Everything I couldn’t stand about Reed and Gideon is amplified in Easton – he’s a seriously problematic protagonist, and his relentless pursuit of Hartley is disgusting. She vocally tells him to leave her alone several times, but because he thinks he sees something in her eyes (are you fucking kidding me?), he doesn’t give up. This whole story is a neverending cycle: Hartley tells Easton to leave her alone, he ignores her, puts his feelings first, and pretends to do something nice until she caves. Then Easton quickly fucks something up because he never actually cared about Hartley’s feelings, and the cycle continues. If he had just left her alone in the beginning, nothing in this terrible story would have happened, and I wouldn’t be here regretting my decisions. I’m not rooting for their relationship; I want Hartley to cut her losses, get the fuck out, and save herself (and me).

Yes, Easton has a lot of legitimate issues, but it’s not a good enough excuse for him being an entitled asshole. His bluster may be an attempt to protect himself because he’s a sad little baby, but at the end of the day, he thinks he’s better than everyone else because of his name. I couldn’t even try to count the number of times his mood changed on a dime because of an offhand comment or glance. The second someone stops amusing him or says something that could be taken the wrong way, Easton instantly becomes a massive pretentious twat and snaps at them. He always finds a way to twist this into someone else’s fault and refuses to take any responsibility for being spoiled, selfish, and rude.

Easton is a big, spoiled baby, and if all the people in his life would stop tiptoeing around him and his visible-from-space issues, he’d be in therapy, getting help and not fucking up everyone else’s life. It’d be one thing if he were just fucking up his own life, but he’s dragging everyone else down with him, and I have nothing but scathing apathy for the mental gymnastics he does to make himself the victim.