Mis Quinces Años: Remembering Traditions New and Old

Marley and Delila Penson are identical twins at the University of Florida. Identical

18 The Origins Issue twins share 100% of their DNA. DNA Testing: Blood Is Thicker Than Water

Story by Molly Chepenik

Photos by Melissa Hernandez De La Cruz

Siblings receive half of their DNA from their mother's egg and the other half from their father's sperm.

Alyssa Wolff was shocked to find out she had any cousins at all on her mother’s side, so she was floored the moment she found out she had a cousin at the same university and in the same sorority as her.

“I was at a meeting, and my mom said to call her immediately,” Wolff said. “I ran to the car, and she asked if I was ready for the news. When she told me, I started crying.”

In 2018, Wolff was a senior and her cousin, Jenna Reich, was a freshman at the University of Florida. It was through a long process of DNA testing and cross-referencing ancestry websites that their families discovered that Wolff’s mother was halfsiblings with Reich’s father, Frank.

Reich is from Long Island, New York, and Wolff is from Naples, Florida. Blood connected the cousins, but pure coincidence brought them to Gainesville. A 2020 Pew Research study found that 16% of Americans have used mail-in DNA testing services. Some seek DNA testing to know their medical histories and others are curious about their family heritage. Wolff’s mother, Beth, mailed in a sample to AncestryDNA when she began to question her identity in her 50s. Beth was adopted and did not know her biological parents.

In the early 1960s, Wolff and Reich’s grandmother left her family for some time, had an affair and gave birth to Beth and gave her up for adoption to a wealthy Jewish family. Wolff said her mother was never really interested in knowing who her birth parents were until she decided to take a DNA test.

“We found out my mom was 50% Italian and 50% Eastern European Jewish,” Wolff said. “We got the biggest kick out of that because my mom always loved cooking and Italian culture.”

Wolff said her mother was matched with a first cousin through AncestryDNA, and through the cousin she connected with a woman named Sharon, who turned out to be Beth’s biological half-sister.

Genes make up about 3% of your DNA.

“[Sharon and I] speak at least weekly and keep up on other members of our family,” Beth Wolff said. “We have been integrated into each other’s lives.”

Reich knew about her familial connection to Wolff a couple of days earlier and was waiting for them to connect. She saw her on campus and was dying to tell her that they were related. After Wolff found out, she picked up Reich and the two of them went to get frozen yogurt.

“I pulled up pictures of our family and tried to describe everyone,” Reich said. “It’s a lot to take in at once.”

Reich said it was great that DNA testing helped their family, but it can be scary to learn about things from the past.

According to Wolff, she is just happy for her mom, who never felt like she truly belonged anywhere before finding her family. “Ultimately, it ended up being the best thing ever,” Wolff said. “She feels like she has her own family and knows her origins and where she came from.”

Game, Set, Watch

Story and Photos by Santiago Chacin

For an ordinary person, 8 p.m. may be dinnertime after a long day at work or perhaps the time to unwind with a favorite TV show.

But for Shae Millheim, it’s game time.

Having her computer, camera and lights turned on, she is ready to start hunting down enemies on the board all while conversing with her friends. While some may view video games as a mere pastime, for Shae, it’s not just a hobby. It’s an avenue for her to earn income on the side while simultaneously showing her brand online.

For over half a decade, Millheim — who goes by Kiteera — has streamed for multiple hours on a frequent basis on Twitch, a streaming platform remarkably known for video game content. With over 3,000 followers and an average viewer stream of 30, albeit not her main job, it’s one she takes a lot of pride in.

For Millheim, her role as a video game streamer can be traced back as early as her childhood.

Having grown up with video game consoles like the Sega Genesis, she always had an affinity for exciting video games such as the Sonic games. Andrew Selepak, a University of Florida instructor in mass media, attributes this to the accessibility advancements of these applications.

“Essentially what you have there is that individuals can be content creators,” said Selepak. “We can all create our own YouTube and Twitch channels, and we are not limited by just being passive consumers of content. We are actual active creators of content.”

Video games changed as well and would start relying on online multiplayer modes so that players could play with anyone around the world as opposed to having to physically play with others in the same room. As the player-to-player interaction became more digitized, the social interaction of playing with people incited players to broadcast themselves to do so for others as well.

“Livestreaming allows the individual to interact with another person in real time through a mediated channel,” said Selepak. “It is a real-time interaction, with one person looking into a webcam and another person watching on a screen.”

It was only natural that a dedicated gamer like Millheim would begin streaming herself while playing her favorite games to an audience. However, deciding to become a streamer is one thing and enduring the process is another. For Millheim, it took a bit of trial and error finding her exact niche and audience that fit her preferences best.

“For me, establishing an audience from the very beginning was a bit difficult if you’re just bouncing around playing different games,” said Millheim. “Things became more solidified for me once I found my own road to follow along.”

Although she was already a gamer before dedicating herself as a part-time streamer, she wouldn’t dip her toes into the world of video game streaming until 2014. That year, she signed up for a Twitch account initially to support her friend, Danica Rockwood, who is also a streamer. It was soon thereafter that Rockwood convinced Millheim to stream on her own account.

“[Danica] started talking about a lot of things that I do, and some people started following my account,” said Millheim. “I went ‘OK, I guess I might as well start streaming too.’” Although Twitch and YouTube were platforms developed in the 2000s, their growth and presence on the internet wouldn’t dominate the culture until the next decade.

Most people who try to stream on Twitch often have to decide what their channel will be about. Some people may only stick with the most-viewed popular games, while others will try to bounce back-and-forth between all different kinds of games.

“It’s going to be different for everyone,” she said. “I guess some people do just fine with nothing but variety, and that’s totally fine.” For Millheim, her niche was in "Hunt: Showdown." Developed by Crytek, "Hunt: Showdown" is a first person action game where the player battles other players as well as in-game enemies in match-based lobbies with up to 12 players at a time. Millheim is an avid fan of the game. And turns out, the game is an avid fan of her as well.

Being offered a sponsorship as a Hunt partner, she receives exclusive privileges such as free codes to new downloadable content to the game. This way, no matter if she wins the game, she is still winning in real life. As she gains traction in her channel through "Hunt: Showdown," she can earn revenue from the platform as a Twitch affiliate.

20 The Origins Issue Introduced in 2017, the Twitch Affiliate Program allows streamers who meet the required number of consistent viewers and followers to offer a subscription plan to the public. Affiliate streamers can have their viewers pay a monthly fee to watch their streams adfree and directly support the streamer. Viewers can also use customized emojis — called emotes in Twitch — exclusive to each channel.

Millheim became an affiliate streamer immediately after the program rolled out in April of that year. It has been a small, but consistent way for her channel to earn revenue on a monthly basis.

While her revenue in streaming isn’t enough to pay the bills, her dedication to her channel and the community she has cultivated through it keep her motivated to continue streaming.

“We’ve established a friendly, welcoming type of atmosphere in my stream,” she said. “I’ve seen streams where the chatrooms are toxic, and I don’t like that.” As she has grown fond of her community, that feeling of camaraderie is one she wishes to share with fellow local Twitch users in Gainesville.

“My friend, Danica, and I have been to different Twitch meetups throughout the state and that’s pretty much what we’ve wanted to do,” she said. “We were like, ‘hey, why not get a group together here?’”

As managers of the Gainesville Streaming Group, Millheim and Rockwood have hosted local meetups for anyone interested in starting their own channel or wanting to interact with other members as casual stream viewers.

“It’s not just a meetup for streamers, but also for people who like watching streams,” Millheim said.

No matter the different types of Twitch users in Gainesville, they are all linked together by their mutual love of video games.

“I know we have a good gaming community in Gainesville,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding them.”

Although the local meetups have been postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this has only heightened streamers’ desire to connect with their followers through their streams.

In the meantime, for Millheim, this means more chances to play "Hunt: Showdown" for her viewers.

The Origins Issue 21