles abruptly leaves. Both Agnes and Chuck think that Miles storms out because he hates Dungeons and Dragons. Indifferent to her boyfriend’s reaction, Agnes eagerly puts on her new accessories and resumes the game with Chuck.

Scene 8 Summary

Back in New Landia, Agnes is excited to show Tilly her new gloves and walks in on Tilly and Lilith kissing. At first, she rationalizes that Tilly’s character must be a male, but Tilly corrects her and affirms that not only are Lilith and she both female and lovers, but that everyone in New Landia is gay. Agnes struggles to make sense of Tilly’s lesbian identity and becomes defensive when her sister points out that her over-reaction marks her as being anti-gay. Agnes chastises Lilith for dressing too seductively and scolds her sister for not telling her about her sexuality. Tilly explains that Agnes was too busy to get to know her, but at least she knows now.

While the sisters search for their fellow companions, two Succubi dressed as typical cheerleaders accost them. Tilly uncharacteristically cowers and tries to run away, but the cheerleaders surround them. Evil Gabbi (played by the same actor who plays Vera) and Evil Tina (played by the narrator) call Tilly and Agnes by derogatory names and physically attack them. Tilly’s personality transforms from the fantasy warrior to a vulnerable, real-world teenager facing the doppelgängers of her high school bullies.

While Evil Gabbi restrains Agnes by the throat, Evil Tina baits Tilly into kissing her. With Agnes in a chokehold and the two bullies forcing her to comply, Tilly leans in for a kiss, and Evil Tina kicks her in the face. The Succubi cheerleaders then laugh, and their overpowering laughter forces Agnes and Tilly to painfully laugh as well until they fall to the ground. Only when the Succubi leave do Agnes and Tilly regain their senses, and Tilly runs away.

Scene 9 Summary

The scene is set back at Vera’s office at the high school where Agnes encounters Lilly, a student played by the same performer as the D&D character Lilith. Noticing the resemblance between Lilly and Lilith, Agnes struggles to differentiate between the fantasy world of New Landia and the real world of the high school. Lilly explains to Agnes that they met two years earlier at Tilly’s funeral and expresses her and her classmates’ love for Tilly.

Conflating Lilly with Lilith, Agnes bursts out excitedly that Lilly must be Tilly’s girlfriend and insists that Lilly admit to the fact. Startled and upset, Lilly denies that she was dating Tilly and asserts that she is straight. When Vera enters the office, Agnes shouts to her that Lilly was dating her sister, which Lilly again denies. Seeing that Agnes has lost her sense of appropriateness, Vera sends Lilly out for an errand and confronts Agnes about her behavior. Agnes pleads that Lilly may be her only remaining link to her sister. Vera tells her that Lilly has been dating a male football player for over a year, and that even if she were a lesbian, forcing her to out herself is a violation of her privacy.

Scene 10 Summary

The scene opens with Tilly confirming to Agnes that the bullying they experienced in New Landia did happen in real life. When Agnes asks her why she used the D&D module to tell her this, Tilly reminds her that she intended for her module to be private. Agnes tells her sister that she met Lilly in real life and asks whether she is straight, but Tilly doesn’t know.

As Agnes probes deeper into Tilly’s past and how hard it must have been for her, Chuck abruptly interrupts the role-play and reminds Agnes that Tilly is not really the one speaking. He reiterates that he is only performing Tilly through his interpretation of her module, and that inventing Tilly’s dialogue in this particular context feels blasphemous. Agnes insists that Chuck continue to play the role, and when he tells her that he has something to show her, she only agrees to listen to him if he speaks as Tilly. Onstage, this is depicted when the actors playing Chuck and Tilly speak their lines simultaneously and give Agnes a letter hidden in the notebook addressed to Lilly. Chuck/Tilly ask Agnes to deliver it to Lilly.

Scenes 7-10 Analysis

Scene 7 develops Miles’s character as the jealous and antagonistic boyfriend, and his scuffle with Chuck offers a critique of traditional masculinity. When he first sees Chuck, Miles immediately feels threatened that another male is in Agnes’s home and barks, “Who the hell are you?” (38). Although Chuck is friendly, Miles becomes the epitome of toxic masculinity when he continues his jealous inquiries and convinces himself that Agnes is having an affair with Chuck. His claim that his relationship with Agnes gives him a right to hurt Chuck ignores Agnes’s agency in making her own decisions and shows that Miles’s indignation is rooted in his fear of having a rival for her affections. The irony of Miles’s aggressive display is that the significance of his behavior is completely lost on Chuck and Agnes, who merely interpret his irritation as a sign that he dislikes Dungeons and Dragons. Portrayed as a comically exaggerated fool throughout the scene, Miles represents the folly of overcompensating for a perceived lack of masculinity.

In contrast to the laughs garnered by the play’s wit and irreverent sense of humor, the laughter in Scene 8 is insidious and abusive in its association with bullying and anti-gay violence. After harassing the Evans sisters, the Succubi laugh, and their mocking glee “consumes” Agnes and Tilly, causing them to laugh “hysterical[ly]” and “painfully” (45) until they fall to the ground. The scene evokes several possible interpretations in which the debilitating laughter functions as an index of the hurt and humiliation that Agnes and Tilly feel as targets of bullying. As a form of deflection, the laughter could be a representation of how those who experience bullying sometimes deny or laugh off the seriousness of the offense, but for Agnes and Tilly in this fantasy setting, the harder they laugh, the more amplified their pain becomes, and they remain immobilized on the ground as the Succubi walk around them, literally and figuratively looking down on them just as real-life bullies look down upon and humiliate their chosen targets.

That Agnes and Tilly appear to join in and laugh along with their tormenters also serves as an implicit commentary on the ways in which bullying can cause low self-esteem. Tilly, who is usually intrepid and confident in the fantasy world, suddenly shifts to a “very scared and intimidated” (44) demeanor when the Succubi appear. Neither sister manages to fight the monsters despite vanquishing them easily in earlier scenes. When Agnes later asks Tilly if she experienced bullying in real life, she responds, “I was a dorky fifteen-year-old closeted lesbian, what do you think?” (49). Tilly’s nonchalant answer suggests that she expected mistreatment as an inevitable part of being different and an outsider. Her tone is ambiguous and connotes a mixture of defeatism and self-blame, but also defiance and resilience for not denying her identity.

The scene’s use of laughter is a stark and somber contrast to the play’s overall comical elements and highlights the gravity of anti-LGBTQ+ bullying and its negative effects on mental health and self-esteem. Unlike New Landia where being gay is the norm and there is no “coming out” because everyone is already out, the real world of Tilly’s high school was not always a safe space. The proverbial “closet” delimited Tilly’s social world, and she experienced real isolation and abuse from anti-gay bigotry.