We had 20 new Highlander stories in hlh_shortcuts this year. Find them all on the AO3.

Here are some that I, personally, subjectively, enjoyed most:

"Moondance or A Series of Extraordinary Events" by hafital
G, gen; ~19K words
Joyful. This story wraps a final sci-fi Gathering apocalypse -- starring Richie and Methos -- around many independent but threaded shorter missing-scene stories from throughout canon and beyond -- starring Richie and Angie, Richie and Tessa, Richie and May-Ling, Richie and etc. -- and not only delivers a happy ending at the last, but is again and again joyful and uplifting throughout. Each of the embedded stories would be lovely on its own. Yet they're strung like pearls on a necklace, progressing in a line, in a circle, in an orbit. It's more than its parts.

"Duo" by jasmasson
G, m/m; ~3K words
Amusing. A sensible outsider perspective delivers grins as it clashes with not-at-all sensible run-a-day HL canon in the persons of Duncan, Methos, and a hunter. The narrative packs satisfying, appropriately worded, canon references that fly over the head of the perspective character straight to the audience.

"Guests for the Weekend" by Annavere
G, gen; ~8K words
Unexpected. I was taken by surprise by how well this combination of characters -- Amanda, Anne, Richie -- came together in this off-to-the-side whodunnit romp of a mini-vacation for Anne, where the stakes are set by thieves so incompetent and security precautions so lacking that Amanda feels embarrassed and Richie plays the bait.

"Holy Ground" by merriman
G, gen; ~2K words
Historical. Have a Darius-lives scenario, with Methos and early Icelandic history. You're welcome. Bonus: Rumination on how the "Light Quickening" did and didn't do the work of reforming Darius, which he must have thought on often, and which I have opinions about.

Richie & Connor:

"In Good Company" by Teratornis
G, gen; ~6K words
Cathartic. Structured mostly as an action scene, a dojo workout, this piece has Richie process some of his many emotions in the wake of Tessa's death, his own immortality, and his encounter with Annie Devlin.

"Cousin's Retreat" by Sharpest_Asp
G, gen; ~1K words
Companionable. Richie gets to train with Connor for a while, as the audience gets to enjoy comparisons and contrasts between our two MacLeods, and the conviction that Richie is an adopted son of this clan.

Randi:

"The Pitch" by havocthecat
G, gen; ~2K words
Constructive. This piece worldbuilds around Randi across a decade, keeping her consistently canonical as it kneads and stretches her more realistic first-season world until it merges seamlessly with the more fantastic late-season canon, landing her as if fated in Joe's lap as he works to reform the Watchers.

"Behind the Story" by coralysendria
Unrated, gen, ~2K words
Transporting. Step into the heart of second season with the groundedness of first season. Tessa's murder is news; it's part of Randi's job. Tessa is also someone she knew; it's emotionally jarring, and emotion is not something Randi is particularly good at, so she gropes through the culturally prescribed motions until she finds her way to Richie, grieving, stunned, alone. We see Tessa through both of their eyes, Richie in that moment through Randi's eyes, and the world that was canon in those days as it must have been.

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!

I won't start reading Yuletide until tomorrow, but I've opened tabs and wanted to share:

Yuletide brings us:

• 2 new Forever Knight stories, one Nick/Natalie and one Nick/Lacroix. Take your pick.
• 4 new works for assorted The Legend of Zelda games (the newest one and the least popular old ones were eligible). I am all agog to read the crossover between Majora's Mask and Columbo. See the list.
• 1 new work for the Doctor Strange comics, this one starring Zelma Stanton, hero librarian! Check it out.
• 0 new D&DC, BSG78, JttW, YB, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Dead Poets Society stories. But of course there are other fandoms to check over time, and treats to come.

Plus, HLH_Shortcuts continues to reveal 2 new Highlander stories per day. With 20 total works in this year's collection, we're at exactly 10 revealed and 10 to go, with a wide diversity of lengths, characters, and approaches ... though not a lot of Duncan, curiously, in those I've read so far. Find your favorite.


(A very merry Christmas to everyone celebrating! And warm wishes to everyone, period!)

December 15, 2024 at midnight Central Time is, I presume: today, Sunday, at 9:59pm/10:00pm Pacific Time.

(hlh_shortcuts loading due date) (Who, me, writing up to the last minute?)

UPDATE: It's Eastern Time, not Central Time. So 8:59pm/9:00pm Pacific Time. (I've uploaded a "bus pass." I just need to finish the real ending...)

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). :-)

TLDR: HLH_Shortcuts is on this year, coordinated by Killa and Havoc, with AO3-automated matching.

Details: For anyone fond of Highlander but not subscribed to hlh_shortcuts -- the very long-running (back to LJ days) annual HL fic exchange -- here's a quick recap:

• Tuesday 9/10: lferion, who last year took over the fest from original mod amand_r, regretfully announced that she couldn't run it again. She asked whether someone would like to take over or whether to end the fest. Read the post.


• Wednesday 9/11: havocthecat invited anyone interested in modding or helping mod the fest -- and everyone interested in HL in general -- to join the "Le Blues Bar" HL Discord server. She posted a server invitation link. (If you already have a Discord account and want to join, just click it; if you don't have an account, you can set one up. If you already have an account and don't want to merge it with your HL fandom identity, you'll need a different phone number or email address to create a second Discord account. Or you can trust Discord's nicknames system. YMMV.) Read the post.


• Unknown date: havocthecat created a Tumblr for the exchange. (I tried to find the creation date and the first post there to link to, but I'm slow, and Tumblr demanded that I sign up for an account before I could figure those out.) Visit the community.


• Saturday 9/14: killabeez announced that lferion gave her and havocthecat access to the exchange's DW community and AO3 collection, that they'll work with other volunteers on Discord to ensure the fest continues, and to look for signups to open soon. Read the post.

I'm glad and grateful that folks are coming together to keep the annual HL exchange going! It's one of the three exchanges that have defined my personal fannish year for ages. I read it for years before I participated in it as a writer. It brings joy.

(I'm sorry that I don't feel able to make the platform leap needed to be really helpful with it where folks are right now. Perhaps in the future. There are many things to figure out about other platforms.)

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.

Highlander Holiday Shortcuts sign-ups remain open through 11:59pm Pacific Time, 22 October (which is about 38.5 hours away as I post this). I'll both write and read in this annual HL exchange. There are 13 sign-ups so far; here's mine. As always, reveals begin on Duncan's birthday, the winter solstice. See hlh_shortcuts.

(If you end up as my match, and my sign-up doesn't quickly, happily click for you, please have the mod, or any of our common connections, nudge me to write an all-new Dear Author letter instead of merely linking to past ones! It's just that I have so many past ones. And I never run out of wanting more of what I love best? ~grin~)


Yuletide sign-ups remain open and editable through 9pm UTC, Saturday, 21 October (which is about 5.5 hours away as I post this). I'm not playing Yuletide; I do look for stories to read there every year, especially in D&DC and other very sleepy beloved fandoms. Indeed, many fandoms, I read only during Yuletide, skimming the lists, seeing what's there, and remembering fondly what I might not otherwise have thought of. See yuletide_admin.

About a month ago, per killabeez's survey and conversation on hlh_shortcuts, requesting a new/revived central HL spot for general interaction, rather than exclusively fiction events, we created the new highlander_chat community.

If it interests you, please join and please post when you have something to share.

We hope that this community can offer a handy place for Highlander fans to chat, squee, brainstorm, recommend, signal-boost, seek beta-readers and vid-betas and pinch-hitters, and just generally all the things that will help keep us connected with our HL fan friends (and make new ones). And of course we hope a new round of hlh_shortcuts will come this year, and that the community could help folks connect around the game!

(I'll announce highlander_chat on Fandom_on_DW and Fandom_Calendar in a few days, also name-dropping hlh_shortcuts for anyone who doesn't know of it.) (Yep, I did submit an announcement to hlh_shortcuts a few weeks ago, but the mods have either not seen it or chosen not to approve it, which is absolutely fine -- chatter doesn't belong on a fic community, by definition.)

♥

hlh_shortcuts has de-anonymized! Find all 15 stories with their authors on the AO3.

Now that the guessing game is complete, I can share which new Highlander story I wrote:
"Would you leave" (G, gen, ~3K words).
Richie, Angie, Anne, Duncan. Richie and Anne talk after Mac flees an argument he can't win; Angie learns of the crash at the motorcycle track.

Essentially, it's a missing scene from "Testimony," introduced by a missing scene from "Take Back the Night," with a referenced missing scene from "The Darkness," landing on what I intend as a turn into canon divergence, from which Richie and Angie will get to step out of canon's camera frame and build a better fate for themselves, together, whether as friends or lovers — either way, as partners. Its inspiration spark was very much in a "here, have some prompts" post on my recipient's journal (thank you, argentum_ls!).

Apparently, the story has "Brightknightie" written all over it, even without endnotes, because 6 players guessed me as its author, and no one guessed me as the author of anything else. Um. Well, let's see: rigorous canonicity, mortal characters, surviving loss... the same 3-part missing-scene-and-a-twist structure I wrote last year... compulsive "end" written at the end... yep, sounds like me.

I will now go put on its endnotes (thank you for beta-reading, skieswideopen!). Then I'll return with recommendations for the rest of the exchange. Lots of great stories!