#but here he's just all SORTS of shades of manipulative asshole. like he similarly starts out sweet but ougaaghgghhghhh....

[gu6chan]

speaking of nickel-type observations i was drawing something from and old rp and just now realised that TWICE both my biggest ships with barnabas have been fucked up in one way or another. first was also my very first OC ship and i had only come to realise the brow-raisingly large age gap like 8 years later but it was between this spinstress??? tailor girl named ella who met him while going to deliver a dress (17) and "omg ive never met another person in my life before. sit by the fire and let me tell you about how im going to become an angel someday :3<" barnabas (12) back on g+ between like 2011-2013 and the SECOND was relatively recent, like 4.... 5 years ago which had a boy who was abandoned by his father after birth because of an affair, and that father happened to be BARNABAS' father and deciding he was tired of being treated like dirt by the rest of the clan he wound up in and that he wanted his title back the former sacks the whole kingdom, kills both of barnabas parents and is like "Okay <3 barnabas announce that youre giving your title over to ME and MAYBE (maybe) i will let you live with me <333 i think it could be silly and fun" and barnabas despite starting out as a coward by all means does it starting out simply not wanting to die but later is like "hmmmmm :-)" and starts subtly manipulating him so he can gain his favour and influence and stab him in the back when the time comes (it never did, my poor rp partner was living in argentina and their account is gone now :( but i'll remember you rip....) anyways im drawing them now and just realised their whole toxic yaoi deal was also aided by them being half-brothers. 4-5 years later. hm i am not a very smart or intelligent person i think

[pavlovianpanic]

i'm probably not going to brief on this as much as i should, but nathan and his father share similar interests (not hobbies, interests). they also have similar sex drives, both of their relationships with sex are quite violent in nature, but sean is way past saying sorry. he is not sorry. this complicates how nathan views "sorry". he views sorry as sorrow.

so, nathan gets a lot from his father, he's watched him his whole life, thus knows how he operates.

sean encouraged his son to basically "be on his own" in a lot of ways, giving nathan unrestricted access to the internet in that sweet early 2000s spot so many kids his age fell into (porn, suicide videos, murder videos, just totally rampant content everywhere that can change a kid's brain chemistry). nathan has been consuming "dark content" and sexualized content from a young age, that's pretty obvious by just how he's written in canon. these interests don't just start one day, the bondage and the impulses and everything else. these are both within and without nathan; he both is them, encompassing them, while also being nurtured (and also not watched), arguably even coached. he was always alone, or that's how it felt. it was easier to say he was "always alone" after his sister left.

but this post isn't just about nathan, it's about his father, who acts very similarly to nathan with much more control, ease, and precision. he is a master manipulator, a bully, and knows how to get what he wants out of people even if they don't want to give it to him. business or personal.

to me, sean's wife is his own kate; an innocence he trapped, pressured, and assured her of his stability (thus his ability to keep her stable). now? he abuses her and continues to do so into the latter years of their marriage.

nathan saw a lot of abuse not just on himself, but to his mother and his sister from his father. the control, the hitting, the threat of hitting, the bullying, the cornering, the isolating, the trapping, all of it. nathan is one shade of many bruises across the prescott name.

but sean learned this behavior somewhere. if we can "give a pass to nathan", we must do the same to sean. we know next to nothing, only that he was guided by his father the way he will guide nathan. well, how do you think his father was guiding him? probably with even more intensity, i imagine. nathan's grandfather was old school. sean is a little more progressive, he would aruge, but sometimes ... the best lessons are learned with a simple belt switch or a slap across the face.

sean is nathan's biggest bully, but he didn't just "become" his biggest bully; he was born to be, just like his dad taught him. sean is not the start of this cycle, he is just the middle piece for us to sort of observe and place a lot of blame on.

to clarify, i don't feel bad for sean, as he is "the real big bad" here, the one behind the scenes, "the faceless boss" to jefferson (they have known each other for a long time / they have done this before). but i do have to say, we have to look at him just as objectively as nathan. like ... we know so little about sean, really, and we see nathan do so much bad on-screen where we just hear about sean (he's an asshole, he's mean, he's a bully).

if nathan is the way he is because of his father, arguably his father is the same way because of nathan's grandfather. it's cyclical.

and sean is all too comfortable to play the role of "bad father", by the way. he doesn't really care what nathan thinks, just so long as nathan performs.

actually, this whole post was to say that sean is also insanely sexually aggressive, manipulative, and often cheats on his wife. but he cares about her. he says he does, at least. he "cares" about her in the same sense that she is an extension to him; her womb is his breeding ground, that's it. make me a son, he had asked her. she gave him a daughter. i demand a son, he told her again. when she gave him nathan, he was so proud ... and so immediately disappointed. the boy wept, was often fussy, and too emotional. just like his mother.

to sean, his biggest mistake was not giving nathan a strong enough mother. she is the starting source of this weakness.