An unnoticed bruise.

Rides With Strangers official and promotional art, done by the very talented Jorge Gonzalez!

The second and third pics are pretty notable for giving us a more solid glimpse at Elora's parents. I wonder what their names would be?

I kinda' like the name Mercy for her mom. No clue about her pops, though. He looks kinda' rough-and-tumble.

Kim Walker as featured in an Oil of Olay ad!

Yep, found another commercial that Kim was in! This time for Oil of Olay (now known as simply Olay, I think).

I promise she's there, make sure you watch all the way through! You'll know when you see her.

Got another Rides With Strangers thing that I felt was worth posting for the sake of having it available for everyone.

It's yet another video that Adam posted a long while ago on his YouTube channel that has since been made private (it was originally unlisted anyway, so you already needed a specific link to see it - the original link came from a now deleted tweet on Adam's Twitter). The original video also had no visual - I added that part myself (the art is from Jorge Gonzalez, by the way).

Anyway, the video features a segment of what I assume is a prologue or intro from Rides With Strangers, featuring everyone's favorite hitchhiker providing narration and giving us some details about her life.

That's right, you're hearing Elora's canon voice! Or, at least, her original intended voice. I don't think this video was seen by many, so I'm posting it here!

Elora's voice actress was intended to be Mel Gorsha, as stated on the game's Kickstarter campaign page. But from what I understand, she's been MIA for a while, and not much can be found about her online. In fact, Adam actually had a post on a voice acting forum looking for a new actress for her (as well as the "Momma's Boy" stranger, interestingly enough) where he specifically stated that the reason he needed a new one in the first place was because he could no longer get in touch with Mel. Unfortunately, these posts have been lost to time and nobody seems to have archived them. Take my word for it, though, they did exist. Adam's profile still exists on the site and was archived on the Wayback Machine (you can in fact see that the two posts regarding Elora and Momma's Boy were there as well, even if they weren't archived).

Apparently Mel might be still around, going by a different alias according to her info on the Visual Novel Database, but I don't know how true this is. If anyone has any more info, I'd love to hear it! Regardless, I hope Mel's doin' okay! I think her voice fit Elora well.

Fun fact: you can also briefly hear Mel as Elora in this early trailer for RWS, right at the start! Thankfully, this video hasn't been taken down.

I remembered that I had this video saved on my PC and I believe Adam himself deleted it from his socials a while back (could be wrong, but I have trouble finding it online now), so I figured I should post it here, for posterity's sake.

This was a sneak peek of Lydia/the Nympho pulling in to pick Elora up in an early development build of RWS. It's a neat little interaction that I felt was worth preserving.

Maybe some people will find it interesting.

I like that you hear Lydia talk for only a moment, but you immediately know what she's all about. lmao Girl wants Elora bad.

In all seriousness, at least according to some comments on Lydia's page on the Rides With Strangers wiki (so take them with a grain of salt), there was more footage of Elora's ride with Lydia that Adam showed off in a live-stream a long while back that showed her being pretty seductive with Elora (duh) and also showed that she doesn't like family being brought up? Which, if true, is a pretty neat dynamic/difference between her and Elora.

We know that Elora's reasoning for pursuing the job interview in her backstory so adamantly was at one point because said job involved being able to work on a cure for her mom's illness (and at one point, if I recall correctly, the entire goal of the ride was changed to simply getting to her mom's deathbed before she passed away) so we know Elora cares deeply for her family. I wonder what Lydia's relationship with her family was to make her react so negatively? And does it potentially tie into her hyper-sexuality? Does it explain her behaviors? Much to think about!

I look at that model and think to myself "WHO is THAT??? 😭".

Not that I think it's badly made or anything, mind you.

I'll chalk it up to my attachment to the demo, although I do think there's more to it than that. I know the original model isn't necessarily as "pretty" as the newer one, either, but I honestly prefer it that way. Her first look has an uncanny nature to it that I think fits RWS better. And maybe this is just me, but despite what I just said, I think the old one is significantly cuter, too.

I mean, head-canon whatever you want... but that doesn't mean I don't roll my eyes, every now and then.

And people try to pass it off as "well, everyone has their own interpretation", and yeah, that's true. But, sometimes, your interpretation goes against all the canon information available. Sometimes, it goes against words people more intimately involved with the work have said. And sometimes, the interpretation makes no sense no matter what angle you look at it. It goes against common sense.

Again, you can head-canon whatever you like as long as you're not being a jackass about it, and I'd say most people are nice about these things in my experience. But I really don't subscribe to this idea that all interpretations are equally "valid" when held under scrutiny. Sometimes, an idea is clearly self-indulgent with little or no regard to the character's defined personality and traits and doesn't align with canon at all. That's fine. But that's all it is. And there are clear differences between a head-canon where you can read about it and say to yourself "yeah, I can see where this idea came from and the logic behind it" and ones that scream "what the actual hell are you talking about, where on earth did you pull that one from".

And when you love a character a lot and see many people say things about them that are outright wrong, that can get pretty damn annoying, head-canon or not. There are some things that simply aren't "up to interpretation". They are clearly spelled out for you in the work.

It's hard for me to explain myself in a way that doesn't sound overly judgemental, so let me make it clear in case it isn't obvious that I do not support going after people for their head-canons in any scenario, regardless of how little they make sense. I'm just getting this off my chest.

TL;DR: Head-canons are all fun and games, but sometimes I see one that makes me do this: