#cain meta

🌈COLOR SYMBOLISM🌈

>> Cain: Yellow is a color I use a lot for him when playing with themes of growth and healing, namely because sunlight is a HUGE motif for him. The warmth and comfort of the sun, light being something needed for plants to grow and thrive...

Yellow is bright, it's warm, and it's something he can find in the people he loves! His best friend's yellow eyes, his boyfriend's golden hair. It's a color signifying his friendship and his love!!

Conversely, I use a lot of oranges when playing with his themes of grief, guilt, and trauma. He sees fire in his nightmares, it's a color that will never leave him, it made him who he is. It signifies the destruction of his old life and a rebirth into the person he is now. Orange is a color for anger, passion, confusion, and trepidation.

✍️ NAME SYMBOLISM✍️

✍️ Cain Rook: Cain Rook was a fake name that he assumed when he fully committed himself to the life of a career thief. C.Rook... crook.

His real name is Daniel Bishop though! So much of his name is just biblical references... which is intentional, given his childhood religious trauma. Daniel means "God is my Judge", Cain is a biblical figure who killed his brother out of jealousy. A rook is a chess piece that looks like a tower, but a rook is also a thief... a bishop is both a chess piece and a clergyman. Daniel was a faithful son who believed in God for the sake of his mother, but Cain is a scorned man who wishes he could take back his innocence.

Cain replacing the person Daniel was is deeply symbolic, Cain almost feels like he killed that kid when he looks through the warped glass of his survivor's guilt. It feels wrong for him to move on, he feels like a crook (and he is a crook!! he's an actual thief). He's trying to find anyway he can to rationalize what happened and why he feels the way he does... but it hurts! So he tries to create distance instead. ------------------

✍️ Dante Inferno: Meta-wise, this name references Dante's Inferno! I heavily associate Dante with the 9th and final layer of Hell from the poem-- Treachery. His greatest sin and the coldest, deepest layer of Hell. I thought it was fitting, given that they're a drow from the Underdark, who became a pirate that uses a submarine as their main vessel... who betrays their own people by selling them out to The Spider Queen for their own gain.

And yet, Dante is caught up in their own kind of purgatory. They have dug themself so deep that they can no longer find their way back up towards the light. They are deeply unfulfilled and unhappy by what they're doing but they continue it because it's all they know now!! It's the only thing that's working for them. Until it doesn't.

💪ABILITIES/POWERS SYMBOLISM💪

>> >Solaire is absolutely my #1 oc for this particular question. His story is deeply entwined with his abilities/powers!!

TLDR: Solaire is a phoenix fire sorcerer... who gained his powers when his mother ingested a phoenix feather elixir while pregnant with him. She had fallen ill and needed this elixir to live and save both her and her child. However, Solaire was born sickly... and were it not for the residual phoenix essence that he'd absorbed, he would be dead!!

While this phoenix essence allowed him to continue living and had also gave him incredible fire powers... these incredible powers also consumed his life. His father only attempted to nurture these abilities within him, which isolated him from the rest of his family.

Unfortunately, he was neglected for most of his life, though he doesn't see it that way. As a result, he grew up as quite a unique blend... being entitled, vain, and arrogant... but also profoundly lonely, angry, and confused. Yearning for any kind of connection, but unable to figure out how to earn it, without digging his claws into someone else and holding them close. Personality-wise, he is a Nightmare. ------

>>> Solaire does not know a life without his powers. His power symbolizes strength, control, beauty, and radiance. Destruction and pain. His fire burns OTHERS but not himself... right? He was brought up thinking that these are the best parts of him. These powers are his worth and without them, he is nothing special. He is weak and fragile without them.

It's an incredibly toxic mindset, given that he's chronically ill and his illness is directly connected to his powers,,!! Whenever he overuses his abilities or strains himself too much in any way, he becomes extremely sick and fatigued, on top of having regular flare-ups. It's built up a lot of self-loathing inside of him!! ------

>>> Ah but to tie it all back into symbolism... everything relates back to the phoenix and to fire. Fire can be beautiful and warming, something that can help life prosper, but it can also be extremely devastating and destructive. Solaire didn't know how to use his fire in any positive way and it ended up hurting him and everyone else around him more than anything. But because of that phoenix essence, he will always bounce back. It's a nasty cycle. Hurt, heal, hurt, heal, and hurt some more. ----------------

I have so many thoughts about this particular subject but I'm getting extremely rambly about it and not wording it as cohesively as I'd like!! So I'll wrap it up here for now.