OOC: Basini's Backstory and Personality
Character Name: Stefan Anselm von Basini
Character Series: The Confusions of Young Torless
Character Age: 14
Background:
Basini is a boarding school boy and a minor aristocrat, that's nearly all we know of him in canon. While he came from a pleasant enough town in Austria, from a background just enough tinged with unspecified foreignness to be a hazard, his destination was at the end of a long trip by rail, far out of familiar territory. If the school at H____* had been a nice sort of place, it would have seemed pleasantly agrarian, with little around to be seen but picturesque peasant women and dusty, windswept farmland. But it wasn't particularly, and the nearest village was lifeless instead of quaint, a dried-up isolated model. The goal of the admirably established facility was to preserve aristocratic youths from the corrupting influences of the big cities, but throwing a bunch of teenage boys into one area with minimal parental influence went predictably well for younger students. Expenses were being footed by a kindly enough benefactor, his uncle on his father's side, and the experience, it could be hoped, would be as positive in preparing for military service as it was for his father before him. He received only a little pocket money -- money was still tight -- so there wasn't that much trouble a docile boy could get into in such a place. Stefan went from being an only son among sisters, rather babied by a doting mother, to being surrounded by other boys, boys who smoked and drank and fought effortlessly. Stefan settled in admirably. He failed to make any close friends, but that was understandable. Other boys had met prior, or had family connections that he did not, and flitting from clique to clique as an rootless city boy -- not titled, not of the right birth, neither intellectual enough to make a success of himself nor enough of a failure to rebel and misbehave. If his existence was lonely, he didn't notice it. There were games to play, and sports, and nothing burdensome like a girl sister to be found anywhere. Stefan didn't think to be homesick.
His actual classroom experiences were unremarkable to poor. Some subjects (most of the important ones) managed to escape him and he had difficulty paying attention in class, but no better and no worse than was normal; his performance was thoroughly average. He was too small and clumsy to be much good at any of the athletic pursuits, but kept at them with dogged determination. Keeping up with the status quo was the ideal, doing what his classmates were doing. Much of this he couldn't actually afford, and soon enough, money was running short. The proper response to this was to wheedle and beg his classmates for money, just a little bit more, pleeeeease. This wasn't any kind of long-term solution, and soon enough he was running short, even with those of his schoolmates (including Reiting, an older boy) willing to loan him money. The improper but easy answer: stealing from his classmates' lockers, to pay back those who had already let him borrow. Soon enough this scheme collapsed, and he was in trouble not only with Reiting, but with Beineberg, another student and Reiting's, er, associate. With this uncovered and nothing to say for himself... well, Beineberg and Reiting were shocked, quite shocked. They were well within their grounds to tell the teachers! To have him expelled! But they were going to take pity on the younger boy and gently teach him the error of his ways on their own time. Ever-so-gently.
Reiting was only a particularly perverse bully at first, older than Stefan and quite aware of it. His primary interest was sexual, filtered through the skewed lens of one who hurts others for his own pleasure anyway. He was also the first to express his interest in Basini and to stake his claim -- and Basini didn't think freely enough to find the experience disagreeable. While a nasty piece of work, it's the triumphant power over another human that thrills him... if Basini is even human, of course, who knows, really? When things escalated, it didn't seem that much worse in Stefan's eyes.
Beineberg was equally creepy but rather more warped. A skinny batlike creature with a venerated madman for a father. His fascination, rather than some pseudo-military notion of power, was the psyche and the soul. Rather than getting off on making someone else lick his boots, or read his Latin homework to him, he enjoyed what he would call experiments. Little exercises, derived from a thoroughly muddled understanding of deep thinking, hand-me-down Eastern mysticism and hypnosis. Reiting trusted him as a close affiliate, a likeminded Superior Man in training, but Beineberg could take or leave Reiting, really. Separately they'd just be two creepy rejects. Together, they're two creepy rejects with a game plan. Basini surrenders his personhood to them, more or less, and becomes their slave, and they don't tell any teachers. They offered protection, but at the same time their own perverse punishment far out of proportion with the crime.
Both of them have ventured a little beyond the usual runaround for a personal slave at boarding school but so far Basini has held up admirably. Because Reiting and Beineberg are his friends! In a way. Kind of. It’s so much nicer having them as friends than enemies. The fourth member of this group the barely-present Torless, was an outsider to most of their affairs. He made up a disinterested party in the conspiracy, who was nevertheless too disgusted to look away, and too closely entangled to quit the group. He finds Basini revolting, all the more reason to chase after his approval.
Personality:
Stefan has a kind of childlike ignorance that may serve him just as badly in Mayfield as it did back home. He seriously seems like the puberty train is arriving late, and an adult awareness of consequences with it. It may not be arriving at all. This flaw’s shown off to worst effect in the regimented school system and among aristocratic peers who seem a little creepily wise beyond their years. He is dully resistant to his teachers’ attempts to educate him -- he isn’t a legitimately stupid boy, and in some areas of his classwork (like Latin translation) he has real technical brightness, but concepts of mathematics and serious reading escape him -- and never seems to quite grasp the concept of cause and effect. Depending on the sympathy of the teacher he’s a dreamy and distracted boy, or dumb as a damn post -- and he is woefully inept at the kind of phys ed he’s used to. His emotions aren't terribly sophisticated. He strives to fit in, he envies his peers, he is absolutely paralyzed by fright, but otherwise he's quite docile, rather a dull and trusting boy.
His trusting nature would be a handy attribute if it extended beyond a general blinky innocent credulousness in regards to anyone his own age. Complicated plotting and planning escapes him, but he’s capable of being a manipulative little bastard hisownself, leveraging the same attributes that make him seem vulnerable and easy to trick. God as his witness he will cry on you. Or worse, if he needs to make sure you’re on his side. But he does all of his manipulation with the same blithe lack of self-awareness; it’s not a very potent weapon. Self-preservation is his primary aim, but not the kind that would make you run away and hide from danger; the kind that would make you curl up into a ball and lie there very still in the hopes that the monster would forget about you. This lends itself to deceit and opportunism, lying wildly and quite unrepentantly if need be. He also has been known to steal, especially money.
… he’s also just spent many months at an all-male boarding school being the psychological and sexual punching bag of three of his classmates after they caught him stealing. Most of the (rather sophisticated, for adolescent boys) attempts to psychologically dominate him didn’t really take root, but he’s still noticeably off-kilter after the experience. Adjusting to a living environment that is not dominated by the drill and by dormitories and by disused hallways and attic crawlspaces and by whippings with fencing foils is going to be pretty formidably difficult for him. He might well enjoy being droned. Fear reduces him to rigidly smiling compliance.
His appearance is rather effeminate, and his mannerisms are just the least bit off, skewed and delicate -- along with a soft voice and a puny build. But unless you were particularly viciously minded you wouldn't look on him as having any sort of sexuality. He's in most ways a child still. But his experiences, unfortunately coinciding with the few dim awakenings of actual sexuality in him, have left him kind of fucked up in regards to sex. It's an object of prurient interest, it's something secret and dirty and sordid, and for him in particular it's a rather tedious chore. It's like a game to him, some strange game with obscure and changing that he doesn't understand or particularly want to play, but takes part in anyway. Some of his behavior is quite forward as a result of the abuse, but not in any way anyone would call pleasant or mistake for healthy.
He has an attitude towards girls and women that is even more ignorant than the mock-American 1950s Mayfield superficially emulates. In fact girls barely exist in Basini’s worldview, due to a total lack of experience. Women are beyond his scope of experience due to how much time he spends away at school and his deepest social interaction with one of the fairer sex has been with the school prostitute. (He undertook this like a grave obligation, and hurried off as soon as he'd done his duty by her as he understood it.) The word for cooties might not be in his vocabulary, but the concept is still there, that girls are different and weird and wholly Other from developing young men. You can have girlfriends, though, girlfriends make you very grown up. He’s totally had a girlfriend, too. Loads of girlfriends, back home. He has girls over all the time. They just throw themselves at him. Check out this garter. It’s totally from a lady, he took it right of her leg. Check it out. Still he says, with proper manly bravado, that women are useless, women are nothing.