Teenage Sith Apprentice

Anne is a secretary because I don't know enough to write for a different job. OK, now that you've admitted that, explain how in the world you're going to deal with her. In the absence of Ava or someone like her, Anne can pretty much do what she likes, unstoppable. At this point, Ava sort of waved her hand and told Anne she was leaving her job and wouldn't be returning. Mind tricks are Ava's specialty. . .

OK. The May 2019 comics are a little weird because I scanned them all up (in pretty low resolution) and typed the dialogue. So there shouldn't be any legibility problems here. Apparently they also show up as huge. . . siiiigh.  Better. Okay. Maybe. I guess here I should have picked a different phrase than "Vet Day" to say that it's high time Doomdreg went to the vet's office. Sorry about that. . .  Mindelle, Nick's mischief-making cat.  I was reading a ton of Dilbert when I wrote this. It's a semiborrowed joke. Before you criticize Anne's new boss, Ava, bear in mind that you live with her. By choice. All right, so you are here on military assignment to keep an eye on her, but I'm sure you could convince Luke to move you somewhere else.

Literally. Anne could beat an army. Living on the Death Star III helps with that sort of thing. Susan McCombre's one and only distinction in the TSA world: Being the only character I ever deliberately tried to get rid of. She was just a one-dimensional jerk who was thouroughly useless for comedic purposes. She was impossible to get off the stage. So sort of like a prima donna actress who totally sucks at her job. Sorta like her nemesis Ava. (Susan has it in for Ava. Ava lets her walk all over her like a doormat - this was the point where Ava's spine started to disappear - and that drives Susan even crazier than just Ava's being on campus does.) Ava also gets a lot more camera time than she should. . . but she's an actual 3D character. And I didn't let her stay center stage either. . .

As Ava's character stabilized and conquered her past as Anne's crony, she started to become my main character. That was a natural extension of what she already was - my favorite character! But its was a problem. Normally I just alter the story to fit the new "queen bee" when the main charactership shifts (and it often does, my original main character often turns out to be made of cardboard while a minor member of the supporting cast turns out to be full of juicy conflict). Here I arbitrarily decided not to. Still not sure why. . . I basically rationalized it as "It's named Teenage Sith Apprentice, not Twentysomething Jedi Apprentice!" (When this was written, Ava was actually 19. . . oops.) Plus, I was messing up both girls' characters. Look at my earlier comics. . . they're often based on Anne being clever, albeit in ways that annoy the living daylights out of most other people. My more recent comics are mostly based on Anne's ...

This comic kinda stands alone. It became a TSA tradition about 365 days later. . . seriously. I built on it in April 2020. Anne is standing next to a sealed glass case full of "May flowers" as she recites the poem. . . I'll leave the punchline out. By the way, Anne's 19th birthday happened on April 12, 2019. This brought with it the rather annoying twist that Anne turned 20 on April 12, 2020 . This blog, Teenage Sith Apprentice, started on April 13, 2020. Nice one, me. As soon as TSA started, Anne was no longer a teenager. So now I joke that the "teenage" bit now refers to Anne's apprentice (and Ava's sister), Esther. (She comes in later.)

Anne's mother, Emily Jenner Palpatine, is actually an excellent cook. So is Ava. I guess all that nightshade Anne eats must have messed with her taste buds, because she regards both women's culinary work as disgusting. I'm not sure how Anne learned how to cook. My dominant theory is that the nuclear reactor at the center of the Death Star III taught her. Anne is a bizarrely powerful Sith Lady. It's very difficult to even come near her if she's your enemy. You need similar abilities to have a hope of harming her. . . . she's still terrified of mice. This one wasn't actually one of the last March 2019 comics, but I think it's one of my best and so I put it here anyway. The more places it is, the more chance it'll get read, right? I first posted it here . Okay, that's it for the March 2019 comics. The April 2019 backlog begins tomorrow.

Okay, here is the post the computer deleted on me last night. It's understandably edited because, while my memory might be pretty good, it's nowhere near that good.  Introducing Rita Chi. I was briefly fascinated with Chinese people when I first wrote this one. (When I say briefly, I mean I had a deep running fascination with all things Oriental for about two days.) Hence the Chinese girl character - Rita Chi. Just a quick note - this was written well before COVID 19, bear in mind. You're getting it a bit backwards, Anne. Well, it was most likely either π or √2. Rita had a fifty-fifty chance of getting that one. . . doesn't take a whole lot of luck if you ask me. The premise for this story started out as being that Rita is, ah, a little removed from normalcy. Then I decided that maybe I didn't want to be joking about mentally ill people. But some of the Rita jokes just seemed too good to lose, so I sorta shifted my premise - it is now abo...