#i actually do like numair a lot just in... a different capacity

[anghraine]

Now that I've finally read it, the four immortals books :D

Favourite female character: Daaaaaine

Favourite male character: hmm, not sure, but … oh wait, no, it has to be Rikash. I’m pretty sure I cried over him as a kid. What an arc, omg

Least favourite female character: I didn’t care for Numair’s ex.

Least favourite male character: somewhat tediously, Ozorne. But he’s so unpleasant and just won’t go away. 

Favourite ship: I’m really not shippy at all about these? It’s hard to think of anything. 

Least favourite ship: Numair/Daine. Sorry, friends who like it, but it’s one of those that I was all YAY ROMANCE about as a kid and got increasingly creeped out by as I grew older, and especially as I became a college teacher. 

Book rating: 8.5/10! There are some writing choices that I have quibbles with, and Tamora Pierce is never quite top-notch for me, but what’s great in it is really great in a deliciously tropey way. 

#crocordile #respuestas #meme prattle #/ #// #/// #//// #///// #tamora pierce #tortall #our lady of the zombie dinosaurs #rikash moonsword #i actually do like numair a lot just in... a different capacity #daine x numair negative

[unculturedmamoswine]

Tortall Daemon AU: Daine

Hey guys, it's protagonist time again! This one gave me some trouble, but I hope you enjoy it!

So I'm hoping you guys will forgive me for this but in this AU, Daine doesn't have a daemon. This is a trait she gets from her father's side of the family.

Daine gets to be daemonless as a nod to her heritage, and as yet another thing that sets her apart in Snowsdale. Daine, of course, does have a soul, unlike Weiryn. But frankly? She doubts this as of early in Willd Magic. In canon, Daine is genuinely worried that she might be incurably mad, right up until Numair puts that magic wall between her wild magic and her core self. In this AU, Daine grew up with people edging away from her and telling her she was a cursed monster for being daemonless. Daine’s skill with, and love of, animals would here be attributed to her loneliness. “Poor thing, searching for the daemon she’s missing” say the folks in Snowsdale, knowing full well Sarra or Daine could hear them.

Once she’s free of Snowsdale, Daine tends to act as if Cloud is her daemon. She and Cloud fool nearly everyone, though Numair doesn’t quite buy it, and discovers the truth earlier than he lets on. Of course, none of the People are fooled. Beasts know the difference between a two-legger’s spirit and a real animal. By the end of the book, the main players all know the truth.

As of Wolf Speaker, Kitten acts as Daine’s daemon when necessary. Having a magical creature as a daemon carries its own stigma, but Daine is better-equipped to handle the judgement of strangers now. It’s long been said that only the mad have non-existent animals for daemons, and nowadays nobody knows that dragons are real. Even before they were banished to the Divine Realms, immortal daemons were vanishingly rare. Daine's act with Kitten would be normal around nobles and at state dinners and such, but over the course of the next couple books, it would become less common. (Man you should see Ozorne's face when he realizes!) Daine would be, by the time of, say First Test, tacitly ‘out’ about her no-daemon thing. Learning about her father is a huge relief to her, and gives her a bit more confidence when it comes to owning her own lack of daemon. It doesn’t bother her anymore by this point, because she’s learned who she is and what she is. She knows she’s whole. She never, never, gets used to seeing Sarra without a daemon, though. That’s the oddest thing about Ma being a goddess.

Meta-wise, I also chose to keep Daine daemonless because, well, how do you choose one daemon for a girl who is intimately connected to every animal? And how do you do shapeshifting with a daemon? I ended up deciding that those who shapeshift using the Gift have to meditate with their daemons until the two become one, and THEN they still have to shapeshift together into some other body. Those less skilled at shapeshifting must simply go it alone and leave their daemons as-is. So sure, a powerful mage could turn into a bird, but it wouldn’t do much good if their daemon was a buck or something. Have fun flying with a deer following you around on a ten-foot magical leash. Numair and his daemon are, of course, quite proficient at shapeshifting. But if you stay too long, your minds start to become one and it can be a bit hard to separate. And no wildmage has ever been powerful enough to shapeshift before Daine.

But why did I decide Weiryn doesn’t get a daemon? Well, while pretty much all living beings have souls, gods just...don't. A god is more like a force of nature than a person. They have no capacity for personal growth or change, and, as Aly noted in her dealings with Kyprioth, are very much not human. Kyprioth has to be a trickster; he can't just decide to go on the straight and narrow as a human could. Without souls, they can't choose their own paths. They are what they were made to be. Lacking a soul can be a good thing, though. Gods never have doubts about who they are or what they're for, the way a human does.

Fun fact: it's really common in human art to depict the gods with daemons. When the Cult of the Gentle Mother is on the rise in Tortall, we see art of her pregnant, and as far as I know, she never actually gave birth to anything or anyone. Same goes for daemons, they make the gods more relatable to a human audience. The Goddess might be portrayed sometimes with a horse daemon, while Kyprioth might sometimes be shown with a crow. Weiryn might get a hunting hound, and Oinomi Wavewalker is paired with an albatross a lot, but it’s all dependent on the culture and individual artist.

#tortall daemon au #tortall #tamora pierce #daemons