Dusty Shelf

he/him - With a settled Daemon Always looking to learn and share thoughts on daemonism Feel free to ask!

[dusty-self]

Daemonism & Settling Part 2 - Aquatic Forms

Alright time to continue with some more thoughts on daemon settling. I think for this post I want to focus on fully aquatic forms. This will probably tie into anther post I want to make on viability in general but I thought I had enough thoughts on this to make it it’s own post.

*Disclaimer* This isn’t meant to say one way of practising daemonism is better than another. If you do something in this post I say I don’t agree with that’s fine, this is just a collection of my thoughts. Do your thing. There isn’t one way to practice daemonism. You’re still valid.

So to kick things off, I don’t really think that fully aquatic forms would be very common at all. There would be some, but it would be exceptionally rare. What it comes down to is how impractical it is to be tied to water. Daemons still follow the laws of physics that we have and this includes staying in the water. As cool as it would be to have a dolphin swim through the air as we walk around, that not really how it works. If a daemon settled as a dolphin they would plop down and it would be an emergency to make sure that they didn’t outright die. The amount of people that live far enough away from a major source of water would really limit the odds of a daemon settling as an aquatic form. Because a daemons settled form can be influenced, no water and not dying would have to play a role. Some fish could be carried or pulled around in tanks of water, but settling as a fish would almost be worse as everyone scrambles to get a bowl and water.

I’ve seen it said before that if someone has an aquatic daemon they would be able to move farther away from each other in order to compensate for the restriction, but I’m not sure about that. I feel like it’s too similar to separation. Separation is an interesting topic and I may write about it someday, but for now I’ll just say that I don’t think it’s something that people can just do. I don’t think you can walk inland and leave your daemon miles away. I do think that larger daemons can probably move farther away from their daemian than smaller ones, but that has limits. It seems too convenient a solution to something that could have a lot of other very cool and interesting ways to work with it.

What would someone need for their daemon to settle as something aquatic? Well for starters they would need to live by a large body of water. I don’t think it needs to be an ocean, a lake could do but there does need to be a lot of it. The person would also need a love of water. I do think there should be some symbolism in a settled form, and that’s a great way to get some. Finally I think they would need easy access to the water. As much as I would love for a boat house to be provided to people who need it, I doubt that would be the case. As nice as it would be for a government to just a give an appropriate home to those who need it, they don’t do that now so why would it change. All this leads to the conclusion that yes, while aquatic daemons do and can exist, they are extraordinarily rare.

As always let me know what you think! Hopefully my next post will be out sooner than this took. 

[dusty-self]

Daemonism - Settling & Size

I’ve been thinking a lot about settling, both in an AU sense and in a practicing one. I think I may end up writing a series of posts about it as I want to get it out of my head and because there’s a lot of different thoughts and opinions. One post would be too long and too chaotic. 

*Quick Disclaimer* With this I’m not trying to make any grand statements on how what is right and how daemonism should be done. There’s lots of ways to practice and one isn’t better that the other. This is all just for fun. However you practice is valid. 

That said, let’s jump into it

Whenever I think about a daemon AU, my mind always finds its way to large daemons. I think about how difficult it must be to have one, how the world we know isn’t designed for them, and how hard it must be to move through life with one. All the things that must be done to compensate an elephant or a horse in their daily lives. It’s fun to think about and for sure. There would have to be so many adaptations in society to compensate them, but I want to try and look at something different. How common ARE large daemons?

Firstly, this is all theoretical. There’s no way to measure this. But I think it’s fun so let’s give it a shot! From what I’ve seen online and from what I’ve read from the HDM series, most daemons are small. They rarely exceed the size of a dog or a wolf. I don’t see a reason why there CAN’T be larger forms. I think that if the form fits, and a daemon is a deer for example, then said daemon would settle as a deer. Limiting daemons to all being small also rules out so many interesting animals for your daemon to settle as. That being said, based on the HDM series we know that a daemon can’t be chosen, but can be influenced by their surroundings (I may make a separate post about this). For now, I think it’s fair to assume there is a bias towards settling as smaller forms. It’s simply more convenient to have a smaller daemon than a large one.

This is all fine and good but it does really answer the question of how common large daemons are. I’ve spend a lot of time looking at statistical distributions over the last couple of days. I think that the best one I’ve found would be the power law, also called the 80-20 rule (graph below). In show up all the time in physics, biology, nature, psychology, and a whole lot of other places. It describes the distributions of things inside a system. For example, we could look at as the distribution of wealth, with 20% of the population holding 80% of the resources. This also applies to things like frequency of words used in literature, number of earthquakes to magnitude, and size of solar flares. It all falls roughly into this curve. This is also what I’m proposing for the frequency of daemon sizes. 80% of the population would have daemons under a certain size, 20% of daemons are over that size.

Now there are still some problems with this. Picking what that size is is pretty arbitrary. For this I think it’s fair to to say that anything around the size of a wolf is still pretty common, but anything bigger starts to be on the rarer side. I also think that this implies that truly tiny daemons, like insect, are the most common and I don’t think that holds true either. Maybe some sort of bar graph would work better. There’s flaws for sure, but I think it’s a good start. 

So to bring it back to an AU, I do still think that there would have to be would have to be accommodations for large daemons. 20% of the population is still over 1.5 billion people. The truly massive daemons would be rare, but there would have to be in measures in place for them even if 0.05% of the population had on around the size of an elephant that’s over 4 million people. Something would need to be in place for them. If the world always had them, then it should be ready. It would be interesting to see how things would need to change with the relatively recent population boom as there would also be an increase in large daemons. 

That was a long one. I’m not a mathematician so I may have gotten something wrong. Like I said before, this is all speculation. I’d love to hear what you thought about it!

[darkestabsol]

Thinking about. The fact that people in Lyra's world in HDM see daemonless people as incredibly uncanny and Wrong due to the implications of them being literally souless. Thinking about the fun horror tropes that would result in that world.

In the HDM version of The Thing, the titular Thing tries to imitate the both the humans and the accompanying daemons at the camp, but there's something Off about the daemons in the same way there's something Off about Thing!Jed the dog. They don't act right, they don't feel right when next to a real daemon.

In HDM! Dracula, Dracula, being a souless vampire, has to use his wolf control ability to manipulate a wild wolf to act as his 'daemon' when Jonathan is at the castle. Of course, since Dracula has not interacted with a daemon in hundreds of years, the wolf does not act right. Jonathan can tell there's something off about this 'daemon' but brushes it off at first, his daemon (a dog, to contrast Dracula's fake wolf 'daemon') can tell there's something off about the wolf...it's all very off.

When Lucy is revealed to be a vampire, there is clear horror at the uncanniness of her missing daemon in addition to her feeding off the children and being unable to rest in peace, when she was never able to travel away from her daemon in life.

[dusty-self]

Daemon Care

As always I was thinking about a world with daemons and something that I don't think get's brought up enough is that daemons need physical care too. They're gonna get dirty in our day to day lives! But even beyond washing them they some forms are going to need more intensive care.

Sheep are going to need to be shorn. Fluffy daemons are going to need to be brushed out regularly. Reptiles shed their skin. Birds molt their feathers. Claws would need to be trimmed. I would assume daemons in these forms would go through the same processes, and their human would need to jump in and help. I imagine it would become routine. I can imagine people with different forms may not realize it could be a thing. I can see someone being horrified learning that a tarantula daemon does in fact shed its' skin. That could also lead to some stylings too. If daemons need a hair cut that could be another form of expression.

Another thing is that it can get cold some places. Obvious I know but not all forms are cut out for snow. There would have to be some sort of work around. Keeping smaller forms in pocket close to the body would help for sure, but some forms are too large. Maybe there would have to be some sort of coat or boots, or even electronic heating packs to make sure they could still go outside. For the opposite problem of overheating, I think that cooling packs would be the best bet. There's probably a more elegant solution that strapping a vest of ice packs on a polar bear, but I don't have it. Either way I think more specialized forms would want to spend more times indoors waiting or their preferred season. Lots of complaining.

On a bit of a side note, I do think that daemons would change appearance based on the season if their form does as well. Like an arctic fox would change from white to brown depending on the time of year. The idea of a normally elegant fox being mid shed and being teased by their human is very funny to me.

And of course this would be a form of self care too. It's taking time to take care of yourself as much as it is your daemon. Setting time aside to take care of your soul. I think that there's something beautiful in that. It could also be a good indication of someones mental health as well, the same way as not showering can be an indication of someone not doing well. Check in on your friends.

Any way, that's all for this time. As always I hope you enjoyed and let me know what you think!

[dusty-self]

Oh man, I didn't even think about antlers! Those fall off and grow back each yeah for a lot of different species. What would you do with them all? Keep them? Throw them away? Give them as a gift to loved ones? Make some sort of sculpture with them? Evey year you'd get a new set so I imagine as the years go on you've gotta do something with the hoard.

[mongoose-bytes]

I love how much variety there is in form finding. No matter how much we try to categorize it down to a science, everyone is going to be biased and have different interpretations based on their culture and life experiences. Even for analytic forms, different behaviours may be interpreted differently from person to person.

It’s so deeply ingrained in personal reflection and how every individual views themself and the world around them and just can’t operate under strict rule sets. There’s guidelines and suggestions, for sure. But the fact that everyone has their own unique experiences and interprets things in whatever way works best for them is something that I love a lot about daemonism.

I personally am not a fan of things like astrology and personality types because there’s so little grey areas and room for the vast variety of personal experiences people can have that impact their lives. It just feels far too rigid to me.

At the end of the day, daemonism is about you and your daemon. Your own life, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. And the lens through which you view the world. And while how other people view you also comes into play, no one is going to know you better than you know yourself.

[dusty-self]

Daemon Care

As always I was thinking about a world with daemons and something that I don't think get's brought up enough is that daemons need physical care too. They're gonna get dirty in our day to day lives! But even beyond washing them they some forms are going to need more intensive care.

Sheep are going to need to be shorn. Fluffy daemons are going to need to be brushed out regularly. Reptiles shed their skin. Birds molt their feathers. Claws would need to be trimmed. I would assume daemons in these forms would go through the same processes, and their human would need to jump in and help. I imagine it would become routine. I can imagine people with different forms may not realize it could be a thing. I can see someone being horrified learning that a tarantula daemon does in fact shed its' skin. That could also lead to some stylings too. If daemons need a hair cut that could be another form of expression.

Another thing is that it can get cold some places. Obvious I know but not all forms are cut out for snow. There would have to be some sort of work around. Keeping smaller forms in pocket close to the body would help for sure, but some forms are too large. Maybe there would have to be some sort of coat or boots, or even electronic heating packs to make sure they could still go outside. For the opposite problem of overheating, I think that cooling packs would be the best bet. There's probably a more elegant solution that strapping a vest of ice packs on a polar bear, but I don't have it. Either way I think more specialized forms would want to spend more times indoors waiting or their preferred season. Lots of complaining.

On a bit of a side note, I do think that daemons would change appearance based on the season if their form does as well. Like an arctic fox would change from white to brown depending on the time of year. The idea of a normally elegant fox being mid shed and being teased by their human is very funny to me.

And of course this would be a form of self care too. It's taking time to take care of yourself as much as it is your daemon. Setting time aside to take care of your soul. I think that there's something beautiful in that. It could also be a good indication of someones mental health as well, the same way as not showering can be an indication of someone not doing well. Check in on your friends.

Any way, that's all for this time. As always I hope you enjoyed and let me know what you think!

[dusty-self]

Hi! do you have any HC's about how sports might be different with daemons? I imagine contact sports like rugby or ice hockey would be much more dangerous...

Hey thanks for the ask! I'll be honest I'm not much of a sports person but I definitely have some thoughts.

So firstly I'll get some easy ones out of the way. A lot of the more "relaxed" sports would most likely be the same. Things like bowling, darts, golf, and others are played one person at a time I can't see being different with a daemon.

Now with non-contact team sports like football, basketball, and baseball (I know contact happens but it's not like American football or hockey) I think it's a bit tricky. I think that making the field larger would help limit daemon contact. Otherwise I think it would be largely the same? Again not an expert but the rules should be fine. Daemons could run, fly, or be carried around to stay out of the way, or maybe they could even play along. Some people love sports, so literally putting your soul in the game COULD be a thing.

Touching a bit more on this, it's important to remember that a persons physical appearance and capabilities have no effect on a daemon's settled form. On one hand, athletes could have any form as their daemon. It's based on their personality and who they are so really I think most forms would be viable. On the other hand, maybe people who's career is sports would tend to have some sort of bias towards certain kinds of forms, like those that are naturally more competitive. There's a difference between a group of people playing for fun, and those who make it their life. Also, if daemons do play in the games that could affect who gets picked up and signed. Sure, anyone can play a sport, but not every makes it in the big leagues.

And on to the last bit, sports like hockey, American football, and rugby would be challenging to say the least. Keeping daemons out of the way would be important due to the taboo of touching. Depending on the size and how far apart they can separate, this would have an impact on how the game would work. I think a lot of rules would need to be rewritten or sports changed completely based on contact. I can't figure out hockey at all. Ice and skates make things a lot more complicated. Way to go, Canada.

Hope you enjoyed this and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[depsidase]

[megpie71]

As a former humanities student, I feel it is my duty to reblog this one.

[idkaguyorsomething]

a support group for people with “unconventional” daemons. jeff with his flounder he has to carry everywhere in a huge tank. lois with her poison dart frog everyone is afraid to touch. sam with their elephant that’s the reason they can never go higher than two stories in most buildings.

[dusty-self]

Daemon HeadCanon - Music

I've seen a few different posts about Daemons in theatre and movies (I've got thoughts on this too, maybe one day I'll write them down here) but surprisingly I haven't come across any about music. I thought I'd write down some thoughts I had.

So firstly I don't think there would be much change with instruments. Most forms wouldn't be able to play any existing instruments well or even at all. Fingers are pretty important for that. That said, different instruments could have been invented for Daemons to play. I have no idea what those would look like or how they would work, but it would be fun to see different interpretations of what those could be.

I also don't think that genres would change too much. Because it's a way we categorize music I can't see it being affected. There might me new genres, but I think country would still be country, rap would be wrap, and etc. I DO think that lyrics would be different, or would at least be expanded upon. There would be a ton of different metaphors and says in a world with Daes that would undoubtedly get worked into songs. Romanticizing certain forms would common place in songs and might even popularize those forms.

On another note, I bet it would be super fun to sing with your Daemon. I already sing in the shower and if I'm home alone, but I very rarely sing in front of other people. I imagine belting out a song with your daemon would be a very special and personal experience.

Building on that, I imagine certain singers and song writers would preform with their Daemon. I don't think everyone would. Factors like genre, style, comfort, song, and of course personal preference would go into how often someone would do this, or even if they would at all. But just imagine. A singer sits dow with a guitar, their Daemon siting on their shoulder and preforming a song about a past love. Once they reach the chorus their Daemon joins them in a duet. Another part of them, their soul, joining in and expanding the song. Goose bumps.

Anyway, that's what I've got this time. I'd love to hear other thoughts and opinions on this!

[dusty-self]

Living with Daemons

Hey y'all. I've been thinking a lot about a world with Daemons. Like the world in HDM but also the real one. A modern world that always had daemons. These are some thought I had about how homes would be different.

First of all, I think that daemons would have their own furniture. Perches for bird daemons set up by couches and beds. Little water features for amphibians and other semi aquatic daemons would also be a must. I doubt you'd want to have your bath tub full all the time.

Daemons would probably have their own beds too. I'd imagine something like dog beds in various sizes. Maybe hammocks for more arboreal species. I think some people would share their bed, but I think that largely depends on the size of the daemon (and bed). Wouldn't want to roll over onto a mouse daemon, and a crocodile would take up the whole thing. Daemons that sleep standing up would just have to deal with it.

On another note I think houses and apartments in general may need redoing. I know my apartment wouldn't have room for a daemon the size of a bear or horse. Doorways would likely need to be larger in general and I bet elevators would need to be larger and have a higher weight limit. There would have to some sort of system in place to make sure prices for homes aren't crazy high for people who need more room for their daemon.

There's probably lots more things I'm not thinking about. I'd love to hear what you think!

[saewin]

On Waves of Dæmonism and Dænominations

Every now and again I'll stumble across a conversation about daemonism and I'm left anywhere from bemused to uncomfortable, thinking "that's really not how daemonism works". Yet, I'll dig deeper and see communities of people very happily practising.

So what gives?

I've come to understand there are multiple waves of daemonism. These have developed into "daenominations" that can have mutually exclusive underlying principles. Recently I've mostly seen people advertising and discussing the third wave as though it's an evolution of previous principles, or as an umbrella to previous ideas, which set off my alarm bells.

So I want to talk about these waves and daenominations and roughly what I see defines them, with emphasis on my "own" - the second.

First wave: Canonical - "The books define it"

In the early days, the definition of a daemon was very much like that in the "His Dark Material" books. The books were referenced often and the form your daemon took in projection was often considered significant. So daemon and form, like in the books, were intrinsically linked. There was a strong spiritual element or significance for many, as in the books daemons were thought of as your soul, and to stop projecting completely was considered a significant event. Analyses were more literal in nature rather than interpreted.

Second wave: Prescriptivist - "We define it"

Around 2007-09, as more people joined the community began to move towards a more stripped down understanding of daemonism. This was a push back against the canonical "daemon as a soul" basis of the first wave. Around the same time, the philosophy of New Atheism was born as a reaction to the perceived dominance of the Christian understanding of reality. Given the strength of the parallel, it's likely this wider cultural shift influenced the second wave.

The stripped back view was thus: a daemon was an imaginary friend/mental construct and it was termed a “daemon” because it followed a particular, community-agreed set of rules, originally derived from the HDM books. The entity used part of the daemian's internal monologue, there was one entity with the title of daemon, and the daemon was a positive or at least neutral addition for the daemian in some way. This time the form the daemon took during projection officially had zero significance in deciding a settled form. Instead, the daemian could project the daemon in the settled form or however they pleased (comfort form(s), etc). The spiritual element was downplayed as an optional extra, although many daemians kept that personal significance. Crucially, the rules around the daemon's construct and how analyses were conducted were built through community consensus. As scientific observation of animal behaviour was required to build an analysis, mythics and long extinct animals were not considered viable.

At the beginning of the second wave, the books informed the acknowledged arbitrary ruleset to define an imaginary friend/mental construct as a daemon, which could be considered an orthodox stance. As the community grew and changed, so did the framework through community consensus. Ideas diverging from the books came in, e.g. multiple daemons, because daemians found a use case, and the community took a more modernist approach by challenging the book-derived framework, whilst still relying on consensus.

When the English-speaking daemian community became diffuse across social media, practitioners for whom the second wave structured approach and its specific definitions were not a perfect fit formed their own communities or practiced alone. This signals the start of the third wave.

Third wave: Post-modernist - "I define it"

Given that a daemon is derived from the mind, what is to say that any rules around the construction of a daemon were required, other than the daemian's say-so? At this point overlaps between different kinds of entities became more frequent - headmates, soulbonds and spirits of all kinds may at times have been referred to as daemons by the daemian as they "took on the role" of a daemon. Daemians may have had more than one daemon fulfilling the role, and systems became more prevalent in the community, who might have had one daemon for the system, or daemons for specific system members.

The more restrictive community definition of a daemon, which could be considered gatekeeping, fuzzed out to be replaced by a collection of ideas that daemians can pick and choose from depending on their needs. Generally however a daemon is considered a helpful voice to the daemian.

Multiple form finding systems now exist together, including the addition of Pullman and Symbolic, the latter in particular allowing space for any form with only a cultural presence (mythics and the long extinct) unlike Analytic. Further, some daemians opt to only declare a form of personal significance with no community consensus on meaning. While daemonism had been linked to pluralism before, often as a median concept, this is where the idea of "plural by default" starts.

This is all very rough, and I'm talking about a changing landscape with a heavy sense of irony. The second wave kicked off around the time I joined and I'm sure wound people up just the same, yet I know people who follow the first wave view still practice. For full transparency, I'm not active in the community these days but keep up with the main beats through friends. Even so, I do still consider myself a daemian and have great affection for the practice.

From this I'd consider myself an orthodox prescriptivist. I'd love to see expansions on these waves or other thoughts.

[old-daemon-farts]

Never thought of the progress like this, but that's a pretty accurate way to divide them. I will definitely be using it through the rest of this post. I've been through each of these dænominations and will likely keep progressing if more come along as long as it matches what I experience with my own daemons.

I'll always be incredibly proud of helping push the multidae acceptance in the community. :) I honestly love seeing daemonism change as it grows with new members and experiences. It's exciting as hell for me since I'm "an old fart" and have been gifted the chance to experience everything as it has and will continue to happen.

Admittedly, sometimes I push back against certain form finding methods, like separating symbolism vs. narrative, because I may not understand the difference. But that doesn't mean I'm not excited to see what these differences of opinion produce down the line.

People often need some kind of structure, and others may enjoy full freedom. But I think it's important for anyone joining the community to know a brief history of daemonism because maybe today's beliefs don't work for you, but the original concept does. The important thing to take away is how daemians and daemons who still follow older phases, or dænominations, are still valid as fuck. You got a single daemon who is the opposite gender of you and holds significant spiritual meaning? Sweet, welcome to daemonism. Or are you plural and can't say for sure if it's another systemmate or daemon, but you both are choosing the daemon label? Welcome aboard. Your experience, or how you choose to experience it, is just as real and special as everyone else's.

However, no matter your belief on daemons, it's NEVER okay to harass or claim someone is doing daemonism wrong. We are all daemians, it doesn't matter what dænomination you follow, there is no overall "right way" to be a daemian. Live and let live.

[saewin]

However, no matter your belief on daemons, it's NEVER okay to harass or claim someone is doing daemonism wrong. We are all daemians, it doesn't matter what dænomination you follow, there is no overall "right way" to be a daemian. Live and let live.

This! Exactly. After all, day-to-day it's an extremely personal practice. And this is where I challenged my initial "???" reaction and I'd challenge others of all daenominations to do similar reflection, because this is exactly the point - we all practice for different reasons, everyone is valid, and yet there are mutually exclusive and therefore invalid practices when comparing daenominations from the inside out- so communicating practices can result in tension and misunderstanding. And because of that, in a rush to communicate maximum validity, the older waves can get missed.

For me, I pushed for and gelled with second wave because I'm a rationalist to the point of obnoxiousness in my youth, I love the book canon, and I find community and feel seen by sticking to rules the community participants agree on. One can communicate a lot when using a ruleset, particularly with analyses, because to me saying you're a cat means so much more when everyone abides by analysis rules. In a wider view I also find having rules to play against a far more fertile ground for creativity, as it's like problem solving - what's the core elements? How far can this idea be pushed? Are there any gaps? I find a lot of beauty in vivid colouring within the lines. So when someone wants to play the game but changes a rule rather than works within the confines, my brain 404s. Due to the community consensus required to play with a framework, in the second wave and its subdivisions (and first) there is such a thing as invalid practice. But only when considering those daenominations. 

Whereas, I can imagine being told "hey there's this really fun game being played, but you can't play because you like a different completely arbitrary rule/no rules at all" must be bloody confusing and annoying. Because why not, right? What's wrong with a practice where you have boundless creativity to decide what's best for you? Some people need that open space to find themselves and have the most fun. And these practitioners can play with a different group who like those new rules, or even play alone. I'm presuming for third wavers then first and second is gatekeep-y and at times actively hostile. 

I think what needs to be clear is that whilst the linear march of time has created different waves as reactions, as evolutions of the previous versions, they are evolutions in the strictest sense: they have evolved to suit the people practising, and nothing more need be attributed to that. Second wave is not more refined due to the "mental construct" tenet. Third wave is not more virtuous because of the lack of gatekeeping. It's the fact that we have living daenominations that suit different people (and I'm sure will have more in future to accommodate others) that is the good thing, and as you say, all are valid - and important - practices.

[dusty-self]

I think that this does a great job of summarizing my thoughts and feeling on daemonism. I'd say I'm in the second wave based on this, and I agree that I like having the rules and guidelines to play with. I feel like having those have helped me learn more about myself and my daemon.

I may not always understand the third wave, but I don't want to make anyone feel isolated either. I'm still pretty new to the community myself. I'd love to chat with more people about it and get a wider understanding and appreciation from others who practice!

[cannotescape]

hmmm this his dark materials fanmade animated trailer is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen this year… wow

Directed by Louis HOLMES, Agathe LEROUX and Léa REY—MAUZAIZE