Daemons and doppelgangers: How do you talk about it?
One thing we know in a rock-solid way about daemons is their singularity. Every daemon is unique to its joined person, every one settled in a form uniquely suited to that person's metaphysical makeup. In the HDM universe and in other canons with singly-occurring characters, this makes for crossover potential virtually without a hitch.
Science fiction, on the other hand, presents us with its own problems. How do we handle canonical clones or doubles in an AU with daemons? The representation thereof implies significant opinions about the nature of the soul and about the narrative purpose of clones in the original text. I'm going to be using two different canons to probe this phenomenon: the 2005 Michael Bay action flop The Island (which I loved) and James Cameron's sadly canceled TV series Dark Angel.
The basic rundown of each is this: in The Island, Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johanson play clones of paying customers who are told that their "insurance policy" is nothing more than a collection of organs in some sort of mechanically sustained environment, not conscious or human in the least (patently untrue, as we learn through a series of chase scenes, sex scenes and explosions); in Dark Angel, Jessica Alba plays one of a number of genetically modified transgenic super-soldiers called X5s. Her generation is primarily crossed with feline DNA, though there are many other characters with many other "cocktails" of animal characteristics.
Let's take on The Island first. Here we have a host of people whose entire purpose is to be genetically identical to their "sponsor." They are engineered to be born at the same age as their sponsor, so while Ewan McGregor's character looks like he's in his thirties, he's actually only three years old. If we give the clones daemons and match their daemon to their sponsor's daemon outright, we deny them the free will and individuality the film wants to espouse. Where does the personality come from? What's inherited and what's unique? What determines the clone's daemon's shape? They live in a sterile, contained environment -- how do they know about the different animals? Is it settled at all, or does it change, like a child's? There are implications that memories from the sponsor were imprinted or inherent in the clone -- what else does that entail? The clone device forces us to examine these issues if we want to write good fiction about the trope.
Don't forget about the darker aspects: what are the villains expected to do about their products' daemons? In The Island, the clones are given basic human fulfillments like socialization and the rudiments of education because organs created just on their own (i.e., what the business advertises) all failed after being implanted. Proper humanity is a requirement for flourishing and survival. This creates problems for our villains -- how do you contain a product that so clearly has a soul, both within the clone population itself and among the ordinary employees? A daemon creates double the amount of free thinking and inquiry, as we see in canon with Pan and Lyra. Is Intercision widely practiced? Are they trying to find a way to create clones without daemons? What would that mean about the source of daemons?
Those are questions for canons with straight-up one-to-one clones. Dark Angel's complications are much greater. Much is made of the fact that the protagonists are not only modified and created humans, but that they are part animal in significant ways. Animals don't have daemons: do the X5s? What about the earlier models, the Nomalies and the mistakes? What's the tipping point, in terms of genetic makeup? What characteristics does one need in order to "qualify" as human?
The X5s are designed and trained from childhood to be soldiers. Later, they are reappropriated as undercover operatives and assassins, meant to blend in with the rest of society. Pullman's soldiers tend to have fierce dogs or wolves (as with the force of Tartars in The Golden Compass). Are the X5s constrained by their DNA to only have cat daemons? Through the X5s, Dark Angel constantly illustrates the struggle between being a soldier and being an individual; in this case, it's not only a question of what you were raised to be or what you become, but very literally what you were born to be. What sort of pressure from their upbringing do the daemons of the X5s experience? What would happen if someone's daemon was deemed not "martial" enough? How would the program tailor itself (or not) to the expression of each child's daemon, or vice versa? Canonically, each transgenic has an identical twin (whether it survived to adulthood or not, two of each were born to surrogate mothers): here we run into the same issues as with The Island, about personality and agency and individuality.
I don't know how to answer these questions to my own satisfaction just yet. I would love to hear your thoughts, though, whether just through discussion or (always delicious!) through fic of your own. Even if this has just made you think of more questions, please please add those in too.
What are some other canons these might apply to? How do those circumstances present different challenges to conceptualizing daemons?
Science fiction, on the other hand, presents us with its own problems. How do we handle canonical clones or doubles in an AU with daemons? The representation thereof implies significant opinions about the nature of the soul and about the narrative purpose of clones in the original text. I'm going to be using two different canons to probe this phenomenon: the 2005 Michael Bay action flop The Island (which I loved) and James Cameron's sadly canceled TV series Dark Angel.
The basic rundown of each is this: in The Island, Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johanson play clones of paying customers who are told that their "insurance policy" is nothing more than a collection of organs in some sort of mechanically sustained environment, not conscious or human in the least (patently untrue, as we learn through a series of chase scenes, sex scenes and explosions); in Dark Angel, Jessica Alba plays one of a number of genetically modified transgenic super-soldiers called X5s. Her generation is primarily crossed with feline DNA, though there are many other characters with many other "cocktails" of animal characteristics.
Let's take on The Island first. Here we have a host of people whose entire purpose is to be genetically identical to their "sponsor." They are engineered to be born at the same age as their sponsor, so while Ewan McGregor's character looks like he's in his thirties, he's actually only three years old. If we give the clones daemons and match their daemon to their sponsor's daemon outright, we deny them the free will and individuality the film wants to espouse. Where does the personality come from? What's inherited and what's unique? What determines the clone's daemon's shape? They live in a sterile, contained environment -- how do they know about the different animals? Is it settled at all, or does it change, like a child's? There are implications that memories from the sponsor were imprinted or inherent in the clone -- what else does that entail? The clone device forces us to examine these issues if we want to write good fiction about the trope.
Don't forget about the darker aspects: what are the villains expected to do about their products' daemons? In The Island, the clones are given basic human fulfillments like socialization and the rudiments of education because organs created just on their own (i.e., what the business advertises) all failed after being implanted. Proper humanity is a requirement for flourishing and survival. This creates problems for our villains -- how do you contain a product that so clearly has a soul, both within the clone population itself and among the ordinary employees? A daemon creates double the amount of free thinking and inquiry, as we see in canon with Pan and Lyra. Is Intercision widely practiced? Are they trying to find a way to create clones without daemons? What would that mean about the source of daemons?
Those are questions for canons with straight-up one-to-one clones. Dark Angel's complications are much greater. Much is made of the fact that the protagonists are not only modified and created humans, but that they are part animal in significant ways. Animals don't have daemons: do the X5s? What about the earlier models, the Nomalies and the mistakes? What's the tipping point, in terms of genetic makeup? What characteristics does one need in order to "qualify" as human?
The X5s are designed and trained from childhood to be soldiers. Later, they are reappropriated as undercover operatives and assassins, meant to blend in with the rest of society. Pullman's soldiers tend to have fierce dogs or wolves (as with the force of Tartars in The Golden Compass). Are the X5s constrained by their DNA to only have cat daemons? Through the X5s, Dark Angel constantly illustrates the struggle between being a soldier and being an individual; in this case, it's not only a question of what you were raised to be or what you become, but very literally what you were born to be. What sort of pressure from their upbringing do the daemons of the X5s experience? What would happen if someone's daemon was deemed not "martial" enough? How would the program tailor itself (or not) to the expression of each child's daemon, or vice versa? Canonically, each transgenic has an identical twin (whether it survived to adulthood or not, two of each were born to surrogate mothers): here we run into the same issues as with The Island, about personality and agency and individuality.
I don't know how to answer these questions to my own satisfaction just yet. I would love to hear your thoughts, though, whether just through discussion or (always delicious!) through fic of your own. Even if this has just made you think of more questions, please please add those in too.
What are some other canons these might apply to? How do those circumstances present different challenges to conceptualizing daemons?