More Mermaid!Lilly AU thoughts - Aquarium Edition
The original post about this AU: link A possible scene that I really must write soon: link
Okay so since my brain is incapable of letting this idea go I have started to form some sort of rough plot/timeline and I'm still debating on if I'm going to make it a series of one-shots that I will just upload as I get inspiration or make it a long-form fic (which I tend to struggle with finishing).
My biggest issue is I don't know much about early aquarium keeping and I really don't see Eddie or Volt as having kept fish in this AU. I have already started looking up stuff about aquariums in the first half of the 20th century to get an idea of what the average person would know about keeping fish and I am surprised that home aquariums were already a thing by the late 19th century?
Seriously. I knew that some more upper class people with money to spare were foraying into the idea of having aquariums, but by at least 1861 there were pamphlets (one of which called Parlor Ponds) with simple instructions on how to make aquariums, how to take care of them, and even how to make simulated salt water if you couldn't purchase it. And you could purchase manufactured saltwater in London by 1850 (1870 if you lived in the US).
At the same time there were little glass balls called 'gravity bubbles' that would sink slowly if the salt-to-water ratio was correct, sink quickly if there wasn't enough salt, and began to float if the salt was too high. In the 1930s there were even pet/aquarium stores that sold things like aquarium cement. And from late 1800s on there are instructions on how to make various kinds of filtration/aeration systems. You could even get steam- or gas-powered ones. From what I can find, a lot of early ones were generally made with the same kind of systems used in fountains because that was easier and not particularly new technology.
So marine aquariums absolutely were a thing by the time the 1920s start (the period I'm considering making this story). This admittedly makes my job way easier because now there's lots of places Eddie and Volt can turn to for resources on how to make an aquarium, some of which are made specifically for people who have never had one before. It's even likely they'll be able to purchase, and have delivered, the supplies to build a large one fairly quickly.
They tend to also be really pretty. Pretty much all the old pictures I can find of aquariums up until nearly 1940 about have sculptures on them. So of course Eddie and Volt would have to make sure mermaid Lilly has a really pretty aquarium to live in, maybe give her something with seahorses on it since mermaids would be a little too on-the-nose.
By the way, I am fully imagining Eddie and Volt dropping gravity bubbles into her tank so they can monitor the salt level, and Lilly ends up playing with them. Just taking them up to the top of the tank and dropping them, following them down.
I also completely see them bringing her different sea life from the fish market to see what she likes to eat and she ends up keeping a crab alive in the bottom of her tank as a 'pet'.
Also, I have decided that Dishy (now Edward Dishy, because he seems like an Edward to me) is going to be the guy who's actually in charge of the museum's day-to-day stuff as well as the finances, so Mr. Most makes him be the one to approve/disprove any requests Eddie and Volt make as far as this whole mermaid aquarium thing. They find him to be far more sensible about what is needed then they expected because his goal is to make things continue to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible - and he's really not pleased that Mr. Most impulse purchased a mermaid. He approves of anything that means efficiency down the line, even if it's a bit pricier now.
