Ava Skywalker
I introduced the Ava character in early November 2018 (actually posted on April 22, 2020) specifically because I wanted a Jewish character, and what better time to introduce one than the beginning of the Christmas/Hanukkah season? (I've been told that the Christmas season actually begins early in September.) One of the odd things about her is that she started out as a very cardboard character, with no backstory, no personality of her own. She was basically cobbled together from what little I knew about her religion and Anne's personality. If she needed a line, I had her say what Anne would say in her place. She didn't seem destined to become an integral character.
Yet that's exactly what she did. The strip would not run nearly as well without Ava. This is her:
In January 2019 (probably a few posts after her intro), I revealed Ava as a Jedi. (Hence the lightsaber strapped to her hip.) It actually made a lot of sense to have her wait two months before alerting her Sith friend to that little fact if I rewrote her backstory. . . which let's face it didn't exist anyway.
I originally just assumed that Ava came from some random Jewish family. I gave her a last name, too. I forget what it was. When I revealed her as a Jedi (her younger sister Esther did, actually, which was appropriate), I rewrote her backstory such that she is Luke Skywalker's eldest surviving daughter, and I wrote detailedish accounts of her three sisters (one of whom is older than her and deceased). She is a fairly gifted Jedi.
The next step was that she knew what Anne was. Everyone did; Anne is an open avowed Sith. So Ava deliberately ended up as her roommate and hung out close to her, with Anne not knowing she was a Jedi, in order to keep an eye on a potential threat. So with that knowledge, it makes sense that she would only reveal herself as Anne's worst ancestral enemy after Anne became quite attached to her. (And, truth be told, vice versa, which is why Anne can take as wild advantage of Ava as she does.)
Ava is a biology major, and, unlike Anne, she is actually at Bakuran U to get an education. She specifically wants to go into biomedicine - trying to find new ways to produce meds and specifically how to GM plants into producing meds more easily than can be done artificially. (I don't really know much about what biologists do for a living and I didn't feel like having an embryonic stem cell researcher in my comic strip. Disgusting.)
Currently the guiding theme to Ava's character is that she is very easily guilted. She doesn't like to let people down. (This trait she inherited from me.) And Anne, being a Sith, noticed that tendency and manipulated it into a fully blown karoshi guilt complex. She managed to convince Ava that she should feel practically bloodstained if she doesn't give in to Anne's every demand, which is why Ava works for both of them and runs herself into the ground doing so and getting an education while Anne does nothing.
In April 2019, in some of the missing comics, I had to pull a deus ex machina to save Ava from herself when this situation became extreme. Rachel stepped in and offered to pull Ava out of her current mess and somehow Anne came along for the ride. Ava still feels guilt ridden of course - now she's working to pay off her perceived debt to Rachel (which Rachel considers to be pocket change, by the way. . . she's pretty rich.).
And all of this originally came from my own tendency to guilt myself into doing things I really don't want to do. Any comic about how Ava feels obligated to do for Anne things Anne neither needs nor deserves from her is probably me mocking myself for feeling like a total jerk when I tell my brother I don't want to play a board game. Don't worry; I'm not saying I'm suicidally guilt-complexed and workaholic. I'm saying this trait of Ava's character is a trait of my own, vastly blown out of proportion so that I can laugh at it.
By the way, Ava denies that there is any sort of power relation guilt struggle between her and Anne. There is a hard fought conversion battle going on between Ava and Rachel over wether or not this whole guilt-eating-your-life-from-the-inside-out issue is real. Funny how Ava will listen to Anne, the Dark Sider, but not to Rachel, who actually does have her best interests at heart (albeit, she's pretty clumsy at expressing that).
Ava is 20 in the backlog comics I'm putting up and 21 in real time. Her birth date is May 22, 1999.
Also, Ava's character inspired one of the great anachronisms of the strip: she lives on Alderaan. Yes, I know Alderaan was destroyed during the Star Wars. My job here is to be funny, not to make sense. (Comment if the Alderaan issue actually matters to you.) I'll be posting a more detailed explanation for why I put the Jedi Temple on Alderaan, et cetera, at a later date.
Yet that's exactly what she did. The strip would not run nearly as well without Ava. This is her:
In January 2019 (probably a few posts after her intro), I revealed Ava as a Jedi. (Hence the lightsaber strapped to her hip.) It actually made a lot of sense to have her wait two months before alerting her Sith friend to that little fact if I rewrote her backstory. . . which let's face it didn't exist anyway.
I originally just assumed that Ava came from some random Jewish family. I gave her a last name, too. I forget what it was. When I revealed her as a Jedi (her younger sister Esther did, actually, which was appropriate), I rewrote her backstory such that she is Luke Skywalker's eldest surviving daughter, and I wrote detailedish accounts of her three sisters (one of whom is older than her and deceased). She is a fairly gifted Jedi.
The next step was that she knew what Anne was. Everyone did; Anne is an open avowed Sith. So Ava deliberately ended up as her roommate and hung out close to her, with Anne not knowing she was a Jedi, in order to keep an eye on a potential threat. So with that knowledge, it makes sense that she would only reveal herself as Anne's worst ancestral enemy after Anne became quite attached to her. (And, truth be told, vice versa, which is why Anne can take as wild advantage of Ava as she does.)
Ava is a biology major, and, unlike Anne, she is actually at Bakuran U to get an education. She specifically wants to go into biomedicine - trying to find new ways to produce meds and specifically how to GM plants into producing meds more easily than can be done artificially. (I don't really know much about what biologists do for a living and I didn't feel like having an embryonic stem cell researcher in my comic strip. Disgusting.)
Currently the guiding theme to Ava's character is that she is very easily guilted. She doesn't like to let people down. (This trait she inherited from me.) And Anne, being a Sith, noticed that tendency and manipulated it into a fully blown karoshi guilt complex. She managed to convince Ava that she should feel practically bloodstained if she doesn't give in to Anne's every demand, which is why Ava works for both of them and runs herself into the ground doing so and getting an education while Anne does nothing.
In April 2019, in some of the missing comics, I had to pull a deus ex machina to save Ava from herself when this situation became extreme. Rachel stepped in and offered to pull Ava out of her current mess and somehow Anne came along for the ride. Ava still feels guilt ridden of course - now she's working to pay off her perceived debt to Rachel (which Rachel considers to be pocket change, by the way. . . she's pretty rich.).
And all of this originally came from my own tendency to guilt myself into doing things I really don't want to do. Any comic about how Ava feels obligated to do for Anne things Anne neither needs nor deserves from her is probably me mocking myself for feeling like a total jerk when I tell my brother I don't want to play a board game. Don't worry; I'm not saying I'm suicidally guilt-complexed and workaholic. I'm saying this trait of Ava's character is a trait of my own, vastly blown out of proportion so that I can laugh at it.
By the way, Ava denies that there is any sort of power relation guilt struggle between her and Anne. There is a hard fought conversion battle going on between Ava and Rachel over wether or not this whole guilt-eating-your-life-from-the-inside-out issue is real. Funny how Ava will listen to Anne, the Dark Sider, but not to Rachel, who actually does have her best interests at heart (albeit, she's pretty clumsy at expressing that).
Ava is 20 in the backlog comics I'm putting up and 21 in real time. Her birth date is May 22, 1999.
Also, Ava's character inspired one of the great anachronisms of the strip: she lives on Alderaan. Yes, I know Alderaan was destroyed during the Star Wars. My job here is to be funny, not to make sense. (Comment if the Alderaan issue actually matters to you.) I'll be posting a more detailed explanation for why I put the Jedi Temple on Alderaan, et cetera, at a later date.
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