Well, aren’t they very helpful to the strange magical girl who can’t seem to speak English 😀
The ‘new block’ is actually modelled on my old Primary School back in Leixlip (my home town in Ireland). A lot of schools built between the 60’s and 80’s tended for go for this ‘blocky’ Lego-ish design, where as my 90’s-era Secondary School nearly looks like a bag of knives (long story there…i’ll save that rant for later).
Next week…I wonder what *that* Aoife is up to now?
Everyone remember to show Rawr a little love by voting for Bata Neart at TWC. And remember that you can vote daily. http://topwebcomics.com/vote/14911/default.aspx
Heh, since Aoife is a pretty exotic name in the US, it’s a little funny to remember that you might have to specify which Aoife you’re talking about. Our Aoife ought to be the one and only! Oh well, her class mates seem to recognize that so I guess her being *that* Aoife will do. ^_^
A lot of schools from that era have a similar design in the US. The middle school I went to was literally a block – I’m not sure if it’s a perfect square or not, but it’s close. The classrooms all have tiny windows, and the gym and the auditorium were in the center of the building. The gym had skylights but the auditorium may as well have been on a spaceship for all its connection to the outside world. (Goes and looks for some photos to show you what I mean.) Oh wow, it looks like they sacrificed the building’s symmetry and build an addition. Well, you can still see how tiny the classroom windows are. https://cdn.patchcdn.com/users/165001/2011/03/T800x600/d5d9d87f0d15ba4b61b91c9fb18ffc34.jpg
@Kessy: Actually, you can currently vote twice a day (something they haven’t fixed for about five months–it’s why some comics have outrageously high vote tallies).
@Rawr: I’m guessing “that” Aoife is busy daydreaming in class, blissfully unaware of the mayhem shortly to ensue. ^^
@Delta: Actually I’m wondering if that’s on purpose. I can only vote once, but I’m also not registered there. Maybe people with accounts can vote twice?
@Kessy: Yeah, if you have a TWC membership and you vote from your Favorites page, the voting timer resets twice a day.
It’s free to join….
Plus if you have access to computers in multiple locations you can vote even more than that.
I find it amusing that “strange girls who barely speak “the language” and appear out of nowhere holding strange staffs” are immediately associated with our Aoife. Apparently silliness, hi-jinx, and mild mayhem often follow in the wake of Aoife MacDonagh.
@Kessy: Aoife is a surprisingly common girl’s name, and along with Ashling have actually been in the Top10 selected girl’s names in Ireland over the past 10 years (alas, probably not because of Bata Neart :D) Given that you almost never encounter an Aoife outside of Ireland, I picked that name since it was both common to Ireland and exotic to other places 😀
It’s fun to note also that when I once posted Bata Neart onto an Irish manga forum there was a comment that “I think we *all* know an Aoife like that”, which started to make me wonder if I had accidentally created a character that covers most Aoifes of the world. So if you do spot the name ‘Aoife’ in real life…be careful 😉
US schools had that same ‘box’y design too? Damn, I wonder if all the countries got together back then and decided to go for a shared theme 😀 If you are curious, here is my old school on Google Streetview. Even the other two neighbouring primary schools were cube shaped 😀 Copy and paste this design to pretty much any school in Ireland build after the 60’s 😀
Thank you for all of the TWC voting folks, and that includes everyone who doesn’t comment as well (I know you folk are there too, and I really do appreciate you).
Whenever I do take a look at the monthly vote tally, I’m often taken aback by the many hundreds of votes that have built up. That means that there are many people out there who actually take the time to vote for Bata Neart multiple times a month. The fact that people actively try to promote the comic without me pushing or begging them to do it, inspires me to do my best when I do make the comic.
Thank you again folks, it’s you that makes telling stories like this all the more fun 🙂
I think that the block-like architecture was part of the “modern” design trend that started after the war. There was a sense that the future had arrived that influenced all sorts of things, from the tail fins on 50’s cars to the Jetsons aesthetic you saw a lot in the 60’s and 70’s. Blocky architecture is only one expression of this, you also see many variations on the theme of non traditional design. It tends to be very geometric, and you’ll see things like roofs slanted at an angle for no apparent reason, or the zigzag roofline on my old elementary school: http://www.rtmsd.org/Page/10683
@Kessy: You’re school kind of reminds me of Liberty Hall in Dublin.
There are a lot of similarly pointless angular designs floating around from from that period in Ireland too. Strangely ironic how dated the ‘future’ looks 😀