▸ Column · Contemporary boardroom Metropolis — Lex Luthor's native era, no significant period shift required.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Homelander.
The letter
Dear Mr. Luthor,
My 23-year-old daughter called me last week to announce she was walking away from her nursing residency — three years of work and $47,000 in student loans I co-signed — to move to Vermont and start a goat farm with a boyfriend she's known for eight months. I didn't yell. I told her I'd stop covering her car insurance ($180 a month) until she showed me something resembling a business plan, given that my name is on that debt alongside hers. She has since informed her older brother that I'm "holding her hostage financially" and won't return any of my calls. I do believe adults are entitled to make their own mistakes — but $47,000 in joint liability feels like it earns me at least one honest conversation. Am I the controlling parent she's describing, or does co-signing a loan give me standing to ask one reasonable question?
— Confused in Metropolis
Lex Luthor replies
Darling, she isn't your hostage. She's your debtor — and she's reframed it brilliantly. I'd be more impressed if I weren't looking at your signature on forty-seven thousand dollars.
You didn't raise a villain. You raised someone who has discovered that "controlling parent" is a more comfortable story than "co-signer who just funded a goat venture." Both stories are available from the same facts. She chose hers. You're still auditioning for the defense.
Stop. This is a liability question, not a parenting question. Call the loan servicer today — not to escalate, simply to understand what happens to your credit if the residency income never materializes. Then send Priya one email. Not a conversation, an email: "I spoke with the servicer about our joint loan. When you have a repayment plan, I'd like to see it." Three sentences. Sign your name. Frankly, don't revisit the car insurance — that was theater, and it already served its purpose.
She isn't speaking to you because the silence is currently working. (The brother call tells you she's still watching.) Put the real subject in writing and take the silence's power away.
The goat farm may turn out to be wonderful. The loan is still your name.
— Lex Luthor
Homelander weighs in
What Luthor won't say, because he genuinely doesn't care whether she loves you: the two weeks of silence is working. You've been writing your defense in your head ever since she went quiet. "I didn't raise my voice." "I believe adults earn their mistakes." You wrote those sentences for her, not for me.
I know what it sounds like when withheld approval becomes the loudest noise in the room. I grew up in a facility where people observed me very carefully and nobody once held me. Different scale. Same noise.
You're not controlling. But she figured out that her silence makes you question yourself — and now you're asking a stranger to confirm you're the good parent. A parent acts on what they know. An audience waits to be forgiven. She already knows which one you are.
— Homelander