Make her shorter if you must

Make them exactly the same size and shape but different colors

Give him a huge flock of babies following him around to show off what a great lay he is

Surprise mPreganté

Exactly the same but one of them has a cool hat (you decide which)

Give her a sensible haircut for successful hunting while he has a big dumb mullet so big and dumb the food can see him coming and book it

The male are nearly twice the size of the females. Not just in height, in weight, width, tail size. Everything. And me being me this sent me spirally down the world building path of how does a race like this come to evolve?

First off right off the bat. They must be egg layers with both genders having cloaca. The child models have fully formed horns. I'm thinking they laid soft squishy eggs like crocodiles that are kept safe and warm (or cool) for months after birth until the baby is ready to hatch.

On that topic like crocodiles I'm thinking gender is decided in the egg by temperature and sometimes tribes fight over territory because they need warmer or cooler lands to hatch their preferred gender as needed.

Which is not to say the au ra have a lot of gender policies like assuming the men are in charge because they're bigger or anything. Rather many tribes have wildly diverse cultures and most of them treat the genders equally with a few stand outs like there's an all male tribe but also an all female tribe. One tribe you meet early on keeps their males at home to cook and clean. You see just as many male leaders as female ones. That's talking mainly about the xaela clans but the raen are ruled by a female the Ruby Princess.

My rabbit hole of world building went down them evolving from the Archosauria lineage (the group that includes crocodilians and birds), rather than mammals.

I started think about what we know:

Patch scales rather than full-body scales.

• Large, sensitive-looking horns.

• Powerful tails.

• Extreme sexual dimorphism—males are dramatically larger than females.

From there everything started to fall into place.

• Their "hair" becomes highly modified filamentous feathers rather than mammalian hair. • Their horns evolve as vascularized display and sensory organs. • Their tails become important for balance and social communication. • Their scales become areas of specialized protection and tactile signaling. • Their extreme sexual dimorphism reflects an ancestral period of intense male competition, much like modern crocodilians where males can dwarf females.

Unlike mammals, both sexes possess a pronounced keeled sternum covered by thick pectoral musculature. To mammalian observers, the female's chest is often mistaken for breasts, but these structures are simply the female expression of the same powerful chest anatomy seen in males. The differences are primarily due to fat distribution and sexual display, not mammary glands.

Once biology changes, culture follows.

Once you have eggs instead of live birth, suddenly all kinds of traditions make sense to invent.

Different tribes might develop completely different approaches to family, gender roles, and child-rearing based on environmental pressures. Some tribes become male-dominated, others female-led, while others seek a balance. Seasonal nesting grounds, migration patterns, and even politics could all be shaped by the biology of the species.

The excitement of hearing the first tapping from inside the shell.

Nesting seasons.

Communal hatcheries.

Egg blessing ceremonies.

Specialized midwives who judge shell development.

Families sleeping near the warming sand.

With Enemies Like These

After a serious and devastating attack, the Uchiha are in desperate need of a sealmaster. Unfortunately for them, the best candidate happens to be from the Senju clan. Fortunately for them, he doesn't seem all that inclined to act like an enemy.

Which is lucky because, as it turns out, there are plenty of other adversaries making moves in Fire Country - both the clans will need to make new friends to survive.

Madara would have been content if his new husband tolerated him and helped his clan stay safe. He doesn't quite know what to do with the fact that his husband doesn't stop there.

Demons Don't Like Children

Time slowed down as the wolf neared, its jaws opening, inches from Kagami.

Shikami shrieked.

Madara gathered chakra into his feet, knees bending to jump-

And a hand shot out from a crack in the rock wall behind Kagami and yanked him back into the crevice.

To Love You Madly

Selfishly, Tobirama wonders if Madara will think of him, someday in the future.

AITA for courting the guy my whole family repeatedly insulted?

“Your mother was a Hatake!?” Izuna shouted in disbelief, startling many of the Senju.

“Yes? I thought you knew?” Hashirama tilted his head, looking over to Tobirama who shrugged slightly.

“No, it seems like some of our intel was a bit outdated,” Madara sighed, pinching his brow. “Does this change anything else in the peace treaty? Any other culturally insensitive terms that need to be removed?”

Madara narrowed his eyes as Tobirama coughed, hiding his face for a moment. Did he just cover up a laugh?

Accidentally Mine (Yours)

A manic smile curled his lips.

Fool him once, fool him twice but there would be no third time.

“You’re on borrowed time, pet. You will not escape from me,” he purred silkily.

Their breath hitched at his words, confidence visibly shaken at the weight of the words from one of the strongest men alive.

“Y-You…” they struggled, pinned under the intensity of having the full brunt of an Uchiha’s indefatigable attention on them.

Madara hears it really is quite an experience.

His grin widens, showing off gleaming fangs.

"Me," the alpha goaded hotly.

—

In which Tobirama accidentally adopts a child before covertly returning him and goes back to regular (miserable) life as the Senju’s White Demon. After all, a demon could never feel enough love to raise a child.

Or

In which Madara accidentally adopts a child after he's returned back to his clan and doesn’t even attempt to go back to regular life. He instead proceeds to hunt down the blessing who rescued his child to give them his dick the world.

“No age gap??!?!?”

“And no non-con elements”

“NO NON CON?”

“And no coercion or otherwise manipulative behaviors”

“Joe they want a vampire with NOTHING”

Is there age gap yes.... But it's like 99 year old woman meets 120 year vampire and fall in love. And let me be clear here. She looks sounds and acts like a 99 year old woman. and they squeeze every ounce of time she has left together until she's on the edge of death before he gives her his blood to turn her because there's a chance the turn could fail and they want to take no chances with the time they have remaining. Same book her also 99 year old friend had accidentally ingested vampire blood a year before and reverted to a young woman but mentally, emotionally, psychologically she's still 99 when these two vamp enforcers come to invest the local phenomenon of an old woman turned young again and her 300 ish mate meets her and his 120 year old partner meets her friend.

Same series the 3,000 year old vamp who is tired TM meets a 45 year old divorcee and becomes completely twittpatted over her.

Same series has reunited lovers I forget how old he is maybe 700 something but she's 500ish, mother of several children, pillar of her community, unrepentant romantic.

there you go my latest art~~🧡💚

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

Cos what the fuck do you mean I came here after inheriting the farm to get away from my stressful office job in the big city and you continue to dump all your bullshit on me and only me?

That'd be a cool tutorial device. You find something new and pull out a letter where the farmer detailed building a chicken coop and how to care for them. Pieces of letter in the corner of the screen in the farmer's handwriting saying things like the cow make thing weird (?!) noise the morning you brush her before she has her calf.

You already know all the townsfolk in weird too much information ways because the farmer gossiped in his letter about how the chicken farm lady is a wine mom and how the blacksmith's son is probably gay.

Just the farmer's letter throughout your tutorial including his complaints like "I don't know why the mayor always asks me to help. Doesn't he know I'm busy? I see everyone else walking around town without a care in the world. Surely one of them has time to fix the mine elevator and reach the bottom. I mean I know I'm the strongest person in the village but surely the blacksmith should be doing something like this?"

derek’s eyes start to drift shut and stiles leans down to kiss his forehead. he pulls a blanket off the back of the couch and drapes it over them both, and derek snuggles even closer, tucking his head against stiles’ neck and burrowing in. stiles’ arms wrap tight around derek’s back and skull and he clutches his husband close. 

the night is quiet and the loft is silent except for the low sound of the tv and their soft breathing. stiles leans into derek, pulling him closer still and treasures the man in his arms and the comforting, warm weight on top of him. he doesn’t watch the tv anymore; his eyes are trained solely on the wolf and he can’t stop thinking about how perfect the night feels and how safe and content they are, how they’ve earned this, how he can give this to derek. 

he brushes derek’s cheek reverently with his thumb, stroking across his skin and his nose and his eyebrow and his lips and feels derek’s mouth spread into a small smile in his sleep, feeling and recognizing stiles’ touch against him, warm and familiar. he hugs stiles to him like a teddy bear and looks so peaceful and innocent as he lies there safe in stiles’ arms. 

stiles doesn’t close his eyes for fear of missing this, and just lays there, watching derek fondly, savoring the moment, utterly in love and so very grateful for the safety and security and peace they’ve finally been allowed. 

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

They lost their job this week, and they need money for rent, utilities, and living expenses. Luckily, a friend was able to loan them $55 to get their phone turned back on, so they can follow up on a promising job lead now, but they still have literally no money until they get the job and the paycheck.

Most urgently, they need about $200 for everyday living expenses (gas, food, wipes, diapers, baby Tylenol bc their baby is teething). The wifi bill ($70 to keep it on, $140 total) is due on May 3, rent ($1060) is due on May 7, and the power bill ($190 to keep it on, $483 total) is due on May 14. Less urgently, they will need pet food, and a new car seat and clothes for the baby.

Please help a disabled trans person with a 5mo baby stay fed and housed! Anything helps. Venmo and cashapp are preferred bc they can access the money immediately without having to pay a withdrawal fee that way.

PayPal: [email protected]

Venmo: @enbymickie

Cashapp: $enbymickie

Most immediate needs:

General living expenses: $75/$200

WiFi bill (May 3 deadline): $0/$70

Rent (May 7 deadline): $0/$1060

$65/$1800 for rent (June 5 deadline)