rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

This post is NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS! PLEASE POST YOUR NEW PROMPTS HERE, IN POST 2! Do continue to fill prompts here but please put all new prompts in Post 2.

Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon!

Here's a Friending meme!

What is the 3 Sentence Ficathon?
This is an open exchange where you answer a prompt with a fic consisting of only three sentences. It's open to all fandoms and you can post and fill as many prompts as you like, as many times as you want.

What do I do first?
You can start 3SF by posting prompts! When posting a prompt please format it this way:

fandom, character(s), prompt word/sentence.

Only one prompt per comment please. So, for example,

Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I don't like sand."

Open ended and anthropomorphic fills are popular too, such as:

Any, Any, "I don't like sand."

or

Earth geography, sand, "I don't like humans very much, either."

What happens after that?
You answer other posters' prompts in three sentences (or more if you can't stop yourself) and fill as many prompts as you want, as many times as you wish. If you see that a prompt you loved has already been filled, go ahead and fill it again! Multiple fills of the same prompt are allowed and even encouraged! (We get really fun stories going this way).

Can I still post if I need more than 3 sentences? Or should I just abuse grammar in ways the English language never contemplated?
Yes. Yes.

But I'm not a member of Dreamwidth
No problem. You can comment anonymously or through open ID

I'm really overwhelmed by all the prompts and how much there is and how fast it goes. I can't read 1,000 prompts and fills. It's too much.
I hear this a lot and it keeps a lot of people from participating. The 3SF is big and it moves fast, especially at first. I get overwhelmed, too, and I'm hosting the thing. With 2020 and 2021 sucking so badly you don't want something that's supposed to be fun cause you anxiety. I have a couple of suggestions for managing the 3SF volume.

First, really, you don't have to read every prompt and fill on every page. You can start at the last page of this and just go forward, or back a page or two. It's fine.
You can come and go as time and energy allow, you don't have to participate the whole time, and it drops off quite at bit after about 2 weeks and especially once we open a new post because this one is approaching 4,500 comments.
Even after the 3SF and new prompting end, people fill prompts all year long.
You can fill an already filled prompt and you can can leave a prompt that's already been prompted before. People do it all the time.

Always make sure you're looking at top-level comments only, not threaded. That helps a lot. Your screen should look like this.

But shouldn't I read everything to see if someone already prompted the same prompt I want to leave if someone already filled it?
No. Prompt as many times as you want, as much as you want. It doesn't matter if someone prompted the exact same prompt. Go ahead and prompt again!

I left a prompt and no one filled it. Can I prompt it again?
Absolutely!

Can I spread the word?
Yes, please. I generally fail at creating banners and embed codes but if you create one and make it really idiot-proof, I might be able to post and share it. Feel free to cross-post this entry. If you create your own banners or icons, let me know and I'll share!
Please share the 3SF with your followers, friends, and any channels and comms you are active on. I'll post on fandom calendar, Tumblr, and Twitter, but I don't have many connections in other spaces such as Discord.

Here's my attempt at a text box that might go horribly awry.

How long will it go?
The 3SF closes to new prompts on February 13, 2022. The entry stays open permanently and people post fills all year long. (There were a bunch of new posts to the 2021 3SF this week!)

Are there any rules about cross-posting?
Nope, you can post wherever you want, whenever you want. A lot of folks collected their responses together and posted them on AO3 under the 3 sentence fiction tag. 3SFs are a terrific prompt for remixes and could be helpful for Yuletide bears, too.

What about spoilers, content and archive warnings, triggers, pairings, ratings, tags, and squick?

I thought a lot about this. It boils down to reader beware. In my experience, this typically gets too big, moves too fast, and the stories are too short for content warnings and ratings to even apply. It is too big for me to moderate in this way. You should assume spoilers are fair game and that the initial poster and the responder have opted to use no content warnings or tags. This means AO3 content warnings for dubcon, violence, canon character death, underage, etc. COULD be present (and much more). I've found personally that I can skim and scroll by stuff that, from the prompt, I can tell isn't my favorite flavor of delicious cake. Use your best judgment, protect yourself, and be prepared to skip over things that aren't your thing. In this format, the obligation is on you, the reader, to protect yourself from triggering content.
Some posters do include warnings and spoiler tags or include spoiler space, but they don't have to do so.

Why is 3SF split among several posts? That seems confusing.
It is confusing and we always lose momentum once we have to move to a second post. The reason is because at 5,000 comments to a single post, DW installs a human test CAPTCHA, which is a pain for users. So, once this entry gets to the upper 4,000 comments, I open a new post. If you've been waiting until things slow down to participate, when we open a second post is often a good place to join.

If I have questions, what do I do?
I'm rthstewart everywhere, here, Twitter, Tumblr, gmail and AO3.

A special thank you to

conuly .
Last year, Conuly started logging all unfilled prompts.
This year's (2021) unfilled prompts are here.
Last year's (2020) unfilled prompts are here.

Conuly asks that you not reply, as they want to be able to edit and add more prompts to the list.

Here, have some icons and banners and let me know if you've created your own!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

~~Play a song on the organ.~~

The task was neatly crossed out as the goose paced around the outskirts of the confused crowd, waiting, thinking, watching the line of ladies in colourful gowns, bedecked in jewellery glistening like the ripples of water left from objects thrown in the pond, and the next task was planned.

Become a bridesmaid.

oooh yes, i love how hestia is aware of little details of demeter's grief that demeter herself is not able to see or feel.

thank you! they're each a force of nature, and i think they become even more so in each other's absence, when they don't have their spouse to temper them.

The success of the two couples is bound up in each other: each needs their other half to bring them summer and each needs to learn that watching someone leave doesn’t mean you won’t see them again. This time when they say goodbye, Eurydice doesn’t make any promises or lay any blame, she just pulls him close to kiss him for all she’s worth, and when they pull apart his bandana is around his eyes as she tells him, “I know you know the way.”

It was never Eurydice’s trust he doubted, and always his own worthiness to be trusted, which only gets worse the more people are counting on him, but before he can question himself into nothingness the earth caresses his steps and he follows the soft new grass to safety.

honk honk honk-honk
honk honk honk-honk
(to the tune of Here Comes the Bride)

eurydice, i'm listening !!!! aaaaa, this is such a lovely spin on the prompt, moving the moment that needs to be fixed to before she falls in the first place (there must have been a moment, at the beginning...) and gosh, the description of the careful silent climb at the beginning is beautiful, but needing to climb at all is where it went wrong. gosh!

Edmund snarled in frustration, hurling a dagger at the wall of carved wooden paneling across from his desk. It landed with a satisfying thunk, and he got up to retrieve it, then threw it again. His skill was no match for Lucy’s, but it didn’t truly matter when he was only trying to cope with the piles of idiotic diplomatic missives on his desk.

Susan stuck her head around the door carefully, making sure that she was out of the line of Ed’s throwing before stepping into the room.

“What did that wall do to you?”

“Nothing,” Edmund snapped. “It is what the Tisroc’s ambassador is doing to me with his blatantly fawning, completely obfuscating reply to our trade proposals. It is what the Lone Islands treasurer is doing to me by losing their record of last year’s tax tribute to Narnia - which I have a copy of, of course, but now I have to spend time creating and sending him another one. And then there is Corin, and the endless merchant bills and swooning creatures he leaves in his wake every time he comes to Narnia!”

Thunk.

Susan eyed him. “I’ll bring you some of the Brown Bears’ honey mead. It will at least make writing the replies less painful.”

Edmund nodded appreciatively at her as he pulled the dagger out of the wall again. “Thank you. Hopefully I get through them before I am too drunk to hold my quill - or my tongue.”

Susan gave him a knowing smirk before disappearing, and Edmund put the dagger back in his boot. He walked back to his desk, running his hands through his hair with a sigh and sitting down again. He pulled a piece of parchment and his quill back toward him with a scowl.

“Most Honorable Ambassador of the Tisroc,” he began to write. “As per my last letter . . . “

Edited 2022-01-18 03:19 (UTC)

Stiles scrambled onto the shore, coughing up saltwater, trying to suck as much oxygen into his poor deprived lungs as he could. He still wasn't totally positive how he was even alive right now, given that about five minutes ago, something had been actively trying to drown him.

Werewolves, werejaguars, evil fox demons...he really shouldn't be this freaking surprised that mermaids were real, too, or that they were assholes.

omg, i love these two chatting like coworkers, and puck so casual about the attempted murder. this fill is a joy!

Nice fill.

i'm DYING, this is perfect

"There she blows!"

When the captain stood, silent, at the rail, I finally had to ask: "Orders, Captain?"

"Why are we here, Ishmael?"

"Captain?"

"What am I chasing? So I catch the whale -- what then? Is man ever satisfied? Will I go on forever, always with a bigger whale on the horizon? Is the great whale a metaphor for man's unending striving? Nay, lad. Let him go, take in the sea breeze, and let's turn toward home. I am at peace, Ishmael."

XD This is exactly how the book should have ended!

thank you very much! i love battler and beatrice and their complicated relationship

"Hey, Kaoru, are you cold?"

"No, of course n—" Kaoru hasn't even gotten through his protest before Kojiro drops the sweater around his shoulders, all baggy and warm and stretched-out from Kojiro's ridiculous muscles. "And just what are you going to wear if I've got your sweater, you overgrown gorilla?"

Kojiro grins and flexes. "I'm fine, four-eyes. I've got enough bulk to keep me warm."

Kaoru swats him with his fan.

yessss I love this

"At risk of being called predictable," said the voice of an understandably, all things considered, exasperated Dr. McCoy from out of Uhura's comm station speaker, "I'm gonna reverse my usual question; I know who's holding up the damn elevator, I just don't know why." Sulu tried his best not to snicker too noticeably, though proximity being what it was, keeping his amusement from Chekov was all but impossible even before factoring in the grin his helm partner was hiding, rather badly, behind an upraised hand. "And has anyone in engineering got an estimate as to just when they're gonna get me outta here,?"

This is a wound her cordial cannot fix and unless they amputate the limb the only thing that will grow here is the raging infection. The young soldier nods when he hears the news, and at least Lucy can hold his hand through the pain. At the last moment she cannot bear to look and buries her face in Peter’s chest.

"What do you mean, you can't? The day we met, you picked the lock with a frelling fork!" John hissed in horrified disbelief.

Aeryn shrugged, although he couldn't exactly see what she was doing, since they were bound back to back, in what John insisted on calling a paddywagon: what Aeryn knew was that it was large, square, black, and smelled like three years of stale urine.

"I don't see the point," she replied, with a hint of impatience; "D'Argo knows where we went and Chiana saw us get picked up--we'll be bailed out in less than an arn."

But the truth was that she had no hope of picking the binders on their hands: the day they'd met, she had guessed the administrative reset code to the prison cells once she'd used the fork to pry to cover off the terminal. He had been so impressed by her tech skills (as limited as they were: she was a Prowler Pilot, not a tech) that she had never felt the need to tell the truth about it.

"What's that phrase you have, something about hauled up a post?"

"No, no, hoist by your own petard," he said, and she could just imagine the way he was cocking his head in amusement. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason..."

Edited 2022-01-18 03:31 (UTC)

The Locked Tomb series, Camilla and Palamedes, open up the promise of the day / drive the dark things away / i will do what you ask me to do / because of how i feel about you

It was some months before the Dread Barbarian sailed close to Narnian waters. In some ways they had been the happiest months of Aravis's life; she had learned to climb the rigging like a true sailor, and her knots and sword skills had improved as well. Even the helmsman had taken a liking to her, teaching her to navigate by the stars and steer through shoals. "You'd have a future with us, Ardeeb," said the captain as they sailed northward, "if you want it."

"She won't leave her brother unfound," Russum said before she had a chance to answer. Aravis opened her mouth, then closed it. She did need to find Hwin and make sure that she had found her own way home.

"Perhaps if my path crosses again with the Dread Barbarian?

I have such an image of Father Christmas thinking "Bow? No, I got her that last year..."

thank you! you know how important edlyn is to me, and i really love that she's been able to grow with me through the years.

He finds her in the attic.

“Are we playing bandits?” he asks, laughing only for a moment before his nose twitches and his face wrinkles up. It’s a valiant effort but in the end he succumbs.

“You’re the only person I know,” she says as she hands over a spare bandana, watching him tie it over his nose and mouth against the dust as she had, “who always sneezes in sets of three. Do you suppose it might be a witch’s curse?”

“You know, I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion…”

But the teasing light dies from his eyes as he trails off, and the glimpse of Teddy-that-was fades along with it. Before her stands Laurie, My Lord, neither Her Laurie nor Her Lord, if ever he was either. He might be trying to smile, she can’t tell behind the mask.

“What are you doing up here, Jo?” he asks, looking around at the mess of half-emptied trunks and rag bags.

“My fine young troupe of actors have an appointment with the boards,” she tells him, but her voice sounds tired rather than grand. “We begin dress rehearsals tomorrow and I’m short several costumes with no time to sew new ones. Marmee suggested I raid our old treasure trove.”

“I see.” Laurie sits down tailor-fashion across from her and pulls a basket towards himself, looking into it for only a moment before his eyes are drawn back up to the rafters, the window, the writing desk. He shakes his head, his well-ordered curls dancing around his face. “I haven’t been up here since…”

“Yes,” Jo says curtly. “Since.”

He bows his head over his basket but it turns out to contain only several sets of doll clothes and he soon sets it aside, watching her as she shakes out a faded old purple dress with a sound of satisfaction. “This will do for little Sarah, she’s playing a brave young peasant girl who gets lost in the woods and has to survive by her wits. Most of the other parts are fairies and goblins, that sort of thing, at first she’s afraid of them but in the end they all band together to break a powerful enchantment.”

She sneaks a look up at him, sees that his eyes are crinkled over his bandana and looks away again before he asks, “Did you write this one, Jo?”

“I did.” She smooths her palms over the fabric, noting moth holes alone the lacy edge and adds, entirely failing in her efforts not to sound defensive, “We did Shakespeare in the fall.”

“I was there,” he reminds her, and she’s meeting his eyes before she knows if the feeling in her chest is astonishment or dismay as he orates: “‘O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me.’”

He has a fine voice and he’s learned to use it to great effect as it has deepened with age but as she stares the gravitas falls from him. The bandana has slipped down around his neck and she watches the blood rise to his cheeks, a peek behind the curtain to remind of the little boy he once was, her boy, and she leans in to tug on a lock of his hair, teasing, “You’d make a fine Viola, you know.”

He scowls and smooths his hair back, the light from her flickering candles playing across the line of his jaw, showing stubble and stubbornness both familiar and alien; lines she has always known and lines that have etched their way into the fabric of him when she wasn’t there to watch.

She stands and begins to fold up the purple dress but he catches hold of the hem, holding it gently between finger and thumb. “Was this Meg’s?” he asks.

“It was.”

He hums, and holds on to it a little tighter. “Was this the one that you…”

And now she feels the heat rise to her own face, feels the twist behind her heart that she used to think was valor and hears the snappishness of her own voice as she fires back, “The one that I what?”

He’s looking up at her, chin tipped back to reveal the long pale column of his throat, as though he’s offering himself up. To what, she cannot imagine.

“Was this the one,” he asks again, voice very soft but steady nonetheless, “that you dressed me in, all those years ago?”

She pulls it from his hands and folds it haphazardly, tucking it into the box she’s taking back to the school. “You know very well that it is.”

His hands are folded in his lap, now, fingers twisting around each other, but he hasn’t tucked his chin.

“I wanted…” he breathes in sharply through his nose, then blinks hastily and turns his head, sneezing three times. She laughs, she can’t help it, and the smile he directs up at her is sweet, so sweet in the dying candlelight, that she takes his hand when he offers it to her along with his confession. “I very much wanted to be one of the March sisters.”

“Well…” She pulls the bandana from her face, immediately regretting the loss of its protection against his gaze, however thin. She covers his hand with hers and says, as though thinking about it for the first time, “I suppose that now, in a way, you are.”

“I suppose I am.” His lips twitch, his fingers twine with hers.

“And I was desperate to be the Laurence boy,” she tells him, when the moment has stretched and left with the choice either to grin or to cry. She stoops to snag his fine hat off the floor and squash it down on top of her own head, spinning away when he loudly protests such rough treatment of his brand-new hat.

“Run along now, Dora,” she calls sweetly over her shoulder, “run along and play dress-up, leave the real work to us menfolk!”

He walks her back to Aunt March’s — to the school — over the moonlit fields, their boots crunching through frosted grass, winter’s last gasp before the her younger sister’s triumphal return. She’d lost her gloves again last week and her hands are stiff with cold but her head is warm beneath his hat. It’s a dusty, rumpled mess when she hands it back at the door, trading it to him for the box of costumes, but he bows over it like a knight over his lady’s favor.

She reaches out, gets her fingers under the bandana that still rests against his throat like a cravat in a child’s play. Tugging it up to cover his eyes she turns him by the shoulders, pushing him gently in the direction of his own home.

“Off with you, silly boy,” she calls after him. “Go home to your wife.”

He pulls his blindfold down, turns his hat in his hands, reshaping it carefully before setting it back in its rightful place. The boy transformed into the lord before her very eyes, and to whatever hidden place her Teddy vanishes, there too go her half-formed thoughts of might-have-been.

He lifts a hand in silent farewell and turns his face to his lonely trek even as she turns to shut the door against the chill, the warmth of her self-made life welcoming her home.

Oh! I love the detail of the bandana from the stage costume--that is marvelous. And the detail of trusting the earth beneath his feet to guide him, like it's helped him before in the earlier songs. Love it.

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Page 103 of 247

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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Re: Bitter Growth (Greek Mythology; Demeter, Hestia, Hades/Persephone)

Re: Hadestown, Hades/Persephone

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Chronicles of Narnia

Teen Wolf, Stiles, Time to Update the Bestiary

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Re: RWBY, The Horrible Goose and the Artifacts

the only melville I ever read is some letters to hawthorne I'M SORRY

Re: the only melville I ever read is some letters to hawthorne I'M SORRY

Re: Umineko, Battler/Beatrice

Sk8 the Infinity, Kojiro | Joe/Kaoru | Cherry, Sweater

Re: Narnia: The Dread Pirate Shasta? (AU)

Enterprise senior staff, some time post The Voyage Home

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Farscape: Imposter Syndrome (John Crichton & Aeryn Sun)

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Re: Narnia: The Dread Pirate Shasta? (AU)

Re: Lucy finally gets a sword (crack treated seriously)

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Written with the 2019 Gerwig adaptation in mind

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