I love good guys

I've signed up for this year's hlh_shortcuts exchange (see my sign-up) and filled-in my "Dear Author" letter placeholder post (see my letter). Sign-ups close on October 19. Stories come due December 15. Minimum 500 words. I count 14 sign-ups right now.

(BTW, the AO3 system hiccupped -- as it sometimes does -- and dropped Randi from the tag set after she was properly loaded there. If you'd like to read or write Randi this year, please just include her in your request and tags.)

In my letter, I ran fill-tilt jousting at -- totally optional! -- crossover/fusion concepts and regular story scenarios/prompts for possible inspiration. I thought that a few of you might find some of them amusing enough to be worth sharing separately from the context of the letter? Here are excerpts:

( Possible crossover ideas )

( Possible story prompts )

Open for chatting about any of these open-ended possible ideas as ideas (separate from whatever my match may choose to do or not do). :-)

As mentioned, I'll open this year's fkficfest sign-ups no later than this Saturday, March 11. If you're thinking of playing (please do!), this may be a good time to start pondering what new FK stories you'd love to read, and what new prompts may inspire them!

Because there're so few of us, and because our interests can be so factional, if you've played before, it's not unlikely that your match this year could have received one of your prompt slates in a previous year. A freshly hatched prompt may be most likely to spark a blooming new story...? Not that recycled, rerun, never-attempted prompts don't also have their places!

Just something I've been dwelling on. :-)

FKFicFest sign-ups will open Wednesday, the 20th LK anniversary. I'll post the rules and the contingency challenge. I haven't yet picked the prompt; if you'd like to share your insights on what would make a good one, please do.

(Review: In the event of <9 players, we'd switch from one-to-one matching to one shared prompt with diverse renderings.)

It might be nice to revisit a classic, like FKFic-L's Asteroid Challenge (from "A More Permanent Hell"), but, fairly, "reruns" didn't go over well when mentioned last year. Neither did canonical "What if?"s. I've been advised to phrase the prompt like a novel blurb, and I'd love to! But leaving authors free to pick the characters and angle dead-ends that: "Somebody does something for some reason, and there's some twist!" If I describe a crime in Toronto in the '90s, the writer may thereby feel constrained from placing her story wholly in Pompeii or Paris, wholly in the past or the future, etc.

If the community had chosen a challenge game, we all would have nominated and elected a prompt! As it is, we're stuck with my feeble best. (I recommend that you get 9+ friends to sign up: problem solved!)

( Possible word/phrase prompts )

( Possible setting cues )

( Possible scenario starters )

As my hopes rise that the season of "crunching" through 16-hour workdays may be ending for at least a little while, I've begun thinking again of that Nick/Urs story idea that occurred to me shortly before the FKFicFest matching.

It would be a "just because" story in the old-fashioned way, written not for any fest, ficathon or game, but just because it appeals to me, and apparently I appeal to it, as it seems to have hung on in my imagination this long, gently suggesting that I write it after all. I have no idea how long it will take with no deadline pressure on — I don't even have a proper plot outline yet, just two indelible scenes in my mind — so it could be years. And I have no idea whether anyone but me will even be willing to read a Nick/Urs story these days. Would you?

(I know of only a handful of Nick/Urs stories ever written. I despise the incident in Ophelia5's famous "With Flowers" series, as much as I admire Ophelia5. I adore Leela_cat's "Theory of Lost Things," which she wrote for me in the first FKFicFest. And Hearts_blood wrote "Warmth" for me! I wrote "Chante à Nouveau" and "Kindred Spirits," myself, although they're so unrequited they don't really count.)

For me, personally, anyway, the unrealized, unexplored possibilities of Nick/Urs appeal massively. I hope that the characters could be stronger together, each giving the other something missing while also having much in common, that Nick's instincts engaged on Urs's behalf could manifest healthily instead of unhealthily, that Urs's longings drawing on Nick's instincts could become growth instead of diminishment. I hope that their coming together could re-route third season — or any earlier time one wanted to set a story — restoring the brilliance of first season in themes, striving and hope, and avoiding the end we received.

wiliqueen, please tell us about the time that you wrote: "The only things left at the end of the world will be a twinkie, a cockroach, and Janette." :-) [Edited to add: Wiliqueen replied on LJ!]

Everybody else, feel free to use that as a story prompt. ;-)

I happened to reread Susan G.'s little FK fanfic "The Last One" today (it's one of many of hers permanently on my Kindle), and it happily reminded me of how amazingly wide-ranging is FKdom's imagination, and how inspiring is our interplay with each other as we create. This story was a response to the "Asteroid Challenge," of course, the challenge to write stories set in alternate universes where the asteroid from "A More Permanent Hell" actually comes, and it was also inspired by Wiliqueen's remark (above).

Our fandom, guys. This is us! :-) One day to FKFicFest sign-ups...

P.S. If you don't yet know the FK corpus of the much-missed Susan G., go! Read! You are in for such a treat.