It's nice to see Aiken being a lot more civil with Rain this time. genuinely reaching out to her. Kellen however, is still either a) getting used to everything and taking a long time. Or b) Just not willing to accept it and intentionally making spiteful comments.

And the awkward meter goes shooting up. Ding ding ding.

We see how Kellen reacts to Emily now, but wait until she finds out Emily's baby is Chase's!(if she ever does, although it will probably come out sooner or later) XD

You know, it's occurred to me that this is our first time REALLY getting to know Kellen. So far all we've seen of her is just her fussing over her siblings and being suspicious of their dates over phone calls.

...She is not leaving a good first impression on the readers here. xD

I wonder what Kellen is planning to get outta this meeting? She barely seems to be trying. She seems rather miffed about Emily being outspoken (you go Emily standing up Rain like that).

Once again, not what I was expecting. Kellen doesn't even seem to be entirely open to Rain being Trans and Aiken once again is being quite open. This course of events never even crossed my mind when I thought about this meeting. I love how Emily immediately stands up for Rain and asserts that she is a girl. Reminds of what my friends did and still do for me. Awesome update and I can't wait for the next! :)

I approve of Aiken now. He is being really cool now. Kellen, I hate. But Aiken is cool.

My prediction way back when Emily first showed extensive knowledge of lgbt is coming true ^_^ Emily IS becoming Rain's best ally

Emily is so cool... Even my best friends still get the whole gender thing wrong from time to time... Though they usually realize they said something wrong when I glare at them.

I Love you Emily!!! ^_^ but for real she's so awesome. I hope Rain's sister comes around and stops being a butt head.

Does anybody have a problem with me sending an assassin after Kellen? Anybody at all? Because he doesn't seem to be trying at all. If anything, he seems to be going out of his way to be as intentionally rude and spiteful as possible. What the hell does "real girl" mean anyway? And what does being pregnant have to do with being one? A sizeable portion of the female population (whether they fall under the cis or Trans* umbrella) are incapable of having children. And a sizeable number of "real" men and non-binary people are capable of being pregnant, because having a working uterus falls somewhere around "having toenails" in a list of "things irrelevant to figuring out someone's gender".

And yes, I do realise that Kellen is female. I'm just trying to demonstrate the point that there are rather few things as insulting and belittling as intentionally using the wrong pronouns for someone. Kellen seems to be aiming to go for some record in how many of them can be used in a single conversation.

i think somones jealous

It seems Aiken has changed for the better,for now.....Kellen on the other hand.......

Interesting....notice the pause in panel 3. It reads to me like Kellen wasn't expecting Rain to bring someone else along. Which raises an interesting question: what do you think Kellen would be saying/doing if Emily wasn't there?

Despite this page, I still would have given Kellen a chance. Mostly I base this off Aiken, because he acted terrible when he found out too, but now seems to be a whole lot better about the whole thing.

Unless, he's didn't change and is actually trying to convince Rain to change, in which case, screw them both.

What does bother me is that Kellen didn't do her research on transfolk. If she did, she wouldn't have acted this way.

Or maybe she's just a tactless person in general. idk.

I think the problem with Kellen is that there a great big difference between consciously trying to accept, and subconsciously, willing to accept.
Humans are stupid in that way, for all our adaptability as a species we are very set in our ways and like things to be a certain way in our head, even if you're one of those people who says they like the unpredictability of the unknown, if you are confronted with it you fall back onto what you do know, and work from there.

Kellen is still trying to accept this, but she hasn't seen Rain like Aiken has, and unlike Aiken all her trans exposure is limited to one short visit from Vincent before he transitioned, when she was a kid.
Like I said, humans, when confronted by the unknown start at what we do know, and work from there.
The word confronted is important, Kellen could have read up all she wanted about Trans people, but when the moment is actually there, to her it's not Rain standing there, it's Ryan dressed as a girl, now she has to learn to get used to, and accept, that it's not her little brother Ryan, but her little sister Rain.

As for her reaction to Emily it seems to be twofold, the initial hesitation in the third seems to be that she'd rather have to Rain come alone, maybe to talk her out of it, or just to have this be "a family thing".
The later reaction in the last panel seems more she's annoyed by Emily constantly correcting her, and actually acting like an accepting big sister/best friend like she wanted but couldn't (yet).

Should I feel bad that I was giggling hysterically when I was reading this? I realize that this is not exactly the most "supportive" of interactions to have, but for some reason I found it extremely funny. I imagine that there are people who have had this conversation before, and that's not funny, but this page is funny to me.

I am so glad I've not had to have these sorts of conversations since I moved away from family :/
Everyone else seems to be able to adjust, except the people that think they know you simply by you growing up around them.

I'm so happy I was introduced to this comic! The writing is wonderful, and as a trans comic artist myself, it is really encouraging to see stories like this, and worry less about making stories about trans characters myself.

I ah, I made a rough fanart: http://bmprager.tumblr.com/post/98575286243/reading-this-wonderful-webcomic-about-a-trans

I do not like Kellen. I have a feeling she is going to be that negative character that we will hate later. I know I will.

Im pretty sure she and Emily will have it out. Rain is so shy and, even though she has her moments, I am pretty sure she will not try to correct Kellen. I know this sounds bad, but I really hope that Emily shows her how someone who is ACTUALLY supposed to support their sister.

I just noticed! Rain isn't wearing her "falsies"! Is there a reason for that?

Aiken's expression is the one your family members might get when you bring home one of your stranger friends. Meanwhile Kellen has the glare of someone who does not like to be corrected.

I actually had a very similar occurrence happen on Sept. 30th. I was stuck having to go see my parents, due to a vehicle breakdown issue when I was near them. And it was the first time they were seeing me in "girl mode" (frankly, no matter what I wear I'm in girl mode, cause, that's what I am!), and my dad was more or less ok. My mom on the other hand, she was going crazy, trying to guilt me, kept crying made a point of saying "when my SON has bigger boobs then me, that's a problems" as well as saying she has nothing to live for now.

I was texting my girlfriend about the stuff, she ended up dropping everything she was doing, and drove the 2.5 hours out by me. Her roommate also ended up coming with. They wanted to come out to help protect me, and make sure I was going to be ok, as well as to take me and my friend home, incase we couldn't get the vehicle working.

It didn't take more than half an hour for the fight to start. My mom kept misgendering me, and my GF corrected her (multiple times). My mom got all sorts of offended, and felt disrespected (cause she said it's rude to correct your elders). It almost turned in to a physical fight even. It got loud, aggressive, and I'm very sure it almost turned to violence. At one point my mom said "this is hard for me to try to accept" and my friend I originally had with me piped up and said "have you even tried?". My mom ended up with just... a look on her face, she was shocked at that.

Not long after that, my mom went inside, and my dad took up the fight. So far he'd been really good about calling me Amber, and using female pronouns. But he was "defending his wife's honor" and such he said. Anyways... made the argument even longer then.

Anyways, long story short... my mom is a bitch, my dad is kind of a dick, although he tries, my girlfriend is awesome, her roommate it awesome, and my best friend is awesome. And sorry for the long post.

Sure would've been nice if Kellen had bothered to do one bit of homework about transfolk before this, grumble gripe ...

At least Aiken seems to be trying a little harder.

Wow. Kellen is working hard to become one of the top villains, isn't she. She's almost passing Aiken, who's moving in the opposite direction.

Way to go, Emily! I like how she's correcting Kellen, each and every step.

I know I'm coming to this party really late, but I've only read archive pages before this, and this one. And while Kellen surprised me with how quickly she was awful - I expected her to manage to avoid saying terms for a bit for some silly reason - Emily is doing exactly what I thought she'd do when she was picked for this trip. Of all of Rain's friends, Emily seems like the one best suited for this particular job. She's done the research, and she's handled social gracelessness. Fara could handle interacting with Aiken and Kellen, but wouldn't stand much of a chance of educating them. Vincent's likely too busy. Jessica couldn't handle Aiken and doesn't want to see him now. Gavin would want to stand up for Rain, but he'd fumble badly. Rudy would be best at turning things into jokes, but that's not called for here, so all he could really do would be to comfort Rain. And I don't think anyone else on Rain's friends list could personally handle the confrontation, let alone help Rain with it.

Emily is doing a really good job supporting and defending Rain here, it's really nice how deeply she cares and understands her sister.

It must be hard for the author to write such unsettling dialogue, with Aiken and Kellen's unacceptance of their little sister. It's so realistic, deep true and raw I really love that about this story. People are often unsupportive at this time, and it can really be brutal for the person they sincerely care about. Aiken has finally moved past that by seeing Rain's happiness, and might be starting to realize this is her becoming whole after all her life, and understood how important it is to cast aside his former feelings and support his sibling in her true nature. Aiken has really grown a lot, and that makes me really happy.

Poor Rain.
Thumbs-up to Aiken for genuinely trying.
Top marks for Emily. She is being her awesome-est.
Negative marks for Kellen. She's not reflecting. As in, at all. Which, plus side, means there's hope, but really, while pissing your guests off is a thing in and off itself it also means she fails at deciding who she herself, Kellen, is supposed to be, and why :]

This is one of the few 'morality' pages that has seemed very clearcut to me :]
Sorry if I seem judgemental. I might be :]

gah, i suddenly hate kellen even more. its almost painful to read.

So Rain was not understating Kellen's nosiness. Lovely.

This was so painful to read! I hope things get better between them all. :)