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May. 15th, 2005 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
froodleWatched the last few episodes of Highlander today. The world without Duncan Macleod was... well, it's a shame about Amanda and Joe and Fitz, but I never liked Richie anyway, and frankly, I think a world without Kronos sucks way more. And yes, I did cry during the scenes with Tessa. For I am a sappy, sappy Fangirl.
Am getting sinful amount of enjoyment out of the Law and Order dvds I bought for my mum's birthday (shut up, alright, I have to check that they work!), despite my horror on realising that District Attourney Paul is in fact Mr. Jubal Early, Bounty Hunter and shooter of Lovely Simon.
And finally, when I die, I'm going to a very special level of Hell; the one they reserve for people who write Phantom of the Opera MPREG...
Like most courses of action that turn out extremely badly, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Christine had been cast in a key role in the new production of Tristan and Isolde, and aside from concerns about losing her girlish figure, she really couldn’t afford to take time off for maternity leave. As for Erik, while nothing was actually said, the unspoken consensus was that he was unstable enough without a hefty dose of pregnancy hormones floating around in his bloodstream. Whereas Raoul, despite an unfortunate haircut and a tendency to whine, was relatively free of psychosis, drug additions or work commitments. He was the obvious choice, really.
And so Erik, with the medicinal knowledge he’d learned on his travels to places that the author is far too lazy to describe but is assuming is Persia because everything seems more exotic when it comes from the East, and a little help from the MPREG fairy - the pinker, sparklier cousin of the Absinthe Fairy – had prepared a fragrant herbal tea to aid digestion, induce pleasant dreams, and give Mother Nature a little push in the direction of total equality between the sexes.
It had been alright, at first. The morning sickness passed quickly, and Raoul soon learnt that sympathy was not to be gained by kicking Erik in the ribs on his way to the bathroom every morning. The cravings were… strange, but fairly innocuous, and Erik could always leave the room if the sight of pickles and mashed swede started to make him feel queasy.
When every flat surface in the Lair became a breeding ground for glossy magazines with titles like “Baby and You”, he’d resisted the temptation to shred them to use for lining Ayesha’s litter box. He’d listened to the endless arguments about the various myths and old wives tales associated with pregnancy, and dutifully gone out to buy calcium tablets and bio-yoghurt and red wine. He’d even taking up baking to produce the dozen blueberry muffins Christine insisted were necessary for healthy brain development in a foetus, before he’d noticed that all the little muffin papers had somehow ended up on the floor of her room.
When Raoul had insisted on putting railings around the lake, Erik had agreed, even though he personally thought nailing carvings of brightly-painted jungle animals to them was a waste of time. When he gutted the Room of Mirrors and turned it into a nursery, Erik had been annoyed, but he let it slide. It wasn’t as if he had much use for it, these days. He put his foot down about the clown frieze, however. There would be no clowns in Erik’s future.
Then the mood swings started. Every little thing could spark a hissy fit that would last for days. Raoul complained that his clothes were becoming too tight; Erik suggested he ask Piangi to loan him some and found himself banished to the sofa for a week. Raoul demanded Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream; Erik explained that Ben and Jerry’s wouldn’t be invented for another hundred years or so, but Raoul had icily suggested that time-travel shouldn’t present an obstacle for any real genius and flounced out of the room. A heavily pregnant woman in the marketplace had tried to touch Raoul’s stomach, “to feel the baby kick”. Raoul had hauled off and punched her, shrieking about personal space and being treated like a walking incubator before storming away, leaving Christine and Erik to apologise to the outraged woman, which had just made Raoul even angrier. He’d wanted to know how Erik would react if strangers, on learning he was about to be a father, had asked if they “could grab his mighty life-giving testes?” Erik had pointed out that generally it doesn’t show if a man is about to become a parent, and Raoul had kicked off at him for implying he wasn’t a man, or that he was fat, or both.
And when he wasn’t shrieking and throwing things, or sobbing hysterically about the cradle being an unsatisfactory shade of yellow, or demanding expensive and useless cream for his stretchmarks, he was filling the Lair with horrendous stuffed animals whose glassy stares followed a person around the room. The worst offender for this was an enormous pink and blue unicorn, who Raoul insisted on referring to as “Magickal Sparklynose Fairydust Pixiefoots”, as if inanimate objects needed names. It stood in the corner of the master bedroom, and Erik always turned its face to the wall before he changed at night. Otherwise he got a horrible feeling that the damn thing was leering at him.
After a while, Christine had moved back into her old rooms above-ground, claiming it was more convenient for rehearsals and costume fittings. It probably was, but Erik nonetheless felt abandoned. He didn’t say anything, because Christine was unlikely to be sympathetic to complaints about being trapped in an underground cavern with a madman.
Even Ayesha was annoyed with him; Raoul had insisted she be confined to Erik’s workroom (prompting another shouting match, which Erik had lost when Raoul played the “I’m pregnant and upsetting me might hurt the baby” card), and she was not pleased to find herself suddenly banished from most of the Lair. She was getting her own back by knocking over his manuscripts, chewing his quills and shedding all over everything, as well as giving him glares of feline contempt every time he met her eyes – which was less and less often, these days.
In search of a sympathetic ear, he’d gone to Madame Giry, who had been horribly unsympathetic and performed a little puppet show with her friends Mr. Rubbing Alcohol and Mrs. Wire Coathanger. He’d gone to Meg, but she’d giggled and blushed and made a few gestures that he was quite sure a girl her age shouldn’t even know about.
He’d even tried asking La Carlotta for advice, and that had been a complete disaster. The dreadful woman had taken his agonized stuttering and vague hand gestures entirely the wrong way, and by the time he’d realized what she was doing, her corset was partially unlaced and he’d had to make a hasty exit through a revolving bookcase, which was horribly cliché and had given him weeks of sleepless nights at the very thought of it.
Now, pacing up and down the long corridor outside the Giry’s suite of rooms, barely conscious of Christine’s voice reassuring him that everything would be fine, and that yes, there was a reason for all that hot water, Erik was giving serious thought to just running away. He could always catch a boat to Manhattan…
Ahh, smell that brimstone.
Am getting sinful amount of enjoyment out of the Law and Order dvds I bought for my mum's birthday (shut up, alright, I have to check that they work!), despite my horror on realising that District Attourney Paul is in fact Mr. Jubal Early, Bounty Hunter and shooter of Lovely Simon.
And finally, when I die, I'm going to a very special level of Hell; the one they reserve for people who write Phantom of the Opera MPREG...
Like most courses of action that turn out extremely badly, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Christine had been cast in a key role in the new production of Tristan and Isolde, and aside from concerns about losing her girlish figure, she really couldn’t afford to take time off for maternity leave. As for Erik, while nothing was actually said, the unspoken consensus was that he was unstable enough without a hefty dose of pregnancy hormones floating around in his bloodstream. Whereas Raoul, despite an unfortunate haircut and a tendency to whine, was relatively free of psychosis, drug additions or work commitments. He was the obvious choice, really.
And so Erik, with the medicinal knowledge he’d learned on his travels to places that the author is far too lazy to describe but is assuming is Persia because everything seems more exotic when it comes from the East, and a little help from the MPREG fairy - the pinker, sparklier cousin of the Absinthe Fairy – had prepared a fragrant herbal tea to aid digestion, induce pleasant dreams, and give Mother Nature a little push in the direction of total equality between the sexes.
It had been alright, at first. The morning sickness passed quickly, and Raoul soon learnt that sympathy was not to be gained by kicking Erik in the ribs on his way to the bathroom every morning. The cravings were… strange, but fairly innocuous, and Erik could always leave the room if the sight of pickles and mashed swede started to make him feel queasy.
When every flat surface in the Lair became a breeding ground for glossy magazines with titles like “Baby and You”, he’d resisted the temptation to shred them to use for lining Ayesha’s litter box. He’d listened to the endless arguments about the various myths and old wives tales associated with pregnancy, and dutifully gone out to buy calcium tablets and bio-yoghurt and red wine. He’d even taking up baking to produce the dozen blueberry muffins Christine insisted were necessary for healthy brain development in a foetus, before he’d noticed that all the little muffin papers had somehow ended up on the floor of her room.
When Raoul had insisted on putting railings around the lake, Erik had agreed, even though he personally thought nailing carvings of brightly-painted jungle animals to them was a waste of time. When he gutted the Room of Mirrors and turned it into a nursery, Erik had been annoyed, but he let it slide. It wasn’t as if he had much use for it, these days. He put his foot down about the clown frieze, however. There would be no clowns in Erik’s future.
Then the mood swings started. Every little thing could spark a hissy fit that would last for days. Raoul complained that his clothes were becoming too tight; Erik suggested he ask Piangi to loan him some and found himself banished to the sofa for a week. Raoul demanded Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream; Erik explained that Ben and Jerry’s wouldn’t be invented for another hundred years or so, but Raoul had icily suggested that time-travel shouldn’t present an obstacle for any real genius and flounced out of the room. A heavily pregnant woman in the marketplace had tried to touch Raoul’s stomach, “to feel the baby kick”. Raoul had hauled off and punched her, shrieking about personal space and being treated like a walking incubator before storming away, leaving Christine and Erik to apologise to the outraged woman, which had just made Raoul even angrier. He’d wanted to know how Erik would react if strangers, on learning he was about to be a father, had asked if they “could grab his mighty life-giving testes?” Erik had pointed out that generally it doesn’t show if a man is about to become a parent, and Raoul had kicked off at him for implying he wasn’t a man, or that he was fat, or both.
And when he wasn’t shrieking and throwing things, or sobbing hysterically about the cradle being an unsatisfactory shade of yellow, or demanding expensive and useless cream for his stretchmarks, he was filling the Lair with horrendous stuffed animals whose glassy stares followed a person around the room. The worst offender for this was an enormous pink and blue unicorn, who Raoul insisted on referring to as “Magickal Sparklynose Fairydust Pixiefoots”, as if inanimate objects needed names. It stood in the corner of the master bedroom, and Erik always turned its face to the wall before he changed at night. Otherwise he got a horrible feeling that the damn thing was leering at him.
After a while, Christine had moved back into her old rooms above-ground, claiming it was more convenient for rehearsals and costume fittings. It probably was, but Erik nonetheless felt abandoned. He didn’t say anything, because Christine was unlikely to be sympathetic to complaints about being trapped in an underground cavern with a madman.
Even Ayesha was annoyed with him; Raoul had insisted she be confined to Erik’s workroom (prompting another shouting match, which Erik had lost when Raoul played the “I’m pregnant and upsetting me might hurt the baby” card), and she was not pleased to find herself suddenly banished from most of the Lair. She was getting her own back by knocking over his manuscripts, chewing his quills and shedding all over everything, as well as giving him glares of feline contempt every time he met her eyes – which was less and less often, these days.
In search of a sympathetic ear, he’d gone to Madame Giry, who had been horribly unsympathetic and performed a little puppet show with her friends Mr. Rubbing Alcohol and Mrs. Wire Coathanger. He’d gone to Meg, but she’d giggled and blushed and made a few gestures that he was quite sure a girl her age shouldn’t even know about.
He’d even tried asking La Carlotta for advice, and that had been a complete disaster. The dreadful woman had taken his agonized stuttering and vague hand gestures entirely the wrong way, and by the time he’d realized what she was doing, her corset was partially unlaced and he’d had to make a hasty exit through a revolving bookcase, which was horribly cliché and had given him weeks of sleepless nights at the very thought of it.
Now, pacing up and down the long corridor outside the Giry’s suite of rooms, barely conscious of Christine’s voice reassuring him that everything would be fine, and that yes, there was a reason for all that hot water, Erik was giving serious thought to just running away. He could always catch a boat to Manhattan…
Ahh, smell that brimstone.
