Slenderverse Archives

Stephanie/Damsel

Stephanie/Damsel is a character from the EverymanHYBRID ARG.

First introduced through her blog, it is still unclear exactly how she became connected to the EMH cast. Since she does not sign her blog posts, and there are no references to her name on the site, the fans dubbed her "Damsel," short for "damsel in distress," since most of her blog entries alluded to a force that was persecuting her, and to a secret past. Her name remained a secret for months, and even in videos like "Damsel" where her real name should have been audible it was covered by audio distortion. After nearly 7 months her real name, (Stephanie or Steph) was finally confirmed on Dec 19, 2010 when Jeff referred to her by name in a tweet.

Origin

Initially not a lot was known about Damsel. She had explicitly refused to give her true name, and most of what was known about her had been deduced by her posts rather than outright stated by the girl herself. She claimed to be in the age of "teenage angst", and that she had attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts and moved to Princetown at about the same time she started her blog. She has an interest in art -- she paints and draws, and has posted some of the results on her blog. She's a loner, and before her disappearance Damsel's only friend had seemed to be Jessa. She alluded to horrific events past, and to her parent's being killed in a house fire. She hinted that she was at least aware of the existence of Slender Man, if not that she was being outright pursued by him. Most of her past was only hinted and alluded to, and her responses to direct questions were filled with prevarication and sometimes lies.

Finally, after it looked like she had been arrested and removed from the game the truth became clear. The evening of her arrest and commitment to a mental facility Damsel announced that she had left a blog post to be automatically posted at an unspecified future date. When speaking of her parent's death she had originally lied, saying "I came home from school one afternoon. The house was a half acre of ash." but on Halloween the automatically queued post revealed the truth:

"That day, when I said that I arrived home from school to a half-acre of ash... wasn't entirely accurate. I came home from my classes and everything was normal. My family's house was older and relatively sizable. Made of fine, decaying lumber. Easily combustible. Upon setting foot within the threshold, I immediately felt something in the air. Something was terribly off. The house was silent. No sound from my siblings, no familiar clicking of my mother tending in the kitchen, no sound of shuffling from desk-to-shelf in my father's study. And then I saw the bags.

Through the large sliding glass door, I saw them all, each strung from the old ash tree in the center of the backyard. I... I opened each one. I just had to be sure; you would understand. I was covered in a bit more and more of my family with each inquiry. I took the opened bags and went upstairs into my parent's master bedroom and laid down on the gigantic bed. I placed each of the bags around me, resting one last time with my family. The bags that still held their contents bulged towards me in a comforting embrace.

I saw myself in the mirror. Perhaps my body was still in shock because I wasn't crying, not yet. I was drenched in the blood of my siblings and parents and I couldn't feel anything. I knew He did this to me. The one I had been seeing in my dreams since I was a baby. He wanted me out of the house. I don't know why, but He willed me elsewhere. I burned my house. I set the fire. I don't care who knows anymore because by this time, I'm sure they would have coerced this confession from me. By this time, I will have been (accurately) proven guiltyGUILTYGUILTYGUILTY."

After the investigation of her family's deaths, Damsel was medicated, but she has said in her blog that she has been avoiding taking her pills. Also, she has a bad relationship with the police, and had hinted at being harassed by them in the past -- it had been theorized that she was accused of causing the death of her parents, or that some deaths due to Slender Man might have been blamed on her, and the truth about her past bears out that theory.