Rachel

Age

**Rachel**, sometimes known by her username **Redearth**, is a main character in Redearth88. She is a teenage girl, about the same age as Maddison Atkins, who just finished her first college year, majoring in communications. She started videoblogging as an assignment, and later becomes unknowingly protected by Linc and Tachyon.

## Background

### From Humble Beginnings

When Rachel was 9 years old, her parents died in a car crash. She was in the car with them at the time, but claims she has no memory of the accident itself, only waking up in the hospital and being sent to live with her grandfather in Texas. After turning 18, Rachel enrolled in SFA University in Nacogdoches, but later moved to Los Angeles to participate in an internship as a production assistant through the school that was due to start during the summer of 2007.

Her first roommate was a girl named Zoey, whom Rachel did not get along with at all, claiming that they were too different to be friends. Shortly after she and Zoey moved apart, Rachel was dating a boy named Jordan, who was a member in a band. In February 2007, she and a friend visited a local clinic, and Rachel got an STD test as moral support her friend who believed she had an STD. Shortly after, Rachel caught Jordan cheating on her with another girl. While she initially blamed the other girl for the incident, she broke up with Jordan after catching him a couple of months later with yet another girl. Fearing that Jordan's promiscuity may have caused her infection, she went back to the clinic to get a second STD test but was given a clear bill of health. At this point, she is now living alone in her Los Angeles apartment, as a girl from SFA named Maddison Atkins was supposed to take her place, but she was murdered a couple of months before she was supposed to start the internship.

Alone and not having made any friends in Los Angeles besides her land lady's dog Bucket, she accepts a date from a stranger she runs into at the park named Linc, who claims that he is filming his cousin and his dog.

### Forging Relationships

The two of them go out on a date, and things initially seem to be going well. However, a couple of day's into the relationship, Rachel runs into Linc's "cousin" at the park, and she discovers that he had lied about what he was doing, and the guy had absolutely no idea who Linc was. She ignored Linc's phone calls, and sent him away when he arrived at her apartment and tried to talk to her. Feeling discouraged about her dating life, she receives word from a clinic she uses that her STD tests from a few weeks prior may have been faulty, and that she should get tested again.

Upon arriving at the clinic, she is ushered into an examination room by a Doctor and put under some kind of anesthetic. At this point, a mysterious figure in a suit enters the room, but they are interrupted when Linc enters and shoots one or both of them, leading Rachel to safety. Rachel sleeps for the next couple of days, and wakes up not knowing exactly what happened at the clinic. However, she feels like she should give Linc another chance, and they make plans to go out on the town a few days later. However, War Pylol follows them on their date, resulting in a chase that ends when Brother arrives and shoots him. Linc recieves orders from 15over15 to meet them nearby, but Rachel refuses to quietly cooperate, and begins to walk away through the tunnel. What happens next to Rachel is unclear, but Linc is seen getting captured by OpAphid, who materializes in the tunnel.

Three months later Rachel uploads a video in which she explains that as soon as Linc had his back turned she hightailed it out of the tunnel and decided to return home to east Texas to her grandfather's place. However, whether this is true or if fake memories were implanted by OpAphid has yet to be determined. Rachel goes on to state that the professor making her vlog in the first place was Dr. Arscott.

### Rooming with Aly

A few days later, she reveals that she received a call from her former boss, offering her old job back. She is contemplating taking the offer considering she can't afford the apartment she is in. She considers getting a roommate but worries that she'll get another roommate like Zoey. On top of all that, she has picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport, accidentally switching it with someone named Aly Zarin, who she says "totally sounds like a Russian heiress or something". In her next video, she explained that Aly Zarin had retrieved her suitcase and is actually "pretty cool". Aly had just gotten a long-term gig in Los Angeles and was looking to move out of her brother's apartment, as she and her brother's wife were not getting along. So Rachel decides to let Aly move in with her. Aly pays Rachel first and last month's rent "no strings attached", although she does ask if Rachel has any puppets.

Rachel's next two videos discussed how well things were going with Aly and lead into discussion of Rachel's old roommate Zoey, whom she didn't get along with...to put it lightly. Rachel also mentions a dinner party being thrown by "my boss and his wife", which Aly is going to help her pick out clothes for. However, Rachel is disturbed by the fact that Aly seemed to only pick out revealing attire and was very focused on watching Rachel as she tried on clothes. This makes Rachel question whether she wants to live with Aly anymore. This thought is reversed in Rachel's next vlog, in which she discusses why she reacted so harshly and questions her own sexuality.

In her final video to date, Rachel discussed her revelations that Aly is not gay, as she had rejected Rachel's advances and gone home with the male bartender at the restaurant they went to. She relates how she felt embarrassed about misreading Aly's possible sexuality, and feels that while Aly has figured those parts of her personality out already, she herself still had a lot to figure out about herself.

## Notes

* Over 200 actresses responded to the casting call for Rachel. It listed Julia Stiles, Natalie Portman, and Christina Ricci as influences for the character. [1]
* Glenn Rubenstein admits that there are many similarities between Rachel and Bree and hypothesizes that this may be because he and Mesh Flinders could have had a crush on the same girl growing up in Petaluma, and therefore tend to write the same type of female character. [2]

## Etymology

Rachel means "ewe" in Hebrew. In the Old Testament this was the name of the favourite wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. The name was common among Jews in the Middle Ages, but it was not generally used as a Christian name in the English-speaking world until after the Protestant Reformation.

## References

1. ↑ http://www.behindthename.com/name/rachel