What’s this now? Aoife has figured out something here, and it’s got her a little excited. I wonder what it could be?
Well…in fairness, there is an awful lot of things that can excite her. Show her some bright colours and she’ll be up the walls with delirium, but in this case it’s something else that’s got her so happy. Please check in next week to find out what it is.
Maybe it’s something to do with the Ba-ta Knee-art? Maybe….
(PS. This is another post from before the baby came out, so I’m guessing the schedule here. I will update if anything changes).
Yeah, try it, Ashling! it’ll only blow up the whole bus! 😀
@Jen: Oh, yea of little faith. Don’t you believe in Ashling? I’m sure she could blow up a lot more than just the bus. 😉
Why I’m I thinking that there will be a magical sky flare with a hole in the roof of the bus?
Why not a little…..
Little?
I don’t get the phrasing?
Ummmm…..help me here, okay?
Jim
As far as I know, there is no common phrase starting with “Why not a little”. Some googling and a trip to wiktionary did not unearth it either. Sorry I couldn’t help 😛
I’m thinking Ashling should try whatever it is after they get off the bus. I hope Ashling can say no long enough for that…
@Jen: Oh Aoife wouldn’t try to get Ashling to cause that much damage. She’s just a minor social nuisance 😀
@Kessy: Of course not…its not like she could…I dunno…rip through an entire city block…….(/foreshodowing)
@Tiger: nnnnnnnnnn-nearly…..something else will happen though.
@James: Ah now James…that would be telling 🙂 Also using Google Translate is cheating 😀 Not that it’ll help you much, since the Gaelige translations don’t take grammar into account.
I would translate, but it would spoil next week’s page for you. (Sorry about that)
@O8h7w: Translating the words on their own isn’t enough I’m afraid. You also need the context of what Aine is saying, which is what Aoife has just figured out thanks to her own particular point of view.
You’ll see next week ;D
Actually, the thing I really like about this page is that I feel like we’re starting to see a bit of Aine’s normal, non-traumatized personality. She has a bit of a mischievous side, doesn’t she?
@Kessy: Glad you are enjoying the more calmed down Aine.
She’s a bit mischievous, but nowhere Aoife’s level of mischief. They are going to have some difficulty aging her, but outside the narrative I can confirm that Aine is an older teen at around about 19 years of age. Given the time she’s from, and the kind of life that she had led prior to being frozen, Aine is a lot more mature than the other girls. However she does a have a fun and whimsical side thanks to her living most of her life around magic.
What you can expect to see in future chapters, is Aine extracting fun from the simplest of things and being very easily amused by Ashling and Aoife.
So Aoife wants Ashling to do something exciting with the Bata Neart?
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Hopefully this will not end up on twitface with #magicpowers
Aine almost certainly wouldn’t know her exact age. It’s really strange to think about, but people didn’t start keeping close track of their age until quite recently. It kind of threw me when I first discovered that fact doing some genealogy research. I found birth dates for my great great grandfather that varied over 16 years.
I’d think their best bet for a good estimate of Aine’s age would be to take her to see a doctor. Which they should probably do anyway, considering the state of medicine in her time.
There are different kinds of maturity, you know. Aine would be more mature in some ways, but there are probably some things that Ashling and Aoife would be better at than her. For example, they probably have a lot more experience dealing with strangers, foreigners, and generally diverse people than Aine.
Considering what Bata Neart does to cars, maybe it’s not a good idea to use it while riding the bus.
@James & Rawr: Aha, I didn’t even see this was an attempt to translate Aine’s words. I thought it was a reference to something I didn’t catch. That explains it!
@Kessy, you make a good point about experience with people. Ashling and Aoife have probably met close to a hundred times as many people in their lives as Aine has met. And while she may have met someone of a foreign skin colour, the diversity of today’s cities is bound to have quite a few examples of people completely new to her. A good bit of “social mischief” might be to learn Aine the phrase “You talk funny!”. 😀
Looking forward to see these three girls keeping each other amused!
@008: yup, that’s pretty much what I was thinking. Although it’s not just about skin tone – consider that East Asians tend to have a similar skin tone to people from the Mediterranean. It’s facial features, bone structure, hair color and texture, etc. We tend to focus on skin color because of certain unfortunate aspects of our history, but Aine doesn’t have that baggage.
But I was also thinking about diversity in terms of behavior and personality. I’m not an expert, but I’m thinking that people who live in small communities with limited interaction with outsiders tend to have really tight knit social networks, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone influences everyone else. In today’s urban culture, people have much larger and looser social networks, and have a variety of influences.
Think about the way culture, fads, memes, and things like that mutate and spread today. There are new ones, what? Every few months? Of course those things happen in small villages, too. But I would imagine in those cases it’s much less frequent, and you’ll immediately know the origin and context because you know the person who started it.
So I think that Aine might expect everyone she meets to somewhat like Ashling and Aoife and know the things they know and like the things they like. I’m sure Aine is expecting a bit of culture shock and having a bunch of new things to get used to. But she might not be expecting a constant stream of new things to get used to. She might wind up feeling like as soon as she gets used to her new world, it changes and she has yet another one to get used to, and this just keeps happening.
(Although thinking about it – a society of Aoife’s? What must Aine be thinking things are like now? LOL)
@Delta: Oh I’m sure that Aoife’s idea is sound, reasonable and not at all risky…..just as I’m sure that she’s the current President of Ireland….yea….
@Henry: Oooo, that is a risk. Then it would start to tend on Twitface 😀 (I’m glad you remember my social media parody. It will crop up again whenever I need a Facebook reference.)
@melareblu: Good point. That Yaris was blown to pieces, and they’re actually *in* the vehicle this time. O.o
@O8h7w: Glad you are looking forward to the mischief 😀 Just wait until she get’s to the school 🙂
@Kessy: Aine might be blown away a little by the contents of Aoife’s dorm. Aoife’s a bit of a fan-girl / otaku, and a lot of her possessions are somewhat Japan-centric….and that’s just for starters 😀
No matter where you are in modern Ireland, you are pretty much connected to current culture. Also most of County Wicklow is within Dublin’s catchment, and my fictional Ballinafil is essentially a sleeper town on Dublin’s southern commuter belt. Towns like this are very much connected to the beat of modern culture, but also benefit from being centered on quiet villages. This was part of why Bata Neart is set in Wicklow. It provides a relatively less stressful way to wean Aine into the 21st Century….at least that’s the plan.
Wait until you see what happens to her in the non-cannon Bata Neart short-manga I’m drawing for my course with Manga School Nakano. (Spoiler: It’s going to be in Dublin!)
@ Rawr: Oops, sorry, I was unclear. When I was talking about small tight knit communities, I was talking about how things were in Aine’s time, not rural Ireland today. I was contrasting that with the sort of urbanized culture we have today, by which I meant that we have large urban centers as kind of hubs of culture, not that suburban and rural communities aren’t a part of it. These days, pretty much any place with an internet connection is plugged in to the current culture.
How can I put this…… Given what I’ve heard about other Irish magic-users who employ a rather singular source of power, and the probable nature of Aine’s prior interactions with the *Ahem* “Teacher” now inhabiting Ashling, I think the Bata Neart may have a non-lay-waste-to-the-countryside function that Aoife would be interested in.
Who knew that ancient Gaeilge had euphemisms?
Ah, so Aine said (in context) “Why not try something that won’t explode the bus?”is now my guess.
@Kessy: No problem Kessy, I reckoned that was your meaning 🙂
I can’t explain futher without spoiling some of the story, but Aine’s experiences are not limited to just one village. When her back-story is revealed you’ll find out why.
@Delta: You are very good at reading between the lines there 😀
Aine’s interactions with her Muinteoir will be explained further when I get to her back-story 🙂 (Probably next chapter, I’m currently planning it out).
If you remember waaaaay back in Chapter 1, both the Bata Neart and Bata Achrann had a set of different spells attached. Those were just a small example of what the Bata Neart’s abilites, which range from attack/defense spells, spells for practical use, and more frivolous stuff that’s not so important….rain for example….
Aoife has picked up on something here which kind of fits into something she is very familiar with. You’ll see what I mean in the next week or so 🙂
Gaelige and euphemisms? It’s fun to do that with a language, but alas, I’m kind of using them out of absolute necessity. For many years the Irish Language has been in the hands of very conservative groups of people, ranging from the Catholic Church to various semi-state volunteer groups that share similar values. The end result is a language that has been heavily sanitized.
Although it’s the official state language of Ireland, practically speaking Gaelige is endangered. Irish lessons are mandatory until the final year of Secondary School, after which few continue to practice it, and ultimately forget much of it. The vast majority of Irish people (myself included) fall into this pattern, leaving the “living” language confined to the sanitized realms of the classroom. Since it is not presented as a language that is compatible with modern life in Ireland, I feel that this is why so many people drop it so readily.
If that approach was changed, and Gaelige was essentially made ‘sexier’, I think people would hang on longer. Bata Neart is part of my own misguided attempt to make the language more interesting to people, while still pointing out the fact that no-one can really speak it after 15 years of continuous training (both Ashling and Aoife will have been learning Gaelige since the age of 5, and still struggle to talk with Aine).
Anyways, sorry for going off on another rant :/
@Henry: She didn’t say that exactly…but she did suggest something that is helpful. Once you see the next page, and then re-read this page you should get the context of what she is suggesting 🙂
@Delta: Other Irish magic users with a singular source of power? Sorry, I may be out of it, but I have no idea what you’re referencing.
As for Aine’s relationship with Muinteoir, did you really have to jump to that conclusion? I mean, that could well be the case, and I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with it if it were, but it’s not the only possibility. Despite what our culture seems to think, it really is possible to be close to someone and care deeply about them without sleeping with them. For example, Muinteoir might have been a mother figure or an older sister figure to Aine.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like I’m jumping on you. It’s just been a frustration in my life that people today seem to think that a close relationship *has* to be sexual.
@Kessy: No one has really guessed correctly what I going to do here with these 2 characters, which is what I like 😀
I fully take the blame if anyone is jumping to sexy conclusions, I have been running a very fan-servicey chapter this time. I’m sorry about that.
There’s a lot more to Aine’s past and relationships that you’ll be able to assume so early. Even with Ashling and Aoife, you folk have only just started to get to know them. As time goes on, I will be revealing more and more of who these 3 young woman are, who they were, and who they are becoming as we watch them grow. I’m hoping that it will be as rewarding an experience for you, as it will be for me to draw it.
As I hope I’ve shown with Ashling and Aoife, I can sometimes draw up a close relationship that doesn’t involve the characters sleeping together 😀
Not that Aoife doesn’t keep hinting. *Groucho Marx face* 😛
@ Azrael: Well, it seems like Aoife and Ashling have some boundaries. I’m sure Aoife has lots of fun walking right up to the line and seeing how close she can get to it, but I don’t think she’d cross it on purpose.