What If? (Libra)

Community Posts
21

A pro-no vaccine movement is gaining huge power and influence. At CPAC a lack of vaccinations got thunderous applause only days ago among a crowd who are not anti-vax outside of deaths being bad for their political opponents right now. In Florida deaths are skyrocketing and the governor is selling T-shirts and beer holders that have the message of keeping the influence of the guy who’s job it is to end the pandemic out of Florida, and Tennessee is moving towards eliminating all vaccinations for children for everything.

American politics is increasingly based purely on unapologetic contrarianism and raw unhidden pragmatism that used to only exist on anonymous message boards.

Arguing the sky is green to cancel blue could be a legit position tomorrow.

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22

I keep forgetting to take into account how insane Americans can be.

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23

The reason the implications of the technology aren’t usually brought up, is that one common facet of the setting is that the technology doesn’t exist anymore. Whatever Hasbio did to create the fluffies, all the documentation has been lost, destroyed or sealed by government post-Cleveland, and with many key figures in its development either in prison or having commit suicide in order to avoid being in prison, since then nobody else has been able to put the right pieces together to be able to re-create them.

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24

Technique or technology?
You can lose formula without losing the process of distillation.

At issue is Hasbio being the sole company that ever developed the chimeric hybridization and/or organic programming, only kept it in a single place that can be physically destroyed, and no researchers could/did leak it, then no other nation or company rediscovered it on their own research once it was proven.

Kodak invented digital cameras in the 70’s. They did nothing with the tech until another company invented it since developing rolls was a better economical model. But it only took twenty years to reach that point. Given people have pedigree and systems for Fluffies, its been at least twenty years. Hasbio couldn’t have been that far ahead.

The only explanation I buy is @FallenAngel007 saying black magic is involved alongside the science.

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25

The reason nobody else could re-create it - the secret of speech - IS the result of a certain “magic ingredient” that exists only in the blackest of Hasbio’s black books, all knowledge of which was put under lock and key by the US government, with everyone who knew about it firsthand either rotting in prison or rotting six feet under.

Publicly, fluffies are known to be a mishmash of pig, hamster, bird, a smattering of horse, and some other animals here and there. However, these lists leave off one important ingredient: human. Once you know this little fact, the seeming impossibility of creating a talking animal from decidedly non-talking component creatures suddenly makes more sense: it WAS impossible, until they added in the DNA of something that ALREADY knew how to talk.

While it’s not exactly the furthest reach, and some people HAVE theorized about its inclusion in the fluffy genome, it’s generally treated as nothing more than a fanciful conspiracy theory.

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26

In some settings its a dark fact, but in others its publicly known.

Plus, in real life adding human DNA to animals and vice versa is where we’re starting. Can’t be that taboo if Fluffverse starts as a divergence from our own.

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This is why all the other countries think Americans are dumb. - Because we are.

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28

Mostly theoretical headcannon:

In my world, if they had been released normally, the only fluffies sold would be sterilized (either sterile females or wholy un-gendered if they could work that into the design).

All viable breeders would be kept in house by HasBio to control the supply.

This would have given them full control over supply levels, quality and development, including more specialized (premium $$) breeds and the like.

Legally they would have the same ‘biotoy’ status, but without herds of feral pests and low quality ‘shit rats’ there would not be any legal reason to persecute them - in most stories stealing a person’s fluffy and killing it slowly is hardly even a legal concern.

While some level of abuse would exist, the general public would view it much more like animal abuse rather than being accepting of it.

Overall the fluffies would have much better treatment, but would not be a common/cheap. Most stories rely on a large feral population/mills to keep the prices down, but in this setting HasBio would dictate the price.

Bog standard earthies would probably be trivial to get, but other breeds would be more in the price range of a pure bred cat/dog, so would be more high class status than common pets.

I’m also sure that there would be a range of industrial usage for fluffies, so the level of industrial ‘sadbox’ would be much much higher. I’m thinking of a story from a while back where they were processed to produce the same stuff that’s harvested from Horseshoe Crab blood.

And the HasBio breeding stock would probably suffer as much as anything in any standard mill.

Overall the general fluffy population would be better off - but they would still be a product, have no legal rights and have no reproductive ability.

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29

In my headcanon, fluffies aren’t actually a new idea. There was something like them a very long time ago. That’s all I’m saying about that.

But my point is that just because the technology used to create fluffies was lost, it doesn’t mean the technology can’t be found again.

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I just looked it up and holy shit.

I’ve heard of blue blood before, but that’s just ridiculous.

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It’s common knowledge that fluffies have human DNA in them in my headcanon.

I’ve hung a lampshade on the fact that nobody really cares. Hey, people have done a lot worse things with human DNA in my headcanon!

And I hung another lampshade on the fact that everyone just accepted fluffies changing the status quo. If they can accept fluffies, they can accept everything else I’ve got.

I mean, how many people refused to believe that COVID-19 wasn’t just another flu virus?

How do you think those people would react to fluffies spreading across the globe?