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!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Some of the hottest scenes in the books are when they're using each other's powers, and I was sad there weren't more of them. It's just such a good trope, and I can easily believe that somewhere in the outrage of being controlled by someone else, Aleks might also find a little relief in it, after all that time. Giving Alina that power over him twists their relationship in such a fantastic way.

Sometimes, even months later, Ophelia still coughs up river muck or sees her hair suspended around her or feels her skirts weighted down with stones and water, and she has to take the time to breathe and remember where she is.

She has been asked many times whether she did it on purpose, and she always redirects the question with verses as vague and context-dependent as any bouquet of flowers. The fact of the matter is that even if her near-drowning was se offendendo, the person who wanted so dearly to die wasn’t her, and she cannot allow herself to return to that state of mind

oh, this is excellent! i love the sheer variety of directions that these kids can take their ambitions, and i have high hopes for them

this is terrific, I love how well the different kinds of magic suit each of them, and how with each sibling it becomes a little less direct and obvious as magic.

Troy was just TOO GOOD, TOO PURE for this world!! Babies, indeed.

thank you so much!

thank you! it was very neat to think about how similar these incredibly difficult tasks are, but also how they play on very different insecurities and character flaws.

the love of the gods, so ironclad, so poorly tempered--YESSS, how brilliant and how terrible for Gen, to be so dear to the gods, so vital in their plans (and taking into mind that parallels between Irene and the Great Goddess, OUCH.)

I am so always here for an Ophelia who survives (yes, the Daisy Ridley movie was um, mayyybe not the best, but I will take the cheesy Disney ending as long as it ekes some measure of happiness for any of those characters).
(Also, yay just because I can imagine Laertes being SO HAPPY in this universe)

Oh daaaaamn, that last line. So good!!

Yes, the whole thing is both so wonderful and terrible for him and just...shapes and controls his entire life. Obviously it lets him do things a normal person never could, but it also costs him a hand and a lot of his free will, so...quite a trade.

Gen absolutely worships Irene as much as any of the gods, and I think they all know it.

Shadow & Bone/TGT, Alina/The Darkling, i came in from the outside/burnt out from the joyride/she likes to roll here in my ashes anyway

"Greedy Alina," he chides; "you want us both, don't you? The devoted mentor to dream of; the demon to rally against, either role as empty and ridiculous as actors in a two-bit production."

She blanches, bites her lips, turns away; "I hate you," she replies, resigned.

Curious, really; only a minor victory among the many he's won, but the first to set his hollow chest aglow.

Shadow & Bone/TGT, Alina/The Darkling, you left my soul bleeding in the dark/so you could be king

"We will know our new home," Aeneas tells his men, "when we find it."

They suppose him to be in search of a second Troy, and do not rail against him for his many rejections; they follow him back onto the deep dark sea, time and again, and wait for the gods and their gods-touched master to give his next command.

Aeneas know he will never find home, not if he searches for centuries; home is his hand caught between warm white fingers, home is the second of her laugh, home is long long dead.

When Cassandra finds him again, his hair is silver and so is hers; his cheeks are cracked and leathery, and so are hers; his bones are weary, and so are hers. But oh, his smile is just the same, and the steps to her side as she steps off the boat that of a much-younger man; and for once she thanks the visions that made it clear where she might find him, even after so many years had passed.

"It happens," she tells him, looking up at him and remembering Clytemnestra's sudden unexpected mercy in the face of all the gods have decreed, "that an Achaean might die as easily as any other; and a princess turn to adventure; and--" her trials are over, she reminds herself sternly, and she need no longer cloak her intent in riddles, "--and oh, my friend, you see I've come home at last!"

Even now the married Queen of Attolia goes to bed alone; and half her court thinks it a pity, and the other half an outrage.

Irene--if anyone thought to ask-- has grown fond, over the years, of watching the sun descend in silent contemplation, of filing through the litany of what must yet be done, of the startling singular pleasure of silence; and besides, there will be more enough time come daybreak, which brings a tap at her window and the rustle of the sheets as Gen slips between them, home from his latest nocturnal misadventure.

Irene finds herself content.

"Enemies," the General muses aloud once, "are made in pairs: Shu and Ravkan, man and wife, water and flame."

She can't be sure if he means to reassure her about her ancestry, or pass on some deeper warning; "Made by the same hand, then," she offers in the end, "and of the same substance."

Foolish, perhaps; and yet she thinks she can see the corners of his mouth twitch upwards, as though she's sworn some solemn vow she can't yet comprehend.

Poor cousins are for mending, Penelope finds; whether that is the fabrics Helen apologetically rips while on her rambles, or the delicate diplomatic negotiations Clytemnestra shreds with a sharp word at dinner. At first her uncle's proclamation to invite Helen's suitors to Sparta at once seems only one more command to do so, to smile and sigh and comfort those rejected, to agree with their aggrieved assessment as to Helen's perversity and general personality, to offer herself up as pale replacement in the marriage bed.

"Pity," grunts the Ithacan prince she meets at dinner that first night, "I do so hate the waste of a good mind;" and Penelope, startled, thinks for the first time that she might agree.

Here is what you do not realize (yet):

It is something to repeat everything to hear on the snatches of the wind, and it is something to piece painfully together meaningful speech of what little you are offered; but over the years you will find young women with the gift of words, who yield it again and again at the altar of obedience or matrimony or a dozen other excuses.

Envy will burn you alive from the inside out, little Echo, and in the end they'll still lie that it was love that caused your fall.

any, any, moon pearl

There is a curse, Clytemnestra knows, over the house she married into; a curse that catapults the men who belong there into glory, and dooms the women bought or traded into the family to infamy. There is a curse that she once thought to break, that she once thought did not belong upon the brow of a serious young man who cared about everything; there is a curse that came for her in the end, and snapped at her fingers even as she fed it like an ill-trained dog.

She loved him once (she hopes they forget).

Placid, her father calls her from the start. That is not the word he uses, of course: he cloaks it with compliments like "pious" and "patient" and "prudent," but Iphigenia knows what he means; perhaps, after all, he intended her for sacrifice from the start, from that first moment she was delivered, helpless, into his waiting arms.

At Aulis, she need no longer conjecture or cower or chastise herself for suspicions unworthy of a much-loved daughter; the knife is waiting, as it has been for sixteen long years, and Iphigenia steps towards it willingly.

I LOVE the way you write his dialogue, it's so perfect (and commanding, and hot). That he calls her greedy, that he knows exactly the way she sees him and how shallow and false it is and calls her out on it!

Of course, that he sees this as a victory is sad, if fitting - he just wants to make Alina feel anything towards him, positive or negative.

gosh, laertes would be so happy to have his sister back and non-suicidal (it would still take a lot of convincing for him to not kill hamlet, but if anyone could do it, she could). it still takes a lot of work to survive the pain of surviving, but if they're alive they have a chance at least.

(i haven't seen the daisy ridley movie, but i remember enjoying the lisa klein book it's based on.)

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

Re: Don’t Pretend That You Don’t Want Me (TGT, Darklina)

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Re: Balance in the Sacrifice (Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra)

Re: this is very silly, but they deserve a break

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Re: The Way We Remember Us (Queen's Thief, Gen/Irene)

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Re: The Way We Remember Us (Queen's Thief, Gen/Irene)

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