I love good guys

hlh_shortcuts has now released 18 of its 20 total 2024 stories. See the list. I expect that tomorrow, Monday, will bring the final releases, to be followed by the event’s traditional author-guessing game.

To my surprise, I’ve received a second story for my fest request this year: “The Pitch” (G, gen, ~2K words). (For a completely spoiler-free reading experience, follow the link now and come back later for the rest of this post.) It stars Randi, supported by Joe, with cameos by Duncan and Methos.

Riding the wave of Randi’s conviction that Duncan could be the biggest story of her career, this piece sweeps from Randi spotting Joe near MacLeod & Noel Antiques, through a decade of dogging the literal and paperwork footsteps of Duncan and his friends, to Joe offering her the biggest story of her life... with one little catch.

This Randi is properly tenacious and perceptive. The story compellingly suggests how very much her interests, talents, and drive converge with the commitments and needs of the Watchers, to the point that it set me ruminating on the meta level where Randi and her local TV station may well have been a certain kind of unwitting structural first draft for Joe and the Watcher organization. (But why not both? ~grin~)

More comments on the story itself, of course! Take a look? Or, if this is not your personal HL flavor, try one of the others!

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.

This is the Highlander story that I wrote for the Summer 2010 oldschoolfic event.  My thanks to karrenia_rune for the prompt, and to batdina for the beta-reading.  (As always, constructive criticism is welcome.)

I'd never written Charlie DeSalvo before, and I'm not sure that I'd ever read a story from Charlie's perspective, either.  When I looked for screenshots from which to make an icon to go with this story on the ficathon, I found only half a dozen unique images of Charlie on the entire Internet.  It's curious.  He really is a significant character, if not as significant as some.

•	Title:	"Present Company" (also on AO3)
•	Length:	~2,900 words
•	Date:	July 2010
•	Rating:	PG
•	Characters:	Starring Charlie.  Also with Richie, Randi, Duncan and Joe.
•	Summary:	Charlie has a lot on his mind when Duncan finally returns to Seacouver.
•	Quotation:	"Charlie thought again about legitimate reasons that a stranger might have popped up like this -- and about how very little he wanted to end up charged with assault -- but the weight in the man's right hand inside his pocket skewed the odds."