If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?
I know there's a philosophy that experiences make you who you are and you shouldn't wish them away, but I have a few friends who have been through what I feel is a disproportionate and unfair amount of tragedy in their lives. Partner suicide, early death of parents, sudden loss of physical health, financial hardship, homelessness. I don't think any one person should have to go through all of those before the age of thirty. And yet. Here we are. So yes, I absolutely would change that for certain people if I could.
Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?
Uh, neither? Both take work! You have to listen and try to empathise and forgive and communicate. All relationships require effort, and if they don't, someone is being used.
Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?
Yes. It's not very pleasant. But occasionally necessary for the sake of self-preservation.
If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?
Barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, most of which involve an immediate threat to life, lying and making them happy. Life is difficult enough without intentionally causing pain.
Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?
The comforting lie, if it comes to that. I'd hope it wouldn't, most of the time. I'd like to believe that truths can be delivered kindly, most of the time.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani will on Saturday appoint Tricia Shimamura, currently a borough commissioner in the Parks Department, to lead the agency, according to officials.
She will replace Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, who was appointed commissioner last year after nearly 40 years in the Parks Department.
Mayor Mamdani praised Shimamura’s ability to listen to New Yorkers to find ways to make the city’s parks as enjoyable as possible.
“Our city’s parks embody the promise of public spaces — they’re where childhood memories are formed, where leisure can be found, where I got to hone my soccer skills (or lack thereof) throughout school, and most importantly where the greatness of our city is within so many New Yorker’s reach,” he said in a statement.
“I’m excited to be announcing the appointment of a Parks Commissioner who has spent her career showing up, and listening to communities across our city.”
Shimamura became the Manhattan borough commissioner for the Parks Department in March 2024, after leading community affairs for former Manhattan borough president Mark Levine.
She previously worked in community relations at Columbia University and in various roles for former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), according to her LinkedIn. She ran for City Council in 2021 and was also a social worker.
The city’s Parks Department encompasses over 30,000 acres of land — everything from miles of beaches and oceanfront to playgrounds, forests and pedestrian plazas.
During the final general election debate, Mamdani promised to allocate at least 1% of the city’s budget to the agency, which currently receives .6% of the city’s more than $117 billion budget.
Parks advocates have urged the mayor to commit to the increased funding in his first preliminary budget that is due at the end of this month.
“As the Mamdani administration advances its affordability agenda, increasing the Parks Department budget is essential,” Adam Ganser, the executive director for New Yorkers for Parks, said earlier this week in response to a New York Times reader poll that showed overwhelming support for more money for parks.
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Docent #1: I was trained as a geologist and a diver. We dived at Bikini and Eniwetok. Mostly Eniwetok. The trouble at Bikini is that there were a lot of shots on the same site, so it was hard to isolate the effects. At Eniwetok there were a lot of different sites. We scuba dived and had submersibles, for the deeper sites. We looked at the damage to the coral. This was 20 years later.
Castle Bravo was at Bikini, Mike was the big shot at Eniwetok. There was another shot that was in a tank, a water tank. That let us study the effects for the more modern type of weapons. Like the bunker busters, yes… You have a technical background? (No, but my father was an engineer and I think my grandfather was involved in the British atomic tests.) Yes, many thousands of us were involved.
Ironically I ended up helping to create the specifications we sent to the DOE for new designs. Because I understood the effects, as a geologist, I could advise on changes. Improvements. (More efficient? More destructive?) Both.
Of course I worry they’re going to be used. Did you see the Doomsday Clock? (Yes, and I check it frequently.) Then you know we’re at 90 seconds to midnight. It’s the most dangerous time we’ve ever seen, and people don’t realize. The last of the effective treaties with Russia runs out next month. In the eighties, in the old cold war, people knew what we were up against. Now we’re in a new cold war, and people don’t even know how much danger we are in. I wish we had leaders who understood it.
Docent #2: Back when we had an Atomic Energy Commission, it paid for me to go to graduate school. Nuclear engineering. I worked at Sandia. I have a measly master’s and I worked in safety, an I would write these reports and the scientists would say, “I have a DOCTORATE.” They do say PhD stands for piled higher and deeper…
I was in San Francisco in the seventies and eighties. I loved it. Is it still like that? Are you all right? I was working with colleagues at Lawrence Livermore, and I would get over to the city every chance I got.
I had some other Australians in here this week! You’re from Australia, you know how common uranium is, especially in your country, but you don’t even use it for energy. You sell it all to China. (Yeah, like that’s not gonna come back to bite us.) Yeah, you get the money, but at what cost?
I think we should get rid of them all. Everyone who works on them feels that way. But the trouble is that if we get rid of them, the other guy still has them. There are nine countries that have them, and some of them, the leaders are pretty… Unreliable. (What can we do?) Don’t vote for the unreliable ones. You’re both younger than me. It’s in your hands now.
Today's frivolous low-stakes question is: if following a recipe, to what extent do you consider "mixed lettuces", "mixed greens", and "mixed leaf salad" synonymous?
This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.
I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.
Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.
I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.
I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.
I wanted more books about people exploring dangerous and mysterious alien spaceships! And I found some! This one was well written, and an engaging read, but I did wind up feeling like it answered too many questions and wrapped things up too neatly for good cosmic horror. I want them to end with me having some degree of feeling unsettled and pondering things.
This has more explicit gore/body-horror than Ship of Fools did, in case anyone is seeking/avoiding such things.
I will be one of the speakers/mentors at the Indian Ocean Writers’ Residency in Bentota, Sri Lanka from July 9‒15 2026. The residency is hosted by Tambapanni Academic Publishers, Colombo, in collaboration with the Max Weber Forum, New Delhi. Details for application and how to apply are at the Tambapanni website. Do check it out if you’re interested, and don’t wait—applications close January 31st 2026.
Here’s their description of the residency:
In July 2026, Tambapanni Academic Publishers, Colombo in collaboration with the Max Weber Forum, New Delhi is hosting a writers’ residency, “History and Fiction, History as Fiction,” on Sri Lanka’s western Indian Ocean coast. The residency will bring together ten writers from a range of disciplines and fields, creative and academic, to discover new ways of writing about their chosen topics, through workshops, mentored sessions, critique and dialogue. The aim is to explore how writing about the past can be made accessible and engage a wide readership, specialist, lay and the curious. A space of cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary conversations, the residency intends to stimulate and encourage discussion and dialogue between the participants and the mentors.
The chairperson of Tambapanni Academic Publishers is Dr. Nira Wickramasinghe, the historian who I cite in the fifth chapter of Rakesfall, whose work I have been reading assiduously for years, so when she got in touch to invite me to this, I jumped at the chance. Bentota is a lovely beach town not far from Colombo: I’m looking forward to spending a week there talking to a bunch of brilliant people. Do apply if you’re interested! There’s an application fee, but as it says on the website, partial and full scholarships are available, so please do ask for that when applying.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a settlement was reached between the city and A&E Real Estate, alongside Queens City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan and Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson
By Noah Powelson and Casey Wetherbee
A prominent real estate company that has racked up thousands of housing violations in rent-stabilized apartments, including dozens in Queens, reached a settlement with the city on Friday, promising to fix dangerous living conditions in its buildings and stop harassing their tenants.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development reached a $2.1 million settlement with A&E Real Estate for violations in 14 buildings it operates across three boroughs. Roughly 750 tenants live in the buildings, according to HPD, and have reported bed bugs, fire hazards, malfunctioning elevators and many other issues over the years.
Making the announcement inside an A&E-owned apartment building at 35-64 84th St. in Jackson Heights, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the settlement also prevents the real estate company from harassing tenants and forces it to correct more than 4,000 building code violations.
Mamdani said the settlement was only the beginning of his administration’s actions against A&E, as the real estate company has acquired over 140,000 total violations, 35,000 of which came in the past year.
“For years, A&E has operated with callous disregard for those residing in its properties, racking up over 140,000 total violations,” Mamdani said. “This is not just a failure to serve those to whom it holds an obligation, it is a cruelty to over tens of thousands of New Yorkers.”
One tenant, Diana de la Pava, who has lived at an A&E-owned apartment building for several years, said the elevator in her building has been out of commission 12 of the past 18 months, beginning in July 2024. The broken elevator has left some of her elderly or disabled neighbors trapped in their apartments.
Among them was 84-year-old Alberto Quintero, who died in his apartment on the fourth floor during a heat wave, de la Pava said. The elevator was out of service when Quintero died, and de la Pava said his death is why she and her neighbors sought legal action against the landlord, one of at least half a dozen lawsuits brought against A&E by tenants last year.
“This is not about broken machinery,” de la Pava said. “It is about neglect, indifference, and lives treated as disposable until public pressure makes inaction inconvenient.”
Stairs inside a La Mesa Verde building owned by A&E Real Estate tenants say they use while elevators remain out of service. Photo by Casey Wetherbee
One of de la Pava’s neighbors, Nathan Harding, said A&E never responds to complaints from tenants, and that many of his neighbors have left due to deteriorating conditions.
“A&E will just waste your time, or they just don’t maintain your apartment, so people just leave,” Harding said. “There is no level of accountability.”
An A&E spokesperson told the Eagle the company invests hundreds of millions of dollars in repairing acquired buildings, and that the majority of the violations at the 35-64 84th St. building had been resolved since it acquired the building in 2021, though they noted there were still over 200 open violations at the location.
“We’ve made it our mission to collaborate with the city to improve this building and others that were in deep disrepair when we took ownership,” the spokesperson said. “In every building we’ve purchased, we’ve invested in replacing boilers, rehabbing elevators and fixing tens of thousands of longstanding violations.”
But the settlement announced on Friday represents a small piece of the myriad violations that residents are still demanding be addressed, especially in Jackson Heights.
New York City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, whose district includes the neighborhood, said that between the 17 buildings A&E owns in Jackson Heights, the company has accumulated 2,000 housing code violations.
“A&E’s greed has left New Yorkers without working elevators, crumbling bathroom ceilings, and termites eating through the walls,” Krishnan said in a statement. “Here in Jackson Heights, we’ve been fighting alongside the tenants of A&E buildings for years. Every repair we’ve won leaves us with 10 more to fight for — their buildings are revolving doors of neglect and major housing violations.”
One of those buildings is La Mesa Verde, whose tenants’ union just last September sued A&E in cooperation with the legal nonprofit organization Communities Resist for the hundreds of violations the building has accumulated. The tenants alleged the landlord ignored falling ceilings, mice and cockroach infestations, exposed electrical wiring and mold on the walls.
La Mesa Verde residents claimed that most attempts to report issues with A&E went unanswered. One resident, Ursulina Mora, has lived at La Mesa Verde for seven years and said her apartment has had severe mold issues.
“When we call the office and leave messages, they don’t even respond to the messages,” Mora said. “The mold harms all of us, even our pets, and us as human beings, so we’re demanding that our landlord fix it for us.”
La Mesa Verde’s lawsuit remains ongoing.
According to Christos Bell, a lawyer with Communities Resist who represents the La Mesa Verde tenants, A&E’s failure to address violations is not just about costs or building repairs, but a form of harassment.
This is blackly hilarious and absolutely worth a read.
Leftist journalist Laura Jedeed showed up at an ICE recruiting events to do scope it out and write about what she found. What happened next is... eye widening.
At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.
The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.
In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.
[...]
I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.
“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”
As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.
And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”
The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”
I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”
By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.
I did not enjoy listening to this song! I think maybe a version without the ding ding ding duh duh duh ding ding of the casio keyboard would be good, but I was not a fan of this version.
The titular Trinidad turns out to be a town in California.
Current Music:Fresh Cherries in Trinidad — The Mountain Goats
I've officially completed all my birthday activities for this year, so I can like, breathe again.
There was recreational axe throwing, joint TV marathons, dinners, gifts and hugs. I chose not to have any kind of party or gathering this year, so just saw friends individually or in small groups, and it worked out OK. I also celebrated roga's birthday (and will continue to tomorrow), so it all kind of worked out with multiple events.
How have you been doing, friends?
I'm feeling a bit better than I hoped to, at this time of the year.
ETA: I have cautiously started looking at social media again, in very very limited quantities, and as twitter seems like... not the place, I now have a bluesky. IDK IDK. But if you're on there I may also be on there sometimes too I guess.
Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)
I'm going to go off both my fic journal (feast_of_fanfic) and my AO3 page (Muccamukk). The DW has a handful more fic, and a slightly different rating/tagging system, but should be roughly the same.
What rating do you write most fics under? DW: Teen. AO3: Teen and Up Audiences.
What are your top 3 fandoms? DW: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 & tie of Babylon 5 and The Pacific. AO3: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 (then several subcategories thereof), The Pacific.
What is your top character you write about? DW: Don't tag for characters. AO3: Richard Winters (BoB)
What are the 3 top pairings? DW: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Band of Brothers Rarepair. AO3: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Andy/Eddie (The Pacific).
What are the top 3 additional tags? DW: Drabbles!, PWP, Canon-Era H/C. AO3: Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon.
Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag. Only giving each fic one genre each on DW skewed the tags much differently from AO3, for the last question. I've also posted a bunch of drabbles to DW that didn't make it to AO3, so that probably also moves the numbers (like tying B5 with The Pacific). If one includes HBO War and Marvel comics each as one fandom, it would go HBO War, Marvel Comics, Babylon 5.
It also leaves out some of my most popular fic, which are for fandoms I didn't write for as much, but got a couple one hit wonders that sailed to the top of my stats page.
(Any word on DW figuring out what's wrong with the AO3 user profile logo? I gather it's some kind of import problem.)
Consult just about any guide about how to build a tech startup and one of the very first pieces of advice you’ll be given is: Talk to Your Customers. If your target market just so happens to be Python-fluent developers, data scientists, researchers, students, and open-source software enthusiasts, there’s probably no better place than PyCon US to share your startup’s products and services with the Python community.
If you’re a founder of an early-stage startup that’s building something cool with Python and want to apply for free (yes, free) booth space, conference passes, and (optionally) a table at the PyCon US Job Fair for your team at PyCon US 2026 in lovely Long Beach, California this upcoming May, we have some great news for you: Applications for booth space on Startup Row are open, but not for long…
Applications close Friday, January 30, 2026. You’ll hear back with an acceptance decision from us by mid-February, so you’ll have plenty of time to book travel and get your booth materials together in time for the conference.
TL;DR: How/where to Apply. For all the action-oriented types who want to skip the rest of this post and just get to the point, here’s the Startup Row page again (where you can find eligibility criteria, etc.) and a direct link to the application form (for which you’ll need to be logged in or create an account to access). Good luck! We look forward to reviewing your application, and hope to see you at PyCon US 2026.
What Startup Row Companies Receive
Since 2011, organizers of PyCon US set aside a row of booths for early-stage startups, straightforwardly named: Startup Row. The goal is to give early-stage companies access to the best of what PyCon US has to offer.
At no cost to them, Startup Row companies receive:Two included conference passes, with additional passes available for your team at a discount.
Booth space in the Expo Hall on Startup Row for the Opening Reception on the evening of Thursday May 14th and for both days of the main conference, Friday May 15th and Saturday May 16th.
Optionally: A table at the PyCon US Job Fair on Sunday May 17th. (If you’re company is hiring Python talent, there is likely nowhere better than PyCon US for technical recruiting.)
Placement on the PyCon US 2026 website and a profile on the PyCon US blog (where you’re reading this post)
Eternal glory
The only catch? If you’re granted a spot on Startup Row, as part of the onboarding process, PyCon US organizers ask for a fully refundable $400 deposit to discourage no-shows. Teams also cover their own transportation, lodging, and booth materials (banners, swag, table coverings, etc.). Startup Row organizers will partner with your team to make sure everything runs smoothly. After the conference, PyCon US refunds deposits to startups that successfully attended.
If your company is building something cool with Python, it’s hard to beat PyCon US for sharing your work and meeting the Python software community. Startup Row is where some companies launch publicly, where others find their earliest customers and contributors, and where attendees can discover exciting, meaningful job opportunities.
What kinds of companies get a spot on Startup Row?
Python is a flexible language and has applications up and down the stack.
Over the years, Startup Row has featured software and hardware companies, consumer and enterprise offerings, open-source and proprietary codebases, and teams from a surprisingly broad range of industries—from familiar categories like developer tools and ML frameworks to foundation model developers and the occasional wonderfully weird idea (think: an e-ink portable typewriter with cloud sync, or an online wedding-planning platform).
Want recent examples? Take a look at the PyCon US blog announcements for the 2025, 2024, 2023, and 2022 batches.
When scoring applications, the selection committee is encouraged to weigh:
Market upside: could this be a big business?
Problem/solution fit: does the product truly address the stated need?
Team strength: does the founding team have the credibility and capability to execute?
“X factor”: would appearing on Startup Row materially accelerate outcomes for the company and/or the Python community?
If you can make a credible case for any one of those points, your startup stands a chance of getting featured on Startup Row at PyCon US 2026.
Who do I contact with questions about Startup Row at PyCon US 2026?
For specific Startup Row-related questions between now and the application deadline, reach out to pycon-startups@python.org.
In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...
In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.
Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.
This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.
Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.
Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.
Still 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.
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:
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.
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