Rain
Comic 1422 - Three Birthdays
Author Notes:
Anyway, I've been joking to friends that Lydia was me kinda not firing off "Chekhov's baby" through the last chapter. The pieces were all set for everything to happen, but I just didn't want that to be what that last chapter was. I really wanted it to just be about all the kids actually enjoying themselves at the party. They deserved to all have a nice time.
Also, to the best of my memory, I've never attempted to draw a newborn baby before. In real life, they're wrinkly and lumpy and stuff. Trying to keep the kid in the consistent artstyle just resulted in a long face. Sorry if this is a little weird. XD
Jokes aside, I saw a lot of people getting anxious about super heavy stuff like miscarriage, or Emily dying in childbirth, and that was just not ever where my plans were going. I think going into the full drama of rushing to the hospital and "a very long night of labor" would've just stressed people out needlessly for a story path I had zero interest in exploring, so I veered away from getting too nitty gritty with the childbirth (I probably wasn't gonna include it anyway; I didn't have any big ideas, so it would've been mostly tangential and not really adding much).
Moving on, Rain tried to make a simple yellow cake with chocolate frosting for Emily's birthday. But a baker, she is not. So here we have this weird lumpy birthday cake she made. Tastes good, though. That's what's important. Based on actual events. XD
The final image shows a calendar with all the days crossed off leading up to Rain's birthday. It's very small, so if you can't read it, the notes on August 24th are "B-Day", "Name Change", and "Inheritance". Looks like a busy day!
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Rain, all characters and all other aspects of the story are copyright material belonging to me.
My next round of dental work is currently slated for November, but as I've discussed, I've still got a lot to save. If you can help, I will be very grateful. If not, no hard feelings. Thank you, either way.
https://gofund.me/bc702c0d
Cries like Caston
No one poops like Caston
No one makes a mess of themselves like Caston
Does the extra word work with the rhythm better? I was thinking of Gaston too. I am reading comments to figure out where the surname came from.
> No one makes quite a mess of themselves like Caston!
The baby looks a bit like the people from Chin Chan
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In real life, newborns kind of look like they could be Martians. (I saw both of my kids right as they popped out of mommy.) And until the midwife (or whoever) cleans them up, they look like they're covered with something sort of like snot with the mange. I have no idea how you could show that in the style of drawing that Jocelyn is using.
There's a reason that ads for baby products don't use pictures of newborns -- they're not all that photogenic. (Unkind folks use the word "ugly.") I think the preferred age is around 6 months.
Or in the case of Star wars, the new owners just wanted the old blood gone as cheaply as possible.
Ditto for any fictional story set during a war.
That doesn't mean the author will take it, but chances are good they will. Wars are bloody. Even when it turns out the War in the show name is just a game.
most everyone is 18 when they graduate high school, so to have two students who also happen to be in a relationship both graduate at 17 would be...extremely rare
We started this tale with a translesbian with a summer birthday. The story was of her transition and her life coming together. We didn't know her birthday at the start or her orientation and she didn't have that figured out yet, bur I think Jocelyn did. It at least felt to me like things were pointing that way.
If we were looking at the population at large, the odds we'd be talking about would just be the odds of her being in a relationship multiplied by the odds that one other person would also have a birthday between June and the end of September. (This is in the US, so kids start kindergarten the year that they are 5 years old at the end of September 30.)
Given the genre of story, I'd guess the odds of the former would be around 80%. Given birthdate frequencies (thank you year end holidays), the odds of someone being born in that date range is about 35%. So we're talking odds of around 25% - not what I'd call extremely rare.
But we didn't have a statistically representative pool of candidates. There were only a few, and June through September birthdays were disproportionately represented, if I recall correctly. So Rain's chances were actually pretty good of accomplishing this.
was it important they both be 17? I feel like there might be a reason but I'm not seeing it
See, if you're looking for the realism, it's as Ed says. Some kids are just born toward the beginning or end of that window to be in a certain grade. Speaking for myself (May 29th birthday), I ended up always being one of the youngest in my class. The amount of students in my class younger than me by that point were fewer, but I seem to remember many. They existed. But neither my nor your experience represents every experience. I knew several graduating 17 year olds, and you knew two, but I'm sure other readers could chime in and say most of their graduating class was 17, and another could say none were.
Why were Rain and Emily only 17 until the Summer? Because they just were. Because that's just how life happened for them. That's when they were born. I don't know if it's actually rare or not, but I know it can happen, and that's kinda all that matters. ^^;
If you're looking for plot reasons, both are actually very deliberate. I wanted Emily to have a late birthday so she'd have her kid while she was still essentially a kid herself. That little fact, simply put, carries a lot of weight. It adds a lot of gravity to the awfulness of Chase's actions and highlights Emily's need to mentally grow up fast.
With Rain, her birthday was kept to very nearly the farthest point from the start of the story very much on purpose. When I began writing/posting the comic, I hadn't started my transition yet and didn't want to write about something I didn't understand. And because I was also under the (incorrect) impression that kids couldn't pursue transition until they turned 18, I put her birthday super far away to give myself a lot of leeway. Ultimately, it ended up being somewhat irrelevant in this regard, as I have long since transitioned now (and as has Rain begun hers), but it still plays into the ground rules established for Rain's inheritance.
My question, though, is why it seems to bother you so much? I'm not really sure why this small coincidence matters.
the plot reason for Emily makes a lot of sense, and I definitely get the explanation for Rain
it wasn't that it bothered me as much as I thought I was...I dunno, "on to something", like there was some big hidden reason for an event that to me is unusual, but now it just sounds dumb xD
anyways, uh...love the comic, thanks for replying!
I'm interested to see what this new chapter will be about. Lots of interesting developments!
Funny enough I skipped Wednesday’s page because I didn’t want to see just a cover and wait two more days to start the story.
Has Rain saved and stored some of her sperm? Is she planning to? I'm not sure at what point in HRT this becomes no longer possible (I've heard conflicting claims), but the sooner the better, I assume.
Assuming Rain and Emily stay together, they might want another child, and that would give them the option of having one without an (outside) sperm donor.
I realize that it's not the same as Rain bearing her own child from her own (so far, non-existent) uterus, but at least that child would be her own (and Emily's) biological child.