Hello and welcome back for another chapter of Bata Neart, and for the first time…a Chapter Title?
I haven’t done this before with Bata Neart, but I felt that it was time to start giving the chapters working titles, both as a way to organise stuff but also to offer you a teaser of things to come.
What is ‘Home Alone’ about? Well…I was thinking of making a light comedy movie franchise that I would decimate over time with annoying low-budget sequels 😀 (What do you *mean* that someone else did that?!)
Seriously though, this was a last minute idea that I threw together a few weeks ago while I was on the train home from work. I was already drawing what will become Chapter 9, when I realised that there was a whole chapter I was missing out on, a chapter that felt so fun in my head it would have been a terrible pity to hop over it. Thus, here we are with ‘Home Alone’.
I hope you enjoy this 😀
Oh yes, since I know people will still be linking to this page via VDSD links, here is a repeat of last week’s post 😀
That’s right! Time for VDSD! This year Bata Neart is represented by the War Priestess.
Please click on the link above and vote for Bata Neart to see the full image. I truly appreciate all votes, as they do help drive up the comic’s ranking which in turn attracts in more lovely readers like yourselves. Thank you to all who do this 🙂
But remember this is a community event, and there’s few better communities out there on the Interwebs than the Webcomic Community. Please take some time to check out the wonderful contributions from all of the other web cartoonists who join in.
Valentine’s Day Sex Drive 2017
Andrew Hunter – Delve | Lou Graziani – CyBoar | Nick Greaves – The Great Isle of Prentil | Caley Tibbittz Collopy – SwordCat Princess | Amy Letts – Epic Fail | Inky – Ink Dolls | Inky – Five Mighty Damsels | Bibbling Prophet – Holy Bibble | Scott T. Hicken – Exiern: Dark Reflections | Scott T. Hicken – Exiern | F. T. Benjamins – Valkyries | Rd Ashes – Dyerin’s Line | Mike Aston and Shaun Nicholls – Lacey Investigations | Jackarais – Bicycle Boy | Alli Perry – My Hero! | Jeremy Begin – After the Dream | Coldreave – King Martha | Niauropsaka – Raspberry Rain | yellowgerbil – Zoe the Vampire | MonicaNG – MoonSlayer | The Blood Teller – Alvery Nerveaux’s Secret Case Files | John Harrington – The Savage Sword of Sharona | Sean Harrington – Spying With Lana | Ebenezer Splooge – Portcall Uranus | Ebenezer Splooge – PronQueens | Ebenezer Splooge – Mammazon | Ebenezer Splooge – Hentai Poster Company | Ebenezer Splooge – Magical Virgin Princess Training Academy | Ebenezer Splooge – PronQuest | jeromatic – Jeromatic Tales | jeromatic – Bunny Wiggins | Zach Vanzile – West Tree Academy of Heroes | Bearalzebub – Bearalzebub | Byron Wilkins – 1977 the Comic | Vas Littlecrow Wojtanowicz – Velvet Rasputin | Dave Barrack – Grrl Power< | Mark Egan – Bata Neart | Mark Egan – Back Office | Peter Anckorn – By The Book | TK Doherty – Nikki Sprite | Stef Marcinkowski – Sarah Zero
Welcome back, Rawr.
Breakfast time! Wakey, wakey. Eggs and bac…..fruit and tea!
Really like the Múinteoir VDSD pic, Rawr. Nicely done.
Yay! Aoife and Aine are back – I missed ya, guys. ^_^
I love Aine’s look, “WTF *is* all this stuff?”
Kuki? (sings off key) Kuki, Kuki, lend me your comb…
@Kessy: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magoic.”–Arthur C. Clarke. And are those BANANAS in the fruit basket? No way Aine has seen anything like them before. ^^ And then, there’s the tea…..
@Rawr: Welcome back, indeed! I like the idea of chapter titles because it helps with archive diving. It would have helped me a lot when I was working on my review. 🙂
“Any technology, no matter how simple, is magic to those who don’t understand it” is a variant on Clarke’s 3rd law I’ve seen.
And I do like Aine’s face here. Very “eh?”
Welcome back, Rawr. And I agree. Aine’s face is adorable in that frame.
@Delta: You might be right about the bananas. Those, the grapes, and the oranges might be foreign things to her. According to this site: http://www.localhistories.org/fruits.html, only apples and pears are native to Europe. But if it’s accurate, she might know about grapes and oranges, depending on how far north they reached, but probably not.
@Farren: Remember that Aine grew up on the edge of the Roman Empire, and the Romans took grapes with them wherever they could get them to grow for wine making.
But the bananas and tea would definitely be foreign to her. Citrus – including bitter oranges and lemons – were known in Europe at that time, but not sweet oranges.
@Azreal: Thanks! Great to be back 🙂 Glad you liked the VDSD. Since she had been around in-story lately I felt that it made sense to feature her this time.
@Delta: Aoife has Áine convinced that the world is full of magic items now. So these new magical fruits might not be too shocking 😀
I still hope to overhall the archive with a special ‘Aoife’s Guide to Bata Neart’ page. I just need to get around to actually doing it 😛
@Farren & Henry: Glad everyone is liking Áine’s expression. It’s may favourite part of this page too 🙂
@Kessy: There has been evidence found of trade between the Irish Kingdoms and the Roman Empire at the time, but Áine probably only ever saw apples. Ireland’s climate doesn’t make for good grape production (unless you are on the very southern end of County Kerry or County Cork.)
She might have encountered some other edible fruits such as wild strawberries which have grown naturally in Ireland.
No, Seriously, why does Aine’s shirt say “kuki”?
Not sure if it would be relevant to whether or not Aine’s seen grapes before, but the climate was different in the past than it is now. There was significant grape production in England during the Roman period, for example.
@Kessy: Ahh nuts….well this is embarrassing, but it seems that spelling mistakes follow me across languages.
I had drawn the Katakana for “Ku-Ki”, when I had actually planned to draw “Wa-Ki” (as in ‘wacky’. I’ve seen this word used in Japanese fairly often). ‘Ku’ and ‘Wa’ are pretty similar thus my stupid mistake.
‘Wa-Ki’ is a meta reference to my very first drawing of Aoife which had the Katakana ‘Wa’ & ‘Ki’ flanking the Lucky Star on her bandeau. I assumed that she’d have more clothing with this on it.
Now I’m not sure what to do. I’ve drawn 5 pages with this error in place. Should I ret-con all of the pages to make her T-Shirt ‘Wa-ki’?, or just put this down to Aoife’s own limited grasp of Japanese? Would she have a Kuki (Kooki?) T-Shirt? What you’d think?
Katakana is tough – there are a bunch of characters that are really close to each other. (“so” and “n” in particular.) To be honest I had to check my old textbook to make sure I was reading it right.
I think that “kooky” works just as well as “wacky.” They mean practically the same thing. Aoife could well have misread it too. Or it could even be an error by the people who made the shirt – it’s not at all uncommon to see those kinds of mistakes made by people designing clothing with phrases from languages they don’t speak. Including in Japan. I’ve seen a ton of anime with a character wearing a shirt with a misspelled English phrase on it.
So if it’d be a lot of work fixing it, I wouldn’t bother. Just be careful about keeping it consistent in the future.
I’d also like to thank Kessy for ear-worming me. With a cream pie. To the face. 😛
@Azrael: Mwahahahaha! My evil plan is coming along perfectly! Just be glad you don’t have to actually listen to me sing it – I wasn’t joking about being off key. I’m afraid I’m rather tone deaf.
My parents were very much children of the ’50’s, so I got exposed to a lot of pop culture from that era growing up. But you know the only cure for an ear worm – listen to it over and over until you’re sick of it. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiYj9Ods4OQ
I imagine that banana would be an interesting culinary first for her. There aren’t a lot of fruits it and she’s almost certainly never seen one before.
@melaredblu: Too true. Apples would have probably been the fanciest thing she had ever seen before, but a banana would blow her mind away. Unless she tried to eat though the skin…then she might not like it at all 😀