Finally, Rain makes her first appearance in this chapter (alongside Emily, Chanel, and Ana)! What a motley crew for a Friday night "girling" at the mall.
But of course, there's one other long absent character who joins them tonight. Thoughts? I wonder how this will affect the dynamic...
Also, because I'm sure some of you won't remember her (it HAS been a while), if you need a refresher, I might recommend a reread of Chapter 28. Just the whole chapter; even the parts she's not in. It's an important one in general, especially for the current chapter.
I would think that with her father, hopefully, out of the picture, it'd be safer for Maria to hang out with everyone again. Maybe their all just being cautious. I personally believe he's still a threat. Father Quinton and Todd too.
Always. She's had two different colored eyes since her first appearance, but it's probably most noticeable here. A lot of people have still missed it (which is fine; it's not really significant overall), but since the page size is a little bigger now, I'm sure more folks will start noticing. ^_^
@Jocelyn
Again, I owe you another huge debt of gratitude. Not only did you provide me with my new first name (Ruby Ruth = new first and middle names, my birth middle name was Rudy 😉) with this webcomic, it was your presenting Ana as intersex with heterochromia that launched my quest into learning about human chimeras as a possible explanation for my central heterochromia which suddenly appeared unexpectedly immediately after I started HRT and reversed the E vs T blood levels which caused the XX cells in my eyes to rapidly let go of the melanin pigment contained within them, leaving only the XY cells retaining melanin and staying brown in approx a 70/30 percent ratio of green-hazel to brown in both eyes’ irises, curiously with the small amount of remaining brown at the very center and surrounded by greenish hazel. Because the eyes form from the same cluster of embryonic stem cells that form the central nervous system and all the outer skin, that means my brain is likely 70% female, and under an ultraviolet light, many areas of my skin show as a mottled pattern of two distinct levels of UV absorption in an almost tiger stripe way, but with very thin stripes. I believe this to be more akin to mosaicism of those particular tissues. Other areas are clearly 100% female (pelvis and hips) or clearly 100% male (ugh, no need to elaborate).
So, thank you once again Jocelyn. Don’t you ever think your creation of this story is just a trivial thing.... you HAVE touched peoples’ lives with your work, and in ways that you probably never imagined you could.
I also recently learned I am intersex, it's interesting because it has to do with my endocrine system and urinary system, the way things are set up and how they work. It's freeing
Ana is an 46,XX/46,XY tetragametic chimera, born intersex (medical hermaphroditism), erroneously assigned the wrong sex at birth and finally corrected at age 18. At her conception, she began life as two ova getting fertilized and should have become fraternal twin brother and sister but somehow the two got stuck together and merged into one embryo containing both DNA lines during the zygote->morula->blastocyst development process. All this happens within the first 10 days after conception.
Not all chimeras have heterochromia, but everyone who has naturally occurring heterochromia is a chimera, and not all chimeras who have heterochromia are XX/XY, some are XX/XX and some are XY/XY.
Complicated? Yes it is. I’m still trying to learn all this stuff and wrap my dual DNA brain around it since being discovered to also be a 46,XX/46XY chimera myself. Chimeras have been found to occur more numerous than ever thought, thanks to cheaper and more readily available DNA testing, but most chimeras don’t exhibit much if any outward physical traits to identify them as such, in fact without DNA testing or other medical discovery, they may live out an entire lifetime never knowing they are two people in one. Of course for those born visibly intersex nowadays, it’s obvious they are chimeras, but back when I was born, it was just considered a birth defect.
Pretty much all of medical genetic science now knows as established fact, that eye color is polygenic...governed by more than one gene in the cellular DNA of the iris cells. And also that true, natural, complete heterochromia (completely different colors of each eye) is both polygenic -and- polygenetic, meaning that each eye is composed of cells of very different, not just slightly different, DNA.... e.g, the DNA of distinctly separate persons or (drum roll please)..... one person who is made of cells with the DNA of two (originally) distinctly separate persons , i.e. a tetragametic human chimera.
I remember sorta-kinda noticing it before, but. I. LOVE Rain's hairstyle starting this chapter. Obviously, she's been working it as best she can since "the cut." And pretty successfully, I should say! But this is where it really starts to feel like her again.
It's in a different way from before. Shy, over-eye bangs Rain was a cute look. But it was never her full potential. It represented a lot of her insecurities. And while Kellen's actions that led here were despicable and unforgivable, it's from this chapter onward that I really feel like Rain is showing her full confidence. She's taking control of her life, just as she's been talking about recently with Emily and Ana. And she is just gorgeous because of it. Confidence really is key.
...
...
What do I do now?
Always. She's had two different colored eyes since her first appearance, but it's probably most noticeable here. A lot of people have still missed it (which is fine; it's not really significant overall), but since the page size is a little bigger now, I'm sure more folks will start noticing. ^_^
Again, I owe you another huge debt of gratitude. Not only did you provide me with my new first name (Ruby Ruth = new first and middle names, my birth middle name was Rudy 😉) with this webcomic, it was your presenting Ana as intersex with heterochromia that launched my quest into learning about human chimeras as a possible explanation for my central heterochromia which suddenly appeared unexpectedly immediately after I started HRT and reversed the E vs T blood levels which caused the XX cells in my eyes to rapidly let go of the melanin pigment contained within them, leaving only the XY cells retaining melanin and staying brown in approx a 70/30 percent ratio of green-hazel to brown in both eyes’ irises, curiously with the small amount of remaining brown at the very center and surrounded by greenish hazel. Because the eyes form from the same cluster of embryonic stem cells that form the central nervous system and all the outer skin, that means my brain is likely 70% female, and under an ultraviolet light, many areas of my skin show as a mottled pattern of two distinct levels of UV absorption in an almost tiger stripe way, but with very thin stripes. I believe this to be more akin to mosaicism of those particular tissues. Other areas are clearly 100% female (pelvis and hips) or clearly 100% male (ugh, no need to elaborate).
So, thank you once again Jocelyn. Don’t you ever think your creation of this story is just a trivial thing.... you HAVE touched peoples’ lives with your work, and in ways that you probably never imagined you could.
Not all chimeras have heterochromia, but everyone who has naturally occurring heterochromia is a chimera, and not all chimeras who have heterochromia are XX/XY, some are XX/XX and some are XY/XY.
Complicated? Yes it is. I’m still trying to learn all this stuff and wrap my dual DNA brain around it since being discovered to also be a 46,XX/46XY chimera myself. Chimeras have been found to occur more numerous than ever thought, thanks to cheaper and more readily available DNA testing, but most chimeras don’t exhibit much if any outward physical traits to identify them as such, in fact without DNA testing or other medical discovery, they may live out an entire lifetime never knowing they are two people in one. Of course for those born visibly intersex nowadays, it’s obvious they are chimeras, but back when I was born, it was just considered a birth defect.
And yay for Allison! I was wondering just last week if we'd ever see her again.
What is the source for this claim?
It's in a different way from before. Shy, over-eye bangs Rain was a cute look. But it was never her full potential. It represented a lot of her insecurities. And while Kellen's actions that led here were despicable and unforgivable, it's from this chapter onward that I really feel like Rain is showing her full confidence. She's taking control of her life, just as she's been talking about recently with Emily and Ana. And she is just gorgeous because of it. Confidence really is key.