#pftt but yeah I think I might have managed to shake off my artblock so expect more of this

[dannybobany]

CLEG HOLY SHI-

*is crushed to death under this mountain of paise and analysis*

ANYWAY AUGHHH thank you so much cleg I am so so so glad you like it!! And AUGH so many good points

To be totally honest with you cleg there is nothing going on here visually, other then that I made the cake pink/strawberry but that’s kinda it, originally I intended to draw a background behind him and have Polly standing there with a hand on his shoulder but then I thought “no, Basil feels alone” and corrected the vibes to depict that better (which was also when it went from being a comic to a video)

Although disregarding the candle thing ALLLL of your observations are correct

In all honesty I can see a world were Basil reconnected with his parents, I can see a world where he wasn’t bitter, where he could grow to love them even despite everything before… if only they’d been at grandmothers deathbed with him, but no. Instead they place a surrogate in their stead, did the bare minimum of paying someone else to give the care they did not want to. Basil could’ve got over his own mistreatment, but to leave grandma? Babcia? Alone as she dies? Thinking her daughter came for her when she didn’t? Leaving him and him alone to bear that grief and play that role to diminish his loved ones suffering just a small bit?

That is the moment for him where that relationship becomes unsalvageable, to shove the burden of death unto another is the cruelest form of neglect, even if it doesn’t feel that way to the perpetrator, even of they remain apathetic to the dying and the one who must take their stead alike

And I VERY MUCH agree that his grandmother was the only thing that kept Basil from attempting sooner, in my idea of things he’d been miserable to the point of self harm for nearly two years leading up to it, not long after Polly showed up… I think that was when it really hit him that grandma was dying, maybe before that when he could mostly handle things and she could still be active enough t take care of herself and Basil maybe then Basil could rationalize that she was just old… that she just had bad days sometimes, rationalize that it was okay that some days she was forgetful or slept until nighttime, she’d be better again wouldn’t she?… they were just.. bad days, everyone has bad days, right?

It isn’t a coincidence that Basil tried to give his photo album to Sunny before knowing he was moving away, he was already planning to do it then, Sunny leaving was just another hit of emotional turmoil to plague him until the end

Oh and lastly AUGH the thing about people seeing old photos of Basil’s mom and thinking it was him is so real actually, I bet Basia (Basil’s grandma because remember how I came up with a name for her) kept a lot of photographs of herself and Basil’s mom (who I’ve yet to name) around the house, and I can very vividly imagine Kel or Aubrey when they were younger curiously asking why a photo of Basil and his mom was in black and white, and little Basil coming over to see the picture of his grandma holding his mom as a toddler and having to explain that “no, that isn’t me, the baby in the photo is my mom”

And I think that plays a lot into Basil being such a complicated character gender-wise too, everyone has their headcanons but in my view and mostly in canon Basil is just a very feminine young boy, but that makes it worse doesn’t it? That his hair is longer then a boy’s usually is, that he would wear a flower in his hair, that he might even wear a ruffled blouse or a pretty sunhat with a big bow- I wonder if he feels bad about enjoying those things… it makes him all the more like her, not to mention it gets him bullied… even if it’s simple things, things a boy shouldn’t be ashamed of…

Anyway! Final comment: the rusty lake games and their music SLAP birthday piano, out of tune is so ingrained in my memory, watch me end up using other songs from the series for more Basil angst/Marzenie stuff PFTTT ANYHOWWWWW

Happy birthday Basil

Omg!! I actually did something in time for the event it was meant for!! Anyway, yeah here let me throw some depressing basil content at you-

He makes me so sad honestly … also! The song here is “birthday piano, out of tune”, it’s from the soundtrack of rusty lake: birthday, a game from perhaps the most underrated puzzle game series of all time… rusty lake is great and it thought the vibes were a good match for this post

Also here’s the frames for this:

The quality got a tad bit destroyed while I was making this but oh well!! I still like it

Lastly: the ‘she’ as mentioned here is referring to Basil’s grandma, and I will never stop yelling about that horrid headcanon I have of her thinking Basil was her daughter / Basil’s mom as her condition got worse, it’s always been in my head that she had dementia, the last half year before she died was terrible for Basil, watching the person who raised you slowly cease to exist, watching the person who cared for you forget your name, that you ever existed at all, Basil’s sixteenth birthday was the worse he’d ever had