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

[rthstewart]

Wheel of Time (Amazon), Moiraine Damodred/Siuan Sanche, blue and gold

WoT (TV), allusions to sexual situations

[senmut]

Siuan dreams of the vivid blue, fingers finding enclosures, slipping it clear of pale shoulders, dipping in to kiss at the cream bared there.

Moiraine remembers the coolness of the gold beneath her lips, the last kiss given that of tribute to the woman that will ever hold her heart.

In time, this life or the next, neither blue nor gold will be the end of all their dreams, and yet… it is who they are, with destiny writ large over them.

[rthstewart]

Hawkeye, Kate Bishop +/ Yelena Belova, elevator music

[petra]

Kate ticks off the boxes in her head: tall, no; tan, no; young, yeah; lovely, if you like your girls a little murdery. Two out of four isn't great, and she has no idea where Ipanema is. "Do you dance?" she asks Yelena, and doesn't realize how weird the question is till Yelena stares at her, frowning.

[rthstewart]

Any, any, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”

Transformers G1

[(Anonymous)]

Prowl's back slammed against the wall as a barrage of laserblasts crisped the paint on his doorwings, narrowly missing his head and taking chunks out of the tumbledown remains of the building he'd sheltered in. His comm screeched; whatever interference had been jamming it finally lifted, possibly thanks to the barrage that had knocked out almost everything else in the air. "Tactical," he rapped out, processor already recalculating how to turn the remains of the army around and push into the battered Decepticon line.

//Oh thank Primus someone's there, we've lost our captain, we're stuck in-//

"Burst me the co-ordinates," Prowl interrupted, brisk and already on the move away from the gun emplacement blocking his previous route. "I'm on my way."

No plan survived contact with the enemy. And no tactician did either, unless they could think on the move.

[(Anonymous)]

Any, novena/supernova, will GRRM ever finish ASoIaF?!

[loveandrockmusic]

The sun scrambled as it collapsed into a white dwarf: "Oh wait, did George ever finish those books?"

The universe paused just at the edge of the star's death. The black void opened wide, split like a grin.

"Fraid not," it laughed, before gobbling it up.

[kalira]

any, any, tea makes everything better

[ruthchinn]

Q blinked blearily up from his screen. The agent on another continent was still standing, and there was retrieval arriving soon. His mug was cold, but that didn't matter.

[ruthchinn]

Any, any, "conlangs are worth learning"

[ravenlilyrose]

John started between Sherlock--still standing in the middle of the deserted road--and the building the strange man they had just been talking to had disappeared into.
"Did you just-?"
"Conlangs are worth learning, John," Sherlock declared as if that explained the complete conversation he'd just had in Klingon when John had been pretty sure Sherlock had deleted all knowledge of Star Trek.

[(Anonymous)]

Any, any, I have no interest in learning the rest of the Greek alphabet.

Beast Wars, Depth Charge & Optimus Primal

[raisedbymoogles]

No more Omicrons.

If Depth Charge and Optimus agreed on nothing else, they agreed on this: Rampage, or Protoform X as Depth Charge had known him, must be destroyed here, on Earth, before they could even think of going back to their own homeworld and time. As much as Optimus hated the extrajudicial nature of it, he knew he'd never forgive himself if through inaction he let another event like Omicron happen again.

[loveandrockmusic]

Narnia, rthverse,

Dark Wings, Dark Words (Narnia RthVerse, Ed & Susan)

[vialethe]

“Ed,” Susan asked, twitching the curtain aside with a practiced hand, “have you any projects on the boil, as it were?”

“Why would you think that?” he asked, stifling the urge to yawn into his teacup (too many late nights in the bars of DC will do that to a man, he reflected, even one with his sort of stamina).

“The murder in our front yard was a dead giveaway,” his sister said, and it’s only that exhaustion he had to blame for the undignified way he scrambled from his chair; in hindsight, perhaps the caws should have given it away long before Susan’s satisfied huff of laughter.

[ernest]

RWBY, Salem, 'fantasy takes the form of what they fear'

Salem Explains Herself

[silveradept]

"Tyrian lacks subtlety," Salem said, nodding at Cinder's outburst, "but I do not use Tyrian when I wish to be subtle. His role is to remind every Huntsman that they took on their foolish paths because they believe in a fantasy, with heroes, villains, and the assumption that their side will win in the end."

"Tyrian," she said, indicating the battle unfolding beneath them, "is there to remind them that their fantasies of victory are nothing more than the dreams of frightened children."

[kalira]

any, any, someone is determined to remain a background character

[ravenlilyrose]

Matt had very quickly after arriving at McKinnley his freshman year, looked around and realized that it was perfectly set up to be a high school drama, and he wanted no part in that. And maybe he had made some poor decisions--joining the football team had been a risk and joining Glee had been a serious lack of judgment on his part, but there was very little he could deny Mike and he really did like football and dancing--but he tried to make up for it by not talking to anyone.
But by the end of his sophomore year, he realized that if he stayed he was going to be pushed into the foreground by force because Glee seemed to be the center of the drama, so without explaining his reasoning to anyone but his parents and Mike, he moved away and left McKinnley behind, sad to sacrifice his new pseudo-family but unwilling to become a main character in a high school drama.

[ernest]

Umineko, any, heart of gold

[(Anonymous)]

Any, any, "If it's IN you to climb you must"

Littlewood, Nameless Hero

[(Anonymous)]

You blink at the insistence, if only because travellers through the village tended to come for the market and only spared a few words - or a brief interpretive dance if they spent time in Deluca first - before moving on.

They don't take your deflecting headshake at face value, it seems. "But you are the Hero of Solemn!" they protest, peering at you as though you'd just belched in their face - pulling back just a bit, nose scrunched in offence. "You must-"

It's probably rude to turn and walk away, but you've already lost your memories to a previous life's heroic quest. The person you are now would much prefer to spend their morning bringing new trinkets to Laura in the museum, not scrambling up a cliff on someone else's sidequest.

[topaz_eyes]

Any, any, cardboard masks of all the people I’ve been

RWBY, Ozma

[ernest]

Ozma is a magic lantern, the shape of his soul flung carelessly across the nerves of whoever will come next. He does his best to fake the life he has just stolen, or he fakes being himself when there’s no way to know who that is after all this time.

But the one thing he does not do, cannot do, is turn back to see the light source that sends him on his way, for fear he will discover that Salem was right and it is no god at all.

[ernest]

RWBY, Salem/Oz, the glass of fashion and the mould of form

[ernest]

Umineko, any, 'he saw the way the world could be, in spite of the way that it was'

Umineko, Battler

[rionaleonhart]

For a long time he only knew the dark side of magic, stakes and blood, something to be denied and pushed away. It's hard to define exactly when that changed. But Beatrice leaps from the window into his arms, and the world is different now, every mundane surface shimmering with golden butterflies.

[ernest]

RWBY, Winter, ice shards

Winter after Penny gives her the gift

[silveradept]

She is a solider, first and foremost, and that means she does not have time to handle anything that might make her vulnerable on the battlefield. But seeing Penny, and the terrible power that she bestowed on Winter without losing her smile, she can't channel all of that into justifiable rage. If the ice she's spent years building around her heart breaks now, the shards will kill her long before the Grimm do.

[loveandrockmusic]

Narnia, mirrorverse feat. Andrew Garfield!Caspian

Narnia Films, Barnes!Caspian & Garfield!Caspian

[aelisheva]

It was like looking through a window and meeting a long-lost brother, or rather a distant cousin, as he didn’t look exactly similar to Caspian, come to think of it. This Other Caspian had a stronger nose, light brown hair instead of dark, and his thick mane was fluffed and peaked up like whipped cream instead of loose and straight around his shoulders. Still not ugly though, thank heaven.

[ravenlilyrose]

Star Trek, any, "Early 21st Century TV shows are not cool"

Star Trek: Discovery, Michael Burnham & Sylvia Tilly, So Many Channels...

[ladyjax]

Michael walked into the ship's lounge to find Tilly grumbling as Zora zipped through her library of stored media on a view screen.

"Find anything interesting?" Michael asked as she undid the collar clasp of her uniform and took a seat near Tilly before digging into a bowl of popcorn.

"I have two words for you: Reality. Television," Tilly replied with huff. "Early 21st Century TV shows are not cool."

[ernest]

Hamlet, Laertes, 'there is no justice, there is just us'

[smallhobbit]

"Look," Laertes said to Ophelia, "there really is no point in complaining. Get a grip, sister, and if you think Hamlet is a complete **** then go and tell him so."

"Says the man who's been pining over Horatio over since he arrived home!"

[ernest]

Hamlet, Claudius/any, with witchcraft of his wits

Claudius/Beatrice (Umineko)

[little_lady_d]

Her eyes are sparkling bright, blue as the sea, her lips curled with mocking merriment as she curves her hand to Prince Claudius’s cheek and pours golden promises into his ear. All the dreams of his midnight hours and midnight weeds collected — crown, ambition, queen — could be called his at last, and no breath of blame shall fall on him. All it needs is a little magic.

[mad_madam_m]

any, any, Valentine's Day

For White Day, Sayaka's sending her a pipe bomb as a thank you gift

[last_haven]

When it came to Kyoko, there were certain truths that you could always take at face value: wasting of food or grief seeds were a recipe to get your ass kicked in, life was too short to worry about things like homework or obeying the law, and if she gave you gave you food, that meant she approved of you.

This monstrosity sitting like an eye sore on the table in front of Sayaka, on the other hand, didn't seem to fit in the categories above. "I think," Sayaka murmured, "this is a threat."

"Oh, don't say that," Madoka demurred, but even she was looking dubiously at the thing before them. "She wouldn't want to hurt you!"

Homura frowned, adjusting her glasses as she flipped the sloppy scribbled card over in her hands. "I agree with Madoka--this is too much effort for a trap from her. It probably is just chocolate cake... or, rather, it was supposed to be one."

"Well," Mami offered, hiding her smile behind her tea cup and tapping a finger against the fork next to Sayaka's plate. "There's only one way to find out."

Sayaka frowned, cautiously cutting a tiny piece off--the cake belched a tiny plume of smoke--and reluctantly stuck it in her mouth. Quietly, the group watched as she winced and then slowly bit down--something in her mouth crunched. After a moment, she swallowed and looked at them with watering eyes. "It was a threat."

[mad_madam_m]

any, any, working late

HIStory 3: Trapped, Tang Yi/Meng Shao Fei

[undeadrobins]

[My first 3SF of the year, and, as usual, I've failed to keep it to three sentences. At least it's only four, so it's not THAT bad...]

Tang Yi wakes up alone in the bed; he can hear Meng Shao Fei muttering to himself at the small desk in the room, quietly enough that he's clearly trying to avoid waking Tang Yi, but loudly enough that something is bothering him.

He's missed too many of these moments to even consider going back to sleep, so Tang Yi climbs out of the bed, grateful for the warmth of the room on his bare skin, walks over to Shao Fei to plant a soft kiss on his shoulder.

Before Shao Fei can respond, Tang Yi scoops him into his arms, ignoring the spluttered complaints about having work to finish and things to sign off, and carries him back to the bed, where he places Shao Fei down carefully and stretches his own body above his husband's. "No more work for you," he says with one more kiss, "at least not of the paperwork kind."

[mad_madam_m]

any, any, returning a gift

Hamlet, Hamlet/Ophelia

[ernest]

Ophelia has certain remembrances of Hamlet’s that she longs to keep for herself, but just as the prince is not only one man, the things he gives away are no mere objects. She thrusts the letters away from her without looking because she cannot bear to see his face when he realizes what is being done to them both.

“I never gave you aught,” he says with an attempt at derision, and she knows it for the promise it is – if there is nothing to be returned in the first place she can keep the memories for as long as she likes.

[mad_madam_m]

any, any, their greatest fear

Nightmares Shut Aside (Tiger & Bunny; Keith/Agnes)

[kalira]

". . .darling? Are you all right?"

Agnes didn't open her eyes, focusing on taking deep breaths - focusing on the warmth of the broad hand curling gently around her shoulder, and the strong body nudged up close at her back.

"I'm fine; go back to sleep, sweetheart." she said, her voice wavering just a little as she fought to compartmentalise - shutting away the images that had torn through her sleeping mind; a whirling backlash of a fiery storm, an explosion scattering fragments of tech and armour, shattered shards of pink-tinged ice . . . a dusky purple shadow plummeting from a clear sky.

[mad_madam_m]

any, any, phoning home

One Last Time (Timeless, Flynn/Lucy)

[ultra_fic]

It was a crazy thing to do, calling her at a time like this, in 2012, when she wouldn't even know who he was (and was probably better off never finding out).

Garcia Flynn couldn't help himself - he had to hear her voice, just one more time before the end came - even if it was just her saying hello over and over again, before summarily dismissing a possible heavy breather and hanging up.

"Goodbye, Lucy," he whispered, after already ending the call, then letting the darkness take him forever.