I love good guys

It looks like we currently have 13 people signed up for hlh_shortcuts 2026. See the sign-up summary or the requests summary on the AO3.

If you're planning to sign up, today (October 11) would be an excellent day to do so! The deadline is "midnight" Central Time on October 12. Is that 12:00am tonight (technically accurate) or 12:00am tomorrow night (common way of speaking)? Why not say 11:59pm and make all things clear? You'd have to ask the mods. Sign up now and don't worry.

Dear hlh_shortcuts author,

Thank you for sharing your Highlander love and creativity this year!

TLDR: My personal tip-top favorites are: gen; PG-13 and below; first through third seasons; Duncan, Tessa, Richie, Darius; Duncan/Tessa; choosing the hard right over the easy wrong; choosing to care and to hope; the power of friendship; history, whether as setting or reference; grief and bereavement; fighting the good fight; and the immortality fantasy as hyperbole/metaphor for real life. I also enjoy many other things, so it's fine if none of these click for you! Please go where your love of HL takes you.

No need to read on unless you really want to. This post is long. And highly similar to last year's. :-D

( Likes, dislikes, crossovers & character-specific prompts )

Sign-ups are now open for this year's hlh_shortcuts, the long-running annual Highlander fanfiction exchange game. All Highlander media (movies, TV, comics, animation, games, etc.) are welcome, but the 1990s TV series is very much the bedrock. Sign up on the AO3. Check out the collection on the AO3.

• Sign-ups: 10/01-10/12 (midnight CDT) on the AO3
• Assignments sent: By 10/15
• Default deadline: 11/20
• Submission deadline: 12/13
• Releasing starts: 12/20

I look forward to this game every year. In the pre-AO3 years, I only read and commented on the stories. This will be my tenth year writing as well as reading. ♥

hlh_shortcuts, the long-running annual Highlander fanfiction exchange game, is on again this year. All Highlander media (movies, TV, comics, animation, games, etc.) are welcome -- though the '90s TV series dominates by far.

• Sign-ups: 10/01-10/12 (midnight CDT) on the AO3
• Assignments sent: By 10/15
• Default deadline: 11/20
• Submission deadline: 12/13
• Releasing starts: 12/20

Yes, the release date is Duncan MacLeod's birthday (which is also the solstice). Stories traditionally release a few per day as long as they last, skipping Yuletide day, and staying anonymous through an author guessing-game period. Then, usually in early to mid January, authors are unmasked and guessers are lauded.

Dating back to LiveJournal, it's a great fannish fic game in the classic mode. You can depend on your recipient to politely acknowledge the story you wrote, and on the mods and other players to read and comment on many of the stories (though of course it's above and beyond for any individual to read and comment on all the stories! I suspect that the mods may divide the event between them to help ensure everyone feels seen).

Last week, I noted that the new art style of the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake reminded me, personally, of stop-motion animation, particularly 1960s Rankin-Bass productions, because the textures are so rich and real (and slightly out of proportion), like stop-motion models/puppets.

Since then, a respected Nintendo veteran named Takaya Imamura posted publicly that this new art style directly reflects original game creator Shigeru Miyamoto's passion for traditional Japanese puppet shows (ningyōgeki).

No Wikipedia page is titled "ningyōgeki" in English; the word apparently means "puppet shows" in general. From the pages for specific types of Japanese puppet shows, it seems that "bunraku" ("ningyō jōruri?") is the one we mean here. The intricate puppets/marionettes are usually about three to four feet tall, operated by three puppeteers at the same time, wearing black against a black background (like in the The Monkey King opera that I saw last year!).

While this medium of puppet shows is used for all kinds of stories -- many Western fans are posting comparison images of a specific production of The Three Musketeers, possibly because that d'Artagnan is blond, possibly because we recognize Dumas stories (I love Dumas stories!) -- it seems key here that Japanese puppet shows do not have the automatic cultural association with children's entertainment that they do in the UK, US, Canada, etc. These were originally and still largely are adult literature. From the Wikipedia page: "Bunraku is an author's theater, as opposed to kabuki, which is a performer's theater. ... The most famous bunraku playwright was Chikamatsu Monzaemon... sometimes called the Shakespeare of Japan."

I look forward to learning more about ningyōgeki as part of enjoying the remade game!