DAPHNE DELANEY
( backstory )

NOTE: Inevitably there will be spoilers in this chapter, concerning Daphne's childhood and other events taking place prior to the timeline of the books. If you feel this will interfere with your reading experience, please wait with this chapter and come back when you would like!

E A R L Y
L I F E

Daphne Lynn Delaney was born on October 31st, 1966 in Hawkins, Indiana to Martha and Thomas Delaney. She has one older sister, Catherine 'Cath' Delaney, and there is an approximate five year age gap between them. Her mother's biological parents were  together of Norwegian and English descent (her adoptive had predominantly Scottish and Irish ancestry) and on her father's side she has very strong Irish roots, as well as some Swiss.

Some of Daphne's happiest memories are from her early childhood, back when her mother was still alive. It is likely because of Martha's passion and imagination that she inherited a lot of these qualities herself, while also being a little more shy like Thomas. The first four or five years of her life were very innocent ones, filled with laughter and joy and wonder. Daphne was also intrigued at the thought of being a big sister when her mother fell pregnant again.

Sadly, this was greatly overshadowed since Martha died not long after Cath's birth due to complications from labour — an amniotic fluid embolism. Daphne initially found it difficult to understand what this loss meant, but she was also a highly intuitive and sensitive four year-old and could sense something was wrong. When the truth finally solidified, Daphne was devastated.

In the first year and a bit following Martha's death, her father became somewhat distant due to his grief; she remembers bouncing between the care of family and friends, including both her living grandparents, Judith 'Judy' Jenkins (her mother's childhood best friend), and Joyce Byers to name a few (whose son, Jonathan Byers, she used to play with a lot). Suddenly, a little over a year later, Thomas had an awakening to his duty and responsibility as a father — simply willing himself to push through his grief, he made a conscious effort to be there for his daughters and never wavered since.

It was also around this time that Daphne met her first best friend, Amy Nakamura. In the wake of her mother's death, she was a little bit lonely at school and mostly preferred her own company anyway. But one day at recess she noticed the new girl at school sitting by herself with a 'shop' set up — pine cones and pebbles lined up meticulously as the produce. One payment of blades of grass for a pine cone later, and the two five year-olds were the best of friends. Amy was quite different from Daphne; she was more rational, organised and much less dreamy than her. In spite of their differences, the foundations of their friendship lay in mutual trust and reliance, and would go on to stand the test of time.

A big aspect of Daphne's personality was and still is her imagination; it was after this time it started becoming a coping mechanism of sorts, and when her passion for storytelling really took off. Daphne found comfort and escapism in the fictional worlds she saw in books and movies, which also acted as fuel for her imagination and creativity. Storytelling like this became her salvation and a huge part of her life, from reading stories to her little sister to acting them out with her toys.

But it was when she was about seven years old, that Daphne's love for filmmaking was truly inspired. She had always enjoyed that world when she got to come into work with her dad at the Hawk Theatre, watching him prepare film reels and often frequenting the foyer adorned with colourful movie posters. One day, Thomas was doing a test screening for a new movie coming out — 'The Way We Were' with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford — and little Daphne was left to wander the theatre. She had little else to do, so she took a seat and watched the movie. While she was too young to understand all of the details, Daphne sat through the whole thing in complete awe because she could feel every emotion being translated, even if she didn't know what it was. She even shed a tear towards the end of the movie. From then on, Daphne was inspired to create something with that same emotional impact one day.

Daphne always wore her heart on her sleeve, and had a variety of crushes throughout her childhood. One of them was Steve Harrington, and in the Fifth Grade for his birthday she plucked up the courage to give him a gift, in the form of an innocent, heartfelt letter inside a Hershey's Kisses tin. Steve was somewhat indifferent to the gift (he secretly might have found it sweet); however, his friends like Tommy Hagan endlessly poked fun at her for it. That should have just been an isolated incident, but sadly it wasn't...

Now that Daphne was on the radar of the popular jerks in her year, the bullies ended up making her life hell during Middle School. She was called names, was teased in the girl's bathroom and changing rooms. One winter, Carol Perkins even poured ice down the back of her coat on the way to school, and Daphne was freezing for the rest of the day. These experiences embittered Daphne, and solidified one thing in her mind: she hated Hawkins, and she wanted out.

L A T E R
L I F E

By the time she was a High School freshman, Daphne had been worn down after the bullying she endured in Middle School. She was a little more withdrawn. But she also had a thicker skin, and was determined to keep marching to the beat of her own drum in the face of those bullies. She did not want to let herself be trampled by the idea of insecurities — Daphne liked who she was, and no one else was going to tell her otherwise.

Daphne kept indulging in her passions, one of the ways by starting work at the Hawk Movie Theatre when she was sixteen. She settled into the job very easily due to all her childhood visits, and also took it very seriously, unlike some of the jaded teens that went in and out of the jobs. Still, she did make some friends who had a genuine interest in cinema, such as Harriet Jones and Robin Buckley. One of the more awkward aspects of the job was perhaps the fact her dad worked there as a projectionist, and therefore she sometimes felt like he kept checking up on her. Another interest she had was in being environmentally aware — Daphne had read and heard new discoveries about pollution and climate change, and this aligned perfectly with her love of nature. Although it was harder for her to pursue this passion at a time when it was widely disregarded, she still tried her best to do her bit in saving the planet.

She also craved more independence in her life. In her childhood, Daphne had always partly been a caretaker for her little sister Cath; they walked to and from school together, played together, and the younger sister even tagged along with her friends sometimes. But Daphne was itching to spread her wings more, finding that the age gap between them was more prevalent now than it had ever been. So she purposely tried distancing herself from her, as much as she loved her. (There was also a part of Daphne that didn't want Cath to see her being bullied, because she was aware of how her little sister put her on a pedestal).

Of course, not everything about her teenage years so far had been bad. In the Eighth Grade, Felix Rancourt moved to Hawkins from Montreal — Amy was the one who introduced him to Daphne. The tall, long-limbed boy with the red turtleneck and flared jeans clicked with her instantly. He was an aspiring ballet dancer, amazingly skilled and honing his craft since he was a very young child. Felix was also interested in the arts like Daphne was, which became an instant bonding point. He became a part of Daphne and Amy's friendship group, solidifying the bond of this trio.

As some years went by, Felix and Daphne grew even closer, and eventually started falling for each other. In 1982 they started dating, and it is safe to say that Daphne was completely smitten. One of their traditions was making mixtapes for each other of songs that symbolised their feelings. He was Daphne's first love, and she completely threw herself into their relationship. Felix was one of her favourite people in the world, and now they were together, the idealistic side of Daphne began resurfacing as she began jumping to conclusions and imagining what their future held (she might have even paralleled their friends-to-lovers trajectory to the childhood romance story of her parents, placing similar expectations on them).

So it came as a total shock when, early in their Junior year of High School, Felix told Daphne he thought they should break up. The decision threw her completely off guard, because Daphne had been feeling the complete opposite about where they were at (although upon reflection, she was likely seeing a rose-tinted version of their relationship). Not only was she heartbroken for weeks afterwards, but returning to their friendship beforehand was incredibly difficult after their romantic history. On top of this, not long after their break up Felix started dating Tonya McCarthy, his ballet partner who he'd formed a strong connection with. After this, Daphne was much more hesitant to act on her feelings (however intense they were) when it came to love — they only resulted in heartbreak.

However, boy troubles and High School boredom would be the least of Daphne's problems, after Will Byers vanished mysteriously on November 6th, 1983 — followed by the disappearances of Tonya McCarthy and Barbara Holland in the following days. She rekindled her friendship with Jonathan and found an unlikely friend in Nancy Wheeler, the trio together would unearth a Pandora's Box of dark secrets underneath their hometown that they never could have imagined...

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[ this ended up a little longer than i'd planned, oops! anyway, bless daphne's heart, she deserves the world 🥺 she is just a teenager trying to figure out her place in the world... and then some inter-dimensional monsters and government baddies come and make things 100x harder than they have to be. ]