what the FUCK do you mean you wrote two of the best prototype fics AND drew some of the best art. illegal
seriously though i am in love with your characterisation, especially of all three mercer siblings. frankly your version of dr mercer is the best ive seen in the entire fandom lmao
Thank you! I'm really glad you're enjoying that terrible bastard of a man. Dr. Mercer enjoyers unite. We love this evil skinny twink
Thoughts about Mercer sibling characterization + themes of the game (under a cut because it's VERY LONG):
The thing I try to stress when writing Doc Mercer (hereto referred to as "Xander") is that yes, he is a narcissistic, vain, arrogant bastard of a man, generally irredeemable, with extremely loose and/or nonexistent morals and a terrible personality.
However, [PROTOTYPE] is a game where most of the characters are some level of fucking awful and monstrous, but their motivations are still explored, and sometimes even still justified. I mean, Alex eats people. Randall was on his way to nuke Manhattan. Blackwatch regularly laughs at being able to murder innocent civilians. A powerful moment in some of the WOI's is Blackwatch gleefully discussing killing people, while the visuals show a camp on a rooftop where the survivors have written a big "NOT INFECTED" in a bid to not be murdered by Blackwatch.
Still, there's nuance there. Alex may grow a conscience and save New York, but he's still, you know, a walking viral apocalypse that both eats people and enjoys it/thinks it feels "right." Blackwatch murders all the people they want, but at the end of the day, they ARE the line that stands between humanity and viral apocalypse. And Randall might even be justified in nuking Manhattan if it means taking Alex out, because - you know - walking viral apocalypse (and for all Randall knows, ZEUS only killed Elizabeth to establish his dominance as hive queen supreme). I don't see why Doc Mercer should be exempt from that nuance, but he so very often is.
So that as my starting point, what do we know about Doc Mercer? Well, mostly from the PRIMA guide, we have his backstory. This backstory is so hilariously awful that I legitimately don't think I'd believe you if you told me he wasn't supposed to be sympathetic.
Xander's mom is thrown in jail right after he's born, no other family is willing/able to take him in, so he's thrust into the foster care system (no father is EVER mentioned, ever)
To make matters worse, Dana's bio mentions that she moved "to New York" to follow her brother, implying that they aren't NY-born, which further implies that they're from NEW FUCKING JERSEY LOL (it's only like, an hour's bus away from Columbia U, where Xander went to college)
Xander is kicked around foster care system like a hot potato until mom is released from jail. Seems like she either got pregnant right at the end of her stint, or right as she got out; he's 10 when she regains custody of him, but 9 when Dana is born.
Dana's bio says "[Xander] was the only parent figure Dana ever knew." It also said their mother had "drinking problems." Xander raised Dana to the degree that she literally doesn't even see her mom as a parent.
"For [Xander], foster care was better." Yikes. That's definitely an implication of abuse (if the parentification weren't enough). What kind of abuse? Well, they're often bundled together, but we can make a Strong Case for extreme violence at minimum, given the following:
What was mom in jail for? A 9-year sentence implies a second-degree crime, which, uh... take your pick: aggravated assault, aggravated arson, theft of an item more than 75k$, armed burglary or burglary that results in injury or threats of injury, unlawful possession of a firearm, sexual assault. Yikes
Bio outright describes it as living in "abject poverty," so with the fact that he was LITERALLY the only parent Dana knew (a role he was forced into starting at the age of TEN), as soon as he was legally able, he probably had to take on a job in addition to school and childrearing.
Given the "abject poverty" angle, I find it doubtful that he was able to leave home until he graduated, especially given that a commute from Jersey to Columbia U could be as short as an hour. Since he graduated from his PhD at the age of 24, that means he was Dana's parent until she was fifteen. 3/4 of her life by the time of the game.
Needs to be stressed: this man changed her diapers, warmed up her formula, cooked meals for her, helped her with homework, taught her sex-ed and what puberty was, helped her get her first job, taught her how to apply for college. He is, for all intents and purposes, Dana's father. (Put a pin in that!)
Like... holy shit! This is a sympathetic character! I don't know how anyone would be able to read that in isolation and not feel bad for this guy. I mean, this is a person who has literally ALL the trauma. Like, he's in the 99th percentile of worst childhoods in America. This boy has collected PTSDs like they are pokemon.
The PRIMA guide literally says that, at the end of all that, he "trusted no one, had no friends, cared less and less what others thought of him," and was an "impatient, dark, tortured person" with a history of burning bridges. "Forever paranoid," "morally ambiguous," and "teetering on the border of sociopathy" are also used to describe him, and - yeah, of course! I mean, did you SEE his backstory? Holy shit.
And what really fascinates me about this is that, even under those circumstances? He was probably the best parent he could have been to Dana. She literally sees him as one, stuck around NYC for five years because he was just that important to her, and trusts and cares for him so deeply that she's willing to risk her life for him/willing to forgive Alex ranting about how eating people "feels right."
Some people argue that he was using Dana as a pawn, or manipulating her, etc. etc., and I really dislike this take (though, of course, everyone's entitled to their own HCs etc., especially because a lot of the PRIMA stuff was clearly rewritten by the time of the game's release). First, I think that a working college girl with a fiery personality like Dana would not have stuck around for FIVE YEARS if she didn't feel like Xander deserved it - and given that he was also ghosting her for those five years, any manipulation he had her under would have worn off. Like, it's REALLY HARD to gatekeep gaslight girlboss someone if you're no-contact with them. Also, are you trying to tell me that an eleven-year-old boy was looking at a literal 2 year old going "yes... I will raise her to trust me absolutely... as a tool for me to use in the future... and then completely ignore her calls for 5 years!" C'mon.
But the second, and more important, reason I don't agree with that take is that I feel like it strips Dana of agency and reduces her to this almost damsel-like role. Nah, man, even if Xander was not her brother/dad, she would have risked her life to help him out. Why? Because she's a fucking anarcho-socialist journalism student, that's why!
Her PRIMA bio is really interesting in that regard; I feel like the game didn't show off well enough just how awesome Dana actually is. She's studying journalism at NYU. You may have heard that her job is "writing tabloids," but that's such a simplification/misunderstanding of the text! We actually have the titles of the publications she writes for, and they are: "Everything You Know Is Wrong", "Bathsheba", and "The Military/Industrial Complex Report." Even just from that small glimpse (and the fact that she calls Blackwatch "goose-stepping motherfuckers"), I think it's evident that she's got some deeply anti-government, anti-military, anti-fascist beliefs.
Furthermore, Dana is like... kind of a terrible person. Here's a great excerpt from her bio that I feel like isn't talked about enough (emphasis mine):
"She owes money all over town, and somehow manages to sweet talk friends into lending her more. She's a hustler, good at manipulating people. Like her brother, she's narcissistic and evasive. When she doesn't like someone she'll go out of her way to make sure they know it - particularly if they push the point. She's disrespectful, foul-mouthed, and not afraid of a fight. This all serves her well when she's neck-deep in a story, but in real life, her kind of behavior only makes her one thing: enemies. In short, she's her brother's sister."
Guys, I am not normal about that last sentence. It's phrased the same way as "she's her mother's daughter" or "she's her father's son." Like. Oh my god, Xander is basically her dad.
But back on topic: Dana is characterized as a BADASS BITCH who doesn't take shit from ANYBODY and is ALREADY anti-government. She literally calls the Blackwatch shit "the story of the century." She would have taken that case on even if it weren't her brother presenting it to her, no manipulation necessary.
AND she knew the risks. I've seen it argued that Xander's to blame for "tricking" her into investigating something that put her life in danger, but I think that's unfair to him. First, I think Blackwatch would've investigated and/or disappeared Dana either way, given how trigger-happy they are. Second, she knew the risks - that's why she was using her friend's penthouse apartment as a safehouse. She was prepared to risk her life for this story; BW just moved faster than she anticipated and ambushed her at her apartment.
(And, also, like, just as an aside, we don't know if she had permission to be in her friend's place, and given her PRIMA bio, she probably didn't, like she just full-on broke into her friend's really nice apartment LOL probably even chose the friend with the nicest digs LOL)
This also serves as such an interesting glimpse into not only her and her brother's relationship, but her brother's characterization. We already know that Xander possesses good social skills to some degree, given that he has a girlfriend who was willing to risk her life for him (she went back to the lab to get something for him, which is how she got caught - let's ignore for now the ethics of dating his subordinate); he also climbed the ranks at his job, rising to Associate Director (McMullen's direct subordinate) sometime within only five years.
Dana's bio, however, confirms it. Every description of her personality becomes associated with Xander with the phrase "she's her brother's sister." Xander is a hustler; he's manipulative and gets people to do what he wants. Xander is evasive, disrespectful, and lets people feel it when he doesn't like them. Xander makes enemies. BUT.
Even in the midst of all that - his paranoia, the fact that he's having a freak-out because his coworkers are being "silenced," and that he ghosted Dana for five years in an effort to leave the past behind him... who does he trust to have his back? Dana. I need you guys to understand. He doesn't go to Dana because she's an easy tool for him to manipulate. He goes to Dana because he's scared for his life and she is the only person he trusts. I think there's a reason Alex latches onto her when he learns she exists, and part of it is definitely because the scaffold he's built on, the original Dr. Mercer, viewed Dana as unconditionally trustworthy. The feeling is mutual.
And just in case you needed some sort of in-game proof? He has at LEAST two photos of Dana on his foyer wall. Legit. Go back and rewatch that cutscene when Alex walks into Xander's apartment. He has 2-3 photos of Karen... and 2-3 photos of Dana. He's been ghosting Dana, but he keeps photos of her on his wall, where he sees them every day, right next to where he works. One of the Dana photos is also the only photo that Xander is not in. I just... he loves his sister. He's just too mentally ill to be normal about it and keep in contact.
So, we have here pretty much Xander's ONLY redeeming quality: cares about his sister! That's it. That's all he's got. Let's talk about some other irredeemable stuff.
So far, I've talked a lot about the PRIMA guide, but now I'm going to talk about what's in the actual game, because it's quite interesting, and I don't think all of it made it into the fandom zeitgeist. It's too bad, because this one major fact really adds a shitton of nuance to this character:
Xander was out of the loop.
Xander did not know anything about Hope, Idaho. Xander did not know that Blackwatch existed. Xander didn't even fucking know that his human test subjects were deliberately infected. Within day one, Alex knows more about the conspiracy surrounding Blacklight than Xander ever did. And we know exactly how much he knew about the virus because he mailed Dana a laptop containing everything he was able to find, and it pretty much got as far as "MOTHER is named Elizabeth Greene" and "Hope, Idaho existed...?" We have a WOI where Randall expresses concern over even giving Xander access to MOTHER, and a WOI where Xander is pissed the hell off when he finds out that their human subjects were not naturally infected. He didn't know!
That suddenly casts his role in Blacklight's production in a much less nefarious light. Look at this job from Xander's point of view: You're a 24 year old who completed an 8-year college run (undergrad and PhD) in six years, WHILE raising a teenage girl and probably while working, too. At graduation, you get offered this insanely cushy job, with a threat that you'll be blacklisted from the industry if you refuse (this literally happened to Dr. Ragland, according to his PRIMA bio). It's a top-secret government job. The government's not great, but you have loose morals, and it can't possibly be worse than Albert Einstein building the atom bomb. So. Whatever.
(On top of that, they're already lying to you abour what the project's purpose is. Xander states he "didn't know" what he was working on until he "figured it out," and there's a WOI where one employee raves that the virus could be used to cure every disease on earth. It seems there was a general vibe that they were probably working bio-weapons, but no one knew FOR SURE, and a contributor to Xander's meltdown is the fact that his research results just... vanish. He doesn't know what they're being used for.)
Plus, holy shit, the pay. Xander is making, like, seven figures by the time he's 29. He lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side (where Gossip Girl takes place lol). The average price for a one-bedroom there is, like, 4000$ a month. This man spent 24 years in brutal poverty; the money matters to him.
On top of that, the stuff they're doing at GENTEK? Of course, it's stomach-turning, but it wouldn't clock as inherently unethical. Xander's fury at learning that MOTHER was a test subject, and not naturally infected (as he's been led to believe), implies that they were NOT infecting people at GENTEK. The bodies we see in WOI, their test subjects, were already infected by the time they got there, supplied to GENTEK with a cover story, that the virus was one they'd found naturally, and that these people - whose brains were fried by the virus - were just unlucky victims of random happenstance. Furthermore, making viruses more dangerous is legitimate virology. It's called "gain-of-function" experimentation, and while it is controversial (for obvious reasons), it's still something you would potentially be doing at an above-board lab.
That means that, prior to Penn Station, the worst Xander can be accused of is being a bootlicker, class traitor, who knowingly worked on WMDs for the US government. And yeah, that is monstrously evil, and Albert Einstein is a monster by that metric, but it's a level of evil that's matched or surpassed by almost every other character in the game. Dana and Ragland are the two exceptions, maybe Karen too, depending on whether you think her low hierarchical position absolves her of any sin. McMullen and everyone at Blackwatch are all more culpable than Xander. They're the ones giving him orders - he's the low man on the totem pole!
And his reaction upon realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes? It's not asking to join up with the evil side. It's not going out to do a terrorism (even if that's how it ends up). It's blowing the whistle. His first instinct is to go to his sister, the anti-government, anti-military journalism student. And as he spirals into panic and anxiety, it's to escape the city, while warning someone - probably Dana - to "get out of there". Even McMullen says, when Alex confronts him, "you were always so smart. You were ready to give up all our secrets. [...] We were trying to figure it out -- you just wanted to bring it all down." The class traitor was about to redeem himself. His motivations might still be selfish - to punish the people who lied to him, to save his own ass - but he's not a cartoon villain.
It's only after he's cornered, staring down guns, realizing that all his efforts were futile, possibly even realizing that Dana is next, that he smashes the vial. AND EVEN THEN... I think we're supposed to understand why he did it. Not sympathize, necessarily, but... look at his life. Abandonment, abuse, parentification. Skipping meals to make sure Dana can eat. Running on a sleep deficit because homework has to be done after helping Dana with hers after coming home from work after going to school. His wealth and girlfriend are hollow victories when he can't trust people enough to make friends. He loves his sister, enough to keep her photos on his foyer wall, but can't bear engaging with her as an adult on equal footing. He thought he'd finally caught a break, only for it to turn out to be a death trap from the start. Yes, choosing to smash the vial was an irredeemable action, a selfish, vindictive, and evil choice; however, I don't think he could have chosen differently. Dr. Mercer was not necessarily intended to be a sympathetic character (although he was), but he was certainly, bare-minimum, intended to be a tragic one.
It seems like the game went through several rewrites, and those rewrites confuse a pretty major plot beat: does the virus Xander releases at Penn Station burn itself out, or does it go on to become the main virus on the streets of Manhattan? This question, and where you personally fall on it, is really important. And that's because... if the virus burns itself out in Penn Station (which apparently the writer confirmed on Twitter, but there's evidence in the game to suggest the opposite), then that means Xander has one of the lowest body counts in the game.
Yeah, you heard me. Let's say the virus burns itself out in Penn Station. How many people would that even be? A few thousand? In 2009, Penn Station served about 300,000 people per day. That is really busy, but obviously, not all of those people - or even a majority of those people - are going to be in the station at any given time. It's probably a number around four digits. Um, how many people does Alex kill over the course of the game, again? Obviously, the in-game kill counts can't exactly be trusted, because you can rack up millions depending on how much you fuck around, but it's generally agreed that he's in the tens of thousands, between all the military bases he destroys, civilians he eats, and soldiers he cuts through. Randall has been confirmed to have ordered the glassing of both Hope, Idaho, AND Two Bluff, Arizona, with an attempt on Manhattan. (Cross also mentions a Kentucky in one of the cut lines, implying there's more cities and casualties than we even know about.) There are 1.6 million people living in Manhattan in 2009, so Randall was about to kill, like, a thousand times more people than Xander.
It also means he never put Dana in danger. If it's a virus that burns out on its own, he - the person whose work was "years ahead of his nearest competitor" - would know that it wouldn't reach her. And it would make sense if it burns out, too, because it's a bio-weapon. Not a great bio-weapon if it causes a a whole-ass apocalypse! And I also don't think it's fair to blame Xander for Alex letting Elizabeth Greene out of her cage, because by that point, 1) Xander is dead, 2) Dana sent Alex there, 3) Alex is a fully sapient and independent being who is not under Xander's orders because Xander is dead. I mention this because I've literally run into people who believe that the virus burned itself out at Penn Station, BUT ALSO that Xander releasing the vial directly put Dana in danger of infection AND that Elly's rampage is somehow his fault. You can't have it both ways!
That's actually why I don't believe that the virus burned itself out. Narratively and thematically, it's much better if Xander did release his virus knowing that it might cause a full-on apocalypse. That does make it so that he risked his sister's life (although you can argue that he figured she was as good as dead, anyways, given that they'd tracked him down - I don't, since I think he was too busy panicking and being sleep-deprived to be thinking about that), and it DOES make the entire ensuing tragedy his fault. And the reason that this is important is because of Xander's role as a "father" to Alex.
Here's something else that's important to note, which I often see overlooked: Alex places the blame on the shoulders of Randall, not Xander. "You bastard," he says after he's eaten Randall. "You could have stopped all this - you let it happen." Meanwhile, here's what he actually says about Xander: "what Mercer did is beyond forgiveness," and at the end of the game, "Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's a part of me." We aren't supposed to think he's unilaterally evil without nuance. Pretty much everyone, Alex included, has done things "beyond forgiveness" in this game. We're instead supposed to ponder what it means to be derived from his stock.
What is Alex's characterization? To be frank, Alex is a dumbass baby. I know that this is not necessarily popular, but I genuinely believe that it's intentional. There are literally cut lines from the very first mission that REALLY drive home that this poor guy has NO IDEA what's going on. Begging people to stop shooting at him, thinking to himself "where's a place with a lot of people?" (honey, you're in NYC), and generally going "what was that? how did this happen? what's going on? what? huh? what?"
There's also needing Ragland to suggest to him the novel idea of breaking both spines on the leader hunters, and following Phone Voice into a death trap, and then still listening to Phone Voice a second time, not to mention how awkwardly he shrugs his way out of Karen Parker's hug, or how he's constantly pushing himself all the way into Dana's personal space/startling her/disappearing while no one's watching. There's a point where his brilliant plan for getting McMullen to land is to disable some infection detectors... while standing ankle-deep in biomass... looking up at McMullen. He's just, ah, ehm... not the sharpest tool in the shed. If you replay the game with that in mind, it... yeah. I mean. His first instinct upon being attacked by helicopters is to go up onto the roof of a building, where he is surprised by... more helicopters. Who left this child unattended? Where are your guardians.
I know I'm exaggerating - Alex does show remarkable flexibility and adaptability and on-the-fly problem-solving sometimes - but when the PRIMA bios and McMullen repeatedly stress that Xander is clever, manipulative, a schemer, a hustler, "so smart," it really highlights how... straightforward Alex is in comparison. You cannot tell me that Alex, as he's presented in-game, is "a lateral thinker - plans within plans."
And the interesting thing is, this actually seems like a fairly late-stage change! The original PRIMA guide blurb for "The Prototype" seems to suggest that he is actually an amnesiatic Dr. Mercer, not a wholly separate entity. It goes on and on about how "The Prototype" is cool, calm, dry and witty, always in control of his body, etc. etc., but that really doesn't match the in-game characterization at all (he's consistently characterized as awkward, unsure of himself), meaning that I think this is more proof that a characterization as "fucking idiot dumbass baby" was intentional.
Sampling of cut voice lines:
"Ghost Twelve, Ghost Twelve... oh, shit, that's my callsign..."
"Aw, I hate D-Codes..."
"They think I'm dead. Perfect. I can't wait to see the look on McMullen's face."
"I need to get somewhere with a lot of people... somewhere where they can't just keep firing at me."
"Where is there a lot of fucking people? Where?" (girliepop you live in NEW YORK)
"Just remember! This was your idea!"
like. cmon, man.
That being said, Alex is not innocent. He starts the game without a conscience, easily and effortlessly killing people, instinctively eating them, too. He's quite literally built upon two existing minds - the people-eating virus, and the sociopathic misanthrope. I think this is why he defaults to shoving people and has no option to put them down gently - he's filled with Xander's rage, his hatred, and his casual cruelty. One of his earliest lines is this: "revenge was the only clear thought in my head. The only one I could call mine." LITTLE DOES HE KNOW. He continues. "I wanted to find out what happened to me. The reason. Someone to blame. Someone I could punish."
And now we get into a major theme of the game, my thesis: [PROTOTYPE] is about family. It's about nature vs. nurture, it's about the cycle of abuse, and it's about how the people who raise us, shape us. Xander is the "father" of this story; he's consistently placed in that role relative to Dana, and Alex directly inherits his genetics, his appearance, his name, and even his initial personality from him. And as for the mother... there is literally a character in the game named MOTHER.
Alex is, in a very literal way, the child of Xander and Elizabeth Green. He was born out of a fusion of their DNA - the virus infecting Xander's body. Elizabeth also literally says "I am your MOTHER" in their first meeting. And as if that weren't enough, Elizabeth's relationship to Alex directly mirrors Xander's relationship with his own mother: the first thing Elizabeth does is abandon Alex, and when she returns, it's only to threaten Dana's safety and torment him. Xander himself becomes a mirror to his own absent father, disappearing before he ever got to know his son. This is the cycle of abuse, the tragedy that occurs when someone who was abused becomes trapped by it, and has no ability to operate outside its confines, perpetuating the pain that was inflicted upon them.
However... something's different. Alex is not left alone to suffer like Xander does. He has Dana - a parental figure who loves him unconditionally, whom he loves unconditionally in turn. And she is the impetus for his ability to change, the one who most directly molds his burgeoning consciousness. His interactions with Dana are brief, but even in those brief interaction, she teaches him empathy ("my god, [Elizabeth]'s just a girl. What kind of fucking monsters are these people?"), kindness/mercy ("whoa, whoa, whoa. [Ragland]'s a good guy"), and trust ("look, no matter what, you're still my brother"). Let's go back to our pin. Xander is Dana's "father" also... and he was the best one she could have had, given the circumstances. Dana represents breaking the cycle. Dana represents Xander's single redeeming quality.
In other words... the key difference between Alex and Xander is that Alex has an adult figure in Dana that he can trust and rely upon, something Xander never had... because Xander was that for Dana. Xander broke the cycle. That's the one good thing he managed to do.
Now, we know that lots of rewrites happened, that final boss stuff got shifted around, and things got moved into a sequel hook, like Dana's fate or PARIAH's whole deal. However, I think we can almost piece together what it might have been if we follow this thematic line of thinking. Because here's something quite interesting: PARIAH... is in foster care. A child who kills everything he touches, abandoned and trapped, a monster, whose only use is as an agent of evolution, a direct parallel for Xander at his worst - this tortured man who "found solace only in his work", for whom foster care was better, who teetered on sociopathy and didn't care. Randall represents the government, the system, that put him there - the first ones to ever screw Xander over. So if we assume that the final boss was originally PARIAH, and Alex still needs to eat his way through Elizabeth and Randall to get to him, then an incredibly interesting thing happens when we view that sequence of events from this thematic perspective.
Alex would triumph over MOTHER, the government, and Xander's worst. The crystallization of the fleeting love within Xander's heart - the one redeeming facet of Xander's personality - would overcome his abusive mother, the cold-hearted system that forsook him, and even his own worst traits, the monster he was molded into. Quite literally, love would win. And I think this would have even tied in to curing Dana - that this would become a major facet of Alex's motivation - that he'd need PARIAH in order to cure her, or something like that. Dana - kindness, empathy, and love, breaking the cycle of abuse - becomes the impetus for Alex to change, to become a better person, to grow a conscience, to trust others. I think that's the central theme of this game.
Xander's shadow looms large over the entirety of [PROTOTYPE]'s story. There are more themes than just family, but it's the one I wanted to highlight, because I think it's the one most central, most core to the game's emotional experience. At every turn, you can feel the ghost of Xander - not just because Alex is literally wearing his corpse.
I'll restate here the relevant parts of Alex's closing monologue:
"I looked for the truth. Found it. Didn't like it. Wish to hell I could forget it. Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's part of me."
Xander is Alex's father - the person from whom he inherited his base nature. But Alex is able to grow beyond that - to trust others, to love others.
"What have I become? Something less than human. But also something more."
Xander was so tormented by his past, by his abandonment, neglect, and abuse, that he was unable to face his sister. Terrified of the pain of abandonment, he chose to abandon her rather than risk being rejected when she became an adult. And yet, he loved his sister. That's the nuance of this character, the legacy he leaves. One of cruelty, but also one of kindness. Both are inherited by Alex - it's fair to say that everything Alex is has been shaped by Xander, his father. The bad... but also the good. And it is because of that miniscule, faltering, fleeting "good" that Xander was able to procure, that Alex is able to rise above what Xander became.
TL;DR: It would be appropriate, both narratively and thematically, to call Xander "daddy".
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