I probably won’t be doing any such universe - but, if we make some modifications, maybe the trolls have daemons *instead* of lusii... and maybe every character is human.
Just about every troll-in-canon would probably have daemons that match their lusii in canon, but are smaller. Exceptions would be with Feferi and Meenah, as well as Kanaya and Porrim. As for the humans: Rose’s would be a cat, Jade’s would be a dog, and Dave’s would be a crow. I’m not sure what John’s would be.
I need someone in Homestuck who also loves HDM because I need to talk about Daemons AU
humans have daemons but trolls don’t. readmore because i have a lot of feels
So at first the trolls hint at how weird the humans having those weird animals that change shape sometimes is, and the humans obviously consider the trolls just internet trolls so they play along with their lack of knowledge about daemons
but then they actually meet
and there is a moment where rose and dave are faced with the fact that these are truly aliens, and they do NOT have daemons and suddenly it’s so very confusing and while they don’t live in the middle ages and people with no daemon doesn’t equal someone to keep away, it’s still so weird for them that trolls’ daemons are *inside* them and not outside.
I need a fellow davekat fan talking with me about how dave’s daemon rarely shifts because dave was so focused in becoming a shadow of bro that he mimicked him in everything and it was cool to have a stable daemon, especially one that mimicks his bro’s
and the first step he takes to move away from that shadow is his daemon consciously changing shape and not instantly returning to the one she had before.
and he does that mostly for karkat, and their closeness is shown with the way dave loses his cool persona and with having karkat finally allowed to touch the daemon -and actually it’s the daemon who nudges karkat first as they grow close and end together.
talk to me about how when rose goes grimdark, her daemon is not touched and they have a moment where they become separate like witches and their daemons and from there on, she can send her daemon away as far as she can go.
talk to me about rose and kanaya dancing around each other, and kanaya learns to talk with the daemon first, because she’s like a little window inside rose’s mind when her ability to read through a human’s mind is too little to help.
talk to me about how their ‘deaths’ in the game momentarily make their daemons vanish into thin air, but when they ascend as godtiers the daemon ascends with them. (and how their dream selves also have a dream daemon)
talk to me about dave who sees his dead bodies and there’s no daemon anywhere for him to throw into lava, so he clutches his daemon closer to him and his fingers tremble slightly and she mutters words of reassurance into his ears.
talk to me about how jade is not left alone during the 3 years trip, because she has her daemon with her, and how this makes him stable for her because she needs some stability after seeing john die, and how they sleep cuddling together in the infinity of space.
talk to me about jake’s daemon never taking a single shape for longer than a few hours, because it’s so excited to explore and have fun and one shape is never enough for him, and they actually trained by themselves so that she can travel far on their island without him coming along, and they do so until shit goes down and then his daemon becomes the littlest critter and curls up in his arms, just as confused as he is, because smaller is better and she can give him reassurance without ever leaving his side.
talk to me how dirk’s daemon gathers all of dirk within herself and takes the shape of water creatures she meets in the ocean, but can’t take the form of anything else but that or seagulls because books and old movies aren’t enough to give her the feeling of actual animals she can turn into. and dirk builds robots and his daemon gives them names and makes dirk stop when he’s worked too much or worries too much, and can voice things dirk himself can’t.
and roxy’s daemon grows up meek, because he’s not sure he can take bigger forms like he wants to, not when she drinks so much that he’s tipsy and waddling around like a fool. but when she stops, when roxy takes the first step forwards, he finally feels controlled enough to become big, and furry, and curls around roxy and gives her strength and then flies around her twittering like a colourful bird now that he can finally flutter around without falling down.
john and his daemon pulling pranks together, and she plucks hair from the back of his head when he says something he shouldn’t, because she is a little more aware or things than he is, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t do mistakes too. his daemon always takes shapes of colourful, funny things, never boring, never meek, never anything else but visible and gaudy, but when they see john’s dad sprawled on the ground, his daemon gone, she becomes grey and dull, to show the kind of pain that john isn’t letting himself feel, not yet. she mourns for him until he’s had time to do so for himself.
jane and her daemon who is weird and confused, because she takes the brunt of messages she can’t see, not even with the corner of her eyes, but her daemon still manages to make her think, even if it’s harder for her. jane’s daemon who sings quietly, covers the silence of a dead planet, makes jane feel better about herself and about her friends, and makes her apologize when her words hurt roxy. her daemon who feels more alive now that she’s away from her world, and the batterwitch, than ever, and suddenly starts being more inventive and attentive and proactive
jane’s daemon who’s the first to fall when HIC captures her mind, and who clenches her talons in jane’s arm and fights until vriska is the one to come to their aid.
talk to me about how dirk and roxy meet with jake and jane, and their daemons are the ones who come in contact with the other two daemons, the first real contact they have with others, and how their heart swells but that’s all they can manage at first, no matter how much they want to reach out and hug jane and jake.
at what point do we start narrating it, how much of that is backstory
i sort of like starting with terezi's return but we could always lay down a bit of an intro with terezi not being back yet so as to set directly into the action when she does show up
terezi's boat is a piece of crap but dammit it's her piece of crap and she has lovingly repaired it every time it fell apart and sollux is make her gonna glide so smooth
by the way piers we gotta figure out where this thing starts
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.
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.
