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

[harmony_lover]

The Matrix Resurrections, Bugs & Lexy, falling in love

[harmony_lover]

The Matrix Resurrections, Bugs, your story meant everything to me

[harmony_lover]

Doctor Who, 13th Doctor/Yaz, we finally get our moment on the beach

[ruanchunxian]

(not quite the moment Yaz meant...but close enough)

“I’ve lived so many lives, so many years, that I stopped counting how old I was a long time ago,” the Doctor says, holding out a pocket watch with intricate circles and swirls carved into the lid, “and yet now, there is this – I know I must open it, it is my past, my present, and my future, but Yaz, I don’t know what will happen when I finally do open this, I can only know that I will not be myself, not the self that you know; can you live with that, and wait for me to come back to myself again?”

Yaz gingerly reaches out to touch the metal, which hummed under her fingertips, and for an almost wild moment, the word “Horcrux” flashes through her mind – it is like enough, isn’t it? – but also, it isn’t, not really.

Looking up at the Doctor, Yaz finds herself smiling, “No matter who you become, you’d still always be the best person I've ever met and I’m with you, whatever happens.”

[harmony_lover]

The Matrix Resurrections, Bugs, White Rabbit

[harmony_lover]

Doctor Who, 13th Doctor/Yaz, confessions

[harmony_lover]

The Matrix Resurrections, Neo/Trinity, our first moments alone after escaping The Matrix

[harmony_lover]

The Eternals (Marvel), Blade (character), it's about time

[raisedbymoogles]

Transformers (G1-cartoon for preference), minibot tossing

[(Anonymous)]

"Heads up!" Ironhide roars, bends and twists and grabs Cliffjumper by an arm and a leg and, before Cliffjumper can do more than squawk his indignation, surges up and sends him flying clear across the battlefield.

"Hey!" he yells, and then "Oof!" when he lands in Skyfire's oversized mitts, and before he can start to really protest the oversized probably-a-Decepticon-sympathiser says "Sorry!" and tosses him all the way up the mountain overlooking the fight, which is further away from the mayhem than Cliffjumper ever wants to be.

"What in the name of Primus' creaky boron compressor," he yels, pinwheeling in midair, and by the time yet another pair of too-big hands catches him he's about ready to haul off and punch someone right in their big smug-

"Apologies Cliffjumper," Optimus Prime says, and Cliffjumper might throttle it back just a tiny bit for the Prime. "But do you still have that rocket launcher in your subspace?"

Despite everything, Cliffjumper starts to grin. "Well if that's all you needed, Prime, why didn't you say so?"

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Star Trek Voyager, Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman, the utility of dandelions

[silveradept]

"There are many uses to this plant, as it is edible, can be used to make a restorative drink, provides sustenance for local apiary requirements, can be used as a—"

"Yes, Seven, but when they're like this, you can make a wish on them." Naomi concentrated on the flower before scattering all the seeds with her breath.

[(Anonymous)]

FFVII, Sephiroth, what's a beautiful boy like you doing without silks to balance the leather?

[ravenlilyrose]

Shakespeare, any, a character ends up in the wrong play

[smallhobbit]

"What's all the shouting about?" Gertrude demanded as she came into the main hall to find her new husband confronting an angry man wearing a kilt. She listened as Claudius explained that the newcomer was accusing him of usurping the throne that he himself had just usurped, and, what was worse, that he hadn't been at all subtle about the usurping, having used a dagger and not poison. She thought for a moment and then said, "It's simple really, we stick both Macbeth and Hamlet in the same ship and send them off together."

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Cimorene, adventures in organizing a dragon's hoard

Delegation

[edenfalling]

The trouble with the King's Hoard (the Capital Letters were not only implied but pronounced) was, firstly, that it had been gathered over centuries and consequently had more time than any individual hoard for items to accumulate and to spoil (or have their spells start to fray, whichever was more applicable), and secondly, that it had been gathered and partially reorganized by multiple dragons during those centuries, which meant there was neither rhyme nor reason to be found.

Kazul's hoarding tended toward fancy weapons and rare magical items, but apparently other dragons were more interested in intricately woven carpets, or jewelry (Cimorene was unsure if the big gaudy items and the small delicate items came from two dragons or one with wide-ranging tastes), or silk paintings from Cathay, or fragmenting papyrus scrolls, or inconveniently large sculptures, or any number of mismatched themes -- many of which required special conservation skills that Cimorene did not have.

"We're hiring a director and turning the Hoard into a museum," she announced to Kazul at breakfast; "We'll pay the salary out of ticket sales, and trust me, once we publicize a list of what's in here, every scholar in the world will pay an arm and a leg for a chance to respectfully poke around."

[(Anonymous)]

FFVII, Sephiroth&Aeris&Rufus Shinra for preference, Twins run in Cetra families

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Star Wars AU, Obi-Wan Kenobi, what would he have been if not a Jedi?

[ravenlilyrose]

Obi-Wan Kenobi has been many things, has seen countless possibilities stretching out before him, has nearly started down thousands of paths, has loved a million people, and watched a billion stars go by, but what he has never been (no matter how often he wished it) is insignificant to the galaxy.
He never gets taken to the Jedi and stays as a farmer with a mother who wished for a daughter and a father who cares very little for his family beyond their physical needs, but still the galaxy doesn't leave him alone, because when he crosses paths with a tall young man in the market one day, he allows himself to be dragged along on a world-saving adventure, taking that young man under his wing (because, honestly, he isn't sure how the idiot managed to keep himself alive this long without Obi-Wan's help).
Or he leaves the Jedi Order sometime during his apprenticeship (he had a thousand choices and saw twelve million paths, he just chose something different this time around) and he settles as best he can on one of a hundred planets, right up to the point when someone needs his help (and maybe, it's not the universe who won't leave Obi-Wan alone, but rather his own conscience and need to help that forces him into the center of a galaxy-sized shatterpoint).

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Mythology, different species of gryphons, different definitions of treasure

Sexual dimorphism in British heraldic gryphons (really!)

[adaeze]

Only the females have wings, all the better to soar over the wastes, seeking out the finest, rarest and best to bring home to adorn their nests.

The males have sharp spines instead.

The female flies all the stronger for knowing her eggs to be well guarded.

[vialethe]

Narnia, Susan, Listen to the sirens/listen to the heartbeat/listen to the turning tide/listen to the murmurs, carry them inside you/til we’re on the other side

[ernest]

Susan will tell herself later that she heard the ambulance scream past her window without guessing that it had anything to do with her, but the fact of the matter is that she would have been too late even if the siren did enter her conscious thought right that moment. She will hear her own furious, desperate, bargaining heartbeat over and above anything the police or fellow mourners or people who have never known loss can say to her.

And then, months or years in the future, she will know what she needs and ask one of her boyfriends to drive her to the seaside, where she will strip down to nothing, surge beneath the waves, listen to the voiceless murmur of the departed one last time, and finally leave a second set of footprints pointing away from salt water.

[vialethe]

Narnia, Aravis/Cor, We made it alive/we are not alone/kiss the ground and change your name

[animus_wyrmis]

The court at Archenland is foreign to both of them: less formal and smaller than the complex network of Calormene nobles that Aravis grew up with, and mind-bogglingly larger and more stilted than Shasta's childhood hut. So when they are tired of lessons, or once of them has accidentally offended one nobleman or another, or Lune's face has imperceptibly tightened and Corin has laughed himself sick, Aravis and Cor escape to the north tower and look south, to what was home, or north, to their Narnian friends. "We could go back," Cor says sometimes, when Aravis is overwhelmed; "We could run off again and go further north," Aravis promises, when Cor is frustrated. But in the end they always agree, together, to stay for another week, another month, until they realize they have not been to the tower in half a year and have become, in some real way, Archenlandian.

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, let me uncover the silver in your dark hair/the weight of your bones/i want to witness the beauty of your repair

SAB, Darkling/Alina

[caramelsilver]

In the twilight space between waking and sleep, in the state where she forgets all the terror, she imagines a life where they can be together. She sees the years unfolding, the world changing around them, but they stay the same, they stay together, they thrive together. In the dawn of her waking mind lives a dream of a life she can never have, but still yearns for, an exciting life with him.

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow/tarnished but so grand

SAB, Darkling/Alina

[caramelsilver]

She feels like a junkie around him - the yearning, the need for him to touch her. His touch made her feel alive, warm, useful, for the first time in her life. She wanted that feeling all the time, she wanted him, all the time, he made her shine.

[schoolsasaint]

Grey's Anatomy/Supergirl, Lexie Grey & Astra In-Ze, there's something going on with that alien general

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, wait for the signal and i’ll meet you after dark/show me the places where the others gave you scars

[conuly]

TGT?

[vialethe]

Narnia/GoT, Susan/Jon Snow, it’s still always you that i think of every morning no matter what/how i want you here

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Any, any, the last item on a length to-do list

[loveandrockmusic]

"Hair, check. Fourteen inches. Arm length, crown to cuff, check. Twenty-four inches. Inseam length, check. Twenty-eight inches."

She ran her finger down the list, expert eye cataloguing every checkbox, until it stopped at the very bottom.

"Ahem -- ah, Mr. Snow? If you'll just undo your pants, we have one more length to do."

[vialethe]

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina,, just between us, did the love affair maim you too?

SAB, Darkling/Alina

[caramelsilver]

Even years later, after him, after everything, she could not banish him from her mind. He was always lurking there, in the corner, taunting her with the memories, the nice ones, the warm ones. The memory of his kiss never far under the surface, easily triggered. He was gone, he was dead, but in her mind there he was, for forever.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Any, any, how to cope when you're surrounded by idiots

FF7, Reeve & Shinra execs

[raisedbymoogles]

Hour two of the board meeting: Scarlet and Hojo bitched and argued and did everything short of actively trying to rip each other's throats out; Heidegger bawled his terrible laugh and egged on whoever he thought was winning at the time; Palmer was doing much the same, albeit in his own oily obsequious way; and President Shinra presided over it all, watching the proceedings like a sports match but doing little in the way of refereeing.

Reeve just... kept his head down and sketched a model of Midgar with a few improvements he was working on designing. And if a couple of small stick figures were to be sketched flying off the edge of said model of Midgar... well, that was nobody's business but his own, wasn't it?