Anya's Ghost

Anya's Ghost is a single-issue graphic novel by Vera Brosgol. It features Anya: an insecure, dowdy teenager, born of Russian immigrants, who finds herself struggling with the day-to-day trials of high school life, like her crush Sean and mouthy friend Siobhan. One day, she falls down an abandoned well and discovers the bones of a young girl who fell down there before her... As well as the ghost of said girl, still haunting the well she died in ninety years prior. The ghost, Emily, turns out to be pretty friendly, and the two eventually become good friends, as well as partners in crime. (Anya uses her invisible buddy to cheat on tests, keep watch while she's smoking and spy on classmates.) Of course, these sort of things rarely end well, and soon Emily proves more of a problem than a friend.

A lovely story about friendship, selfishness and maturity. Try the artist's blog for more information.

Tropes used in Anya's Ghost include:

• Adorkable:
  • Dima.
  • Arguably also Emily. Before she snaps.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Emily seems to think so.
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • A picture of a girl in a bikini is visible on the inside of Sean's locker when Emily sneaks into it to look up his schedule for Anya.
  • Preston tells Anya, "Your boobs look spectacular in that shirt" at Matt's party.
  • Avoided with little churchboy Dima.
  • Siobhan certainly thinks so.

Siobhan: You have a crush on Sean? He's the kind of guy you crush on in a bad teen movie! Has he even talked to you?
Anya: Yes, he has!
Siobhan: Are you sure he wasn't just talking to your breasts?

• Alpha Bitch: Averted and deconstructed with Elizabeth. If you are familiar with high school tropes you'll think she'll be one, however she doesn't have the trademark meanness of an alpha bitch. Case in point, when Anya falls in gym she doesn't laugh at her and asks her if she is all right. It soon becomes obvious that Anya is the nasty one and she and the other girls are jealous of Elizabeth, for being pretty, athletic, intelligent, dating the hunky jock Sean, and being all around "prefect". However, when we get to the party we find out Sean likes to sleep around with other girls and Elizabeth knows about it. Not only does know she goes along with it. Why? She only feels good about herself if she and Sean are together and desperately wants to keep him in her life. All her positive traits mean very little to her and it only shows she probably has little to no self esteem. This also drives home the theme that everyone has problems.
• All of the Other Reindeer: The other kids picking on Dima. It's only seen for one panel, but it's enough to drive the message home.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Sasha.
• Anti-Hero: Anya is a Type III/IV. She's definitely no angel: Who lies about her last name and ethnicity, conspires to steal the boyfriend of a girl who has never wronged her whilst playing nice to said girl, ditches her one friend the moment she finds another friend who acts subservient to her, and seriously believes that nerds and minorities have themselves to thank for being picked on? Why, our heroine of course.
  • She does show moral backbone when push comes to shove, though. She can't go through with having sex with Sean, out of pity for Elizabeth; apologizes to Siobhan when meeting up with her later; comforts Dima when he asks her how she manages to survive high school so well; and in the end stops lying about being Russian.
• Bastard Boyfriend: Sean turns out to be this when it's revealed that he makes out (possibly even sleeps) with other girls at parties for fun, even when Elizabeth knows about it.
• Bitch Alert: Alot of what Emily says when her real personality starts appearing, the biggest indicator probably being her overall expression when she says "See you, hun."
• Big Sister Instinct: Comes into play when Anya comforts Sasha after he's threatened by Emily.
• Coming of Age Story: For Anya
• Control Freak: "Highschool's pretty fun, but imagine how great college will be! Not that you'll be needing any more boy help pretty soon! How young do people get married nowadays? ...Well, we'll just have to find that out then, won't we?"
• Clingy Jealous Girl
• Cute Ghost Girl: She's more of a mousy, spindly kind of cute, but still distinctly adorable. Most of the time, anyway...
• Dead to Begin With
• Death by Falling Over: Emily died by falling down the well and breaking her neck.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The entire graphic novel is done in varying shades of black, white, and purple.
• Delinquent Hair: The boy who rescues Anya from the well has a mohawk.
• Disappeared Dad: Anya.
• Dream Sequence / Imagine Spot:

Sean: "Oh Anya, let's have an intense spiritual relationship for no believable reason!"
Anya: "Oh Sean, take me away!"

• Everyone Hates Mathematics: Siobhan refers to economics class as 'naptime'.
• Evil Counterpart / Not So Different - Emily is the evil counterpart to Anya. She starts out mellowed out pretty well after ninety years sitting in a well to think about what she's done, but when Anya teaches her her own high school lifestyle she reawakens the beast, and the beast turns out to possess exaggerated versions of all of Anya's negative traits: Emily is obsessive over boys (but unlike Anya, she is a Yandere), sees existing girlfrends of 'mark' boys as not human individuals who deserve respect as such - but just competition (but unlike Anya, she is inclined to murder them), lies and manipulates (but not just about her last name, she lies about her entire past). The mirroring is even physical: she dons Anya's hairdo and starts smoking "ghost sigarettes", presumably a mimicing of Anya's bad habit. In the end, we even get an explicit You're Just Like Me speech from Emily - and Anya partially concedes the point, stating that she is enough like her to at least understand her.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Emily learns to flatten her hair to create a more modern look.
• Face Heel Turn
• Fighting a Shadow: Anya's predicament once Emily turns on her.
• Fog Feet
• Foreign Cuss Word: "Oy...bleen...my leg!"
• Foreshadowing: The cover. At first glance it just looks like Anya with the Emily we're first introduced to, but look closer and you'll see Emily's hairstyle is different. It's the hairstyle she gets when she first begins to reveal her true self to Anya.
• Gender Blender Name: Sasha, Anya's little brother. Their family is Russian.
• Genre Savvy - Siobhan: "Sean from the basketball team? Dude, he's the kind of guy you're supposed to get a crush on in a bad teen movie".
• Ghostly Goals: Emily claims to be a type 1.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath
• Go Into the Light
• Gym Class Hell
• Hair Decorations: Siobhan wears two hair clips.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Invoked: Anya is of average weight, but diets stubbornly and sees herself as obese.
• I Am Not Pretty: Again, Anya. For a curvy, fresh-faced young girl, she's pretty convinced that she's unattractive.
• If I Can't Have You: Emily's decision after catching her crush with another girl.
• Jacob Marley Apparel: Emily explicitly expresses the wish to upgrade he turn-of-the-century jumper, but she's apparently stuck with it. Played with later as she learns to change her poofy hair into a more modern style, Foreshadowing her shift out of the 'innocent victim' persona.
• Kirk Summation / Shut UP, Hannibal: Anya's last argument with Emily.
• Love Makes You Crazy / Love Makes You Evil: Emily's excuse for burning a couple alive.
• Love Martyr: Elizabeth. See Alpha Bitch.
• MacGuffin: The finger bone.
• Manipulative Bitch: Emily's Evil All Along reveal.
• Messy Hair: Emily's is described as 'dandelion-like.'
• Nice Guy: Sean. Subverted at Matt's party.
• Noodle People
• Non-Human Sidekick
• One-Winged Angel: A mild form of this at the climax, when Emily hauls her bones up from the well in a last-ditch attempt to kill Anya. She looks like a ghostly silhouette with a tangible skeleton underneath.
• Ordinary High School Student: Anya, Siobhan and their classmates. Evidently, Emily wants very badly to be one.
• Panty Shot: Anya gets one when she trips and falls in the middle of a run in gym class.
• Product Placement: A boy throws a can of Crush soda down the well where Anya is trapped, which alerts her to call for help.
• Prophet Eyes: Emily.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Emily convinces Anya to dress up and go to Sean's party. This is the result.
• Shown her work - Vera Brosgol knows how to investigate old newspapers using microfilm, and she will make damn sure you do too when you've read this. With four pages, and a diagram. (Oh, and by the way, Anya's right: it will hurt your eyes. Don't do this for too long wearing contacts).
• Shout-Out: A girl named Emily who comes back from the dead involved in a love triangle and a popular blonde girl named Elizabeth...where have we seen this before...
  • Anya has a Domo-kun plushie in her bedroom. It can be seen on pages 41 and 93.
  • A girl who falls down a well and becomes a ghost. Sounds familiar. The reference is made pretty explicit when at the end, Emily claws her way up the well and crawls out of it, head slumped downwards.
• Self-Disposing Villain: A sad variation. After Anya talks Emily out of her stubborn rage, Emily's skeleton falls apart and she evaporates in order to 'move on'.
• Smoking Is Cool
• Soul Jar: Of a sort. Emily can't move very far from her skeleton, so Anya ends up carrying a bone from her little finger so they can move about together.
• Unfinished Business
• The Unpronounceable: Anya's last name is Borzakovskaya.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Siobhan is Anya's best (human) friend... She just has a funny way of showing it.
  • Anya's got a funny way of showing it too.
• Who Dunnit to Me?
• Yandere: Arguably subverted. Emily didn't 'help' Anya for her sake, she did it because she wanted to make Anya live the life she couldn't have.
  • Its revealed that Emily also played this trope straight. She burnt down the house of the boy she liked while he and his girlfriend, were inside. All because he rejected her feelings for him.
• You Can Barely Stand: Almost said word-for-word when Emily crawls out of the well, bones and all, to try and drag Anya down with her. Her obvious weakness and anguish make this scene a bit of a Tear Jerker.
• Zettai Ryouiki: In her school uniform, Anya's stockings are between Grade B and Grade A.