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

[whynot]

Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, literally meet your maker

[primeideal]

(I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I couldn't resist.)

The Englishman does not look as natural on the throne as Claudius or the elder Hamlet had back in Elsinore, but he seems only a little surprised at the band of pirates storming into his hall and presenting the dignitaries. Guildenstern bows low, presenting him with the letter. "His Majesty Claudius of Denmark greets you in goodwill, Sire."

The Englishman blinks several times. "I'm terribly sorry," he says. "My name is Tom Stoppard, and I'm afraid there's been a very large misunderstanding."

[whynot]

Macbeth, the witches, wrong recipe

sneaky /Harry Potter

[ruanchunxian]

They stared at the golden concoction sparkling, shimmering, jumping like fishes in the cauldron.

"How did we end up accidentally making Felix Felicis instead?"

"Well, no one can deny that he's going to need the luck."

[whynot]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the ravens, across worlds to their master

Across worlds to their master (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the ravens).

[theseatheseatheopensea]

The ravens roam the country, seizing the sky and claiming it for their own, riding the north wind in a blur of spells and black feathers, reaching out to the stones and the trees and the rivers--reaching out to the magic. They speak with the world, and they wait, and they listen. And when he calls (the memory of his voice deep and dark and true in their hearts), they fly away from the edge of the sky--they always come home.

[whynot]

House of Leaves/Narnia fusion, any, Cair Paravel of Leaves

Fragments recovered from the notebooks of Professor S. Pevensie, following her disappearance

[(Anonymous)]

What I found on my return to the mansion is half what I already knew and half unexpected: there is no country in the wardrobe, nor has there ever been, but I have discovered something peculiar about the old building’s dimensio


camped by the lamppost tonight or this morning, with my dim torch and my dwindling supply of batteries,
and as I tried to sleep
heard a sound in that echoing darkness, from a distance that I could not determine, like the note of a high, clear horn; I s h o u l d n o t b e h e r e, I think, but
cannot help imagining that Lucy would have wanted me to go on, and Edmund would have wanted me to take care, and Peter would have told me to be brave


no way back; the way is closed; the
re was never
a way there was never
      any road
  except


                f                              f
              u                            u
            r                          r
          t                        t
        h                      h
      e        a          e
    r       n         r
         d
  u           i
p        n

[ranalore]

The Untamed, Wei Wuxian, explosions

[wearing_tearing]

It really wasn't Wei Wuxian's fault if this one badly drawn line in his heating talisman suddenly made it explode into pieces and caught the table on fire. He was only trying to heat up some tea!

Or that's what he said as he made attempts to put out the fire smoking at the hem of his robes while Jiang Cheng tried to strangle him.

[ranalore]

The Untamed, Yunmeng siblings, nightswimming

[wearing_tearing]

It was always best to do this while in the middle of the night--there was no one to reprimend them or tell them to get out of the warm waters that surrounded Lotus Pier.

Wei Wuxian splashed Jiang Cheng and swam so he could hide behind Jiang Yanli, laughing at Jiang Cheng's curses and then sputtering when Jiang Yanli tried to dunk him with Jiang Cheng's help.

If someone ever asked for Wei Wuxian's fondest memory, he'd tell them about this.

[whynot]

The House of the Spirits (book), Clara del Valle, death is not the end

[ranalore]

The Untamed, Wen Qing, phoenix rising from the ashes

Wen Qing - phoenix rising from the ashes

[sallymn]

"You can't be Sect Leader," the Chief Cultivator said finally, his air of sweet and practiced ease twisted into something both unsettled and angry. "You're dead."

"Yes I am." Wen Qing looked down at him, and the other cultivators who had come to 'cleanse' her bloody and battered seat of power. Dressed in shabby red, the gold embroidery tarnished and burnt, she looked oddly fitting on the shattered throne. "I am also the heir by blood. What do you think you can do about it?"

It was Jiang Wanyin - the other leader of this ugly group of her family's murderers - who snarled what they were all thinking. "We can suppress -"

"You've already done that. Three times." She smiled, a cold, scarlet slash of a smile. "How many more before you grow tired of it? Or before I do," the smile died, "and let my brother loose?"

Her undead brother, standing by her side, eyes blank and dark, face still, broken chains still around his broken body. Broken or not, he could kill them all. And they - it appeared - could not kill her.

The Chief Cultivator was silent.

"This time," Wen Qing said softly, "you have no choice. You will leave us in peace."

[whynot]

The OA, Hap, Lucius Malfoy

[last_haven]

Undertale, Toriel/Asgore, I'll sing you a song of a love gone wrong

[astrogirl]

Even after the worst happens, Asgore never stops humming to himself, and at first Toriel is glad to know that he, at least, can still find some residue of cheerfulness in his soul. But in the end, it is the humming that breaks her. She can love a man who hums to comfort himself after the death of his children, but not one who does so as he plots to murder others'.

[last_haven]

Phantom of the Opera, Eric+Any or Eric/Any, he's actually a vampire

[last_haven]

Crimson Peak, any, fixfic happy ending

[last_haven]

Greek Mythology, Apollo/Hyacinthus, pulling some strings to get your dead boyfriend brought back to life like a boss

[atamascolily]

"Come on, Uncle, give Hyacinthus back to me," Apollo said. "Or else I'll--I'll--I'll stay down here forever and play the most terrible songs I can think of--"

"All right, you've made your point; take your boyfriend and get out," the Lord of the Dead snapped, knowing full well he'd have no peace until he yielded.

[astrogirl]

Doctor Who, Doctor/Master (any incarnations), love-hate

[alexseanchai]

3SF …RPF? anthropomorfic? some such anyway, rth's inbox and/or/slash/ampersand the inbox of anyone else subscribed to the post, day one

[kiestan]

It's used to this abuse by now, because how many years has it been? The answer is buried someplace deep, behind batches of five thousand letters, full of hopes and desires streaming in too quickly to be answered, but that doesn't stop them from arriving.

The weight of the unread is heavy, but it'll keep trucking on, carrying them in its arms.

[alexseanchai]

3SF RPF, me, belated birthday

[ernest]

This ficathon moves fast and everyone knows it, you've scarcely left a prompt and then you've jumped forward ten pages of comments facing a new cast of characters. Sometimes things get buried, and birthdays are forgotten, but there will always be someone to painstakingly comb through the tangled threads of the past, to recover what had gone missing.

Many Happy Returns of the Day!!!

[cofax7]

ST:DISCO/Rihannsu novels; what happened to the S'harien when Ch'Rihan was destroyed?

[ruthchinn]

Awaken the Stars, any, any.

Tristan/Yvaine (Stardust)

[(Anonymous)]

“Tristan,” Yvaine whispers, shaking his shoulder, “Tristan, wake up.”

He rises, blinks the sleep away, then follows her up the ladder and through the hatch he’d had installed in their ceiling to grant his wife easy access to the roof.

The air is crisp enough that their breath puffs out white steam and the night sky is empty of clouds. Yvaine stares up at the stars, spilled out across the heavens like rice poured from a bowl. She grips his hand hard enough to hurt.

Tristan tugs at her waist and Yvaine leans trustingly back into him, but her eyes stay fixed on the stars until the dawn.

[wingedflight]

Middlegame, Roger, Dodger, & Erin, Three creations of terrible alchemy walk into a bar Dennys

hi i love u

[be_themoon]

Erin is patient, as ever, waiting, but the second Dodger realizes what's taking so long she's already talking, of course. Of course.

"A twenty percent tip is going to be seven seventy six, Rodger, and if you want to do thirty percent it'll be eleven sixty four, just round up."

Rodger isn't affronted or upset by this, the slow easy smile he wears a little more real in this moment. He puts down the bills, keeps his words in his back pocket, almost conservative with them these days. He knows, now.

"I'm finishing my food," Erin says, stolid and calm, as if she can pretend to be at a remove from the electric back and forth in front of her.

[ruthchinn]

Jaran / Highroad 'verse, any, language problems

[ruthchinn]

The Goblin Emperor, any, names

[adaeze]

When the Empress presents his Serenity the Emperor with a healthy son and heir, people are quick to offer their advice, thoughts, and opinions on the delicate subject of a suitable name.

Maia reluctantly agrees that any name reflecting his Goblin heritage will be unpopular (there might be Satires!).
Naturally he rejects out of hand any suggestion that naming the new Prince after the late Emperor would be graceful. His suggestion that the baby's other grandfather could be acknowledged prompts Csethiro to share with him the second verse of *that* poem of her sister's (so now he knows what it takes to make Beshelar blush).

Finally Csethiro suggests that nobody could object to naming their child after Maia's late brother Nemolis. Maia is not surprised by the varied reactions of his family: a gentle press of the hand from his sister; squeals and hugs from his nieces. He is surprised to find that at last, his own tears are unlocked.

[ruthchinn]

Crossover, any, "You!"

MCU/Suits, Tony & Harvey/Mike

[hogwartstoalexandria]

because Tony should be a client of Pearson Hardman

"You!" It's out of his mouth before he can rein it back in, stomp down the urge. He really wants to know though—who this guy is and how he managed to wrap Harvey "the best closer in NYC" Specter around his little finger.

It doesn't take Tony more than a couple of minutes of Mike stammering and rambling and playing with his tie to realize Mr Skinny Ties here doesn't even know he's done it. Convincing him that the feeling is mutual, when Harvey happens to pass them by in the hallway and Mike's everything shifts and straightens, takes even less than that.

Tony meets Harvey's questioning gaze, laughs, and starts back for the elevators. He turns back just long enough to nod, "I like him."

[rionaleonhart]

Any, any, accidentally falling asleep on each other.

Criminal Minds, Jason Gideon/Aaron Hotchner

[hogwartstoalexandria]

where Hotch's divorce takes place in s1; established relationship

The first thing he feels is a weight on his shoulder, one that's not supposed to be there—he's in the jet, not napping with Jack back at home—and Aaron frowns even before he's opened his eyes. The cologne tips him off first, and then the slight snore he can hear once his mind clears up some more. He feels his face flush, they are not usually this obvious.

He finally blinks, and then blinks again. He doesn't blush when his eyes focus and Morgan is looking right at them with a smirk of a smile. He glares at him though, that he does, but he can't maintain it. He's too warm, and he's always liked watching Jason sleep, so he stops paying attention to Morgan, and does that instead.

[rionaleonhart]

Until Dawn, Mike/Sam, the only ones left.

[rionaleonhart]

Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Ori and Ku and/or Shriek, a different ending.

More the set-up for a different ending, but...

[felis]

She was huddled under the corpses of her parents, born out of dust and never taught anything else, when the sliver of a memory appeared in the darkness of Shriek's mind: a feather, bound to a damaged wing, and hugged by a creature of light so bright that Shriek couldn't stand to look at it, leave it be.

But the feather and the wing, they meant something.

Unconsciously, she began picking at the grey armor that was covering her body and her own feathers; she'd find out what that something was, even if she had to carry the light to do it.