#i know the cornbugs arent true canon technically but i count it when it doesnt conflict with pre-existing canon

[ofthehands]

Question for TCM fans: What do you think the reason is that there's such a big age gap between Drayton and the rest of his brothers? Like I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason is that Hooper wrote him as a nebulous old man then decided later that he's their brother, but now that it's the canon we have, what do you think the in universe reason is?

I tend to lean towards the idea that they share a mother, but have different fathers, and that she had Drayton quite young, though the twins and Drayton share a pretty strong resemblance (though again it could be a total casting coincidence lol).

I think it also could be possible that they all share parents, and there's more (deceased) Sawyer siblings than we see, with Drayton, the twins, and Bubba being the only to survive to adulthood + avoid leaving the home, with the younger brothers likely being dependent on Drayton from a very young age + their parents being out of the picture by then. I feel like this one takes a big more stretching/ expanding on scraps of canon, bc I got this idea almost entirely from the Cornbugs song Buried Child, in which Chop Top sings about buried children (go figure lol), particularly these lines -

Which seem out of place with the way the Sawyers behave. Like we've never seen them kill kids, but I would imagine they would, and don't expect they'd treat them any differently from other victims. So in my mind it makes sense the buried nameless child "gone too soon" could be another Sawyer sibling.

Idk, there's a lot of explanations that could make sense, these are just the two I go with most often. What's your ideas?