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| Fan Panel: "Empathy for the Devil" -- All Souls Con 2017 (left to right, Angela, Valerie & Jean) - Photo by Tim Trevaskis |
Daemons Domain is the brainchild of three overachieving women who met
online in 2012 because of a shared passion for a book - A Discovery of
Witches. This combination quickly grew into a friendship and an
unhealthy obsession with all things de Clermont! Eventually, they
decided to invite the world into their personal chat box overflowing
with historical research, speculation, and flights of fancy. The
podcast, Daemons Discuss!, is their fortnightly deep dive into the All
Souls Universe. Sometimes serious. Often irreverent. Occasionally
ridiculous. Always All Souls.
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| Daemon antics! - taken in the library at the Isabella Gardner Museum (photo: © 2013 Jennifer Wood) |
So you've found the 'Meet the Daemons' page! Since you are here, we are going to assume that you are at least somewhat curious about our story. Okay! It's long(ish), but here we go ...
We got our public start in December of 2012 by running the fan campaign Armitage4Clairmont (December 12th, 2012 - August 22nd, 2017; the dot-com web domain expired December of 2018) when the screen adaptation was a mere whisper of possibility. At the time, it had been optioned by Warner Bros. We were the first All Souls fan entity with its own website + accompanying social media accounts. As intimidating as that seemed to us at the time, we figured if we were going to go for it, we should go big! We took on quite the project. Our intended mission was to convince fans of the books to embrace Richard Armitage as Matthew Clairmont, and we had go the other way, too — try to convince RA fans to embrace the series (that one was a bit tougher). With the community we fostered, we were able to make our share of noise (to people's joy/chagrin). That's when the epiphany hit us hard. We realized that we LOVED talking about the books, sharing history factoids, doing character studies, making Pinterest boards, having giveaways, sharing images (our own and others), and having conversations with fellow trilogy lovers. Before we knew it, our corner of the internet grew beyond all boundaries of our imaginations. We lovingly called it our 'monster;' sometimes out of control, but still very much ours. There was actually a point in 2013 that if you googled 'Matthew Clairmont,' our site came up first (yikes! maybe we flooded the internet a bit too much 😳).
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| The browser view when googling 'Matthew Clairmont' in May of 2013 |
☞ As an aside, we enthusiastically embrace Matthew Goode as the actor chosen to portray Matthew Clairmont. RA was our guy for five years, and #MatthewSquared will be for the next five! We are all in. RA was the perfect age for the part when we started the crusade. Five years later, Matthew is the same age Richard was then. It all happened the way it was supposed to. A vampire is supposed to be ageless. Human actors aren't. Those are the breaks, kids. Apparently, screen adaptation wasn't going to go as fast as we imagined in 2012 (what the heck did we know, anyway?), and this journey has opened our eyes to many realities. Just because rights have been secured, it doesn't mean that it's a 'done deal'. Five years and three production companies later, here we are! Anyway, we digress! Back to the story . . .
In January of 2015, we made ourselves confront the inevitable: the #RA4MC campaign will have to end when the production got the green light, and casting was announced (no matter which way casting went). After all of that effort and fan-fare, what would we do (certainly not pack up and go away quietly)? That's when the idea of Daemons Domain was born. We already called ourselves "Daemons" as an attempt at anonymity while running Armitage4Clairmont, so the name made sense. 'Why did you want to remain anonymous?', you ask — okay, you probably didn't ask, but we are going to tell you anyway — imagine your boss googling you, and stumbling upon a fan-girl site for an actor ... that you run. Well, that's not exactly what Armitage4Clairmont was, but would your boss really care about the minutiae?! That's why. We're glad you get it!
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| Not sure who the artist is who did this, but it cracks us up! |
More recently, we came to the conclusion that we really didn't care who knew what we were into. Producing the podcast made us confront that elephant. We believed that in order to do a podcast well, we had to ignore our fears, and present our most authentic selves. With that — finally — we were out of our proverbial Daemon closets. We were new at this podcasting thing, and we worried that since it wasn't perfect all of the time, there would always be someone out there judging us harshly (it's you, isn't it?! STAHP IT! 😂😜). Luckily, one of us reminded us to 'SNAP OUT OF IT!' just when we needed it! *cough* ANGELA *cough!*
When it comes to All Souls, our loved ones fear we're a tad insane — and they know we're a lot obsessed — especially since we approach our book related adventures with the same level of attention and devotion that's required by each of our high-stress, high-responsibility, real-life careers. Our families shake their heads at us when we spend hours discussing theories. They politely cheer us on when we get to do really interesting things because of our 'hobby'. Bless them for understanding us so thoroughly and tolerating our lunacy! This series and friendship has been our 'soft place to land.' Let's hope they remain as tolerant during the second wave ... the opening to a continuation in this universe (Time's Convert), and the the reality of a television production! Buckle up, fam!
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| Taken on the Muriel's Jackson Square balcony during our stay in New Orleans for All Souls Con 2017 |
We thank you for taking time out of your day to visit our site, and we hope you are informed and entertained by our musings. We are humbled by the positive response we've received thus far, and only hope to live up to the praise we are given. Welcome to our world, and please enjoy your stay!
Angela, Jean & Valerie.
a.k.a. The Daemons.
P.S. About the layout and design of Daemons Domain.
This design was a very interesting project. We all decided we wanted it to look and feel like a mixture of "decayed beauty" and something out of a Tim Burton film! We came up with this, and as it is with most creative endeavors, we didn't know what we'd end up with until we were done. We are quite pleased on how it turned out!
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| Listen to the pronunciation |
Based on how we described ourselves above, you can see why we would gladly embrace the 'daemon' moniker!
When we say "Feed Your Daemons," we don't mean feed us! We believe everyone (example: Matthew and Diana!) has a bit of daemon inside...we are actually suggesting that you should occasionally abandon what's expected and 'normal'. We are encouraging you to give in to the indulgence — wander into to the world of madness that allows one to create, think, imagine, and explore different ideas and concepts freely.
We used elements from the following alchemical pictures:
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| Kircher's Moon Phases |
The damask blue "wallpaper" on the side is just how we would picture our theatre lobby being decorated. Classic, yet slightly different and whimsical. Nothing expected or predictable!
You'll note the colors chosen for this look represent both warm and cool. We've also included the sun and the moon. Both are unions of stark opposites:
"—warm and cold, light and dark, female and male, witch and vampire, a conjunction of opposites."
"That makes her not only a creature of fire but one of water, too, capable of moving between the elements. The firedrake is a union of opposites."
"I turned the page. Here was the image sent to my parents, the one the Bishop house had saved for so many years: the phoenix enfolding the chemical wedding in her wings, while mythical and alchemical beasts witnessed the union of Sol and Luna."
"Like sun and moon, we were unconcerned at this moment with time, distance, and difference. All that mattered was our position relative to each other."
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