#Fallacies in Personal Relationships

[pastordin]

The All-Encompassing Book of Fallacies: Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Contextual Applications of Fallacies | The All-Encompassing Book of Fallacies Home | Media | Contact Chapter 8: Contextual Applications of Fallacies Published on June 11, 2019 1. Fallacies in Political Discourse 1.1 Common Political Fallacies Political discourse is rife with logical fallacies that can distort public understanding, manipulate opinions, and influence policy…

[moontrinemars]

after the mass retrograde event that aligned with multiple intense malefic conjunctions in my chart and seeing that reflected in my real life it really is so funny hearing people say like, "you THINK astrology is real because when you think something is going to happen, you end up making it happen!! self-fulfilling prophecy!!" like... that may make sense in some cases but my cat died? my grandma is in the hospital? my tire blew out? an owl got stuck in my chimney? like you're allowed to think astrology is silly, but don't make stupid arguments, the idea that we control every facet of our own circumstances is new age cult bullshit in itself #TheSecret

[cruelsister-moved2]

its just weird bc with energy usage or whatever, we recognise that telling someone to turn the lights off and not overfill the kettle is a distraction from the unfettered consumption of big industry etc, but when it comes to food suddenly you people are like no no it’s the consumption of tofu that is the real issue here!! I’m so sick and tired of this debate because whether or not you eat meat, as leftists and as people with any care for the environment, we should be united in recognising the harms of industrial animal agriculture.  and at a certain point the choices of foods to get mad at in particular start to just come off like an appropriate outlet for your discomfort over someone else eating differently to you. why is it always soy and quinoa and never corn and wheat?? at a certain point you have to acknowledge that all of us consume plant products, and vegans/vegetarians are a very small proportion of that. plant agriculture is perhaps as ethically and environmentally fraught as animal agriculture, but that means we should desire to improve both, rather than NEITHER

[desperatepleasures]

thinking of finally looking into what getting an adhd diagnosis would entail. but I'm scared about it. and also angry about it so. lots to process there

[explode-this]

I am so fucking ✨annoyed✨ that 24 years after I got out my parent’s house my brain’s first reaction to anxiety and feeling like a shitty person for being slow and forgetful and in my own little world is is STILL “yeah you should just like… die” and I have to manually jiggle the handle on it and say “yeah no” or “stop that” or “bit dramatic” or “ughhhh come on,” like, can we just skip it, please?

(I am also annoyed that the last time I went to the doctor i answered the survey about depression symptoms by underestimating myself by 75% because that’s the sort of thing you do when you were raised to think you’re an attention seeker whenever you’re honest about your shitty interior monologue and doctors are technically authority figures to you and defying them in any meaningful way has never worked out so why bother being honest and she was pleased and said “that’s good” and in my head I was just like “yeah because whenever I ask about anti anxiety meds you just say ‘vitamins!’ or ‘your adhd meds should help with that” so there’s no point in reiterating that at this point I need a non-talk-therapy solution to my faulty brain wiring because I’m a fucking idiot who basically answered the mental health survey with two thumbs up and a star sticker”)

[comicaurora]

Listening to the latest OSPod and your discussion about being ace and wanting to be prioritized, it resonated a lot with me. I also go through those sorts of yearning periods and it was nice to hear that verbalized.

It's a tough feeling! Loneliness is a universal consideration, but for anyone who doesn't want a single life partner it takes on a new, difficult shape. Finding "the one" won't fix it, because you don't want "one", and you also don't want to give all of yourself to just "one." So everything we learn from the social and cultural zeitgeist tells us that this life will make us, forever, a third wheel - deprioritized, unnecessary, nobody's first choice.

I think some of the fear is rooted in a fallacy, though. Broken down, it's basically just "will people like me if I can't offer them something?"

Relationships aren't really transactional. I do things for the people I love because I like it when they're happy, and I can only assume the inverse is also true. But if you're a person for whom the supposed "highest tier of relationship closeness" is inaccessible, if your friends have Most Important People in their lives who aren't you, this insidious feeling can creep in. "Those people are closer because they could offer something you couldn't. They get to be cared about because they have something you lack."

It's not true, obviously. Relationships aren't a linear hierarchy; every relationship is completely unique. Everyone I'm friends with, I'm friends with in a completely different way. I don't have a ranking or tier list defining how close we are, and I can only assume my friends don't either.

And the logic breaks down further the more you look at it. There's this idea that friendships are more fragile and disposable than romantic relationships, leaving people whose only relationships are friendships in a more supposedly unstable position. But romances and life-partnerships break down all the time. Not to go morbid to prove a point, but I've lost several elderly relatives at this point, and the one whose passing was mourned the most, the longest, and the most impactfully was the maiden aunt who never married, never had any kids, but was still so deeply loved by her nieces and nephews and their spouses and children. I've seen it proved that marriage, kids and grandkids doesn't save someone from isolation, and that a single life doesn't doom them to isolation either. None of us are automatically destined for loneliness.

A fear of abandonment is a powerful thing, and while my perspective on it is intrinsically tied to my ace identity, it's definitely not just us feeling it. For a social species like us, there's really nothing more unifying than a fear of being alone.

[mywitchyblog]

Reality Shifting and Age Changing Explained: A Deep Dive into the "Controversial" Practice

Introduction: Reality Shifting, the mind-bending practice of moving your consciousness/awareness to another reality (known as a Desired Reality or DR), has sparked intense debates within the community. One of the hottest topics? Age changing – the act of shifting to a different age in your DR. This shit has caused so many arguments, especially about ethics and what's "allowed". Let's break down why age changing isn't as fucked up as some people make it out to be, and why those who say otherwise might need to reconsider their stance. I will Mostly talk about agin yourself down since that is what is making the biggest noise

Taglist of various people who i think would be interested in this post (i will update it progresively) :

@shiftersroom You wanted my opinion ? Here is it /pos

@norumis I saw that post of yours

@evangelineshifts and @reiashiftsrealities Talked my project on your discord lol.

@jolynesmom Loved your post about it btw

Warning : READ IT FULLY BEFORE JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS THANK YEW

My Race Chaging Post

Masterlist

Part I: Why Age Changing Isn't Bad

a. The Maturity Conundrum: When you look at the source of this controversy, you'll realize it revolves around the maturity gap between the shifter and their DR . Critics argue that age changing either doesn't alter your maturity (meaning if you're a teen in your DR, you still have the maturity of your Original Reality (OR), essentially making you an adult in a minor's body) or that it's inherently problematic. But here's the thing: when you shift, you fully take on the age and mindset of your DR self. You're not just playing pretend; you actually become that age. If you can get your DR self's memories, abilities, skills, and personality, why the fuck is it so far-fetched to think you can have their maturity as well?

Let's break this down scientifically. Maturity is dependent on brain development, more precisely, the coordinated functioning of four distinct zones:

Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): The "CEO" responsible for planning, decision-making, impulse control, and emotional regulation.

Limbic System: The "Marketing & Sales" team that influences emotions, motivation, and memory, shaping how we perceive situations and respond.

Basal Ganglia: The "Operations" department that controls habits and translates plans into action.

Temporal Lobes: "Customer Service & Public Relations" that processes social cues and guides our interactions with others.

This neurological ensemble shows that maturity is something physical, related to the brain development of an individual. It's been established in the shifting community that you cannot bring physical things across realities, so what makes you think you can bring your CR brain with you?

If that were the case, scripting a different personality, skills, and knowledge would be impossible. This means your DR self has its own cognitive and emotional frameworks developed in that reality. Your experiences and maturity are context-specific (in that case reality specific), so when you shift back to your OR, you regain your OR maturity. Shifting isn't like a permanent personality change; it's more like fully immersing yourself in a different role or life. Which is exactly what happens.

b. Debunking Anti-Aging Arguments:

"If you age yourself down, that means you're attracted to minors/you're a pedophile": This argument is complete bullshit. If there are gay people shifting to be heterosexual, lesbian shifters shifting for men, aro/ace people shifting to experience romantic/sexual attraction they never do in this reality, then aging yourself down and potentially having romantic and/or sexual relationships as a minor with another minor doesn't mean you're attracted to minors as an adult in another reality. This take is a "Hasty Generalization" fallacy – making a broad generalization based on a small or unrepresentative sample.

"Why in this reality are you thinking about dating minors??": This type of take is not what you think it is, baby girl. It's called a fallacy, more specifically the Straw Man fallacy. It occurs when someone misrepresents or oversimplifies an opponent's argument to make it easier to attack or refute. In our case, they're trying to oversimplify something as complex and nuanced as reality shifting, not taking into account valid instances where one would age themselves down.

"Even if you are the same age, you still have the awareness of being an adult, which means you're a predator": And again, another fallacious argument. Seriously, aren't y'all sick and tired of bouncing on my wood all day long? That's not how shifting works, and you know it. We aren't even sure awareness works like this. It's just a theory, plus I can tell that a lot of people with this stupid-ass take haven't shifted at all.When you shift – and let me tell you because I did shift, so I know how awareness works – when you shift to a reality, you don't even realize you've shifted at first because for you, existing, waking up, just living in this reality is something normal, not extraordinary at all. Then something will trigger the fact that you know you've shifted, and from the perspective of you in your DR, you don't feel as if you "originate" from a specific reality. For you, your DR becomes your CR, and subsequently,so does your awareness. You just know there's another reality, another version of you that exists and that you're an adult there. Your existence/consciousness/awareness is like a circle: no beginning, no end, no origin.Plus, according to the concept of infinite realities and possibilities, you can change via scripting how your awareness works. I haven't done that; that's how I and thousand of shifters WHO DID ACTUALLY SHIFT personally experienced/perceived our awareness while in our DR.

"Using shifting to age yourself down to date a minor while being an adult hereand saying 'oh well according to multiverse I AM this age, it doesn't matter ifI'm an adult in a different reality' is similar to trying to pursue someone thesecond they are of legal age when that shit varies in other countries/states": Nah, seriously, do some of y'all have actual arguments to defend your point of view except fallacious ones that have as much value as my nonexistent heterosexuality? The statement equates aging down in a Desired Reality to the practice of pursuing someone as soon as they reach the legal age in this reality, which is a "false equivalence" fallacy. These scenarios are fundamentally different in nature and intent. In reality shifting, the individual adopts the full cognitive and emotional framework of their DR self, becoming that version of them entirely. This is not comparable to someone in this reality deliberately targeting individuals based on legal age thresholds. The intent and context are distinct. Do some of you people realise that an actual predator/creep/pedophile would not age themselves down once they realized they could strike a chord as an adult in their DR without any consequences?

c. Valid Reasons for Age Changing:

Exploration and Nostalgia: Some people age down to relive experiences or explore stages of life they missed in their OR. It's like getting a second chance at living life. Maybe you want to experience high school without the anxiety, or have a childhood free from trauma. This shit can be healing as fuck and the best therapy there is in the multiverse.

Healing and Fulfillment: Shifting to a younger age can help heal from missed opportunities or trauma, like experiencing a fulfilling teenage romance or a carefree childhood. It's a way to rewrite parts of your life that were painful or unfulfilled.Imagine being able to have loving parents if you didn't in your OR,or getting to pursue that dream you gave up on as a kid.

Non-Sexual Intentions: Many shifters change their age without any sexual motives, focusing more on friendships, adventures, or just being in a different stage of life. It's about experiencing life from a different perspective, not about fetishizing youth. You might want to join a high school club, go to prom, or just enjoy the simpler responsibilities of being younger.

Tried to shift since being a minor: A lot of shifters discovered shifting when they were still minors and made DRs whose age corresponded to the one they had in their OR at the time and tried to shift again and again despite the years. Are you telling me that you're going to tell those people to discard those realities the moment they turn 18? Bitch, make it make sense and you cant.

Part II: Examining the Discourse Within the Reality Shifting Community

a. Teenage Shifters : Double standards and hypocrisy. Teenage Shifters need to acknowledge the hypocrisy of them shifting to a DR where they are a married adult with kids one day and then deciding to shift to a reality where they are 15 and dating another 15-year-old the next. This inconsistency becomes even more problematic when they complain about their "maturity" being affected upon returning to their original reality. Furthermore, these same shifters often label adult shifters as "predatory" for shifting to realities where they interact with high schoolers, failing to recognize the double standard in their own behavior.

This hypocrisy extends to their attitudes towards sexual content and relationships. Teenage shifters often defend scripting mature content in their desired realities, arguing that teens naturally have such desires. However, they become outraged when adult shifters express a desire to experience young love again through shifting. This inconsistency is further highlighted by their willingness to engage in adult behaviors with older partners in one reality while simultaneously pursuing teenage relationships in another.

This hypocrisy extends to their attitudes towards sexual content and relationships. Teenage shifters often defend scripting mature content in their desired realities, arguing that teens naturally have such desires. However, they become outraged when adult shifters express a desire to experience young love again (or expereince young love they never did) through shifting. This inconsistency is further highlighted by their willingness to engage in adult behaviors with older partners in one reality while simultaneously pursuing teenage relationships in another.

Moreover, the logic applied to adult shifters - that having a teenage love interest in a desired reality implies attraction to minors in the original reality - is not consistently applied to teenage shifters who frequently shift between adult and teenage experiences. This disparity in reasoning further underscores the bias within the community.

Lastly, the pressure to shift before reaching adulthood in the original reality is a concerning trend. The community's belief that minor-aged shifters can shift to any age creates an implicit urgency to experience various realities before becoming an adult, after which such experiences might be viewed as pedophilic fantasies by the wider community.

Many Shifters who are minors (I do not say that all shifters that are minors are like this, just a huge amount) have a very odd understanding of what shifting is. They often treat it like cosplay, which is not what true shifting is about. They accuse adults who age down of being predatory, yet they:

Age themselves up to be with adults.

Age down adults to be with them.

Have pornstar or stripper DRs, which is ironic considering their criticisms.

This double standard reveals a lack of understanding about the true nature of shifting and the subjective experience of each shifter. It's like they're playing by different rules depending on what suits them at the moment.

Consider this mind-fuck: A 17-year-old shifts to another reality, lives there for 40 years, then comes back and dates someone who's 17 in their CR. By their logic, this makes them predatory because they've lived for 57 years. Conversely, if they return to their CR as a 17-year-old and date a 57-year-old because they're "57 in shifting age," it's still seen as wrong. This highlights the inconsistency in their arguments and the subjective nature of age and experience across realities.

It's like trying to apply the rules of chess to a game of poker – it just doesn't work. Each reality has its own context, and trying to apply blanket rules across all of them is an exercise in futility.

b. The Hypocrisy of shiftok : Oppresive and unfounded dogma, lack of empathy and Cultish Tendencies

The TikTok reality shifting community, colloquially known as "Shiftok," often displays a concerning lack of empathy and nuanced understanding when discussing complex issues surrounding shifting experiences. This is exemplified by the interaction shown in the image below :

In the first comment, an individual expresses feeling emotionally and mentally stunted due to missing formative experiences while growing up(which is true a lack of expereince can stunt someone s well being and developement). They view shifting as a potential way to have those experiences and achieve personal growth. This perspective highlights the therapeutic potential some see in reality shifting. However, the response to this vulnerable admission is harsh and dismissive: "Just bc your childhood got fcked up does not give you the right to fck up another child's." This reply demonstrates the judgmental attitude prevalent in the Shiftok community, where complex motivations are often reduced to simplistic, moralistic condemnations.

This interaction illustrates several problematic aspects of the Shiftok discourse:

Lack of empathy: The responder shows no compassion for the original commenter's expressed trauma and stunted development.

Misinterpretation of intentions: The reply assumes malicious intent, ignoring the therapeutic or self-exploratory motivations expressed.

Imposing rigid moral standards: The response applies a single moral framework without considering the subjective nature of ethics across different realities.

Oversimplification of complex issues: The nuanced topic of personal growth through shifting is reduced to a binary "right" or "wrong" judgment.

Hypocrisy: While condemning certain shifting practices, the community often overlooks similar ethical concerns in other contexts, such as minors scripting adult relationships.

This example shows perfectly the need for more thoughtful, empathetic discourse within the shifting community. Rather than rush to judgment, shiftokers should strive to understand diverse perspectives and the complex reasons one would shift to a specific DR of theirs.Otherwise people will keep thinking that we are nothing more than a cult that seeks to exploit the mental health of broken teenagers and prey on their desperationf for fame and money.

c.The "holier than thou" attitude: The "holier than thou" attitude, also known as moral superiority or self-righteousness, is a mindset where individuals or groups believe their moral standards, beliefs, or practices are superior to those of others. This attitude often manifests as judgmental behavior, condescension, and a lack of empathy towards differing viewpoints or experiences.

In the context of Shiftok, the TikTok reality shifting community, this "holier than thou" attitude is particularly evident and problematic. It applies to Shiftok in several ways:

Moral Absolutism: Shiftokers often apply rigid moral standards derived from their original reality (OR) to all desired realities (DRs), ignoring the concept of subjective morality across infinite realities.

Selective Condemnation: The community tends to harshly judge certain practices (like adults shifting to younger ages) while overlooking potentially problematic behaviors by minors (such as scripting adult relationships in their DRs) or people scripting in trauma abuse or that people get SA ed or are in relationship with problematoc people such as murderers and villains.

Lack of Empathy: As demonstrated in the image, there's often a dismissive attitude towards individuals expressing personal struggles or complex motivations for their shifting practices.

Oversimplification of Complex Issues: Nuanced topics are frequently reduced to simplistic "right" or "wrong" judgments, disregarding the multifaceted nature of personal experiences and ethical considerations in shifting. Shiting at its core is complex, nuanced and multifaceted, no black and white its gray.

Assumption of Expertise: Despite many members potentially lacking deep understanding or personal experience with shifting, there's a tendency to speak authoritatively on what is or isn't acceptable in shifting practices. It's always those who either have never shifted or minishifted who yap the most about shifting like they know it all . Honey you don't , you know nothing you have nothing to talk about shut up and try to shift before opening your mouth on a subject you do not have an expertise about.

Gatekeeping: Some members of the community may attempt to dictate who can or cannot engage in certain shifting practices based on arbitrary criteria or personal biases.

Dismissal of Therapeutic Potential: The community often overlooks or dismisses the potential therapeutic or personal growth aspects of shifting, focusing instead on enforcing their perceived moral standards.

This "holier than thou" attitude in Shiftok creates an environment that suppresses open dialogue, discourages the sharing of diverse experiences, and potentially alienates individuals seeking support or understanding within the community. It contradicts the very essence of reality shifting, which is about exploring different perspectives and experiences across infinite realities.

And also the most concerning consequence of this effect, this hypocrisy, this lack of empathy makes shiftok look like a cult in the eyes of other spiritual communities. I do know and disagree when antishifters make the statement that shifting is a cult but I understand and come to agree with them when they say that shiftok is a cult.

This community that is supposed to help one another is just oppressing bullying and suppressing people when they have an opinion that differs from the dogma big shiftokers imposed on the rest of the community thinking that their word is law and they get to write the rules of a practice that is the antithesis of that .Shifting is the epitome of breaking the chains the constraints of this world and its rules. Plus do some of you lot realise that those people that you worship do not give a flying fuck about you ? These people pray on your desperation to keep you on their page.

Shiftok is nothing more than a living sack of horse shit. All the knowledge and tips are just poorly regurgitated from amino and other shifting spaces that existed far before 2020. They immediately closed themselves to outsiders when they saw the damage shiftok did to the community as a whole. When a cultist, shiftoker claims to have this groundbreaking solution /information about shifting keep in mind that 100% of the time it was already known elsewhere.Just not on shiftok and now they are the new shifting Messiah lmao.

Shiftokers sometimes (more like always tbh) ignore the fact that shifting involves complete immersion in the new reality. If it's possible to gain your DR self's memories and personality, then obviously, you'll also become their age mentally as well. You're not just dropped into that life with no context; you fully integrate into that age and lifestyle. When you shift to your DR, that's your new CR. This reality becomes a DR. This reality is not the baseline for anything.

Some people say their memories of their OR feel far away while their DR memories are front and center, making their DR life feel like their primary existence. This means you won't feel like an imposter, no matter how different your DR is from your OR.

In ancient times, gaining spiritual knowledge like shifting required understanding that you are a soul or consciousness having a human experience. Modern cultists shiftokers often skip this step, leading to judgment and misunderstanding. Shifting should be a tool for self-discovery and growth, not just entertainment. This lack of spiritual foundation often leads to a superficial understanding of shifting. It's not just about living out fantasies; it's about expanding consciousness and understanding the nature of reality itself. By focusing solely on the surface-level aspects of shifting, many miss out on the profound insights and personal growth that can come from this practice. Because of the damage shiftok did on the reputation of the practise it is nearly or impossible to break free of the stereotype of shifter being a bunch of mentally ill schoolgirls shifting to be with the wizard version of Nazis (looking at you girlies that shift for Draco Malfoy or Tom Riddle).

Honestly that is the thing that makes me cackle. The most about shiftok i keep hearing and seeing videos from these cultists shiftokers asking and wondering themselves why is the platform dying and why theres no active discussions like sharing tips story times etc...

Bombastic Side Eye-Do you fuckers realised it is all your fault ? You try and silence people when their opinion differs than the one you have.They experienced something you did not you shame and burn them at the stake for it no wonder why people leave that ghetto ass platform and im scared just like a lot of us here of the massive exodus of shiftokers that will happen once tiktok is banned in the US.

Conclusion:

Age changing in shifting isn't inherently bad. It lets people explore different life stages, fulfill desires, and grow personally. The real issue comes when age changing is done for fetishizing purposes, turning ages into objects for sexual gratification. As long as shifters are respectful, consensual, and not exploitative, age changing can be a valid and enriching part of the shifting experience.

Remember, shifting is about expanding your consciousness and experiencing the infinite possibilities of existence. Don't let narrow-minded judgments hold you back from exploring the full potential of this practice. Stay open, stay curious, and most importantly, stay true to your own journey of self-discovery through shifting.

[netherfeildren]

FABLE OF THE DOG : 1. The Two Headed Calf

Series Masterlist;

Pairing: Joel Miller x FMC

Summary: Welcome home and buck up, cowgirl.

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: Cowboy/Heiress AU; Slowburn(ish); Original Characters; Alcohol & Drug Use; Discussions of Grief; Daddy Issues; Graphic Descriptions of Vomiting; Description of a Dead Body; Death of a Parent; Parental Neglect; Older Man/Younger Woman; Jealousy; Past Teenage Crush; Unrequited Pinning; Yearning and Longing Galore; Boss’s Daughter; Complicated Family Relationships; A Home is a Place but ALSO a Person!; Found Family

A/N: Disclaimer, I know nothing about Wyoming and it’s geography, ranching, or being a cowboy and just made all this up. Any and all misrepresentations are fallacy of my laziness.

The FMC tag was decided because she has a last name. It was just too difficult for me to speak in depth about her father without giving him a name, and thus her one too. After that decision was made, she kind of went away from me and devolved into her own person who I have come to be quite obsessed with. It’s still written in ‘you’ format, anyhow.

I’ve been having a whole lot of fun with this, I hope you do too.

Word Count: 10K

Read on AO3

1: The Two Headed Calf

“She’s been shut up in that house goin’ on three days now, Joel,” Tommy says as the two brothers make their way across the lawn. 

The ride had been long and hard, and Joel is tired—he levels a dark look at him. “Just sayin’. Nothin’ you find in there’s gonna be pretty to look at.” He raises his hands in surrender at the brooding glare, that non-confrontational shrug that’s set Joel on edge since they were boys. 

“One of you’s should’a gone in there. Made sure she’s okay.”

“The housekeepers’ve been keepin’ an eye. And Frank tried to go in there and check on her himself, but she’s angry as a barn cat. Hissin’ ‘nd yowlin’, and just bein’ downright scary as hell, to be honest. You should be prepared is all I’m tryin’ to say.”

“Her father just died, Tommy. I’m not expectin’ pretty sights right now,” Joel gruffs, trying to swallow the panic that flutters in his throat as they crest the final hill up to the big house. 

The beautiful stone, oak, glass monstrosity that’s stood as monument to this place, this home that is not truly his, for over a decade now. The Kelly Ranch. The sky above is still a sultry, yawning blue, deep and tired, basking in the throes of dawn as the sun just now makes its way over the crest of the Tetons in the distance so that the house sits for just a moment longer in its pool of shadowed blues. 

Joel pauses on the border of that somber darkness, afraid suddenly of what awaits him inside; boots glued to the ground with the gum of cowardice. He doesn’t want to see her broken. He doesn’t want to see her hurting. But there’s no other recourse, he knows this. The death of the estranged father she’d fought with all her life, the inheritance of this world that seems suddenly too big for just one orphaned girl, all alone now. 

He’s afraid that he’ll walk into that house he’s always seen as other and home all wrapped into one—that Olympus that was so far removed and out of reach even when he walked through it’s halls to the man who’d given him sanctuary and salvation, to the man he knew mistreated her sometimes, didn’t love her enough—and not have the capacity to recognize her, this girl who’d always been familiar and stranger all in one also. 

Joel Miller suddenly feels afraid of the memory she exists as in his mind, in the face of the woman he knows she is now. 

When he lets himself in the back kitchen door, it’s still nighttime within. The cool dryness of the AC cranked up to inhuman temperatures makes him shiver once while sprouting a damp sweat along his nape. He should’ve showered before coming, should’ve washed the ride and the days of camp off his skin before walking into her presence, but all he’d managed were his hands and face. There’d been panic to make sure she was well, if not then alive, at least. But he should be more presentable for her. 

Hell, he should’ve been here for her when she came home for the first time in two years to the house where her father had died. He should’ve been here when the man died. 

But the herd had needed moving. He hadn’t thought it’d all happen so quickly, thought he had more time, that they all had more time. He’d hoped she wouldn’t return at all, if he was being honest. There was nothing here for her. Nothing except memories of a gilded and loveless, already motherless childhood. The reality of all she was set to inherit. The truth of an aloneness Joel didn’t know if she was prepared for. 

He moves through the house slowly, afraid to disturb the ghosts and the silence. The interior, immaculate and beautiful and solemn. Something out of a movie picture or the gloss of a magazine. Something covered not in dust but in sadness. The stairs are silent as his spinning mind makes up for the creak, the boots she’d sent him on his last birthday hit the richly piled rug at the top, and the hallway to the bedrooms yawns long and frightening in front of him. Two grand a pop, the boots—Lucchese, he’d looked them up on the iPhone she’d sent him the year before. A gift giver, generous to a fault, kind to a detriment. She sent something to all the ranch hands that’d worked for her father since she was a girl. Something for the entire ranch at Christmas. And all he managed each time was a perfunctory thank you card, like he did every year because he remembered, years ago, in her little voice, polite people send thank you notes, Joel, my grandmother told me so. Last year he’d written that they were too much, that she shouldn’t have, that he was grateful. There wasn’t much else to say. 

That was the extent of their communication, familiar and stranger in one, the far removed golden child of the Kelly. They’d all called him that, the Kelly, for as long as he’d known the man. As if he was some Scottish laird of old, ruling over his clan and half the world. Egotistical, was what it really was. He’d thought himself a god among men, in the face of his only child. Ridiculous was what Joel saw it all for, a put on play, a farce.

And wonder of wonders, she was entirely unlike him because of course she would be. Of course a man ruled by nothing more than ego and narcissism had been sent his polar opposite in the form of his only child. Kind hearted, was what she was—sending him a birthday gift every year. Remembering them all here always no matter how far she’d gone. He sent her a thank you note for each benevolence in return, a word of respectful gratitude for the fact that a person like her could ever remember a dog like him. 

Sometimes, Joel had wanted to go to him, the old man, Oswald Kelly, and ask him where his daughter was, why he wasn’t looking for her, keeping her closer, caring for her. He wasn’t the sort of man that could’ve ever understood such callous behavior towards one’s child.

The last time she’d been here, over two years ago: less than forty eight hours that had ended in screaming so terrible they’d all heard it down from the barn, sitting in uncomfortable, swollen silence, the spinning of tires ringing as she yelled at her father that he was never going to see her again, the man’s echoing laugh as she’d fled him. 

Joel hadn’t seen her on that visit, it’d been so quick and angry. Flying down on the jet from New Haven for her father’s seventieth birthday and not even making it long enough for the festivities. This was what her life was, as he’d observed it from a distance for all these years, the singular daughter of this great house, coming to her father, attempting joy and finding nothing but disappointment at the end of him. 

She’d been right, a knowing streak running through her. Kelly had never seen her again, and Joel didn’t know if the old man had regretted it or not, the anger and the estrangement and the lack of love. But the last time he’d spoken to him, hours before setting off on their move, the herd always came before everything else, the ranch was all that mattered is what the man had always said, with death scratching at the window, his frail and withered body licked down to almost nothing from the austere and imposing figure Joel had always known him as, he’d asked for her. His only child. Do you think she’ll come, Joel? The dying man had asked him. My girl, do you think she’ll come see me? Joel had lied a lie he hadn’t known was one, said she would, that he’d call her as soon as he was back. 

In the end, he hadn’t even afforded her that decency, a personal call.

He comes to her open bedroom door now, pitch dark as grief within, and the stench of sorrow and liquor seeping from the living grave. He looks down the long and empty hall for a brief second, wishing it didn’t have to be him, that again, he didn't have to see her any way other than okay. And he realizes that there’s something about her, as she will exist now, that makes him cowardly. Something about this house without the man who’d granted him the absolution of a hiding place all those years ago, who’d understood and sheltered Joel in the midst of his own past grief, that makes him cowardly. The house feels wrong without Kelly within it, wrong with only her as its holder now. 

Joel steps into her dark, and it’s a battleground—

—You are silent and motionless in the blue room. 

Nothing of the gleaming splendor that dresses the rest of the home sleeps in here. There are clothes everywhere, an exploded suitcase lies open and massacred in the middle of the plush white rug, a turned over bottle of red wine bleeding into your clothes. Shredded pages with scratched on writing slashed across them, the dusted white mounds of crushed pills, as if you’d smashed each one individually beneath the thumb of your grief. The sight makes him more afraid, the scent of weed and cigarettes heavy in the air, as he takes the final step towards the wrecked bed, and a single small foot hangs limply from the edge.

He stares at it long and hard for a second, afraid, afraid again, still, of what he’ll find. He says your name once, short and gruff like a dog’s bark. It’s what he feels like. Animal, bestial, lacking any sort of cognizance amidst this minefield. His heart beats against his spine, and he thinks he should do something else, shake you, check for a pulse, his bones throb inside his skin. He needs to fucking move, but the smell of smoke is so cloying he’s choking on his own tongue. 

Your ankle twitches.

And Joel sucks in a sigh of relieved air without panic, saying your name again. His voice is level now, maybe gentle, no more barking dog. His eyes move up the length of one pretty leg, and then quickly, he averts his gaze when he gets high up enough he’s met with soft-creased asscheek covered in silk. Swallowing his tongue, his eyes roll in their sockets, looking for anything else to look at besides the sight of panty clad ass. He steps closer again, gripping the edge of the sheet to pull it over your scantily clad body, eyes flitting to the silver spun clock on the nightstand, the warm glow of the hall light shows that they have two hours to get you sober and presentable before the funeral. 

Joel should have been here. He does not feel that he is even here now. And the guilt eats at him like acid. The fear too. 

“Darlin’, you’ve gotta get up now,” he says softly, taking hold of your shoulder, scalded by the feel of fragile skin, realizing with the suddenness of a gunshot that you’ll be the Kelly now. He gives you a gentle shake, “We’ve gotta get you ready,” and his heart pumps blood like a machine. The sight of the dry liquor bottle toppled on the nightstand, the shattered glass glittering the floor in crystal, the empty pill bottles, it all taunts him. His guilt is a cacophony in his mind. He knows he’s going to have to stick his fingers down your throat, make you spit it all up, that you’ll hate him for all of this afterwards, but when his gaze meets streaked rust, dark and shocking against the white sheets, he’s kicked into terrified action. 

He turns you over, your head lolling sickeningly in unconscious stupor, hair a tangled mess strewn about your face so that he has to dig for your eyes, parting the curtains of your fringe to uncover you. He focuses on your closed eyes, the too long lashes clumped together, lips cracked and parched. 

He should’ve fucking been here. 

Smoothing his fingers along the lengths of your arms, he keeps his eyes on your face and averted from all the skin that keeps peeking out below, searching the divots and slopes of your arms for hurts. When he gets to your right hand, battleground of a long ago broken hurt, he finds the drying crust of blood, the ragged split in the soft, small palm, thankfully shallow.

 His eyes smart, looking down at the broken glass, feeling the tear in you. 

Gripping you gently below the elbows he pulls you into his arms, cradled like a child, light as loss. Your head lolls again, neck crooked at an unnatural angle as he carries you into the restroom, careful of your head, knocking the lights on and putting you down in front of the toilet bowl. He pulls your camisole to rights, making sure everything is covered, and gathers your mess of hair as carefully as he can, trying his best to not snag the fragile strands in his too rough hands, but gripping you firmly in position. And ignoring the sound of your awakening cry, he sticks two fingers into your slack jawed mouth and down your throat until he feels the hot rush of vomit. 

Crouching behind you, his thighs bracket you, keeping your form from slumping over as you empty the poison from your belly, flushing the alcohol soaked bile as you struggle. He wipes his messy hand on the leg of his jeans and rubs soothing circles on your back, his fingers woven through the soft silk of your hair to keep your head in place and your face clear. His heart thumps in rhythm with your heaves, your too quick, panicked breathing. There seems to be not enough oxygen for the two of you and your grief in the too small room of the commode, and Joel gasps like a dying fish, trying to swallow calm breaths. 

When you finally stop your heaving, you rest your arms at the edge of the gleaming porcelain, head hung low, defeated, wracked with shivers or silent sobs, he isn’t sure, a strange and horrible keening noise, so small he barely catches it, held in your throat. There’s the finest down of peach fuzz that covers the tender slope of your vulnerable nape, and it makes Joel feel suddenly, just as vulnerable, just as unprotected. At a complete loss for how to help you. 

“Finally decided to show your face,” you croak, voice ragged with your sick. 

His fingers tighten once around your shoulder, a panicked tick of reminder that he’s here now, that he’s him. “I was moving the herd. It had to be done. Your father, he—” he stutters, trying explain, tripping over his own guilt ridden words. “I didn’t think it’d happen now, so fast, that you’d get here so soon. I thought we had more time.” 

We. 

Your skin seems to cool by the second beneath his fingertips, and then you’re shrugging his touch away, huddling closer to the porcelain bowl, further away from him. 

“Get out.”

“Let me explain. I—” And he’s begging now. He can hear the note of it in his voice. Begging for forgiveness. For a chance. 

“I don’t want to see you.” You don’t say his name. “Get out.” It feels worse than anything. 

“I’m here now. I didn’t know— I didn’t think.” He reaches to grab for you again, but you turn to face him suddenly. Wiping the back of your hand against your mouth, pushing your heels at his shins to kick him away. Your eyes are red rimmed, the hollows beneath bruised with lack of sleep. But fire spits from the deep color, all anger and hurt. 

“Go deal with your fucking ranch,” you fling the words at him. “It’s all you care about anyways.” And they weren’t shivers, he sees now, they’re tears tracked as proof of all his guilt, all his lacking, along the slopes of your fine grained cheeks. 

Your, you say. As if this place and anything in it has ever been his. He’s never wanted any of it like that, only ever seen a thing that needed taking care of, and him, with the ability to care for it. 

“I needed you,” you whisper as if the thought comes along on a second wind of anger, a realization that sends your voice breaking, hitching, your chest caving in on itself as the tears come faster and faster now. “He’s dead, and I needed you.”

“I’m sorry,” he begs. “I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks now too. He thinks he’ll cry now too, for the man who he also lost, who despite it all meant something to him, as well. For you, who’s lost even more. For Joel’s own guilt. 

But he doesn’t think you see any of that, not his apology, not his regret, not his own grief. You turn away from him again, laying your temple down again on your forearm. “Get out. I’ll be ready soon.”

And so he goes.

-

Your father is made small and withered in death. 

One of the wealthiest men in the entire world. A stranger, a titan, a nightmare of a man. 

It wasn’t something you’d ever considered, that a human body could look so colorless and frigid and not alive. Like a shock or a ringing bell, it’s a realization that you’re an orphan now. That you’re all alone. 

You feel something like a memory of regret. Or something that’s like the idea that you should feel regret, that you should feel guilt for how it was between the two of you. But all that is overshadowed by the reality of what you weren’t. All you feel even more, or in actual reality, is the old loss of what you’d never been to each other. That, you realize, is the seed of your grief. That long ago wound, that child’s understanding that he wasn’t like all the other fathers, that he’d never care for you the way other children were cared for. 

Looking down at the frozen face that looks nothing like the one he’d worn the last time you’d seen him, the wispy thatch of hair that hadn’t been so jarringly white before sickness had ravaged his body, you realize that this is no new loss, it is only a continuation, a reopening of a very old one. 

The cavernous cathedral at your back is silent, vacated by the sea of people that had congregated here earlier. And with sickening curiosity, you uncoil an arm from where you’ve got it wrapped around yourself, reaching out to press a finger against the ice cold back of his hand. Shockingly not alive; he feels made of rubber. 

Everyone that’d been here to bid farewell to this behemoth turned slip of a man, to catch a glimpse of you, packed like teeth into Jackson’s grandest cathedral; business men and heads of state from around the world, the oldest family names in the country, figures of the highest echelons of wealth and society, vipers circling the barrel—half the world here to see this person who was supposed to have been your father but was really only a stranger. 

You take your hand back, and you don’t say goodbye as you turn away from his body. There’s no farewell to really tell. 

And at the back of the church, hiding in a bright ream of sunlight, Joel stands propped against the face of a saint. Dark and silent and maybe even more far removed than your dead dad. Watching sentinel. Oswald Kelly’s hovering man—come to watch over him one last time. 

The silk of your stockings slide against each other at the junction of your thighs, the hiss of your skirt around your calves as your reed thin heels click against the stone, and you pull your armor as tightly around yourself as you can. There’s a hollow echo inside of everywhere and everything, your mind like a gong, reverberating, and his gaze is so steady, hazel bright, deeply shaded by the lip of his dark hat, beckoning you towards him from beneath the brim. 

Large and strong and steadfast, your heart gives a painful, longing thump—stupid, writhing thing—and you can only bear to look him in the eye for a second, and if you were to really think about saying goodbye to that father that never really was, lying behind you, slipping further and further away, you’d say it to the man that always stood as his shadow before the world, before you ever said it to the man himself. 

-

The drive back home is cast in frigid silence and made all the more uncomfortable because you can practically hear Joel’s brain clicking and ticking away with worry. 

He’d sent your car and driver away with a harsh word while you collected your final goodbyes and words of respect from the last smattering of people congregated and waiting for the newly birthed heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the world. 

Hovering over your shoulder, he’d kept anyone from stepping too close or getting too friendly, so close you could feel the heat of his chest through the silk of your blouse, and then going suddenly full on aggressive when a reporter from the New York Times had approached, fishing for a quote on the future of the Kelly empire. Ushering you away with a hovering hand at the small of your back before the man could get half a question out, he’s opening the truck’s door for you as a haze descends over your eyes, the distant shutter and flash of cameras bursting in your peripherals, a latent hangover and sleep deprivation and not enough to eat in the last forty eight hours causing you to sag in his hold. Then it’s only his big fist wrapping around the span of your wrist as he lifts you into the truck, your eyes downcast and unable to take in sight or sound, vision all a blur. You murmur a barely there thank you with his hand fitting at the dip of your waist, big body blocking yours entirely from prying eyes trying to catch a glimpse or a stumble, and for a single second, your entire weight is suspended in his hold, allowing you to bypass the struggle of balancing your high heel on the step up, and then you’re sliding onto the leather of the seat, the whisper of your cashmere and silk rustling around you as he handles you like a child being spirited away from the scene of a crime. 

The door shuts gently behind you, face turned away from the flashing lights, the watchful eyes of the whole world, and worst of all, the assessment of his concerned gaze. All you’re afforded are thirty seconds of privacy to let out a single gasping sob. 

And now, an hour and a half of silent purgatory. 

You slip your heels off, flexing your smarting toes against the damp of your stockings and tuck your folded legs beneath you on the seat. Paying the frantic energy of his anxiety and lodged words no mind, you consider instead: your new reality. The burden of it all means very little to you now. The last of your worries is being readied for entombing as the two of you speed down the eighty nine, zinging past the bright Wyoming green. The thrum of his truck drowns out your thoughts, brand new, probably over a hundred grand, only the best for your father’s right hand man, and the Kelly Ranch insignia emblazoned proudly on the sides. A brand for the whole world to see just who exactly is being whisked away to her old home turned brand spanking new grave. 

You might be feeling a little bit dramatic. But then again— you’d just put your last remaining parent in an actual grave, surely that provides you some allowances. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his big paw gripping the leathered steering wheel in a death clutch, knuckles white with his frustration at the dilemma you pose, his own discomfort. You’re sure if he thought you wouldn’t catch him, he’d be squirming in his seat. 

You do something to him sometimes, you know this. Not in any way you’d like, not in any interesting way, that of a woman affecting a man, but something respectfully harrowing. Maybe something a little bit like fear. 

There has existed between the two of you, always, that strange intimacy of two people who’ve known each other for a very long time, and yet, have always remained at a far removed, arms length distance from one another. 

A professional intimacy of sorts. Your father’s foreman, shadow, fixer. The man who guarded that treasure trove you’d inherit one day, today; the thing your father loved most in the world. Two people who’ve known each other a long time, and yet, don’t really know each other at all. 

There has always been, however, the fact of the birthday. 

The birthday. Your birthday.

The way you’d latched onto that small, immense, detail when you’d first discovered it at fourteen, when he’d newly arrived at the ranch and the true weight of your first real crush had really hit you, it was probably not entirely healthy. But you’d thought yourself in love with your father’s man, the first figure of the male species who’d ever drawn your attention in such a way. 

He’d never paid you any mind; you were the boss's daughter, a figurehead or a responsibility, maybe a nuisance, although he’d never ever treated you as one. But the day someone had let slip it was his birthday, on the same day as yours, your teenage heart had swelled with the naive hope of fate. It was meant to be, the two of you were connected, so on and so forth, swallowed by girlish innocence and made buoyant by fantasy. 

But you’d had something to share with someone, which was what really mattered. Something tangible, even if only in your inexperienced little mind, something to wield as comfort so that the first time your father had forgotten your special day, fifteen, and what a tender age it had been, you’d had something to cling to. That's when your gifts to him had started. It was your way of making sure there was at least one person in the whole world who’d remember that was your day too. That you were alive, that you mattered. A reminder of yourself. And as the years and birthdays passed, sometimes, when he sent those coldly gracious notes of his, you’d wished you could’ve written back with honesty. Said something like, I’m so lonely, wish you were here, wherever it was in the world you’d found yourself at the time. 

And of course, he was gorgeous and older, strong and patient and capable, entirely unattainable. Impossible to forget. You’d gone so far, traveled wide, gotten yourself an overpriced education that would probably serve you for nothing, had lovers and parties and splendor, and always, you remembered your gifts for him, you remembered him. It was the single most important detail of your birthday every year. 

The leather creaks beneath his fist again, chapped knuckles set to burst before he flexes his fingers out, long and straight. Thickly built hands, strong, made for working or hurting, on a man who you’ve never seen be anything but stoically patient. 

He was strange in that way, neither wholly impulsive nor precisely intentional in his mannerisms. More so, it was that there was something extremely neutral about him, a middle buoyancy of personality. Strict with the cowboys, exacting, wielding his title as ranch foreman with an iron fist and your father’s blessing, and yet still, quiet, serious, with that patient gentleness about him. You’d seen it in the way he’d handled Ellie when she’d first come to the ranch, young and skinny with that hollow look of trauma kids who’d seen things they shouldn’t have shamed adults with. She’d been a little older than you, and with an air you’d not understood, a sort of lived past you’d been naive to the existence of, frightened when confronted by it, and yet inevitably, the two of you’d become fast friends eventually.

You’d even experienced it yourself, on two treasured occasions, that gentleness that you’d held onto for years. Nurturing the memory of him in your mind like a delusional bloom. 

He stretches his hand again, wheel caught between his thumb and forefinger, cinching it there, back and forth. His nails are meticulously clean, cut to the quick, and you imagine he must spend a great deal of time cleaning himself up when he works so hard at getting himself so dirty most days. 

You can see him sneaking glances at you, and he coughs once, a clearing of his nervous throat. Averting your gaze, you turn your face away so that you’ll be able to watch him through the reflection in the window. He monopolizes the space in the cabin of the truck, broad shoulders and hulking form, all the fine leather smell washed away in the scent of him. That bay rum aftershave he’s always worn, the one with the distinctive notes of bay leaf, cloves and citrus. An old fashioned scent, masculine and crisp. 

You’d snuck into the bunk once with Ellie, before he’d moved into the foreman’s cabin, before Switzerland, when the two of you were still girls running rampant and free through the ranch, clutching desperately at the last vestiges of any sort of happy childhood you could scrounge up for one another. You’d peeked in his things, found a whole world of Joel shaped curiosities. The glass etched bottle of aftershave, a hole spotted t-shirt with a burnt orange longhorn across the front, Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories—something you found comforting, knowing he could read about the small, the freakish, real life; thinking that perhaps he was homesick for the comfort of the South, hungering for a taste of the life he’d had then, through books. And then, in a spine cracked copy of Suttree, the pages almost falling apart beneath your fingertips, dog eared and well loved, her picture tucked between the pages.

It had been the first time you’d done something you knew you shouldn’t have and actually regretted it, looking down at that green eyed photograph. 

You’d run back to your room after that, ashamed and something a little bit like jealous, desperate to know who she was, desperate for someone to keep a picture of you like that—as if they loved you. And years later, you’d found the scent for yourself. The little molasses glass bottle you still have and pull out on occasion, when you’re feeling extra bad, extra lonesome, extra far away from the whole world, just for a reminding of home. 

Beside you, he sighs again, coughs again, brings you back to himself and the present. Just spit it out already, you think exasperatedly, say something, anything else besides how sorry you are. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he starts, and you roll your eyes, scoffing quietly. 

“You already said that.” Sullen. Mullish. You wish you were a child who could still throw a tantrum and get away with it. Letting your eyes go unfocused from his reflection in the window, you brood at the sight of everything that’s yours now as he turns off the highway, passing below the iron eave of the Kelly Ranch entrance. Eight hundred thousand acres of pristine Wyoming land nestled into the deep valley surrounded by the Grand Tetons mountain range. 

“Well, I’m sayin’ it again.” He’s driving too fast, and you refuse to turn and look at his face. Your heart beats blood in your ears, and you screw your eyes shut to the dizzying blur of green legacy, not wanting to see any of it—him. 

Your belly swoops, going slightly nauseous and gurgling. 

“I didn’t think you’d get here so quick.” He swallows, “Hell, I didn’t think it’d all happen so damn fast.”

“I was already in New York,” you tell him, voice clipped with breathlessness. “I left Paris last week.”

“What? I didn’t know— I—”

“Why would you?”

“I would’ve called you. I would’ve gotten you out here quicker.”

“Ellie called. It’s better like this, Joel.” Finally letting yourself say his name out loud, it feels wrong and molten on your tongue, a heaviness being spit up from the depths of your stomach. “We don’t have to pretend anymore. He’s dead now.”

“There’s no pretending. He wanted to see you—”

“Please, stop.”

But he urges on unheeded: “He told me so before I left. Told me—”

“Stop,” you snap. Finally turning to look at him and hating him for it. For how gorgeous he is, for all the things he’s always made you feel for as long as you can remember what it was to feel something for a man, for all he did or did not have with your father when you had none of it or so much of an entirely different thing. “Stop. I don’t want to hear any of it. It doesn't matter anymore, Joel.”

“But you should know. You deserve to know that—”

“What?” Because that one hurts. “I deserve to know what?” That he actually had loved you but had just never been able to show it? That now it was too late? That the only person the great Oswald Kelly had ever been able to speak to of the supposed care he had for his only daughter was the hired help? You’d read once that one should never let their parents anywhere near their real humiliations. You’d tried your damndest to follow that as soon as you’d grown up. “It’s not your place,” you seethe with teeth bared, an animal shoved into a corner and made to fight for its life, deciding you won’t ever let Joel near them either.  

He spits a cursing, growled sound of frustration, but doesn’t continue. The two of you find yourselves at an impasse, and you turn back to your windowed mirror of him, eyes pinching hot, filling with tears. One of the things your father disliked most about you, your easy tears, and a single salt marred inadequacy tracks down the slope of your cheek, dripping off the edge of your jaw into the bandaged cup of your palm, and you breathe slow and measured through your open mouth, watching the fog cloud grow and shrink against the glass obscuring your vision of him. 

-

The last time you’d missed your mother, the one you’d never known, in any sort of real and true way, you’d been eighteen. Returning to an empty house after celebrating your high school graduation in a far off school, alone. 

In the midst of your sophomore year, you’d been sent away to a Swiss boarding school. It had been something worse than devastating, losing your life in Wyoming, the only home you’d ever know, Ellie, the other people on the ranch… But it was far removed enough that you couldn’t bother, where you couldn’t ask for things like attention or consideration. The education had been excellent, the upbringing desperately lonely ending on a whimpering sigh despite your many accomplishments. You’d wanted her very badly then indeed, your mother. To have been there, to have helped you pick your dress, kissed your cheek after watching you walk across the stage. To have wiped your tears when she told you that your father wasn’t there because he was busy managing the whole world, but that he was proud of you, that he’d have been there if he could. You’d wished she could’ve been there to lie to you so that you wouldn’t have needed to lie to yourself. 

Peering down from your balanced perch atop the deck’s bannister, you survey the deep bed of Lily of the Valley, destroyed beneath the vindictive soles of your bare feet. He’d planted them for her all around the house after she’d died, her favorite flower. 

You’d always hated them. 

And that was the thing of it all, which you’d learned when you grew old enough to recognize such things like disdain. He couldn't stand you because you reminded him of her. Clichéd and old and tired. An excuse for being a neglectful father. The daughter who was too much like her dead mother, and thus did not deserve to be loved. 

You tip your head back, nursing at the lip of fine aged Macallan, and the sky is a glass mirror of blackened silver streaks. You’re almost positive that all the stars in the Milky Way are visible from right here at this very spot in the heart of Wyoming. The sight makes your broken heart feel full and falsely mended. 

You’re certain you’re painting a pretty picture right now: tipsy on a bottle of your dead dad’s sacredly hoarded whiskey that probably cost as much as someone’s house, staring up at the stars in your newly inherited home with a whole unappreciated life full of possibilities ahead of you. Basking in the title of your newly minted— orphan-hood? Orphan-ness? A peer of the orphans. 

You snort softly, sucking on the bottle again, letting the heat of it settle in your belly, smolder in your heart. Your head feels full of bubbles and sugar and sad. 

There’s a part of you that feels a little ridiculous, despite the circumstances. You’re good at compartmentalizing, good at being objective of your realities. Obviously: sad because your father is now dead, and it’d been nine months and eleven days since you’d last spoken to him. Sad because he’d never given a shit about you. Sad because you’re alone, dumped by the stupid French jockey boyfriend who you’d not even liked very much, just a few days before this whole pathetic ordeal of acquiring your orphan-hood, yeah, that’s what you’re sticking with, had occurred. Not to mention the army of looming lawyers and financial advisors and various heads of business vying for your attention, waiting for the what next?

And Joel.

A one man army of looming Joel. 

So you’re feeling morose, blue, maybe a little spoiled, but brought low and cut short. Depressed and unsatisfied with your life thus far. 

Poor little rich girl. Poor little orphan. Poor little me.

What you want? 

Someone to care. 

Someone to love you. 

Hard to come by. Impossible to buy. 

The stars gleam purple silver, winking at you. The bracketing black so dark it swallows the eye. Another taste of the nutty bouquet of smoked apple oranges, and soon you’ll be tipsy enough you won’t be able to balance your butt on the bannister’s ledge anymore. Maybe you’ll go humpty dumpty over the edge and crack your skull against your mother’s valley of destroyed Lily’s. 

You laugh again with sound now, not crazy, only an orphan, ha, but you think that it’s only that it feels shockingly as if you’ve fallen through the surface of your life. As if you are still falling with nothing and no one to grab on to, to help stabilize you. A really terrible, shit-out-of-luck feeling. 

Your eyes continue their infernal leaking, and you blow your nose loudly on the inside of your sweater. You’ve given yourself three days to do whatever the hell you want, be as disgusting as you may. When the three days are up you’ll plan to get your act together, take responsibility and hold of your life and become the woman you should be. 

Who that is? Still being decided. 

You think that maybe you’ll buy another jet before that time’s up. Or an island. Something ridiculous. Maybe you’ll sell the goddamn ranch. 

You eye the dark rolling hills of the valley with seething suspicion. Let’s see what Joel says about that. You, marching up to the highway entrance and spearing a For Sale sign in the dirt of the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the continental United States. Way more than that God forsaken surly frown is what you’d get. 

So long, Joel, it’s been swell. I’m done with this place. It’s time to pack it up and find some new hunk of land to care about more than you care about me or anything else. 

Maybe you’ll be real funny and put up a Craigslist ad. 

And it isn’t that you don’t love this place, the only home you’ve ever known. You do. In a way that is passionate and consuming and irreconcilable. Everything about it, the serenity, the guarding mountains and the deep woods, the home you’d been born in, that both your parents had died in. You do love it in your way. 

It’s only that every man you’ve ever loved—loved—had always cared more about the place than he’d ever cared about you. 

For the longest time, most of your youth until you’d decided that you officially felt an adult, you’d thought you’d hated your father. There was just so much anger and resentment and the resound of his ever furious words and insults and endless disappointment. The echo of no mother ringing so loudly in your ears that the confounding feelings had all been mistaken for hatred. But with age and distance and life, you’d realized you didn't hate him. You never had. You thought, actually, and this was a very good and mature thought of yours, that you were the only person in the whole world that had ever seen him as only a man and not a god. 

He was only a man, full of greed and grief and missing the mother of the child he’d probably never wanted. Nothing more or less. 

Maybe it was that you felt sorry for him. Not in the way of pity, but in the way of one person feeling empathy for another in a clinical and helpless sort of manner. And a numb, detached sort of sadness. A longing for something that you’d never had and had always wanted but eventually learned to live without. 

Ultimately, his disappointment had turned on him, and now it was all you felt you had for him at the end of it all. 

But, for some reason, and an annoying one at that, you do think that, if you try very, very hard, you could bring yourself to hate Joel Miller. There’s satisfaction in that possibility, vindication—resentment that even now, as practically strangers, you know he’d be able to pull that sort of feeling out of you which could result in hatred. Something strong and overwhelming and not easily escaped. 

Your stomach rumbles, and you smile blithely at all your inherited legacy, filling the hollow with more drink. Three days to behave very badly, as badly as you can. The whiskey is so good, and swishing it around in your mouth, you tip your head back further, gurgling it loudly at the back of your throat. 

“What the hell are you doing?”

You jerk, scrambling to keep your balance, choking a little on smokey apples and your own spit. A trickle of the golden amber liquor drips out of the corner of your mouth as you find him hiding in the dark across the deck. Accustomed to drooling over him, you wipe it away with the back of your hand. 

“Having a party. Would you like to join?”

“Are you drunk again?”

Tough crowd. Ugh.  “Never mind. You’re not invited. Go away.”

“You need to go inside and go to bed.”

You tip your chin at him, putting on doe eyes. “Alright. And are you going to be my new daddy also?” You say in a baby voice.

Fucking Christ, you hear him whisper under his breath, turning away to run an exasperated palm over his mouth. Frustration seethes off of him like sulfur. He’s tired. Of you maybe. Of the whole circus this place has become in the past few days—and rightfully so. 

“What do you want? I’m extremely busy, if you can’t tell.”

“Just thought I’d check on ya.” Courteous, always the gentleman, bullshit. You roll your eyes at him. 

“I don’t need you to check on me.” And you, ever the child. One day you swear you’ll grow up. 

But it can’t be said that you’re entirely selfish either. You have considered the fact of Joel’s own grief at the loss of your father. After all, they’d been much closer than you’d ever been to him for many years. And maybe, in his own cold and removed and superior way, your father had seen this man who you’ve thought yourself in love with since you were a teenager, as something like a son. 

Probably, that’s just your own wishful thinking: that Oswald Kelly had ever been capable of such tender feelings.

Maybe the fact of Joel’s own grief is the thorn beneath your nail bed that’s making you so angry with him, so needing of his attention. Maybe it’s that he’d failed to fulfill your silly and girlish fantasy that upon receiving the news of your only remaining parents death, he’d have been here waiting for you, at this home he’d guarded for you for so long, ready to take you into his arms and console and care for you. 

When instead, he’d been off doing what he’d always done for as long as you’d known him. Protecting your father’s interests, his legacy. 

“Is this how it’s going to be?”

“How?”

“You, being difficult.” Driving me fuckin’ crazy— he adds again under his breath. 

“I’m an orphan now, Joel.” You’re becoming quickly addicted to the word. “I think I should be afforded a tiny bit of leeway to drive people fuckin’ crazy,” you mock his Southern drawl. Enough of your time had been spent in Europe over the past two years, kissing Europeans, that you’d sloughed off the last of your American twang; something of a vaguely European lilt peppering your words every now and then that Ellie likes to tease you for whenever the two of you speak on occasion. 

A muscle under his left eye twitches at the jab, and you take another deep swig of the bottle, provoking him with your gaze. Wishing you had whatever it is a woman needs to entice this man. Like the fucking vet. Fucking world renowned, brilliant, highly coveted, beautiful veterinarian. You know about her. You’re sure he thinks he’s been discreet over the years with their whatever they’ve had, Tess, but you know. 

Maybe you’ll be insane and irrational and possessive, taking advantage of your three crazy days, and fire her with your new found power. See what he has to say about that. Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. 

Obviously not. 

Despite your current hysteria, your goal is not to send the ranch head over heels into a tailspin.

But the imagining is soothing. 

“Want some?” You hold the heavy crystal out towards him in a peace offering, held precariously between two sweaty knuckles. “It’s probably worth as much as your truck. Would be a waste for me to finish on my own.” You eye what’s left of it, about half, and give him a sheepish grin. It really is very good. 

He looks at you for one long, solemn moment, always so silent and pensive, this strange enigma of a man. You get to watch in real time as he loses whatever fight it is he’s trying to fight against you, victorious when he shrugs and comes over slowly, resting his butt against the bannister—a carefully respectful distance away from you. 

When he takes the bottle from your swinging clutch, gripped from the base, careful not to touch you in any way, you see the real sad in his eyes. The dim lights bleeding out through the big windows of the family room without a family shine on his face in strips and bursts. A shadow here, golden warmth there. He’s got more lines around his eyes than you remember from the last time you’d been this close to him. Smile lines made bright white in the center and gold burnished at the edges from too much sun. There’s little bursts of silver threaded at his temples now too, a gleam here and there in his dark beard. Forty four years old, he’d turned on your last birthday. 

You dig your nails into the soft meat of your palms, and your belly smolders as he brings the bottle to his lips, tasting the exact place your own mouth had just been moments ago. You press your knees together as hard as you can, head a little woozy with the color of his eyes; the most gorgeous green, caramel hazel. 

You’d graduated two years ago with a degree in art history and had done absolutely nothing with it since. It was just that everything appeared boring and pointless and shallow. Your whole life had one day suddenly seemed just a little silly. Useless, overpriced degree, nothing to be done with extensive knowledge in color theory when your world is expecting such different things from you now. 

But you sure as hell can appreciate the color of his eyes in extensive and meticulous detail. There is that. 

Watching the slow slide of the amber liquor down the bottle-neck, the long pull of his lush mouth, the ripple of his strong throat, and the way his eyes go a little wider, shocked at how good it is. You laugh soft: “I know, right.”

He takes another pull, another swallow. That’s what you want to be—swallowed just like that. “Damn, that’s good.” His mouth is a little wet, bottom lip shiny with thousands of dollars worth of your father’s favorite whiskey, and his eyes are sad. 

You’d said you were going to be bad, but you don’t want to be bad to him. “I’m sorry,” you whisper.

He swallows again, tipping his head towards you, trying to catch your too soft words—he’s got a bad ear, you know why—and turns to peer at you from beneath his low pulled brow, the tip of his tongue peeking out to swipe at the drop of liquor you wish you could suck off his tongue. 

“You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

The first time he’d shown you that gentleness of his: You’d fallen from your horse at school in your junior year. Something had frightened the beast, and she’d bucked you, sent you flying ten feet in the air, ragdoll-like, before you’d landed badly on your right arm, a comminuted fracture in your radius that you’d needed surgery to fix. At your insistence, and with only a few weeks left to spare, you’d been sent home for the remainder of the semester. Your father had been incensed but eventually allowed it. He’d been away from the ranch on business, after all, at no risk of being truly disturbed by you. But when you’d been readying to return to Switzerland at the end of the summer, arm healed, courage not, you’d not been able to get back on a horse no matter what you tried. Joel had helped you, before they’d shipped you off again. Trotted the corral with you for hours and hours before you’d finally been able to relax and sit on your own without tears and vertigo. No questions or admonishments, nothing but the quiet burr of his deep voice, guiding you and the mare along. 

It had been a kindness unlike any you’d experienced in maybe your whole life. 

“I’ve been bad.”

“Nah. You couldn’t ever be.”

The second time: “Did today make you think of Sarah?” Years after you’d found that green eyed photograph, he’d shared her with you. 

His gaze turns suddenly sharp, but you’re not worried you’ve stepped in unbreachable territory. “Yeah.” The echo of her name rings around the two of you. 

“In a bad way or a good way?” He takes another long swig, a low whistle through his teeth and a shake of his head before he’s handing the bottle back to you—again, carefully. 

“Both.”

You take your own swallow, slicking your tongue all around where his just was, and you’re drunk for real now. Drunk on a man. 

“Do you ever regret telling me about her?”

“Nah.” He tips his head back, looking up at the thick beams of the deck’s awning. He’s got the longest lashes you’ve ever seen on a man, thick and curling. The deepest voice you’ve ever heard too, sultry, a bedroom voice. A voice for fucking. Your belly swirls and dips, and you want so much you’re dizzy with it. 

Heart beating like it’s about to burst, out of breath on the verge of hyperventilating, you can taste his mouth in your mouth, the imagination flavor of it. This is what it must feel like to die. This is what your father must have felt like three days ago, this agony. 

His Adam’s apple bobs, and it’s so pronounced, the skin of his throat sun pebbled. There isn’t an inch of him that isn’t all rough-hewn man. “You needed to hear about her then, I s’pose.” 

Yes. “You told me when I needed you to.” After that lonely graduation, the last time you’d missed her really very badly, longed for a mother. Alone, alone, alone little girl. 

“You were missin’ your momma somethin’ fierce. Needed to know you weren’t the only one that felt like that sometimes.”

You laugh a not-laugh, butt scraping against the railing, slipping off your perch, socked-feet thudding beside his gifted boots. The pleasure you feel whenever you see him use one of the things you’ve given him is indescribable. 

“Silly,” you say with barely any sound, his bad ear reaches for your voice again. “At the time it felt like I was the only person in the whole world that had ever felt like that.”

“We all feel like that at one point or another, I reckon.”

“Will you miss him a lot?” You ask looking up at him, the beautiful profile, the strong jaw. You’ve always wondered how he sees you. If he’s ever thought you were beautiful. Other men do, it’s a common thing, a nothing sort of thing. There are always men, there will always be men. But this singular man—this one is not like the rest. 

“Maybe. Can’t tell yet, don’t think. But it felt wrong earlier, walking through his house without him in it.” His house, not yours. 

“Do you wish he’d been your father?” And he turns to look down at you at that, gaze snapping, and you can tell you’ve shocked him with the question. But you’d always wondered. 

“No. Never,” he says with such assuredness, an uncompromising shake of his head. 

And the answer doesn't necessarily shock you in turn. You don't think anyone could have ever wanted a father like that. But it also doesn't help you understand what it was that lived between them either. 

He sighs, perhaps reading the confusion in your gaze. “He helped me at a time when I needed it real bad. Gave me a place and a purpose and a thing to do and take care of. You get me? It was gratitude—maybe. He saved me in a way, after Sarah. Nothing more.” He thinks for a moment, and then, “Perhaps it was that we understood each other about certain things.”

You gaze across the sprawl of dark land as far as the eye reaches, that point of no return where the earth shoots up into the sky, purple blue behemoths in the shape of mountains. 

From this spot, rooted to the deck of your family home, it seems like the whole world is yours to keep. Also, like you’ll never be able to touch any of it with fingers or taste or meaning. 

Your love for this place is complicated—tied up in the people, the memories, the could’ves and should’ves, the whole dreamscape idea of the monument of childhood and all it’d really never been. The time away had felt eternal, like you’d never really been here to begin with, like the young girl who’d grown up on this land had never really existed. But you’d not forgotten them, this, despite your distance. Your home, the father that wouldn’t want you, Wyoming and all its splendor, the people you’d left behind, Joel and Ellie and shared birthdays that meant a secret world to you. Morsels of small happinesses interloped amidst a largely lonely and sad childhood. That’s what it was at its core. 

“Would you be angry with me if I gave it all away?”

He thinks for a moment, maybe you’re making him sadder, but then finally says with a swallow, “No. It’s yours to do with as you please.”

You eye the quarter of whiskey left, but your belly isn’t hungry for its warmth anymore. You want something heavier now. 

“Could you even do that—legally—sell it or somethin’?”

“Probably not. He probably tied it to my fucking life. Sell and die.” You mime your name in an imitation of your fathers deep voice, frowning at yourself the way he’d always frowned when he looked at you, but it pulls a laugh from him, and the painful memory is worth it. “But I have a billion dollars to spend now. More?” You tap your chin—you want to make him laugh again. “Gotta think of something interesting to do with it all.”

His mouth slides into an easy half grin. Like the moon—that beautiful. And he turns to face you fully. “You’re gonna be just fine. You know that, right?”

You turn to face him too, gripping the bannister for dear life. “What? Will you make sure of it?”

“That’s my plan.”

“How’re you gonna do that, d’you reckon?” The American twang bleeds back into your voice, and you’re all swollen lush on the inside, heart a beating fist in your chest. 

“Haven’t gotten that far, if I’m bein’ honest with you.” God. His eyes, the strong bridge of his nose, his mouth. He’s so tall your head has to crook back to look up at him. “I’ll figure something out.” And after another pensive second, and still with that soft, sloped eye smile, he asks, and nicely, “Will you stop drinking now—for me?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” you say with the same sort of smile in return. 

And then suddenly, like vomit again but maybe more humiliating this time: “Did you respect him?” Because you don’t know all the things about him that there are to know, but you do know that Joel Miller’s respect is a thing hard earned. 

He clicks his tongue, and you hear the pop of his jaw as he shifts it like he’s chewing on an honesty. His eyes, his eyes, they’re serious, mercurial, warm and deep also. You worry he won’t answer, that he wouldn’t want to disappoint you or something, but then: “No,” said real simple like.

“Why not?”

And the way he looks down at you, you know already, and it makes that falling through the surface of your own life feeling rise up inside you again, makes your ears pop with embarrassment. Ah. “He never did a very good job of hiding the way he treated you, sweetheart. I couldn’t ever respect a man like that.” 

This is reality right here, this is you falling through your life, this is the realization that it wasn’t only you imposing yourself, your existence, on someone with gifts they didn’t want or ask for. Joel had seen. Joel had understood. 

Someone else had noticed that you exist, and it had been him. 

What else had you ever wanted?

And in the blink of a desperate, yearning eye, drunk on a man still, you’re throwing yourself at him, pressing your mouth hot and heavy to his, kissing him full on the way you’d dreamt of since you knew to dream of such things.

Chapter 2; Sugar, Not so Sweet

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog

[ryan-sometimes]

One of the greatest gifts my 20s have brought me is the ability to exchange my confidence with others. I don’t mean hubris, I mean genuinely loving yourself in a strong yet relaxed manner. That secure tranquility radiates to others, especially when you make an effort to share it. Because confidence isn’t something that is felt only on an individual level, but a communal level as well. Think of how it feels to have an insecure teacher or parent. Those emotions always trickle down in one way or another.

Confidence isn’t something you simply give others, you model it too. It’s hard to feel secure in a relationship when you can feel the other person’s constant hesitation. I don’t mean this in a “insecure people can’t be in relationships” way, I just mean that confidence is felt both in a personal and collective scale. When you don’t have enough of your own, uplifting others can be draining, while secure confidence is only strengthened by watching others be infected by yours.

It’s also way more rewarding to uplift others when you have enough security in yourself. It’s a matter of applying to yourself the same things you believe about others. I would never think one of my friends is worthless, and so how does it make sense for me to be the one exception to this rule? It’s because I’m not. There was a time period where I could ignore this fallacy, but at one point I couldn’t outrun it any longer. My 20s so far have been all about truths catching up me.

[vintagetimetarot]

Message from your future spouses higher self 🌹

Hi everyone! It’s been so long since I posted a PAC. So sorry! My mental health hasn’t been great. But I finally mustered up some motivation for a reading today. This is whatever your future spouses higher self wants to bring to light to you. Let’s go! Pick a vinatge image below for your pile. (Side note, a lot of the piles were very similar, so if you feel drawn to more than one, go for it!)

Pile 1: The message your future spouse’s higher self wants to tell you is that that are genuinely so proud on how far you have come in life. They can’t wait to finally meet you, they say that your union isn’t super far away. They want to let you know that once they come into your life, they’ll be your biggest cheerleader and number one support. They think you are the most beautiful, graceful, and talented person they’ve ever met. They wish they could just hold you all night. They want to let you know that your relationship is not one sided at all, even though it may come off that way when you two first meet. They just love you so much! They also pick up that you haven’t been emotionally feeling great, they are here to remind you how beautiful of a person you are and why they fell in love with you. They really want to emphasize how true their connection is with you. That’s all Pile 1, I hope this resonated.

Pile 2: Your future spouses higher self wants you to know that whatever struggles your dealing with right now are about to end. They know how amazing you are and are telling you they have 100% faith that you will get through whatever is going on. They are letting you know divine timing is on your side, and things are going unfold into a happy place naturally. They admire how you’ve been handling everything with such grace, they think you are so beautiful/handsome for this. They are telling you to look for signs (birds and rabbits for some reason may resonate) of your union coming closer. Just hold on a little longer! Even outside of your love life, good offers and opportunities are coming to you, and you need to embrace them is what your future spouse is saying. Materially, you are in for a really good time, and it’s going to get even better once they come into your life. Your future spouse is well off, and will try to share this with you by giving gifts and taking you to nice places and such when you first meet/start dating. They are here to tell you that are very excited for you guys to meet and are very excited. That’s all Pile 2, I hope this resonated!

Pile 3: Your future spouses higher self wants your to trust your gut more and believe in yourself! They love every part of you and are asking you to not be so ashamed of yourself. You are a hard and generous worker, and they want you to start recognizing your power and your influence. You bring so much positive energy into your family and friends lives, and especially theirs. They want to tell you they just love you so deeply. They want to let you know when they come into your life, they will rush in so fast. (The Elvis song came to mind lmao). They want you to be patient with them as they are charmer and experienced at love, but have their fallacies sometimes. They like to put you on a pedestal I see. They want to remind you to keep making good choices in your life. Your skill and dedication to things is something they admire and wish for you to keep up. Keep up the good work is what they say! That’s all Pile 3, I hope it resonated!

Pile 4: Your future spouses higher self wants to be more assertive for yourself in love so you can attract them into your life sooner. They are ITCHING to just meet you already. They consider themselves lucky knowing you are their future partner. Your future spouse is saying to keep your standards high and to not settle for breadcrumbs. The relationship they are about to give you will be beautiful and the romance of a lifetime, but you need to trust the process. As you both balance your lives and keep moving forward, the closer this connection gets. You are a natural born leader and they want you to assert and put yourself or there more. You have such a bright future ahead of you right now, and they just wanna tell you that you should be excited and happy. They think that you’ve been doing a good job, but wanted to serve this to you as a huge reminder. You bring so much life and light into people’s lives and you have amazing gifts, they are screaming at you to start using them! That’s all Pile 4, I hope it resonated.

[yeyinde]

I am binge reading your work and I love your Price characterisation so much! Can you please go into detail what you his childhood looked like and what led him to be this angry, stubborn man who is fixated on saving the world at all costs

this is basically a reinterpretation of opening Pandora's box but instead of releasing great evils, it's just me yapping non-stop about John Price whenever i get the opportunity. but i cut a lot out because it was getting too long, so this is a brief summary on what made John Price the way that he is;

re: abuse (physical, mental, emotional; of authoritative power).

Nepo-baby. Born into Military Royalty. The Price name has a lot of sway in the government. Probably lived in Hereford going up before moving to Liverpool at 18. Realistically, Price has no other career choices because I can't see Mr "threatens to hang superior officers" sitting in a cubical and expected to hit quotas without catching several charges for assault and battery when his temper gets the best of him. And it always does.

His homelife was bad (but absolutely nothing compared to Simon's). His dad was just a staunch disciplinarian groomed by the traditional values of 40s-60s England. The typical "father works to provide for his family all day and then comes home to quiet, respectable children neither seen nor heard with food already on the table waiting for him and a wife that only speaks when spoken to and only ever to agree with her husband (and a lil bit of female "orgasm"????? by god! they've brought witchcraft back to the land of her Majesty the Queen!)"

He has an angry, uncompromising father with a temper and a mother who says thinks like, "well if *you* didn't make him angry, then you wouldn't have gotten yourself a black eye."

His dad was very physically abusive to both of them. Price really tried to stick up for his mum, but that would just set his dad off even more. And afterwards, his mum would just side with his dad, anyway. But on the flipside, I think she expected Price to protect her. So when he didn't (because he's a literal child!!), she'd get angry. But she obviously can't lash out like her husband or even her child, so uses the only weapon she has to gain some semblance of control: manipulation.

Price takes pieces of both his parents. His father, the physical aggressor, and his mother, the manipulative victim. And she is a victim, very much so. But I also think she pits them against each other. Gets bored. Causes issues. But there's power in getting someone to do what you want, and that's how she takes hers.

Price catches on to her in his early teens, but that's still his mother. Even though they have a very rocky relationship, she's still the Victim in his head, even when she's whispering in his dad's ear about all the things she despises about her son. And then going to Price (after his dad does something about it - again: disciplinarian, control freak) and playing the pitiful mother subjected to her husband's tyranny and a sad, weak son who can't do a single thing to protect her when she needs him.

Price learns to manipulate from her. Emotional blackmail. Victim-complex. Gaslighting. Scapegoating. But the biggest takeaway is the way he shifts the victim-complex into heroism (esp with Gaz). They can't be the bad guys. It's a logical fallacy in his mind. They're the ones saving the world, and if the world wasn't so riddled with bad guys, with people who need projecting, then they wouldn't need to do what they do.

I think Price has a bit of animosity towards people he sees as weaker (re: his mum having to share the victimhood with her son). But this animosity can also rear as obsession. He's the only person who can save you/them/the world. And since you/they/the world can't save yourself, then you should just listen to him.

And if you don't. Well, that's going to be a pretty big problem.

Honestly on the fence about siblings. If he has any, it's probably an older sister and she's either the equivalent of Janice Soprano (minus any of the backbone and ambition) or Barbara, resigned to her life and utterly forgetful. but I kinda like the idea of him not having any siblings to weather the storm with, you know? Like, it's just him and a mother who victim blames and ignores, and he gets the brunt of his dad's anger.

He was an obnoxious kid to be around. Probably really tried to impress his dad by adopting all of his values; baby misogyny, bite-sized authoritarianism, military fiscalism/military–industrial complex, militarism, etc., before realising (earlyyyyy teens) that he hates his dad and everything he stands for (but I'm a SUCKER for letting Price suffer and I love cyclicity and generational trauma so naturally, as much as he tries to run from the ghost of his dad, it still lingers - just in different ways; the worst thing you could ever say to Price is, you're just like your father).

Turned into a moody teen in the 80s/90s. His anger is a hair trigger. Utterly uncontrollable. But by this time, he learned to hide it because his dad's way of idealing with trauma was to add more. Therapists are pseudoscience, so he taught Price that men just bury these things. And if you can't, then you should be put down like a dog.

The assessment of a man's character was entirely based on the military tests he passed. And with Price's anger, trauma, he probably shouldn't have passed the evaluations, but since his dad, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, were all military dogs, he learned how to beat it. He's also really good at manipulating people.

I think between 16-17 there was a real attempt to do something that wasn't the military and I haven't decided which one I like better but:

He gets a job (as a port worker or in a factory). The Price name has no sway here (and baby Price grew up surrounded by people who knew his family, who revered them for their service to the country, etc). If he wants to make it, it has to be by his own merit. The problem is, while he's a hard worker, his trauma (men who remind him of his father, women who are too much like his mother) causes an incredible rift between him and authority.

If his boss is a man just like his dad, then Price is a match in a tinderbox.

If he isn't, to Price (who has only just learned to hold his tongue), the idea of a nobody being in a position of power over him will also set him off.

Either way, he's doomed.

If he man is a beast that no one can stand up to, and gets away with things because he's the boss, then Price's temper would flare pretty quickly. Especially if he comes after Price. Bullies him. Belittles him. But the worst is the humiliation. He ends up beating his boss very badly, terrifying the men around him but in their fear, and how quickly they listen to him because of it, Price realises he likes it. That fear can be weaponized. Honed.

Or: same situation, but if you lean more towards Price looking out for the underdog rather than his own self-interest, then he sticks up for someone and beats his boss to protect them. Everyone's still afraid of him, but they revere him. They do what he asks. This version, he realises that respect can be weaponized.

(and if the man is not like his dad, then Price will antagonise him into action. He'd throw the first punch, and Price will retaliate. It would still go too far, but - Nepo baby, weaponized fear: the outcome would be the same.)

He gets taken into custody. The tell him his boss is not going to make it. But Price's dad exercises every ounce of power to get his son out of trouble (because this will look very bad on them), and Price leans several things which shape him as an adult: his name has a lot of power; rules and regulations and just policing won't stop bad people unless you take it into your own hands once and for all, and people listen to him and that either version of the above can be weaponized.

He'd probably take the military a bit more seriously but only because he's trying to get vengeance for himself (even if this is subconscious and he doesn't realise it). He leaves at 18. Joins. And climbs the ranks higher than his dad.

At first, there's a concerted effort to do good but something cracks. Builds. Eventually Price comes to the conclusion that he'll have to take a more hands-on approach and get them a little bloody if he wants real change.

I have a lot of thoughts of military-dog Price. But!! That's basically it.

Shaped by physical, mental, emotional abuse; leans into the poor rich kid trope slightly. It all manifests more when he climbs the ranks, gets freedom, and realises that only he can do what needs to be done.

[transmutationisms]

in addition to being prone to an obvious naturalistic fallacy, the oft-repeated claim that various supplements / herbs / botanicals are being somehow suppressed by pharmaceutical interests seeking to protect their own profits ('they would rather sell you a pill') belies a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between 'industrial' pharmacology and plant matter. bioprospecting, the search for plants and molecular components of plants that can be developed into commercial products, has been one of the economic motivations and rationalisations for european colonialism and imperialism since the so-called 'age of exploration'. state-funded bioprospectors specifically sought 'exotic' plants that could be imported to europe and sold as food or materia medica—often both, as in the cases of coffee or chocolate—or, even better, cultivated in 'economic' botanical gardens attached to universities, medical schools, or royal palaces and scientific institutions.

this fundamental attitude toward the knowledge systems and medical practices of colonised people—the position, characterising eg much 'ethnobotany', that such knowledge is a resource for imperialist powers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to mine and profit from—is not some kind of bygone historical relic. for example, since the 1880s companies including pfizer, bristol-myers squibb, and unilever have sought to create pharmaceuticals from african medicinal plants, such as strophanthus, cryptolepis, and grains of paradise. in india, state-created databases of valuable 'traditional' medicines have appeared partly in response to a revival of bioprospecting since the 1980s, in an increasingly bureaucratised form characterised by profit-sharing agreements between scientists and local communities that has nonetheless been referred to as "biocapitalism". a 1990 paper published in the proceedings of the novartis foundation symposium (then the ciba foundation symposium) spelled out this form of epistemic colonialism quite bluntly:

Ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, folk medicine and traditional medicine can provide information that is useful as a 'pre-screen' to select plants for experimental pharmacological studies.

there is no inherent oppositional relationship between pharmaceutical industry and 'natural' or plant-based cures. there are of course plenty of examples of bioprospecting that failed to translate into consumer markets: ginseng, introduced to europe in the 17th century through the mercantile system and the east india company, found only limited success in european pharmacology. and there are cases in which knowledge with potential market value has actually been suppressed for other reasons: the peacock flower, used as an abortifacient in the west indies, was 'discovered' by colonial bioprospectors in the 18th century; the plant itself moved easily to europe, but knowledge of its use in reproductive medicine became the subject of a "culturally cultivated ignorance," resulting from a combination of funding priorities, national policies, colonial trade patterns, gender politics, and the functioning of scientific institutions. this form of knowledge suppression was never the result of a conflict wherein bioprospectors or pharmacists viewed the peacock flower as a threat to their own profits; on the contrary, they essentially sacrificed potential financial benefits as a result of the political and social factors that made abortifacient knowledge 'unknowable' in certain state and commercial contexts.

exploitation of plant matter in pharmacology is not a frictionless or infallible process. but the sort of conspiratorial thinking that attempts to position plant therapeutics and 'big pharma' as oppositional or competitive forces is an ahistorical and opportunistic example of appealing to nominally anti-capitalist rhetoric without any deeper understanding of the actual mechanisms of capitalism and colonialism at play. this is of course true whether or not the person making such claims has any personal financial stake in them, though it is of course also true that, often, they do hold such stakes.

[thebookworm0001]

Spoilers for the end of veilguard and specifically how solas’s story is handled under the cut

And seriously I do mean the very end of the game and I’m gonna talk about stuff that happened before then too

You have been warned

I felt satisfied with the ending.

I was able to collect all the solas memories/regret murals and very much felt like the way the ending unlocked by that was handled well.

Solas has always been a man bound by his regrets. And this game spent a lot of time establishing is primary regret is Mythal. Yes, he cares deeply about helping people and wants that world restored, but it’s less to do with the elven people and more to do with him feeling like he’s made mistake after mistake.

He’s been living in a sunk-cost fallacy for millennia and cannot see a way out. He really, really doesn’t want to do this - he knows how many people he’ll hurt to do it, but can’t see another way because if he stops now he feels like it’ll be just another betrayal of mythal when he’s already betrayed and failed her so many times. She’s the reason any of this happened.

That’s why it has to be mythal telling him to stop. He wanted to stop for a romanced lavellan - his letter says that explicitly. But he regrets mythal’s death (and his resulting actions) so much he just. Can’t let it go. What does his life mean if he can’t fulfill the wishes of the goddess that called him to service, to a body? The friend he murdered, in the end, to make up for the first time she as killed.

He was a spirit of wisdom mythal corrupted - it’s another version of Cole and the Templar who killed the human Cole. That confrontation has to happen for him to move in any direction.

And the way he absolutely crumples when he sees her? Damn if that didn’t sell me on how deeply he cares for her, beyond the murals that show how ashamed he is of what he did with and for her.

He’s always needed someone to tell him there was another way, but nobody besides mythal could absolve him of the actions he took, because they aren’t her. It’s not a matter of the nature of their relationship, rather that he cannot untie himself from the way his spirit was warped by her and the actions he took in response to her.

Idk I know people will have very different feelings and opinions on how that went down, but it made sense to me.

And my solas-romanced lavellan acted exactly how I expected her to. Granted, Ellana is the kind of lavellan who would immediately forgive him and would, no questions asked, go with him on his journey to atone. I had a whole fic planned out where she did that exact thing - even if the details weren’t what happened here.

If you have a lavellan who isn’t as sad as mine and who wouldn’t join him, yeah this ending may not work for you. But I went from being pissed at him for trapping my rook and lying about killing varric to immediately being back on my ‘fuck you’re just a deeply sad and broken man please let yourself be happy’ lament when he talked about how he failed both the world and mythal in different moments.

It worked for me. I’m satisfied by how it was handled and think the ending makes sense for the read on Solas I’ve had for the last several years. He’s just a deeply sad man who thinks he has to make up for his failures - and the one person he’s failed more than anyone tells him it’s not on him. She’s the one person he could never get forgiveness from - and he got it. And that’s why it had to be her.

[lorde--of--the--rings]

SPOILERS! On Solavellan in DA4

Prefacing this in saying i’m giving my own take (not fact or fiction or right or wrong just my take) on this. I really love this community because I get to read other people’s thoughts and feelings about this game we all love. so just hoping to join the dialogue for a moment on this.

Sollavellan is a big part of the veilguard ending if you let it be/want it to be-- but I'm not convinced that this is because of the ship itself, but the fact that their relationship (romantic or platonic) is important to Solas's development as a character. I played this game and interpret solas’s part in the narrative of the game as a representation of regret, shame, and what regret and shame can drive us to when we let them— really thinking of the line in Macbeth where he remarks  "I am in blood 1440. Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er…." (3.4 134-136)

Bro is so far into his own despair and shame that he can’t see any other way out-- he's tied up in the logical fallacy that to be good now would be a "betrayal" of those he wronged before; he can't imagine any other end to the story than to "right" his previous "wrongs" by fully "fixing" the world he sees as broken.

Enter the inquisitor, a total wildcard who disrupts his plans in DA3 and the domino effect we play out in Veilguard. Whether or not you romance Solas in DA3, Quizzy is still a blindsiding character that disrupts solas and his worldview. Here is a person with immense power and influence, who, unlike Mythal, actually wields it to protect those they love and patch up a world that THEY had a hand in breaking (rather unintentionally,… sounds familiar?) 

But more importantly-- they're able to be redeemed in a way Solas imagines to be impossible for himself.

Quizzy represents who Solas was, or could be, without his pride and without the influence of Mythal. They fit in as a puzzle piece in his transformation WITH OR WITHOUT romance, and with or without friendship.

This is why Solas having the opportunity to be redeemed in DA4 makes so much sense to me, he is effectively forced by what he lives through in DA3 to question his own plans and approach, or at the very least become aware of his own infallibility in comparison to an alternative and restorative type of problem solving. This all sets the scene for Rook and Varric once again foiling him (you meddling kids! and speaking of foils, Varric/Rook and Solas are as foily and foil characters get…) 

Oh and your ex (lover, leader, friend/foe) just appears out of the blue and is like ok bro party’s over. Confronted with all of this, with Varric’s fate, with Mythal’s memory if you choose that path, and oh, hey, look it’s Quizzy….

I know he’s the ancient elven god of trickery, but isn’t it so much more interesting that he could also be the ancient elven god of resistance, of thwarting power and authority, and in that vein be redeemed and live out this alternative side of himself? Rather than being the god of pride he can live as the spirit of wisdom he was before Mythal, and in that also resistance— resisting the toxic urge to destroy in order to create/redeem.

We know these "Gods" aren’t really "Gods," so why not let them occupy this grey space?

[twinliches]

my best friend and i have this theory that many of our interactions with the world around us can be approached from two broad perspectives: life as a narrative (i interact with the world and the world interacts with me) or life as an environment (the world interacts with the world and i happen to be in it).

in almost all cases, both things are true simultaneously, and i believe most people are inclined one way or the other, but depending on the situation, reflecting on which side you view it from might help with acceptance or change.

a narrative perspective can help you see yourself as a actor able to change their fate, but also lead to unfair self-blame or frustration with the rest of the world when you are not able to change said external factors. being stuck in traffic and hating everyone in a car and yourself when you are late at work because this always happens on important days when this is just what being alive in our world means is a benign example, but narrative fallacy can easily make you view a series of unrelated events in your life as divine punishment or personal failure instead.

at the same time, while an environmental perspective can make it easier to accept things you can and could not influence, it can also leave you stuck in unfavorable situations because you don't consider action a viable or productive option. an environmental fallacy would be hating everything about your job and your relationships with your coworkers but accepting this as a natural part of being an adult when actionable steps, be it self assertion or a job change, could improve the situation in your favour.

of course, not every interaction with the world fits into two neat categories, but often when i am frustrated or angry with the world or myself, it helps to take a moment and ask myself. is this my narrative or my environment? and if it's both, am i looking at it from the wrong direction? am i stuck in the environmental perspective, standing in front of an open door and lamenting being locked inside? or am i stuck in the narrative, rattling at the closed window instead of giving up of enjoying the view?

[thebeesareback]

I just finished the audio book for Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History, so naturally I had to have a lil scroll to see what everyone thought on Tumblr. To add to the discourse: (spoilers, obviously)

Also trigger warning: incest, abuse, murder, alcoholism

Why is Tumblr so in love with Henry Winter?! He murders the farmer, Bunny, and possibly tries to kill Charles. He's manipulative and may well try to make Richard take the fall (har har) for Bunny's death. In the garden scene, he admits to being a psychopath/sociopath. Oh, and he's unbelievably pretentious

Also, why are there so many cute pictures of the twins hanging out? Their relationship was strained, incestuous, co-dependent, abusive. The whole uwu thing baffles me

Richard has a very obvious foot fetish and nobody is talking about it

The novel is quite funny, and I wish more people picked up on that. Most of the humour comes from Francis - the pinz nez stays ON during sex; no, Bunny's parents weren't very upset when one of their grandchildren ruined Francis' scarf, they were preoccupied by their missing son; and there's a throwaway line where the art students eat sushi with paintbrushes instead of chopsticks. I also liked when the twins panicked after Bunny's murder and decided to start repotting tulips

The farmer is referred to by name twice. Once in a newspaper, once by Bunny. Strange to think that he's the person in the squad who might actually have a conscience. Incidentally, Milo, the golden retriever who finds Bunny's body, has his name mentioned more frequently.

Richard is a smelly, badly dressed misanthrope. As is Henry, and Charles towards the end. Francis, Camilla and Hampden itself provide the (admittedly gorgeous) dark academia aesthetic, but if you want to end that dream, remember how terrible everything would have smelled. I guess the difference between appearance and reality is a pretty big theme

Julian is very creepy, obviously, but I was surprised that he wasn't more involved in the plot. He seems like exactly the sort of person to start a cult. I'd also like to know if he and Henry were in a sexual relationship, because we see them kiss once and then it's never mentioned again

Foreshadowing is done EXCELLENTLY through the book. There were a few characters who were described as ghostly at the start, and I THINK they're the ones who survive. Also, Tartt loves her pathetic fallacy (not phallusy).

Time is very strange. If you bothered to plot out all of the events, I don't think it quite makes sense. Term starts in September, say Richard joins Julian's classes in early October? That means all the picnics, the Sunday walks with Bunny, the trips to Francis' house, all happen over about five weeks, leading to the 12th November when Charles, Henry and Francis kill the farmer. Unreliable narrator, I guess

A lot of things about Richard's character make more sense when you realise the abuse he grew up experiencing and witnessing. Poor Ms Papen. Odd that Richard's parents don't visit him when he's in hospital

Funny that everyone is surprised when the twins' incest comes out. Like, they had an orgy at the start of the baccanal. Call me a prude, but I wouldn't attend an orgy with a family member

I would go for girls' night with Judy Poovey

Also, the book was published in 1992. Does anyone know when Prince Charles and Camila Parker Bowles went public with their relationship? Seems like an unbelievable coincidence otherwise

If anyone has an actual criteria for identifying alcohol abuse/alcoholism, please lmk if any of the main six characters AREN'T alcoholics. I'm pretty sure I got liver cirrhosis and lung cancer just from reading this book