I dunno why I felt the need to put in a silly prat-fall in there, but it did help get Áine in ‘contact’ with the road’s tarmac. Road surface would be very alien to someone from before 100 years ago, and so I’m hoping that this would be a natural point to ask the obvious; “When is Áine from?” We’ve got a better idea of this thanks to Chapter 1, but Ashling & Aoife will somehow have to figure this out with a girl who has no sense at all of how much time has passed.
But, like many Irish students…the girls aren’t exactly fluent in Gaelic, and are now facing some translation problems. Things are going to get tricky….
If Áine likes the asphalt, just wait until she gets a load of he first vehicle. 😈
Anything to work in a grope, eh, Aoife? I see that face you’re making in panel 4. 😛
I’d think that the fact that Aine’s completely unfamiliar with English ought to tell Ashling and Aoife that she’s been asleep at least a few centuries. Well, unless they’re even worse students of Irish history than they are of the Irish language. 😉
I wonder if Aine is going to decide that she’s literally been abducted by aliens? The concept has been around for a long time, even if the SF spin on it is recent. Maybe she’ll decide that Ashling and Aoife are fae and she’s been taken into a fairy mound or something?
@Azreal: Ah ha, you spotted that. I was wondering if people would 😀
Yep…Aoife is real sorry about the fall…not intentional at all 😉
@Kessy: Fiona is the the historian of the group, so I think they’ll be mostly relying on her for the historical stuff. Irish Primary and Secondary School history classes don’t go into great detail about pre-christian Ireland, and tend to focus on Ireland’s various wars with England, and then follow onto 19th – 20th Century European and US history. So, even if they were good history students (which they’re not) they wouldn’t know much about Áine’s time.
Ashling & Aoife are however pretty sharp, and they’ll be coming up with some clever tricks to cope with Áine’s encounters with the modern world.
Nooo! More and better history! Sorry, I’m a history geek but more so a language geek. I’d try to learn the language just because. Which is so not productive. Haha.
And I so missed out on all the interesting convo last time because I was moving. Drat! Oh well. 😀
Looking forward to see where Áine will be staying and what excuse will be used. Aoife would seem most likely to pull off “dragging home a stray puppy/friend” but for soooome reason I feel like she’d be safer with Ashling. I wonder why…
Oh man, if she thinks asphalt is amazing, wait until she discovers the wonders of plastic. I’ve always wondered what a person from ancient times would think of plastic…
@Jen: It’s perfect that you are a history geek Jen, we will be going into a good deal of actual Irish history and my own creative spin on things in later chapters 😀 Feel free to keep the pervious conversation going too, I don’t mind conversations happening on previous pages. I’m just delighted to see the comic become a forum for such things 🙂
There is a plan for Áine’s living situation, which you will learn more about in the next chapter 🙂 I think (hope) you’ll all enjoy the resulting antics.
@melaredblu: Oh god yes…that and touch-screens….those might break her brain 😀
@Rawr: Well actually she might not realize how difficult a touchscreen is over a regular screen because she has no idea how it works.
@Henry: Good point! A glowing picture-frame with moving images?! I’m still working out how they’ll explain TV to her 😀
@Rawr: Oooh! Now you’ve got me excited. 😀 I love seeing history drawn and how different people see it and tweak it to fit their stories.
No, no, no! Phones! I was also going to say TV. Haha. Now that I dread. There’s a tiny person locked in a box! Movie version of Dark Shadows anyone? Just… with Áine I’m expecting to see her reel back in horror. Or try to bash the flat box. It’s possessed.
@Jen: Actually, I’m kind of skeptical of the, “A wizard locked a tiny person in a glowing box” trope. I imagine most people’s reaction to seeing a screen for the first time would be more just a “wtf is it?” sort of thing. If you think about it, if you look at a screen (especially a flat screen) it’s pretty obvious that the image is flat like a painting, not a three dimensional object like a person. It should also be pretty apparent on closer inspection that the sound is coming from the speakers, not the image. So I’d expect amazement, wonder, puzzlement, but not really horror. Think about how most modern people would react to suddenly being exposed to a fully rendered hologram. you might be amazed, you’d probably walk around it to look at it from behind, and you’d probably stick your arm through it. I’m thinking aine would do something similar with a TV.
@Henry: I’m inclined to agree – I think there’s only so much wonder to be had. Would a touch screen really be that much more amazing to Aine than a fluorescent light? I actually imagine street lighting would be really foreign to Aine – we’re literally turning night to day. And we’re so used to it we don’t even think about it.
People seem to be forgetting Aine’s knowledge of the Bata Neart. She recognized it. Thus she knows that something invisible can make visible things happen.
In this, she is not far from Clarke’s Law:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology will be called magic”
So, each of these electronic things may be far more acceptable to her than commenters suggest. They are just “magic” her teacher hadn’t had time to teach her by the time she was frozen. Or, perhaps, “magic” her teacher hadn’t known about.
The road surface is one thing. Accepting that this sort of road connects all of Ireland, so that you can cross the island on M6 in one day’s travel, may be incomprehensible. Even the High Kings never had the wealth to do that!
It may well be simple scale that drives Aine more than a bit crossways. Ancient Ireland (pre-Christian era) had few towns bigger than a 16th century village. Getting a sight of Dublin’s lights on a clear night, from Maulin might make her shrink back a bit, or more than a bit.
@Jen: Glad you are excited Jen, I hope my work will live up to your expectations 😀
@Kessy: Funny you should mention the ‘Person trapped in a Box’ TV trope. I plan to poke fun at that particular trope when it comes up 😀
@Tom: Oooo ‘Clarke’s Law’, I didn’t know there was a name for this. You pretty much nailed part of what will be part of the girl’s strategy for dealing with modern life. Pretty much everything is magic 😀
Oh…Dublin….I actually have a future chapter planed for Dublin. This will be much later in the story when Áine settles more into the 21st Century. They’ll take her on a trip to Dublin City (which is a full blown 1st World City, with traffic, noise, office towers, pollution…the works), which will be interesting challenge for them (and for me, sine I gotta write it :D)
I hope you enjoy the results!
Actually, it’s Clarke’s third law, as in Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama, and lots of other good stuff. His three laws of prediction are as follows:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The third law is the one that’s most widely known, although I happen to be a fan of the first law as well.
As for how applicable Clarke’s third law is in this instance, it very much depends on what exactly you mean by “magic.” In my experience, what most people mean by the term (and the meaning implied in the third law) is simply, “A process that I don’t understand and am unfamiliar with that allows someone to do things that are seemingly impossible by other means.” The only reason that all sorts of things in our modern world fail that definition for most people is because they are familiar. Microwave ovens are my favorite example of that. One of my favorite ways of poking fun at woo warriors is to challenge them to come up with an objective definition of “supernatural” that doesn’t include microwaves. I haven’t come across anyone able to do so yet, but I live in hope. 😉
However, if we’re talking about magic as a real discipline that’s actually practiced in universe by the characters, then it’s a little different. Any skill that people actually do is going to have its techniques, its rules, its limitations, and a person who practices that skill will know them quite well and will be able to tell you that it just doesn’t work that way.
It’s kind of like Mythbusters. TV and movies tend to treat guns and explosives as magic that can do whatever you want them to. You want to blow up a car? Shoot it. You want to open a locked door? Shoot it. You want to disarm a grenade? Shoot it. You get the idea. As Jamie and Adam have made a career of demonstrating, that’s just not how explosives and firearms actually work, and someone who works with them for a living will probably wind up laughing at Hollywood action sequences.
In the same way, Aine could probably tell Aoife that no, magic does not make hot water come out of a pipe when you turn a knob. Magic gathers spiritual energy in order to do this and that and the other thing, none of which involves pipes or knobs. It just doesn’t work that way. Of course, I’m pretty sure that Aine will quickly conclude that trying to explain that to Aoife is really an exercise in futility. 😉
I am thinking: 1-their coach is fluent in Gaelic; why not make their confederate? Surely she could be trusted? 2-Ash’s mom? Would she not help?
3-history display at a local museum; pointing at the dioramas or other Irish or pre-Christian displays to Ann to get some historical referent to which they THEN can work from & relate to her??
4-Ann said “mentor”, wouldn’t she be amenable to follow Ash’s lead anyhow???
Jim
@Keesy: Ah Kessy, you underestimate Aoife 🙂 With time she’ll likely grasp how the magic of Bata Neart’s world functions. Remember, she’d already in touch with the spirit world 🙂 The real challenge will be getting Ashling to learn how to use it properly.
Hello Jim, welcome to Bata Neart.
Oooo…a list!
1) Sharon (their PE teacher / Camogie couch) can indeed speak fluent Gaelige. However she’s a bit of an antagonist. Thankfully most teachers in Irish schools are fluent in the language, so they’ll likely manage to find a nicer teacher to help.
2) Ashling’s mother is likely the kind of person who would help out. But at this stage of the story she’s being occasionally over-protective of her daughter. Ashling may not want to rock the boat by introducing her to Aine just yet.
3) Most museums of this type in Ireland are located in the cities. The closest to them would be the museums in Dublin, which travveling to would be too much of a shock for Aine at the moment. It’ll come, but later on.
4) Aine said ‘muinteor’. Rather cheekily, I’m not translating this one just yet. One of its meanings translates to ‘teacher’, but that is not its *only* meaning. I can’t say without it becoming a bit of spoiler. I plan to reveal more in the next chapter 🙂
LOL, you misunderstand, Rawr. I’m not saying trying to explain how magic works to Aoife would be an exercise in futility because she wouldn’t get it, but because it would be far too much fun for Aoife to purposefully miss the point when it comes to explaining the modern world.
I would also point out that if the scale of Dublin would be overwhelming for Aine, that would be because of where she’s from, not when she’s from. The city of Rome had a population of well over one million for pretty much the entire Imperial period. Rome at its height was really quite modern, and most of us would probably feel more at home there than in the 18th century in Europe.
“The city of Rome had a population of well over one million for pretty much the entire Imperial period. Rome at its height was really quite modern, and most of us would probably feel more at home there than in the 18th century in Europe.”
All true except in one thing. Rome was almost entirely dark at night until recently. That’s why I spoke of looking North from Maulin, or better Two Rock, at night, on a clear night. Aine, if she was not before 200 B.C., would know of Rome. Before that, however, Rome impinged little on that portion of the Celtic homelands.
@Kessy: My bad, I get what you mean now. Indeed, Aoife would all over the place having fun with the magic at hand. Of course, that’s just Aoife for you 🙂
@Tom: You would certainly see Dublin at night from Two Rock or Maulin. At very least the glow from it.
However, both of those heights are on the northern end of the Wicklow Mountains and enter into the Dublin Mountains area. My fictional Co. Wicklow town ‘Ballinafil’ is roughly located half way though Wicklow at a point near Wicklow Town.
https://www.google.ie/maps/@52.9640776,-6.0485904,11995m/data=!3m1!1e3
I’m using Ballinafil instead of the real-life Wicklow town, to allow me some creative licence with it’s layout, even though it is essentially Wicklow Town. (I’m even modelling parts of Ballinafil on Wicklow Town). This position is far enough away from Dublin to not see its lights clearly. That all said, Aine will soon encounter the main lights of a modern Irish town, which will still be surprising to her.
@Tom: Agreed, and like I said, I think that street lighting will be one of the things Aine will find strangest about the modern world. Although I think it’s worth mentioning that although ancient Rome was dark at night by modern standards, that doesn’t mean it was actually dark.
@Rawr: So if Aoife has a greater natural sensitivity to the spirit realm than Ashling, and it seems like a safe bet that she’d be more motivated to learn how to use magic, why then was it Ashling who was called to the crevasse instead of Aoife? I mean aside from Ashling being the protagonist. 😉 For that matter, the crevasse is in a national park that schools take day trips to, and there’s a walkway and a railing built on the edge of the crevasse. There must have been a lot of people to stand at that spot over the years. So why Ashling? Maybe she has some sort of connection to the Bata Neart beyond being in the right place at the right time? (Or wrong place maybe, considering all the falling and fatal injuries and all that.)
@Kessy: Oooo….I could provide an answer to this, but I’ll end up ruining a lot of Bata Neart’s main plot for you. The ‘whys’ and ‘what-fors’ of what has happened to Ashling will slowly reveal themselves over my planned 70 Chapter run for this comic. I even have 2 extended universe comics planned to follow Bata Neart once this story comes to its eventual end, both of which will expand the story even further.
I fear that it might be a big ask to expect readers to hang around for the many years it will take me to complete Bata Neart in order to learn all of the answers. So in the meantime I’m going to try and make it a fun ride that tries to kick-off everyone’s weekend with a new page 🙂
@Rawr: I don’t think you’ll have a problem keeping us around… 🙂
@Kessy: I have no idea what “woo warriors” is, but I think my personal definition of supernatural works. Anything not explained by science. Microwave ovens are completely understood and explained, so they are not supernatural. This definition is sort of the same thing as Clarke’s third law. What is deemed supernatural becomes less and less over time. Notably quite a few aspects of how humans work are still supernatural, but I don’t have a problem with that. Because who knows? Maybe they actually are?
@08h7w: Ahh, sorry. “Woo” is a common derisive term for anything the speaker views to be silly and ridiculous in the atheist / rationalist / humanist / any-other-appropriate-labels community. It’s commonly applied to things like ghosts, ufo’s, homeopathic medicine, herbal remedies, and so forth. There are a fair number of people who are a bit militant about it and seem to view it as their personal mission in life to utterly discredit and banish from society anything they view as being woo, and I refer to such people as woo warriors. Since they typically insist that the “supernatural” definitely does not exist, that means they need a better definition for the term than just what we don’t yet understand. The microwave example is just my way of poking holes in that argument.
Personally, I don’t think the term “supernatural” is really all that meaningful in any sense, and I generally don’t use it. The word has all kinds of baggage that I feel makes it an obstacle to clear communication.
@Kessy: I’m continually amazed by how much your thoughts reflect mine yet I do not see them coming. It gives me a nice feeling, somehow 🙂