pokemon daemons au thing where people's daemons are also pokemon pokedaemons can touch normal pokemon and other daemons just like humans can touch humans, but daemons touching humans that aren't their other half is about as intimate as a kiss-so you might see siblings touching each other's daemons, or a parent's daemon touching their kid, or romantic partners touching each other's daemons, but not just. any two random people touching each other's daemons. apricorn pokeballs were first discovered by someone who was messing around and accidentally put their daemon in one-this is harmless so long as the daemon ball stays close to the right human, and unsettled daemons cannot be put in a 'ball. you cannot put someone else's daemon in a ball, it doesn't work unless the ball is already registered to the daemon or if it's a snag ball as those are modified in ways that allow them to catch basically anything mass-produced pokeballs cannot catch daemons at all, this is a technical limitation on the level of the "don't catch already caught pokemon", but there are mass-produced daemonballs for people with large daemons or daemons that otherwise can't go everywhere their human half can go settled daemons can evolve! this feels very weird if your daemon settles before you start your journey, they're typically your starter! however people who start their journey without settling have something of an advantage in training pokemon due to being able to just try a thing out themselves i had other stuff...last night...i forgot it oh no
people settled as dark-types are anywhere from resistant to immune to psychics most people have at least heard of aura powers as a thing people can have, especially as people who settle as togepi, riolu, or mienfoo lines always either have aura powers or at least sensitivity, or gain them upon settling other lines with aura-related moves usually just result in the daemon half having aura sensitivity, but not the human half most people settle as the first stage in an evolutionary line, but sometimes they'll just settle straight to second or third-stage evolutions
ooh! riley's lucario is his daemon daemons do not count towards the six-pokemon carry limit but do count towards the six-in-a-battle limit
on a different note: i always just kinda assume, in reading daemon AUs, that the maximum distance a daemon can go from their human varies from person to person some people can just. send their daemon to the other side of the school to get something. or whatever. ETA: and others can't get further than a meter or so
In the Kitty Powers games, one of the traits the couples have to work out is whether they think each others' daemons are cute. The daemons sit offscreen so the artist doesn't have to draw hundreds of different animals.
Since I'm on a kh kick atm - I don't know what kinds of animal forms daemons would take since there's too many options Also do the Disney anthro critter crowd even have daemons or is a human only thing? No matter what subtype of human that is? And Nobodies don't have daemons obvs - and who the fuck knows what would happen with all the norting going on. But I do know that Sora hasn't Settled yet. Riku has, though, as of DDD, and we don't see enough of Kairi for me to judge.
I feel like the Disney castle folks’ daemons equivalents should be some kind of reference to early Disney cartoons, but I have no idea what that might be I think the Norts should have wispy, translucent versions of Xehanort’s daemon. Or maybe they just keep not having daemons at all, and they’re all linked to Xehanorts original daemon with a super long range... and I guess that daemon would be Ansem SOD? What if Ansem was animal shaped in this and Ansem was xehanorts daemons actual name
Monochrome and tend to have exaggerated proportions and look a bit archaic compared to more modern daemons?
I was thinking more like they have a daemon-equivalent that isn’t actually a daemon, like the panserbjorn’s armor or the elephant motorcycle aliens’ seed-wheels. I don’t know what that would be though.
... The gloves. The anthro Disney characters pretty much all wear gloves, if they have hands (unless I'm forgetting about someone). It's a signature thing, if you're trying to make a character look especially cartoony, that you put gloves on them; Warner Brothers characters do it, too.
Also, I just binge watched all of sense 8 in like four days. I suspect it's a lot more difficult for sensates to keep hidden in the AU where their daemon switches form depending on who's at the wheel...
I've been thinking about a FMA daemon AU since I was about halfway through Brotherhood Spoiler: Brotherhood spoilers Ed's daemon is a lioness, though maybe she should be a mountain lion or some other smaller wildcat to Torment The Boy Al was unsettled when the Incident happened and remains unsettled through the whole series until he finally gets his body back at the end. I'm not sure what his daemon would end up being though? Also Al has a super extended range like witches in HDM, but it freaks people out so he doesn't take advantage of it unless he has to. Or maybe both the brothers do, along with anyone else who's seen the Truth. Riza Hawkeye has to have a hawk, but I don't know what kind Roy Mustang... I want to say dragon, is dragon allowed? If not dragon then maybe also some kind of bird of prey? Maes Hughes has a wolf or possibly a wolfdog Olivier Armstrong obviously has a bear Alex Armstrong has a cow or an ox. Something massive and bovine with big horns. Izumi Curtis has a swan I'm not sure if the homunculi have daemons. Maybe they can manifest fake daemons for when they need to pass as normal people? If they do have real daemons, they're all bug/insect types. Lust has a praying mantis, Gluttony has a cockroach, Envy has one of those flies with markings like a bee (or some similar disguised bug), and I'm not sure about Pride. Father definitely has a spider daemon. Greed and Wrath might be exceptions to whatever the norm is for homuncili since they're part human too. Would he and Greed just puppet their hosts' daemons the same way they control their bodies? That would probably get kind of fuzzy in the case of Greedling. If homunculi do take the daemons of their hosts, daemon form would probably have been part of the selection criteria for the Fuhrer President candidates. Wrath would have a powerful, imposing daemon, exactly what you would expect a man in his position to have. A lion or an eagle or a wolf or something. If he had his own daemon, it would be a hornet. I think Ling would have some kind of snake but I'm not sure Mei's daemon is either Xiao-Mei, or a tiny panda identical to Xiao-Mei I'm not sure about Scar, Winry, Hoenheim, or any of the other characters. Does anyone else have thoughts on what they might be? Or different thoughts on what the characters above might be?
Spoiler: spoiler for Brotherhood I think the homunculi mostly don't have daemons of their own, or have chimaera-like daemons that probably don't read as fully settled. Pride gets away with this because he's a kid and isn't expected to be settled yet, he gets compliments for how imaginative he must be to have a daemon that's taking the forms of unreal creatures; his shadows make it easy to fake small daemons, and it gets read as shyness. Greed, I feel like, doesn't have a daemon until after Greedling happens. This bothers him a lot, and he really wants one but hadn't yet figured out a way to actually get a daemon that would work. Alternately, his daemon tries to play up looking Weird and Sort Of Scary, and his chimaera henchmen assume it's because he got experimented on too. (Or: original Greed was starting to develop a daemon. It looked super unsettled and weird, but he was incredibly proud of it because none of his siblings had their own real daemon. After Father reforges Greed, this proto-daemon stops existing; it's an indicator of just how much Father has stripped away from Greed.) Ling and Greed merging results in Greedling having a daemon that's unsettled for a while, until they start getting along better; whether it looks more like Ling's daemon or like something more Amestrian is a useful tell for who's in the driver's seat at that moment. The end result has elements of both, and Ling complains that he's going to have to come up with an explanation for why his daemon has resettled. If the homunculi don't normally have daemons / don't normally have normal-looking daemons, then daemon form would definitely be part of the selection criteria for the Fuhrer President candidates and they might have been experimented with to see if it was possible to fuse a daemon of the 'right' form to a prospective candidate. Wrath's daemon may or may not be a chimera actor who has either been muted (to make sure they can't give the game away) or thoroughly brainwashed; it definitely looks like a super-stereotypical daemon for someone in his position. I think probably Mei's daemon is 1) not Xiao-Mei, and 2) isn't properly settled yet because of how young she is. It splits its time between looking identical to Xiao-Mei, and trying to look like something Big and Impressive so that people will take them more seriously. (This absolutely does not work, and only increases how adorable and in need of support people think she is.) ....it would be hilarious if Ed's daemon were a Pallus cat. Just saying. But he's a bit too social for that to be a good fit, so it's probably a lioness. Winry's daemon probably settled earlier than usual, and looks like it's not sure if it wants to be a wolf or a dog or possibly a small bear. It bullies Ed's daemon just as comically as Winry bullies Ed. Scar's daemon is unsettled and has been since the war. It's used as part of the Amestrian propaganda for how crazy he is, but it's actually a result of his trauma from the war and his refusal to deal with it in a healthy manner. I don't think it settles before he dies, although it starts cycling through fewer options when he's getting to a better mental state. There's probably also in-text discussions about how an unsettled daemon isn't inherently a sign that you're crazy - it's a sign that you aren't okay, and unsettling is a normal response to trauma. I feel like a lot of Ishbaalan veterans experienced unsettled daemons in the aftermath, especially Alex Armstrong. Considering that Olivier makes a point of picking at him over being weak, he may not have resettled to the same form he had before - he definitely has a bovine now (an auroch, I feel like), but it might have been a bear before the war; that would line up with how Olivier digs at him over having broken in the war, and how he's not a good choice for leading the family - she probably has a pretty good understanding of how trauma can cause unsettling (what with running Briggs), but she needs to provide the appearance that she despises him and she actually is upset that he changed so dramatically in the wake of the war.
bnha daemons? all might's daemon reflecting his current form at the moment would be really neat; switching from bald eagle to, idk, vulture or heron. i feel like bakugou's daemon probably settles as... a wolverine. or a honey badger, maybe, stereotypical as that may be. midoriya's could be unsettled for the first bit of the series, mostly small and timid animals; she settles as a falcon, sleek and mobile and protective. uraraka's is a squirrel or hummingbird. tensei's is... a grayhound, i'd say. tokoyami's is either an owl or some sort of corvid, maybe just a straight up crow. not sure about most of the other students! i'm only partway through season two. shinso's is a cobra.
Spoiler: brotherhood spoilers I absolutely love the idea of Father giving Wrath and maybe the other homunculi brainwashed chimeras as fake daemons if they don't have their own, it is the exact kind of creepy he specializes in :D And of course he would have a lot of creepy daemon-related research going on in addition to all his other creepy research. I wonder if maybe there were some attempts to make chimeras by fusing research subjects with their own daemons? Also, now I'm imagining that the immortal doll army at the end is always crying out for their missing daemons as well as food, parents, etc. and it's extra horrifying! I was actually thinking that she settled very young, soon after the Emperor of Xing made his announcement about wanting immortality, and her family took that early settling as a sign that she was the one they needed to send. Settling at her age is rare but not unheard of, I'm pretty sure? And as for what it would settle as... i just really like the idea of her running around with two adorable tiny pandas, my reasoning is incredibly shallow -_- I don't think that daemons can resettle in HDM canon, even in response to extreme trauma - I think showing physical damage like scars or missing limbs (which normally never happens because daemons don't really do physical stuff like that) is the usual fallout. Settling is related to becoming an adult and what kind of person you end up being after the indecision of childhood. Of course, AUs don't have to follow the canon's rules, but I do like the idea that you could look at someone's daemon and instantly see that oh, yeah, they've been through some shit :P There would probably be some stigma attached to this as well - having an "imperfect" daemon is seen as a sign of either weakness or dangerous insanity. In this headcanon Alex Armstrong's daemon would probably have cracked horns or maybe a missing horn, and Olivier would pick on that as a sign that he'd lost his will to fight. (and now I'm also thinking of what damage other character's daemons would show, because so many people in this show have so much trauma) Wrt Scar, I was thinking that he would be some kind of very social animal that can sicken and die if it's left alone - maybe a bat? There's a lot of desert-dwelling bats, one of those would probably fit. Not only was his family one of the most important things to him, he also decided to join the monks as his life path. Having a group like that was vital for him. His whole arc (at least in Brotherhood) is about how the Ishbalan massacre sickened his soul, and he only started to heal when he began to (reluctantly) gather trusted friends and allies around him again. I also had another thought about Alphonse - I think he would be an exception to the thing about touching other peoples' daemons as well. Other daemons touching his armored form don't feel a thing. (this makes those times when someone has to hide inside him easier, but is still very unnerving for everyone involved.) But I still can't think what he would settle as!
Spoiler: brotherhood spoilers I think I recall that Mei got sent because there wasn't anyone else available? Or she basically volunteered as tribute, or stole the supplies that her clan was gathering and ran off to do the quest or something. Basically "her clan definitely did not want to send her and no adult thought it was a good idea, but she took the choice out of their hands" is what I'm recalling. She doesn't read as a Settled kid to me, though - she tries to put on a very brave and mature act, but she's still a smol and very much still figuring out who she even is. (Also the idea of her daemon preferring to look like Xiao-Mei but puffing up to try and make Mei look more impressive and mature when they're feeling pressured appeals to me. As does everyone else responding to that puffing by going "that's adorable, you're being a very brave kid but you're way out of your depth".) Huh. Admittedly, I didn't finish reading the books - I got fed up with them about partway through the...second one, I think? Some point after the boy protag got the magic knife, and the whole thing about Separation and Excision had been revealed. I know that "unsettling as a response to trauma and then resettling" is a thing that's been discussed in this thread before and "that doesn't adhere to canon" hasn't come up before now. So idk. I do like the visual of someone who has been traumatized having a daemon that's gone back to shifting through forms (although with significantly less variation than you'd see in a kid who hasn't settled yet) - an indicator that they've gone through or are going through some shit and haven't properly processed or dealt with it yet; someone whose trauma isn't actively fucking them up in the day-to-day could definitely have a more battered-looking daemon (Ed's might be missing an ear and a chunk of tail!), and it's probably a much more common look among the veterans and refugees. Ling might comment on how many Amestrian daemons look like they've been chewed to pieces, actually! (And it might be contrasted with how his looks nearly pristine.) So with that as a thought, Scar's daemon might be shifting through a bunch of appropriate-to-him-and-Ishbaal forms - mostly bats, maybe also meerkats or something that lives in large communities and doesn't cope well with being on its own; it starts shifting less as he starts healing, but I don't think he was fully healed by the time he died - it may have narrowed to two or three forms by that point, though, all along the same lines. I do like the idea of those who've seen the Truth having that mark their daemons somehow. Not by taking something from them (the Truth only seems to take body parts; not stuff that makes up the core of who you are), but maybe adding specific patterning to the portions that match up to what their human lost? Not quite a tattoo, although it looks a lot like one, but definitely a good identifier for anyone who's seeking out such people. (Izumi's daemon has the marking on its belly. They're both pissed to see that Ed's daemon has a matching marking on her front and back legs, and this is what twigs Izumi to realize that Ed tried to do human transmutation. It's very, very hard to tell if Al's daemon has the markings at all - he doesn't remember meeting the Truth, so if the markings are there at all, they're incredibly fuzzy and can easily be handwaved as "well, that's just a Normal Fur Pattern" especially since it would cover the whole body.) I think Al probably doesn't settle until a few years after he's gotten his body back, but trends towards felines like his brother.
Spoiler: re: Mei (brotherhood spoips) from what I remember, Mei got sent because her clan needed a royal heir to go on the trip to find immortality to make the emperor happy and choose that heir to inherit his throne, and...she was kind of the only heir they had. from context of how things worked in Xing, since each of fifty clans sends the emperor one concubine to bear a child for the emperor so that clan will have one royal heir, I'm thinking it's the norm for each clan to only have, well, one royal heir (if that, since there's fifty clans but apparently only forty-three heirs). so they may not have WANTED to send Mei--but a royal heir had to be the one to find and bring back the secret to immortality if they wanted the emperor to choose their clan's heir to inherit the throne, and Mei's clan is apparently poor and downtrodden, they could really benefit from Mei becoming the ruler, so....they kind of had to send her. only a royal heir could go on the quest, they needed what succeeding at that quest would bring, and her clan only had one heir. eta: and Mei almost definitely went "we need this and I'm the only one who can go", like I doubt she had no say in the matter or something, but she probably also recognized that their clan NEEDED this, and so did her clan, and there was only one person to send--so whether she or they liked it or not, she went.
Spoiler: Brotherhood spoilers Ah, yeah, HDM went a bit more into the connection to your daemon and what exactly settling means in the third book. Going by HDM canon, becoming unsettled would be kind of equivalent to a regression to childhood and resettling would be fundamentally changing everything about who you are as a person - as I see it, unsettling is the sort of thing that could maybe happen to people with advanced Alzheimer's or something similar, not so much people who've experienced trauma, because trauma doesn't make them not themselves anymore. I do think that people who experience a lot of trauma in their childhood tend to settle either very early or very late, but I can't remember if that's actually canon or just my headcanon. I'm pretty sure it does go against canon, at least as far as I can remember, but I mean. It is an AU, so it's all up to personal preference! There's lots of good ways to do the basic concept of "your soul has a physical animal form." I just tend to stick close to HDM canon when doing daemon AUs because I happen to really like everything about how daemons work there (though I often toss the more technical stuff about Dust because it doesn't translate well to other settings). I love this idea! Maybe the markings are pure white patches, to mirror how Truth manifests with the parts that were taken? Which would make Izumi's pretty hard to see, if her daemon was a swan. The "missing" parts could be edged in black like Truth as well? I also think the daemons would keep the markings even if their people managed to get back what they'd lost, because that still Did happen, but maybe they would slowly fade over time. I was also thinking something feline for Al! Specifically a Maine Coon, the breed that's enormous and badass but also extremely fluffy and the Friendliest family cat. Only problem is I'm not sure if they exist in the FMA universe, since I'm pretty sure Maine doesn't :P Maybe a Norwegian forest cat? Was also considering giving him something enormous like an elephant, to show that his soul is still kind of in the habit of being enormous. That wouldn't be as inconvenient for him as it would for other people because of his extended range thing. Buuut I think a cat works better! (though maybe it's too close to Ed's? idk idk) And I was imagining him settling literally the instant he got his body back, because naturally he would have settled a few years back, probably around when Ed did (which I think was the moment he decided to join the military - early settling because childhood trauma!). He was basically already settled, his daemon just hadn't caught up yet. Being stuck to the armor really fucked with Al's whole situation re: his connection to his daemon. tangent: I think Al's daemon becomes unusually tactile while he's in the armor, because that's the only way he can experience even an echo of basically any physical sensations. His daemon is always touching things, even going so far as to tug on people's clothes sometimes, and spends a lot of time in a cuddle pile with/riding around on Ed's daemon. She spends a fair amount of time in bird form so she can flit around investigating things. She even eats, which daemons don't normally do. Her lack of a daemon's usual sense of personal space when it comes to other people is yet another thing about her and Al that freaks people out a bit, and Al tries to get her to cool it since he doesn't like unnerving people, but what he really wants deep down is to be able to touch people again, and the behavior of his daemon reflects that. I think she probably actually has touched Ed a few times, during particularly low moments, as a way of comforting and reassuring all of them. Every time I post here I give Al more daemon-related bullshit to deal with. Poor Al. Also finally I was considering it at work yesterday and I think Hoenheim would maybe have a donkey, or some other pack animal since I'm not sure donkey is right. Definitely a pack animal though - both for his past as a slave who didn't question his situation much until Homunculus prompted him, and for the majority of his life spent traveling and carrying the burden of hundreds of thousands of souls. Maybe a horse? A camel? Camel doesn't sound right either... Whatever she is, she has pale golden fur to match Hoenheim's hair.
