#if prometheus can form a bond with the bird that attacks him every night maybe mel has a shot with eris

[freenos]

meleris thoughts below (and update spoilers):

I feel like the Olympic Update sheds new light on some of the conversations between Melinoe and Eris. Because I think Eris is a bit better at getting under her skin than Chronos or Prometheus or even Nemesis at times.

When people challenge Melinoe’s outlook, she often ignores them or shuts them down completely. She’s like a brick wall at times, she doesn’t listen when she doesn’t want to.

But Eris just keeps ranting and prodding at her however she pleases and is, if anything, encouraged by Melinoe’s frustration and annoyance.

Occasionally, Melinoe asks her to elaborate on her opinions and entertains her little thought experiments, if only to try (and fail) to comprehend her point of view. Despite herself, she’s drawn to Eris and wants to understand her perspective. But that would mean questioning the authority of the gods or, for that matter, Hecate. And she won’t let herself do that.

I like that Melinoe, stubborn as she is, has someone equally relentless at matching her freak challenging her perspective, even if Eris’ goal is just to piss her off and cause more problems. They're both equally capable of being petulant, callous and unreasonable, just in opposite directions. I think they should kiss.

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

The daemon AU becomes incredibly sad but interesting if you put it to the universe of Alien/Prometheus/Covenant, and I just wanted to share some thoughts.

So humans would have their daemons, the representation of their souls walking beside them, and obviously you’d have so much funny stuff to think about if you and your daemon are in space. Like, certain daemons would be ill-suited to space and spaceships/journeys. 

I haven’t decided on what forms the daemons on the Covenant would take, but yeah. 

Synthetics, however, wouldn’t have daemons - and that’s where this gets kind of sad, because the whole crew would be even more unsettled by Walter because of it.

Because daemons are representations of souls, Oram snarks that this means Walter doesn’t have a soul. Daniels tells him to shut the fuck up; her daemon growls at Oram’s in warning.

“Maybe yours just isn’t visible,” She tells Walter later on, stroking the fur of her daemon as he curls up with her. “Scientists have proved that there’s possible other worlds out there - there’s probably one where no one can see their daemons.”

Walter doesn’t know whether to argue with logic or to just agree with her because he doesn’t want to annoy her.

Daniels’ daemon unsettles when her husband dies in front of her and keeps flickering between forms, much to everyone else’s unease. She hates people staring when her daemon changes, hates the looks they get. She has nightmares about her husband burning to death, about his own daemon disappearing suddenly. It’s another reason why she stays in her quarters more and more.

Walter is the only one who doesn’t stare or blink when her daemon changes forms, and her daemon ends up taking quite a liking to Walter. 

(”I wonder if it feels taboo if a synthetic touches a daemon,” he whispers to Daniels as she struggles to sleep that night. She brushes the thought away)

When the Covenant goes to mysterious new planet, Daniels’ daemon curls up safely around her neck as a ferret to keep her warm. When they start getting distress calls from the lander, he turns into a quick and agile panther, running alongside her in a rush to get back to the rest of the crew. Even as he turns into a lion to protect her from the alien attacking in the grass, he’s terrified and worried, unable to do much damage to the strange life-form. 

Because David is batshit crazy, he’s attempted to engineer his own daemons in his workshop but failed every time - just like he’s failed with his other experiments.

He even tried to transfer Shaw’s daemon to himself but it disappeared when she died.

Daniels’ daemon tries to protect her when David pins her down, but the android has superior strength and slams him into a stone wall, leaving both human and daemon weak. He torments Danny by saying the things he does, but also touching her daemon without permission - a taboo, a sin - and it makes her want to vomit.

Walter comes to the rescue and it gives them time to escape; Daniels wants to help him, but her daemon runs forward and the bond hurts too much to stretch, so she goes too.

Tennessee’s bear daemon or whatever (lmao just imagine him with a bear daemon I’m sorry) nuzzles Daniels’ in greeting when they rescue them; her daemon whispers condolences for the loss of Faris and her daemon. 

Daniels’ daemon helps her fight the alien and get it clamped in the crane, turning into a bird to keep an eye on her from above etc.

When she’s stapling ‘Walter’s’ cheek, her daemon presses his head against the stump where a hand should be and smiles. 

Her daemon curls up in her space helmet as a mouse when they’re in the terraforming bay to get rid of the other alien.

So when ‘Walter’ is putting the remaining crew under (and I’m imagining that there would be different sized sleep pods because of the size of certain daemons), her daemon changes into an ermine or a marmoset so that he can curl around her neck and sleep. 

When Daniels realizes it’s David, her daemon panics and switches forms rapidly in the pod - ermine, cat, moth, bird, monkey - in an attempt to get out but it doesn’t work and they both fall asleep.

And then because I like to pretend the film ended on a happier note and that it really WAS Walter and not David...

Daniels wakes up and her daemon still won’t settle; Tennessee sends her a slightly worried look when she’s not looking.

On Origae-6, the colonists are slightly judgemental and fearful of her because she’s a fully-grown woman whose daemon changes. She tries to ignore it, and her daemon snarls at anyone he sees staring.

Her daemon helps with the construction work, pulling heavy loads by becoming a horse and so on. It’s actually quite helpful.

Daniels, her daemon, and Walter build the cabin together, and her daemon actually enjoys talking to Walter, who responds to him like he would a human.

That first night in the cabin, Danny curls up with her daemon and cries herself to sleep in his fur while he’s a cat. 

As Walter and Daniels get closer and closer, so do Walter and her daemon - it’s a weird but wonderful friendship. 

Her daemon is the one who tells her to tell Walter how she feels - he nips her and digs his claws into her, and tells her quite bluntly “if you don’t do it, I will”.

Walter mentions the fact that he doesn’t have a daemon and is not human as reasons for why she shouldn’t be with him - she tells him what she told him on the Covenant, that his soul exists...it’s just not on the outside like hers.

He’s so touched that it convinces him.

Walter knows the rules and protocols, that it’s extremely wrong to touch a human’s daemon, so he doesn’t do it - Daniels’ daemon, however, is a sparrow one day and hops from her shoulder to his, turns into a mouse, and cautiously presses his paws to synthetic skin. It makes both Walter and Daniels freeze. He hadn’t even done that with her ex-husband.

When her daemon comes back to her, she looks sheepish and apologizes. “I have no idea what’s gotten into him.” Walter asks if she feels okay, that she doesn’t feel sick about it or violated - she slowly smiles and shakes her head because, actually, no...it felt kinda intimate.

Speaking of intimate, that raises the question for them when they do get to that point; usually daemons interact with each other during such an occasion while their humans are busy, but because Walter doesn’t have a daemon that can’t happen...so Daniels’ daemon looks sort of awkward and tries not to look, mostly at her own request.

(”For fuck sake, don’t look if it makes you uncomfortable - you’re ruining the mood” “Trust me, this is just as awkward for me as it is for you”)

After they’re finished, the most miraculous thing happens - Daniels’ daemon settles again. She’s in awe as she takes in his new form, because it’s beautiful whatever it is (I’m thinking a wildcat or some other kind of wild cat)

She tells Walter to touch the daemon, and after hesitating he does. It’s a really beautiful moment where they feel more connected than ever before - and Daniels finally feels whole again.

If anyone ever makes remarks in public about Walter’s lack of daemon, Daniels’ daemon hisses/growls/snarls in defense. Tennessee’s daemon does too, because Tennessee likes Walter and thinks of him as a trusted friend, so who cares if he doesn’t have a daemon?

When Daniels and Walter have kids, her daemon has to name their children’s daemons by himself since that’s usually what the parents’ daemons do. He takes the responsibility all too seriously.

The kids know early on that their dad is a synthetic because of his lack of daemon, and they accept it - “it makes you special,” Little Maggie decides as her butterfly daemon changes into a kitten. Young Jacob agrees, his Labrador puppy of a daemon nuzzling his hand. 

One day Maggie presents Walter with a small stuffed dog and announces, “this can be your daemon, Daddy!”

Jacob remarks that his daemon is “probably one of the plants in the greenhouse” because of Walter’s affinity with nature. Walter knows this isn’t possible, but it makes him smile and feel rather loved.

Honestly, though, Daniels’ daemon jokes at one point that he’s a daemon for the both of them and even though that’s not technically true, the sentiment is still lovely.

I’ve...thought way too much about this...