Im Sat. Im Taking Notes. Im Obsessed With The Dissertation And The Breakdown.

im sat. im taking notes. im obsessed with the dissertation and the breakdown.

i know what i gotta do. i gotta fix the timeline. i gotta rewrite all of canon and make stars chrisker the new canon event.

Some scattered thoughts about Wesker's character and STARS

Your worst sin is that you've destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing" - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Wesker grew up in an environment controlled by Umbrella. I like to think of it as an institute or orphanage. He must have felt lonely. He must have been alone.

This fact is not trivial because loneliness is thematic and yet ambivalent when it comes to Wesker's character. His relationship with other people and humanity as a whole is complex but fundamental to understanding his motivations. We know for a fact that he is not averse to being alone and even enjoys solitary walks through the Arklay forest. He also talks a lot to himself. But is his relation to aloneness one-dimensional?

He was human (and in some ways, he still is even after his death and rebirth). As a consequence, alterity interplay necessarily shaped his identity, even if he himself went so far as to cast away his humanity, deemed a weakness. This credo does not pertain only to Wesker. Alex Wesker, Dr. Marcus, Spencer, William Birkin, Sergei Vladimir... Umbrella's executives and higher-ups regard humanity as a dead end to be overcome with the help of science.

But unlike them, Wesker managed a small family team for almost 3 years. And unlike them, even after his rebirth, Wesker never really works alone.

I like to imagine how much inner conflict and cognitive dissonance the STARS era must have triggered. Can you really select people that you find highly capable, train with them, earn their respect and trust, and not care at all ?

Is it truly possible that he was but a cold monster, conditioned by Umbrella to destroy the world and embody the future of humanity ? An efficient tool that was taught how to identify valuable people and exploit their abilities ? Is Wesker just repeating with others what Spencer did with him ?

It’s an interpretation of the character. I find it too plain for my tastes. Wesker is a man of contradictions. He values freedom, is brilliant, and yet he is never able to think outside Umbrella's conceptual box. He values efficiency and yet seems unable to get rid of Chris and Jill. He obviously craves control and seems wary and distrustful, which is probably a result of Umbrella's smothering grasp on him since childhood, and yet he trusts Ada, Krauser, Excella and other people to carry out his plans, increasing the risk of betrayal. Wesker is multifaceted, and so is his relationship with humanity.

Wesker's education is undoubtedly orchestrated by Umbrella/Spencer. Conceived and planned by Lord Spencer and his colleague Dr Wesker, Albert’s education was designed to make him an active defender of utilitarian philosophy, though devoid of its moral aspect. 

I believe the STARS, its inability to let go of the past, particularly Chris, reveals a failure in Spencer's plan.

Even if "little piggies" sounds provocative and unflattering, and even if he evokes "a family reunion" in an ironic way, there is still something along the lines of possessiveness that manifests itself here. When it comes to Chris, Wesker is the most ambivalent, helping him during the events of RE1, lamenting that he "cannot understand" his vision in RE5 and expressing his pride at every encounter.

The point is that Wesker almost never made a choice that wasn't designed or foreseen by Umbrella in his life. Even his suicide and following rebirth, a last-minute plan that was his way out of Umbrella (he symbolically steps on his glasses branded "property of Umbrella"), was overseen by Spencer. But he did choose the STARS members himself with no criteria forced upon him.

When he was given full latitude to build up a team from scratch, he selected talented people, sure, who displayed for most of them an unconventional profile and/or a sense of honor and justice. Chris was kicked out of the USAF, Jill's father is a notorious thief (and herself is suspiciously good at picking locks), Kenneth is a chemist, Richard Aiken lost his sister and wanted to protect others, Rebecca is caring and brilliant,... etc. Wesker's targeted people who were courageous, empathetic, and strong-willed. And yet, at this point, he didn't know what Umbrella's planned to do with them. He chose them freely, with no hidden motive at this point, without Umbrella interfering.

He willingly chose to surround himself with people who absolutely did not share his beliefs. He did NOT choose meek and/or plain people. He COULD have found competent AND cynical, less idealistic, less intelligent, policemen. People whose job was really just a job. But he chose them, introducing a risk factor as he was actually reporting to Umbrella. He chose people who follow their own moral compass, though they are less likely to be manipulated, are more difficult to lie to, and would rather not compromise. People with a sense of justice are often fierce and eager to defend their beliefs even though it's not in their best interest. They could have put Wesker in a delicate position, and, as a matter of fact, Chris, Forest, and Joseph were hated by Brian Irons.

So, why did he do that ?

If you listen attentively to Wesker's soliloquy in RE5, while he tries to pursue Chris as a clumsy octopus-like monster, I believe it makes sense if you consider he sees himself as a Messiah and a Creator.

Wesker states that he hates humanity. But before his experience with STARS, humanity was actually comprising his colleagues within Umbrella. He doesn't know the world even though his denial and inflated ego and probably his own suffering help him believe that he does. Umbrella taught him that people are worth less than nothing. (Though ironically, Umbrella's executives and accomplices, such as Brian Irons, probably reinforced Wesker's belief that humans were to be punished and corrected).

And so, when he loses his mind, he does not ramble, like a classic comic book villain, that humans are stupid or a lost cause. No. He laments that he sees "war and pestilence" wherever he goes. It is very telling : He desperately craves peace and he only sees the world as Umbrella taught him. And it's horrifying. He relishes on being a Creator, a Demiurge. A GOOD one. He wants to punish humanity AND start anew. That's precisely what Uroboros, a never-ending circle of life and destruction, encompasses.

Wesker doesn't only want humanity to face its long overdue punishment ("this winnowing"). He wants humanity to do better, to be closer to perfection, even though his method is totally irrational (as you could argue that he was the one bringing up War and Pestilence at its climax in their universe...).

He hasn't killed Chris, nor Jill, AND he EVEN confesses that he should have killed him YEARS ago. But why does he want his former pointman to understand ? Why is he OBSESSED about Chris "not understanding", if he isn't supposed to survive ?

I think that in Wesker's twisted mind, Chris represents what humanity should be at its best. Wesker fawned over his Tyrant because it was his creation. A new human, created by him, the first step to his new world. But Tyrant is soulless. Chris, Jill, and every member of STARS he chose, trained, and teamed up with, embodied values that he regards as worthy, honorable but not fitted for this corrupted world (according to him). If he calls out Chris on his self-righteousness, it's because Chris does good deeds in an evil world, which Wesker deems worthless because that's inefficient (utilitarian thinking). A drop in the ocean that changes nothing. However, the members of STARS (a name that evokes hope) had a soul. They were drops in the ocean. And they were his.

There is something so enticingly complex about a character who implicitely confesses that the world would be a better place if people were all as good and pure as the STARS members were, while he brutally killed them all in a way that reminds me of the sacrifice of lambs on behalf of a God that is supposed to be fair and good.

He is Frankenstein's beast and a coward and a man that preferred to be cruel (with the intent to be a Savior) than weak (and admitting he was only a pawn in Umbrella's grand scheme of things).

And so, he suffers from chronic backstabber disorder and delusions of grandeur. He believes that he had to escape humanity to punish them and save them, that he had the courage to do what is necessary for the greater good when he is, deep down, just a man. A man who is very angry, very hateful, a coward who walked a path of loneliness because it was much easier than to face the truth : The world can only be painted in shaded of gray and certainly not in black and white. But that would mean throwing away the great destiny that Umbrella designed for him (for Spencer actually, but he realized that at 50 yo...). That would mean that he is just a man, wronged, "manufactured", manipulated and slowly turning into a BOW. Their BOW.

Wesker, who blamed "loathsome humans" for turning the world into a cesspool, was actually one of these humans he so despises, partly because he never really abandoned Umbrella's mindset ("you're just another one of Umbrella's leftover" ie : a thing that belongs to them and doesn't think for himself which is TRUE).

And paradoxically, ironically, he betrayed and murdered in cold blood people that would have helped him make the world a better place.