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, outsider perspective

Eddie can't help his spit-take at the headline in the morning paper: "Businessman John Chen found beheaded, 5-year-old daughter his heir". The man was an old fixture of the upper-class community in Hong Kong, at least fourth or fifth generation. And who's to be the poor little girl's guardian? Oh, what a shame: it's to be some nanny there were rumours swirling about a few months back about her and her employer. Too bad, Chen Enterprises had some good properties that he could have snatched up.

ooohh interesting!

"What the fu- Is that Keisuke?" Junro pulled his sunglasses off - it was past dusk anyway - and stared at his ex . . . and the slim, pretty little thing curled into Keisuke's side, looking up at him like he was some kind of wonder. "How the hell did he get such a sweet, pretty boy on his arm? Kei is trash!"

"Uh . . . didn't you date Kei?" Isumi asked slowly, looking at Junro rather than the pair across the street.

"I said what I said." Junro said with a huff, crossing his arms.

lol XD

*coughs* >.> XD

"Oh my God, Kaede, have you seen this?" Rei shoved a magazine, open to a two-page spread in the middle, in front of her face. "It's a swimsuit shoot with Barnaby and Wild Tiger!"

"Agh!" Kaede squeezed her eyes shut, but not quite fast enough; it was going to take some doing to get that image out of her brain. "Don't show me that!"

"Why not?" Rei looked confused. "I thought you liked Barnaby."

Kaede stared at Rei; it was weird to come across someone who didn't know at this point. "Yeah, before I found out he was dating my dad."

Rei's frown got deeper. "But I thought he was dating Tigerrrohhhhh my God Wild Tiger's your dad?!"

She slapped the magazine shut and threw it halfway across the classroom, and Kaede buried her face in her hands and really hoped nobody else would want to show her Barnaby's newest photo shoot.

I don't know this fandom, but this sounds pretty wild XD

Ange seeks out the Witch Hunt, the only people who have thought about her family’s destruction twelve years ago as much as she has – more than she has, if she’s being honest, because for years she tried not to think about it at all even when the fact of the explosion is what made her the pariah she is today.

These armchair detectives have all combed through the bottle messages front to back to uncover the real truth, so they know the written version by heart, but the longer she talks to Professor Ootsuki, the sicker she feels – they treat it as a riddle or a puzzle, but forget that each of those victims or potential culprits were people too, not just pieces to be deciphered.

“Thank you,” she says, meaning it, “but looking at the outside of the catbox just isn’t enough for me anymore.”

I'm afraid I don't know this fandom, but I really liked this: "they treat it as a riddle or a puzzle, but forget that each of those victims or potential culprits were people too, not just pieces to be deciphered"

thank you! umineko is a murder mystery game, and that sentence is one of the central sources of tension throughout it, because the mystery of whodunnit isn't nearly as important as the whydunnit.

ange! aah all her complicated feelings, her gratitude to the witch hunt for keeping her family alive at least through their speculations, and her discomfort with having something so personal reduced to an impersonal puzzle, a heartless mystery to be picked over and gutted by seagulls and cats.

(Necessary fandom background: Acatl has taken a vow of celibacy; Mihmatini is his sister.)

To give his superior some credit, Ichtaca supposed he had to admit the man was trying to be discreet. If Acatl-tzin was any other man—say, one who regularly had some sort of social life or maybe a hobby or two—it might even have worked. But Ichtaca saw him every day, and by now he’d picked up on his usual moods. Acatl-tzin was fatalistic, cautious, and diligent to a fault. He’d seen him smile perhaps once, ever.

Which meant that when Teomitl-tzin came by and Acatl-tzin lit up like a torch...well. It was enough to make Ichtaca think, and he wasn’t sure he liked the conclusions he was coming to. Teomitl was the Master of the House of Darts, destined for a life of war and politics. His brother had tried to kill Acatl-tzin. He himself had behaved so abominably during the plague that most of Acatl-tzin’s priests still wouldn’t even look directly at him, and not out of respect. It was true that he was Mihmatini’s husband, but when had marriage vows ever stopped a bored nobleman who saw something he couldn’t have? Ichtaca had seen firsthand how persuasive he could be, how easily Acatl-tzin yielded to him. Even plans for regicide had only been deferred, not stopped, and if Acatl-tzin could be persuaded to break those vows despite how hard he’d clung to them in the face of Tizoc-tzin’s instability...

(Not to mention what the Master of the House of Darts, chosen of Chalchiuhtlicue, could do to a man who turned him down. Ichtaca didn’t even want to think about that.)

It probably wasn’t his place to say anything. They were comrades, not close friends. But he couldn’t simply shut his eyes to unnecessary touches or Acatl-tzin’s smiles or the way Teomitl’s eyes gleamed like a hunting caiman’s when Acatl-tzin walked by. Finally, it was too much. I’ll ask how Teomitl is, he decided, and go from there based on Acatl-tzin’s reaction.

As he approached, it took him a moment to realize Acatl-tzin’s courtyard was occupied. Teomitl was speaking, voice clipped and distant, and he slowed down to listen.

“—rgive me, Acatl-tzin. I overstepped. I don’t mean to press my affections where—where they’re not wanted—mmph.”

Ichtaca knew what he would see and that he didn’t especially want to, but he cautiously peered around the entryway anyway. There was Acatl-tzin with his arms around Teomitl, kissing him with surprising ardor; Teomitl was stiff with shock, but then melted into it with a happy sigh.

Grimacing, he turned away. My lord, I hope you know what you’re doing.

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

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Dark Heavens x Crazy Rich Asians

Re: Dark Heavens x Crazy Rich Asians

Moving On (Kingyou Hime; Keisuke/Kingyou-kun, ex-boyfriend)

Re: Moving On (Kingyou Hime; Keisuke/Kingyou-kun, ex-boyfriend)

Re: Moving On (Kingyou Hime; Keisuke/Kingyou-kun, ex-boyfriend)

Tiger & Bunny, Kaede, Gonna Need Some Brain Bleach

Re: Tiger & Bunny, Kaede, Gonna Need Some Brain Bleach

Umineko, Ange (Spoilers up to Episode Four)

Re: Umineko, Ange (Spoilers up to Episode Four)

Re: Umineko, Ange (Spoilers up to Episode Four)

Re: Umineko, Ange (Spoilers up to Episode Four)

Obsidian & Blood, Ichtaca, Acatl/Teomitl