#to CREATE Jesus we need to create a Hebrew religon that becomes temple-era judaism
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So often alt-Earth worldbuilding falls apart under the slightest bit of pressure: what if every human on earth from birth had a sentient, speech-capable, physical manifestation of their soul that could shape shift and eventually settled on a form that revealed some inner truth about your person would that not radically alter the course of human history? To which the answer, apparently, was 'not in any meaningful way, no.'
Live theater in the His Dark Materials universe must be wild. Surely an actor's daemon also has lines to recite, so their daemon's form probably also factors into casting decisions. Maybe some plays have vague character descriptions for daemons, but I bet other plays have really specific or central daemon characters. And sure, big-budget theaters can afford to hire a separate actor with a particular daemon to stand backstage while their daemon plays its part onstage, but community theaters don't have those kinds of resources.
Like if you're casting for Julius Caesar, surely the real historical Caesar had a pretty iconic daemon, right? Are you going to cast an actor with a pigeon daemon as Caesar and just have everyone suspend their disbelief that it's Caesar's lioness, ἁμαρτία?
#I mean fundamentally the addition of daemons magnified the presence of tripping hazards times the entirety of the human population#it would have severly impacted the nature of domestication#and when you start eliminating house pets you effect everything from the Odyssey to grumpy cat#was Jesus's daemon crucified too?#NO SERIOUSLY DID THEY ALSO CRUCIFY JESUS DAEMON?#to CREATE Jesus we need to create a Hebrew religon that becomes temple-era judaism#With its heavy emphasis on animal sacrifice#In such a way that it accomodates every person in the scriptures having a talking animal companion#in order to create a state that could be conquered by the Romans to create conditions under which a Jesus could arise and be crucified#Understand this: it presupposes a version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms with TWO THOUSAND CHARACTERS#Since ever Generals Tom Dick and Zhang now also has a daemon#but not in such a way that it materially so distorts history language and culture#So that Will and Lyra can find one-another foreign but not alien#and every nation state in Lyra's world feels just like the one's in ours with some serial numbers filed off#every 'great figure' was unaffected by the potential increase in the odds of tripping over a nearby soul mongoose and breaking their neck#and hey what if I'm a Mongolian on the steppe and my daemon turns into a narwhal#Or an uncontacted pacific islander and suddenly my daemon becomes some northern european mammal no one's ever seen#I can't help it my soul is a mastodon that doesn't fit on the island or a boat please don't outcast me#“He had a horse daemon so I just assumed he'd also be... y'know...”#in the throws of passion his walrus demon crushed my mouse demon oops now my soul is dead#the conditions that create modern Britain ahve so many inflection points that it is incocievable that such a massive change in the firmname#of humanity would still create Lyra's oh-so-recognizable Brytain
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