bloberta moeington

Under the cut because this is more about the scene with Eddie than Morty relating to Planetina

Affective (Emotional) Instability

Basil tends to flip between emotions quite quickly. During the final fight, he switches between being gentle and being upset/angry. He first talks calmly to Sunny, then switches to being mad at him for moving away, then trying to be calm again as he tries to take on Sunny’s pain, then of course he ends up fighting Sunny and getting mad at him for trying to stop him. He struggles to keep his anger in and ends up having bursts of anger directed at Sunny, ultimately leading to him badly injuring Sunny.

It’s also implied that Basil had suicidal thoughts since he was about 12 or even before then as he is the one who comes up with the idea to frame Mari’s murder as a suicide by tying the skipping rope into a noose, which again suggests even at a young age he has had difficulty controlling his emotions.

Also, if you assume the Hooligans tell the truth, when Basil goes to the hangout spot, he spontaneously starts screaming and crying for no reason.

Disturbed Patterns of Thinking

Unlike Sunny who chooses to repress the incident, Basil holds onto the guilt. Basil grasps onto the belief that Sunny wasn’t the one who killed Mari, that Something overcame him and that’s what killed Mari and scribbled out the pictures from the photo album, therefore removing the burden of guilt from Sunny. He also sees his Something, even though the reality is nothing is there. But he sees it and feels it’s presence. And the Something is what made him fight Sunny and cut him in the eye. He believes that he is removing Something from Sunny, when in actuality he was just hurting Sunny.

Impulsive Behaviour

It’s not really shown what sort of impulsive things Basil does, but I assume that he probably does or has self harmed considering he knew about suicide from a young age. Also, on the final day, it’s safe to assume his desire to commit suicide was somewhat impulsive. He hadn’t attempted suicide before then (that we know of), but the shock of seeing Sunny again and stress of him leaving likely caused Basil to go over the edge. (And ofc depending on your choices, he may end up actually killing himself. He likely bottled up his pain and stress to the point that it caused him to end his life.)

Unstable Relationships

After the incident, Basil seemed reluctant to study with Aubrey, perhaps out of a fear that she would abandon him like Sunny did. And sadly that fear came to pass when Aubrey mistakenly believed that Basil scribbled out the faces in the photo album. Also, on “two days remaining”, Basil goes back to the hangout spot, likely because he can’t let go of what everyone has. He desperately wants things to go back to normal, when everyone was together.

Basil also refers to the friendships he had with everyone in the past tense, showing he feels as though everyone had left him and they were no longer friends, though Kel assured him of their friendship.

The biggest example of this though is that Basil keeps telling Sunny not to leave him. He feels immense distress and pain whenever Sunny tries to leave this room, probably not helped by the fact he was left alone to deal with Mari’s death alone and also because he didn’t know Sunny was moving until Kel mentioning it casually. This likely isn’t helped by Sunny’s repressed emotions, which may have come across as abandonment to Basil. Going back to the battle, Basil flicks between a desire to save Sunny and rage at Sunny trying to leave him again.

Basil cares deeply about Sunny, so after the incident, having Sunny suddenly hide away caused Basil a great deal of anxiety. Seeing him again 4 years later and learning he would soon be gone again would have only increased that anxiety, which is why Basil gets paranoid about Sunny trying to leave and so repeatedly asks Sunny not to go.

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