HLH_Shortcuts '23 has finished releasing

hlh_shortcuts brought us 25 new Highlander stories this year. Check them out via the community or directly in the AO3 collection. They're still anonymous, pending this fest's traditional author-guessing game.

The story gifted to me in the exchange is "Hellish Dreams of Heaven" (G, gen, ~4K words) (Richie, Duncan, Connor, Powell, Joe, Tessa). Entirely from Richie's perspective, it navigates sequentially through missing scenes fitting within -- or sparking off lines in -- "The Gathering," HL's premiere. I love the first few HL seasons best of all, as you know, and I like missing scenes and canon awareness, so this story is very comfortable in some ways. In others, though, it's rightly challenging; this early Richie's internal narrative bristles with disenchantment, between what he thinks he's found to be the ideal and the real. He wants to believe; he tells himself he's seen too much to believe... Yet he believes.

I haven't read all 25 stories, but of those I have, I'd especially like to recommend:

• "Know Where It's At" (G, gen, ~5K words) (Richie, Darius, Methos, Tessa, Duncan) -- This time-travel fix-it pulls Richie from an unspecified future moment (possibly circa "Richard Redstone," possibly later) back into his younger body in the days leading up to Darius's murder by Horton. Can Richie put right what once went wrong?
• "Friendship And Favors" (G, gen, ~2K words) (Rebecca, Darius) -- Of the two stories this year featuring Darius and Rebecca, this is the cooking one (the other is chess). This precisely-set historical interlude richly intertwines Darius and Rebecca in their shared hopes for the future: in individual students, in a community, and, implicitly, in the whole world exponentially in expanding rings. We readers know we'll lose them both too soon, but their work (and hope) will survive them.
• "The Polyglot" (G, gen, ~3K words) (Methos, Richie, Joe, Amanda) -- This fun story lightly romps through some practical, ordinary, real-world threats, nothing a sword can solve, and delivers a happy ending all around.

More D&DC comics coming soon!

Whoo-hoo! IDW is putting out a second series of Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures comics! The first monthly issue of the new run will release at the end of January (which I will be buying), and the collected edition for the new run is expected in June (for those who prefer to wait).

I should perhaps point out that these are not necessarily the very best* comics currently on the shelves. That's not the point. They bring joy to D&DC fans. That is the point!

Check out the projected second collection and the existing first collection on Amazon, or at your local comic book shop.

* "Best" on the shelves today presently means, to me, "written by Jed MacKay." He is so satisfying that I'm willing to follow him into "Midnight Suns" territory, which is not my native land.