oh, this is such a good question. i can’t believe I’ve never thought about it until now! I’ll do a part two soon.
i’m so conflicted about Gereon. i can see him having any über banal mammal form, but one that still turns out to be very capable and useful despite being so common – sort of a metaphor for a generation of men used as cannon fodder, one as useful as the other, despite all their individual strengths & peculiarities. like, the war impacted these dramatically young men so much that their entire personalities remained stuck on a few, deeply ingrained concepts, and the consequence is that they all settled in not identical, but similar forms.
(he DEFINITELY settled in a trench)
OR I can see him having an objectively…odd daemon. something small and quirky that kind of signals him being broken from wwi onward. a bat would be good in this scenario.
OR, even more heartbreaking…Gereon never really settled, at all. or reverted back to an unsettled stage. that’s why bruno and the other, non-PTSD-burdened people refer to psychologically-traumatized veterans as “broken machines” – because their own souls reflect this brokenness. they wear the war on their most intimate part. mixed animals, ugly crossovers, creepy-looking things that other people look down on.
gereon could have a form that’s only slightly out of the norm, and that only adds to his anxiety (who will be he first to notice? when people look at her like that, are they wondering wether we’re normal?)
Charlotte is going to be another hard one, given that she’s my favorite character. i know i’ve described her as a stray cat before, but I’m not sure it holds enough ground for it to be her form. i need to think about it. (whatever it is, though, he’s witty and answers back quiet often. he loves dancing as much as she does. he needs to be quick, resistant, i-may-be-small-but-i’m-hard-to-kill animal, too)
Greta has a small dog-daemon. a friendly-looking, fast-tailed creature; all big brown eyes and white & ginger fur. excitable, and chatty, much more than greta is. dogs are known to be very faithful, maybe even a bit gullible, but sweet and lovable – which Greta definitely is.
maybe a mix between a beagle and a calmer breed?
Stephan settled as a songbird – maybe a mockingbird? or a nightingale, something plain, small and not flashy at all, but with a splendid voice.
his parents’ daemons would listen to her songs and move their paws/beaks/tails across their humans’ skin following the rhythm, so they could hear them too.
Kardakov has a beautiful, long-legged, rusty-colored female dog. i can see her having a honest look to her. dogs are loyal, and kardakov has always been ready to die for a cause.
she’s missing one ear, and by the end of the series she walks with a small, but noticeable, limp.
Svetlana: i’m obsessed with her having an objectively ugly, off-putting daemon. maybe some type of mantis? but i’m thinking about something that gives an air of ambivalence… i’d say a mutt of some sorts; a bulky, snarling thing, and female, too. probably some sort of half-dog, half-ukrainian wolf mix? a woking-class daemon. bulky, ferocious-looking even with a diamond collar on.
her father never really took any care to explain to Svetlana how settling works, and just shrugged at her daemon’s form and said that he always knew she was dangerous. Svetlana was always both darkly proud of her being so ugly, and at the same time she held a deeply shame because of it. but she’s got teeth that could easily crush a man’s bones, and her dusty-colored, opaque, unrefined fur is hugely effective when she pairs it with an expensive grey coat.
she knows people are entranced by this beautiful lady followed by her dog daemon, and that they explain it to themselves with stories about the ugliness of the war and how it changes people, forces them to change – but she knows better. take off the makeup and the jewelry, and she’s as blank and ruthless as the taiga. her daemon reflects that.
The Armenian has an octopus. he keeps her in the aquarium in his restaurant. people actually don’t know she’s his daemon until he nonchalantly puts his hand on the cold glass and they see her tentacle rising from the bottom floor to meet it.
