Heron fic: Form'd for Idleness and Ease
Jan. 16th, 2026 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinityStill catching up on things I wrote in 2025, although I believe this is the last of them.
Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.
What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:
I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:
Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.
Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.
What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:
In these works, a human character experiences so much stress that they transform into a Pomeranian dog. They can only revert back to their human form if the stress is relieved via receiving love and affection from other people.
I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:
Form'd for Idleness and Ease
Keith & Ewen
Pomegaverse, Animal Transformation, Bad Things Always Happen to Keith, Let's Get That Man Some Affection For a Change, Or At Least a Mini-Vacay as a Beloved Lapdog
Captain Keith Windham's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day just got worse. Ewen, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it all.
Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 07:35 pm (UTC)Feel free! Perhaps in prison in Fort Augustus, Keith finds a mistreated, ill-fed little spaniel growling at him and attempting to bite him...
ETA: Although that would seem to defeat the purpose, for the captors? I mean, they can't torture information from a spaniel. Perhaps Greening has to grit his teeth and pretend insincerely to treat Ewen kindly and pet him, in order to get him back to human so he can get the information. In general torturing someone for information in this world seems close to impossible!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 08:53 pm (UTC)The answers to those (very serious!) questions will determine how the rest of these encounters might go...
But yes, if the incidence is at all common, torture would not seem a very effective strategy for gathering information -- even less so than ordinarily! And battles might be followed by swarms of feral lapdogs roaming the countryside. In packs of a thousand, even a tiny lapdog might be considered a public menace, worthy of no affection whatsoever...
no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 07:58 pm (UTC)As an aside, I will suggest adding "terrible horrible no good very bad days" as an additional tag; that would make the fourth such usage on AO3 (one of the first three being mine*, and might help the wranglers toward canonizing the tag).
I would also totally read the hypothetical sequels proposed here....
*(You may actually recall that one, in which I gave Pepper Potts a disastrous series of laundry problems...and eventually the superpower to solve them.)
no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 08:58 pm (UTC)Huh.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-16 09:13 pm (UTC)