Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

[rthstewart]

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.

<br /><a href="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/172142.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/172142.html"><img src="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/file/71907.jpg" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/file/71907.jpg" alt="" title="3 Sentence Ficathon 2022 Banner" /></a>




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!



      

Comments

[raisedbymoogles]

any, any, (you have made it this far) it's time to end this story

Take It Back 2021 - Miracle of Sound

Voltron: Legendary Defender

[kiestan]

He had nothing; no Blue Lion, no functioning armor, no Shiro or Allura or Coran or any of his teammates to break him out this predicament with a well-timed wormhole, or a confident roar, or a strike across Lotor's chest possible only with skill he did not possess.

His bayard was too far away, and besides, in this tight space of an engine room, there wasn't much a sniper rifle could achieve.

Lance unclipped the other bayard from his belt, one he had not dared wield, and as it grew weightier in his grip, he raised the red and white broadsword towards Lotor's serene, smiling face, and declared with a grin the beginning of a fight he was not confident he would win.

A/N: OP THIS SONG IS A BANGER THANK YOU FOR LINKING IT

[harmony_lover]

Bandstand, Davy/Jimmy, love will come and find me again

[raisedbymoogles]

any, any, come and heal us too / we never could find you

Sirona - Miracle of Sound

Genshin Impact, Neko (cn: cat injury, brief mention of past cat death)

[scytale]

Meshi comes home limping and whimpering in pain, serious-looking bite marks covering his neck and legs. Neko smells fox musk and blood on him, and she can guess what happened even before he tells her he ran afoul of a fox at her den.

Long ago, when Neko was bitten by a dog, Hibiki treated her wounds with water and a sharp-smelling leaf paste, all the while murmuring magic words to take the pain away. She wrapped Neko's wounds in soft, clean cloth, and Neko was all better when she took the cloth away.

Neko can't do those things. She doesn't know how to make the leaf paste, and all the cloth in the shrine has long rotted away -- and even if she found some, her claws would not be able to wrap them.

She scolds Meshi for his recklessness and cleans his wounds with rasps of her tongue, licking away the blood and making sure there is no dirt or debris. Then she orders the other children to bring him fish and his favorite orange crabs, and when the children depart, she curls against Meshi and rumbles her deepest purr, the way she would in the nights when Hibiki started to cry. Her purr isn't as magic as Hibiki's words, but it will have to do.

Even though Meshi interferes with her naps and duties, she keeps him close over the coming days. If she doesn't, he will try to run off or scratch at his wound.

She finds his bites very worrisome. Most of the time, bites heal, but sometimes they turn black or red and start oozing a foul-smelling liquid. When this happens, children can become very sick, and there is nothing Neko can do but hope that they get better.

This generation's Meshi is a lucky child, though. His wounds heal without a problem, and soon he struts around the shrine as if he was never injured, bragging about how he beat a fox. She swats him hard on the head when she catches him at it; he shouldn't encourage other children to do dangerous things. The next time a child gets into trouble, they may not be so lucky.

Neko does not want to be impatient, but she hopes Hibiki will come home soon. Sometimes it is very hard to take care of the children on her own.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Narnia AU, Jadis, a different sort of Queen

(Take it as literally or cracky as you want!)

Killer Queen

[edenfalling]

"The sexual innuendo is disrespectful," Jadis said as the song finished and the disembodied voice resumed its spate of falsely cheerful inanities, "but it's true that my rule would automatically remedy the follies of your world's native leaders, and your gunpowder and guillotines have great entertainment potential. Nonetheless, I fail to see why I should waste time on common musicians and their caterwauling rather than secure one of your nuclear missile launch sites as a power base for my inevitable conquest."

"The thing is, your Majesty, the problem with conquering the world is that then you have to rule it, and that's a lot of work," said the sweating woman whose 'car' Jadis had commandeered at wand- and knife-point. At Jadis's raised brow, she gulped and added, "It's much more efficient to get rich and famous and pay other people to cater to your every whim. People fall all over themselves to do stupid shit for their idols, and if you're rich enough, you can buy your way out of just about any trouble."

"And you think this presumptuously named band might aid me in such an endeavor?"

The woman shrugged, damp hands shifting on the steering wheel of her cramped, inelegant, and odiferous vehicle. "It's a place to start?"

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Castle, Castle/Beckett, murder by trope

[harmony_lover]

Bandstand, Donny, I am a soldier, I have seen worse sights than this.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Star Wars X-wing series, Kettch, the triumphant return of a legend

[raisedbymoogles]

"Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening," Face protested, and then, "Wait, didn't that thing get blown up or something?"

"Miraculously, it survived." Piggy held the - rather raggedy-looking, admittedly - Kettch puppet out for inspection. "You're the only one qualified to handle him. We all agreed."

"I notice 'we' didn't include me."

"It did include General Antilles, however."

...well, he couldn't argue with that. Face accepted his fate and took the puppet from Piggy. His friend gave him a satisfied, squinty-eyed nod.

"And thus," he pronounced, "the mantle is passed."

(A/N: KETTCH OMG YES)

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, i’d be appalled if i saw you ever try to be a saint

[caramelsilver]

He saw her move among them in a way he could never do; the people flocked to her, wanting to be near her, basking in her sun. They loved her, sat her on a pedestal, called her a saint - it made him feel sick. It made him want to keep her for himself, lock her away, forget the key - her, a saint? No.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Narnia, dragon!Eustace, the hoarding impulse

I Still Need You (Narnia, Eustace/Jill)

[vialethe]

Forever after, it will hit him at the oddest times - standing on the deck of the Dawn Treader with Reep and Caspian and Lucy and even Edmund, if he’s being honest - or much later, with Jill and Puddleglum and Rillian, tumbling out from beneath the earth.

The urge to grab them all, to gather them into him with arms grown longer for the purpose, folding them into his great wingspan, where he can hold them, defend them, protect them -

Hoard them, some nasty little voice whispers in his head, sibilant and sharp, and so he shakes himself mentally, and pulls his hand back from where it hovered over Jill’s shoulder, nearly touching - let her be free then, he thinks, let her fly on her own.

[vialethe]

The Folk of the Air, Jude/Cardan, combat/I’m ready for combat/I say I don’t want that/but what if I do?

[syrena_of_the_lake]

The Hobbit, Smaug, the tactile pleasure of treasure

Hobbit, Smaug like a cat with a blanket, except it's gold

[hogwartstoalexandria]

He does not fall into slumber so much as a daze, so much as a contemplation. Smaug rolls this way and that, flicks his tail and licks his paws so they will stick to the gold as he walks to another pile, slithers to another haul of the same glinting, enchanting treasure. It is his, and his only.

[harmony_lover]

Bandstand, Wayne Wright, These people wouldn't know real sacrifice if it slapped them in the face.

[vialethe]

Narnia, Peter /& Lucy, I want a space to watch things grow/but did I dream too big/do I have to let it go

Narnia, Lucy and Peter

[caramelsilver]

She grew up watching him fill the empty spaces in her life, keep her family whole, keep them safe and together. She put her whole life in his hands, trusting him to hold it, trusting him to keep it, trusting him to save it. It never, even once, occured to her that it was too heavy a burden, not for a second did she think he could fall.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Jane Eyre, a self-sufficient ending

[animus_wyrmis]

The house was snug and secure against the biting wind. Diana sat in one chair, her book in her lap. Mary and I, warm in our respective seats, Mary in the facing chair and I at Diana's feet, listening as Diana read St. John's latest letter from India aloud. Afterward she sighed and said, "I am glad, for his sake, that he has gone; but I wish it were not so far. At least you have not left us, Jane. Will you read for us?"

My German was no so bad, now, that I was embarrassed to read for them. The fire crackled. Reader, I was content.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Little Women (any version), Laurie/Jo, what might have been

Comfort in Marriage

[ultra_fic]

She's sitting by the fire, juice from a piece of orange dripping down her chin unnoticed, a manuscript balanced on her knees, not paying attention to either as she looks over at her husband, deeply engrossed in a book.

Of all men in the world, she could not imagine another that she could be this calm and comfortable with, just so very content to be as she is and know that's perfectly fine with him.

When he looks up from his reading and smiles at her, Jo wonders how she ever thought for a moment that refusing Teddy's proposal was the right decision - how awful the outcome of that terrible decision might have been if she hadn't been so quick to change her mind!

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch/everybody wants you/everybody wonders what it would be like to love you

SAB, Darkling/Alina

[caramelsilver]

In all his years he never felt what he felt when he was with her. It was like he had been freezing, and in her presence he felt warm again for the first time. She warmed him up, and it was disgusting how it made him feel.

[vialethe]

Narnia/GoT, Susan/Jon Snow, at first chance/I’d take the bed warmed by the body

[harmony_lover]

Bandstand, Julia/Donny, being madly in love with you

[sideways]

Spider-Man (comics), Peter/MJ, "you wear your mask and I'll wear mine / they don't come cheap but they fit just fine"

[harmony_lover]

Wynonna Earp, Wynonna/Doc, travelling light

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Gunsmoke, Matt/Kitty, gone fishing

[harmony_lover]

Wynonna Earp, Waverly/Nicole, happily ever after

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Narnia/Star Wars, Susan/Obi-Wan, an elegant weapon for a civilized age

A Feeling So Peculiar (Star Wars/Narnia, Susan/Obi-Wan)

[vialethe]

“I don’t whip it out for just anyone these days, you know,” he says, trying to sound peevish but, he suspects, failing utterly, for the sight of Susan grinning up at him from his bed is far too pleasant for that.

“I assure you, yours will be far from the first man’s sword I’ve seen,” she says, wicked mouth curved, “so you needn’t be shy on my account.”

He hesitates a moment longer before hitting the switch, the familiar hum overtaking him, an extension of his arm, his will; in the glow of his lightsaber, her face lights like sunlight through leaves in warm, living green, her gaze softer now and dreamy; when she speaks, it’s from a universe away, and chills him to the core: “You look like a knight, somehow,” she breathes, in the voice of a queen.

[harmony_lover]

Wynonna Earp, Waverly & Doc, saving Wynonna

[sideways]

The Old Kingdom, any & cat!Kerrigor, there is still one bound servant of the Abhorsens

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

[livewareissue]

Lirael, called the goldenhand, sat quietly outside the circle.

No simple thing, it hummed with power to her senses, spell upon spell and barrier upon barrier as it barred the way to the creature within, despite the way he was held tightly by Ranna's grip.

The Disreputable Dog might have gained her freedom - or was never truly bound at all - as had Mogget, but here beneath the House, slumbering quietly, there is still a bound prisoner of the Abhorsen.