With the upcoming week being the first week of May, a large number of people, Animalians, and things began moving into high gear.
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What was probably the biggest thing happening was the 2023 IAC. Not only would there be returning faces, such as Abby and Durga for the Triathlon, but there would also be some new faces showing up in the IAC, such as Nio. While shi was bigger than most of the other herms in Animalia, a good deal of the herms had more experience than hir in terms of weightlifting and the UFC-A.
Fortunately, Milla, or DJ Jag-Wire as she was known "on the clock", was more than happy to help Nio out, and deal with hir upsurge in male hormones (as long as she took her birth control). Not only did this help hir learn a bit more about being a herm, but it did also help hir keep hir hormones in check since she was the proverbial "last minute entry" in the IAC Bodybuilding competition, and shi didn't want to scar anyone with an ill-timed erection.
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Another thing that was going on was the reappearance of Animalia's "lesbian lizards", which were making some new waves in a different way. Not only had they finished their design of the female equivalent to the BARA Houses that were now becoming a staple of Animalia society (since a large percentage of furry art usually involved LGBT+ themes), but they were now getting ready for an important question that had gone unanswered until now.
The New Mexico Whiptail lizard (which most of the "lesbian lizards" were) was one of the few fully female animal species that reproduced through a form of parthenogenesis. But what threw everyone for a loop was when they started noticing the male lizards and crushing on them... hard. Even Susan and Sappho, the two "founding members", were feeling the attraction to the male lizards. So, a new project was planned to investigate this, called "Lesbos Lizards", but they couldn't really start it until Whiptail mating season, which was late spring-early summer.
The project was remarkably simple: The whiptail Animalians had been separated into two groups. One of those groups would engage in lesbian sex until eggs were conceived, while the others would rotate among male lizard Animalians, almost all of them were members of the BARA House (since it was also part of their "acceptance therapy"), again until eggs were conceived. The first part would focus on how long it would take to conceive eggs. While the second part, when the eggs hatched, would see about the genes of the offspring.
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There were also a few unintentional things that happened. The best case of this was when Lin got a double-dosed fox conversion for her friend Mai. After her conversion, Lin and Mai were enjoying a lunch at Animalia's food court, along with Molly and Shelly, that Lin's "strong-willed go-getter" personality began manifesting, and (partially thanks to talking with Molly and Shelly) both Lin and Mai had begun questioning whether their relationship was truly platonic, or whether they were actually drawn to each other.
However, it was the second unintentional thing that helped divert attention from their new conflicting thoughts. Molly had accidentally bumped into "Ela Sha" (though some on the internet tended to misspell it as "shah"). While everyone present was very confused at the not-quite-hostility between the two of them, at least one bystander knew better than to pry.
"Don't bother. It's clearly a noodle incident between the two of them from way back."
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Another unintentional thing was tied to Miss Juliet and her field trip to Heiya Island. While she hadn't intended to get drunk, again, her winning the wet t-shirt contest during Songkran seemed to have either loosened her up a little more or made her RHS symptoms worse. Either way, she was now dancing at Belle's Bêtes, though only once a month. Nobody really thought to criticize her for this, in fact, some of the people in the new colony were glad for her, having remembered her "tragic past".
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Finally, in what could only be described as "the craziest, most convoluted event ever to occur" (though social media tended to tack on other things, such as other synonyms for 'crazy' or 'convoluted', or even '... in the history of mankind' to the end), there was a sudden flood of conversion requests in Lyre/Animalia. Upon investigation, everyone who heard the reason why only shook their heads and smiled.
As it turned out, there was an international furry convention in Las Vegas, and the upcoming IAC became unintentional advertising. While none of the new conversions were able to take part in events such as the IAC Games or the IAC UFC-A Tournament, they were allowed to take part in other events, including planned interviews with Animalia Ambassadoria, though LGBT+ people would have their interviews take place during Pride Month.
The best example of this was a blonde, tanned woman who, privately, admitted that she was trans and wanted to become a herm, venomous snake. While she didn't have an idea yet on the specific species of venomous snake, she did look forward to it.
Of course, since the convention was an international one, there were those from Europe, Asia, Africa, etc., who were either planning to move to one of the other established colonies or found colonies of their own. While this last one was certainly ambitious, they were allowed to claim a "founders package" for themselves.