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23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:06 am
by Giz

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:25 am
by Error of Logic
Yeah, Dillon. You and Angel both need to grow up.
And if that is impossible, at least shut your pie-hole. :p

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:39 am
by Spidrift
Ah, so Ramona has a mind of her own behind the slightly immature and nervous initial image. And the sibling vibe off these two is pretty much a certainty now. It's amusing to see Angel turning positively geeky when it's something like this; I'd guess that Ramona's status was only diagnosed in her early teens (lack of menstruation would be the big clue stick), and she was a little overwhelmed while big sister Angie devoured a stack of textbooks in an effort to help.

I'm now also imagining Ruby just off-screen, hammering frantically at her smartphone screen as she attempts to google all these terms as fast as Ramona and Angel reel them off.

(Talking of which, so far as I can make out from Wikipedia, 17-β-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase III deficiency isn't the same as CAIS. Oh well, I'm sure that we'll get as much clarification as we need; Giz and Dave have clearly done the reading.)

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:15 am
by Don Alexander
Yessssss, Dillon gets the finger (pointed at him!)

MERRY CHRISTMAS! :D

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:15 am
by LegendaryKroc
Ladies & gentlemen, I present to you a sane, responsible person who is not crazy but still capable of standing up for herself. Like Peggy before her, her presence is proof that sane and responsible (or at least rational) people can exist even in a comics universe like this one.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:16 am
by Don Alexander
Yes, but I can hear the hundred howling hounds of hell already harassing her heels... :ymdevil:

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:35 am
by Spidrift
LegendaryKroc wrote:Ladies & gentlemen, I present to you a sane, responsible person who is not crazy but still capable of standing up for herself. Like Peggy before her, her presence is proof that sane and responsible (or at least rational) people can exist even in a comics universe like this one.
Yes, but remember that Peggy suffers so much stress from being sane and responsible that she has to take periodic holidays from rationality and act like everybody else in the comic. For that matter, Ramona currently looks a bit like early-model Ruby, but without the temper trigger or the overdone shows of confidence.

And we know that Ramona is a big yaoi geek, while dealing with her condition (and with Angel's outbursts) is evidently a little bit of a hassle for her. I suspect that she'll be shown to have her little moments, in time.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:20 pm
by Krendall
I just met Ramona and I like her already. I gotta start using "confuzzling" in my daily life.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:27 pm
by Spacedoubt
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Also I think this strip sums up the terminology situation pretty well. I would never want to offend anyone but it can be pretty hard with so many shades of grey out there (pun unintentional.)

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:00 pm
by brasca
Error of Logic wrote:Yeah, Dillon. You and Angel both need to grow up.
And if that is impossible, at least shut your pie-hole. :p
But not too much. Sudden maturity and overnight character growth would make these 2 dull.

I would like to know more about Angel and Ramona's relationship. As tiresome as Angel's antics are his heart is in the right place.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:03 pm
by Artemisia
Don Alexander wrote:Yes, but I can hear the hundred howling hounds of hell already harassing her heels... :ymdevil:
She's probably my favorite character right now :)

Of course, you know what that means...but still...

And I agree with her about how confusing the whole set of medical terms is.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:42 pm
by Maechris
Angel is trying to make me feel bad about occasionally using the world "Hermaphrodite" when referring to humans/people (real or fictional). Daaamn you Angel. Although they're right about it not being accurate in case of virtually any human intersex people. I guess I just never saw the word as particularly demeaning in any way.

As for the medical terms... yeah. Probably not helped by the enzyme name sounding like one of those instances where old biochemists and organic chemistry experts who have nothing left to do anymore are/will/in the past tried to change its name several times over.

Because it's silly to just have a long-term single comprehensive way of naming things in chemistry! It's better to change the naming mechanisms every 2-5 years a little so people are super confused talking to each other, and students cannot use the notes of students that came before them!

In either case, Ramona sounds like one of the instances of F-bomb to perception of particularly conservative or close-minded people. A.k.a if we split gender/sex into mental, genetical, and physical/biological (which is a simple split), and transgender people are gender A genetically, gender B mentally, and either A or B physically/biologically depending on phase of transition, Ramona is one of those "weird" instances that was born as "Man genetically (XY chromosome set), woman mentally (so far appearing that way), woman biologically/physically", which can happen (even if I did joke about "House's case number xxy"). Just to mess with the heads of people going "Whooooaaah, dat's unnatural, and them chromosomes/genes are still a guy's/girl's, so they're just playing make-believe, man!"

The above is a crude explanation but it's how some people seem to view the issue when they're ignorant about certain facts and possibilities.

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 3:48 pm
by Spidrift
The jargon that Angel and Ramona quote does seem to be a little baroque, but let's be fair; it's medical jargon. Concision isn't supposed to be the point, precision is. If these phenomena were more common and more visible to laymen, then they'd have short simple names.

And Ramona honestly strikes me as one of the least mind-bending or emotionally confusing instances of intersexuality one can get. Some intersex people do have ambiguous anatomy or self-image, but Ramona was born and has grown up looking like a girl, and she apparently has a solidly female (and, for what it's worth, heterosexual) self-image; the only way anyone can tell that she's not a vanilla human female is probably by internal or genetic examination. At my most conservatively fogeyish, I just couldn't be bothered to think of her as anything but a woman, with some non-life-threatening medical issues.

(She's actually kind of the Anti-Angel, really; placid, shy, short, and a little plump, with an uncomplicated gender self-image but a non-standard biological makeup...)

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 4:03 pm
by TwoWayStar
Spidrift wrote: (She's actually kind of the Anti-Angel, really; placid, shy, short, and a little plump, with an uncomplicated gender self-image but a non-standard biological makeup...)
\Well when you put it like that it seems really obvious! Very interesting, makes me like her even more. Plus, who doesn't want more cute girls in the strip!?

Re: 23-12-15 Fend for myself

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 5:51 pm
by knite
Took me 3 pages to realize Angel's boobs are (slightly) visible