I claim this DE for daemonmuses!

[death_gone_mad]

So, let's talk daemons, ala Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials canon.

Which of your pups have you nailed down a daemon for?

What species are those daemons?

What name have you given those daemons? Where do those names come from?

How do the daemon's personality differ from the pup's?

Also, if you are having trouble deciding on a daemon for your pup, feel free to cry out for help!

Comments

Austin here

[md_donighal]

This is the only pup for whom I've definitely decided on a daemon, which is funny because "Daemon" is his canonical middle name. (A daemonmuses version's middle name would be Aaron, thanks to Ama the Annabelle-mun noticing some similarities between him and a City of Heroes character by that name. It may in fact have been his original middle name in the Trinity Universe Continuum.)

Aaaaaanyway, Michael's daemon, Theophilos, is a bald eagle. The name is Greek for "friend of God" (you may be more familiar — I know I was — with the Latinate form Theophilus, as in the old joke "because he's Theophilus-lookin' dog I ever did see"). His personality reflects Michael's in every way I can think of at this time of night.

Any daemon suggestions for the rest of mine would be welcomed. (As a refresher, that's forgoodorforawesome, hiroaki_protagonist, ilko_skevuld, maxwell_a_mercer, ringo_to_omoshiro, rotwood_reaper, slidingjennifer, and I've even entertained apping futamura_neo, whose daemon's form would have become fixed about the same time hir adult gender did.)

Re: Austin here

[cameoflage]

I can barely pick out my own daemons, on account of being Bad At Animals, but I really wanna see what kind of daemons people come up with for Strong Bad.

[cameoflage]

*stumbles into DE two days late and covered in mashed potatoes* Daemons! I love daemons! I find it incredibly difficult to choose and name a daemon for any given character, but I love them nevertheless. I haven't really played with the daemons so far (perhaps I should rectify this), so I'm unclear on their personalities relative to their humans.

What I generally end up doing when I make daemons is pulling from a confusing mishmash of actual animal behaviour and whatever animal symbolism I can find. Often on TV Tropes. I mean, it's where I hang my hat anyway and they have a lot of pages about animal symbolism and the stereotypical roles of any given animal. Also this page; it's very useful but I don't know where they got this information from so I'm slightly dubious about it but I still put it into my daemon melting pot.

Aradia is exempt from this DE because she was raised by her symbolic animal. Specifically a sort of ram goat thing.

Dr Thurlow has a crow daemon named Cordova. A crow was the first decent idea I thought of and I got attached. Crows are very smart animals, and social as well, but they are also commonly known for being loud, rude, grubby, and kleptomaniacal. So that hits the Watchful, Persuasive, and Shadowy stats, which Thurlow has all raised quite high. They're a scholarly sort, they can be both charming and brash, the constant stream of snark is rudeness enough, and they do tend to steal random things that catch their interest. (Dunno where Dangerous fits into this. As animal attacks go, an individual crow would be one of the easier animals to fend off. Oh well.) Like the human half of the pair, Cordova is of mysterious and indistinct gender, because how exactly would anyone but an ornithologist tell the difference (and their voice is ambiguous), and named after a street in downtown Vancouver. (I deliberately picked two intersecting streets.)

Also Thurlow ticks every box on the So You're A Bird checklist over on the big daemon page of daemons. To various degrees.

And now the OC sandbox regulars!

Gareth's daemon is a coconut octopus, thanks to the kind assistance of The Other Cam. This species' defining characteristics are curiosity and being ridiculously clever, much like him; they're called the coconut octopus because they hang on to coconuts and use them as shelter. I named this particular octopus Arianrhod, after the Welsh goddess of the moon, because... I don't remember my exact reason (I'm sure the usual moon symbolism was involved though) but Gareth's heritage is Welsh and more distantly German, and I had no luck trying to find some sort of German mythological figure who was appropriate and had a cool name.

Also it helps that, while she's an aquatic daemon, she's small enough to carry around in a fishbowl.

I haven't worked out Tamsyn's daemon yet. She has a spider motif so that's the obvious choice, but I'm not sure how spider-like her personality is. She's been compared to a hyena for her constant laughing, so there's that option (the big page o' daemons does make it sound like a spotted hyena would work pretty well), or a fox or monkey 'cause she's a bratty little shit.

I seem to favour clever animals. But then again, I seem to favour clever pups.

[jjprobert]

*strolls in even later*

Well, Jack would have a female Peregrine Falcon, named Horus.

Bean's (if he has one, I think he would) hasn't settled yet. When it settles (very early, like everything with Bean), I can't work out what it would be.

Max's would possibly be an owl, though I'm not sure.

Erik's I have no idea about.

Alfred's could well be a bulldog, or something similar.

[hoofandhorn]

Lol I wondered where this weeks influx of newbs came from.