Embracing fears and learning to overcome them is one of the central themes in Roller Girl. The graphic novel’s protagonist, Astrid, begins the story and the summer as a sensitive, angry, and insecure person. She depends heavily on her best friend Nicole and her mother and feels lost without them. In fact, when she was younger, Astrid always imagined she “was Venus, Mom was Mercury, and Nicole was earth. [She would] make up stories about [them] floating around the solar system together. [They]’d visit other galaxies and meet extraterrestrials” (176). Now, everything is changing as Nicole decides against roller derby camp, and Astrid must attend alone. When she walks into the roller rink on the first day of camp, she begins a long process of confronting and overcoming her fears of being alone, failure, and the unknown.

Astrid finds roller derby much more intimidating than she expected, and she feels like giving up after a couple of weeks of exhausting drills and feeling as though she is not improving. It turns out she is improving though, and she finally realizes this one day when she goes down a hill too fast and falls into a bush.