Chương 1162: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Sixty

Dear Diary, Y'know, I remember reading at one point back in the day that folks with ADHD have an exaggerated sense of 'Justice'. That we get really bent out of shape when we perceive something as 'unfair'. When we can't fix that shit or force someone else to fix it, we react badly. Sometimes that's the whole 'smash the entire system' thing. Other times we just straight up leave the situation entirely.

Worst case, which I think may explain a lot of my life back in the day, when we can't destroy the injustice or physically leave the situation, we do so virtually by dissociating. Back in the day, I had mixed emotions about that. Not that I recognized that at the time. On one hand, I totally agreed with the idea that I wanted life to be Fair. To be Just. For people who work hard to prosper. For my mom to be alive and able to spend her golden years watching over me after working her ass off holding down three jobs.

On the other hand, I thought it was complete bullshit that some fuckwad called that 'exaggerated'. Like somehow wanting the world to be Fair and Just was a character flaw. I think I broke yet another phone after reading that article. Now I think I get it. I mean, I still think it's a fuckstain thing to do calling a desire for the world to be Just and Fair 'exaggerated', or some kind of character flaw.

The only kind of person who would do that, to my mind, is someone who wants the world to be unjust, to be unfair, and the only kind of person I could think of who would want that is somebody who thinks they can use that injustice and unfairness to exploit people. To get over in the worst kind of way. But I do understand that thinking the world is a Just and Fair place is both incorrect and horrifying.

Incorrect because in the absence of some sophont deciding on standards of Fairness and enforcing them, Fair does not exist. The universe isn't balanced by default, except in the most broad and fine granularities, like galaxies and quarks and shit like that. Okay, maybe stars or planets, I dunno, but at the scale most sophonts exist at, life isn't 'Fair' or 'balanced', it's fuckin' random as shit. Karma just... Isn't.

Horrifying because if it was, if every bad thing that happened to every person was something they deserved, that would mean that people really are horrific. I'm not misanthropic enough to think that way. Fuck, I don't think I was even back in the day. So yeah, I get that the world is not Just nor Fair, and I agree with the Marshall that the biggest single part of being a Hero, no matter what world somebody's in, is to make it that way. Or maybe die trying to do so.

Thing is, and this is the part that came to me while pondering, sometimes Just and Fair aren't the same thing. Sometimes Fair isn't Right, either. At least not the simplistic version of Fair that kid me always gravitated to, the one I'm thinking most people instinctively choose. I think part of what got me where I am now was thinking about Equity versus Equality. Because both of those are different definitions of 'Fair', but the former requires a lot more understanding of nuance than the latter.

People who aren't thinking things through, which includes the desperate, the ignorant, and kids, who often qualify as both of the former, hear 'Fair', and think 'Equal'. Balanced might be a better adjective, but even there folks swing back to Equal. Thing is, sometimes in life the teeter totter doesn't have equal length limbs. Because as noted, shit ain't fair by default. To put more of a specific illustration in play, my mom whipped my ass as a kid.

On the regular, because at some point my kid brain decided that any attention was better than no attention, so I acted up just to get my mom to notice me, even if it was going to town on my ass with a yard stick, a hair brush, or just her hand.

That simplistic notion of 'Fair', the one that rules my ADHD gut, and thus my actions when I don't think, would say that since my mom hit me, and her mom hit her, and so on back to the first mom who smacked her daughter for annoying her, it's Just and Fair that I should smack my kid when they annoy me. Oh, I'm sure most moms who do that don't justify that with 'because she annoyed me'; they probably cloak it with 'when she's out of line' or some shit like that.

They put a shiny skin of morals over it, to excuse what is inherently an immoral action. That still doesn't make it Right. Yeah, got to pondering all that while I was thinking about something Anne said yesterday, about the 'Fair Folk' not being welcome in the London Keep. Honestly for an ADHD brain, 'Fair Folk' jumping to 'Fair' not being inherently 'Right' or 'Just' is practically one step from Kevin Bacon.

Forget about the fact that most of the Sidhe I've known are blond-ish, and as Saffron reminded me, 'Fair' means 'light in color'. Of course, I still think shit ought to be Fair. Or, at worst, that anybody deliberately making life less fair ought to get some impact delivered attitude adjustment. Which is something I really need to be aware of, because as I have noted in the past, I am not just some random bitch sitting in my living room wearing nothing but underwear pwning noobs at COD.

I'm not just a rich, wealthy, almost-a-Hero, I'm not just a Goddess, I'm the Elder Primordial Matriarch of a fuckin' Pantheon that's dominating a chunk of a continent. Not to mention my mountain range sized M-Space ass literally dominating most of that continent in M-Space. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

So I think it might be better for me to ponder whether my M-Space ass can be literal or not rather than getting worked up about 'Fair', because when I get too worked up shit happens that I may or may not have direct control over. I mean, back in the day I figured I'd need to watch my diet eventually, but never thought I'd need to pay much attention to my idle musing.

Here and now I can eat whatever the fuck I want and not worry about consequences to my physical health, but pondering shit like that might wind up with me finding random strangers well on the way to joining The Morrigan in tentacle-sleeve-hood. Which, since I haven't pressed the issue of her ultimate fate, I guess I'm not totally averse to applying that punishment to someone else, but I sure as shit don't want to do it without thinking about it. I mean, I hope I never have to do that again.

But if I do, I do, and if it's Justified I'll try not to beat myself up about it, but if I realize I've done it by accident I'm definitely gonna feel some kinda way, and 'guilt and shame' will be big parts of that. Of course, I can't stop thinking about Right and Wrong, either. Because when Deities, or honestly anybody who gets treated like one, stop thinking, encourage others to stop thinking, that's when Dogma happens. I'm not talking about vaguely amusing movies with Alanis Morissette as shrieky God, either.

I'm talking about Fundamentalists, folks who confuse 'the world isn't right, but my Goddess says it oughta be, so we gotta make it so' with 'my Holy Book says the world is flat, so obviously it's flat'. Yeah, so once we let the Captains three know that all their base were belong to Leanan, they got on board real fast with plan 'ally with the Alliance to kick that bitch out of our house'. Of course, that meant a whole shit ton of organizing, not to mention some subtle shit on the part of our new friends.

Unfortunately, we did not have anything like enough Cold Iron helmets to outfit every Pirate sailor who might be sneaking up the Thames. Fortunately, those helmets were intended to stop the Shaping of a Lich who might have been a borderline Archmage before she died and chose Lichdom, and as I'd come to realize given what happened with Ria's Blessing, the problem with smaller amounts of Cold Iron wasn't Fae Magic, but my own overpowered nature.

So right now the machine shops aboard the Black Dragon are turning all but a few of those Cold Iron helmets into simple circlets, earrings, and similar small head jewelry they can wear without looking like rejects from an X-Man movie.

As soon as we've got them dispersed through the fleet, mostly on the Pirate ships, since the Tentacles each have at least one person who can Shape Wards aboard, the Black Dragon will be heading back to Atlantis to pick up more Cold Iron, which is already being reforged into more of those little anti-Fae bullshit knickknacks.

Okay, it's possible that those will overheat, but given that we're worried about sneaky shit like people being mind controlled, somebody's hair catching on fire will be a clear sign that someone was tryna put a whammy on them. At which point they can also dive in the water, since most of them will be aboard ships. Once we got all that in motion, Saffron, Tallulah, and I stepped home to get dinner going. Okay, both of them were stepping home for dinner, but I had a Revel to get to.

But before that, I carried out the ginormous sparkly pink cake and sang Happy Birthday to Davey. Who, for her part, did a whole runway walk around the edge of the central table modeling each of the outfits Marie made her this year. I'm not sure, but I think they're getting frillier. Fancier. More layers, more ruffles, more lace, more everything. Fuck it, as far as I know nobody in the Alliance is going without clothes, so our little clothes horse can have some extra without me feeling some kinda way about it.

When I carried everybody up to the Bath, Davey tugged at my tentacles until I pulled her close.

"It's okay, Mama. You can head out."

"No Kaiju Mama?" She shook her head.

"That's fun, but..." I grinned at her, and somehow saw exactly what she wanted instead.

"Okay, kiddo. I'll stay home tomorrow."

"Yay!" Once I got everybody bathing, I hopped to the Temple of Love, at which point Murder Mittens hopped in, grabbed me by the hand, and towed me to my Temple in New Amsterdam. Where Cadet Brat was already sitting on my Altar. With three fairly fancy hookahs sitting on the altar behind her. I did not expect to spend the beginning of my night discovering that novelty aside, I do not actually like smoke being blown up my ass.

Because yes, apparently the Champion of New Amsterdam had heard about me mentioning that, and her deep and abiding secret wish was to be the one who got to do that. After she nearly suffocated herself alternating between the three, which contained weed, tobacco, and what I think was atomized Fae Whiskey, I was more than a little high. She, on the other hand, was absolutely wasted. The combination of those two is probably why she asked to be Gifted more Ecstasy than any Mortal could handle, as well as why I did it.

Absolutely Revived her after, because even high as a fuckin' kite I wasn't about to toss her Soul in my Maw. Despite how she whined about that shit. The blasts of Worship during each part of that, including after Reviving her, which apparently left her stone cold sober as well as, y'know, alive, told me that Cadet Brat might have some serious impulse control issues. Not like that should be a surprise to anyone at all, including me.

The remainder of the evening I spent with one of the instructors from the Norfolk Academy. Big dude named Hafthor. Oddly enough, while everything about the way he carried himself told me he was one of the old school Jarls who just wanted a free use hole, his actual deep need was something else entirely. So I held him in my lap and snuggled him, telling him how proud of him I was of all his work with the kids.

Because apparently while he was a full on PT and CT instructor at the Academy, he volunteered at my Temple working with kids, especially the ones who didn't really fit in for whatever reason. When I got home, flush with Worship from New Amsterdam and Norfolk, I woke Davey up and followed her back to her room, where Mittens joined us. Should have expected that, and should have expected my makeover to wind up with me in Marie's frilliest concoction yet.

Did not explain my blush when I looked in the full length mirror. Let Davey think it was because, in her words, 'I looked so pretty'. But Davey does not need to know that Saffron was looking through my eyes drawling out, oh, my... The fanciest of Goofs, with the kind of tone you'd expect from a gourmet looking at five star cuisine. Nor did she need to know about Mittens answering, I Agree.