So back when I first started planning out Beau's first canon catchup, I kept joking at people that I was going to end up wanting to app Yasha by the end of it. And people kept telling me I should do it. So that happened.

More serious answer, though: they're two people who have a lot of the same kind of damage though to different degrees and and often for different reasons (and a couple of very similar ones). It's had the same kind of impact on both of them, but they've dealt with it differently and it manifests completely differently in both of them; I find that fucking fascinating. (Also never going to get over how Marisha and Ashley managed to pull that off, given that nobody had any idea what the others' character ideas were when they were creating them.)

Besides, canon gave me two explicitly lesbian main characters, and how am I not going to enjoy that given how rarely it happens?