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Page 2 - Preperations

dragonsong12

on July 30, 2006

I'm happy with their costumes. Anybody who reads either one of my comics knows I'm not very good with character design, so for me to come up with some ~fairly~ elaborate wear is amazing. I added the little tail scarves on a whim because I felt it would be fun. I though about making them tame their hair, but I thought it would make them harder to recognize and in black and white it's already more than hard enough. XD

Get ready! Long explaination time!
Okay! There is an element of Boetheri culture that's touched on in this page that WILL be explained later on, but I'm going to explain it now so you special peoples know all that's happening. It's the name thing. All Boetheri names are hyphenated, the first part of their name is an individual name given at birth. The second part of it was initially a job-title (much like the names "smith" "tanner" "thatcher" and "fisher" once were in english). Boetheri tend to have a high work-ethic, so the work that they did was considered to be part of who they were. You weren't "Bas" you were "Bas the farmer". So the full hyphanated name was considered to be one's "True Name", and that was how most people knew you. But there are those, family and very close friends, who know Bas outside of his work as a farmer, who know what he's like without the work involved. They can call him by only the first part, the "Sub Name". You are expected to call someone by their True Name unless you know them VERY well. It's one of the bigger breaches of etiquette to call someone by their Sub Name if you haven't known them long, or don't know them outside of your work. (obviously the work thing isn't as big among the slaves, where the second part of the name evolved into a family name, much like "smith" and "thatcher" are now)
Jaith asking if he can call him Tren is a pretty big deal, and in other circumstances, might've created a big rift between the two of them. So why does Jaith ask in the first place if it's such a big deal? He really just wants to be sure to establish a link with Tren before he leaves. In a way he's asking, "so, we're buddies, right? right?" Luckily, Tren doesn't get that. He has no idea about the boetheri customs and it seems far less important to him, so he's just like "huh? sure, whatever". Unintentioanlly, however, he's set himself up as a close friend of Jaith's. Mwah ha haa.

Whew! That was long-winded!

Thanks for reading! See you next week! And if you're going to Otakon this year, see if you can spot me there! I'll be traversing the crowds with Ry! *hint the Ry clue is a bit of a trick*