Alex and Adam have been bonded, ever since childhood – whether they like it or not. Alex is a fairly typical, athletic young man. Though his only failing is that he tends to avoid confrontation and is somewhat lazy. As a child he was bullied for several years and had no friends. To remedy this, he invented Adam, a confident, catty boy, who could be his friend. Understandably, they were both surprised that Adam stuck around after childhood.
Now a seventeen-year-old, Alex is resigned to the fact that he must be clinically insane. Adam tends to agree, always taking some pleasure in being a bother. He gets in Alex’s way, mutters rude things about the people around them, and always tries to cause trouble.
When making a protagonist for Underside I knew I had to be weary not to copy and paste Sam’s character. To avoid this I tried to make Alex as different as I could. I automatically made him older, closer to an adult than a child. At one point, Alex was also more integral to the plot. That is to say, he had some secret piece of knowledge trapped in his head. But then I began to realise – I’d made him Underside’s Spirit Rider. So I changed that, pulled it all back and made Alex absolutely normal. No magic, no abilities. Nothing.
Meanwhile, Adam is very important as well. Within the first book of the series, we get hints that there’s something more to him. He mainly acts as an acidic comic-relief, but there’s still something more – even if he doesn’t know it himself.
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