FM-CRau General Info (still slightly wip)

[not_over_yet]

Name: Basil [ canon: Basil of Baker Street | crau: Basil Facilier ]
Canon: The Great Mouse Detective [ canon history* ]
CRau: foolishmortals [ round 3 - endgame ]

*[ Note: The wiki has its problems... most pertinently in that it claims his disguises "inevitably fail", an assessment I just don't buy. Basil clearly goes undercover for cases pretty often and he's a well-known successful detective, not a well-known laughingstock--the only disguise in the film that actually "fails" is one seen through by Ratigan (who was not only already expecting Basil, but likely knows him better than anyone else in London). ]

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Canon Personality / Game Events / CRau PersonalityPre-CRau Personality:

Basil is supremely confident in his own abilities. Somewhat unfortunately, he is highly capable--if he thinks he can handle something, he's usually right. This is unfortunate because where someone else would fail and Learn A Valuable Life Lesson about pride and reckless behavior, he succeeds and learns nothing of the sort ("gaining further evidence your smug arrogance is totally justified" being the polar opposite of Learning A Valuable Life Lesson). As a result? He tends to forget he's still capable of royally fucking up. This doesn't necessarily lead to ~terrible consequences~ or anything, but it does lead to him experiencing failure as a Major Event worth sinking into self-indulgent despair over and he'll just. flop somewhere and be annoyingly useless until he's presented with another opportunity to succeed (...at something he deems worth his valuable moping time--he stays picky about what he'll grace with his attention).

Snide comments come more naturally to him than pleasantries; he's just kinda difficult to deal with in general, and he doesn't value his social life enough to put effort into disguising this. Said social life has definitely suffered for it, as there's no evidence he's maintained more than two long-term relationships pre-film: one being with his landlady/housekeeper (who notably: a-he pays, b-still finds him exasperating, c-he readily resorts to bullying out of the room if she bothers him) and the other being semi-job-related with his nemesis Ratigan (who is both vocal and demonstrative about his hatred of Basil). At film's start, Basil's been obsessed for years with putting Ratigan behind bars, and that's kept him far too busy to really reflect on the fact that he's lonely. He's not unaware of the fact, addressing the issue just hasn't made it onto his list of priorities. He accepts the reasons others find him abrasive as perfectly valid, but that's hardly cause for a complete personality overhaul of all things--it's not as if it's that or be ~forever alone~ after all. Adjusting his own standards is simpler (and far more sensible) than wasting time trying to meet those of others. By the time he meets Dawson, Basil's "ideal relationship" bar is set at right about the "begrudging respect from someone engaging and at least mildly intelligent" level. And then Dawson's offering sincerely-meant positive reinforcement, even in the face of his... general Basil-ness... is incredibly novel and really nice and can he keep this guy forever, is that a thing he can do.

And while Basil's full of himself yes, he does genuinely want to help people and rarely intends to hurt anyone--though it's harder for others to hurt his feelings than it is for him to hurt theirs, which he can easily forget to take into account. When he realizes Dawson's actually taking his ranting to heart after they lose Olivia, Basil regrets it at once, purely because he's hurt someone who hadn't done anything wrong out of malice. (Basil notably takes nothing back, as he continues to consider Dawson at fault from an objective standpoint, but he also offers reassurances that the problem is fixable until Dawson starts feeling better.) Basil's instinctive response to distress is an impulse to help somehow. He's unfortunately prone to then readjusting that response with a pretty durn egocentric mental assessment of "but how worthy is this problem of my attention", but he also won't hesitate to endanger himself for another if needed. And for all his smug arrogance, he's very much not a glory hound--he rarely expects praise for his own accomplishments. Of course, at the start of things he didn't particularly want to acknowledge others' contributions either... but over the course of the film he starts giving others more of the credit they're due. After Dawson rants him out of his self-pitying despair and sparks the epiphany that allows Basil to free them from Ratigan's death trap, Basil credits Dawson for the whole escape with cheerful sincerity.

Aaaand because it will come up, and it's not exactly what it seems at first glance: Basil's repeated harping on Ratigan's being a rat. If Ratigan was proud of being a rat and despised being taken for a mouse, Basil would find a way to continually misidentify his species. Ratigan's species never comes up unless he himself is physically present to be hurt by the comment. Rather like how Basil's spirited rants about Ratigan's genius and ~villainy~ never happen when Ratigan's within earshot. Given that Ratigan seems to take accusations of wickedness as compliments and is also one of the few people who can legit hurt Basil's feelings... Well, they both go out of their way to enrage each other, partly in retaliation for whatever the other one did last and partly for the hell of it. Their relationship is a mutually-destructive MESS--and by the film's end, really the only part that's changed is Ratigan has been forcibly removed from active participation because death. Someone save them from each other.

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Canon Personality / Game Events / CRau PersonalityCRAU:

About a week or two after the movie's final scene, Basil woke up in an unknown location: at first he assumed he'd merely been kidnapped, but the situation grew increasingly bizarre, from finding he wasn't the only victim to discovering information about each one of them tacked up on the wall; finally culminating in the revelation that they were all expected to take part in some sort of murder-based blood ritual. Basil also quickly realized that magic had to be real--their host Dr. Facilier was far too obviously undead for any other explanation. Basil made their escape his top priority. As part of that, he started trying to learn about magic from their host's daughter Freddie (herself a victim of the mass kidnapping). Soon Dr. Facilier introduced another element: each week they would be given an incentive to participate in the murder-game--to start with, personalized curses that could only be broken by one of them killing another. Basil found himself haunted (as best he could determine) by the ghost of his former nemesis, Ratigan. Every hour of every day, Ratigan following him everywhere, providing unnecessary and aggravating commentary at every opportunity. Despite this, Basil noticed Dr. Facilier was unpleasantly surprised by the curse that'd struck Freddie, and started to hope Facilier miiiight be willing to help the "guests" with a little further prodding. That week's execution was somewhat alarming in its ...theatrical originality... but far worse was Dr. Facilier's abrupt falling apart afterward (while Freddie watched no less). And then at the next trial they discovered that even tragic accidents earned the "culprit" an execution--several people, including Basil, tried to volunteer in her place, but in the end their new host Randall (who'd also taken waving Facilier's still-animate head about on a stick) refused to allow the "culprit" to switch out with anyone, and proceeded to have her mulched. Yeah. Mulched. On stage. Basil put the escape plan on hold, now determined to first kill Randall. At this point Basil also learned that somehow Ratigan was in fact alive, but he opted to ignore the information in favor of Operation Kill Randy. They needed Randy out of the picture for the time and safety to give their escape the thought it would require.

The next week Basil managed to get Facilier's head away from Randall and back to his daughter Freddie--unfortunately that was also the week of the first inexcusable fuck-up on Basil's part (in his own eyes, at least). Wanting to be helpful, Pinocchio had set up a trap for their host--only for it to kill one of the other "guests" instead. Ultimately it turned out Pinocchio had been manipulated into it by Negaduck (whose sole motivation had just been entertaining himself). Basil blamed himself for the whole thing: he'd also noticed how easy it was to manipulate Pinocchio, even taking advantage of the fact a few times himself, and realized Pinocchio's friendship with Negaduck would lead nowhere good. While Basil had made an attempt to explain the problem to Pinocchio, he hadn't made much headway--and now felt he simply hadn't tried hard enough. He also believed Pinocchio had been inspired to action in the first place by his own stressing of the importance of getting rid of Randy. Basil straight-up had a nervous breakdown after this execution: besides just the guilt, he decided sticking to his usual strengths was clearly not enough, but he didn't know what else to offer. One of his fellow "guests", Kim, talked him through the breakdown and suggested he try providing emotional support to others as well. ...Of course that would involve social skills, and Basil's social skills, in general? SUCKED, and he was well aware of the fact; but if the Pinocchio disaster taught him anything, it was that he couldn't afford to be "useless" here--not at any point but certainly not for "the majority of the week". From this point he did what he could to offer moral support as needed--but forcing himself outside his fields of expertise at the murder-game's unforgiving pace did nothing to help with his newly-acquired self-doubt. Honestly, his attempt to comfort himself by checking on Ratigan's well-being (which very quickly devolved into indignation over having been ignored) did more to kick Basil back into gear than anything else.

All the same, he was still pretty directionless: offering support as best he could, solving murders that inevitably happened; when the lot of them all nearly died via mass execution by shadow-spirits, all he could think to do in response was get good and drunk with Freddie and her girlfriend Ariel. That was when he decided against returning to London even if he ever had the opportunity: he was convinced the people there expected to be able to rely on him, and he just wasn't reliable enough anymore (and that's how being responsible works right, immediately choosing the most drastic solution??). When Freddie obtained the Fairy Godmother's Wand and she was able to properly restore her father, Basil did try a little fishing for info, but mainly he and Freddie stuck to trying to convince Dr. Facilier to escape while (if) he could. Then the next motive was a threat against the "guests" loved ones: Basil simply refused to check who'd been selected to motivate him, to better resist any temptation--he was certain it had to be either Dawson or Ratigan... but as the week progressed he came to realize he was WAY more invested in both Faciliers' safety than he'd previously guessed. Great timing to figure that out, the week Freddie turned out to be the culprit. Basil offered to die with her, but she nixed that--and used her execution as an opportunity to finally get in a good hit and damage Randy. Basil turned the usual after-execution wake into a victory party instead, as he felt Freddie would far have preferred they celebrate sticking it to Randy over being sad about her. That used up the last of his fucks however, and he could barely maintain interest in the next trial, finally announcing that if no one figured out a better way into the underworld within the week he'd simply poison everyone. Death being a reliable and faster route into hell and all. Having stopped paying attention, Basil was taken by surprise when some sort of scuffle broke out between Randy and a number of the others--ending with Randy seemingly dead, and the surviving "guests" gaining a free ticket to hell.

When they all finally arrived, Dr. Facilier, Basil, and Freddie were reunited; the participants of the murder-game learned the universe was in danger from the rituals they'd taken part in, BUT they also just so happened to know how to fix that once and for all; in general things were finally starting to look up. And then Basil discovered Ratigan back in hell again. Their ensuing argument over which of them should be more ashamed of himself managed to turn into one of those "we need to talk"-sorts of relationship conversations, and then devolved further when Basil tried (very, very badly) to ask if his not being able to keep up their usual criminal/detective game was a deal-breaker and Ratigan misinterpreted the vague stammering as Basil dumping him; and then Basil likewise misinterpreted Ratigan's attempt to save face as Ratigan dumping him--in a way that managed to one-shot Basil's remaining sense of worth, at that. So Basil crept off to have another nervous breakdown somewhere out of everyone's way. Universe still needed saving, of course, but Basil spent rest of his group's mission in the underworld being irritable and depressed, and ended up not giving their investigation anywhere near the attention he should have. It didn't help that he kept misinterpreting Ratigan's attempts at getting back together as Ratigan simply not accepting there was a problem. The group discovered too late that they'd been tricked--their mission resulted in setting off the apocalypse, not averting it. At the same time Basil learned Ratigan had previously sold his soul, putting his very existence in jeopardy. ...They did at least finally manage to talk to each other, using their words, like normal people, for once,, and realized they both did care about each other after all. They spent the rest of the apocalypse waiting to die. Eventually after this continued to not happen, they went looking for everyone else and discovered the others had saved all of reality while the disaster rodents were distracted by being disasters. AND Freddie had found and retrieved Ratigan's soul. (With Dr. Facilier dead--permanently this time--Basil adopted Freddie; and during the brief visit to the Actual Afterlife the surviving saviors were then allowed, he sought out the doctor: both to say goodbye and to ask his blessing in taking the Facilier surname.)


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Canon Personality / Game Events / CRau PersonalityPost-CRau Personality:

Prior to his time in the murder-game, Basil had always been extremely confident in his own abilities. Somewhat unfortunately, he is in fact highly capable--if he thinks he can handle something, he's usually right. This turned out to be unfortunate in that where someone else would have failed and Learned A Valuable Life Lesson about pride and reckless behavior, he would instead succeed and learn nothing of the sort. ...To the point that Basil considered his own smug arrogance to be far closer to "simply being honest about myself" than "this degree of cockiness is not healthy for multiple reasons".

...Reasons like how he used to experience minor failure on his part as a Major Event worth sulking over, and how he'd never really figured out how to deal with Actual Major Failure before Pinocchio's execution. (The first time he experienced such a failure was in canon, yes--but his reaction at the time had been to completely give up and wait for death. He only snapped out of that funk when he realized that he still had a shot at succeeding--which he promptly proceeded to do, so...) Major Failure that he couldn't turn around? That couldn't be fixed? Haha. ha. Oh god. His inability to prevent that tragedy with Pinocchio prompted him to rethink his approach to 'providing help'--he finally really thought about the fact that his detective skills alone weren't applicable (let alone useful) in many situations. He'd always sorta known it--but it wasn't until dealing with the aftermath of his breakdown that he decided those social skills he sucked at? Important.

Being able to provide help has always been important to Basil--he does genuinely want to help people--but he also had the idea that "being too useful to avoid/ignore" was an important part of finding people who'd willingly deal with him. He knows he can be unpleasant company: he's prickly and prone to snark and equally prone to underestimating how mean he's being. Even with Dawson, Basil still had the idea that his regularly working cases was integral to the relationship. Realizing that yes, there are people who want him around even with him being messed up from the murder-game is a surprise to him.

[I should probably write something regarding Ratigan cause that's changed like. a lot. Buuuut it's not written just yet, whoops]

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Canon Personality / Game Events / CRau Personality