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, a phone that keeps ringing

Should we really have forced – even become a demon to protect – I trust the police – this isn’t justice – we gave up the right to be – I don’t trust – when the seagulls cry – guys, please stop fighting – mom, if it were me would you have – this is what the witch wants, she –

The shrill cry of the telephone cuts through the circle of their discord and they all look at each other helplessly, a lump of fear in their collective throat – the phone lines were supposed to be down because of the storm. Another surge of squabbling threatens to rise up in the face of this new development that must be a trap, and still that horrible machine continues to ring, so as the only living adult left, Natsuhi takes responsibility and picks up the receiver.

oooh i love that last sentence and how all the fragments blur together, it reminds me a bit of a certain source for umineko, that scene in attwn where they're all at the table and agatha christie jumps from thought to frenzied, suspicious thought. and natsuhi cutting through the chaos to take responsibility in the end!

thank you! some of those fragments had specific people connected to them as i was coming up with them, and others were more vague and shared among all four of them, and it was a lot of fun to figure out what order would tell the best story. and heee, i hadn't specifically been thinking of that attwn scene, but now that you've mentioned it i can totally see it.
natsuhi is so brave to answer that phone, considering her history.

They break from their romantic interlude to both face the phone on the desk and stare as it rings and rings and rings.

Maybe it's Matt Kerr calling to tell Lynda the commercial version of the Junior Gazette is a go or a dud, or maybe it's Spike's dad ready to tell him they need to get to the airport ASAP to head back to America, possibly forever.

Spike and Lynda believe their futures each depend on the words that lie beyond the persistent ringing of that phone; if only they realised they actually held their futures within their own joined hands, if only they would promise to simply hold on.

Maybe there's a world, Zhao Yunlan thinks, where he survives this and walks away even though Shen Wei doesn't, where the university calls the SID's chief in to sort through Shen Wei's personal effects because for all that Professor Shen had colleagues and admirers legion there'd never been friend.

A world where Zhao Yunlan starts paying for a no-longer-necessary phone bill, just so he can dial it sometimes and hear those familiarly measured tones: Hello, you've reached Shen Wei at Dragon City University…

(Or maybe it doesn't exist at all because that Zhao Yunlan gets his Shen Wei out alive somehow, because if time travel can be real then so must parallel universes with endings happier than these; but in this one all he asks is to hear Shen Wei's voice even just one more time, before the Lantern takes him.)

Ohhh this is heartbreaking!

I feel like I'm going up and down the angst meter with these prompts haha. Though credit where it's due, the answering-machine-message idea was totally filched from Detective Conan…

One more, one fucking more, Agnes thought, gritting her teeth as she put down the contract she was reviewing yet again and picked up the phone. One of the sponsors. Of course it was; Agnes took a breath and let it out, reminded herself HeroTV needed them, no matter how obnoxious they were and how many stupid questions the reps asked about disaster fallout - an easier reminder to give herself on the fourth call than the twelfth - and picked up the phone.

"It's just my friends, again," Keisuke waved it off, "they've been asking me to come hang out with them tonight, but since I've got you here I don't want to, you know?"

". . .do you not want to let them meet me? To . . . to admit to me?" Kin asked, fingers knotting before himself, and Keisuke froze, eyes widening; Kin didn't sound angry or even leading - the way Junro most certainly would have - he sounded . . . distressed.

"Oh fuck! No, I mean- Of course not!" Keisuke assured him, grabbing for the phone an instant before it started to ring again. "We can go out with them if it's what you want! You wanna meet them?" he asked, and a little smile bloomed on Kin's pretty face as he looked up at Keisuke.

Tadokoro raised an eyebrow at him. "Aren't you going to get that?"

Yuusuke glanced at his phone, which showed Toudou's number flashing on it for the fourth time in the last three minutes. "No."

His phone finally, blessedly silenced, and then a beat later Tadokoro's phone started ringing.

Tadokoro picked it up, the traitorous asshole. "Hello? Oh, hey, Toudou!" He gave Yuusuke a shit-eating grin. "Yeah, he's right here. Hang on, let me grab him for you."

Yuusuke glared at him. "You two should never have exchanged phone numbers."

Tadokoro held out his phone, still grinning. "Oh, but aren't you so glad we did?"

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

no subject

Umineko, Natsuhi and the cousins

Re: Umineko, Natsuhi and the cousins

Re: Umineko, Natsuhi and the cousins

The Future is Calling (Press Gang, Spike/Lynda)

Guardian; Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan

Re: Guardian; Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan

Re: Guardian; Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan

Aftermath (Tiger & Bunny; Agnes)

Meet the Friends (Kingyou Hime; Keisuke/Kingyou-kun)

Yowamushi Pedal, Tadokoro & Makishima, Toudou/Makishima, Persistence