Lovely

you know i do this. every character i write gets a chart before he gets a scene.

i've been getting asks about joe's since before i ever posted daniel's, and i sat on it because the astrology side of my following is serious and joe doesn't have a public birth time. so here's my promise up front: every planetary placement and degree i discuss is confirmed. the rising sign and house placements are part of my rectification, and i'll show you how i got there.

if you rectify him differently, come tell me. i genuinely want that conversation.

december 10, 1996. ames, iowa.

this is my read on him, not gospel. astrology is interpretation, and mine is one of many 🤍

no birth time means the ascendant is a choice, so here's mine and here's why.

pisces rising at 5°43'.

i landed there because of what it does to everything underneath it. joe's confirmed chart is overwhelmingly fire and earth: sun and moon in sagittarius, mercury and jupiter in capricorn, mars in virgo. it should read harder than he does.

and yet the words people consistently use when they meet him are softer. gentle. hard to read. easy to project onto.

that gap is the rising sign's whole job. the ascendant is the vehicle, not the driver.

i ruled out aquarius, which was the other real candidate. aquarius rising would make him detached in a way that reads as chosen, the guy who stays a little above it and watches from a distance because he's decided to. that's not him. he's in it and not saying anything, which is a completely different mechanism.

aquarius rising also puts his venus and mars in houses that don't match how he actually loves.

pisces rising is ruled by neptune, which sits in capricorn in this chart. so even the veil is disciplined. even the softness has structure behind it.

that detail is what sold me.

if you rectify him differently, i want to hear it, especially if you've got a time you trust. this is the part of the post i'd most like to be argued with.

now the actual chart.

his sun is at 18°58' sagittarius. his moon is at 19°33' sagittarius. they're less than a degree apart: a new moon birth, with identity and emotional life fused into one placement.

so the man underneath is a sagittarius twice over. expansive, restless, philosophical, allergic to stagnation. wants to understand why everything happens. reads until two in the morning. takes the long walk because he needs to think it through.

and then his mercury is in capricorn.

mercury is how the mind gets out, and capricorn is one of the most economical, structured, self-editing places it can land. the unfiltered version of joe burrow is enormous. the version that reaches his mouth is rationed.

it's why he speaks in complete, articulate sentences and stops the second he's said the thing. it's why the humor is dry and deadpan instead of the broad, enthusiastic sagittarius kind. it's why the pause before the joke does as much work as the joke.

the silence isn't emptiness. it's editing. there is a full sagittarian sentence happening in there and you're getting the capricorn draft.

when the filter drops, when he's comfortable enough to go on for ten minutes about fossils or space or whatever he's currently reading, you're not getting small talk. you're getting the part of him capricorn usually keeps locked up.

that's the gift.

back to that sun-moon conjunction for a second, because it does something most people don't have.

for most of us, the sun and moon are in different signs, and that split is useful. you want one thing and need another. some part of you is always arguing with the rest of you. it's uncomfortable, but it's also how people catch themselves.

joe doesn't have that. what he wants and what he needs are in the same sign, less than a degree apart. no counterweight. no internal second opinion.

that's why he reads so unified even when he's saying nothing. there's no visible seam because there isn't one. the man is coherent in a way that's genuinely rare, and it's a huge part of the presence.

it's also the blind spot.

when nothing inside you pushes back, your defaults stop feeling like defaults and start feeling like facts. withdrawing when it gets hard isn't a choice he examines. it's what he does, and it doesn't occur to him to question it because there's no part of him raising a hand.

the correction has to come from outside. it has to be a person, and it has to be a person he'll actually let in. which is a problem, because he's the one deciding.

venus at 21°55' scorpio.

this is the placement that makes him hard to write and hard to be with.

venus in scorpio doesn't do surface. it doesn't do casual attraction, casual loyalty, casual anything. he's slow to trust and fast to clock when someone isn't being real with him. when he does let someone in, it's total: loyalty, intensity, and a possessiveness he'd probably deny if you named it out loud.

now put that against a double sagittarius.

his sun and moon are saying don't fence me in. his venus is saying i want to consume you and be consumed.

they don't speak the same language.

he can resist falling in love, and it has nothing to do with not feeling it. the depth of it threatens the freedom his moon needs to breathe. once he's in, he can swing between pulling someone impossibly close and needing distance. it reads like inconsistency. it's two placements taking turns.

this is also where the jealousy lives.

it doesn't announce itself. it starts as him trying to shake it off and failing, and then it goes physical. hand on the small of your back. more tactile in public than he'd normally be. eye contact with whoever he's decided the problem is.

venus in scorpio doesn't experience jealousy as insecurity. it experiences it as survival, like losing this person would take something with it he doesn't get back.

the reassurance has to be both words and touch. one without the other doesn't finish the job, and even when it lands, he needs time to fully put it down.

one more thing, and it's the tell: his venus at 21° scorpio is sextile his mars at 20° virgo. less than a degree of orb, and easy.

desire and drive cooperate. what he wants and how he goes after it are in agreement, which means intimacy isn't a separate department from the feelings. it's where the feelings go.

a man this locked down everywhere else can come completely undone with someone he trusts. it's the same placement doing both jobs.

mars at 20°56' virgo.

mars is anger and drive, and virgo is one of the least explosive places it can sit. he doesn't erupt. he goes cold. he gets precise. he gets critical, or he retreats, and he'll usually try to fix the problem before he admits how it made him feel.

virgo mars doesn't rage. it reviews.

it's also where the noticing comes from. the crack in your voice when you say you're fine. the thing you mentioned three weeks ago that you don't remember saying.

that's not intuition. it's cataloguing. mars in virgo files details away and produces them later with unnerving accuracy. it's elite game prep on the field, and it's slightly alarming to be loved by.

it's also the answer to something the fam asks me constantly: why does he reach for you before he says anything?

mars in virgo is precise with actions the way mercury in capricorn is precise with words. when someone he loves is hurting, his body knows exactly what to do. pull them in. stay close. make something. fix something. his mouth is still drafting.

his hands are more articulate than his sentences.

the cost is that he's methodically hard on himself. he'll replay one conversation, one throw, one moment he phrased wrong, and take it apart with real skill. virgo mars applies the same precision inward that it applies to everything else, and inward is where it does damage.

last one, and it's the one that made me sit back when i first built this chart.

his north node is at 4°10' libra. his chiron is at 28°08' libra. they're in the same sign, and in the rectification i'm using, they land in the same house.

his growth direction and his deepest wound occupy the same part of the chart.

north node is where you're headed. the thing that doesn't come naturally and is the whole point anyway. chiron is the injury that doesn't fully close.

for him, both of them are partnership.

the thing he's here to learn is the exact thing that hurts. letting someone in. needing someone. being seen needing someone. that's the direction, and it's also the sore spot. there's no route to the first one that goes around the second.

it explains the self-reliance, which is the most misread thing about him. it doesn't come from not wanting people. it comes from a wound in the shape of wanting them.

stack that on the new moon from earlier. no internal counterweight. nothing in there arguing with his defaults. he cannot get there alone. the growth requires another person.

so i've never written his arc as him becoming softer or louder or more open. it's him learning that partnership isn't the opposite of strength. that letting someone in isn't losing himself.

that staying is the bravest thing he does.