Ah Ashling…. littering the countryside with magic and ruining careers 😀
Anyways, it’s been 5 updates which means that next week will not have a new Bata Neart page. Please return on the Friday after next for the next page 🙂
Bata Neart
Irish Magical Girls!
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Hey, at least the kiddies are having fun.
Enjoy your week, Rawr. 😀
Is it just me, or might that reporter’s complaints be taken as a challenge?
Awww! Ashie… *hugs*
Have a good rest, Rawr! 🙂
@Kessy: I dunno… That might be dangerous/harmful to the gang. You know, “magic doesn’t exist” and anyone who proves something to the opposite might get studied for their efforts. Not nice. Humans are too human.
@Jen: Yeah, except that governments don’t actually imprison people in order to study them like lab rats – that’s pure fiction. The real danger is that the reporter would plaster their faces all over the news and they’d become instant celebrities.
Anyway, I was thinking of something a bit less spectacular and a bit more impulsive, probably from a certain brunette…
@Kessy: A goose, perhaps? ^^
I think Ashling might need to have the Bata Neart at full size to break the spell. Since enlarging it is somewhat ….. noticeable ….. even Ms. Snotty Reporter Lady might notice unless they wait until she leaves. Otherwise, international fame is inevitable. 🙂
@Azreal: Thank you! I’m going to use the time to try and repair the buffer 😀
@Jen: ‘Ashie…’? ahhh…I think Aoife is about to have new pet-name for our heroine. 😀
@Kessy: I’ve toyed with the idea with having the big bad government try to do the whole ‘Government Lab’ thing when I first dreampt up Bata Neart. Then I realised this would be the Irish Government we’re talking about, and so I reconed any attempt they would make of that would be wrecked by bureaucracy, and out-sourcing to expensive idiots. Thus…no…I don’t think this would be a problem…
However as you already know….never forget the Aoife-Factor 😀
@Delta: Ms. Snotty Reporter Lady (who is yet to get a name, but this one seems to work well) will probably be revisiting this story a few times. I haven’t fleshed her out yet (and she was supposed to be a throw-away one-shot), but there’s some potential plots involving her looking into these mysterious #magicpowers.
But since she’s stuck doing local interest stuff…maybe she isn’t that good? 😀
@Rawr: I’ve always thought the “government lab” trope was kind of silly. If you think about it, what would be the legal basis for holding someone in a lab like that against their will? Bush locked up terrorists without a legal basis at Gitmo and that’s turned into an ongoing political storm ever since. I’m deeply ashamed of my country that *anyone* here would think that setting up a gulag for political prisoners is okay, but if the government can’t get away with doing that to jihadi terrorists they sure couldn’t get away with doing it to some schoolgirls.
Incidentally, the only thing the US government does at Area 51 is test experimental military aircraft. And burn toxic waste in an open fire pit, but that’s another story. LOL
I think the Chinese government has butted heads with various religious orders like the Shaolin since the communists took over. I think I heard a story about the government trying to lock up some Buddhist leader and he just vanished straight out of a locked cell. That could be complete fiction tho.
As for Ms. Snotty Reporter, I assume that she works for some local TV news? The only TFE News that Google seems to know about is a Russian gamer channel on Youtube. (At least I assume it’s a gamer channel based on the Warcraft, Warhammer, etc boxes on the shelf behind the guys, since I don’t speak Russian.) Local TV stations often have some real heavy duty internal politics going on. She might be stuck covering errant rain storms because she get on the wrong side of her boss or something.
@Kessy: It might be a fictional stand-in. The closest I can find is RTÉ, standing for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, which is Ireland’s national broadcast station. There might be copyright or other legal issues involved in the use of the name. /speculation
Oh Ashling, didn’t your parents ever teach you to pick up after yourself and not leave your rainclouds laying all over the place? And also not blow up cars? I mean honestly, that’s the bare minimum.
@Kessy & @Azreal
As Azreal guessed correctly, my ‘TfÉ’ is just my own cheeky re-brand of Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ.
I could probably get away with actually using RTÉ in this comic, however I kind of enjoy retooling brands like this 🙂
@melaredblu: I know! The manners of kids nowadays, leaving their magic all over the place! 😀
@Kessy: I always base things on worst case scenario. Also, Russia manages to do almost the equivalent, so… yeah. (None of us live in Russia though, I think. Thank goodness. Haha. But you any of you do, my utmost sympathies.)
@Rawr: Ahaha… Sorry, Ashling? I’m sure Aoife won’t abuse it… too much.
@Jen: Well, it’s really a matter of taste in story telling style. The “secret government lab” trope can and has been done well, I’m just not a huge fan of it. My tendency is to put my fantastical elements in the story premise and try to keep everything else as realistic as possible. Although I admittedly have a rather… eccentric view of what’s realistic. 😉 My initial gut reaction is that it would be challenging to make some sort of Men in Black fit in well with the world of Bata Neart. I’m thinking that the main antagonists would more likely be something more supernatural in nature, like the skeleton in the Nao-verse one shot.
Not that I disagree with you about Russia, but be aware that a lot of Russians would. Putin has sky high approval ratings domestically.
Don’t worry too much about “Ashie” – I can think of *much* worse pet names for Ashling. (And no, Aoife, I’m not sharing 😛 LOL)
@Kessy: ‘Nao-verse’ 😀 I love it!