#obviously but I gotta clarify for the dum dums out there

[asmrbrainrot]

OKAY OKAY OKAY! So this audio was FIRE! 🔥

But as per usual, I noticed this deviant was up to something and felt the need to share. Spoiler below so watch the video if you haven’t already:

So pretty early on in the vid he said that PEWTER was an acceptable cauldron material; HOWEVER, if you know anything about anything, you’ll see how this can be problematic. Seeing as pewter contains LEAD that is especially easy to leach out via acidic ingredients like THE NIGHTSHADE FAMILY! (Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, belladonna, etc.)

Now I hear you guys in the comments saying “But asmrbrainrot, pewter doesn’t contain lead anymore!” To which I would say dear reader, your correct. EXCEPT, modern non-lead pewter wasn’t developed until the 1970s. WAY later than than any magical-time period this could be set in. Now another counter argument, “Oh but what if he didn’t know it was bad?” To which I do concede that as a possibility. But I HIGHLY, doubt that after years of magical trial and error, it wouldn’t be common knowledge that lead was harmful to most creatures. (Even if they didn’t have the means to make a non-leaded version of pewter)

All this to reiterate the already know fact that Atropa is probably trying to poison us.

TLDR:

[novelmonger]

Okay, what's the 'clone idea'??

Just to clarify up front: This idea has nothing to do with Star Wars ^^' I actually got it from a super-cool dream a few years ago! In the dream, it was about me and my youngest sister (but not my other siblings for some reason?), but obviously I'll be altering them to make distinct characters that aren't just...clones *ba dum bum tsh!*

This unnamed idea for a novel is set in the not-too-distant future, when cloning of human beings has been perfected. It only works with fresh DNA, and it takes about five years for the whole process to be completed. Due to this and ethical concerns, there are laws and other safeguards in place so you're only allowed to clone someone who has just died (DNA can be collected prior to death, but the cloning process itself can't be signed off on until the person is declared dead). You're also only allowed to clone someone's particular DNA once. The clone will then take over the deceased person's legal identity, in terms of social security, taxes, etc. (there's probably more complicated caveats and whatnot, but this story isn't really supposed to explore all of that). Naturally, there's a whole debate about whether these clones are actually people or not. Do they have souls? Are they the same person as the one who died? Are they a freakish abomination and the scientists who developed the process are treading in God's domain? Should they be outlawed? Are they an unnecessary drain on the economy? It's very expensive to have a clone made, as you can probably imagine, but not outside the reach of someone who's reasonably wealthy. So like...you don't have to be a millionaire in order to pay for it, but you've gotta really want it.

The story is about a family that has two teenage daughters. I think I've decided the dad is a dentist, and the mom has a some kind of career as well, or maybe volunteer work or something. The sisters are three years apart in age. They aren't best friends exactly, but they get along pretty well and genuinely love each other. The older sister is about to go off to college when the younger sister dies suddenly and tragically in some kind of accident. The whole family is thrown into shock and grief, but the mother especially is not handling it well. She can't take the thought of her baby girl suddenly being taken away from her, so she insists that they clone her. The dad is reluctant at first, but the mom says that if she has to go on for the rest of her life without her daughter, she's going to kill herself to join her. So they pull out all of their life savings and order a clone of the younger sister.

In the five years it takes to develop the clone, the family processes their grief and the mom gradually begins to think she made a mistake. She realizes she was mostly just angry at God for taking her daughter from her, and making a clone was like shaking her fist at the heavens. The cloning agency allows those who have ordered a clone to cancel their order - payments are made in installments, so besides a cancellation fee, they don't have to pay the full amount; they just won't get a refund for what they've already paid if they back out partway through the process. But even after the mom realizes it was a mistake to try to clone her daughter, she doesn't want to cancel the order either.

She says, "I realize now that it was a mistake to want to clone her. I was angry at God, and didn't want to accept it when he took her away from us. But I believe that God can take my mistakes and my lack of trust, and make something good out of it. His plans are bigger than mine. And that clone in there? That's a little girl who deserves a chance to live. I may not have given birth to her…but she's my daughter. And she needs her mommy."

So they go through with it. The mom has to quit the job she loves and get one that will pay better, and the older sister has to give up on her college plans and go straight into the work force while still living at home, so they can continue to pay the cloning agency. And finally, the day comes when they can bring the little clone home. The standard/cheapest option is to grow a five-year-old clone (for some reason that's easier than a baby or an adult, just run with it), which is what they'd decided on - to get a second chance at childhood, as well as to make it as affordable as possible.

There's an option for training/programming (not sure exactly how it works yet), using video footage and other information provided by the family, to make it so that when the clone first leaves the facility and comes home, they'll have an approximation of the original person's personality and mannerisms, which can then be fine-tuned with the family and various psychologists/trainers over the next year or so. But this family opted not to do that - partly because that would be another expense, partly because the parents have agreed that, no matter what scientists or whoever else say, this little girl is her own person. She might look like their original daughter, she might have identical DNA to her, but it's not the same person. They want to raise this little girl as their own daughter, but they want as much as possible to let her decide for herself what kind of person she's going to become.

The result of all this is that, when she first comes home, this little girl is kind of robotic. She can talk and understand what people are saying on about the same level as any five-year-old, but a lot of the nuances are lost on her because she's only observed the world for like a week at that point. So she understands the concept of food and eating, but she might look at an apple and not understand that it's food.

I just think this would be a really fascinating concept to explore. There's a really compelling pro-life side to the whole thing, as well as the age-old debates of nature vs. nurture and what makes us human. Beyond that, it would be so fascinating to explore what the sisters' relationship would be like. I think there's definitely going to be some resentment and other growing pains on the older sister's part, because here's this girl who looks like her little sister but is definitely not, and they've all had to upend their lives in order to bring her into the world. But then there are moments where little bits of the sister she remembers will peek out - the way the clone smiles, the sound of her voice when she sings, the kinds of food she really likes. I want to put a lot of me, as a big sister, into this story.

WIP ask game