Success

Meds were obtained, some other adulting was done, I have plans to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Also we have leftovers in the fridge & freezer which we need to remember to eat. I’m not sure if this is intentional on the restaurants’ part or if my idea of a good rice:sauce ratio is just weird, but whenever I eat curry/stir fry/etc. from a restaurant, I use up all the rice but only finish about half the… topping? So I have to make rice myself to eat my leftover stir fry. I am promising myself that this is Going To Happen because it was really good! and also I really don’t want to waste it.

I’m re-reading the Fable of the Swan

and I just want to express my deep and abiding love for everything Jenna Moran writes. Even if it does take me multiple readings to really understand any of it.
It’s fantasy with lots of interesting concepts just on the surface, and if you want to dig deeper into it there are big serious difficult themes, too. Superficially, Fable of the Swan is about a girl who lives in a town only called Town, and attends a school that is possibly run by the Devil (or maybe God), and her strange friends, and the scary and misguided things they attempt to do with magic. In the words of the Amazon blurb:

This is the story of my first kiss, how I was struck by a dodgeball and achieved enlightenment, and how and why I plan to turn into a brass cephalopodan war machine and rip up Death.

But really, Fable of the Swan is about redemption. It’s about how the idea of redeeming grace, that we receive without deserving it at all, is simultaneously incredibly good and kind of frustrating. Like, wouldn’t it be nice to deserve redemption? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to earn it, if you could? Just passively receiving the best thing in the world, knowing that you had no part in it, is awfully… abject, isn’t it?
That’s what Fable of the Swan is about.

And the main character, I just love her. The part I’m reading now, she’s telling us an old legend, and commenting on how human-centric and male-centric it is, and how probably the women in the story were actually more interesting than we know about, but people through the years decided they weren’t as important. So cool!

I’ve been re-reading this, and I just have to tell you guys.

Hobbitdragon is kind of a fanfiction genius. You think to yourself “No, never in a million years would those characters do that!” but he comes up with completely plausible reasons why they would. Do read the warnings, because there’s a lot of scary and depressing stuff in this story, but parts of it are sexy and other parts are really sweet. Like Hermione explaining how she’s read all about anal sex, and of course enjoying it doesn’t make you gay. Because of course Hermione would respond to any new idea with a stack of books. I love her.