Nick Chancy (Full Name Nicholas)
Maybe that Sixteen Personalities profile was right and I am a hopeless romantic. The Nick Chancy character only exists because I wanted one of my two female main characters to have a functioning relationship. (They don't even have a functioning relationship with each other as roommates who spend 90% of their day separated. Anne frequently tries to convince Ava to commit various crimes and Ava has taken to sleeping heavily armed.)
Anyway. Nick is probably the one character in the strip who would ever make it in reality. Anne and Ava have all sorts of problems. Rachel mostly takes care of herself via luck. Nick is practical, hardworking, not a terrorist, not nursing a major guilt complex, not mentally ill, and not a psychopath like Esther is. He'd go far, here in reality. (Anne might, too, but only on blackmail.)
I complain endlessly about Nick being a lousy comedy character. Honestly, that's not it. He offers two excellent joke opportunities: one, anxiety, and two, awkward dating scenes. ("Excuse me for a minute. I think I need to go arrest my sister." As a Jedi, Ava is a member of law enforcement, and her sister really pushes that legal envelope. . .) The problem is that I've already had one Ava-becomes-the-main-character problem, and she's not supposed to be the main character. However, the first gag possibility requires Nick to be alone and the second possibility requires that he be. . . not necessarily alone with Ava, but definitely with Ava. And Nick's not masochistic enough to explain why he wouldn't exclude the rest of the main cast. (He gets along with Rachel. At a safe distance.) So in order to include Nick more, I would need to exclude Anne a lot. . . and we'd wind up with the whole Anne v. Ava mess again.
On the rare occasions when Nick does make an appearance, he is an excellent comedy character. He doesn't have much of a personality yet, so I'm kind of just winging it. I guess one major established part of his personality would be a tendency to worry an abnormal lot about Ava - the girl's friends with two terrorists, for pity's sake. Have you seen the stuff Ava lets Anne drag her into? So there are some really good rescue scenes - like the one where Anne takes Ava camping out in the woods and then lights a forest fire right after a monsoon. (Don't ask.) Nick gets a bit concerned because the two have been gone for days more than they said they would be, so he heads out with a snow speeder, essentially, to look for them. He sees the fire from a few miles off and immediately assumes it to be a mark of Anne's presence, so he heads towards it. Due to the fact that Nick is only a slightly more competent driver than Anne is, he runs over the girls' campsite. Ava manages to get out of the way - heck, she manages to jump onto and then into the snow speeder - but Anne. . . well. . .
CRUNCH.
A few panels later, Nick realizes that he's run over Anne. Just as he and Ava are starting to panic, Anne clambers up from the floor, covered in motor oil - and just fine. (Deus ex machina.)
The silent punch line is that Nick never apologizes, he just sort of shrugs, and, "well, that's interesting." (Meanwhile, Anne can get Ava to apologize in blood over things that weren't so much as slights.) Nick's destiny, for the near future anyway, is probably going to be to end the guilt complex Ava storyline. He happens to not be nearly as easily manipulated as Ava is, and he also happens to not be pathologically paranoid like Rachel is. So he's perfectly able to see Anne's ongoing con for what it is, but unlike Rachel, Ava won't see major reasons to distrust him.
Failing the possibility of Nick getting Ava out of this mess, I could just force her to acknowledge that something's wrong. But I'd like my solution to this story at least to make some modicum of sense.
Side note: Nick is 21 years old and he was born on October 24, 1998.
Anyway. Nick is probably the one character in the strip who would ever make it in reality. Anne and Ava have all sorts of problems. Rachel mostly takes care of herself via luck. Nick is practical, hardworking, not a terrorist, not nursing a major guilt complex, not mentally ill, and not a psychopath like Esther is. He'd go far, here in reality. (Anne might, too, but only on blackmail.)
I complain endlessly about Nick being a lousy comedy character. Honestly, that's not it. He offers two excellent joke opportunities: one, anxiety, and two, awkward dating scenes. ("Excuse me for a minute. I think I need to go arrest my sister." As a Jedi, Ava is a member of law enforcement, and her sister really pushes that legal envelope. . .) The problem is that I've already had one Ava-becomes-the-main-character problem, and she's not supposed to be the main character. However, the first gag possibility requires Nick to be alone and the second possibility requires that he be. . . not necessarily alone with Ava, but definitely with Ava. And Nick's not masochistic enough to explain why he wouldn't exclude the rest of the main cast. (He gets along with Rachel. At a safe distance.) So in order to include Nick more, I would need to exclude Anne a lot. . . and we'd wind up with the whole Anne v. Ava mess again.
On the rare occasions when Nick does make an appearance, he is an excellent comedy character. He doesn't have much of a personality yet, so I'm kind of just winging it. I guess one major established part of his personality would be a tendency to worry an abnormal lot about Ava - the girl's friends with two terrorists, for pity's sake. Have you seen the stuff Ava lets Anne drag her into? So there are some really good rescue scenes - like the one where Anne takes Ava camping out in the woods and then lights a forest fire right after a monsoon. (Don't ask.) Nick gets a bit concerned because the two have been gone for days more than they said they would be, so he heads out with a snow speeder, essentially, to look for them. He sees the fire from a few miles off and immediately assumes it to be a mark of Anne's presence, so he heads towards it. Due to the fact that Nick is only a slightly more competent driver than Anne is, he runs over the girls' campsite. Ava manages to get out of the way - heck, she manages to jump onto and then into the snow speeder - but Anne. . . well. . .
CRUNCH.
A few panels later, Nick realizes that he's run over Anne. Just as he and Ava are starting to panic, Anne clambers up from the floor, covered in motor oil - and just fine. (Deus ex machina.)
The silent punch line is that Nick never apologizes, he just sort of shrugs, and, "well, that's interesting." (Meanwhile, Anne can get Ava to apologize in blood over things that weren't so much as slights.) Nick's destiny, for the near future anyway, is probably going to be to end the guilt complex Ava storyline. He happens to not be nearly as easily manipulated as Ava is, and he also happens to not be pathologically paranoid like Rachel is. So he's perfectly able to see Anne's ongoing con for what it is, but unlike Rachel, Ava won't see major reasons to distrust him.
Failing the possibility of Nick getting Ava out of this mess, I could just force her to acknowledge that something's wrong. But I'd like my solution to this story at least to make some modicum of sense.
Side note: Nick is 21 years old and he was born on October 24, 1998.
Comments
Post a Comment