Do you think mermaids have daemons? That would be a nice setting to use underwater daes more, I guess. Wonder what would Ariel's daemon be and how would she handle it being on land after her getting legs.
Oh true, interesting! I think mermaid daemons are totally plausible even with the obvious limit of only being able to settle as fish/fully aquatic animals, since there are so many different species. Maybe they could also settle as whales...? I just think it would be tricky if daemons have to breathe- if they don’t I suppose a merperson could settle as anything that lives in the ocean. And freshwater fish, if the water composition/salt content isn’t a problem either.
I don’t know what Ariel’s daemon would be (the easy answer is to just use Flounder, but I personally don’t like the daemon AU trope of repurposing a canon animal as a daemon), but that would certainly be a transition, huh.
Disclaimer: I haven’t seen The Little Mermaid in a hot minute ^^’
If fish daemons need water to breathe, then I imagine it would be assumed that the tank/bowl/whatever she uses to carry her dae in got washed away while they were on the beach, so they’d have to bring her one. And a mermaid on land would probably run into issues with their bond range a lot, since they’re not used to having to move their daemon around- normally they just swim together. They’d get a lot of weird looks when they start to walk away without bringing along the tank, until they developed the habit.
I do think in a corporeal world Flounder wouldn’t exist in the movie, though. Does he actually do anything after Ariel gets legs? I don’t remember. I bet a lot of talking animals in Disney movies would be changed or omitted entirely. Interesting to think about for sure!