rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

UPDATE 14 FEBRUARY 2022 -- 3SF 2022 IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS! Do continue to fill prompts already posted but the 3SF 2022 is now closed. We'll be back next year in a new comm (If I can get my act together). Thank you again!

THIS IS THE NEW POST FOR PART 2 OF THE 3 SENTENCE FICATHON -- ALL NEW PROMPTS SHOULD BE POSTED HERE
You may continue to fill prompts (but not leave new ones) at the original Post 1 here but please post new prompts here, not there. And if you're asking, hey is just me, or did this get enormous really fast? Why yes, yes it did. Last year, it took us ten days before I opened a new post. This year, it took us about 5.5 days to get there. So, by all means, go back and fill in Post 1 and post new prompts here!

Also woops, in an indication of how busy I've been with other things, I neglected to post that for a third year in a row the awesome

conuly started a master list of unclaimed prompts and has been updating it as time permits. Obviously a huge task! Thank you!

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!

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Sleeping Beauty (Perrault version), the princess, if her mother-in-law was an ogre, then her husband and children must be part ogre too...

DC franchise (any), Dick/Barbara, I haven't laughed like that in a long time

Any, any, mindless scrolling

Pearl looks at her phone so she doesn’t have to pay attention to the man screaming about the apocalypse; she’s too old for revelations or memories, she just wants to pretend to be a soldier fighting a bear in a game that has no stakes because it isn’t real. Just as she selects the sword her phone flies out of her hand and she follows it over the edge of the platform, trying to believe those weren’t claws digging into her back.

When it becomes clear that she cannot climb, she chooses instead to let the train rip through her.

Leverage/The Hobbit, any, the wrong thief

Bilbo crept through the halls of Erebor, trying his hardest look for this Arkenstone while attracting no attention, he stopped to look around a pillar and-

“You walk really quietly,” a voice behind him said, startling Bilbo so badly that he squeaked and almost tripped over himself in his haste to turn around- only to find himself face to face with a blonde human Woman.

The woman quirked her head curiously and seemed to come to some sort of conclusion; in one quick movement she pulled out a big, almost impossibly shiny stone and said: “Were you looking for this?”

I am making a grabby hands sort of gesture, and laughing, and also delighted. Parker creeping up on people is the best super power. =D

thanks XD I'm glad you liked it!

Leverage/The Hobbit, Eliot Spencer, fighting a dragon isn't that hard

"Fighting a dragon isn't that hard."

The company of dwarves looked at the human with various shades of disbelief.

"And how, praytell," Thorin says, slowly, deliberately, swelling with banked anger, "could you kill a dragon, where many greater men failed?"

"Because I've got Parker."

~

"You couldn't even make it past a bank vault!"

"Why would I need to bother with petty human doors when I could tear apart your dwellings and fill them with fire?"

"Because that's flashy and flashy gets you killed. In and out, no trace, that's how you get gold."

"Do I look killed, little human?" The great dragon rumbled a laugh, peering down at the little speck with hands on her hips. "Does my gold seem lacking?"

"You look like you're gonna get a lobotomy."

"Then what is a - "

Before Smaug could finish his amused question, Eliot rose from his hiding place in the loose coins, firing his harpoon gun into the beast's burning eye. He didn't even have time to roar in pain with the huge steel bolt burrowed into his brain.

"That," Eliot said to Parker, to be repeated later, "is how you kill a dragon."

Edited 2022-02-11 08:32 (UTC)

I LOVE this! :D

thank you! i was thinking of what eliot would do to kill smaug - hit him with aqua regia, strangle him, shove something unpleasant down his throat - but then i remembered a quote from a book i like, about a man not being left even a long pin because "two inches in the right place" could kill. And hey, dragons still have eyes, and a brain, and the skull would be most fragile there. Eliot bursting from a pile of gold coins with a harpoon gun was a cool image that immediately followed.

It was amazing! It didn't even matter that I'm not overly familiar with LotR, you wrote it so well :)

This is the absolutely perfect response to the prompt I thought up while sleep-deprived and over-worked.

I love this so much.

You cannot imagine how much I cackled with glee when I first read this, but it was a lot. And it made my morning.

Thank you!

thank you for posting the prompt, it was a really fun thought exercise.

im so happy you enjoy it so much! making someones day, making them laugh, thats really the best compliment :3 im so glad i fulfilled the prompt to your delight!

It was, of course, all Hardison’s fault: it was Hardison who found this job and Hardison who got Parker excited about the gold and the challenge and the chance to say: “Let’s go steal from a dragon!”

Yet Hardison was also safe – only a voice in Eliot’s ear as he cast illusions and protection spells from a distance – while Eliot fought an actual dragon with only an enchanted sword by his side, all to give Parker the time to find the Arkenstone.

As Eliot rolled out of the way of stream of fire just after narrowly dodging a swipe from the dragon’s tail, he seriously regretted his life choices- but he also had to admit that fighting a dragon was a lot more fun than he had expected.

Leverage/The Hobbit, Sophie Deveraux, ent-wives

any, any, on your third broken window / with your hair full of glass

any, any, and the crowd in your bedroom waits for a piece of your personal space

Everyone in Bobby’s life wants a say in what he does with it, to the point that he can’t even bring a girl home to an apartment he spends hardly any time in without wondering what they’d say about her. When is he going to stop messing around and find someone worth settling down with, and what does he think he’s doing with this girl?

But it’s none of their business and he didn’t invite them into his head or bedroom, so it’s hardly fair for them to have destroyed the mood so thoroughly.

I really like how much Bobby feels other people intruding on him even when they're nowhere close - it fits him really well.

yep! i love how this show plays with linearity and overlapping spaces and conversations so that when the wives sing Poor Baby it's unclear whether it's them (falsely) imagining what he does when they're not paying attention, or bobby unable to escape their advice, and either way, he doesn't ever get to be his own person until the very end.

Any, any, "Wow your shorts are like especially gold today." "My mom uses colour safe bleach." "Go Carol."

Any, any, The moon's an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun

The knowledge that she'd been the Moon Princess they'd searched for all that time had hit like a hammerblow, and at the time Usagi had been able to do nothing but collapse to the ground, hiding her face in her folded arms. This is wrong! It was supposed to be Minako!

The feeling never really goes away, even after Usagi lifts her head again and claims her power. Minako isn't the perfect goddess of a Princess that Usagi had imagined, but she is all warrior and all Princess, her power tearing through enemies like justice given form, her words inspiring and commanding the other Senshi in a way Usagi never could. Next to her, Usagi feels like a pale imitation, any light she gives off merely stolen from Minako, and it's only because Minako shines so brightly that she doesn't even seem to notice.

And then Minako shields Usagi in battle like she'd lay down her life for her Princess, or she catches Usagi's hand and says I really admire you, you know? and Usagi's confused/euphoric all over again.

Chrom once blushingly compared her hair to moonlight, marveling over the pearlescent white-blonde strands as he combed them with his fingers. Robin thinks he was more right than he knew to liken her to the moon, although he’d surely be upset if he knew her own reasons for finding it apt.

Any light she gives off is the merest refraction of Chrom’s own, a pale imitation borne from close proximity to his radiant, shining presence.

Any, any, We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.

When it came down to it, though, none of them really were like him. They were all people with spider abilities, but each of their stories were just different enough from each other that while they could relate, none of them were exactly the same. It made many of the things they said to each other both truthful enough and false enough that Miles never really knew what to say and what to believe about any of them, even himself.

Edited 2022-06-12 01:18 (UTC)

Any, any, hop, skip, jump

Leaping through flames was nothing to linking clues bound up in an arcane American custom Gary could not quite wrap his head around.

“Oh, it’s easy!” Linda exclaimed and fell to twirling the rope about her with giddy delight.

Any, any, whiskey, lapsang souchong, rosemary

Any, any, death by apotheosis

Ozma knows full well that he is anything but a god, barely worthy of being their champion – but he has the kind of magic that only one other person on this planet can use, and he has traveled through many lifetimes to get here, so by most reckonings he could call himself one. Each life he takes for his own consumes him in turn until neither he nor his host knows where one ends and the other begins but one of them is the corpse of a soul, steering the corpse of a man. The path to divinity is a curse, a reminder that he has still failed in his holy task and may never succeed.

Despite being called Immortal Cultivators by the common people, even the most powerful disciples and masters of cultivation sects are terrifyingly mortal. To be truly immortal, a cultivator would have to ascend, but advancing one's cultivation is dangerous at the best of times and gets even more dangerous as the cultivator grows more powerful. Some cultivators are more unstable, while others have a more solid foundation, but in the end, anyone could fall victim to qi deviation at any time. It is an uncomfortable truth hanging over all cultivators' heads, one they don't like to think about.

As Bai Zhan Peak Lord Liu Qingge, Cang Qiong Mountain Sect's unbeatable War God, qi deviates and dies in the Ling Xi caves, he is not thinking of any of this. He is not thinking at all.

😢

man, just *sobs* this is so good

Any, any, I'm not putting bleach in my tea

“Are you sure, Lieutenant?” Translator Zeiat asked, pushing the little ceramic pitcher – painted with delicate blue fish and filled nearly to the top with not even the most alarming substance the Translator had consumed that day – in Tisarwat’s direction. “The chemical composition is charming, and the flavor is, mmm, what’s the word… piquant, pungent – no, poignant, I most certainly mean poignant.”

“Be that as it may, I value my survival more than my sense of culinary adventure,” Tisarwat said weakly, and didn’t mention for fear of inspiring a dangerous curiosity that this was why she had no plans to interfere with the Translator’s new favorite drink, but she’d be keeping all the vinegar in the vicinity to herself.

omg, that final line is a delight! i've only read the first book in the series, a really long time ago, but this prose fits in excellently with the style. this is great!

Kittens need their mommies, and then they don’t. Olivia would bring her whole family to the Red Room to stay if she could, but Luke and Nell are the only ones who haven’t fallen in love with the world too much to want to leave it. This tea party may be painful while it’s happening, but when it’s over there will be nothing but light for all three of them.

Any, any, the more you try to get rid of unlucky numbers, the more what you love disappears without you knowing

Hamlet couldn’t say when he started counting, but it began with matching his steps to his iambs, right foot landing hard on each stressed syllable, and after a while if he spoke in syncopation he’d have to pause and curl his arms around himself to self-soothe. Still, it didn’t get bad until he met his father on the watchtower and swore to wipe away all trivial fond pursuits, and now a madness that is not entirely feigned shows him the ghost in every silence, in the stitches his girlfriend sews.

The play’s the thing (he thinks, he hopes, he prays) to catch both the conscience of the king and his own writhing, all-consuming obsessions, and once the curtain falls and the king rises, he’ll be free of that vicious mole of nature.

Hamlet's awareness of his fictionality coming through his words - the feeling of being controlled by an outside power - fits so well into this canon (and it also works as a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead crossover, too). Love it!

thank you! shockingly i wasn't thinking about r&gad at all while writing this, even though i love that play with my heart and soul, but you're absolutely right about the awareness of fictionality! i was also thinking of a really good analysis i saw once that reads hamlet as having ocd and convinced that he has to Act And Think Correctly or it will be his fault if everything goes wrong.

Very nice take on the fourth-wall trope, well done. Poor guy. :(

thank you! and hey, maybe the play will work and not be an unmitigated disaster this time :D

Any, any, water evidence

“I will not deny that some of the facts appear rather against my client,” Holmes genially answered Inspector Gregson without the slightest hint of concern, which I believe prompted that man to overstate his case.

“Why, everything points to her guilt!”

“I will grant that a lady may quickly change her clothes after traipsing through a thunderous gale to remove all trace of rain from her person, or even her shoes—but I must ask how she kept her hair so perfectly in tact?”

any, any, dance hall

any, any, i should be better, but i'm worse

Hamlet thought briefly about what his actions were achieving. When he'd begun his plans he'd meant to deal with people better than Claudius had done. Now he'd killed Polonius, horrified his mother, and no-one knew who else would be hurt in the fallout; he wasn't better but worse.

oh, poor boy. on the one hand i'm glad that he has at least a little introspection here, it's just too bad that this knowledge isn't going to help him at all :( this is great, thank you!

Yes, this is probably more how the Hamlet at the beginning of the play would have reacted, but maybe he had a few seconds of introspection. I'm glad you liked it.

i think a lot about something andrew scott said in an interview, that it would be impossible to kill someone and still be the same person you were before, something would have to change, so i think he probably would get a moment like this, before immediately flinching away from the conclusion and doubling down on his awful behavior.

Yes, that's very true.

It's like seeing a trainwreck coming but feeling that you can't stop it - well done!

Exactly and thank you.

He'd thought he was over being the impulsive kid who'd crashed them on Prehistoric Earth. Two upgrades, more battles than he could count, and - well, more reasons to be better, put it that way - and here he was, a cat in the doghouse, because he just could not get a grip.

Cheetor's post-upgrade madness had passed, but sometimes, Primus, he just wanted to take off running.

i'm unfamiliar with the canon, but Cheetor's frustration and self-loathing is just palpable, poor guy. i'm sure there's an entire HISTORY in "well, more reasons to be better, put it that way" and i love it. thank you!

any, any, your body is a machine

any, any, i'm broken-hearted but my beat's in time

any, any, the post-it note on the fridge

Hey Jim, don't eat the brownies on the second shelf, I made them for the sensory testing tomorrow and you do not want to know the secret ingredient in each one... at least not yet.

* * * * *

Jim, do NOT eat the meatballs in the blue Tupperware bowl, they're for testing and remember what happened with the brownies? - 'cause I'll never forget and neither will most of the building and next time YOU can do the 'splaining and damage control.

* * * * *

Okay Ellison, it's on, they're TOFU this time and yeah, you are too gonna eat them but not until I'm damn well ready to test you with them - and no whining, Oh Great Sentinel, you ASKED for it!!

LOL!!! Love it! :D

I'm so glad :)

LOL. You'd think that Jim would learn, wouldn't you.

Mab

Probably not, but Blair will never give up trying {g}

Oh, this was great. Made me laugh. I needed that. Thank you.

I'm glad, thank you for reading!

oowww I don't remember their dynamic but I do remember I also watched this show!

It was a long time ago... :)

Kakuzu would often roll his eyes whenever he saw the post-it-notes stuck to the front of the refrigerator. Small, pastel squares of paper in a multitude of hues that usually only had a heart, or maybe a flower, drawn on them. Sometimes a quick ‘Have a Nice Day!’ was scrawled across it with an overly cheerful happy face. Sometimes there was an apology or a simple ‘I Love You.’

But it didn’t take long and soon he found himself looking forward to them, little notes left by Hashirama, or Mito, often times both, to remind each other that they were all loved.

He saved each of them from the start, selfishly taking them and stuffing them in a dresser drawer beneath his neatly folded socks and underwear. Until he started to feel almost bad for it, knowing those notes weren’t only meant for him but for all of them. Little reminders to let each partner know that they were loved and cared for.

After that he took them all and stuck them to the inside of the cupboard where they kept the mugs, so his partners could enjoy them as well, and then began leaving notes of his own on the fridge though he felt ridiculous at first until he got a feel for it and when Mito first caught him sticking his note to the fridge, he felt his face heat up as she watched and then kissed him lightly before leaving one of her own.

this is so cute

Any, any, superb owl Sunday

Duo here! That's an impressive 199 day streak you've got there, it would be a shame if something... happened to it. Comment disez-vous « superb owl »?

XD XD XD Bravo!

heee, thank you! i actually did get up to 200 days last sunday, and they gave me three days of a premium trial (which i promptly ignored, of course)

Congratulations!! I'm so bad at keeping my Duolingo streak!

hee hee hee

As somebody who's relied on streak freezes way too much - relatable.

Doctor Who, Fugitive Doctor (& other Doctor), I won't regret what I become, I won't remember after all

any, any, something fishy

He is Ahuitzotl; thanks to Chalchiuhtlicue’s favor, the beasts for which he was named are bound tightly to his soul. As much as they’ve saved him in the past—it turns out that even the fiercest fighter is vulnerable to a man-sized blur of teeth and claws that can spring from any source of fresh water—there are occasional downsides to that. He finds it more difficult to keep ahold of his temper when he’s hungry. His hair is frankly unmanageable. (They are, after all, thorny water beasts, referring to their spiky wet fur.) His teeth are sharper than they ought to be, and he keeps biting his tongue or the insides of his cheeks by accident. Sudden bright lights give him headaches.

And he is absolutely, shamefully ravenous for raw fish.

(“Teomitl,” his wife asks, “what are you eating?”)

(He swallows the rest of his still-bleeding meal quickly. “Just a quick snack!” It’s not technically a lie.)

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Page 48 of 57

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

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Ghost Quartet, Pearl and the Pusher

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Two Feet In The Right Place (Lord of the Rings/Leverage; Eliot, Parker, Smaug)

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Company, Bobby

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Sailor Moon, Usagi(/Minako)

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Spider-Verse, the Spider-Cast, "Friendly Neighborhood"

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Roped In (Linda Dale & Gary Preston, the Flame Comics)

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RWBY, Ozma

Scum Villain's Self Saving System, Liu Qingge (Original PIDW Timeline)

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Imperial Radch, Zeiat & Tisarwat

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Hill House (miniseries), Olivia Crain, suicide cw

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Hamlet

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Eliminating the Impossible (Sherlock Holmes)

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Hamlet

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Beast Wars, Cheetor

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The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

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Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Re: The Sentinel (a very old but dear fandom of mine...) from Blair to Jim

Naruto, HashiKakuMito

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Based on a true story...

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