I heard very traumatic events or extreme events can change a daemons form. So maybe stanley's changed?
Hooooooooo boy, you ask the tough, spoilery questions, donāt you? XāD Honestly, I was planning on tackling this subject later, but since someone actually brought it up, I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about the Tricky Matter of Stanley Pinesā Daemon.
First of all, as Iāve mentioned, I am not an expert on how daemons work in the HDM. All I have read are a number of (varying degrees of excellent) fics that are basically āX Universe with Daemons Includedā kinds of stories, which is where Iām pulling a lot of my headcanons for this particular AU from. And yes, I have decided in this āverse, it is possible - if extremely, extremely rare - for a daemon to become unsettled later in someoneās lifetime after something extraordinarily traumatic happens to them that alters their entire personality. Now, did this end up happening to Stan?
Short answer: No. It did not. But he pretends it did.
Long answer: When Stanford and his daemon disappeared through the portal and Stan decided to take on the identity of his twin, he was faced with a very big conundrum of what exactly to do about his daemon, since if thereās one thing you canāt exactly fake easily, itās pretending you have someone elseās soul. And pangolins arenāt exactly readily available to a homeless drifter without even 2 cents to rub together, either. Heād barely managed to bluff his way through going to buy groceries and his first tour in Fordās house the first time by bundling a few pillows and his actual daemon together under a blanket and pushing them in a wheelbarrow heād found in Fordās basement, and he probably wouldnāt be able to keep using that ruse much longer. He had been kicking around the idea of faking his own death already, and when he remembered that heavy physical/emotional trauma could potentially unsettle oneās daemon, his mind was made. He would kill off Stanley Pines, and āStanford Pines,ā wracked with grief and guilt and already more than a little crazy from whatever spooky science heād been up to in that remote shack of his would finally just snap, at least for a while. And if any relatives came calling and started asking questions, well, one doesnāt just āget overā the death of oneās twin, at least not immediately, right? So Stan caught a squirrel, kept it in a cage in his living room, faked his death, and the next time he went out in public, Stanford Pines now had a squirrel daemon.
However, the squirrel escaped 10 minutes before a tour was due to start a few weeks later. In sheer desperation, he caught a stray cockroach that happened to be scuttling up the wall, trapped it in a test tube, shoved it in his pocket, and began the tour. Stan noticed that the group was extremely unnerved by how his ādaemonā had apparently changed, and he started incorporating that into his āMr. Mysteryā persona, changing out different insects, birds, and animals as his tours progressed through the Shack, and the crowds just ate it up. His actual daemon stays hidden in his room most of the time, though he does take her out when the Shack closes and everyone else goes home, and occasionally out and about, just to keep people guessing. Only a few people like Soos and Wendy even know what his actual daemon is at this point. The twins eventually find out at some point during the first half of season 1, and she starts hanging around the family a bit more as Stan becomes fonder of the kids. Itās sometimes difficult for them to spend so much time apart, but their bond has a much greater range than most people due to them Separating as an initiation rite into a gang Stan got mixed up with for a short while during their time homeless, so theyāre able to bear it without too much trouble. Ā
(Separating, for the uninitiated, is something anyone can do but something very few people actually attempt due to it being so difficult to go through with. Itās a gradual stretching of the normal bond between a human and their daemon so they can be as far apart as they want without it hurting them. It does have to be gradual, however; do it too fast, too sudden ā like from a fall or from a vehicle taking off without one or the other on board - and the bond will snap, and youāll either end up dead or a mindless shell for the rest of what passes for your life. Itās a very challenging, painful thing to do, however, voluntarily separating yourself from your soul for a time, which is why most people donāt even bother trying it. Itās like getting oneās 12 year molars or wisdom teeth removed in return for the ability to, say, breathe underwater. Itās a cool and useful ability to have, it might save oneās life, and depending on oneās situation, one might even need it to be done, but that doesnāt mean that people would be lining up around the block to have 4 of their teeth dug out of their jaw and having to go through the awful recovery process, just so they wouldnāt have to come up for air in the swimming pool.)
TL;DR ā Stanley pretends to be unsettled to throw off suspicion that heās not actually his brother, and heās only able to keep up the charade because he and his daemon Separated during the decade he was homeless.
