rthstewart | 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Any, Any, dancing with ghosts

Before Aradia ever met Sollux or Tavros, before she met Vriska and all of Vriska’s ghosts, her friends were a boy with blood-drenched hair and a girl who existed only as a voice on the wind. They’re both long gone – found what they wanted or just drifted off – but while they were there, they’d hover outside her window, throwing small stones at the glass until the sun set and they could call her out to play. She used to chase them through half-buried halls, and twirl with the wind in her skirts until the stars through the cracked-open roof made her dizzy, and none of it frightened her; death was always close, but in those nights, every ending seemed a long way away.

My girl!!! What a lovely fill; that last sentence esp hits powerfully, both poetic and wistful.

Thank you! And I love the salamander icon.

Dance was returning to Cybertron, but it didn't much resemble the dance from Cybertron's Golden Age. So much of it had been lost to war and destruction, and the gaps had been filled in with styles from other cultures brought in from colonists from all over the galaxy. Not that Rodimus could throw stones - he'd practically revived pole dance in Iacon using techniques he'd learned both in Vos and on Earth.

Dancer of Flamestep's buildline. Would Flamestep even recognize her buildline in the dances he performed? Would she disapprove?

...he couldn't know either way, unless some archaeological miracle turned up her diary or something. Until then all he could do was tell himself he didn't need two dead authority figures hanging over his shoulder disapproving of him, and dance the steps he knew.

(takes off from my fic Dipolemacy)

Eeeee, Dipolemacy! And good for you, Roddy, that's probably the best thing you can possibly do.

Bucky wonders if it was like this for Steve when he came out of the ice, though it's certainly not now. He never sees Steve in the early hours unable to sleep. It’s a relief to see Clint already sitting on the couch, curled up in blankets, TV on quietly, letting him know that he’s not the only one whose memory is dancing with ghosts in the dark.

Ianto came up from the archives and paused as he heard the soft sound of music drifting out from Jack's office; he made his way directly up to look in on Jack, and found him dancing with an invisible partner, his face melancholy and his eyes closed.

Ianto hesitated, but slipped inside, brushing a hand over Jack's shoulder and moving around to face him. Jack startled, steps hitching, and Ianto caught his hand, pulling him closer, feeling warm as he smiled and wrapped an arm around Ianto's waist, dance brought into the here and now and ghosts, for the moment, forgotten.

Lovely ♥

Thank you! ♡

It was the ghost of Lilith's great-grandmother who taught her to dance, whirling around the empty halls with incorporeal hands hovering just over her skin. Ancestors used to help her study for tests, and a girl who never gave them her name would tell Lilith and her brother extra bedtime stories after their parents had tucked them in for the night. The ghosts were fewer there, and Lilith knew all their faces, and in the jumble of Volisport's streets full of them, she finds herself homesick for the quieter, kinder dead.

I don't know the fandom (I know Oxventure is outsidexbox's d&d stream, but that's it), but this makes me want to! I love the image of 'incorporeal hands hovering just over her skin', and that last sentence is one hell of a closer.

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.

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.

oh i'm loving the sort of lilting rhyme and alliteration of the first sentence, dance to prance, prance to plants, say to she and sits and still, and waits to whisper with the sort of flowing rustling ending. the second sentence is blunter, and the last has a ... softness to it, like settling down to rest in the earth, where murky's parents love her.

ahhhh, thank you, i've been rereading this comment and blushing ever since i got it, i love how you pick apart my sentences to find devices and structures i wasn't even properly aware of, it's very flattering.

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

no subject

Fill: Homestuck, Aradia & ghosts

Re: Fill: Homestuck, Aradia & ghosts

Re: Fill: Homestuck, Aradia & ghosts

Transformers (G1), Rodimus Prime

Re: Transformers (G1), Rodimus Prime

Avengers, Bucky (& a mention of Clint)

Melancholy Memories (Whoniverse; Jack/Ianto)

Re: Melancholy Memories (Whoniverse; Jack/Ianto)

Re: Melancholy Memories (Whoniverse; Jack/Ianto)

Oxventure: Blades in the Dark, Lilith

Re: Oxventure: Blades in the Dark, Lilith

The Walking Dead, Maggie

Pathologic, Murky

Re: Pathologic, Murky

Re: Pathologic, Murky