For the Night Vale one? Of course!
There are a ton of ways. The easiest characters are the ones with animal names. Lauren Mallard gets a mallard, Tuck/Tak Wallaby gets a red-necked wallaby.
With some people, I pick something related to their profession, which is how John Peters (you know, the farmer?) got a cow. For Earl Harlan, I looked up animals associated with the Boy Scouts, and learned that the Silver Beaver Award was a thing. Martin McCaffrey, local TSA representative: went looking for the bird that can fly the longest without stopping, and lo and behold, it’s the kûaka.
Or you can pick any other character detail and look for animals that share it. Leann Hart: looked for a noisy bird that will aggressively run off its larger competitors, got the rainbow lorikeet. The Faceless Old Woman: looked for animals without eyes, settled on the Texas blind salamander. Vithya: trawled the category for bioluminescense, picked a firefly.
Sometimes a daemon has to fall within a certain category, so you just have to narrow down options. For Khoshekh, I checked out every non-extinct species in the Felinae subfamily. Then I wanted Pamela Winchell to match — besides, she’s very similar to Lord Asriel, so a largeish cat seems fitting — and ended up with the desert lynx. Josie needed to have a bird, ideally one that lives in deserts, thus the peregrine falcon. (Which, as a bonus, also lives in the arctic.)
Sometimes someone else brings a species to my attention — maybe in a post on Dreamwidth, or a photoset that comes across my Tumblr dash, or a link shared on Facebook — and I either think “whoa, that would be perfect for [character],” or “whoa, that’s an awesome animal, it should totally go in somewhere.”
This video of African buffalo banding together to totally pwn some lions was the inspiration for Tamika’s daemon. (It’s also the reason you can look forward to Strex employees with lion daemons.) Saw a Tumblr photoset of Jacobin pigeons and immediately thought “o hai, Marcus Vansten.” (Look at those gorgeous, useless fluffballs. Look at them.)
Meanwhile, there’s a section in my notes file that is literally just “Someone needs a tiny squid. Can I write anyone with a waterbear? Someone should totally get one of those self-cloning lesbian lizards.” (So if you see any of those show up later in the story, now you know why.)
Finally! If somebody needs a daemon species and absolutely none of the above strategies are coming up with anything, then it’s time to go trawling the Wikipedia pages for phyla/orders/genuses that haven’t been represented in a while. Intern Stacey has a Pomeranian because dog daemons should be common, but I had barely written any. One of the scientists got a binturong after I realized that, as carnivores go, there were plenty of felines and canines represented, but no viverrids. Another got a poison dart frog because there hadn’t been a lot of amphibians.
(I have learned so many crazy things about animals and taxonomy while doing research for this stuff. Waterbears, man. And extinct mammaliaforms. And basically everything about molluscs. 90% of what I know about Animalia is the vertebrates, and even then I only just learned that “fish” includes three classes rather than a single one like mammals or reptiles, and, wow, there are just whole swaths of unexplored weirdness out there.)
Tag: Daemon au
AtLA Daemon Headcanons!
Because @florafaunaandeldritchhorrors requested it. And because I wanted to. I don’t have very detail explanations unfortunately, because I’m tired.
Okay so Aang’s daemon is not settled yet. One of his daemon’s forms is a lemur (like Momo. Maybe his daemon can be called Momo? That can be a female name too), while other forms include a flying squirrel and some sort of bird (haven’t decided which). I haven’t decided exactly what yet, but I think the Avatar’s daemon should have something special about it. Maybe they can be separated? Maybe they never settle? Or maybe they settle on some sort of spiritual form? Idk.
Katara’s daemon is a male North American river otter. They’re resourceful, versatile, fast learners, social, and not to be underestimated.
Sokka’s daemon is a female Alaskan gray wolf. They’re powerful but also incredibly social and pack-oriented and Sokka’s wolf is probably the embodiment of that one post (which now i CAN’T FIND ANYWHERE), where i think someone asked how wolves moved and the reply was a bunch of pictures of wolves being goofs and the caption was something like “wolves aren’t so sure how they move, either”. (can someone find that post please? i’d appreciate it!) But anyway, that’d be Sokka’s wolf when she isn’t being a loyal, dangerous fighter.
Like Aang’s, Toph’s daemon isn’t settled. But his forms include a hog badger, an argali (which is a type of mountain sheep), a ground beetle, and an Indian rhinoceros. The last one makes me chuckle because I’m just imagining Toph standing next to this gigantic rhino. Also rhinos have bad eyesight, soo…yeah.
With Azula I’m so torn. SO TORN. I initially had her with a male King Cobra, but then I was browsing the daemon au tag for ideas and the description of a spotted hyena came up. I mean, their clan structure is very competitive and ambitious (a BIG part of her childhood was how she had to keep proving she was better than Zuko), spotted hyena babies are literally the poster child for sibling rivalry (if they’re twins, the cubs will fight. sometimes to the death. hyenas are hardcore), they’re very forceful but can be quite individualistic, and are incredible opportunists. Also hyenas are brilliant tacticians and their intelligence even rivals chimpanzees on some fronts. Does all of this sound like someone we know? My only problem is that I’ve been trying to give everyone (except Katara and Sokka) animals native to Asia, and spotted hyenas are obviously not. Now there are striped hyenas, but those aren’t nearly as aggressive as spotteds. EH FUCK IT I’LL JUST HAVE HER BE THE EXCEPTION. But female spotted hyenas are a lot more aggressive than the males, so…maybe a female daemon for Azula? Idk, I never got why the daemons had to be of the opposite sex.
Mai gets a male clouded leopard, because to me something about Mai just screams that she’d have a feline daemon. She’s introverted like many solitary cats, and very sharp and precise. And out of all the Asian felines I looked up, clouded leopard seems to fit her best. They’re elusive, secretive, good at hiding just like Mai is good at hiding her emotions, and they have the largest canine teeth of any feline (proportionate to their size), which goes well with Mai’s knives.
Ty Lee’s daemon is a male Lar gibbon, which is a super acrobatic primate that rarely comes down to the ground. I mean…primates are very social and some of the species are very playful and all are cooperative, perfect for Ty Lee’s lively and extroverted personality. Also monkeys of all sorts are very popular circus animals. Both Ty Lee and her daemon wouldn’t appear like they’d be very intimidating, but face them in battle and you’ve got another thing coming. Her gibbon was even able to overpower Azula’s hyena (though he had the element of surprise on his side).
And as for Zuko, Jin, and Suki…? I have no idea, honestly. Suggestions for those two are welcome! Also I like the idea of Yue with a male koi fish daemon, but idk how she’d get a fish daemon to move around with her. Maybe he has a magical water sphere that he’d get to swim around in? I mean these are waterbenders. Maybe only people of the water tribe can get fish daemons, and those daemons (regardless of whether or not their humans can bend) get magical water spheres that float alongside their human. But that’d be a little awkward for the person who gets the whale daemon…oh well. These are just ideas!
Zuko doesn’t settle until he faces his father on the day of the eclipse. Before I think he would’ve falsely settled into a daemon that was expected of him, but his general unhappiness and other classic false settling signs showed this wasn’t really him, yknow?
As for waterbenders, I think anyone could get a fish dæmon but it’d be viewed differently depending on the culture. I picture them being in like buckets of water always peering their heads out to look around, lol.
Aang doesn’t settle until he beats Ozai and masters the Avatar State. (though most Avatars settle upon learning of their destiny at 16)
Azula obviously has a female dæmon, and in the Fire Nation this is seen as an auspicious sign so she got even more praise and attention. (Sozin had a male dæmon) Yes, spotted hyena.
Dæmon forms aren’t limited to what continent you live on/are based off of.
The Avatar’s dæmon shares the same Dust throughout incarnations.
(Ysee me, with no life.)
Alright, so you’re the only one I’ve found that likes both one piece and daemon aus so after years of silence I can finally share this idea I’ve had. What if when someone eats a devil fruit their daemon settles as a fish of some kind, as some kind of ironic curse? Sorry it’s probably weird that some stranger would just show up in your ask like this but I really love your daemon aus so I couldn’t help myself.
Awwww thank you!! Admittedly, I know alot ABOUT One Piece but I haven’t gotten very far in the series itself O.o Xi made her own One Piece daemon AU (which I know you saw, thanks for reblogging it!) but I don’t have a very solid answer on that?? She only typed one fish daemon, and for someone who has not eaten any devil fruit (I think) so I don’t know how that would translate! I don’t think one would settle as a fish because they ate the fruit, but if they happened to have a fish daemon…they’d probably have some difficulties. Hopefully it’s something with gills so it can just…idk. Sit at the bottom of a fishtank, not able to swim but just chillin LOL. Or maybe it wouldn’t affect them at all? @x-i-l-verify any thoughts?
Also, in my Psychonauts daemon AU, funnily enough I came very close to typing Raz as a dolphin….now imagine how awful that would have been for him. Not only is a dolphin aquatic, it’s still a mammal that needs air. The hand of Galocio could have very quickly drowned Raz’s daemon if he was not super careful, killing daemon and boy, effectively fulfilling his curse early on. O.o Not to mention he has to climb around alot, and it’d be hard to carry (psychically or otherwise) such a large daemon around all the time! So I’m glad we ended up settling on the Carrion Crow for Raz instead; keeping him safer and they’d be able to take to the skies together. :>
…I know you weren’t asking about that AU but the situation seemed similar hahaha
I struggled with this question for quite a long time, actually. What I ended up going with is that since the human ate the devil fruit (since daemons don’t need to eat, being made of Dust instead of flesh and blood), the human gets the powers and also the issue with water. Daemons don’t have their human’s DF power just like a human isn’t automatically able to secrete poison from their skin if their daemon is a poison dart frog or something. So if you have a fish daemon or a daemon that likes to swim and you happen to eat a DF at some point, no biggie. Heck, it might even work out for you if you fall overboard and start drowning, because your daemon can rescue you if they’re big enough, like with Law and his polar bear daemon. XD
Now, Psychonauts on the other hand…. yeah, it’s probably best Raz didn’t settle as a dolphin, or he wouldn’t have been long for this world otherwise. 0-0
BUT ALSO CONSIDER: Stan’s daemon shifting between a few different forms when he’s hit with the memory gun, like it can’t remember what it’s supposed to be.
OH NO MY HEART… but i love this idea. and maybe while Stan still has amnesia, the daemon’s form is shifting again, and it’s very jarring for everyone. But once his memories start coming back, she settles back into the seagull form.
If ur still doing prompts, an au where the modern!animorphs are suitably paranoid to survive? If not then anything spiritual and dæmons aka any faith or whatever
Some random worldbuilding facts about dæmons and religion in the Dæmorphing universe:
In Ancient Greek mythology, the gods have dæmons, like humans. Zeus’s dæmon is a bull, and in the myths there is a lot of improbable dæmon-on-dæmon action, even though dæmons in their actual world don’t have sex. People whose dæmons settled in the same form as a god’s dæmon often became priests in the temple of that god. Among modern-day pagans, many people choose to direct their worship toward a god whose dæmon has the same form as theirs.
In the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – God does not have a dæmon. Though Jesus does, which makes all the Trinity stuff even more complicated – Jesus and his dæmon Magdalene are two aspects of one part of the Trinity. Mohammed and all the other prophets have dæmons, and in Islam representing Mohammed’s dæmon in art is as taboo as representing the man himself.
Cheloneuniverse 