Basil Kette

[Basil Kette]

1. Are you 18 or older? We want to know if anyone is under 18 years of age. Being under 18 will not bar you from participating in our community. Rather, this will allow us to gauge who is acting inappropriately toward minors.
Yes, yes I am.

2. Do you have past experience with collaborative writing or roleplay, and if so, roughly how much? You can be brief. This is intended to help us provide useful feedback in your approval.
Yes. I've Role played in various other forums and in the tabletop setting, for most of my highschool and now college life.

3. You may include an optional (SHORT!) Roleplay sample for people to read that gives a feel for your character in writing.

The midday sun was shining overhead and over the bed when I woke up. I’d slept for a while, hadn’t I? The memories of the training accident coming to the front of my mind. I barely managed to get up and unwind the bandages around my body. It seems most of my injuries healed up overnight, thanks to my aura and the medicine I took. The first thing I saw as I opened the door and to leave the room was Xiao having lunch at the table.

“Basil! Did you have a good rest?”

The snake faunus cheerfully greets me from her seat. Her tail was saying back and forth at me, performing a facsimile of a wave 'Hello'. Since both of Xiao's hands were occupied trying to devour the venison in front of her. It seems she was back to her usual, lively self, having shaken off all the fatigue and gloom that was weighing her down yesterday. Which likely means that Mei was well, after taking a hit from that Boarbatusk's charge.

“Yes. I assume Mei recovered as well?”

“Yep! I told you a few broken bones wouldn't keep her down! Wanna have some lunch? Your mom is a really good cook."

“Apologies, I don’t feel like eating.”

Leaving Xiao to her food. I grabbed my cloak from the rack, and headed to the terrace. I needed some fresh air and some time to think, about yesterday's events. Early-morning meditation sounded like a pleasing prospect.

[Al Ciendra]

Basil is well written, I always love characters that have a lot on their shoulders, gives him a good bit of weight.

Distortion despite looking a bit simple at first is a pretty dang cool weapon, the whole weight shifting thing it has going on is awesome, and you can never go wrong with using a giant blade to conduct other dust either.
That does make me wonder though where he keeps all his dust stored ?
As for Subversion, using a cloak as armor is quite nice as well, but I really don't see how a piece of clothing could be sharp in any capacity, unless the cloak is as thin as string.

His semblance is also really cool in concept, being able to switch around semblances may cause some confusion among his teammates at first, but I can see some really cool strategies being developed using it, so I'm really looking forward to seeing Basil in some fights.

Anyway, while he may not meet his mothers expectations he certainly does meet mine, so I'm giving Basil a yes!

[Professor Honeydew Monarch]

Bear in mind, people here do 3rd person past tense roleplay, so idk if that might conflict with your apparent first-person style. I guess we don't really have a rule against it, but it might be weird for some. Thought I'd throw this out there.

[Basil Kette]

That's fine, I write in both styles. I mostly just preferred 1st person for that particular snippet.

As for Subversion's cutting ability, it doesn't really come from the cloth itself. Rather it's ability to create barriers can be used to momentarily mold a thin hard-light barrier, which you can cause shallow cuts with enough force. It's mostly for distraction rather than any real damage since it lacks the projector Velvet uses. He also tends to carry dust inside his suit jacket since he avoids or blocks with his coat anyway.

I've edited a few parts to make his uses of it more clear and dry.

[Ax L Rose]

Basil is a very neat and fun-looking character with an awesome emblem and a very cool weapon. It looks like a lot of heart and soul went into him! Here is some constructive feedback for you.

-I think the 'magnetizing enemy weapons' thing Basil does is pretty clever, but the mechanics of this aren't really very well elaborated on - it seems excessively useful for Basil to be able to punish and lockdown any weapon made of metal at-will, especially against aura specialists that are trained to channel aura into their gear. Some handwavy declarations are made about refined/unrefined magnetic dust, and I generally think that such declarations aren't good to make in profiles because of how easily they can conflict with other people's interpretations about how dust works.

-I think Basil's semblance concept is a little bit overloaded. The aura link mechanic in general is a pretty big game changer - the ability to exchange aura at an undefined/unlimited rate and range with bonded subjects is worthy of being a semblance already on its own, and grants a team some extreme advantages all by itself. Also, in general I'm kind of wary of a semblance that's is sort of mechanically recursive like this; realistically it seems like in any given scene Basil is in, everyone who he's bonded with simultaneously has the advantages of their own semblance as well as Basil's at the same time. The 'soul bond' concept is fine, I just think some of the details could use some more iteration.

While I'd like to see some revision done to Basil's semblance concept, I think Basil deserves a yes vote.

[Basil Kette]

Thanks for the feedback!

I can see the problem with hand wavy declarations is coming from so I'll just expand on the logical pros and cons of using magnetic dust over gravity and lightning rather than saying one is stronger than the other. I will try to expand more onto the swords mechanics but since it runs on the principle of raw dust use it can be a challenge. But my general answer to magnetizing being excessively useful is. It is, and anyone with the right tools can and should capitalize on it, especially since most hunters and police should have access to it unlike with Hard-Light's rarity which would make catching criminals much easier.

As for the semblance, I've been running through a few iterations but I've run into the problem of using specific and otherwise hard limits don't generally work. Especially for scenes, where it would have to be constantly specified how far apart or how much aura everyone is currently on at any given post which might ruin a writer's flow. I do understand the fear of it being extremely powerful, and honestly unfair in strength compared to some but considering how broad and wide some semblances are. I simply just threw balance out in favor of the RP opportunities it opens up to me.

I'm not too attached to the Semblance Exchange but the way it incentivizes people to deepen their relationships makes me hesitant to let it go for balance sake, especially since I don't envision PVP being a constant factor since the main enemy is Grimm rather than each other. Still if more people feel it's too much I'm willing to drop it.

Edit: Modifications have been made for elaborations.

[SheidelII]

I don't have any concerns that haven't already been stated before. I think Basil Kette is in a good place at the moment and my only concern is with Soul Reverberation.

I'd like it if some detail were added about the costs it places on the people it affects. If establishing a link has an initial cost and if the exchange of Aura and Semblance through the link has a ratio. Just something so that we get a sense of that mechanic. Everything else is fine to me. Soul Reverberation meshes well with Basil's person. You've detailed things well.

(Btw, in the Likes esction, you put "Deserts" and I'm wondering if you meant "Desserts" as in sweets or "Deserts" as in sand. Basil has "Rough Surfaces" and "Bitter Foods" in his Dislikes, and that's making me think that there was a mixup there. Unless I'm reading too much into it... I didn't see any reference to the biome in his profile, so I wanted to make sure. If it isn't a typo, then nevermind.)

[Myron Hyles]

I don't know if you made all of the art, but I love it (character, emblem and weapon). I think that you write very good descriptions all around, be it for his personality and backstory or for his appearance.
He is original too ; we have some characters with barely (or not at all) present families, but Basil has an overbearing one. The fact that he embraces his entourage's expectations instead of rebelling against them is interesting too.
And finally, I'm a fan of trapping weapons, and Subversion's lock and chain seem very cool.

I really want to vote Yes for this amazing profile, but I can't because of Soul Reverberation.

I'm going to keep it short because it's 1 AM, if you want the full rant I can give you my detailed reasons later.
For me, basically, being able to link other's Auras and to exchange Semblances is too much. I'd keep only one of the two aspects, and the one I like better is the Semblance exchange, because I don't think it's overpowered, and Aura Link is boring.

[Basil Kette]

Well after taking some of the new input I opted for making his new semblance. Semblance swapping with extra steps. Thanks for everyone's feedback.

Also yes Desert and Dessert were typos and The Art is mostly from the game Library of Ruina. The character I'm using as a face claim is called Yan Vismok, I did have to photoshop the Emblem out of the game.

[Myron Hyles]

The Semblance has gotten a bit more complicated, but I still think it has potential. 100% Yes this time.

[Maria Ravenheart]

There isn't much I wanted to say that hasn't already been said here. I like how the character is portrait with the whole overly critical self evaluation aspect, creating emotional baggage and thus windows to develop Basil even further. The character's aesthetic design is very neat from looks to weapon of choice and how detailed the combat style is with usage of dusts incorporated, I'm all about that.

Soul Echo is, albeit a little confusing, a pretty cool sounding semblance that allow for a lot of creative ideas to be executed, overall there's tons of potentials and combinations to be explore.

Overall, that's a yes from me.

[Bartok Evergreen]

Along with what everyone has said, I think he's still acceptable per Freelancer code, so it's a yes for me.