rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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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, the hero becomes the villain

It wouldn't have taken much for his life to go very differently; a small nudge in one direction, a slightly less positive decision, a choice to act on an impulse instead of swallowing it down.

He sometimes wonders, when he sees another rich asshole walk away without a care in the world, why he shouldn't just do it himself, just use his skills in a different way, and take the wealth and power they all seem to have.

And then he glances at his partners, the two best things to ever happen to him, his compass for what is right and wrong, and he knows that they'd never forgive him if that happened... and that's enough to still his mind for another short while.

Perfection ♥

Ooohh I love this! The idea of Eliot being very close to walking a dark path, only being stopped by his love for Hardison and Parker, really cool

Sam clutched the Ring in his hand and looked out at the green world around him: vines tore down the Dark Lord’s tower and crumpled the garrisons and camps of the orcs; trees burst forth full-grown out of rocky crags; and meadows of wildflowers rippled out over the wastelands of Mordor, spreading until they reached Ithilien to the west and all the land was one great garden.

He smiled at his triumph and at the destruction of the enemy’s works: Everything would be green and growing now, as it always should have been.

And across the wide lands of Middle-earth, the rampage of nature swept through the dominions of all Free Folk and drew their cities to the ground.

Oh, this is perfect.

Ohh, this is great!

Oh my god, this is chilling! I have never seen this idea before but I love it so much! How even the best of intentions and superficially good actions can be corrupted. Sam with the ring is something else

Thank you! It was interesting idea to play with for sure.

Ah, I love this! The "rampage of nature" is a wonderful blend of Sam's good intentions and the violence that springs from the Ring.

(There's actually a scene very much like this in the Rankin-Bass cartoon Return of the King! For a brief scene, Sam contemplates taking the One Ring for himself and transforming all of Middle Earth into an idyllic garden, in a rather terrifying manner that looks very much like what I visualize in your ficlet. I've seen some people complain about that scene taking liberties with the text and Sam's character, but I always thought it was a really interesting view of how the Ring could potentially corrupt anyone, even him, however pure their ideals.)

Thank you!

How interesting! I've never seen the Rankin-Bass version of LOTR; thanks for sharing that! When I was writing this, I remembered (perhaps wrongly) a scene in the books that states that Sam would want to create a garden if he had the Ring, but perhaps it was actually something I'd heard about the RB version that my brain then misattributed to the books (entirely possible; I do have a knack for scrambling things). Regardless, I agree with you; it's fascinating to consider how the Ring could prey upon anyone's good intentions and twist them into something altogether negative.

a scene in the books that states that Sam would want to create a garden if he had the Ring

You know, now that you mention it, it's very possible that this is mentioned in the books and I've just forgotten about it -- that would explain where the scene in the cartoon came from!

In any case, it's fascinating to think about. And I particularly love the way your ficlet transforms Sam's love of nature and gardens into this wild vision that's less like Hobbiton and more like the Romantic sublime.

Oh, nicely done, this is great.

This is amazing ♥

Taichi took a deep breath and held it for a moment, staring down at the horrified face of his sister. "O-Onii-chan?" she asked shakily, taking in his long cloak and cracked goggles perched like a mocking crown on his head, which he wore to remind himself of the child he used to be and the reason why he had turned his back on everything.

"Hikari, I never wanted it to come to this; I never wanted to leave you behind," he said sincerely, trying to hold in the pain - he had decided to take over the Digital World to protect everyone from the threat of another evil Digimon (like Diaboromon, who had almost started a world war, like Apocalymon, who had nearly destroyed both worlds, like Millenniummon, who had taken a Chosen Child down before being defeated), to protect her from the grief and anger that had slowly been festering inside him.

She didn't believe him, he could see it in her eyes, and so he sighed and tapped Greymon's shoulder with his boot, signalling his partner to prepare himself for a fight. Greymon, at least, would always stand by his side.

"If this is how it ends... then... then so be it!"

Zelda spread her arms and darkness, not light, burst forth from her; it was an unlocking of power of a sort, but Zelda didn't even look like she noticed. "So be it!" she cried again. "Let it all burn, I don't care! The Goddess abandoned me; she can burn! My father can burn! All of Hyrule-!"

Her voice choked off on a sob, and Link thought for a second that sanity had returned to her. But when her mouth opened again it was to scream, not speak, and that dark energy was taking on a baneful glow, it was swirling up the princess's body and she screamed her fury, her hatred, her malice-

Link could only watch helplessly as Malice consumed the bright, brave, beautiful girl he'd served all this time. As she turned to him at last, laughing from a throat gone raw, Link saw Calamity Ganon roar his triumph, swirling under the blood moon.

Oh I love your descriptions of dark!Zelda! It's very powerful

The power always comes with a cost, but the cost doesn't matter.

Every time she accepts it, she learns more about it, where it comes from, and how to control it.

The next time he offers it, he shouldn't be surprised when the stinger finally finds its way to him, instead.

Oohhh, cool

Depending on how you looked, it hadn’t taken much to push Clint from good guy to bad – just a snap of the fingers. That was before you took into account just what that snap took – family, friends, half of the world and what had been left behind… the Tracksuit Mafia, Hydra, The Ten Rings… more than enough evil to keep Clint working out his anger and sorrow for the years it took for someone to come up with a way to undo the snap.

He may not like who he’s become, he may not be proud of what he did, but he knows there was more justice in his actions than in those of Thanos who took half a universe without caring about the innocence of the people he stole. But even knowing that, it’s hard to live with the truth of who he is now and the guilt for all those people he killed.

Oh this fits the prompt very well!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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Leverage, Eliot Spencer

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Re: Leverage, Eliot Spencer

LOTR, Sam Gamgee

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Re: LOTR, Sam Gamgee

Re: LOTR, Sam Gamgee

Re: LOTR, Sam Gamgee

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Digimon 02, Kaiser!Taichi AU, A Bitter Reunion

Re: Digimon 02, Kaiser!Taichi AU, A Bitter Reunion

Breath of the Wild, Zelda & Link

Re: Breath of the Wild, Zelda & Link

Miraculous Ladybug, Chloé, Trying To Learn

Re: Miraculous Ladybug, Chloé, Trying To Learn

MCU - Clint Barton (Ronin)

Re: MCU - Clint Barton (Ronin)