Life Hacks/Notes on Rich's personality
Richard was devastated by the circumstances of his divorce, particularly due to his liason with Shauna complicating matters. He takes responsibility for Shauna, but he has a hard time viewing her and the children he had with her as his family. To him, Inga and the 6 children he had with her are the real family and Shauna, Rhane, and Kizzie are his mistake. This does not mean he neglects them, in fact he does foster good relationships with them, but it is not quite as open of a connection as it otherwise could be. Despite the girls being his own biological children, he views them a bit more how he might if they were Shauna's kids from a previous marriage. He still loves and cares for them, but he is a little reserved about it. This is also the reason why he has not married Shauna and why it took so long for him to have another child with her.
At the same time, Rich feels guilty about having cheated on his former wife, and feels a great deal of shame as he blames himself for the divorce whenever he looks at his children he had with Inga.
Relationships (start of story)
Rich is happy that he has managed to maintain a good relationship with Xander. In fact, Xander seems to have taken a genuine interest in computers and programming, a subject for witch he is happy to give Xander some guidance in in order to continue fostering a good relationship with his son.
Rich still harbors a flame for his frigid ex-wife. It has been 8 years since their divorce, and he lives in the house he bought for his girlfriend he cheated on her with, but he holds out an unspoken hope they might be able to mend the fence and get back together.
Rich is saddened by how much his actions seem to have hurt Brittany. He knows she does not want to have contact with him, and really wishes this were not the case, but knows that there is nothing he can do about it.
Rich cannot understand his daughter. He heard Inga warn him about how Charity started sexually molesting Roni, and her frenzied tones at the time impressed upon him that it was something much worse than what actually happened. She also has a habit of getting into fights with all of her siblings. He takes his ex-wife's word and keeps Charity separate from Roni, and also tends to watch her when she is around his daughters he had with Shauna. He is not good with challenges of this sort and so he has not figured out that Inga was just overreacting and does not have enough regular contact with his children for him to discover otherwise through talking with them about the situation.
Rich is able to understand and cope with Bastian's boyishness a lot better than his mother, and much to his relief it seems that Bastian doesn't seem to put much stock into the weight of what it means that he cheated on their mom with Shauna. As such, they seem to be able to have a reasonable relationship (as good as can be had only seeing each other every other weekend.)
Angelica is Richard's "little princess." He adores her love of stuffed animals and girly things, and doesn't even seem to care that she seems to act a little younger than her actual age. It just spares him the heartache of having to miss her growing up too fast while she is away from him. It doesn't even seem to occur to him that she is the same age as Rahne but acts rather immature by comparison. In his mind, it is Rahne that is acting uncharacteristic of her age.
Having been scared by his Ex-wife into the idea that Roni had been sexually molested by her older sister, seeing her awakens all manner of guilt and mixed feelings, bringing up thoughts of the guilt that he had had sex with Shauna when she was only 15, thus placing him in the same boat as Charity of horrible things to have been done, and also because Roni's habit of going pantiless sort of reminds him of Rahne's sexually suggestive behavior. At any rate, the mixed emotions this creates for Rich make him unsure of how to approach Roni, and he tends to leave this to his oldest two children since they seem to have a good handle on their youngest sister. Beings she was just a newborn when the divorce happened, he had never had the chance to develop any kind of meaningful bond with her in the first place.
While having her in his life is a major obstacle to him ever even having a chance of getting back together with his ex-wife, he did get her pregnant and so he can't possibly not take responsibility for her. He is sure she is using him for his money, but she does live within reasonable means and is not that bad a person either. He knows she is smarter than she lets on, but there is something about how her acting like a bimbo while in bed just turns him on and makes her very hard for him to resist. Actually, she has shown him more love both in a physical and emotional sense than Inga ever did, but he just has a hard time with the whole situation.
Since she is a stay at home mother, he mostly has left the raising of the girls to her. However, with the slutty way Rahne seems to be starting to turn out, he has taken a little bit more of an interest in her upbringing now but is having a hard time figuring out how to grab the reigns.
Rich has noticed how Rahne seems to have started dressing in extremely revealing clothing that he is uncomfortable with a girl her age wearing, and she seems to have started trying to imitate her mom the way she interacts with him, even to the point of giving him bedroom eyes and, somewhat inexpertly, using some of the same kinds of language she uses to lure him into the bedroom for sex. He does not suspect Rahne knows what she is imitating, but he sees this as foreshadowing of rough things to come if she keeps on this track.
WIP