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

One

The Shadow People, the Sheikah were called. Most assumed because they operated in the shadows, in the dark spaces the royal family could not tread nor acknowledge. In reality they were the shadows cast by the light of Hylia. The first Impa was the first Zelda's other half, ever at her side. Just as Zelda, first of her name, would have her bloodline blessed by the goddess, so Impa would have her descendants always by the queen's side, as close as a person and their shadow.

People were always messier than gods.

Even if one believed in the purity of the Zeldas, those around her were not so blessed. Shadows were thrust into darkness. Companions became assistants became servants. Royals and nobles kept their hands clean by having their shadows butcher and torture instead. Priests became sanctimonious, abhorring the shadows as something sinister to harm those who walked in the light. Tidy graveyards hid necropolei underfoot, tainting the water supply. Who cared about the poor and the gravekeepers? Another story of many. One more bloodsoaked record of atrocity, murmured by the restless dead.

Even before the latest Zelda could not call upon the blessing of the goddesses, a schism developed when their technology turned on them. Some were done being servants, some resented the blessed being royal, but many agreed that their place in the darkness was a gross reversal and a betrayal of their people, unfairly blamed for the tools that killed their makers even more than other innocents. If the goddess and her supplicants would not uphold their ancient covenant, if the Sheikah would once more be a scapegoat, then there was no reason to serve. A schism might have been a grim but peaceful parting of ways were it not for a new idea.

The author's name was merely signed as "Yiga". An unassuming booklet, untitled but for the Sheikah eye, held heresy within. Why should mortals fight on behalf of the gods? it questioned, why should Hylia spill the blood of thier mayfly lives battling another immortal? What, it even questioned, was the evil of the Calamity? An era of darkness? Did their people not already face such strife, come out the other side, flourish in the shadows where others withered? The ones who sided with Calamity already were granted immortality, how was that any different from the blessings of Hylia except politics? Instead of a single hero reborn between eras, each individual was equally blessed every blood moon.

The books were burned as heresy.

The readers were killed as heretics.

With Sheikah killing Sheikah, the schism irrevocably tore the two groups apart. The new heretics took the penname as their name, the Yiga.

Two

"So I was thinking, with the centennial coming up..."

"Yeah? I've got a new dress ready and everything!"

"Do you think the Calamity will ever triumph?"

Her friend hissed through his teeth. "It's not like you to lose faith."

"It's not a question of faith!" she protested, "But these things usually get resolved quickly, right? Not deadlocked like this. Even the hero isn't dead this time, and if they're not dead, then they can't reborn."

"So?"

"So... I wonder if this is a stalemate. Not just for our lifetimes, but even longer. Maybe forever."

Her friend thought about it, then shook his head. "The Calamity's been around for even longer. The gods operate on such long timelines, a hundred years is just a day for them. Nothing can last forever, we just have to be prepared to support our lord."

She nodded. "True. I just worry about the future sometimes, yknow? Like we're on a cliff's edge."

Her friend laughed. "And we can handle cliffs, so don't borrow trouble, alright?"

"True. Thanks."

"No problem. C'mon, enough with the gloom, we're gonna have a real blowout for the centennial festival!"

"Yesss I'm gonna eat grilled noodles and fried bananas until I burst!"

"You and your stomach. I wanna dance til I drop!"

"You just wanna show off your dress."

"Yeah so? I've been working on it for a year! Everyone has to appreciate my embroidery."

Three

For a bunch of assassins and warriors, they never seemed to look up. The traps in the gorge were all set up for anyone walking up at the base, but dropping down from the top was a breeze. Literally, with Link's paraglider. Maybe it was more for the Gerudo?

"What do you think?" Link asked without speaking in the way of fairies, to the Korok.

"It's for an army!" she chirped, "Individuals like you are easy to off, but a larger group needs to be bottlenecked and crushed."

Link nodded at this wisdom. The little lady sure knew a lot of battle tactics, but she had probably witnessed it in action. They gave her another apple, since she had finished the one dropped on the offering bowl.

"Shouldn't you be protecting them from me?"

"Not our arrangement." she said, eagerly crunching into the second apple. "I'm here for favorable winds and water for their crops, and I get their tasty fruits and grain. Besides! You're playing hide and seek, it'd be no fun if you were stuck. It's only been twenty years!"

Link laughed. Twenty years for a wood fairy would be short indeed. "You don't mind the Yiga? They worship Calamity Ganon right?"

The Korok blew a raspberry behind her mask. "Who cares about fights like that? We serve Farore. We don't need to squabble over the Triforce or keep Hylia happy to keep our forests strong."

Unused to theological debates, Link thought for a minute about that. She did have a good point, but...

"What if Calamity wins and burns your forests down?"

"Oh, he can't burn them all down, silly! Even if powerful demons didn't need to breathe, their followers do!"

Sometimes Link really didn't understand fairies (did trees blow air?), but they couldn't deny the Korok's logic.

this is actually amazing, holy shit

loz has a hole filled story and lazy, formulaic writing but i am here to piece something out of the scraps dammit. i really like thinking about the world and stuff and thinking about how it'd all work, what would motivate people... its just boring and stupid if all the evil people are evil "just because". i do like the yigas' comedic tone but i wanted to really dig into the previous games' sheikah lore to fuel this. i played oot as a kid and the shadow temple has haunted me since. the implications!

on the other hand i didnt want to do a total reverse of "actually the yiga are Secretly Good and the good guys are Bad", since i think that's just as lazy. rather than good or evil, i thought about what might make people turn away from gods who are very real. i think about these things a lot when playing, thats why i love this writing meme, so i can get my gamethoughts out!

lastly, i wish i had yakisoba and fried bananas... they're both so good.

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

Subjectivity [Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Yiga Clan, Link, a Korok]

Re: Subjectivity [Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Yiga Clan, Link, a Korok]

no subject