wouldn't shooting at right angles to the sun cause the shot to also orbit the sun in the same trajectory as the orbit of your planet?

Another contribution was Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader from 1989, the 4th part had a character become a dragon involuntarily. Other stories and shows had similar themes, but most had a character forget they were human, or didn't show their inner monologue, these encouraged ideas.

In the Pirates of Dark Water, there's an episode called "the Dagron Master". Specifically the idea of being transformed and unable to communicate, as well as imprisoned.
Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits had a character named Delma. First site was VCL taken down in 2013 vixencontrolled.net archive

I think it's fine unless the owners of the original work give you a takedown notice. You can reduce the chances by determining a few things, like, do the character names have some form of copyright or trademark, and you can change the names a little bit if that's a problem.