rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

Entry tags:

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, working late

[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."

Zuko twitched, breath hitching, as Sokka's hands slid over his shoulders; he hadn't needed the confirmation that his boyfriend was barely tracking, but he added it to the list.

"Come on, dragon," Sokka coaxed, glancing out at the very dark sky just visible through the window in Zuko's study, "it's late; you know," he added, changing tacks when Zuko made a cat-mulish sort of noise, "you'll do better work in the morning anyway. . ."

Zuko also, Sokka had noticed more and more over the past months but not yet mentioned to him, tended to droop and get a little less sharp after the sun went down; silly jerkbender did better under the sun . . . and then he spent all day with the court before working late into the night - how could it be any surprise he was distracted and less than his best?

The strange occurrence that day was that for once, Yu Tu was home from work before Jing Jing, who came in at nearly eleven o’clock, slamming the door, then just managed a “Sorry, my hand slipped” in a voice that oozed of lingering exasperation. She changed into slippers before flopping down next to where Yu Tu had been reading on the couch, allowing him to kiss away the knit of annoyance on her brows.

In answer to his questioning look afterwards, she said with a soft sigh, “I’ve just had the most trying evening with a producer who shall remain mostly nameless but who unfortunately shares your surname – a fact I will forever be resentful about – anyway, I think Ling Jie and I managed to turn down his offer of a collaboration in the end, but it was still exhausting!”

Edited 2022-01-16 11:03 (UTC)

"Jemis, it's half eleven; time and past for all good souls to be abed," Benneret said as he nudged his stepson's door open and saw the boy bent over his desk, beeswax candle burning like a defiant shout against the thick, sleepy darkness of the summer night.

"Oh!" Jemis said, startling to his feet and whirling to face the door; "Sorry, sir -- I lost track of time and didn't realize I was wasting the light."

"You've no need to worry over the cost of candles," Benneret assured the boy, wondering for the thousandth time how to break the pane of awkwardness that had lain between them since Jackory Greenwing had returned to life and died again within a single month. He ventured into the room to rest his hand on Jemis's shoulder and added, "I only meant that the mind is part of the body and requires similar care. Your books will be waiting in the morning, and you'll face your studies better with a good night's sleep and some of your mother's excellent breakfast in your stomach."

"Yes, sir," Jemis said, expression and posture screaming his own, equal sense of awkwardness, but he pressed back against Benneret's hand for a moment, chasing that contact, before he turned to put away his books and pen and pinch out the light.

Reeve had picked up more than one trick in his time at Shinra, and one of the most useful was the knowledge that if he turned off the light in his office and stayed very quiet for ten minutes at around seven o'clock each evening, the guard who came around to lock up would never bother checking that he had gone home.

That gave him the opportunity to work on his robotics. After a day of fraught communications, trying to make up for the most egregious of the other executives' sins, nothing beat a little tinkering with the cats: especially not with the knowledge that one day he might use this technology to put a stop to at least some of the terrible things perpetrated in the name of his employer.

He'd promised Holly that he'd give Lucy and Jack his undivided attention while he had them on his two week summer visitation, but he had shit on a stick on the Washington Heights homicide and if he didn't talk to his CI by the end of the week he might as well just throw in any chance of solving the damn case. So he left them sullenly stewing in the car while he dashed into the precinct and quickly snagged a few files from his desk, and was halfway back out the door before he heard the moans coming from the copy room; he backtracked, cocked his head, and smiled slowly when he recognized the voices. So that's what Joe and Connie meant by "working late."

The creak of the floorboards made Thoma look up from the counter he was wiping down. Ayaka stood there in the doorway, her arms crossed over her middle and wearing a pretty lilac yukata. “Thoma, what are you still doing up? It’s almost midnight.”

“It’s alright,” he said, giving her a tired smile, “I couldn’t go to sleep knowing I had unfinished work.”

Ayaka suppressed a yawn and smiled at him, she knew full well why he was still awake and it had nothing to do with unfinished housework and everything to do with her brother still not being home yet. She would let him have that though, and inclined her head to him. “Well, don’t stay up too late, you were going to escort me into the city tomorrow and we were going to have tea, remember?”

“Of course I remember, and don’t worry, I won’t be up much longer.”

“Make sure you’re not. Goodnight, Thoma.” She quietly left, leaving Thoma to finish cleaning the counters that he had already cleaned earlier that evening. He then tidied the pantry and made note of things that were running low and finally sat down at the table. Perhaps he should just go to bed, but… he just couldn’t. Not until Ayato returned home and he made sure he didn’t need anything.

It wasn’t for another hour, when Thoma has nearly fallen asleep at the table, head resting on his folded arms, that he’s gently shaken awake.

“Huh?” Lifting his head he blinks, looking around as his vision comes back into focus. Why was he in the kitchen..? And then he sees him. “Oh. Oh! My Lord, you’re finally home.”

“Thoma, why are you not in bed?” Ayato asks as he looks down at him, exhaustion all over his face.

“I was… finishing up some work.”

“At one in the morning?”

“I… yes.” Thoma decided he was sticking to that story no matter what.

“I see... Well, as your master I’m ordering you to bed now.”

“How did the meeting go?”

“It went as expected. Be careful, in the city tomorrow, Thoma. As you know the vision hunt decree is getting underway…”

“I won’t let anything happen to Ayaka.”

“Good. And make sure you don’t let anything happen to yourself either.”

Thoma nodded and was surprised when Ayato extended a hand to help him up. Without much hesitation, Thoma took it, enjoying the warmth of his master's hand clasped firmly around his own. That alone, Thoma thought, had been worth staying up for.

It was a routine funeral service, but that was no excuse to be sloppy. Cuauhtli—age 56, heart attack—deserved better than that. So Acatl and Ichtaca were still standing vigil over him past midnight, though Acatl for his part had been up since dawn and his hands were starting to shake. He ignored it. He was fine.

And then came the next line of the funeral hymn, and he had to stop to hold back an entirely inappropriate yawn. High Priest of the Dead with Mictlan’s power coursing through his veins or not, he was inconveniently mortal.

Worse, Ichtaca had noticed. “I’m calling Palli to take over for us,” he said with a tone that suggested Acatl had no choice in the matter.

By now, Acatl knew better than to argue.

Eve was wiping down the last of the tables at the end of the long Saturday shift in her cafe on Great Western Road when the woman, all long hair and feminine wiles, wheeled in with her dogs, or perhaps children, strangely hairy children if so, and paused, staring at the remainder of the days' sweets — there weren't very many now as Eve had taken most of the ones that were out-of-date but still good to eat to be packaged up for the homeless shelter — before dropping her shoulders and making as if to leave, the children running about on all fours around her wheelchair, so Eve called out before the other woman reached the door, "Our selection is limited because it's the end of the day, but I have some stuff out the back still, if you want something that isn't available," although Eve feared she hadn't heard her until one of the maybe-dogs barked something sounding suspiciously like language, at which point the woman turned towards her, who continued, "I can give you whatever want for free, as you've come in just as I was about to close the doors so I'm not actually required to charge you anything, and the till is off anyway, so why make not make both our lives a little better," and I want you to stay, Eve didn't add, as she had felt a brightness spark in her chest reminiscient of when she first saw her own reflection in that glorious pond soon after her birth — she wanted to look at this woman forever, wanted to touch her face and smile and converse with her, felt drawn towards instinctually more than she had initially been with dear Adam, wanted to smooth the pain lines around her eyes and share their life stories together.

The other woman turned back into the cafe, wheeling around while expertedly avoiding her childrens' paws even as they flocked around her, and looked over at Eve, who did smile but then began rearranging the table's cultery, trying to hide her frantic energy because it felt like she'd just seen, in this stranger's face, a long-lost sister or lover whom she wanted to embrace, "I saw the other day, as I walked past with my son," she indicated outside, and not at any of her dogs in the cafe, "strawberry tartlets on the menu — they are my absolute favourite, but I didn't want to buy any then as he, my son, would have eaten them all — you know how boys are with their insatiable appetites — so I have managed to sneak away for a moment's respite to get some for myself, and perhaps these runts, if they behave, but only if they aren't the chocolate covered ones," she said, indicating what Eve had apparently mistaken for small dogs but where clearly toddlers, each now sitting with rapt attention towards their mother.

One of the children wagged their tail as Eve nodded, smiled, and with great effort managed to walk into the back room, although every step away from the woman felt like that first day when she'd been called away from her own reflection by that voice, ultimately to be lead towards Adam, and had not wanted to leave, yet obeyed anyway, and here there was not even a voice to pull her away, only her desire to please guests as a good host, which lead her to carefully package up four of the best strawberry tarts with extra whipped oat cream, and walk back out to hand the box to the woman, who took one for herself and laid the opened box on the floor, where her dogs, dressed in jumpsuits, dove at the remaining tarts, then she took one of Eve's hands in her own, "I cannot recall ever meeting you before, my love, but you feel so familiar, like my reflection fully seen for the first time and not in some puddle of water; I wish we had met long ago before certain events tied me down," at which point she kicked one of the dogs, who yelped but continued stuffing strawberry tart into its face with its hands, "We could have been goddesses together, but, please, let us become friends; alas, I must go now, my son will wonder where I have been - know I will be back, but until then I hope you will write to me!" She took her hand delicately from Eve's, letting her fingers trail over her palm, and wheeled out of the cafe, the dogs trotting after her on two legs as they licked the remains of the tarts off their hands, and Eve wanted to reach out to her but instead looked at what had been left in her hand — a small, off-white calling card with a name and number on it:

Minerva "Sin" Djöfulsinsdóttir — 666 65000 —

I always write such long sentences for 3 Sentence Ficathon things, and have embraced the liberal use of the em-dash! Also available on AO3 here - https://archiveofourown.org/works/38605464

Edited 2022-04-25 16:25 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

no subject

HIStory 3: Trapped, Tang Yi/Meng Shao Fei

Late-Night Fog (ATLA; Zuko/Sokka)

You Are My Glory

A Scholarly Bent (Greenwing & Dart)

Final Fantasy VII, Reeve

Die Hard with a Vengeance, John, Joe/Connie

Genshin Impact, Ayato/Thoma

Obsidian & Blood, Ichtaca & Acatl

Strawberry Tartlets, Sin/Eve (Paradise Lost)