lordess of the obvious

These days I sometimes find myself going, "Whoa, people on TDF have daemons!"

At a glance this is a very strange thing to be surprised by. It's The Daemon Forum. Of course there are going to be daemons oozing out of metaphorical pores.

Nonetheless, gone are the days when I could - and, embarrassingly, did - write a list of most members, their daemon's names, and their associated forms. There are several reasons for this. One, there are now well over a hundred members and my memory has its limits. Two, I don't frequent the forum nearly as much as I used to, so I can barely remember the names of members in general, let alone all the other details. Three, daemonism has become such a second-nature thing for me that I don't spend time observing other people's workings with so curiously keen an eye. And four, human-daemon anecdotes aren't as big a part of the community as they used to be. It just ain't talked about as much.

It's a touch regretful, in a way; silly as it could sometimes be, the level engagement and sharing that existed in TDF's days of yore made daemonism a particularly vivid experience. I heard and knew about the daemons themselves - not just what form they were taking or what witty quip they had imparted that morning, but whether they were more inclined towards comfort or blunt snark, shied away from touch or embraced the defiance of physics, always sided with honest reason or always sided with the person.

That said, things change, and while it might be for the worse in some areas, it's certainly been for better in others. Startling myself with the realisation that oh yeah, people still have these depths of relationships is not so dastardly a thing when it means those relationships are indeed still there.

(I also occasionally go, "Oh man, my daemon's name is Killy." Kilmaeyon is genuinely kind of nice. Killy was whipped up on a hurried whim and sounds like something you'd name a fluffy puppy with a knife in its teeth. 'Course, can either of us be arsed changing it? Nnnnope.)