I was having a crappy day. I made a (damn reasonable) request for a one-day extension on paperwork. My study abroad trip was cancelled on Friday, the paperwork to work in any other medical office was due Friday, I wanted two hours on Monday to get the appropriate papers filed. The office refused (if they gave me an exception they'd need to give one to everybody... and they refused to give everyone one day), and went the extra mile of treating me like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I'm polite to people when they're doing their jobs. My mom even brought that up when I called her--it was bad enough that I ended up crying because they were oozing disdain and I'd had a rough day and I think I utterly bombed the physio exam because the meds just took my migraine from an 8 to a 4, instead of down to a 2 like usual.
I went to the pet store, and the nice people let me hold a lovebird for an hour and a half, and one of the employees talked about what I could do with a five-gallon. He's awesome-- I can get angelfish. I could get two smalls, or the big black one (if he's still there) that would immediately be named Temeraire. (That would leave the catfish to be Laurence. I think that might happen.) Then I came home and Neville-snake was cuddling around my arm to the extent that I needed strip off the shirt to get him out of the sleeve so that I could feed him, and after his last shed he got even prettier. He has an orange/peach stripe running down his back, not that it shows except in direct sunlight, and there's a prism effect between his belly-scales right now. So animals rock.
Re: French capturing Laurence and baby!Tem: The advantage is that Temeraire is still quite tiny, and probably easy to trick? They'd also have the issue of trying to bring the ship in, and if Laurence is the only surviving officer... it might turn into an abrupt change again, if the British AGAIN try catching the Amite. Might be fun as a comedy-of-errors.
That's perfect! Lien DID mean for him to be some useless animal that can barely talk. Instead, Laurence is very, very powerful and at least as smart as she is-- she might have thought he'd be a Volly, small and simple and oh-so-European. (She wouldn't realize that Volly does his job brilliantly and has a lot of loyal companions.)
The French ship had rather epic bad luck, and I did like that Laurence returned the captain's sword the instant he worked out just why the man had put up such a fight. The captain did his best, but the story would have suffered without Laurence there as a balance.
"Now that would be an interesting situation, if the egg imprinted on someone who was a prisoner of war! ;)" That would be just like Temeraire, too--cause the most fuss possible while being so cute/funny/useful that people let you do it.
They didn't mean for the egg to hatch on the ship, no, but they should have had some kind of contingency planning.
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Date: 2011-02-28 10:40 pm (UTC)I went to the pet store, and the nice people let me hold a lovebird for an hour and a half, and one of the employees talked about what I could do with a five-gallon. He's awesome-- I can get angelfish. I could get two smalls, or the big black one (if he's still there) that would immediately be named Temeraire. (That would leave the catfish to be Laurence. I think that might happen.) Then I came home and Neville-snake was cuddling around my arm to the extent that I needed strip off the shirt to get him out of the sleeve so that I could feed him, and after his last shed he got even prettier. He has an orange/peach stripe running down his back, not that it shows except in direct sunlight, and there's a prism effect between his belly-scales right now. So animals rock.
Re: French capturing Laurence and baby!Tem: The advantage is that Temeraire is still quite tiny, and probably easy to trick? They'd also have the issue of trying to bring the ship in, and if Laurence is the only surviving officer... it might turn into an abrupt change again, if the British AGAIN try catching the Amite. Might be fun as a comedy-of-errors.
That's perfect! Lien DID mean for him to be some useless animal that can barely talk. Instead, Laurence is very, very powerful and at least as smart as she is-- she might have thought he'd be a Volly, small and simple and oh-so-European. (She wouldn't realize that Volly does his job brilliantly and has a lot of loyal companions.)
The French ship had rather epic bad luck, and I did like that Laurence returned the captain's sword the instant he worked out just why the man had put up such a fight. The captain did his best, but the story would have suffered without Laurence there as a balance.
"Now that would be an interesting situation, if the egg imprinted on someone who was a prisoner of war! ;)" That would be just like Temeraire, too--cause the most fuss possible while being so cute/funny/useful that people let you do it.
They didn't mean for the egg to hatch on the ship, no, but they should have had some kind of contingency planning.