Prototype 2 Headcannon + Alex's personality (Comic spoilers if you care about that sort of thing) · 5:00pm Jan 9th, 2015
Considering I went and made a story, I might as well as explain my head-cannon for it.
Starting at the beginning, Alexander Mercer (Alex Pre-Blacklight) had a very crappy childhood, non-existant dad, a drunkard of a mom who spent the first 9 years of his life in prison, abject poverty, tons of crappy stuff. He trusted no one, had no friends, couldn't care less about what others thought of him, and found solace only in his work. By the time he was hired by Gentek, Mercer was a borderline sociopath.
This is the base frame-work that Alex (Blacklight) had to work off, and even though he lost most of the memories, he still had the basis of the personality. Over the next 3 weeks, everyone he met either tried to kill him on sight, ran away screaming, or ended up betraying him (except Dana or Ragland). Not to mention he became intimately aware of all the shit Blackwatch has been doing.
And now, there's another factor, and that is Alex is sorta crazy. It seems a unavoidable consequence of absorbing people's entire life memories, and instead of losing himself and becoming Legion, he was able to section off the memories into the Web of Intrigue. But this obviously wasn't perfect, for memories bled through, often manifesting themselves as voices.
Over the next year(?), he decided to travel the world and try to find his place in the world. But everywhere he went, he saw the crappy side of the world, drug rings, African war-lords, a guy with a supposedly loving family died in his house unnoticed for a few weeks, bad stuff.. He decided he needed some peace and quite to do some thinking, and with some Drug Money he "borrowed", he rented a nice little cabin in the woods up north, from Flint and his daughter Dawn. He originally wanted to spend the time alone, but they were so friendly he couldn't help but begin to like them. Then one day Flints old Mafia partner (Alex not aware of that fact yet) decided he wanted Flints land, and when Flint didn't want to sell, sent some guys to light it up (and take the girl alive if they can). Alex of course murders the heck out of them, and using their memories, proceeds to their base to murder the heck out of all those guys too. After eating Mr Mob Boss, he found out about Flint's past dealings with the Mafia, and proceeded to lose it a bit (Flint was suppose to be a GOOD guy, a NICE guy, but then he apparently was a mob person, Alex felt betrayed) and murder Flint. He finds Dawn and tries to convince her to run away with him, and when he gets to his cabin to grab the money, he finds it isn't there. When he turns around, he is met with a bullet to the face (and several to the body). Then Dawn said, thinking he was dead (this is the kicker) "Once I found that stash, there was just NO WAY I was going to let you leave here with it. My Daddy taught me better than that. Too bad. I really liked you." Yeah, Alex has now been betrayed by the women he loved, and he has a thoroughly bad impression of humankind in general.
Add in the voices talking in his head this ENTIRE time, screaming in pain, crying for vengeance, whispering temptations to just murder everyone, it's surprising he didn't flip sooner.
Now, he hates all of mankind, and doesn't really care to help it like he said, but he's the only one who can, so he feels he must. "Humans... are WORTHLESS. Every last one of them. Worse than worthelss... humans are VERMIN. How could I have associated with them? How could I have tried to be ONE of them? It only angers me further that the realization TOOK this long. The Age of Humans has PASSED. And the task of ushering in a new world... a BETTER world... falls to ME."
That last bit is important to the events of Prototype 2, he doesn't want to "help" the world, yet he is the only one who can, so he put some effort into it, but not a lot. Because really, if he was trying, Prototype 2 wouldn't have even gotten a chance to happen, Alex could have brought the world down within a week. So he went about his thing, half-assing his attempts at conquest, and winning none the less, and then Heller came along. At first he was just amusing, providing some actual resistance (Blackwatch was in his pocket, there really was no-one who could stand against him). But then he became annoying, and Alex decided to take him out, only, Alex found he couldn't just easily consume him like he could the others, and this surprised him. Alex found someone who CAN stand against him (given time to get stronger, of course, as is Alex can still woop his ass), which also meant, he found a possible replacement. So Alex proceeded to let him do his thing, get stronger, and pass several tests Alex put up to see if he could survive. He did, and finally, the final confrontation. Alex placed Dana safely away with Amaya so Heller would come save her afterwards if he passed the final test (He still loved his sister, Dana, despite his hatred of humanity). Alex also collected all of the other Evolved, everyone who could possibly stand against Heller later on, and removed them from the Equation, leaving just him, and Heller. The final fight STILL wasn't a real fight, but a test (because looking at the big power upgrade Heller got afterwards, Mercer had to be MANY times stronger than Heller), one that Heller in the end passed, leading Alex to congratulate him "Welcome to the top of the food chain." Now that Heller had the power, it was up to HIM to decide to "save" humanity or to just leave it to rot. It was no-longer Alex's responsibility.
Eh, makes more since than him suddenly being a random villain.
I've always thought alex was actually a good villain for prototype 2, the problem was the poor dialogue and the 'evil for the lulz' vibe you get from the story.
first of all, nice explanation for Mercer's apparent heel face turn.
Second- isn't something like this better explained in the story itself? because blog posts explaining whats actually going on kind of falls under spoilers or 'all there in the manual' territory.
2711822 I'm not sure how I would explain it in story, considering the only person who knows the details is Alex, and would simultaneously be unlikely to talk about it, and wouldn't be the most reliable narrator considering he's talking about himself.
2711823 Flashbacks in the forms of dreams? (She is nightmare moon after all) Or even Self-narration on Alex's part, like you said, but purposefully make the line between what is demonstrably true, and what are just Alex’s views, blurred.
2711850 Alex doesn't sleep. It's both a waste of time, and I bet he would have nightmares.
I will see what I can think of for the self-narration though.
2711852 But Is he immune from magic? A simple sleep spell could get around the whole, 'he doesn't need to sleep' thing if NMM ever gets curious about him.
Or even little flashbacks that come when and if something happens that reminds him of a certain event relating to his past?
I can only guess seeing as I'm on this side of the authors notes.