#im back on my defending prototype soapbox again

[lassieposting]

Back on my Poppyposting bullshit to yell about something I haven't seen anyone talking about:

Prototype is still protecting the orphans

So. Obviously this new chapter puts a lot of effort into villainizing my boy. I still have some hope that not everything is as clear-cut as Poppy is trying to make it look - god knows there are a half dozen places where her story doesn't add up or she's been caught not being honest with us - but I reckon they're far more likely to go the predictable "Prototype-as-Big-Bad" route, and not in the fun morally grey way I theorized last year.

But

There's this one line that really sticks out to me. When the Safe Haven, Poppy tells us that the orphans have been "taken" and that they're "in the labs...the Prototype's home."

And then, in the conversation between Prototype and Harley Sawyer, Sawyer asks Prototype to give him labs access if he wants actual results.

And Prototype says, in essence, over my dead body.

He's still refusing to give Sawyer access to the orphans. He's keeping them in his own lair - the one experiment who does not need to eat - and he's refusing to let them be used as test subjects. Even though whatever he was doing with Sawyer was pressed for time, he prioritized their safety over achieving his goals.

He's still trying to protect them.

And like, if you think about it, it's strongly implied that he actually planned for the safety of the orphans well in advance. Miss Delight's tape confirms that she asked CatNap what had happened to the children, where they were, and if they were safe. CatNap refused to tell her where they were (and she says this was, "Probably because he knew I'd kill 'em all.") but confirmed that they were safe, and had been moved. Which means Prototype planned the move of the orphans ahead of time, and CatNap was aware of - and potentially involved in - the plan. The children eventually warmed to CatNap in Playcare - he may well have been their escort down to the bowels of the factory.

Which. This whole thing is a fucked up situation - obviously. Prototype is keeping them prisoner, for sure - I'm not refuting that. For them to still be children, he'd have to be keeping them in some kind of suspended animation state - unless they're now adults who have grown up down there with him. But I've seen theories suggesting he's planning to use them in experiments of his own, and that...just doesn't ring true for me.

He's done the best he could for them within the incredibly limited options available to him. Poppy says that he's explained to her why the toys can never leave the factory - he knows they'd be promptly shuffled into some government facility where they'd be taken apart in order to figure out how to repeat Playtime's atrocities. They will never be able to live normal lives. And releasing the children onto the streets in the aftermath of a massacre is a great way to bring the police howling to the factory's door - jeopardizing every soul inside. So he keeps them there. But he keeps them safe, as best he can - sometime between the Hour of Joy and Miss Delight being released from the locked schoolhouse after killing and eating all her sisters, he realises he's run them all into a bottleneck, and he has the orphans moved from Playcare (CatNap's territory - loyal to Prototype, but full of Critters who are going to start starving eventually and could pose a threat to the children) to his own lair in the labs. There is most likely no safer place in that factory for them. He is the only experiment who does not need to eat to survive - his digestive tract is vestigial - and as the facility's biggest, scariest apex predator, he is the most intimidating defender those children could have as the factory descends into chaos. Because really - even when the Bigger Bodies start starving, who's brave or stupid enough to walk into his home turf and fight their way through him - a being notorious for exceptional violence - to get to the children?

Nobody. The only fucker in that factory who seems willing to directly lock horns with Prototype is Doey, and only in defence of his own home - he's not fool enough to seek him out. For most of the Bigger Bodies, it's easier and less risky to turn on other experiments. Lives that have already been ruined.

I've theorized before that Prototype has been playing a long game of manipulation to grant everyone in that factory peace through having us kill them all, him included. We're his suicide. But I don't think that's his goal for the "children".

The letter he sent us at the beginning, prompting us to look for the disappeared staff members, says "We're still here."

The staff aren't still there. But the orphans are. And he's been keeping them safe from Harley Sawyer and the Bigger Bodies for a reason. Maybe we are it.

Anyway tl:dr; antihero/antivillain prototype still very much plausible imo