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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arcane, Jayce/Viktor, unprepared

any, any, marionette

The fastest way to get on Penny's bad side is to refer to her as a thing, a weapon, a puppet, as if the Aura animating her doesn't set her apart from all of the soulless machines of Atlas. General Ironwood always calls her everything except what she most desperately wants to be.

For that brief and fleeting time when she is free from the appearance of metal and silicon, everyone gets to see her as she has always seen herself, a real girl capable of all the things others girls can do.

any, any, cutting ties

The worst part, Teomitl reflected, was that he’d really thought his elder sister had cared about more than power. That she’d been sincere when she’d patted his shoulder and told him to have faith, it would all work out. That she’d ever once weighed his misgivings as more than an unfortunate attack of morality. (She’d asked about Acatl. About Mihmatini. And he’d been so stupidly, pathetically grateful to have someone to talk to that he’d told her.)

Hatred—at her, at himself—curdled his heart, but he stood in front of her complex in Zoquipan anyway. The guards had their weapons half-drawn. The one on the left (gods, he’d never learned the man’s name) said, “State your business.”

He straightened up to meet the man’s gaze. “I’m here to speak to my sister.”

And warn her never to contact me again.

any, any, ring(s) around

Viola does not stoop just yet for the ring the steward tossed to the ground. She has never seen it before so it cannot be from Orsino, but she has just heard with her own ears how Olivia reviles him, so it cannot be to Orsino either. Then she gasps and covers her mouth: a ring is just a link on a chain like she is – or rather, like Cesario is – Olivia wants the messenger to be the man, while she, poor monster, dotes instead on Orsino.

Oh, what a tangled we we weave. Love it!

thank you! i love viola and this is one of my favorite speeches of hers!

oh this is great, i love how twisty the prose is as viola untangles the tangled knot that is olivia’s game and her own identity, and the image of the ring as a link in the chain finishes it off perfectly.

thank you! i love writing twisty prose capped off by a simple, clear image, and i think it's especially suited to viola's situation.

any, any, pretending to be each other

By sheer bad luck, Hamlet is named the older twin and Claudius the younger, but they both look at each other and know their parents chose wrong: Hamlet has a decent head for policy, but it is Claudius with a face for politics, though of course their features are identical. Put Hamlet in front of a crowd and he just becomes a lost, fumbling mess, so on the worst days when he knows he just can’t handle it, he begs his brother to take his place and save the speech or gala or treaty with his considerable charm, and Claudius in turn prays he won’t get addicted to the feeling of having people pay attention to him.

The day Hamlet asks him to help get Gertrude to fall in love with him is the day Claudius knows someone’s heart is going to get broken, but though he knows how to steer people to his advantage, he never could deny his brother anything.

Oh, this is super good

thank you so much!

oh this is great, both as a story in itself and as ‘tell me claudius’s motive without telling me claudius’s motive.’ it sets up the characters of the twins so well, of where they came from and how they see each other, and how dependent king hamlet is on claudius to save the day with his political sway and how dependent claudius is on king hamlet (without wanting to) for that feeling of being needed, and becoming the center of attention. and then gertrude enters the picture and you know it’s going to be a mess.

Edited 2022-02-20 19:04 (UTC)

thank you! and yeah, they're both dependent on each other, it's not just one of them taking advantage of the other, and they both care so much (for now, anyway). poor gertrude doesn't know what she's getting into :(

Meeting Princess Anneliese was like a dream. It almost didn't feel real, to look at a stranger and see yourself, but it was exciting even if at the end of it the princess returned to her castle and Erika returned to Madame Carp.

When Julian came to beg her to take Princess Anneliese's place to buy him time to unmask the princess's kidnappers, that lingering dream shattered. This wasn't something fun anymore; impersonating a royal could see Erika charged with treason. That wasn't even considering what Madame Carp would do when Erika ran out on her debt.

But Anneliese was living in a nightmare she couldn't wake up from, and Erika couldn't bear to abandon her to it, despite how terrified she was of what she was agreeing to do.

It was only after they arrived at the palace that Erika thought to question whether her face would be enough to sell her acting.

any, any, risking it

While probably not the stupidest thing Acatl’s ever done, he’s aware that this is up there. Tizoc is so paranoid, so unstable, that even to breathe a word of treason within the palace is to take his own life in his hands. But Teomitl has asked, and this time—without the army at his back, without the adrenaline still racing through his veins—it’s not so desperate. He’s asked because he really wants to know. And, more pertinently, because he wants Acatl’s advice. As a friend.

There’s something very nice about being wanted.

“...What do you think we should do about this?” Teomitl’s asking. This, at the moment, is Tizoc’s plans for a complete refurbishment of the Great Temple, a massive construction project that they can ill afford no matter how much it might please the gods.

Acatl grimaces. “Nothing.”

“But—”

“It’s a stupid idea,” he clarifies, “but it will keep him occupied and not ruining anything else.”

“Until we go off to war again,” Teomitl mutters mutinously.

Acatl takes a moment to study him—the young Master of the House of Darts, keeper of one-fourth of Tenochtitlan’s army, devotee of She of the Jade Skirt, skilled in magic and warfare, currently crunching a handful of peanuts as though they’ve done him an injury. And then he finds himself smiling. “I think you can handle that.”

Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra, all downhill from the first kiss

In the moment after, her fingers brush over her lips, eyes closed, a question asked by one blind; they sting under the sea-salt of her skin, swollen and tender with his attention, and yet - they curve.

He catches up her hands, and in the wash of lamplight, she wants to tell him you look like your mother, all golden hair and flushed skin, all the intensity of a man aflame, her name curling like smoke off his tongue.

The scent of the future chokes her as he bends close, blood and ash, foreign shores on his skin; she breathes it in, like an oracle, like a devotee, and lets him possess her, the only god she has faith in.

So lovely!

Greek Mythology, Medea & Glauce, revenge is a dish best served cold

Greek Mythology, Clytemnestra & Any, is that a threat or a promise?

“Mother says you can come live with us again,” says Chrysothemis, holding out her hand to the woman in the dust of their family plot. “Please, I want my sister back, all you’d have to do is—”

“I know what I’d have to do,” Electra snarls, half-feral, “and I know why you didn’t speak out against her, but for me the cost is too great.”

Ooh, the tension here is great.

thank you! i have such sympathy for chrysothemis, because she and electra are both not entirely wrong in how they react to this whole situation.

“It will not bring you peace,” the Trojan princess says, standing there wide-eyed, placid as a cow to the slaughter; Clytemnestra thinks of Iphigenia in a flash, and wants to die, wants to bring the world down with her in a welter of blood.

“Only your children will do that,” the girl murmurs on a bloody dying breath.

Clytemnestra leaves her there on the floor and sets off, Iphigenia’s shade whispering vengeance in her ear, secure in the power of a mother’s devotion, and does not tremble.

Clytemnestra's anger is so powerful here, and Cassandra's perfectly unnerving.

only your children will do that. oh wow, what a line! and the way she reminds clytemnestra of iphigenia, that's excellent (shoutout to the production i saw where they were actually played by the same actress!)

shoutout to the production i saw where they were actually played by the same actress!

Oh, that's so cool! I wonder if the two of them would have had anything to say to each other in the afterlife...too bad it's too late to prompt more!

“I’ve been wanting to meet you for years, you know,” says the little Trojan princess, her colorless eyes piercing right through Iphigenia’s heart. “I could wait for it because I knew I was coming to the same end as you and we’d end up in the same place eventually.”

“I never really thought about you,” she admits, “but you’re right about premonitions: I knew I was meant to be a sacrifice long before Aulis, even before my father thought of it.”

❤ You read between the lines!

It's such a good parallel to draw between them, Cassandra's "gift" and Iphigenia's premonition of her own end, the tragedies that became of them via the same hand, directly or indirectly. I can see Cassandra latching onto her because of that similarity!

Greek Mythology, Odysseus/Penelope, the first time they leave Ithaca after the war

Greek Mythology, Hektor/Andromache, they have a daughter instead of a son

Neoptolemus allows her to keep her daughter, magnanimous in his victory, parading his Trojan family as trophies, his new wife and her miniature copy.

Still, Andromache wonders at times if it were not his sharpest weapon of all, for where all others see only Andromache born again in her child, she sees Cassandra in her dark eyes, Priam in the proud tilt of her chin; hears Paris in the bright lilt of her laughter, Hecuba in her sharp wit, watches her move with Creusa’s grace, all unknowing of the weight she carries, the memories of a nation running in her veins.

And yet, nothing of Hektor lives in his daughter for her to see, not a breath, a word, a gesture; she disdains horses, possesses no head for strategy, no desire to lead, and Andromache wonders if this is the gods’ last punishment - or their only mercy.

The part about Andromache's daughter having so much of her Trojan family but being so dissimilar from Hektor is both fascinating and heartbreaking.

both fascinating and heartbreaking.

My specialty! Thank you, I loved the idea of her having something of everyone except Hektor in her, and Andromache not knowing whether it was better or worse that way.

Greek Mythology, Penelope, the most fun a girl can have--

Indiana Jones/The Mummy, Evelyn Carnahan &/ Marion Ravenwood, dry as dust

Leverage/Torchwood, any, any (can you con alien tech? hack their systems? steal Myfanwy?)

Leverage/Torchwood, Eliot, it's a very distinctive tentacle

Three man that Gwen had assumed wax a civilian fried his gun once, and the thanks meaning them dropped to the pavement as the tentacle's owner screamed in pain.

"You're not a civilian," Gwen shouted at him, "nobody just knows where to hit a creature like that with a single bullet."

"It's a pretty common weak point for Class III entities," Eliot told her, and at Gwen's continued look of disbelief, he continued, "look, it's a very distinctive tentacle, okay?"

Any, any, trial by fire, ordeal by moonlight

Of course it couldn’t simply be a wandering ghost or hungry monster from the Underworld. No, Acatl was summoned from his warm and comfortable bed by the manifestation of a minor god, one who intended to take by force the tributes He felt had been denied to Him. Which would have been alright, really, except it was a god even Mictlan had thrown out, and so when the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli showed up...

Well. It was not taken well. Acatl, gritting his teeth on a scream as Teomitl poured cold water on his burns and Palli ran for a healing-priest, still had to admit it could have gone much worse. At least nobody had been too badly injured.

Of course, when he voiced this, Teomitl glared at him. “You’re not nobody, Acatl!”

He started to say it was still fine, he’d had worse—but then Teomitl started bandaging his wounds with shaking hands, and he shut up.

Any, any, pas de deux

Madoka Magica and/or Magia Record, any, regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention

Narnia, Peter, the terror of a furious swan

Final Fantasy IX, Eiko, post-game life

Final Fantasy IX, Steiner/Beatrix, be my mirror, my sword and shield

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, you only know what i want you to//i know everything you don’t want me to//your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine//you think your dreams are the same as mine

Shadow & Bone/TGT, The Darkling/Alina, hey december/guess i’m feeling unmoored/can’t remember what i used to fight for

Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra, this pain makes you who you are/this pain makes you who i love/your brain, your deep and ragged edges/you can give me your pain/i can take it all

Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra, when you hold me i know/i was born lucky/hold me even though/the days are short and the shadows grow

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Page 51 of 57

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

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RWBY, Penny Polendina, No Strings Attached

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Obsidian & Blood, Teomitl & Chalchuihnenetl

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Twelfth Night, Viola

Re: Twelfth Night, Viola

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so much hath discretion fought with nature (King Hamlet & Claudius)

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Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper, Erika

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Obsidian & Blood, Acatl & Teomitl

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Lucky to Be Alive (Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra)

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So Casually Cruel (Greek Mythology, Clytemnestra & Cassandra, cw: death)

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in the image of her cause i see the portraiture of mine (Iphigenia & Cassandra afterlife)

Re: in the image of her cause i see the portraiture of mine (Iphigenia & Cassandra afterlife)

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Be Swallowed by the Sun (Greek Mythology, Andromache/Hektor)

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Re: Be Swallowed by the Sun (Greek Mythology, Andromache/Hektor)

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Eliot and Gwen, Class iII

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Obsidian & Blood, Acatl & Teomitl

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