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

He didn't have the ingredients for a cake and he wasn't even sure he'd gotten the days right, but Frypan put extra eggs in the pan with some pieces of thick brown bread, and served them with a dollop of real butter that he'd been hoarding for a special occasion.

"Happy birthday, Minho," he said as he set the plate down in front of the other boy.

His knees felt weak and his stomach wobbled a bit when Minho smiled at him, but that smile made the teasing he was going to get from Newt later all worth it.

She promised. That's the one thing he remembers, as he curls up beneath the old horse blanket and watches his breath mist the air, and listens to the murmur of Glenn and Maggie's voices in the next room. She said they'd be together, take care of each other, and then they took her and he couldn't find her and he failed, and now he's all alone.

The hospital looks deserted, nothing to indicate that it's inhabited by monsters that wear the face of men, worse than any goddamn walker. He's heard what they do there, to the women. The ground trembles beneath his boots and the air turns frosty as he takes the stairs, one eye focused on Rick and the kid but most of his attention on the landing, the door, the hall that will lead him to her.

"No," Daryl says.

When Beth looks up at him with those big blue eyes he finds it hard to refuse her anything, even as the kittens tumble from her knapsack and pounce on each other, and he knows it's going to make the slog back to the camp practically impossible.

But still… the way them little squirmy things make her smile, maybe there really is no such thing as too many kittens.

The way he looks at her, the monster who scaled her walls, makes her shiver. Gisla isn't sure whether it's fear or desire that makes her insides quiver, but the longing and desire in his eyes is clear. But demons can't feel love, can they?

"Do not!"

Gisla whirls away in a swirl of silk, her arm tingling where his fingers brushed against the flesh beneath her flowing sleeve. Her skim is aflame from the fire of their argument, and she wants to lash out with nails, with teeth, with words that scratch and bite. Her heart beats faster as she sees the same look in her husband's eye, and like that the passion flares, ignites, turns her anger into something more, something better.

"Do not stop," Gisla commands.

"It'll never work," Eliot says after Hardison excuses himself to the bathroom.

"Why not?" the other man asks.

"One, the man believes that 'orange' is a food group, two, he's Team Jacob, and you seem like a Team Edward kind of guy, and three, I'm his boyfriend and I don't like you."

He'd tried "accidentally" bumping into John on the steps outside the precinct; on the bench outside the elevator at the courthouse; at physio (even though they were scheduled on different days), and even at the gym, all of them with no luck. So, it was probably ironic (but he might have to check with Alanis on it) that who should join the line behind him at the DMV but the very cop over whom he was having quite the exotic wet dreams. And when John's lip quirked and he rested a hand lightly on the small of Matt's back to ease him out of line so they could catch up, it felt like maybe those dreams had a smidgen of a chance after all.

Gisla rested against her husband's chest, watching the stars through the bedroom window as he drew pictures with words, stories of monsters in the deep and mighty warriors who rode the lightning. Blasphemy, all of it, but not if she pretended that it was just a story, something with which to entertain the children. She followed the arc of a falling star and tightened her grip on Rollo's hand; if wishing for the rasp of his voice against her ear and his strong arms around her always were a sin, then she would gladly bear it.

Toby watched his shorn nails plop onto the porcelain, each snick reminding him of the bloody conclusion to all of the plans he'd hatched over months in those casts. Gain control of his anger; sit through enough fucking sessions with Sister Pete to convince her he's all right; let Metzger stew and come to him; most importantly, grow his nails.

Now, he just had to figure out how to gain entry to the store room.

"I'm just saying that there's no actual proof that Superman is from another planet," Emmett said.

"His spaceship crashed outside Smallville!"

"And what proof do we have of that? Did the Kents keep the spaceship?"

Michael threw up his hands. "It was... it's the... they don't need to... We just know!"

Emmett raised a perfectly manicured brow. "I'm just saying-

"Brian, help me out here," Michael pleaded.

"XANAX! I need a XANAX!"

Matt's been out of the cast for weeks and doesn't even use the cane anymore, making it easily from the car to the front door with no trouble, so John should absolutely positively not be hovering like a mother hen. And then there's a spot of black ice and Matt is down, and John thanks Christ he was at Matt's elbow as he drops the grocery bags, a cucumber and some asparagus flying five feet past them in the air to land somewhere in New Jersey and the contents of the now-broken full-pulp orange juice container seeping into the snow, and his hands are slapping at Matt's leg and his chest as he's reaching for his cell to call 911.

And when Matt palms his cheek and leans up to kiss him, John figures it's about time he admitted he's over the moon for this damn kid.

He's barely conscious, only just lucid enough to speak, and still they insist on asking the question he wishes they'd avoid, the question of why he helped them on the Floating Continent; and he just about remembers what he had planned to say, and hisses out, "Thought you'd give me a few more gil."

He's well enough to stand and fight, now, and when he says he'll join the party as they head on to the next battle, he sees their feigned looks of surprise and hears Sabin say carefully, "Expecting a big fee, huh?"

He's scrambling upwards, trying to escape the tower before it collapses, and he knows that when he gets out, there will be nothing for him - no easy answer, no explanation - so he makes up his mind; but before he turns back to find a quiet place to curl up and draw his last breaths, he looses the gil purse from his belt, tosses it back down to the others, and says, "Catch."

"It would be so much easier if all of them would just say they want each other," Juleka fumed at Rose. "Marinette stops having panic attacks because she has two people to calm her down, even if one of them is my brother, and Adrien gets the two girls he's admired from afar ever since they came into his life."

"Would you like me to interfere, love?" Rose replied, pressing a kiss to her girlfriend's lips.

[That is, Luka-Marinette-Adrien one way and Marinette-Adrien-Kagami the other.]

The kid looks at him with those moony eyes through that shaggy hair, and John's fingers itch to swat the mess outta the way and... well, and do things that ain't exactly kosher in the state of Denmark. But his life is not an alternative romance, it's an action movie, and any daydreams he had about taking things further with Matthew Farrell belong right back at the Fire Sale, when he was baring his fucking soul in the car to a goddamn stranger and practically begging for the kid to tell me that all his cuts and bruises were sexy in that damn tunnel. Now it's time to go back to reality, and that means quiet nights in front of the tube, not Matt Farrell in his bed.

Daryl's eyes follow her as she moves around the camp; he hovers nearby when it's her turn to do the cooking; he sets up a spot to clean his arrows that happens to be right next to where she's helping Judith do her colouring; he even manages to be hovering around the general area of the bushes were she goes to relieve herself, 'cause you just never know what -- or who -- is lurking out there in the dark.

"She still hasn't noticed you?" Glenn says one night when they're sharing a log during dinner.

Daryl shifts his eyes away from Beth and shrugs. "It could be worse," he says. "I'm just not sure how."

They don't share an ambulance but somehow they gravitate towards each other when they're waiting to be seen at the hospital. John ends up slouched in one of those two-seater chairs that really only fits 1.5 people, but somehow Matt still manages to squeeze into the gap, his head resting on John's non-wounded shoulder and John's arm wrapped firmly around his shoulders.

Lucy takes one look and stops mooning over Matt Farrell and starts hatching plans to make sure he ends up with her dad, instead.

John watches Matt's fingers flip and fold the paper, surprisingly nimble, and imagines those fingers playing at his ribcage, sliding over the curve of his hip, dipping into the gap between-

"It's a seahorse!" Matt announces, holding the paper aloft.

John coughs and mumbles something about Matt still being high from the morphine, and carefully turns over in his hospital bed. For reasons.

I've done my best to make Minho his favourite meals, give him bigger portions than anyone else, serve him first; anything to let him know that I like him without actually, you know, telling him that I like him. Minho nods in my general direction, and then proceeds to ignore me for so long that I finally head off to bed.

So I lay here going through the mental highlight reel of my mistakes, while Minho and Gally press their heads together and whisper in the dark.

Oooooh, I like this! Thank you for writing it ♥

Crossbow, hunting knife, quiver with seven arrows, spare hunting knife; they all hit the ground at Daryl's feet.

"All your weapons," the voice behind the shotgun says.

Daryl shrugs and leans down to his boot, slides to the right, pivots, and the spare-spare knife is up against the motherfucker's throat; he don't give a shit about himself, but people gotta learn not to get in his face when Beth is with him.

Maggie holds her son to her breast, moving in slow circles around the bare floor of the room they've allocated as a nursery. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine Glenn at her back, his warm arms encircling them both. If she closes her eyes.

The soulmate mark fades and disappears within a year of becoming a vampire, so Eric is somewhat surprised to see a return of his shortly after a certain perky blonde first sets foot in Fangtasia, albeit in an unusual occasion. It can't be a coincidence, and he's not sure whether he's supremely annoyed or supremely pleased about this. Thankfully he's not shy, so Sookie will get a big surprise when she arrives at the bar tonight.

I haven't yet seen Live Free or Die Hard, but I watched the first three films recently and I love the hell out of John McClane; it's great to see him in a quiet, vulnerable moment. Thank you!

It's sweltering and the boys are stripping down to trousers, but Frypan is acutely aware that he isn't quite as fit as the others; maybe it's a hazard of being a cook, too many extra tastes as the soup is simmering in the pot. He compromises by taking off his shirt but leaving his overalls on, happy to have that little bit of fabric to cover up the extra ten pounds he's carrying around his middle. It's only when Minho leans over and runs a finger down the strap and wiggles his brows during dinner that Frypan begins to wish for the heat wave to last just a little bit longer.

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

The Maze Runner, Frypan/Minho

The Walking Dead, Daryl/Beth

The Walking Dead, Daryl/Beth

The Walking Dead, Daryl/Beth

Vikings, Rollo/Gisla

Vikings, Rollo/Gisla

A Proper Wingman

Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt

Vikings, Rollo/Gisla

Oz (tv series), Toby

Queer as Folk (US), Brian, Michael, Emmett

Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt

Final Fantasy VI, Shadow

Miraculous Ladybug, Juleka puts it all together.

Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt

The Walking Dead, Daryl/Beth

Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt, Lucy

Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt

The Maze Runner, Frypan

Re: Miraculous Ladybug, Chat Noir, Overstretched

The Walking Dead, Daryl/Beth

The Walking Dead, Maggie

True Blood, Eric/Sookie

Re: Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt, Lucy

The Maze Runner, Frypan/Minho