What are your hcs for Drew’s parents?
There’s a lot. I’ve made a post about my headcanons for Drew’s backstory here where I focus more on Drew’s perspective, but in this post I will be purely about his parents and how their actions affected him.
DISCLAIMER: Many of these headcanons are my attempt at explaining Drew’s behavior throughout the series. I am not justifying anything. Bullying is bad no matter what his circumstances are.
CW: Mentions of child abuse.
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🖤 We all know Drew’s parents are loaded. So I like to imagine they have some upper-management position at some multi-million dollar company. I’d say they work different branches of the same company, but have relatively equal power. (So that their relationship doesn’t become a legality issue.) Their positions have them either working long hours or traveling constantly, so Drew only ever sees them at night, if at all.
🖤When Drew was younger, his parents often left him in the care of nannies. But I don’t think Drew ever really understood why. He didn’t understand why his parent’s jobs were so much more important than him, and why he was always being left in the care of people he barely knew.
🖤Obviously, Drew came to understand this ‘why’ as he grew older, but I think a part of him internalized that belief of: “I’m not good enough, otherwise they would’ve made more time for me.” And I think this is why he’s always fanning his own ego; always bragging about his own possessions and putting others down. It’s a defense mechanism. A way of reassuring himself that he matters.
🖤I don’t really think Drew liked being raised by nannies much, nor did he want them getting close to him. I think he displaced a lot his frustration towards his parents onto his caretakers, which probably only landed him in trouble and made him even less keen on listening and behaving properly. (At least until his parents had this behavior… ‘corrected’.)
🖤But as Drew got older and learned to care for himself, his parents just gave him a credit card and left him to his own devices.
🖤When Drew’s parents were around, I imagine they were pretty strict and held him to high expectations. They wanted him to be someone capable of assuming the roles they held; someone successful. This meant someone who was intelligent, respectful and responsible.
🖤Drew is not (emotionally) intelligent, nor respectful, and he avoids (emotional) responsibility. I believe the way Drew acts TMF is drastically different from how he’d act around his parents. I imagine he’d be a lot more quiet and subdued; nodding along to whatever his parents said. Because Drew doesn’t have control here like he does at school. He can’t just bully his parents around like be can his classmates.
🖤That said, I do imagine arguments are frequent when they’re around. It’s just… something that happens. Drew makes some snide remark, and his parents shut down. Drew knows he should bite his tongue at this point but a scathing rebuttal has already slipped out. Now he’s getting yet another lecture about how it’s rude to talk back, and suddenly a shouting match is occurring at the dinner table, despite this being the one night a week they actually get to see each other. His parents are yelling over him, and he’s once again being guilt-tripped over how ungrateful he is for everything they do for him. He’s halfway to his room before his parents can even shout the order, wondering why he ever missed them in the first place.
🖤 (If it wasn’t obvious, I think Drew’s short temper is something that just runs in the family.)
🖤 It’s been confirmed by Rosy that Drew has a toxic masculinity mindset, and I imagine this also stems from how his parents raised him. Being alone for most of his life meant he never learned how to properly express and regulate his emotions, and his parents never helped him in this regard. Disruptive or ‘unpleasant’ emotions were either ignored or punished, depending on how they presented themselves. He was always treated as weak for showing emotions; was told to ‘act like a man’ more times than he can count. And this resulted in Drew bottling up his emotions and refusing to even acknowledge them.
🖤Punishments were never physical, nor anything that would harm his physical well-being. I imagine it was mostly verbal. Lots of yelling, guilt-tripping, berating, and with even some threats of taking away things he cared for.
🖤His parents were the ones that pushed him to take honors classes, claiming it would better his future. And I think Drew asking to step down from them to be with his friends either in Sophomore or Junior year probably resulted in one of the biggest arguments he ever had with them. He came dangerously close to calling Jake that night, desperate to hear his voice as he struggled to keep his tears at bay.
🖤He still doesn’t really know how he won the argument.
🖤Drew’s parents don’t know anything about his school life. They look at his grades and any reports they receive from his teachers, but they never ask him directly. So they’re none the wiser to all the bullying he does. (And even if they did ask, Drew wouldn’t tell them anything.)
🖤Other than reinforcing their own values, I don’t really think they actually talk to Drew much. They don’t really care to ask him about his day, or what he gets up to. They’ll buy him whatever he asks for, but they never ask about why he even wants it in the first place.
🖤The fact his parents buy him things is the only way Drew can recognize they even care about him. And this is why he’s always buying things for his friends: to show he cares.
🖤This is all speculation, but I think Drew’s parents always being absent affected him in a lot of ways. I like to think Drew’s possessive behavior stems from attachment and abandonment issues, which developed because his parents were always absent. I think he’s horrible at expressing empathy and understanding others because he was never taught how to. He’s constantly bragging about himself and inflating his own ego because of how small and fragile it truly is due to a lack of love and reassurance. And he bullies others to gain the level of control he lacks at home.
🖤With everything said, I don’t think he outright hates his parents. I think he wants to, but it’s a lot messier than that. He’s certainly bitter towards them, but… they’re still his parents. They buy him anything he asks for. They give him a roof over his head. They’re just… never home.
🖤He despises talking about his parents. Especially when people bring up how lucky he must feel, having rich parents who let him do whatever he wants. He finds himself clamming up a little, his mind drifting back to all those nights spent alone after a hard day, just wishing he could have someone to turn to for everything. (But even if he did have someone, he’d never actually open up to them. Opening up and admitting to your feelings is a sign of weakness. And Drew’s been scolded enough times to know he’s never allowed to show weakness.)
TDLR: I think Drew’s parents are the reason he’s so incredibly messed up. And I want to beat them with hammers even though we know nothing about them.
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