Comic for Monday, November 24th, 2010
…no, neither of them take a traffic cop even the tiniest bit seriously. I feel sort of bad for him.
While Naomi primarily knows Mium as Mium rather than Query, she knows a fair bit about history, just because she spends a bunch of time with him and has likely pestered him before. She did demand a picture of Ila after all.
The idea of mistranslating idioms is a little amusing given that the both Central and Malsan tend to use English idioms because they are English in the comic. Kally’s Malsan is pretty good, but she isn’t as good as fluent as most of the main cast. It’s better than Naomi’s Central though, which is fairly bad.
…in case it’s not obvious why Naomi decides not give the cop her ID, she realizes it has natural hair color in the photo. Trying to avoid getting in trouble for that by getting in trouble for the curfew may not make a ton of sense, but Naomi was told to not get in trouble for the hair color, so worries about that one more. As to why Naomi has the ID in the first place when Mium has undoubtable made her one with black hair… it’s the one that she has her gym membership on, you see.
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Naomi is probably suffering from Clark Kent syndrome on the recognition front.
I had assumed that Naomi could just wash her hair dye out, but I’m starting to wonder if she cannot. Otherwise it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for her stick with black hair at this point.
If so, she’s either going to have obviously dyed hair in a bit, or very short hair. Though her hair does seem grow abnormally fast.
It’s my guess that she’s not fixed her hair because it’s been a very busy day for her.
How busy you ask? Well, it’s so busy she’s out after a curfew she didn’t even have time to learn about until just now.
traffic cop needs to read the sub-text
(…we are trying very hard not to kill you or get you killed…)
Unfortunately cops see the subtext as “This is something I’ll need to do a whole lot of paperwork on if I don’t deal with it now.”
This is very important to know when dealing with cops.
Cop: “Why did you suddenly brake and turn into this parking lot”
Me: “well its not safe to text and drive so when my boss texted me a question I pulled over to answer it since its after hours and might be important.”
It helps if you are wearing business casual attire, and wave the phone around as you are talking so they. can’t see what’s on the screen is really a videogame. Best part is you have quoted safty rules at them, so the most that they can say is about the abrupt turn you didn’t want to miss. Other factors add to the believability as well. Clean interior no shifty people looking anywhere but the cop that would trigger. Suspicions.
The single best way to avoid having interactions with police are not doing things that get their attention.
[gestures in MYM]
You don’t need to see my identification
Sorry, SOMEONE had to say it…
My take is that is pretty much what Naomi is going for. She is confident that if the cop scans anything Mium will make it say what she wants, unfortunately her ID has an actual photo.
Summoning Fluffy would probably work pretty well–plus you’d have the added benefit of seeing the officer’s reaction. ^^
Having a dragon is an important step for proving your credentials, after all.
Cop: “No need for I.D. Miss…” *tilts head sideways to read Naomi’s top* “Atarah. Hey weren’t you in representative sports? There’s something different about your hair though.”
It’s entirely plausible that the hair difference is entirely why the cop is bothering with an ID check. I mean, if he recognized her as Naomi Atarah, he’d have probably asked if she was helping with the situation, rather than for an ID.
This is, of course, assuming that the fact that many of the most impressive members of the military are Registered/Family Mages, who are something of celebrities. Miss Atarah may not be Family, but she’s probably still a Registered Mage, and a celebrity Registered Mage is likely to get a different reaction from police than some unknown person.
I’d guess that she’s used to getting recognized enough she doesn’t have to bother with the ID much, which is why she didn’t think about the picture difference.
For what it’s worth, I’m guessing the cop *did* recognize her, but he’s hoping he’s wrong, because unlike the Consul, Ashvalt, Eliana, and anyone else important Naomi’s met recently, the cop isn’t at liberty to ignore the hair. So ID check.
Pretty sure Miss Atarah is not a registered mage. But if he dose recognize her then he should know she is powerful enough pushing the issue might count as not having good survival instincts, there are reasons they are not normally allowed to interact with family members.
If she’s that recognizable it would not surprise me if there are a lot of young women of all hair colors wandering around town wearing her name on a jersey.
College athletes names on merchandise is not quite so common as with professional athletes, but it seems Naomi is likely to be at that level. Possibly normal hair colors wearing her merchandise are more common than those with augmented palettes?
A dark haired young woman wearing an Atarrah jersey might not immediately be interesting.
As for being a registered mage, I don’t think that’s ever been determined? However i think in Tyler’s story (Patreon content, sorry) I think it is mentioned that Tyler changed living arrangements right before he would have been required to register in his home country.
Quite possibly the only reason Naomi is not yet a registered mage is that she is not yet of age.