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

thank you! and yeah, absence is what other people use to define her, but they forget that it means she is existing somewhere else. and you know me, i can't resist a good gardening metaphor!

this is so adorable! data is an excellent friend, and i just love the rapport these two have.

thank you very much! jadis really does give her exactly what she's looking for here, whether she knows it or not, and 'like it's quieting something inside her' is a great description, i'm so flattered!

thank you! everyone's double (or triple!) nature is one of my favorite things about this fandom, and it's always a fun opening for wordplay, especially in the tsf where every sentence needs to do twice the work. and ahhh, i'm glad you liked that phrase, it took a bit of tweaking to get right.

fun fact, one of my pens ran out in the middle of writing this fic, and i tried using a scratchy pen before giving up and finding something better, so 'with no convenient translators' is in green before switching to blue, which i thought was delightfully appropriate.

thank you very much!

do you have an ao3? I’m thinking of posting some of my 3sf fics to there and I’d like to gift it to you (if you want)

by the way do you have an ao3 account? i might post this there and I’d like to gift it to you if you want

do you have an ao3 account? i might post this there and I’d like to gift it to you if you want

Thank you. <3 (and thank you for all the amazing fills throughout the ficathon!)

Murky doesn’t have to dance or prance to hear what the plants have to say: she just sits still and quiet and waits for the whispers and bells and rustling to understand themselves. She doesn’t like the kids in town much, they always yell and run around and say she’s too quiet and sort of creepy. Murky doesn’t mind – her parents say she’s a good girl and it’s nice and quiet under the earth.

“If he is sad, he wants money,” says Don Pedro and Benedick winces at being so easily found out but does not deny it; he’s been bored almost to tears by the endless talk of wedding preparations and would do anything for a diversion.

Unfortunately one comes in the form of the prince’s brother with the news that Hero has been disloyal; Claudio refuses to believe it until he’s seen it, but even after they’ve been shown two silhouettes at a windowsill, Benedick remains doubtful.

“Still, what good will it do to shame her publicly?” he asks one more time, but Claudio is firm in his course, so Benedick once more curses the fickleness of love and resolves to speak with the girl’s father in time to halt this marriage so it won’t be destroyed before it’s even begun.

After twenty years looking down on the city, Quasimodo understands its habits and its histories like it is some great breathing thing, larger than the individuals who compose it, all unware of how beautiful they are. He is something smaller than a human being and he’s been taught that he’ll never be welcomed into the crowd, but if he could walk among them he’d be grateful for the squabbling and the stench and every imperfection that makes the city real. For one day, just one, he’ll have let himself believe he could be a mortal man.

Isabela has always been on display, even before her door opened for her, and she’s never been enough on her own. It might be nice, she thinks, to be on the sidelines once in a while – maybe she’d get to look around her instead of always watching out for her next mistake.

And then she has to laugh at herself for having the thought –no one would want to be Mirabel!

Not for the first time, Charley wishes they were still poor – he doesn’t miss scraping together a meal out of whatever they could afford, but scrambling to write a song was more thrilling in the days before they’d gotten a taste of fame. Now that they’ve gotten it, it’s something they can lose, and Frank was always the one knew what he wanted to say in music, but now he’s the one who only ever thinks about money.

Charley still isn’t ready to listen to any opinions but Frank’s – they’re the only ones that matter – but that means he’s not ready to follow his friend onto the television screen, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to cross the divide that just keeps growing.

I do! My AO3 name is also sincereously. Thank you so much!

Love this!

It's the kind of kiss that makes you forget everything, your name, where you were, what you were doing, but Ingrid comes back to herself. She looks down at the tub she abandoned when Alan arrived. Her raspberry ripple ice cream has melted, but she grins and dips a finger into the liquid, traces Alan's lips before leaning in, determined to enjoy her treats.

(yes, as in fanfic for the Mountain Goats song)

The adherents of the Wizard King, those whose faith has never faltered, come on bended knee to petition for his release. Even the bit roles have a part to play, and now is the time for they who study the way of the blade to travel by starlight and slip the locks that should have been impossible to overcome. They speak of the kindness of the cracks of his face, and how a touch or a look can be enough to heal if you believe – and oh, how they do – so perhaps the true magic is in the strength of their convictions.

Poor Old Duckling

Poor old duckling, surrounded by fully grown swans, beaks sharp, wings majestic.

Downton perpetuates many tales, if not of one sister's ill fortune and the other's favour, then of Edith's weakness and Mary's strength, in character and will.

It doesn't obscure Mary's doubt: that she's weak and her sister strong.

Kisame never truly paid his wounds any mind, especially when Samehada was still in his possession.

Devour his enemies' chakra to avoid exertion, shred away compromised flesh to cut off the flow of poison, wear the Shark Skin itself for a power boost -it didn't matter because he and the sword were almost the same and that meant it's scales would become his and he would walk out of battlefields practically unscathed.

Samehada was gone now, however, so this time the healing comes from medics, his own crude patchwork, or as it's the current case, Konan's own clammy hands washing the blood off his hair and pressing a clean tower against the torn skin of his scalp; he must still be somewhat concussed because he follows and leans against cool, smaller palms.

"Folding it by hand?" Kisame grins at the glossy, gray square in her hands and at how she folds and creases and tucks in its edges, her nose almost pressed to the paper.

Konan replies, "I don't always weaponize my hobbies."

After a few silent minutes, she forms a seal; the paper shark swims his way in mid air, before gliding back and nestling into her hands.

Lightning cracks high above them, followed by the roaring of thunder and soon the sky tears itself into a vicious deluge.

On old and dutiful instinct, Kisame raises his arm to cover her with his sleeve but Konan is swifter (or just familiar with the weather) and, she too, instinctively, summons her white paper wings above him, shielding them both from the downpour.

He half grins, slowly lowering his arm as she closes the distance between them so her wings don't spread out awkwardly; their arms brush with each step they take towards her office.

They sit beside a kitchen table in the evening light, drinking coffee and smoking, and Harry is speaking with a deep voice that's six thousand miles away: they say that to go into the pale is an annihilation so total that it rejects the rule of time and claws you out of the world's memory, but that just isn't true, is it, I mean, we know that, there's testimonies. There are thoughts traveling forever across deconstructed ideas of motorways and shouldn't we bring love to this fragmentary permanence, Kim, would it not be fair that deep down, in this great tumult of consciences, the very bones of this new world will remember that I loved you so much?
Kim sustains his gaze and sits very stiff and very still, existing fully by the kitchen table, trusted anchor feeling the pull.

"How long has it been since Saruman bought you? What was the promised price, Gríma?"

Pushed against the pillar, its coldness felt like nothing in comparison to the shivers that Éomer's voice was gifting him. Gríma averted the fiery gaze and caught a glimpse of Éowyn's shadow as she headed back to her chamber. Éomer's grip tightened as his eyes spoke in his stead.

And then it just dawned on Gríma the situation he was in: alone with him, face to face with his promised price, in a risky yet awfully pleasant position.

His insides twisted, as many times before, and he felt his desire surging once again. For he had been waiting. So, so long.

If only things had gone differently. If only Saruman hadn't just taken Théoden's mind but also...

"No," Gríma uttered with difficulty. "You're wrong." He got a hold of Éomer's wrist and from there, slowly climbed on top of the Marshall's hand. Timid, unexpected caresses followed.

"That's just too bad," he said as he felt Éomer's grip far looser.

The newfound realization already piercing through the fingers still touching Gríma's face.

"I wished I could have whispered in your ear too."

:I

Edited 2022-02-28 21:20 (UTC)

oh, Quasi. :(

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Page 237 of 247

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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Re: Tell Her How Good She Looks

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Re: Umineko, Kinzo

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Re: Never Have I Ever, Ben/Paxton

Re: The Lunar Chronicles, Cinder & Iko

Re: OW - OMC/OFC

Pathologic, Murky

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Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo

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Merrily We Roll Along, Unrequited Charley/Frank

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Original, OFC/OMC

Clemency for the Wizard King

Downton Abbey, Edith, Mary

Naruto, Kisame Hoshigaki/Konan

Naruto, Kisame Hoshigaki/Konan

Naruto, Kisame Hoshigaki/Konan

Disco Elysium, Harry/Kim, Harry/chucking himself into the void but what else is new

lotr, éomer & gríma

Re: Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo