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, somebody make me feel alive/and shatter me
Shatter Me - Lindsey Stirling, Lzzy Hale

Books had been her first love since she was small, but the older she got, the closer the palace walls pressed in around her, and Amalie retreated into tomes of myth and history more and more. She loved the stories of far-off places, of heroes and monsters and of pig-keepers becoming kings, of good triumphing over wickedness and of happiness coming to the pure of heart.

Meanwhile, rumors of war hissed through the halls and Amalie couldn't even walk in the castle town for her father's fears; she would never hurt her father or Valri for the world, but sometimes Amalie wished for a dragon or a dashing rogue to drop into her lonely tower and upend the silver snowglobe of her world.

"We are not immune to our emotions, Doctor," Spock said amiably, "but the progress of our civilization can be directly attributed to our mental control over our biological instincts."

"It's because you damn Vulcans have no emotions that I'm freezing my ass off in a cave on the mountainside," Bones replied. "Now, get over here under the blankets so we can share bodily warmth."

hee!

So cute!!

If he believed in fate – which he supposed he did not – Yu Tu would say that Jing Jing burst back into his life like a supernova at the time he needed her light the most, taking him so much by surprise that it shouldn’t have taken until that Spring Festival for him to realise how unlike himself he had been acting.

Yu Tu before all of this would never have wasted hours numbing his mind on a video game, Yu Tu before all of this would have no qualm ignoring the strangely insistent request for him to act as a game coach for a random internet acquaintance, Yu Tu before all of this could hardly care less that said random internet acquaintance might have to wait a couple more days to get her air purifier fixed.

But he had chased the stars for almost all of his life, and when his world clouded over, suddenly, she came, sparkling in the light like her name, and she was a wishing star that guided him out of the darkness into a spiralling new world where all his doubts and fears could not help but shatter, and leave him out of breath without any other will but to be pulled into her orbit.

Bobby thinks he’s been dead for years, but did he stop living or simply never begin? College wasn’t so bad, he had a blast, but he couldn’t tell you the name of his major or his fraternity, or any of the girls he’s kissed.

Love is meant to be challenging, not the challenge of conquest, but someone who will sit across from you and challenge the thoughts you never paused to think about, shatter the expectations you had of yourself.

company fic! oh, bobby, there's this sort of ... detached depression to his thinking, where he can vaguely remember having fun, once, but remembering isn't the same as feeling it. and i love that final sentence on love, and the sort of challenge it's meant to be.

oh, excellent, 'detached depression' is exactly what i was going for with this one, the way he's decidedly not 'staring at the walls and playing solitaire' during Poor Baby, but probably goes through a period right after the end where he does exactly that.
but i really do think he's going to turn out okay and find someone he's willing to be challenged by, i think bobby deserves that <3

“You spend too much time with the dead,” Xochiquetzal had told him. “You forget what makes you alive.”

For a time, he’d thought the goddess was wrong. He had his priesthood, his temple, and his gods. He was at peace. What more did he need? Anything else would be...messy. Unnecessary. A distraction.

He built his own tomb brick by brick, not even noticing the clay caught under his fingernails. But it was fine, he was fine, he didn’t need anything else. Love and lust were for other people, for men not sworn to the gods. They weren’t for him.

But Teomitl smiled, and his heartbeat thumped against the walls of his ribcage. But Teomitl took his hand, and he felt that touch in every inch of his suddenly-awakened skin. But Teomitl shucked his cloak and stretched like a jaguar in the sun, all dark skin and strong muscles, and he couldn’t tear his stinging eyes away.

Xochiquetzal was still wrong. Acatl still spent plenty of time with the dead, but he knew exactly what made him alive.

Lieutenant Kitsuragi could not possibly have expected the hungover wreck that is shambling down the Whirling’s stairs on Monday morning, but he knows all too well how to welcome the certainty that fills him at the sight, a feeling that is a known value, warm and trusted, the measure of his life: “stand by this man,” it says, “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for he is your half brother, and you owe a debt to this ancient bond, signed in blood.”
It’s a recording that has been stuck in the lieutenant’s circuits for a long, long time, going in stale circles until today, when it adds: “he will understand you,” a prospect which is neither known nor trusted, not normal, and shakes him like a sudden lick of herring-flavoured egg and liquorice ice cream.
“He will get under your skin and unmake you from the inside out,” the feeling states at last, and Kim lets a shiver run down his back before he stands to attention, alert, collected, stiff and imperturbable, waiting for his new colleague to make his move.

(Kim's EDC is ridiculously high so it's only fair he gets his own first impression! And maybe his EDC is also a bit confused about what constitutes a feeling of brotherhood. Ice cream flavour courtesy of the normal cop thought)

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

no subject

Amalie, Twelve Houses series by Sharon Shinn

Star Trek: The Original Series - Spock & Bones

Re: Star Trek: The Original Series - Spock & Bones

Re: Star Trek: The Original Series - Spock & Bones

You Are My Glory (Cdrama)

sit in my chair and ruin my sleep (Company, Bobby)

Re: sit in my chair and ruin my sleep (Company, Bobby)

Re: sit in my chair and ruin my sleep (Company, Bobby)

Obsidian & Blood, Acatl/Teomitl

Disco Elysium, Kim/Harry, Esprit de Corps handshakes go both ways is all I'm saying!