Dear Diary,

"Passion is not about sex, It's about what lights a fire, Somewhere deep inside your Soul." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Passion

In this, the first Verse of the Book of Passion, we see Tabitha no longer speaking of those Domains she finds dangerous, or problematic, or potentially the source of greater problems than power. This, Passion, is a Domain our Goddess Revels in, as any who have attended Freyday services when she is in residence can attest to. While she does in fact understand and caution, in later Verses, about potential pitfalls of Passion, to her those are potential perversions of Passion, not natural or inevitable side effects of it. For those who have attended a Revel with Tabitha, it can be strange to hear her say that Passion is not about sex, because she is so clearly Passionate about sex. And she is Passionate about sex, but she is also separately and equally Passionate about pleasure, and above all about intimacy. Most of all, for those of us who have joined her on her Altar during her Revels, there is no more obvious fact about her than her boundless Passion for us, her Worshippers, and helping us live full, Passionate lives of our own. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

I know I wrote a lot of the Doctrine while under the effects of Ria's Blessing. Because of that, some of the memories of that time aren't exactly as crisp as my memories normally are. Yeah, that's absolutely me saying that those memories are the kind of shit you remember about a dream like half an hour after waking up. Seriously, my Mimic Dreams are pretty fuckin' crisp, at least in terms of both the sensations during them and my memories afterward. So I'm talking about normal dreams. Y'know, the kind I had back in the day. I mean, I think I had normal dreams back then. Fuck, when shit like that wafts away into the ether normally, how do you say 'yeah, my dreams were normal human dreams before I got reincarnated as the only sentient part of a Primordial Deity'.

But my point, and I swear I had one, was that when I wrote my Domains, the first three wound up causing me all kinds of bad stress. Talking about what Justifies Homicide, tryna give people some encouragement to keep their Vengeance focused on the folks who deserve it, and above all the closest I can remember to doing a 'do as I say, not as I do' since I've embraced my Deityhood. Bloodlust. Getting to Passion was kinda freeing. Like, even through all the stress of not remembering how I'd gotten from getting shot in the Aquarium to showing up in post-Liberation Calverton, I still felt a kind of weight lifted once I got through talking about the, not to put too fine a point on it, Bad Stuff, and was finally getting to talk about the Good Stuff.

Yeah, I'm totally avoiding how my Kitten put all my most private shit on display there. Telling anybody who reads her Commentary, or has it read to them if they're not the reading sort, that their Goddess isn't just a slut, she's a mega-turbo-feels-slut willing to bare her Soul to any Worshipper who gets up on the Altar with me. I. I mean, I'm a mega-turbo-slut. I need to own that shit. Not distance myself from it. Because if life has taught me anything, it's that right when I'm finally getting my shit together, and think that I'm ready to handle whatever it throws at me next, it hits me out of left field with some bullshit I'd never expect. Which means I've got to be ready for some asshole from Boltophsberg to target some poor schlub like Dana from New Amsterdam, who just wanted somebody to see them as a person, as a complete Agender person, and still want to be near them, be kind to them, know them as deeply as anyone can know another person.

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Yeah, every person I connect to is another avenue somebody could come at me from. I get that. I also get that if I let that fear rule me, I'm gonna wind up distancing myself. Cutting myself off from my Worshippers. My friends. My kids, my kittens, my ladies, my Kitten.

Fuck. That. Noise.

Yeah, I expect that between now and some distant future point where all the Deities and assorted Dipshits with Power learn better, I'm gonna have to throw down on the regular. My loved ones are gonna be in danger because I love them and refuse to pretend like I don't. That does not make me happy, but I'm not gonna hold it against the world. I'm not gonna hold it against every person who doesn't agree with me and mine, or what we're tryna do to make the world a better place for everybody. I'm not gonna hold it against my Worshippers, my friends, my ladies, my kids, my kittens, my wives, or my Kitten.

I'm not gonna hold it against myself.

Speaking of Boltophsberg, Karen delivered the Marshall's report today.

After spending most of yesterday night drinking mediocre beer and new wine with a weepy Dionysus, we bundled him off to the Bedroom with Marie to put him to sleep. I hardly dunked anybody while they all floated around my Maw watching the two of them. I mean, seriously, that's the closest thing I've got set up to an Afterlife at this point, so if they want privacy they can hit one of the guess rooms. Then again, Marie has watched that screen alongside my ladies, and she chose the Bedroom as her work space. Play space. Fuck it, her fuck space of choice. Funniest parts had to be the times she looked straight at us like she could see us through the screen. Did the whole 'do you believe this guy' snarky smile like that dude from The Office most of the time, too.

So this morning Diana took Lindsey, Menace, and some of her kids on a hike, while D took most of the rest out to the big grassy area beyond the stone courtyard and... I'm not gonna say 'taught them wrestling', because that would imply a lot more coherent educational planning. Nah, he just had them rolling around in the dirt, mostly. But doing so in a fun, playful fashion. I had the smaller ones in the kitchen helping me prep stuff for dinner. Salad, mostly, because the vegetables from the gardens had started to come in.

Then, not long before lunch, Karen stopped by with a big assed stack of paper all tied together with twine. I had her drop it in my office, got Marie and Siobhan, who felt a little better today than she has for a while, take over with the kids.

I spent the rest of the day reading through the long form briefing. Then rereading the parts of it where my first readthrough left me with zero information absorbed. Then skimming. Then rereading. Then swearing a bit about how anybody fuckin' expected me to be able to handle any of this shit.

Then I hopped down to Rich Man's Port, specifically to the Overlord's Keep's kitchen, and stole some chocolate and flour. Yeah, we've got both Fae flour and chocolate in our kitchen, but our kids were there, and I was really trying to avoid distractions.

So I reread everything while slightly caffeinated and equally buzzed. Short version is that the last government was a more traditional feudal one, but the 'nobles' wound up being completely useless garbage like one generation in, and by generation four the common folks were done with their shit, so they had a revolution. Originally the 'City Council', which officially 'advised' Vyenemoinen, but realistically he mostly just okayed whatever they suggested as long as his pet projects went through, was like fifty different Guilds. Over time, some of them disbanded, others merged, and now they'd gotten down to five Guilds, and the ones with the people who did the actual work were getting more and more pissed off that the Heroes and Scribes wound up with more political clout.

Also, and I found this out at the very ass end of the day, when I read the note tucked into the twine, I had a meeting with Danica Novak tomorrow at lunch.

Yeah, not my fault I had the stack upside down, right?

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