cas

✰ personality/mannerisms

marked by a resounding sense of patience and compassion, albeit in the realm of synthesis with a very reserved and silent persona. on the surface, her speech is often brevitous, and she often seems preoccupied in contemplation and survey... she prefers deep reflection and 'chiselling out' her thoughts into apparent 'perfection' before speaking them aloud. if given the time, she can be exceptionally poetic, prose-y and longwinded, speaking of things quite philosophically. although occasionally overly convoluted whilst idle, she can quickly orient her mind to practical matters and confront odd situations with remarkable finnesse and speed. she's good at adapting to situations quickly and turning most stress and anxiety into 'energy' she can reuse. generally id condense this adaptability into the idea of her paying huge attention to context and the kind of person she needs to be... whether extremely direct and instructive or more laid-back and passive.
a huge part of her presence is also, strangely enough, the habit of anonymity... though she's fond of listening to others and offering advice she almost wholly avoids talking about herself and her past, often shifting the subject or giving people contradictory tall tales that rest in a perfect cusp of possible-impossible, often leaving people wondering how accurate her stories are. the only thing really confirmable was her experience with stunts and flamenco, because they're kind of hard to perfectly demonstrate without past experience. and she is quite talented.
generally she holds a lot of confidence in her talents. though unbeknownst to the other train residents at the time she was quite famous in spain for her unique mixed dancing style (where she'd incorporate dangerous live stunts into her routines) and she grew quite attached to her popularity. at the time she had a very even care for both theatrics and practicality and made it a point to never upset the balance, though following her death, where she lost her physical form... the aforementioned regard for safety started to blur, and this extended to interpersonal matters. this is perhaps best exemplified by her, alongside thuyết and míra, being insistent on sending peixin visions of their own apparent death. in her mind it's simply a more 'interesting' way to signal good future progression, rather than just meeting someone in a dream or something and telling them what to do upfront. nowadays she's much more insistent on 'making a show' and imposing this desire on others, which... is evidently not something everyone can handle.

✰ relationships

most notable ties are to lanuola. will write up more later 👍
strong friendship with lusine. in truth, she was only mildly acquaintanced with lusine and the two didn't hit it off right away, but once she realised lusine hadn't been anywhere for days she started to grow worried, leading to her proposing a search to lanuola. she and lusine only really grew close following the entire consciousness-blend in fornax, with lusine particularly seeking her out to thank her for the concern. they both have similar temperaments and hence blend well...
also decently close to míra but it's more of a circumstance thing and i doubt they'd be friends if they didn't inhabit the same dire form of existence... they occasionally butt heads over how to contact the living and will freely criticise the other though these moments aren't too frequent and they'll usually get over it and apologise.
her most prominent connection to a living fornaxgoer is freya — she's often the primary voice thon hears, and earnestly cas doesn't put much trust in any other passengers and finds other philosophies pathetic... they're both one another's main conduits to their respective 'planes'. cas finds freya extremely sweet and clever, their conversations are often very synchronised and mutually empathetic... and they kind of enable one another to go through with the entire cassiopeia thing.
cas has also reached out to olzhas a few times, though only through dreams, since eir clairvoyance leads to em getting overwhelmed when listening out for fornax messages. their chats are quite slow and leisurely, often about things like exercising or dancing, with near-complete ignorance of complex train matters. they both admire each other quite a bit.
her ties to isel are even more distant, but she spends a lot of time watching him paint or listening to his pseudo-radio show on the train, finding his creative stuff thrilling. isel only knows of cas through what freya's said about her, but would indeed adore meeting her... and in the cassiopeia success ending where he does, cas is the one who helps him adjust to being a fornax ghost and helps him quickly establish a voice in the fornaxsphere. i think they spend most of their time just observing and reminiscing on freya and olzhas, quite bittersweetly... :+(
has talked to marjolaine through the facsimiles interface, though there's a remarkable amount of tension between them. cas detests how much he 'sits around feeling sorry for himself' and wholly ignores his attempts at reaching out to her most of the time.

✰ misc

✰ her real name is casimiro montoya ramadhan. she solely introduced herself as cas and left her full name open to interpretation, earning monikers such as cassandra, caspian, castor... she responds to practically every variant. in the end the only person she ever told her actual name to, prior to her death, was lanuola.
✰ coincidentally (not really. i did this on purpose) 'cas' is the iau abbreviation for cassiopeia. smile. i want to say she's the reason the entire plan's referred to as cassiopeia, probably through a thing that's like 'freya's first thought when hearing the name 'cas' was the full variant being cassiopeia and cas accepted it so later on, when naming the message, thon decided to name it cassiopeia in her honor'. that's sweet to me.
✰ additionally her birthday is an addition of every cassiopeia associate's birth months — she's got olzhas' july, and the 9 comes from adding isel's april and freya's may as the fourth and fifth months....
✰ her associated instrument is windchimes, with an extension of mark trees and bell trees.

✰ role

kind of the meta backbone of cassiopeia! she empathises heavily with their entire philosophy and especially their whole air of showmanship, she's specifically their biggest aide in the fornaxsphere and helped facilitate things like the evoker plan.
she also serves as a heavy parallel to isel — with them both 'sacrificing' themselves semi-accidentally to save someone else, in tandem with using pseudonyms, wearing masks, emphasising drama and secrecy... in the barebones story cas kind of exemplifies isel's ambition and moreover demonstrates the entire romanticism the cassiopeia plan requires being detrimental, with the kind of overall idea of 'oh yeah everyone will end up dead just like she did if they keep pursuing this'... and as mentioned it does come full circle in the cassiopeia success end where isel himself also dies.
although i want to think about it more before i place it into canon, i also think the thought of a lot of communication with isel in that particular ending containing a lot of cas' speech mannerisms and the two kind of blending, at least in CERTAIN conversations, is a very fun way to demonstrate their similarities... the cassiopeia success end is already full of blatant irony i might as well

✰ motifs

both explosion shapes, comic book-style, and very prominent solar system themeing.... in particular being associated with dwarf planets.

✰ title

a parhelion (or sun dog as theyre also known) is a solar phenomenon that makes it seem like there are two bright stars on the opposing ends of the sun, in parallel... relevant to both like her pseudo-planet pseudo-star theme where its stuff thats close to being a big definitive part of the solar system but it just Isn't. and also parhelions result in triads of light which can be both taken as her connection with lusine and lanuola aaaaaand. perhaps another trio in the story. you know.
another important thing is that she's probably got the biggest association with traditional sun/star shapes out of any character. ive mentioned this on other pages but the sun, in ccs generalities, represents wisdom and excessive perceptiveness... and also death! due to everyone with its association either being capable of dying in an ending (isel and mazin) or being in close proximity to death by way of fornax (freya and peixin). and so visual epitome of sun being dead... very much solidifies that double edged sword of that motif

✰ inspirations

✰ significant basis in cojum dip by cojum dip. where the entire dwarf planets and mask thing came from...

✰ external

✰ artfight profile
✰ solo playlist - parhelion

✰ description

hair: a mystery....
face: always wearing a mask, wrestling-style, the base of it black with a protruding sun-shaped cover. an opening is present for the right eye, in a jagged starry shape. her left eye is missing, and part of her right eyebrow is split. she wears blue eyeshadow.
main outfit: wears a necklace with beads resembling, in order, makemake pluto and haumea. main anchor is a heavily decorated flamenco style dress, the base of it red and black with various gold frills. star patterns are prominent, and on the bottom right is a pattern of rings symbolising the orbits of the 8 planets. she wears gloves with similar fire-esque patterning, alongside diamond-esque star shapes at the nails. she also has blue and red shoes, reminiscent of security boots, with red velcro straps and circular silhouettes once again symbolising the 8 planets.
other: she has a tattoo of blue stars on her left upper arm/shoulder. she has various scars, most notably near the right side of her collarbone and right forearm.