#boredsphinx

[mondaemonday]

Hey! Since I feel bad for asking so much, what's your process to analyzing animals as daemons? Any tips & tricks of the trade?

no need to feel bad!! I feel bad that I don’t really keep up this blog nearly as much as I should…

that being said though, I have an EVENT planned for September so keep your eyes peeled!

But back to your question. Tips and tricks.

Well basically my biggest tip is this:

research

research

research

I try to find out everything I can find on the animal, as specific as I can get it - wikipedia is my best friend but I also use lots of other sites. And then you have to kind of think of what those animal traits could reflect in a human. I tend to look more towards their behavioral traits but physical ones can tell you things too. Like blue morpho butterflies have VERY LITTLE about their behavior, but we know that they are beautiful and poisonous. I think that means a person who is very attractive and interesting, but also more dangerous than people think. They seem innocent, and they are in some ways, but they know how to protect themselves.

It can go in different ways too. Packrats have a tendency to drop whatever they;re holding if they see something better. You could say that they’re calculating, you could say they’re flighty, you could say that they are determined, you could say that they’re focused on the future rather than the past. It’s all about how you want to look at it, and so two people with packrats could be very different.

In that vein, I try hard to be as open-minded as possible. There are so many ways to be human, one animal isn’t going to reflect it better than the other. I like to be kind, and give animals the benefit of the doubt - if that makes sense. To go back to the packrats, I phrased it as a sense of curiosity, wanting to see what the next thing holds for them, rather than a more negative trait.

Also, try to focus on a few big traits to make it easier on yourself like I did with the packrats. I focused on that thing and extrapolated from there. 

I personally also have little tips for myself for assigning animals. Birds for people who are ambitious and have a wide view of the world - I think many aspiring actors or people desperate to get out of their small town life have birds for example. Dogs are for people who value loyalty, hard work and have a tendency to love hard (although that doesn’t mean indiscriminately). Cold-blooded animals are people who are a bit aloof - although that can be because of introversion or awkwardness or straight up vanity or a million other reasons. Sea creatures are rare daemons, and you’re more likely to have a daemon from where you’re from. Chekhov (the quintessential Russian) is gonna have a Russian animal for a daemon.

A lot of it though, is instinct. Read the animal’s history, their behavior, they mating styles, and just see what jumps out at you and makes you think  yes that’s what makes them them.

TL;DR: do a whole bunch of research and spin traits until they feel right

I don’t know if that actually helped xD

[mondaemonday]

Sorry for coming up with yet another question, but let's say Castiel gained a daemon once he fell to earth/became human. What do you think it would be?

It actually raises this really interesting question of whether Castiel has a soul during the times when he becomes human. It seems more a loss of grace than an increase in soul if that makes sense? Which makes me wonder if he would even have one, and what would happen to them when he went back to angel-mode.

I actually have this little headcanon-y feel (all my daemons are headcanons, lol, but this is one that I haven’t really thought out and thus is more ‘would this be cool?’ than ‘I have thought long and hard and think that THIS is the animal that encapsulates them) that during the times Castiel is human he has a little cocoon of a daemon in his pocket. They glow, when looked at it in the right light, and Castiel dips his fingers into his pocket to gently caress them sometimes. Wonders at the potential waiting inside them both, wonders what he is and what he will be.

When he goes back to being an angel he dips his fingers into his pocket again and feels nothing.

[mondaemonday]

Here we go again :/ but how would emotional & mental strength translate into a daemon's form?

I am not sure honestly! I think emotional and mental strength would mostly just correspond to a more mature daemon. Perhaps one who didn't feel the need to constantly change form, to constantly reevaluate themselves, but felt comfortable in their own skin. I would imagine that one with a mature daemon would also settle a bit sooner than other people.

[mondaemonday]

Okay, another question: is it common for daemons to settle on the forms of animals that they've already tried out before? Like, say they've tried out the form of a cat loads of times before, but one day it seems to just fit? Or is it spontaneous, like one day they try out another different form and bam, that's what they've been searching for all this time?

I think both are pretty common. I am not a daemon encyclopedia in any way, but in fic at least the latter is slightly more common. I would imagine that people's unsettled daemons tend to try out shapes of animals they like - animals who they would LIKE to be, because it reflects something they like about themselves. But daemons settle as what kind of person you ARE, not necessarily the type of person you wish you were. So people who have a pretty good handle on themselves, their daemons might not surprise anyone. A loyal person might prefer various dog forms and then one day settle as a dog. But maybe they are loyal, therefore taking lots of dog forms, but more important to their character is how they are loyal only to a few and are ferocious in that loyalty - the sense that they will END you if you touch one of the few they love - then perhaps they take on a predatory cat or something. There are many sides to people.

Basically

Although I will say I think it's less 'they just take on a form and BAM it fits' as it is, at some point they feel grown up and find the form they're in just fits them. Does that make sense? It's not that they're trying out lots of forms and find one, it's just that in the moment the form they take is the RIGHT one.