Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

[rthstewart]

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.

<br /><a href="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/172142.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/172142.html"><img src="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/file/71907.jpg" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/file/71907.jpg" alt="" title="3 Sentence Ficathon 2022 Banner" /></a>




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!

Comments

[betony]

A Winter's Tale, Hermione, life as a statue gets boring after the first few months

[kaminagi]

It seemed a brilliant idea at first - she could see her husband first-hand to find if he was truly repentant - but Paulina had waxed far too much about the skill of the sculptor, how the tribute to the lost Queen Hermione would be as though she lived again.

And now after almost half the year, this charade was the dullest thing she had ever done, forced to hold herself completely still in the same position every time Paulina had to let Leontes' messengers examine the "statue" to provide descriptions to the king, who was still too heartbroken to bring himself to see his queen's "likeness" in person.

Oh, how I must stand like patience on a monument, Hermione thinks, and if she must endure this pretense any longer, she may reconsider if this grief was worth her love indeed.


Oops, I cribbed from Twelve Night, but I did think for a long time that "She sat like patience on a monument,/Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?" was from The Winter's Tale and spent ages trying to find it in the wrong play.

[betony]

Child Ballads, Janet (Tam Lin) & Lady Isabel (Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight), advice

[scytale]

"My husband loved an elf queen once," Janet says, piercing the fabric with her silver needle and binding the green thread into a stemstitch for the flowers of her embroidery, "and for his pains, she would have fed him to the fires of hell."

Isabel bristles at the implication -- her own true love is a true and courteous knight, and he will not harm her -- but still, caution makes her ask, "What saved him?"

"I did, of course," Janet says, smiling; she gazes up at Isabel with her odd grey eyes, adding, "But unless you have another lover you haven't told me about, I suggest you learn to sing."

[betony]

Robin Hood (Disney), Robin/Marian, child's play

[betony]

Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beast(/Belle), correspondence from court

Dictatorial

[syrena_of_the_lake]

When the seventh quill snapped in his paws, Belle’s temper snapped as well.

“I asked if I could help,” she said, snatching up the eight quill before he could mangle it, “and I’m done asking — just dictate your missive and be done with it!”

The Beast’s magnificent eyebrows furrowed and rose in quick succession, and if Belle didn’t know better she’d swear he was trying not to laugh.

“I didn’t hear you,” he finally admitted in a strangled voice.

“The roaring in your ears was too loud?” Belle asked sweetly.

The Beast glowered, and she hastily dipped the quill into the ink bottle and readied her parchment. “Don’t say anything you don’t want committed to writing,” she warned.

The Beast’s lip curled. “Your blatant attempt to curry favor has been noted and disregarded.”

“What?” asked Belle in a small voice.

The Beast gestured at her parchment and mimed a grotesque scrawl in the air.

Oh. He was dictating. “I can take a hint,” she muttered.

“Hah!” burst the Beast before visibly restraining himself. He jabbed a claw at her letter and Belle yanked it out of his reach before could furrow the parchment.

“Noted and disregarded,” prompted Belle.

The Beast snorted but resumed dictating. “Your blatantly false flattery—”

“You’ve already used ‘blatant.’ How about ‘patently’?”

He nodded. “— patently false flattery will not make me any more amenable to your proposal, which I hereby reject. You may not raise the rent above the statutory limits — which, I remind you, are based on the rate of inflation, and not the rate at which you would prefer to line your pockets. Moreover… Belle?”

She stared at him, ink dripping from her nib. Clearly the Beast had not withdrawn as far from the world as she’d thought. He cares about his people,, she realized.

“Any suggestions, o human thesaurus?”

Belle blinked. “No, it’s perfect.”

They stared at each other in mutual consternation.

“It’s nice to have someone with hands,” offered the Beast grudgingly. “Not to mention a vocabulary.”

Belle smiled tentatively. “It’s nice to be useful.”

Suddenly the Beast grinned — a frightful, feral sight that would have frightened her a few days ago, but now Belle merely raised an eyebrow in mute inquiry.

“We’ll finish that one later. I want you to help me eviscerate Lord Rodahl, who thinks he can help himself to every chambermaid who crosses his threshold. That is…” he paused and ran a massive paw over his mane, “will you help me, Belle?”

Belle was sure her answering smile was equally feral, if nowhere near as toothy. “Why, Beast, I thought you’d never ask.”

[betony]

Tarzan(1999), Tarzan, he finds out he's a Clayton

[betony]

The Incredibles, Bob/Helen, first impressions

Helen & Honey, Off On The Wrong Foot

[silveradept]

"He's Mr. Incredible, all right," Helen said to Honey, "because it's incredible anyone with that little subtlety would last this long as a super. And the outfits on him and his friend, Fro—no, it's too ridiculous, I can't even say his name without laughing."

"Sounds like you've got it bad, girl," Honey replied sympathetically, "so the best thing to do is go get ourselves 'distressed' so you can put him out of your mind forever."

[betony]

Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Christopher & Oneir & Fenning, the Terrible Three's school reunion

[betony]

Ancient History, Tomyris, unbowed and unbeaten

[betony]

Shadow and Bone, Kaz/Inej, Dear Lord, when I get to heaven/please let me bring my man

a little nsfw

[peaked]

With gentle hands, Kaz glides his fingers softy against the crease of her hip, the bones of her shoulders, the bow of her lips. Inej watches him quietly as he explores her skin, his touch gentle, his gaze appreciative. "Sankta Inej," he murmurs and chuckles as she hides her face beneath the cover of her hands; he bows his head to try and thieve away her blush.

[betony]

Shadow and Bone, Darkling & or / Any, And the saddest fear/comes creeping in/that you never loved me/or her, or anyone, or anything

Love Is Delusional (S&B, Darklina [I know you're shocked])

[vialethe]

“Did you love Baghra?” Alina asks him once, secure in the blanketing dark that shelters them both, curled into the comfort of his frame tucked against hers; sometimes she thinks he couldn’t have, that a monster can’t love anything - not his mother, not his people, not her - and that maybe if he can’t, neither can she, not anymore.

She feels him shrug, the motion speaking clear as any expression before he speaks: “As we cannot help but love the thing that ruins us,” he says, and though the words are bitter, his voice is so fond it pulls the breath from her.

“I wish I didn’t understand that,” she says, and kisses his palm; when he shudders, the tremor in him runs straight through into her.

[betony]

Historical RPF, Any, genderbend/genderswap

[ravenlilyrose]

Slight tw for allusion to suicidal ideation
It wouldn't be exactly correct to say that John wishes she'd been born a man, but there are certainly quite a lot of things that would have been much easier on her--especially since many of her desires do not line up with what a young woman ought to concern herself with.
Firstly, she rather wishes she could travel more freely and go to a university, though she does relish the time she gets to spend with her younger siblings (and she may be somewhat at fault for Polly's preoccupation with the freedom that boys get), but mostly, she wishes she could do something worthwhile for her country, and yes, she knows that everything she and the other girls and women do from home is very important to the war effort blahblahblah, but she really just wants to get out on the battlefield and fight.
What she doesn't admit to herself except in the darkest hours of the night (because it scares her so much) is that she isn't sure how long she'd last on the battlefield, because she's not sure that she actually wants to live longer than it would take to make a grand gesture and write her name across every history book.

[swirlsngirls]

Psych or Euphoria, Shawn/Juliet or Rue/Jules, meet me in the afterglow

[swirlsngirls]

Shadowhunters, any, “you’re in love with him/her too?”

[swirlsngirls]

The Lunar Chronicles, any, photo

[swirlsngirls]

Motherland: Fort Salem or Shadowhunters, any, “she can kick ass”

[scytale]

any, any, the catalogue of ships

*laughs* The Iliad, Helen (italicized portions yanked from the original!)

[betony]

By the fifth time Priam has her up on the ramparts, listing each and every ship she sees on the horizon, Helen's throat runs at least as dry as her tone.

"And lo, there they come," she drones, the perfect daughter-in-law, the perfect captive, "from Arcadia, beneath Cyllene’s steep, by Aepytus’ tomb, where warriors train to fight hand to hand; from Pheneos and Orchomenus, rich in flocks, from Rhipe and Stratia and windswept Enispe; from Tegea and lovely Mantineia, Stymphalus and Parrhasia, led by prince Agapenor, Ancaeus’ son, they sailed in sixty ships, a fleet of battle-hardened warriors."

At last even Priam admits and yawns in boredom, and Helen might retreat to make her own calculations: another ship closer to a thousand, another closer to her freedom.

[ernest]

Greek Mythology/Hadestown, Hades/Persephone & Orpheus, they need a marriage counselor, so orpheus volunteers

[swirlsngirls]

Any, any, you bear your fangs and drink me

the vampire diaries, katherine/elena, a little nsfw

[peaked]

Her survival never included fleeing; she covets danger, inviting it to sit in her lap. Katherine towers over her, pressing her down with the weight of her lithe body and the gentle exploration of her bloodied hands; she should be rougher, angrier, but Katherine is nothing but strangely soft and patient. When fangs brush against the slope of her neck, Elena closes her eyes and thinks nothing of death.

"I’m no longer afraid," she murmurs as she sweeps her hair away from her bared neck.

[swirlsngirls]

Any, any, sophisticated, manipulated

Two-Step (Greenwing & Dart)

[edenfalling]

The first trick to manipulating Lark is to keep all the important actions just beneath her sight, where she doesn't even realize something might exist to overlook: for example, it was obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that Jemis's final paper must be nonsensical -- he was flying so high in the penultimate stages of wireweed addiction that any coherence was the next best thing to a miracle -- so hiding his insight into the relationship between Ariadne nev Lingarel's poem and a guide to Orio City's famously impregnable prison was easy as making a snide remark about Jemis's fixation on yet another treasonous minor historical poet and laughing at Lark's answering jape.

The second trick is to eschew complicated plots: even if Lark suspects Violet's impending betrayal (and with her sophisticated eye for clothes, she cannot have missed the declaration in Violet's color choices during Lark's carefully scripted audience with Jemis and his friends), she would expect Violet to disclaim that declaration as a way to toy with Jemis, suborn a guard or find a mage to whisk him out of the prison, and then play cat-and-mouse through the fog and the foulness of Orio City's streets toward a well-disguised ship in the harbor.

Instead, Violet steps through the mirror into the inescapable prison, secure in the knowledge that even should she live a thousand years, Lark will never understand what just happened.

[swirlsngirls]

Any, any, “in another life I think we would have been friends”

Farscape, Crichton & Crais

[cofax7]

In quieter hours, when there isn't another emergency, another fear-fueled escape from catastrophe, another desperate struggle to keep just one step ahead of their pursuers, John sometimes thinks about Crais.

A guy from what John understands is a one-horse kind of planet, drafted into the Peacekeepers rather than born to the life, and who clawed his way into senior command by the strength of his will--and brought his brother along with him.

Compared to the lives of his current companions: a creche-raised fighter pilot with limited compassion or empathy; a deposed dictator who grew up in a fishpond; and a plant -- well, by comparison, John wonders if he could have gotten along with Bialar Crais, if things had gone just a little bit differently.

[swirlsngirls]

Any, any, set a fire in my head tonight

Not Wholly Unwilling (Greenwing & Dart)

[edenfalling]

"Unlace me," Lark commanded, and as I obediently began undoing her stays, she turned her head to favor me with an assessing gaze that lingered over both the bruise blooming plum-dark around the raw and oozing scrape across my cheek, and the new-grown swell of my breasts beneath my plainer bodice; there was something satiated in her eyes, like a cat well-fed and pleased to toy with mice, and under that a swell of renewing hunger.

"Face the wall," she commanded when I had finished and the shoulders of her dress fell loose down the deceptive softness of her upper arms; I turned, silent, and let her unlace my dress in turn.

As she pulled me to her bed, she kissed the bloody wound her own hand and rings had made, kindled a throb of pain and desire, and the part I will never tell a living soul is that I fell willingly to flame.

[swirlsngirls]

Person of Interest, any, “it’s what we do”

[smallhobbit]

Harold looked up, a little tiredly she thought, as they entered the carriage. "Thank you," he said, "it's all tied up neatly and the child is back with her family."

It had been a tough case for all of them, so Shaw said gruffly, "it's what we do," before turning away to play with Bear so no-one could see her reaction.

[azurefishnets]

Disco Elysium, any, the difference between moose and giraffes

[ruthchinn]

narnia, any, loss

Tumnus

[arveldis]

Tumnus returns to the lamp-post day after day, wishing that he had never mentioned the White Stag and hoping that Lucy Pevensie might wander out from the trees again, that Cair Paravel might ring with her and her siblings’ laughter again and that their thrones would no longer look like cenotaphs, sitting grave and solemn atop the dais, tributes to the kings and queens who had vanished without a word.

But Lucy is never there to meet him, and as the snows arrive and melt and the days warm and then again grow shorter and colder, he, like the rest of Narnia, loses hope that the young queen and her siblings will return.

But he still returns to Lantern Waste with the changing of each season—and sometimes sooner than that, on days that he feels the loss of Lucy and her siblings more keenly—hoping that Aslan might bring them back and deliver Narnia again—but he most hopes most of all to have his dearest friend back.

[ruthchinn]

Star Wars, Satine & Bo-Katan Kryze, any