The everywoman '24 authors are now revealed! See the collection.

As mentioned, my request went up as a pinch-hit and I received both a gift and a treat for Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon, 1983): "Girl Time" (T, gen, ~700 words; Sheila & Diana) and "The Acrobat's Dream" (T, gen, 100 words; Diana). Both, it turns out, are by DesertVixen, whose assignment in the event was The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015): "The Last Night (Before The Rest of Her Life)" (T, gen, ~500 words; stars Gaby).

Here are a few other stories that I enjoyed in the event:

• "a world worth fighting for" by kira_katrine (Captain Marvel (2019); T, gen, ~1K words; Maria & Mar-Vell)
• "i'm gonna be fine (but maybe not tonight)" by SleepyMaddy (The Marvels (2023); G, gen, ~5K words; Kamala & Carol)
• "like a dream i can't escape by SleepyMaddy (Stargate: SG-1; G, gen, ~1K words; Sam & Teal'c)

The story that I wrote was "Beyond Illusion" (Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon, 1983); G, gen, ~4K words; Varla & Presto), for DesertVixen's request for “more about Varla exploring/learning about her power.” The piece is a tag/sequel to Varla's one episode, "The Last Illusion;" the day after the day Varla escaped Venger's Forbidden Tower, as she shows Presto around her village, she examines her powers and her options, ultimately choosing a third way that's canon-compliant and yet opens up her future beyond canon.

This year's fkficfest had a huge haul of 16 total stories! And many folks were absolutely lovely in reading and commenting, appreciating all the widely diverse tastes and approaches! So I feel it's okay for me to go ahead and recommend just a very few of the total stories that happened to speak most to me, personally, as a reader and fan. Obviously, my own subjective preferences may well not be yours, so you should check out the full collection to find just the right stories for your own tastes. :-D

(These recommendations do contain spoilers.)

"To Say Goodbye" (G, gen, ~1K words; Grace & Natalie) by Sharpest_Asp
This deliciously layered post-LK interlude is simultaneously a slice of life, with Grace relaxing after a long, hard shift; an elegy, with Natalie's good advice, good example, and good friendship remembered and missed; and a supernatural mystery that Grace, in the end, chooses not to pursue, for very good reasons built on costly lessons learned. There's relief and hope as well as grief; the reader has more information than Grace in interpreting Natalie's visit. I felt satisfied.

"Day 17" (G, gen, ~3K words; Tracy) by Calliope24
Surprisingly suspenseful for what's fundamentally a character study, this story exhibits Tracy's motivations, fears, and sense of self through a single shift of escalating incidents attended by raw rookie Tracy and her training officer, from a routine traffic stop, to a domestic violence intervention, to crowd control at a murder scene. Almost every tidbit of Tracy's background winds in somewhere, deployed for maximum resonance. I felt riveted.

"Homecoming" (T, gen, ~5K words; Janette, Nick & Lacroix) by SwitchbladeEyes
This is Janette's vivid story of what happened in 1925 after the "Father's Day" flashbacks. It's rich with Janette being fully Janette, navigating between a spot-on Nick and Lacroix not remotely at their best, beautifully carving out her own full, conflicted life under their radar. It's wholly in tune with canon themes, and cleverly stitches together some key missing developments from between canon flashbacks. I felt nostalgic.

"Noblesse Oblige" (G, gen, ~10K words; Nick, Janette, Natalie, Schanke & Alma) by Calliope24
Set in late first-season, this charming story poses a new reason for the Raven redecoration. In some ways, this tale unfolds like an episode, with a dramatic historical flashback, entwined human and vampire interests, and deeper insights, but it's oriented toward a crisis for Toronto's vampire community, not a police procedural, and has a notably light touch, mining humor wherever it can. Throughout, it offers the positive thematic orientation and openheartedness that I cherish in first-season. I felt delighted.


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The story that I wrote for the fest myself is "Found in the Fog" (T, gen, ~5K words; Nick & Lacroix). It's Nick-centric, pro-Nick, and anti-vampirism, as you'd expect from me. I set it in 1890s California, where Nick, working as a lighthouse keeper, has gone to process the "Love You to Death" flashbacks before moving on to "Dark Knight"'s Altun Kinal dig. (It's based on real historical incidents, so of course has endnotes.)

Thank you, everyone, for your wonderful participation in this year's ficfest!

I recently stumbled across a beautiful Toronto photography project, the "Toronto Sunrise Series," by Taku Kumabe, a freelance photographer and art director. I highly recommend enjoying this art. I particularly like this one.

It began as a personal project in 2014 and has grown to be not only an amazing gallery, but apparently also a community with an annual meet-up. Kumabe writes: "[The] majority of my images are taken from various parks along the lakeshore in the West end of the city; "[my] photos serve not only to capture the beauty of the sunrise, but also document major meteorological events" and can be "a study on Toronto's waterfront." Inside the overall "Sunrise" series are "Birds in flight" and "Abstraction" sub-series.

Read about the project. Or go directly to the photographs in the portfolio. There's apparently an Instagram account, too, if you're on that platform.

(Of course I was looking for a new image for my home-computer desktop to inspire me while writing this month. I specifically searched on "Toronto sunrise" -- not sunset -- and found this delightful surprise.)

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.

I'm up to 4 of my planned 6 (max 8) D&DC fanart recommendations this month at fanart_recs. If you're interested, check them all out on that community's newly added D&D fandom tag.

And if you enjoy fanart, follow the community, and recommend yourself!

The recently-new AO3 account nitelvr has been uploading the author's vintage fic from FKFic-L days. If you were there then, you probably recall this fan; check the profile for the author's self-identification.

Back in the days of my very defunct, not to be revived, "FK recommendation of the month" project (DW tag) (fansite), I recommended 2 of this author's pieces that are now available on the AO3:

• "To a New Day" from 1995 (~4K words, PG, gen)


• "Lust for Blood" from 1994 (~15K words, PG-13, gen)

This author was reliably Nick-centric and pro-Nick. If that's your cup of Ribena, maybe check out a few stories?

When I recommend the fantastic Overly Sarcastic Productions to folks who haven't yet met this unique YouTube channel, I usually recommend an episode from their "Miscellaneous Myths," "Classics Summarized," or "History Hijinks." I often link directly to their latest "Previously on OSP" for a frenetic two-minute montage of their delights. I never recommend a "Trope Talk" cold. Never...

Until now! Check out yesterday's new episode: "Trope Talk: The Heart" (15:37). This is (apparently) the last in a series analyzing the storytelling utility and deployment of each member of the famous "five-man band" trope (leader, lancer, brawn, brains, heart). Perhaps unexpectedly, considering how "the heart" (formerly known as "the chick") is often deprecated and downplayed, this analysis is not only an absolute banger, with a gem of a pop-media history timeline in the middle, it may be the most useful in the series. Are you writing a team? Does your team have a character, any character, performing the core structural storytelling job of the heart, which is actually not -- contrary to popular belief (sarcasm!) -- getting kidnapped? If not, you could wind up with a team that just won't jell, and here's, structurally, a possible reason why.

So. Yeah! ;-D

The gift-story written for my request slate in this year's hlh_shortcuts revealed last night. It's amazing. I recommend it to all lovers of early HL canon, anyone who has ever wanted more Randi in particular, and those who dote on the network of friendships Duncan gathers around himself.

"The Jaded Journalist" by [Hafital (name added after reveals)] (~10K words, G, gen)

The story is something I believe to be wholly new in the fandom even after three decades: a chronicle of Randi McFarland's career from "Band of Brothers" to the present. It's insightful and canon-compliant. She was there all along, every step of the way, but out of distance, out of the frame, this story posits. She was living her own rich life, not waiting for canon to keep up with her, yet though we didn't see her, our favorite characters did, from time to time. I don't want to spoil any more of it -- you can see the other characters with lines in the tags, including Amanda, the de Valicourts, and Methos, as well as Tessa and Duncan -- but it's thoroughly imagined and carefully built and touches on friendships, grief, remembering, second chances, striving for the right, and all kinds of things I like.

I'm on the way to adopting this premise as head-canon.

For those who enjoy Christmas music, history, and podcasts, I'd like to recommend "Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols," now in its second season. You can find it wherever you ordinarily get your podcasts (I use Google Podcasts; I'm very basic) or play it from its own site, previously linked.

Episodes so far: "Huron Carol (Twas in the Moon of Wintertime)," "Good King Wenceslas," "Carol of the Bells," "Silent Night," "Adeste Fideles (O Come, All Ye Faithful)," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "The history of Christmas carols."

I fell behind on my halfamoon '22 recommendations challenge. Here's the last.

For the seventh and final theme, "Generations," I recommend this bright, encouraging, inspiring encounter with Michelle Webster (from "Rite of Passage"). It chatters backstory as Michelle bucks herself up to face her present. She reflects a little on her parents and how she believes she failed them -- a topic perhaps still too sore -- and a great deal on her various immortal teachers, whom she has not failed. She receives a kind of generational legacy from each, but the story makes a special connection from Rebecca, to Amanda, to Michelle.

"Even Better" by Melina
~1K words
T