The Daemian Union (TDU) V2 (POSTING OPEN!)

[miraphoenix]

Slightly offtopic: I think that traumas of the past cauterized certain emotional facets to my personality that are just now showing up this summer, so now I don't know if any of the forms we researched fit anymore. Joy.

Anyway, I used to have a pretty set couple of forms, but now it looks like those have been thrown into wild disarray.


On topic: Hello, -3B-!

[pancreas]

*is back*
Hey everyone~ Kite and I had a great time in Jersey, and we used it as a chance to take up some random and holiday-related forms! It was really fun, and I've decided that I love projecting birds. :3

Anyway, on the way down to the ferry, Kite was a bit... Strange. x3 He was in the form on a mini Buckbeak (the hippogriff from Harry Potter) which was fine, but he had the voice of Sumomo, from the anime Chobits. And he refused to say anything except yell "Warning, warning!" whenever we overtook another car. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Has anyone else projected two forms together? Say, a mix and match? And has anyone had their daemon refuse to say anything but a few words? xD

[Desmond]

Tibetador: I did find the elk form odd, but I'm comfortable with it. I suppose it also ties in nicely with the "aggressive-passive-dominant" part of my personality that's hard to find heads or tails of. ^.^;

Rogue Leader: He used to be like that, if I remember, though it varied between cheetah, various breeds of horses, and a couple different raptors... mainly to amuse me, because he'd run alongside the bus, trying to race it. Now, it's just his antlers that need to sort themselves out... one prong on each side wants to be strange and go back and forth between pointing up, and drooping down toward his eyes, like a pair of (rare) antlers that's displayed at my house.

Excuse the rambly. I just woke up. x.x Anaheim's not even awake yet. But thanks for the welcome, everyone!

[wolverine♥]

*waves* Hi 3B! ;D I'm Wolverine and the dae's Nijiri. He usually takes the forms of birds and some dogs, but we're very far from settling and too lazy to do any research now. xD

[Tibetador]

This summer, I had a lot of time to myself, and my daemon decided to appear to me [Reflecting back, I should probably add "again" to this; he was around when I was little, just heavily amorphous, and he started hiding after a bad event in my childhood]. All summer, he's been a relatively stable [usually young adult] elk since he decided on a form and a name, Anaheim [Yeah, yeah, like the city]... I've done some research and offered up some alternates, and though he's stubbornly remained the same, I won't say he's settled quite yet. He's also painfully shy and submissive, so he may or may not want his voice heard on here, or anywhere else others can see.

So... yeah. Hi?

Hey, welcome to TDU. :] Just as a pointer, remember that how long you've been projecting him as an elk, how often he changes and how stubborn he seems to be about what you project him as have nothing to do with the settling/stabilization of your personality and what animal works best as a metaphor for/symbol of your character traits and behaviors. It's you/your personality that settles, not him.

My daemon is usually an arctic fox or a red fox. He seems to like those, and they seem to suit me. He doesn't shift much anymore, I think he's close to settling. I feel more of an arctic fox... but you never know!

Ah, remember that it isn't him that settles, it's you/your personality. What forms he takes, how long he spends in those forms, how often he changes, those things have nothing to do with the settling of your personality. :]

These of course being your opinions, Garrus, doesn't mean that's true for everyone. I would be careful stating anything as absolute fact, as it may confuse or put off newcomers.

[Lizbutt]

These of course being your opinions, Garrus, doesn't mean that's true for everyone. I would be careful stating anything as absolute fact, as it may confuse or put off newcomers.

Actually that’s sort of a 'set thing' here. You are the one that has the soul, the one who has a personality and whatnot, NOT your daemon. You are the one who is settled/stable/unsettled, and your daemon just takes different forms.

[Kheisa]

Yeah, nah, Tibetador, like Carry said, these are pretty much accepted as truth in daemonism. It may just be an issue of semantics, but like I said on the last page, your projected form and your personality form are not necessarily related unless you want them to be (and even then, only one way). Partially as a result of people believing there is a two-way relationship between projected form and personality form, when someone says "my daemon is settled," generally what they mean is "my daemon doesn't change forms anymore when I project him/her/it." Which, I understand, can be the case. I imagine some people have only ever projected as one form, regardless of whether or not that form fits them. I could project Mami as a Mareep for the rest of my life and call him settled because he doesn't change, theoretically, if I really wanted to. It might cause some confusion regarding my use of the word "settled," but I could do it.

HOWEVER, and this is a huge "however," people tend to equate "my daemon is settled" with "my personality is settled." It's okay, it's a pretty common mistake, especially when you're new to the club (or the Union, as it were). But there is a difference between "my personality hasn't changed in a year" and "my daemon doesn't change form as much as s/he used to." The former is what we really care about in daemonism-- and, I know, the former can influence the latter, it's just that we focus on the cause, not the effect-- and a lot of times we see folks who don't know the difference. I might be unsettled or stable right now, I don't know, I've changed enough in the past year to throw that into doubt, but it has nothing to do with the fact that I lately project my daemon as one of a grand total of about four animals. That's just whatever I want him to be. Maybe to a degree whatever he wants to be. But what I want him to be has no bearing on who I am as a person, which is what we care about in daemonism.

I feel like this was terribly organized and maybe I wrote it a bit dryly so it might be difficult to muddle through, but I promise I tried my best to articulate properly my position on this matter *u* Carry gave a pretty good tl;dr of what I intended to say, so if you want I guess you can just skip over the post, but I tried to elaborate to give more insight into what it is we believe in terms of daemons and settling.

WHICH, OH DEAR LORD HOW DID I FORGET THIS, HERE IS A PRETTY BOSS ESSAY ON SETTLING THAT YOU GUYS SHOULD READ BEFORE CONSIDERING SETTLEDOM. I AM USING CAPS SO THAT IF YOU ONLY READ ONE THING IN THIS POST IT'S THIS.

Edit: as I come back to this it looks strikingly like I'm just straight up throwing information at you, Tibetador, and that's my mistake- I accidentally switched from "specific individual response mode" to "generalized information spreading" mode partway through and didn't make that at all clear.

[Desmond]

Well, I'm relatively stable myself anyway, personality-wise, so no worries there. xD I know I'm not completely settled, so I'm not going to use that term. And I've done the research and have offered everything that's complete opposite and more suitable to myself, but it just doesn't quite work out.

And, by the way my brain's set up, he more or less does his own thing. It's more subconscious for me, rather than a conscious action, which is how I do a lot of things - it's also the reason I accidentally tick off my foreign professors by mimicking their accents, to my chagrin. It's probably a result of meditating far too much and losing certain conscious functions to my subconscious.

[Cinereus]

I think the point is that you can have your daemon's form correspond to your form, it's just that it doesn't have to. Newcomers come in and think that because they're stable as a golden retriever their daemon always has to be a golden retriever, when really the daemon is just a mental construct that can take any form it wants to, because it's your imagination - it's simply coincidence or personal preference if your daemon prefers your settled/stable form. :]

Do be do de do, speaking of which, I'm in a little crisis right now and would love some feedback on whether people could see basenjis for meeee? I'm still pretty comfortable with NGSD, but I do feel like I've changed a little bit in the past year. Unfortunately I don't have an up-to-date RA at the moment, but I'm slowly working on that - this is just a really busy time of the year for me.

[Tibetador]

@Kheisa, thank you for clarifying.

@Garrus, I'm not a man, so repeatedly referring to me by "man" is unnecessary. ovo You say that someone's projection of their daemon has absolutely nothing to do with and is absolutely unrelated to the personality of the individual projecting it, and yet there is a persistent desire from most people who get in touch, so to speak, with their daemons to find some sort of meaning in the shapes that they attribute to their daemons. Our minds are pattern-seeking by nature; we are greatly sight-oriented both as highly intelligent creatures and as omnivorous predators. You said

I don't know what it is about this idea that's hard to understand?

It's perfectly understandable if you understand that it's human nature to look for a meaning or a purpose behind everything with which we interact. Why should how we see imaginary friends of any kind be any different? Why else would there be so much time and effort devoted by daemians to finding forms that "fit", so to speak, with them? Yes, I could picture Kael as a purple polka dotted slug from Urpadurple, but there is absolutely no way in which I could relate to him in that shape. Except for people that don't project their inner voice as something, there is a purpose that can be determined for almost any form that someone projects their daemon as. Whether it's something symbolic, amusing, random for the sake of randomness, comforting, there's always some explanation for it. And most people can find a way to relate to the shape their daemon takes regardless of the shape or the length of time their daemon remains in that form. And no, daemons don't have to settle, and we don't have to stop thinking of them as anything else if we don't want to because there isn't a need...but for some it is still preferred that they do find one form which dominates as the most comfortable projection. *shrug*