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

[svgurl]

Aww, perfectly timed saves are everything! You really capture Sam's moment of understandable panic and love the well worded action sequence.

Great job! Thank you for picking and filling my prompt. :D

Re: it's been forever since i watched this but uh, have an attempt?

[svgurl]

That is a great vid! It gave me a good excuse to rewatch. And I love you for being willing to try. ♥

And this was so so good too! Your Clark is so Clark, with his earnestness and wanting to do everything. I like how you captured Oliver's view of him and his longing - you say so much in so few words.

Wonderful job! Thank you so much for picking and filling my prompt! CLARK/OLLIE. Words cannot express my delight.

[be_themoon]

The curl of his hand in hers is so gentle, no words needed. She breathes out, grips it tighter, and then she glances at him and smiles.

"Perhaps Greece?" she says, as if they aren't sitting at a funeral, as if their past and future doesn't lie dead and dying and fallen around them, as if they aren't just one small step from wanting to follow.

[be_themoon]

He hesitates, in the dark of the nights and the early bright mornings, looks at her with eyes exhausted more every day. They mirror hers, in slowly changing grays.

"You know I will," she says one quiet night, when everything else is bearing in, and he looks at her and his gaze is too hot and too cold in one.

"I don't want you to have to."

[be_themoon]

It's not an enemy in a way that actually matters. He thinks, he hopes, but he still has to assume he could be wrong at any moment, could be the dumb kid he would almost like to be who doesn't see every small change as a threat, every sneer as someone he might need to fight.

He's not supposed to think like that anymore.

[intrikate88]

THIS IS REVENGE FOR MINE ISNT IT

Augh, them! Cam agreeing to Pal’s arrangements for his afterlife, exactly what I thought about for this lyric, and yet still gutting

Re: OW - OMC/OFC

[queenlua]

loooooooooool, love it

[wingedflight]

Alex babyyyyy

[vialethe]

SUSAN. ED. Every year I hope you will write these two for me, and it is just as glorious as I'd hoped. They're going to go to Greece!! To run away from grief and everything being DEAD AND DYING around them, of course.

This is good, please continue making them this sad and tortured thanks.

[vialethe]

Oh, I thought this was a fill. How sad.

The Grisha Trilogy, which anyone interested in filling it is already going to know. Sticking with the abbreviations people use is probably fine...

[fallen_stage]

my two thoughts writing this was, what if zelda Couldn't kill ganon and thats why it took 100 years, and what if was because of that very same goddess role? because nintendo is sexist

poor kid, she needs a break

[reverse_changeling]

im glad <3 i never tire of all the dumb bullshit you can do in botw and i like to think that if you Can, then its canon. someone needs to deworm the champion

at least daruk would be proud!

Re: Narnia, Corin, Princes Just Want to Have Fun

[animus_wyrmis]

Hahahaha yessss. What a good combo of Aravis's no-nonsense and Cor's occasional mopiness.

Re: Hamilton/History - Alexnder Hamilton / John Laurens [Headcanon: John loves snow]

[wickedlittletown]

Of course. Image all the money we could save and all the places we could see.
*bored at home* Oh, guess I will take a walk through the streets of Tokyo

Re: Leverage - Alec Hardison/Eliot Spenser - Handle with Care

[(Anonymous)]

AWW I love the quiet gentleness here - it really sets a mood very vividly and sweetly. Thank you - I just love this and I love their characterizations here SO MUCH!!!!! <3 <3 <3

The Majesty of Buried Denmark (Hamlet D&D verse)

[ernest]

Gertrude knows that of all the eligible princesses she was chosen for the magic running golden in her blood.

She adds status to the royal family even without doing anything, but she wants to contribute something of her own, so she’s turned her talents to the magic of statehood and ceremony. It feels different, but not really; she’s just healing on a larger scale.

--

It’s easy to be a rogue, the younger brother of the king, who instead of invading other countries dreaming of conquest helps shore up Denmark’s defenses against its own dead. In this borderland between life and death, Catholic and Protestant, past and future, if the average citizen never sees a zombie, wight, or wraith, all that means is that the Danish royalty is doing its job.

No, what really feels strange is when one of the countless gods Claudius has been praying to with plenty of bitterness and not much hope actually answers him, and he finds himself a cleric of Mask, the better to send his brother to hell.

--

Hamlet’s father never wanted him to be a bard, but he could no more deny the song in his bones than he could refuse the crown in his future, and indeed, Yorick said he was a natural.

Then came that night on the watchtower when churchyards yawned and swallowed him whole, and he found he’d made a pact with – in truth he knows not what, only that it is Forbidden and a problem. But he was dealing with these powers fine, just mad enough to not have to use them, until he smelled a rat in his mother’s closet and poor Polonius had his soul burned from his body – he hadn’t even known he could do such a thing.

--

Laertes gets the Storm Lord from his mother’s side, and the Aasimir heritage from his father, and neither of them has ever felt particularly noteworthy; even training in France to become a warlock has been an article not of faith but of fact. When he is told of his father’s death, his tears burn on the way down his cheeks and he has no idea if that’s normal, and the only person he could have asked about it is gone – maybe he even said something about it while Laertes wasn’t listening.

He makes his oath with himself and consults no god.

--

She is already losing bits and pieces during the funeral, alternately staring and breaking into wild inappropriate laughter, but always rocking in her pew. When she runs out of plants that she knows are not the flowers she claims, she remembers what her mother used to tell her about tempests and knows for certain that a river is nothing compared to a cliff.

She throws herself into a thunder which teaches her ballads and epic poetry and how to prophesy the fall of kings, and she wakes up somewhere else with skin that always glistens as though wet, a resolution to never wear shoes again, and far more comfort in her own body than she has felt in almost a decade.

--

Horatio has always been a man of letters, soothing spells to stay still for long enough to sketch out their structure before he thanks them for their time and lets them go on their way again.

He is used to interrogating sentence structures, but when he arrives at the edges of a story in the making (Hamlet’s story, and therefore his, though he knows he’s meant for a supporting role) he turns his attention to picking apart the way these tales are told. Not all bards sing: all he needs is context and a steady voice to give them something with a happy ending, an ending that makes sense.

Re: Leverage - Alec Hardison/Eliot Spenser - Handle with Care

[dariaw]

this was from me by the way lol - not logged in. Anyway, I obviously loved it!!

Re: Leverage - Alec Hardison/Eliot Spenser - Handle with Care

[ladyjax]

Thanks!

Re: OW - OMC/OFC

[scytale]

Thank you! :D

[peaked]

YESSS KING JESPER COMING TO SAVE PRINCE MILO. A click; a shot; a thud — I love the language used. It's so quick and visual wrt Jesper's shooting and the bodies falling.

Winter Diplomacy

[edenfalling]

As Edmund slipped back into the royal tent, snow dusting the hood and hem of his cloak, Susan stifled a shiver at the cold draft and said, "Was aught amiss, or was the sound, as I told you, merely a branch cracking under the weight of ice?"

"The weight of ice and an Owl who misjudged her landing, so we were both correct," Edmund said, then held up his hands, one bare and one still gloved, and added, "Peace, the message was nothing ill; merely our good Ambassador Coltsfoot sending word that we are warmly awaited in Vashnoi, and that the King of Vinyedvyeri seems most amenable to the plan for a joint strike at Harfang come spring."

"So long as the good Owl is uninjured," Susan said, and quirked an inquiring brow -- ("Merely dazed, and grateful for a warm perch out of the snow") -- "then I was more correct than you; as forfeit, I sentence you to warm your feet by the brazier (for I have no wish to share a bed with a block of ice) and reflect that a king who cannot trust his people to manage a night patrol without his presence at every minute is a foolish king indeed."

"As you command, Su," Edmund said, and neatly caught the cushion Susan tossed at his face.

Re: Hamilton/History - Alexnder Hamilton / John Laurens [Headcanon: John loves snow]

[cornerofmadness]

It would be amazing

Re: Analogue

[eagleoftheninth]

thank you I'm emotional about this

Re: Winter Diplomacy

[vialethe]

This is so cute!! Their little argument, the Owl messenger, the whole background of the situation you've built. And, of course, Susan very reasonably not wanting Ed's cold self anywhere near her! Also anyone else sentencing Ed to anything is always amusing - take that, Mr Justice!

Re: Naruto Founders, Itama/Hikaku

[dawen]

thanks! I'm glad you like it even if you don't go here