@roach I think in modern day or equivalent settings, you could argue that people would have a relatively wide variety of daemons thanks to nature programs on TV, school trips to the zoo, and similar- like, a kid from Oregon may not be likely to meet many Bengal tigers on a day to day basis, but they'd be familiar enough with the idea of them that their daemon could potentially settle as one if it really fit well. As long as you had the ability to find some YouTube videos and the time to watch them, you could wind up learning a lot about stuff you never saw in person. Could actually be an interesting AU detail, now that I think about it- nature science and zoology being a somewhat larger part of children's education than in our world, because of the potential for learning more about possible daemon forms. You'd probably still have a reasonable majority of people winding up with local-ish animals (or ones with some kind of cultural significance), because they'd be what they were most familiar with and could relate to best, and of course there would be people who didn't have access to information about nature stuff for whatever reason, but with globalization and increasing access to knowledge, you could justify some more exotic animals if you wanted to. TL;DR Your point is valid, but consider: "Dude, you were born in Idaho, why the fuck is your daemon a kangaroo?" "The Internet."
IIRC in that fanfic, the Night Vale one, most of the daemons have some kind of justification? Like Carlos has an armadillo but that doesn't seem like a weird animal to know about, and the other scientists have like, a hamster, a snake, an iguana, a wren - the weirdest is whatsisface the scientist's binturong, and I figured he was in a situation similar to Asriel, being super academic. And then the people in Night Vale are just weird (and even then, IIRC Khoshekh only settles on weird cat after seeing such cats in person, so it's not like it came out of nowhere?) IDK, it's been a while since I read that fic.
Okay I can't stop thinking about these ones... Spoiler: Hohenheim's and Father's daemons: so many spoilers Hohenheim's Phillippa probably settled shortly after Homunculus started teaching him alchemy, as some "wise" thing like an owl- something not considered befitting a slave, while he's getting his chance at changing his station. Homunculus named her as well as him, and they both have some self-loathing issues about that but they've never seriously tried to go by other names. Of course, after the Xerxes circle went off, he'd suddenly acquired the souls of half a nation, and I think if anything's enough to un-settle a daemon it's that. Xingese stories of the Western Sage include his daemon that had learned to change her shape again, and some alkahestric mysticism got piled up around it about going full circle and transcending and so on. (The truth is, for a while, she couldn't actually stop. Too many souls.) When in time they got a handle on being a Philosopher's Stone, she was finally able to hold a single form again, but the Xerxes daemons are still within her just like the Xerxes people are in Hohenheim. She is not a naturally-occurring creature, but a chimera. (Fortunately, in the alchemical superpower of Amestris, chimera daemons though uncommon aren't completely unheard of.) As for Father, well, obviously in this AU that's where he got the idea of splitting off pieces of his soul. The homunculi are effectively humanoid (well, most of them are humanoid) daemons, created intentionally out of Father's Stone, then severed. Sadly, this means they don't get daemons of their own... except maybe for... Spoiler: Wrath and Pride All the Fuhrer candidates were carefully severed early in life, of course. Bradley never even met his daemon while he was old enough to remember. According to his handlers, the mountain lion that sat wild-eyed and afraid by his bed as he recovered from his transformation was his own, retrieved from storage when it became clear he was going to survive, because the Fuhrer of Amestris must seem to be properly human. He can't confirm it through his own perceptions. As for Pride, I have no idea how I'm going to keep Mrs. Bradley from noticing this. The idea of having a selection of interchangeable talking chimeras and forcing Envy to stand in for occasional shape changes, while hilarious, seems a little overelaborate. Regardless, Selim's "daemon" will probably settle as early as they can plausibly manage. She'll be very proud of how mature her son is.
Related to Selim: one of the things I didn't mention about DtB is that one of the main characters is a contractor with the ability to possess the bodies of animals, who spends most of his time as a talking cat. He would be a crazy-valuable asset in the daemon AU, because even if you lean closer to HDM canon where people can tell daemons from normal animals on sight, the sheer force of "talking animal" is probably enough to distract a lot of people. All he has to do is possess a nearby pigeon and land on someone's shoulder, and bam, they've got a fake different daemon that can even talk to prove it's real.
@LadyNighteyes wow, that would be pretty perfect. After all, real animals don't talk, so if one does, obviously you were mistaken about it not being a daemon, right? Me, I think I'm going to end up blaming a lot of stuff on Envy, because I don't think I can justify the kind of chimera technology it would take. Speaking of, I think most of the human chimeras were combined with the same animal as their daemon, because that makes the transmutation go more smoothly because of reasons. There are some exceptions, because obviously the chimera-makers needed to test that theory, right?
Pride could also wander around without a visible daemon a lot and say "she's a bug hiding in my pocket" or something.
Yeah but Selim usually pretends to be Normal, if Serious kid, right? So he wouldn't be expected to tend towards insects... I'd suspect a very noble-looking dog or bird or something for what he pretends to be.
Kids love bugs, though! Heh. I do think the Super Noble Dog would probably be the best aren't-I-adorable-and-innocent choice, but hey, he can just go with "being a bug right now" when Envy has to be elsewhere. ...actually, most of the military characters should probably have dogs. Let's nix the bear for Alex and give him a pitbull- big and tough and powerful and ridiculously cuddly. And Kimblee should have something conventionally evil-associated just because I think that would fit with his "follow your nature" philosophy...
I dunno, I'd vote English bulldog for Alex. One that's less inbred and dysfunctional than the current state of the breed, but. It's got the big/tough/powerful associations, but also a bit more potential connotation of ~nobility~, such as that PASSED DOWN THE ARMSTRONG LINE FOR GENERATIONS. Kimblee... scorpion? The fable does, after all, involve following one's nature. And that it's a bad idea to trust him. :::PPP
I approve of both of these ideas! Someone else can have the pibble, maybe Buccaneer? Miles has a more deserty-type dog. And speaking of deserts- dunno about Scar yet, but Scarbro had an ibis because scholarly.
Wait a minute, waaaaaait a minute. I think I solved this. Pride can operate a second container as long as he can keep his shadows connected, we know because he did it to Al. So really, all they'd need to do, at least after the supposed settling, would be construct the "daemon" body the same way they did the Selim-body, however that was, and then it's totally natural for someone to want to stick close by their daemon, right? Maybe he sticks a little closer than strictly necessary, but that's still not too weird.
Actually I think the normal state of affairs is a daemon sticking close to a human, sitting on a shoulder or head or whatever. So that wouldn't even ring any alarm bells.
Yeah, my thought re: pibbles (what a good nickname) is that since the breed has a not-entirely-deserved reputation as vicious guard dogs, somebody with a pit bull daemon would probably be someone perceived as a sadistic thug. (Sergeant Detritus from Discworld probably has a rock with legs that's shaped vaguely like a bully breed of some sort. :::PPP )
Also, as many state alchemists other than Ed should have dogs as possible, in the service of "dog of the military" jokes. I'd vote for Roy to have a Doberman- another breed with a bad reputation and a connotation of viciousness that's rather less so than advertised (cropped pointy ears, docked tail- she looks the image, just like Roy projects a certain image). Could give Scar a dog too, in service to the same sort of irony where he's using alchemy to hunt alchemists.
Hmmm. Roy and Scar kind of have the same problem, which is their significant character shifts well after settling should have taken place. Roy only started projecting his image after he decided he intended to be Fuhrer. Mind you, his pre-Ishval self was kind of what I'd describe as "puppyish", so we don't have to go too far afield. And it'd be best not to pick a breed that would probably torpedo his chances of being taken seriously... maybe some kind of terrier or collie-type thing? Scar was a kind of warrior-priest, comfortable with violence but not crazed with it like he became, and more than a little on the conventional side. Also his frame of symbolic reference comes from a different culture than most characters'. He could be a dog, but I've been pondering some kind of desert feline, like a caracal or something, to kind of subtly highlight his parallels with totally-going-to-settle-as-a-cat Alphonse. And, now I think of it, his differences of opinion with Bird Scarbro.
Not a specific series, but I like "lone wolf" types having wolf daemons *because* of the stereotype, when in reality lone wolves have a terrible time getting by because they're pack animals. And it parallels quite a few protagonists realizing how much they need their friends.
Yoki definitely has a rat of some kind, which is just as well since we need to get him mistaken for Marcoh at one point- just give Marcoh something small and hideable too! I'd say a snake because of medical associations, plus the "evil" associations for someone who's done horrible, horrible things... oh god, what am I going to do with the Curtises
Nah, Sieg totally has something tiny and adorable. I am convinced of this. (Also, great, now I'm trying to figure out Jade Curtiss.)
oh god yes. Hamster for Sig y/y? Izumi might have a bear, she's kind of unlikely-kindred-spirits with Olivier, though maybe we should go with something that makes it slightly less immediately obvious, idk. Badger? Or, coming from another angle, the Pelican that was alchemically symbolic, and was rumored to feed its young with its own blood? (Actually, no, a pelican would be kind of ridiculous, but I've been finding all this alchemical animal symbolism and I want to find some way to use it here, gdi) Incidentally, Olivier and her bear are giving me all kinds of feelings... like, in Briggs the doors and hallways tend to be big, in part because military equipment is supposed to be brought through them but also because it's her fortress, a lot of it was built under her direction. And of course the family mansion was built for Armstrongs to live in, say no more. But when she's in Central Command the bear has to squeeze through doors and it's all confining and stuff and a perfect visual metaphor that, however big the scale of the conspiracy itself, the conspirators are largely small-minded, small people, and her personality is so big and threatens to burst this corrupt place at the seams just by being there and aaaaah
