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HL characters to not forget this year

hlh_shortcuts '25 sign-ups are open through this Saturday, October 11. Last year, I flat forgot to request/offer Grace, and Randi was accidentally glitched from the tagset, but I just now checked and they seem (haven't submitted yet to confirm) to both be available this year, yay! (Thank you, mods.)

I would like to not regret missing characters this year. So I'm pre-compiling a list of all my possibilities (may not use them all, but these are my candidates). If you're interested, let me know of any characters you think I might want to request or offer who are not yet here...?

( List )

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TrickOrTreatEx seeking pinch-hits

Some of you might possibly be interested to know that

trickortreatex is currently looking for pinch-hitters for The Lost Boys (movies) and "Buffyverse" (TV), among other fandoms. Due October 24. Minimum 300 words (yep, 300). Read their post.

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Fannish options & enthusiasms | October 2025

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share!

Spotlight: I'm continuing to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and (of course) loving it. I'm mid-game-ish now, facing vicious white Bokoblins but only my third red-maned Lynel, having maxed my stamina wheel but only half of my hearts, triggered all the Divine Beasts quests but freed only one, and am single-handedly juicing Hyrule's economy through the purchase of bomb arrows. ( Read more... )

Ficathons, fests & communities

Create & engage
- hlh_shortcuts, the annual Highlander exchange, has sign-ups through 10/11; due 12/15.
- yuletide_admin, the massive annual small fandoms exchange, has sign-ups through 10/24; due 12/17.
- smallfandombang, the small fandoms big-bang, has author sign-ups through 10/31 and author sign-ups through 11/01.
- ladiesbingo, a bingo challenge for relationships between women characters, runs from September through March.
- austenexchange is hosting a prompt-fest through 12/16 to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
- janeuary-month is a daily-themes Jane Austen fanworks event throughout January '26.
- latetreatbonanza is designed to help motivate folks to finish late gifts, with a collection, deadline, and reveal. Works due 12/24.
- communal_creators, a community for mutual encouragement among creators, runs its current round through 10/15.
- pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, tardis_festivities and rarepairexchange are seeking pinch hitters.
- whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
Enjoy & share
- fancake (themed fanfic recs); October theme: "uncommon settings"
- gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
- het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
- fanart_recs (fanart recs)
- recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: I've removed Doctor Strange from my comic shop pull-list and replaced it with the upcoming Nova series. Doctor Strange's current author focuses on Stephen as a detective, which is classic and welcome, but has relocated him away from his stomping grounds and supporting cast, which isn't. I am only tangentially aware of Nova, but Jed MacKay will write this series, and his writing single-handedly brought me back to reading monthly comics, so... Fingers crossed!

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GameStop sale on FunkoPop and amiibo

GameStop is having quite a sale on assorted toys and toy-like accessories. I haven't been in a GameStop in forever, but when I stumbled across the news, confirmed on their website, that they had marked some TLOZ amiibo down to $5.99 (from the usual $15-40), I wrestled with myself for a few days and then let myself swing by after work on Wednesday... "swing by" in the sense that they have closed so many that the nearest was actually twenty minutes away in even good traffic.

At this particular shop, the discounted sale merchandise included shelves and shelves much taller than me jammed with a wide assortment of Funko Pops, "Buy 2, Get 1 Free."

The amiibo selection was ever so much smaller, of course, and had no TLOZ amiibo that I don't already have (not that I have that many! they had only two). They'd likely sold out days before. This is probably for the best! If they had had the Guardian amiibo for $5.99, as shown on their website (normally $35+), I would have bought it to use in BOTW for the precious ancient-tech goodies drops as I play, but then I would have had a villain toy to deal with. ;-)

On the up side, I am duly reminded not only that physical GameStop stores are a thing, but that a big part of their business model is second-hand stuff. Good to know!

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Looking forward to HLH_Shortcuts '25

In case anyone here missed the news elsewhere,

killabeez announced

hlh_shortcuts 2025, the annual Highlander fanfiction exchange on the AO3. I'm glad to have it to look forward to. I loved to read it for years before I began writing for it, and since I started writing for it, I've written some things that I'm very satisfied with.

Sign-ups will be October 1-11, with assignments out by October 14, and submissions due December 15. As usual, the first story will be revealed on December 20, as the winter solstice is Duncan's birthday, and subsequent stories will be revealed a few per day as long as they last, to be followed by the author guessing game.

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Seasonsofdrabbles summer '25 reveals

seasonsofdrabbles has revealed its creators (very short anon period for very short fics). I wrote these two:

"Even the Smallest Possibility"
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
(G, gen, 100 words; Link, Revali; Minish | Picori legend)

"Reasons to Visit the Library"
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
(G, gen, 100 words; Link, Zelda; King Rhoam's secret study)

The folks who wrote so nicely for me, as previously posted, are now known to be

kay_obsessive ("Legacy") and

samifer ("Refuge"). Many thanks to them! And also thanks to

senmut for generously beta-reading for me.

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Fannish options & enthusiasms | September 2025

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share!

Spotlight: I don't subscribe to Netflix, so I assumed I was going to miss out on K-Pop Demon Hunters. But then they released widely in cinemas for one weekend only and I happily got tipped off in time. I liked it even more than I thought I would! K-Pop isn't my genre, but thoughtful magical-girl adventures? Well, yeah. Imagine that the original Sailor Moon manga and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show had a daughter and appointed High School Musical her fairy godmother. K-Pop Demon Hunters is joyful, hopeful, and deeper than it looks. It's a packed 90 minutes, with nothing missing and nothing to spare. (And I really enjoy "What it Sounds Like.")

Ficathons, fests & communities

Create & engage
- trickortreatex, where every gift is a "trick" or a "treat," has nominations through 9/08, sign-ups through 9/18, due 10/24.
- yuletide_admin '25 is underway. Nominations through 9/26; sign-ups through 10/24; due 12/17.
- fandomgiftbasket, a gifting fest a la Fandom Stocking/Trees, has sign-ups through 9/05 and reveals 10/12.
- fandommixtapeex uses songs as exchange prompts. Nominations through 9/09, sign-ups through 9/21, due 11/16.
- fffx, the "Five Figure Fanwork Exchange" (10K+ words), has sign-ups through 9/07; due 1/24.
- aspecex is a fic exchange themed on asexuality/aromanticism. Nominations through 9/17; sign-ups through 9/20; due 10/07.
- no_true_pair's 8-Character Challenge somewhat resembles Into A Bar, but everyone gets matched with everyone via distinct prompts.
- 10itemsorless is for ships with >10 works on the AO3. Sign-up through 9/06; due 10/25.
- 1character is a challenge community in which you claim a character and a prompt set and write 50 one-sentence micro-fics.
- fandomwithbenefits is a low-commitment, no deadlines, monthly challenge/interaction community.
- drabbleonficathon is a prompt-meme challenge. Prompts close 10/01; fills open now and indefinitely.
- dreamwars is a community for all Star Wars.
- vampiremedia is a community for all vampire media.
- seasonsofdrabbles has released its summer event and will de-anonymize the works today.
- pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, wipbigbang is seeking pinch hitters.
- whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
Enjoy & share
- fancake (themed fanfic recs); September theme: "food & cooking"
- gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
- het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
- fanart_recs (fanart recs)
- recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: Those who enjoy the ongoing Aurora webcomic by Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions (online | hardcopy) might like to know that Red is currently selling a pack of 4 character pins (Kendall, Alinua, Erin, and Falst). Shop the OSP store. Red's custom pins are always limited time, limited stock (though occasionally some do come back for deals around US Thanksgiving time, I wouldn't depend on that). I plan to put Kendall and Alinua on my work backpack.

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Seasonsofdrabbles work reveals

seasonsofdrabbles released its summer game today (356 works in 199 fandoms). I received two The Legend of Zelda works, both thoughtful, exquisitely poignant, and very much to my taste:

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
"Legacy"
100 words, G, gen; Hero's Shade | Hero of Time | Golden Wolf
The author offers a different, compelling source for the Hero's canonical regrets than fandom often assumes.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
"Refuge"
200 words, G, gen; Malon & Link
The author shows, from Malon's perspective, what her farm and friendship offered Link in his darkest hours.

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fanfic:workout

Fanfic workout buddies #309: “had been sincerely apologetic”

This “15-minute challenge” is filtered…

( links to past installments )

( the usual details )

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New "vampiremedia" community

I imagine that several of you will be interested to learn that there's a new

vampiremedia community, devoted to "all things vampires." It's currently running a recommendations event. :-D Enjoy!

It's not for me, of course. Each to her own! I don't want to yuck your yum! Please skip the rest of this post if it bothers you that not everyone enjoys vampires.

I hope that it's okay to say, here in my own journal, that I personally find no appeal in vampires as a trope. As a metaphor, sometimes! But, mostly, it's just not for me. I love Forever Knight for its complex interplay of history, mystery, and metaphysics, with what I continue to insist, against all fandom opposition, are its beautiful and rich themes of choosing the hard right over the easy wrong, self-sacrifice over selfishness, salvation over power. And I love Dracula by Stoker as B-grade imperial-panic Victorian literature that tapped into our common humanity at a depth it had no right to yet absolutely owns. I appreciate Carmilla by Le Fanu as literary innovation and accomplishment... BtVS and AtS, of course, for their early excellencies that you know well... the UK version of Being Human... a nod to Tanya Huff... and that's it. That's all. You may notice that none of these stories try to suggest that vampirism is a good thing.

(I opened Twilight once and retreated before the acute adverb poisoning. I'm pretty sure that I was too born too old to enjoy Twilight.)

"parsimonious" & Bujold's craft

Penric, from Lois McMaster Bujold's "Penric & Desdemona" stories in her "The World of the Five Gods," fka "The Chalion Saga," uses "parsimonious" in reference to his world's cosmology and metaphysics early in each story, and more often in the later stories, where he is older, and the teacher rather than the student. (As you know, "parsimonious" means an extreme frugality, careful to get everything possible from each resource and opportunity, not quite stinginess, but right on the edge.)

I recently re-read the "Penric & Desdemona" stories, and then read the newest, The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (2025), for the first time, felt sad at not having another in front of me, and so lapped all the way back -- well, chronologically, forward by a few hundred years -- to The Curse of Chalion (2001), the novel with which Bujold started this world, which I hadn't re-read in years.

I found "parsimonious" in the first paragraph of the first chapter of that first book. Chef's kiss.

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2025 Summer Seasonsofdrabbles sign-up

For future reference, I thought I'd paste and backdate my 2025 summer

seasonsofdrabbles requests here:

( General likes & dislikes across fandoms )

( D&DC )

( BSG78 )

( HL )

( JttW )

( TLOZ:LA )

( TLOZ:EoW )

( TLOZ:TP )

( TLOZ&Related )

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Thinking of Seasonsofdrabbles

I've been in a writing slump since the end of

fkficfest. I had expected

saturdaymorningex (where I ended up unmatchable) and

everywoman (which isn't happening this year) to help me re-engage.

Now, I'm thinking of trying

seasonsofdrabbles, which is coming right up, and overlaps some already-planned time off from work: Sign-ups close August 11, assignments out August 13, due August 23. The minimum required is just one drabble, the maximum required is three, and while I don't specialize in drabbles, I feel I should be able to deliver something enjoyable. Fingers crossed.

Nominations remain open through sign-ups, so I've just now added Dungeons and Dragons (Cartoon, 1983), Battlestar Galactica (1978), and The Journey to the West (classic Chinese novel) to the line-up, and added some characters for Highlander: The Series and The Legend of Zelda, which were already nominated.

Do you have any experience with this exchange?

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Fannish options & enthusiasms | August 2025

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share!

Spotlight: I feel that both Superman (2025) and Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) are good movies and strongly recommend them to general audiences looking for a pleasant time at the cinema this summer. I have literary and fannish critiques of the execution of each (of course I do), yet I feel bad about critiquing at all. I so want them both to succeed! And I so wanted them both to be not just good, or very good, but indeed knock-my-socks-off great, and I don't love how the release proximity invites ranking... but that would have been present, anyway, as each has just about the same "job" not just as an IP entry but in its writers' and director's choices. ( Very light spoilers )

Ficathons, fests & communities

Create & engage
- fan_writers is a community for discussion, reflection, and tools for writers, with emphasis on writing fanfic but not excluding writing original fic (or non-fic).
- dreams_mayhem is a competitive creative challenge with weekly games for points.
- seasons_of_fandom is the landcomm formerly known as lands_of_magic, relaunched to reflect that they are panfandom, not fantasy-exclusive.
- ficinabox is a somewhat complex exchange, with a 10K+ words minimum that may or may not be spread, via swaps, across multiple works and/or multiple fandoms and recipients. Nominations through August 12; sign-ups through August 31; due October 19.
- fffc is a low-pressure challenge community for creating something small-ish each week (like a drabble or haiku or equivalent in another medium). Prompts post on Fridays.
- fic_promptly is a comment-fic community.
- trope_of_the_month's August theme is "omegaverse."
- pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, caseficexchange is seeking pinch hitters.
- whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
Enjoy & share
- fancake (themed fanfic recs); August theme: "marriage of convenience"
- gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
- het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
- fanart_recs (fanart recs)
- recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: Did you know that Marvel Comics released a "prequel" comic (single issue) to the Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) movie? The first print run sold out; I'm waiting for a copy from the second. It's not just any old prelude to the events of the movie, but covers the same ground as some of the cut footage. Specifically, it sets up ( mild spoiler )

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New HW:AOI trailer from yesterday's Nintendo Direct (TLOZ)

So how about that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment footage from yesterday's Nintendo Direct? I have no intention of playing a Warriors game (they're battle, not exploration+puzzle, games), but my goodness do I look forward to all the cutscenes and lore! Spoilers ahead...

I'm happy to see the Gerudo sage's face reveal and learn not only that the player will likely be recruiting each sage through the course of the game, but specifically that the Gerudo sage in particular looks likely to have been loyal to Ganondorf before she turns on him; excellently rich story and characterization potential there.

I'm happy to see Sonia broadly active, and the touching artwork expressions when she and Raru look at each other. I'm sure we all recognize the continued thematic emphasis on hands, hand-holding, shaking hands, and cooperation, collaboration, mutual support from Tears of the Kingdom, which was meant to contrast the isolation of Breath of the Wild. I found the new footage of the ancient original palace interesting; it's bigger than I had imagined, though still not as imposing as I imagine Gerudo civilization was at the time.

Which brings us to the final shots and their soundtrack. I expect that Fi's theme playing over that construct implies that Fi will populate and/or guide the building of that construct, likely giving Mineru the idea for her own later construct. I see that many people are expecting that the construct will house the Spirit of the Hero, which doesn't appeal to me, personally; the hero is a mortal being, and the hero's spirit belongs in life or the afterlife, not in a construct, while Fi was created by her goddess specifically to inhabit and animate an unliving item, the Sword of Evil's Bane. Of course these are not the only two possibilities! We shall see. What do you think?

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Ancient Hero in HW:AoI speculation (TLOZ)

I have a small theory of the story to be revealed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment that I haven't seen, which means the fandom at large considers it unlikely and unsupported.

Still, fwiw, as I think on the conjunction between the official statement that the story will be canon and a HW game's need for more playable characters than we currently have pinned down from Tears of the Kingdom -- Zelda, Raru, Mineru, the four masked sages; Sonia until she's murdered; maybe Ganondorf and Twinrova -- the more I suspect that the Ancient Hero (this guy) will be there. Like many, I suspect that he's part Zonai. A question is whether he's also part Hylian or part Gerudo or both (red hair always makes fans suspect Gerudo lineage, e.g. Malon, Groose) or whether he's part of that lost frog-like people seen only in statuary.

But as he is from 10,000 years before BotW/TotK canon, he can't be native to Raru's and Sonia's Founding Era, which is much further back. He can't be their son. (Separate theory: We could be getting their adult children in this game, as new characters.) He could be a descendant of theirs. He could be the Eighth Heroine of Gerudo legend (speculated by fans to have been male). And... he could have gotten to their era by the power of the Zelda of his own era, who could even have accompanied him, adding two to the playable line-up.

Or he could actually be their adult son, who gets catapulted to 10,000 years ago from the Founding Era by our Zelda in the course of the game.

Officially pronouncing this story to be canon, TPTB limited the possibilities for timey-wimey shenanigans messing with the story we know, but left them wide open for the stories we don't know.

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OSP Red's hard-copy published Aurora Vol. 1 is out today

My copy of OSP Red's Aurora (Volume 1) webcomic compilation is out for delivery. Your copy may be on the shelves at your local bookstore or library by the end of the day, or at least by sometime next week. Or you could just read it instantly and for free online, of course: https://comicaurora.com/books/

She's been publishing 3 pages per week, Monday - Wednesday - Friday, give or take occasional healthy vacation breaks, for ~6 years now.

If you like a motley five-man-band questing party with superhero-team dynamics, power-of-friendship energy, and a self-sacrificing leader in an endangered, pseudo-medieval, fantasy-races, elemental-magic world influenced by everything yet like nothing else ... come play. :-)

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Leaving the Great Plateau (and keeping the game in its place)

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild yesterday (Sunday) -- my first playthrough, to be clear -- I successfully defeated the Stone Talus on the Great Plateau with only three hearts (though it took many tries, hiding behind trees, and some bomb arrows that I think I got from my one amiibo), and collected all but one of the available Korok seeds there (for inventory increase later). It started storming a lot on the Great Plateau; presumably, getting the glider unlocked the weather (and Blood Moons). Despite my original intentions about what to complete before venturing off the Great Plateau, I decided to not try to defeat any of the Guardians just now, with my paltry three hearts, but perhaps to come back later for practice, as needed.

I descended off the plateau with the glider, sneaked and fought past some Moblins as I avoided monster camps, and found my way to my first stable, which has a small lake behind it in which the magnesis rune shows me two sunken things that will be my first gameplay targets when I resume. Well, them or the adjacent shrine.

Obviously, the game is beautiful and enthralling. And I'm getting the hang of the controls, I think. Now, I need to worry about keeping this gaming on my new Switch 2 in its place, and not letting it edge out other good things in life, even things like keeping up with shows I want to be able to recognize when you all discuss them. (The last time I did much video gaming, maybe more than fifteen years ago, it was on PC, and I ended up giving away all my games because I had not written any fanfic, not a word, in that period, having let the games gobble that up.) (Of course, in those pre-AO3, pre-DW days, we still lived fannishly on email, mainly, and I had connections to only the one online fandom. Different world.)

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LA > MC > BotW & 3D camera-perspective control (TLOZ)

After finishing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening -- and having thoughts about Marin and Ulrira and reality and what's next for this Link on his shipwreck raft with his one rainwater barrel -- I wanted to play Minish Cap next, but you can't buy Minish Cap separately and "own" it in your account; you have to subscribe to Nintendo's service. I suppose that a year of the service is not more than Minish Cap would be if it were a standalone remake like Link's Awakening, but it's not a remake. And at this time, Minish Cap is all that I want to play on the service, because the rumors are still rife that Wind Waker, which is on the service in its earlier edition, will get a remake (though it's more likely to be Twilight Princess, surely? as that is not on the service, and was iconic for the western audience).

So I started Breath of the Wild and immediately ran afoul of a newbie's clumsiness with the perspective-camera control. This is my first modern ("real") 3D game and I am struggling with seeing where I'm going, not running into things, and having the camera move on its own to unhelpful angles. I have turned the speed of camera changes from Medium to Slow. (It can go further down to Extra Slow.) I have discovered that ZL will reset the camera perspective. I understand that practice makes perfect, that I can stay on the Great Plateau until I know what I'm doing, and eventually I will just "get it," but if you have advice for the transition in the meantime, please let me know! :-)

P.S. The Switch 2 loads so fast that I cannot read the on-screen tips on the interstitials! I did find a compiled list on the best of the wikis.

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Link's Awakening playthrough (TLOZ)

After finishing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom on my still-new Switch 2, I turned to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which of course provided the art style and base assets for the newer "2D" game, but is generations apart in almost every way, for better and for worse. Personally, I much prefer the controls, options, and freedom in EoW gameplay.

But EoW, for all its genuine delights, cannot beat LA's tightly-crafted gem-nugget of a story. I finished LA last night, and, having recently seen the movie The Life of Chuck just before it left theaters, it occurred to me that, indeed, LA is not unlike a non-horror Stephen King story, with that twist, the clues, the insight and precarity and loveliness in the midst of the unlovely.

My favorite thing in LA is taking Marin around absolutely everywhere, while you can, in the portion of the story where you're supposed to escort her. I only wish that the remake had dared to give absolutely all the other NPCs something to say about or to her when you do, or given her more things to say in each setting during the escort mission. (You may remember that I favor Malon. You probably took it for granted that I love Marin. How could I not love Marin?) (Trivia: Did you know that the original German booklet art for LA -- unlike all the others -- drew Marin with a bare midriff and torn clothes, perhaps meaning to imply that she, too, came onto the island from a shipwreck, and is not native there? If so, deep cut! If not, well, bare midriff sells, I guess?)

My least favorite thing is the anxiety of the final boss rush.

You?