Equinox: A Spring & Autumn Vid Exchange

Today is Christmas, three times over!

1.

luzula finished Far Frae the Bonny Hills and Dales, a Flight of the Heron longfic that I have been following for the past eighteen months. AU where Ewen is transported and sold to the Caribbean sugar fields. There are tragic parts to the story (note the "major character death" warning), but it ends in a good and satisfying place. One of the things I love about luzula's writing is that she makes her characters earn their happy ending -- and they do.

Congratulations to luzula, and happy Christmas to me!

2.

fandomtrees revealed! I received some beautiful maritime-fandoms icons (William Bush, Frederick Wentworth, and Anne Eliot), thank you to sarajayechan and chewingbottles! I am looking forward to using them!

I also made a half-dozen things (which will have their own reveals post later), and that's been fun, too.

3.

Family Chistmas celebrations got delayed twice, first by weather, and the second time because my brother called up and said he was still waiting on my Christmas present to be delivered. He insisted he had ordered it in good time, but repeated shipping delays, it was supposed to be delivered any day now, etc. etc. And I was all dude, it's fine (while wondering what the big deal was, but whatever, if he wanted to hold off so we could do it all in person, that's fine, too.) I get a long weekend for MLK Jr. weekend (for non-USians, this weekend), so we pushed it all back to today, when we convened at Mom's house for delayed Christmas celebrations.

grrlpup and I got everyone a lot of Japan souvenirs -- my brother got squeaky-toy katana and a whole big box of the bubblegum he had adored as a kid (which, fair enough, took us WEEKS to find, it no longer being in every convenience store like when we visited Japan as kids) -- and we also got some beautiful hand-made art from my sister-in-law. I thought present-opening was done. When my brother dropped in my lap a great big box the approximate size, shape, and weight of an autoharp. Although a bit heavy for an autoharp? Weirdly balanced for an autoharp, too. (Not that he would ever get me an autoharp!)

Lo, this was my brother's Christmas present to me:
( color me dumbstruck )

I am very much blown away by the gift, and yes that was very much worth delaying celebrations for and also making sure he could watch me open it in person, I very much get it now.

Either he won Christmas or I won Christmas, I'm not sure which, but either way, Christmas was indeed won.

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.

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.