((1. How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy? 8. Where and when do they seem most and least at ease? Why? How can you tell? 15. What kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? Calculating and practical? Full of doubts and fears? Does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?))
Constantly moving, pacing, glancing around. Nervous as a cat, except instead of a housecat, think caged circus tiger. Here’s a good quote about it: “Always a restless little bundle of energy. Like at any moment, you’re afraid you’re gonna burn out.”He tends to have a somewhat hunched, brooding movement to him. Kind of a mix between anxious and predatory. His pace gets very measured and deliberate when he’s interested in something/someone, he tends to “lock on” in a way that can be unsettling... for good reason. If he stops being twitchy and starts being focused, that can be a not so great sign for the subject of his attention.8. Where and when do they seem most and least at ease? Why? How can you tell? Up high, and I mean skyscraper high. He likes to feel tall be able to see everything around him and all possible avenues of approach. The only times he doesn’t like being out in the open are if he’s actively being followed/chased and/or he’s injured/vulnerable. In those cases, he tends to go underground. Somewhere sturdy, quiet and out of the way. Dark.When he’s least at ease would be the opposite of that, indoors in a crowd. He can blend into crowds well out of necessity, but if people start getting suspicious of his presence, alert, or there’s just “high energy” going around, he can get anxious. Lots of noise, movement, bright lights in a situation can overstimulate him. Again, he can blend in well when he has to. It’s more like... he’s fine exactly up until something goes wrong and knocks him out of his mimicry routine, then he starts to go off-kilter and tail-spin.You can tell he’s uncomfortable pretty easily, he’ll be a lot more twitchy and nervous than usual. The pacing gets short and choppy. If it gets bad enough, his disguise will start to falter--little spikes out of his “jacket,” eyes too bright, stuff like that. Also: violent fight or flight.15. What kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? Calculating and practical? Full of doubts and fears? Does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?This one is interesting, because he’s such a young organism yet has adapted to mimic adult humans, and his entire self is based solely on adaptive mimicry. Sapience was sort of an unforeseen side-effect, not that ZEUS had much foresight put into its ultimate deployment. Dr. Mercer managed something real fucked up in that lab.Anyway, my headcanon is that Alex’s internal dialogue is still pretty limited, matter of fact point a. to point b. He mostly operates by situation to situation, adapting as necessary. Action oriented. He has a goal, say “find Dana” or “intercept Taggart” and mostly just reacts to what’s going on around him. He was built to be a weapon, even if he didn’t turn out... quite like expected. I imagine he’s usually pretty single-minded, or at least that’s what’s most comfortable for him. It’s not that he’s not capable of abstract thought, or that he’s “stupid,” far from it, it’s just that he usually doesn’t have much reason to delve into true introspection or emotional depth. That sort of thing mostly comes up because of mimicry, and when he still believed he was Alex Mercer the human being, he kind of arbitrarily went with what was in his mish-mash of stolen memories “told” him he should feel. When he does start getting philosophical, it’s usually because he doesn’t have anything else to do, and he tends towards angst more often than anything productive. One reason why he craves distractions so much.Alex definitely struggles a lot with all the memories in his head, too. If he loses focus, it’s easy for him to get lost in the thoughts and mannerisms of someone he assimilated. Due to his inclination to mimic, he can sort of “mirror” others that he spends a lot of time with and/or thinks highly of. See: Dana. He’ll throw himself into causes she’s passionate about, and align himself with moral judgement that she expresses that he might not normally, because it’s in his nature to mimic and blend in.He has slowly gained more of an individual sense of self over time, and his own opinions, and he will continue to do so as he ages and as situations allow. My Mercer has just had a.. lot of weird time-skippy/memory reset shit happen to him, that has sort of messed with his path of self-actualization. It’s one of the reasons he’s so gosh darn angry/violent--he’s a weapon, that response is easiest and least confusing. If thinking about something hurts your head, well, adopt someone else’s opinions on it instead! This is why letting AM tell him things is a terrible idea.tl,dr: his ‘inner-life’ is inherently inhuman and he’s a baby unknown-to-science entity who is still trying to figure this whole sapience thing out for himself]]
