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

“You and your sister are limbs of the same body, equals and opposites,” Mama said, and it isn’t until years later that Shangqi begins to understand what that means.

She was born to be the bringer of life and joy, like the warmth of the summer she is named after, but he left her freezing on that mountain top, and for ten years, he burns with the rage of guilt he directs at himself.

After, she teases that it is only fitting that he joins the most elite, noble group of warriors on the planet while she still operates in the shadows; the only difference for her from before is that the shadows work for her now.

He is up and she is down. She upholds the past while he fights the forces of the future. He is breath and she is death. Light and dark, they both shape the world.

up 上 = shang; down下 = xia
shang 尚 can mean ‘even, yet, still’, but can also be formed into gaoshang高尚 noble, lofty
qi 气 is associated with air, breath, lifeforce, but also manner, spirit, anger
xia 夏 means summer; also name of an ancient dynasty
ling 灵 can mean agile, intelligent, quick, or spirits, spiritual, (departed) soul
lingqi灵气 can refer to having a spiritual quality/atmosphere (in a place)

Edited 2022-01-17 10:25 (UTC)

!!! I am in awe, truly, how well you work with what was given and write something like this! All the paralles, exactly this: "equals and opposites". It fits them perfectly and it is also beautifully written

And so with Xialing, do you think it's meant to be more summer? Or the ties to her past and the ancient dynasty? It's so sad to think of her cold and alone when she is literally supposed to be the summer child. It is fascinating how you are unpacking all of this. Is Ying Li (their mother) Lingqui above? She was such a fabulous character and I love their "auntie" Ying Nan (I've adored Michelle Yeoh for decades). Something I was struck by (and again on a recent rewatch) is that you expect some sort of tension between the village and the children and instead the are welcomed, cherished, and brought to see their mother again. Ahem. I also have some poorly formed feelings about this movie and your brilliant fills are bringing it all back.

lingqi is the combination of the second characters of Shangqi and Xialing's names, and I have this vague inkling that the compounding of these two concepts (qi-lifeforce and ling-spirituality) have ties to taichi as a martial arts form and so obviously ties them to their mother, but I really don't know enough about taichi to really say anything intelligent about it. But it's clear whoever came up with the specific Chinese characters for these characters' names have put a lot of thoughts into it.

Oh and Xialing - I think it's probably more summer, because that's the most obvious modern connotation you would go with. Even by Wenwu's standards, the Xia dynasty was millenniums before his time. But I do have a headcanon that before America, Shangqi would have had a very classical education because clearly he didn't go to a normal school.

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

Shangqi (尚气) & Xialing (夏灵)

Re: Shangqi (尚气) & Xialing (夏灵)

Re: Shangqi (尚气) & Xialing (夏灵)

Re: Shangqi (尚气) & Xialing (夏灵)

Re: Shangqi (尚气) & Xialing (夏灵)