daemonstuck

[daemonstuck]

was there a thought process behind the gender-variant daemons (considering that the humans are all presumably binary)? or was it just as simple as "because there are gender-variant humans too"

It's a little bit of both. In some cases, we're riffing off the fan theory of a person's daemon assuming the gender(s) that they're attracted to; in others, it's because it just seemed appropriate. Sollux's daemon had to be bigender, come on. It's just a fact.

[daemonstuck]

Daemonstuck recap!

Okay, wow. The enthusiastic reaction to daemonstuck has been pretty astonishing, considering we haven't actually posted anything yet! Some of you may be here because you've been following the verse's progress on James' and my personal blogs, but there are also quite a few people following daemonstuck who are new to it. With this in mind, we thought it might be wise to do a little recap before we start answering questions. That way we don't have to repeat ourselves so much, and you don't have to flounder around in confusion.

(HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)

First of all: the DAEMONSTUCK TAG on my personal blog catalogs most existing canon. Unfortunately, it's also messy and inconvenient and cluttered with drabbles and keysmashing about Oxford library makeouts and the like. I also don't bother correcting outdated posts there, so we've come up with a backup solution: namely, the DAEMONSTUCK GOOGLE DOC, which is... similarly disordered (and partially in skype conversation format?) right now, but which is at least kept up to date. It's kept to bare bones plot information. When we get around to actually writing this monstrosity, that's where fic updates will go.

At this point you're probably eyeing the links warily and thinking about how much you don't want to have to wade through a dozen pages of semi-coherent rambling to understand what's going on. That's fine! That's what this recap is for.

(/SPOILERS)

Daemonstuck is a little esoteric, I won't lie. What you need to know right now is that it's set in a rough approximation of Lyra's world from the His Dark Materials books. The events concerned take place a few years pre-series and ultimately veer miles off-course from HDM proper, but that comes with the whole "alternate universe" territory.

In case you haven't read the books (James, I'm looking at you) or are in need of a refresher, this means that there's a whole lot of ambiguous steampunk going on, as well as some UNFAMILIAR TERMINOLOGY. There will literally and figuratively be a shippy bent to it, considering the verse is focused on the adventures of several teams of polar explorers/researchers. Like I said, it takes place pre-alternate-universe-HDM, in a hypothetical era in which Dust has just been discovered in the loosest sense of the term but isn't quite so monopolized by the Magisterium. Cue the race among scientific - or more accurately political - circles to be the first to understand it.

There are several political powers interacting in this verse. You might want to get comfortable for this bit. First of all, there's the Magisterium, which is a loose analog to the Catholic church and something of a puppeteer to... pretty much everyone else. Next, there are the Amporas (also known as Team WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WEARING), a ruling family currently backed by the Magisterium. At least in the public eye, they're the ones running things around Anglia. Think of the Amporas as cleaner fish clinging desperately to the Magisterium's belly. They get to stick around so long as they provide a useful service, which in this case means keeping knowledge about Dust to an easily-manipulable minimum. Eridan has been assigned this task, as an ambassador for the Dust Is Bad And We're Going To Show You Why side of things. His goal is to secure the Magisterium's exclusive rights to knowledge surrounding Dust.

Enter the Peixes. The Peixes are political rivals to the Amporas, and are in this race basically in an attempt to unseat them from their lofty place of public favor. Or the Magisterium's favor, more accurately. The point is, Feferi is implicated in this whole shebang out of political duty, and also because she thinks the Amporas are a great big bag of dicks with dangerous ideas.

Enter captains Maryam (financed by the Peixes and under the supervision of one Rose Lalonde), Serket (financed by the Amporas), and Pyrope (self-appointed). Also starring Karkat as Terezi's childhood friend/occasional conquest and Sollux as their engineer/boy toy.

Whew.

I'll leave you with the list of already established daemons, and that'll be it, I promise. We'll get to actually answering questions now.

ESTABLISHED DAEMONS:

Aradia: Tomer, male siberian ibex

Eridan: Kambyses, male blue-lipped sea krait

Dave: ???, genderqueer crow

Equius: ???, female rabbit

Feferi: Xabier, male river otter

Jade: Becquerel, gender-all-over-the-place black-tufted marmoset (uses xe/hir)

John: Casey, female albatross

Kanaya: Zaida, female gyrfalcon

Karkat: Madhu, neutrois pine marten (uses xe/hir)

Nepeta: Isak, male mountain lion

Rose: Olympe, genderqueer housecat (uses she/her)

Sollux: Cecil, bigender spotted eagle owl (uses various pronouns)

Terezi: Sargol, female komodo dragon

Vriska: Renenet, female black widow

-- Haley