Serena

Serena is one of the main protagonists of Chasing Beth (2021), the sixth game set in the Elsaverse, and she also features as a side character in some other titles, starting with Saving Chloe (2018), where she is one of the non-canon, alternative love interests. Serena works as a lawyer in a foundation that helps abused women; in her idle time, she is a house music DJ that goes under the stage name DJ Serena Beatz. After being secretly in love for a decade with her friend and former co-worker, Paul, she is currently in a relationship with Joel Dresden. Serena doesn't have any power, although she is well aware of their existence.

Character Overview
Serena is an attractive and confident woman. Smart, witty, and resourceful, she loves house music, to the point that she acts regularly as a DJ and even teaches other DJs, and has a distinctive British accent. She met Paul in college, when a teacher was unfairly scolding her in class: even though they didn't know each other before that situation, Paul stood up for her, and they quickly became great friends. Paul was kind, smart, brave, and had a strong sense of justice, and Serena ended up falling in love with him; however, he was also broken by a traumatic past relationship and seemed unable to move on. After seeing him destroy a couple of promising relationships in college with other girls because he was still haunted by the way he was forced to end his relationship with Chloe Reyes in high school, Serena understood she could never be like that girl he was still pining for, and she decided to keep her feelings to herself and at least enjoy his friendship. As she is bisexual, Serena started to date multiple women, always telling them she wasn't looking for something serious; this way she felt she was being emotionally loyal to Paul.

After graduating in Law, Serena and Paul started working together for a small foundation in Sangrive that helps abused women. As best friends, they used to go to work early just to have some time for themselves, to chat and bond even more. They used to talk about everything, including their tastes in women and their favorite sex positions, all while Serena was still secretly in love with him, even though she knew for sure Paul would never choose her before Chloe. What she didn't know, however, is that he was also feeling something for her, although he never talked about it because he firmly believed Serena was gay and, deep down, he was still hoping for a second chance with Chloe. And, more than a decade after their forced breakup, that chance finally came, and Paul took it. In a matter of just a few days, he got reunited with Chloe and left his job, and Serena was left alone in her office. The hardest part for Serena, however, was that Paul practically ghosted her after he came back with Chloe and started working for her.

At the time Paul left, Serena was in one of her casual relationships with a woman named Amanda Reid, one of her favorite writers. They had met at Serena's office some weeks before, when Amanda came into the foundation with Alexis and Anastasia Bertradino seeking professional help for their friend Jessica Springfield. Amanda, who was already infatuated with her after seeing Serena in a club during one of her DJ gigs, was in a similar situation regarding her love life: her beloved one, Alexis, can't reciprocate her feelings because she's straight. So, when Serena told Amanda they would never be something else than casual lovers, Amanda didn't mind, and they started a hot and very physical relationship that ended some undetermined time later, when Serena met Joel Dresden and realized she was starting to feel something deeper for him.

For the first time since Paul left, Serena met a man as caring and sensitive as Paul: a journalist with a knack for finding the human side of stories. When she learned that Joel was actually the writer of the famous advice column 'Tanya & Tony' in the local newspaper "Sangrive Times", she fell definitely for him. They started dating and, eventually, moved together. Serena tried to support him with his PTSD, as he was severely injured when he was working as a reporter in the war; however, he didn't actually talk with Serena about that incident until he was tasked with covering the info of the vigilante that had started to act in the city. By then, Serena was also struggling with some serious pain after a car crash, and their relationship was in a tough spot.

Things got even more complicated when Paul finally reached out again to tell Serena that he was going to marry Chloe, and Serena realized she was losing him also as a friend: the man she spent more than ten years with would have never waited so much to tell her some big news like this. Conflicted about her feelings, she offered Joel to dump her, but he stayed; then, Joel received an email from Paul, addressed to his advice column, in which Paul confessed that he always felt something for Serena and wasn't sure if he was being fair with both Chloe and Serena by hiding those feelings, which is the reason why he had distanced himself from his best friend. After talking to Serena, Joel convinced her to phone Paul and meet him to clear things out. In that emotional meeting, Serena and Paul finally speak up about their long-suppressed feelings and agree to retake their friendship, as both of them are too much in love with their current partners.

A couple of days later, Joel arrives home with two injured women: the vigilante, Beth, who happens to be the pilot who rescued him during the war, and her friend, Emily. Both women have unnatural powers, but Serena doesn't seem impressed; when they ask her why, Serena says that her former girlfriend, Amanda, and her friends Alexis and Anastasia have powers too: she learned it one day when she was at their home and Anastasia became invisible. She promised them not to tell anyone and never mentioned the incident to Joel before because she thought he could think she was crazy. What Serena doesn't know is that Joel himself has a power too. Later that night, Emily heals Serena, absorbing her pain, and sometime later the four of them end up making love together.

Miscellaneous

 * Even though Serena's character was originally intended to play only a side role in Saving Chloe, Tora Productions' writer, Tlaero, found the model Mortze created for her so attractive that she decided to adopt Serena as a recurring character and planned Chasing Beth to revolve around her, trying to depict Serena in a happier situation with another man.


 * Tora Productions' artist, Mortze, was also quite happy with his creation, and Serena was supposed to be one of the multiple love interests in the game The Science of Lust (2019) that he started to develop with another writer, Iksanabot, when Tlaero announced her sudden retirement in April 2019 . Serena features in the game's beta released in May 2019, but the project was abandoned shortly after.