Joel Dresden

Joel Dresden is the player's character (PC) in Chasing Beth (2021), the sixth game in the Elsaverse. He is a journalist who currently writes an advice column for a local newspaper, "The Sangrive Times", although in the past he was a reporter in a war, where he experienced a traumatic event that caused him PTSD. Joel is in a relationship with Serena and has an unnatural ability that allows him to communicate with the dead, although he wasn't aware of being a medium until the events in Chasing Beth.

Personal
Born and raised in Sangrive, Joel was always interested in the human aspects of stories and cared about the people. Kind, smart, and empathic, in college he went into journalism so that he could tell the stories he wanted to read, and he started getting really good at finding the human side of them. At some point, a war erupted after a far country located in a desert attacked the nation Sangrive is a part of, and Joel went there to cover the military operations on enemy soil. He was embedded with a Special Forces unit and, unarmed, faced the same threats and challenges as those professionals while focusing his reports on them as actual people with hopes, dreams, and fears, instead of talking about bombs, guns, and bullets. Joel was especially successful in bringing closure to the friends and families of those who fell in the desert: when those soldiers died, he knew them well enough that Joel was able to write his reports about them as if they were still talking to him.

One day, while traveling with the rest of the unit, Joel's transport stomped over an improvised explosive device. The explosion left Joel dazed and the transport stranded; when he regained consciousness, the enemy was getting closer and closer and their fastest way out was a medivac chopper flown by a female pilot, callsign 'Tainted Arrow', who had to argue with their base commander to get permission to rescue them, as women were a major target for their enemies. While trying to get to the helicopter, Joel got shot and lost consciousness; one of the Special Forces soldiers, Zach Sinclair, carried him to the chopper and the pilot managed to exfiltrate them. Badly injured, Joel spent several days unconscious and when he woke up at a field hospital, he noticed that, in his mind, he could see and hear two people interacting with him: a happily married couple, Tanya and Tony, which he took for a weird mechanism created by his shaken mind to help him cope with the fact that he had been so close to death. Deeply traumatized by his experience, Joel came back to Sangrive as soon as he was physically recovered and wrote an article about Zach Sinclair's heroic actions in the war. This touching article, combined with all of the rest he had written before, showcased Joel's ability to find the human side of stories, and he was offered a position in the local newspaper "Sangrive Times".

An undetermined time later, when he is introduced in Chasing Beth, Joel is still experiencing nightmares and other consequences from his PTSD, yet he has never looked for professional help, as Tanya and Tony in his mind are a useful way to get on with his daily life, at least when he's awake. They comfort him, give him some tips, and also help him to get insight into other people's situations when he asks them: this new version of his character's quirk to find the human side of stories allows him to write a successful advice column for his newspaper that is published under Tanya's and Tony's names, so readers think they are real, existing people. And, when a beautiful and smart lawyer named Serena learned that this handsome, kind, creative, and badass man was the actual writer of that column, she fell immediately for him. But, after a few months together, their relationship faces a critical moment when Serena is involved in a car accident that lefts her with almost constant pain in her hips. Although they are trying to support each other, he hasn't told her about the reason for his PTSD yet, and she is also hiding an important emotional secret from her past.

In that context, Joel gets a new assignment from his chief editor, Hanne: she wants him to cover the story of the mysterious vigilante that has started to act in Sangrive. Thanks to the info provided by Hanne's source within the local Police Department, Joel learns that the vigilante is using the callsign 'Tainted Arrow' and he quickly realizes that this vigilante might probably be the chopper pilot who saved his life in the desert. So he accepts the assignment to chase her and write an article focused on her personal side, hoping he would be able to properly thank her for her actions in the war, as he never got to know her in person. Finally trusting Serena with the reason for his PTSD, Joel tries to recall the moment when he almost died; however, as 'Tainted Arrow' didn't mention her real name, he gets in contact with Zach Sinclair for the first time after the war. As it happens, Zach is now living in Sangrive and they meet at a bar, where Zach agrees to use his connections in the army to find the pilot's real name and also offers his wife's services as a therapist to help Joel cope with his PTSD: after all, it was Joel's article about him what made Abigale fell in love with Zach.

At home, Joel has to deal with Serena's insecurities, as she has received some news that has caused a heavy impact on her: her best friend Paul, the man she was secretly in love with for about a decade, is going to marry his real love, and Serena feels she's definitely losing him also as a friend. Using his Tanya and Tony personas, Joel talks to Serena and learns about her emotional burden, reassuring her; when she offers him the chance to dump her, Joel lets her know that he is there to stay. A couple of days later, Joel gets a new message addressed to his advice column in which Paul expresses his own doubts regarding his behavior towards Serena, as he had some romantic feelings for her too. After consulting with Tanya and Tony, Joel tells Serena about Paul's situation and pushes her to talk to him and clear things out, even at the risk of losing her. Fortunately, after their meeting, Paul and Serena agree that they miss each other's friendship but still love their current partners too much to think about starting something together.

Meanwhile, thanks to Zach's inquiries, Joel learns that the woman he is looking for is called Beth Lagrange. Using the info about 'Tainted Arrow' actions that was given to him by Detective Michelle Won from the Sangrive PD, and with the help of Jennifer, the newspaper's financial analyst whom he helps to hook up with the cultural columnist, Ming, Joel manages to find the place where Beth is planning to strike next. There he witnesses her amazing fighting skills as she deals with a whole group of gangbangers, but she gets shot, and Joel gets Tanya's and Tony's help to overcome his initial shock and tackle the gunman before he could kill Beth. While trying to save Beth's life, Joel thanks her for saving his life back in the war; then, Beth's friend, Emily, comes into the scene and, much to Joel's surprise, magically heals Beth with her power. Since the police are already searching Beth's apartment as they have finally discovered her actual identity too, Joel drives both women to his own place, where Serena helps them.

The next morning, before talking to Detective Won about the best way to protect Beth, Joel learns what was actually going on in his head, as Tanya and Tony are not exactly a product of his mind but two real people named Tatiana and Michael Blackhawk who died while he was fighting for his life after being injured at the war. That's when Joel learns he is a Medium and has the power to communicate with the dead. Later that day, and following Detective Won's advice, Joel writes a fake article about Tainted Arrow's death, stating that she was just an ordinary person with no unnatural powers that got killed last night.

By the end of Chasing Beth, Joel is perfectly aware of his strange power and the real nature of Tanya and Tony; he's getting Abigale Sinclair's professional help to deal with his PTSD, and has strengthened his relationship with Serena, as now they know about each other's problems and have shown how much they love and care about each other. He is also a great friend of Beth and Emily.

Powers
Joel wasn't aware of him having a power until the very end of Chasing Beth. Up to that point, he only knew he always had a knack for finding the human side of stories that improved a lot during his college years; later on, when Tanya and Tony appeared in his mind after the incident at the war, he just assumed his mind had created a strange mechanism to help him cope with his PTSD that, accidentally, seemed to improve even more his ability to see that human side of stories and read people's emotions. However, he is actually a Medium that can communicate with the dead: although he can only speak properly with deceased people from the parallel universe, he is unconsciously getting messages from ordinary humans too, and this has helped him develop his ability to focus on the human side of stories, as the dead tend to only care about the people they left behind. Those messages were probably the reason behind his ability to bring closure to the relatives of those military men fallen in the war: as Joel explains to Detective Won, he could write about the dead soldiers like they were still talking to him, and this situation might be actually true.

For several years, whenever Tanya and Tony tried to explain the truth to him, Joel's PTSD made him shut down for days, so they finally decided to let him be and just help him in his daily life, until his search of Beth Lagrange serves as a catalyst for his mental recovering. During his investigations, Joel meets Detective Won and Chloe Reyes for the first time in his life; however, Tanya and Tony act as if they had already met them before, and their weird reactions finally push Joel to seek professional help, as he feared he was going full paranoid. Then, during his first session with Abigale Sinclair, he recalls that he started to see Tanya and Tony while he was in a coma, and not after waking up as he always believed. Finally, when he is in shock after the Rats' gang leader shot Beth Lagrange, he listens to Tanya and Tony referring to themselves as Tatiana and Anton, and they promise to tell him the truth. The next morning, Joel confronts them and learns that Tatiana and Anton Blackhawk came from a parallel universe and got killed while he was fighting for his life after being injured at the war; with him being a Medium, and thanks to Anton's own power to amplify other people's power, their wandering souls could find him and have been living in his mind since then, helping him with their powers.

Miscellaneous

 * Joel Dresden and Zach Sinclair meet at the same bar Marc Anderson met Jessica Springfield in the game Redemption for Jessika (2016).