Post by Cain Meverel on Mar 23, 2014 21:30:18 GMT
CAIN MEVEREL 18 HUMAN
PLAYED BY COLIN MORGAN
PLAYED BY COLIN MORGAN
- 1/10/1224 MISCREANT/ WANDERER/ THIEF BISEXUAL MALE |  “What the hell, what are you doing here? Don’t look at me all shocked like that - you’re the one lurking in some rocks in the middle of the forest. Oh, and now you look disapproving - I’m sorry, am I upsetting you? Maybe next time you won’t sneak up on someone like that! Can't you see I'm having a private little brood? …seriously, you can go now. I have absolutely no desire to talk or even look at you. Why does no-one ever just leave when I tell them that? You're as bad as my father - oh, there's a man who can't take no for an answer! Insufferable fool... keeps cornering me and yattering on about responsibilities, and how I need to make myself a better man, and nonsense like that. Senile git. Doesn't realise that half the village looks down upon him as 'that Meverel man'... thinks just because he's good with a bow he's got the respect of the village. Ha! Nothing'll get you respect around here, not unless you're born with it. Those De Perronets think they've got it made, don't they? Lording it up in their manor, and do we see them doing anything when people go missing? When dark things roam the woods? Ha, of course not. They're the ones who decided to curse the place, after all. ...you're still here, I see. Are you completely stupid? I mean, looking at your face I'd have assumed pretty stupid, but given that you're still here I'm downgrading you to complete imbecile. You know, you could just wander off into the jaws of a werewolf and do us all a favour, really. Oh, the disappointed look. That's new. I've never seen that one before. In case you hadn't noticed - and given my doubts as to your intelligence, I suspect you might have missed it - that was me being incredibly sarcastic. Oh, now you're deciding to leave? About time. Fall over a rock and get cursed by a witch on your way out, or something. It'll be fun. [pause] Ha. Idiot. Didn't even notice I'd lifted her purse. Now, what do we have here...?" Cain is neither a particularly nice person nor an easy one to understand. Invariably when one talks to him he is bitter, sarcastic and scathing, using words as weapons to great affect, and seemingly having absolutely no good points to him whatsoever. As prickly as a hedgehog and bad-tempered as a bear, he isn’t one to make friends easily, or even to have many conversations with people that don’t end in angry shouts or the other person throwing their hands up and leaving in despair, because Cain really is terribly hard work. He is also a surprisingly keen judge of people and of what makes that tick, but unfortunately he generally only uses that to be cuttingly cruel when he’s talking to others, highlighting weaknesses and using people’s fears against them as highly honed knives. He takes most anything as a criticism, can be bitterly sarcastic about even the most innocuous of topics, and professes to care about absolutely no-one but himself. He can turn his sharp tongue against himself just as easily as he can against other people, and is filled with seething resentment and anger that even he doesn’t quite understand the cause of - if he was better at self-reflection, he’d probably be a far nicer person, but as it is, he is caustic as acid, highly unpleasant and a complete failure to his family. And it is that where a lot of him lies. The eldest son of Horatio and Aiyana Meverel, he has grown up in a poor family, feeling simultaneously like the unfavoured child and the one who is expected to achieve the most. Initially a happy child, his tongue began to grow sharp and his heart bitter when he started going to school, where he was forever being picked on for having worn clothes, for being behind many others in the school due to not having that much time to put into schoolwork, for being ‘a Meverel - you know, a kid of that ragged hunter who took his wife from a life where she could have been happy to one where she lives on the border of poverty’. He got into more than a few fights on his family and his father’s behalf, but was always far too ashamed to tell his parents why he had gotten into such fights, and so drew their disappointment and disapproval. It was this that began the exceedingly complicated feelings he has towards his family, his parents and especially his father. On the one hand, he is ashamed to be part of the family, ashamed that they are poor and don’t live as well as others; on another hand, he is angry that people look down on them because of that, for can’t they see they are good people doing the best they can; on a third hand he is angry at his parents, especially his father, for being the way they are, for not being wealthier; and on a final hand, he desperately wants to prove to people that he can be better than they think he is. And yet, that is exceedingly difficult, for anger and bitterness tend to overwhelm everything else, and he has not yet discovered how to usefully channel such emotions forward. His personality and his feelings towards his family are further complicated by the fact that, as the eldest child, he has always felt like far more is expected of him than all of his other siblings. While initially he didn’t resent being asked to look after his younger siblings, or help his father lay traps or skin carcasses, when he started to fall behind in school due to having a great deal of chores to fill his time with, then he began to resent it. While a more sensible soul would probably have talked to his parents about this, Cain instead kept it to himself and allowed it to fester, so now he is as bitter and cutting towards his younger siblings as he is towards anyone else… though he does feel worse about it. He does, in fact, periodically feel rather guilty about the terrible way he usually treats those around him, but wrapped up in anger and resentment as he is, he tends to just channel that guilt into being angry and resentful, and frankly at this stage in his life he really isn’t quite sure how to change. He feels like he’s been the disappointing son for so long, that he might as well be a really disappointing son. To that end, as well as his inability to know what he wants to do to himself, he has found it impossible to hold down a job. When he was younger he used to help his father with his hunting, but as that relationship became increasingly toxic, he refused to do so (the argument that surrounded that involved a great deal of harsh words, Cain storming around, and general ill feeling on all sides) and so went to look for a job in the village. He has worked for a multitude of the village’s merchants as a general dogsbody, but those never lasted long, for he could never restrain himself from mouthing off to either a customer or his boss, unable to not be grumpy about the menial tasks he found himself doing. He apprenticed aboard a fishing boat for a time, but that ended due to his generally insufferable personality, and everyone else on board the boat thinks he should count himself lucky that he was thrown off onto land rather than in the middle of the sea. As such, he is now an itinerant wanderer - if it is possible to wander while you’re still in the same village that your family home is in - and is turning towards thieving. At first, it was to see if he could - now, it’s because he enjoys it. And if he’s going to be a disappointment to his family, he should probably go all the way, right? He is also unfortunately rather good at it, for while he is sour and angry, he has also discovered that he’s really good at lying. He can use his words as bitter weapons, or he can weave them into believable excuses or spin them so long that whomever he is talking to is confounded and he can make a quick exit. (In fact, if Cain ever decides to turn his life around and stop being a menace, he would probably make a very good bard or an actor.) While he has so far only partaken in petty crime, the rush he gets from the act may well soon tempt him into escalating - and he's becoming very good at ignoring that small, guilty voice in the back of his head. It's easy enough to drown it out in being angry and making bad decisions. No longer living with his family, he tends to hole up either in the forest - for as Horatio’s son, he knows the woods very well - or in the driest streets he can find in the village. He manages to eat well enough, for even if he resented it he did learn his father’s lessons of hunting fairly well, and is a good shot with the bow he stole from his family’s house on the night he finally left for good. He keeps the bow hidden in the forest, well-wrapped in oil cloth, and quietly steals arrows when he runs out. He cannot escape running into his family, though he avoids it whenever possible, and inevitably those meetings end terribly, with Cain being his usual sarcastic, biting and angry self, and invariably provoking whomever he is talking to into being angry as well. Frankly, Cain prefers it when they’re angry with him than when they’re disappointed, or saying that they still love him and could he please just come home, because anger is something that he can be angry in return about, something that he can resent, whereas the other options… well, those make him feel rather worse about himself. He hides the fact that he still, in fact, does care about his family incredibly well, to the extent that most of the time even he doesn’t realise it. He manages to bury any possible compassion for anyone from both himself and everyone else very, very deeply, and it would take a great deal to appeal to his better instincts. Those better instincts do still exist, however, even if he denies it strenuously, and even if in his words and his actions he manages to demonstrate quite well that he is absolutely ignoring them. His gift with words means that if he wants, he can be incredibly charming, and while sometimes he puts on such a front to get what he wants, usually he doesn't, and is sharp-tongued, easily angered, and almost impossible to have a civil conversation with. In short, Cain is not a guy to go to if you want someone nice, someone reliable, or someone at all helpful. If you want someone to be grumpy at you, to be scathingly sarcastic and to pick out your weaknesses and make you either feel terrible about yourself or the world or like you want to give Cain a good slap upside the head, then he is your man! Increasingly, he may also be your man if you want something stolen and, frankly, given that he’s not a bad hand with a bow and a knife thanks to his father, if you want someone quietly stabbed in a back alley, unless something happens that makes him reconsider his life choices and actually start making decisions that aren't completely terrible. Given his current penchant for making idiotic life choices, however, it's debatable how likely that might be. |
