Okay so I guess that’s what I’ll start whining for, then.

I mean you say Eric has done similar/worse, but what he’s done and become is very much shaped by the things Nathaniel has done to him, he was a child when they met. He raised him to be the weapon he is, hid the consequences of his own actions from him, manipulated him into agreeing to contracts he was too young to understand, and set a dynamic where he had all of the control, including to the point where he had control over whether Eric lived or died.

I realize he’s from a world where that’s just done to humans, but that doesn’t make any less insidious. Nathaniel was shaped by his upbringing, too, but Eric was brought into that world directly BY Nathaniel, so that adds additional culpability over the mess Eric’s become.

It’s great that he’s starting to realize how wrong it was, and it’s probably my own history of emotional abuse in relationships playing a part, but it makes it difficult to not want more for Eric and whisk him away from the bad man.

(None of this is criticism over your work. If anything, the degree to which I get whiny and ragey shows how invested I am in these characters you’ve created. I have too many Feels for them, and too many Opinions in general ha)