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

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.

He stopped, throwing a last look at the building that would be the new home for the one he loved, despite him having committed countless crimes on earth. Bumblebee knew that it was somehow wrong and his feelings for Starscream didn't changed his believing in doing good whenever it was possible.

No one knew about them and no one would ever find out. With a heavy heart Bumblebee turn his gaze away. It was a relieve to transform, since he was certain that his facial expression would give away that something was at odds with him.

While he followed the others he tried to believe the voice in his head, which was whispering to him, that he would see Starscream back in a distant future, since there were no walls strong enough to capture him forever.

"So he's saying that all of those stories about gods, heroes, and legendary people are all true, and they're all him?" Nora asked incredulously.

"Well…not all of them," Oscar said sheepishly. "The one that's about the people with the indescribably large—"

"—and that's enough of that," Ren said smoothly before Oscar said something that everyone else would regret having to explain to him.

"The hardest thing about taking the slow path," Luxu said to the assembled Foretellers, "is that I not only had to watch the old coot try to forge the χ-blade, I had to try and help him do it and bring about the clash of the lights and darknesses, because otherwise the greater disaster that the Master talked about would come to pass."

The other Foretellers eyed Luxu with a mix of expressions varying between suspicion and disgust.

"Fine, believe me, don't believe me, frankly, I don't care," Luxu said, weaving his hands dismissively, "but if you want to keep our timeline on track and save your own asses, we're all going to have to find a way to get that pipsqueak back into our side of reality, and pronto."

"Oh, but, Ed, Father Christmas didn't leave you out! Here, he sent this along for you," Lucy shouts, a little overeager, too excited to be reunited with him and trying her best to ignore the strained tension between the four of them since he arrived in Aslan's camp after his rescue.

She hands a lumpy package wrapped in butcher paper--apparently, Mrs Beaver wrapped it for them, too protect it during the journey--and it really does feel like Christmas as he tears the paper off. Inside, to his confusion, is a lantern although he doesn't recognize it as such first. It's perfect round and crisscrossed with rope that becomes a braided handle to carry it up at the top; there's no opening or latch to put a candle in, but when he touches the rope, blue light shines like a beacon inside, making him jump.

His siblings look just as perplexed at him. "We're not sure how you're supposed to light it, but I'm sure we'll figure out something," Susan offers him kindly.

He blinks at her. "You don't see the light?" Their confusion doubles and he realizes the lantern's light is only for him to see. It's an odd present, thoughtful, but not exactly a weapon for battle.

Still, years later, it makes for excellent use when one night, as he crept back to bed from a midnight snack, he'd use it to sneak up on an assassin outside Peter's bedchambers. He finds out in that moment that it was also indestructible the whole time when he uses it to crack the assassin over the head.

Useful, indeed.

It starts small; Lucy finds a shell sitting on the railing where she first stood and spotted the Sea Girl. She dismisses it out of hand as just one of the sailors of the Dawn Treader leaving a treasure of theirs out, forgotten. She takes it, mostly for safekeeping, since she doesn't want such a beautiful, delicate thing to break from a careless accident.

A few hours later, she finds a bouquet of the sea lilies, tied with seaweed, waiting for her in the same spot. That gives her pause, since she was sure Caspian had ordered the flowers to be left alone since they were already making a mess with the ship going through them. Still, though, they are lovely and Lucy has to hurry and get them in water before they wilt.

The shepherd's crook she finds the next morning cinches it; no sailor would have a good excuse to bring such an unwieldy thing onboard and it looks too much like the Sea Girl's crook to be a coincidence. Has she been following them? Lucy hopes with a thrill that she is--she really had regretted not trying to make contact though their eye's meeting had only been a scarce as a minute. She takes the crook and gives it an experimental wave--it has good heft. She could easily crack someone's head with it, always a plus in her book. She takes it to her quarters, for safekeeping.

It is evening when she finally tells Edmund and the others about the gifts--she couldn't really hide the existence of a tag-a-long, for safety's sake--and when she takes them to the railing, to show them the place she kept finding the presents, instead of a present, it's the Sea Girl waiting for them there.

They all stand, gawking at each other. And then, to their surprise, the girl speaks in perfect, if oddly accented, English at them. "You have accepted my gifts. I'm honored that you have accepted my proposal. We wed at your convenience, my lady."

There is a silence for a long time, but an awkward giggle escapes Lucy's throat and before she can stop herself, she turns to Caspian and says "Fancy that! I got engaged on this trip before you did!"

The air in the Temple of Tash is thick with perfume and incense, supposedly to appease and soothe the Tash so their worship of him won't awaken any bloodlust when they interrupt him. It's an odd, unsettling gesture to Susan--to be so afraid of your own god that you have to sedate him with calming smells so he won't be mad at you for worshiping him.

It's just one more reason why she's really begun to wish they'd stayed in Narnia and never come to Tashbaan.

Susan stands in front of the graves--five of them, in a not-so-tidy row since the ground is starting to shift with spring rain making the ground swell--and tries to breathe. Their son is squirming in her arms because she's gripping him too tight. Grace offers to take him and she hands the toddler to her wife, but now with her hands empty, all she can do is helplessly clench and unclench her fingers over nothing.

"Shall I start first?" Grace tries again. "Introduce myself to the in-laws?"

It's a silly joke, made worse by the fact that this isn't even the first time she's been to the graves, and Susan is still ashamed that this is the closest she's managed to get to them since the funeral without hyperventilating.

Susan shakes her head--she is not going to break down this time. It's been twenty years, damnit, and with Henry getting older, she didn't want him growing up not knowing about her family. After all, she is not ashamed of them--and she hopes they are not ashamed of her either.

Slowly, she takes a breath, and manages to greet the silent headstones before her for the first time in years.

The dagger is supposed to go into the vault with all the other royal treasures, a lasting memorial to their beloved kings and queens, but Tumnus keeps it instead. He knows it is selfish--the entire nation is in mourning and he's on the council for Aslan's sake--but he keeps it anyway. It's not like the cordial, too powerful and important not to go into the vault--it's just a dagger that Lucy eventually outgrew long before they disappeared, that'd she gave to him one day to help him in the harvest and he forgot to give back.

It's selfish, but he hopes she'd understand--it's one of the few tokens he has left of his best friend.

Edmund gets the unpleasant job of trying to gently break the news to Lord Dinnae that he's being removed as an advisor to the throne, although he thankfully doesn't have to explain that it's due to the elkhound's incompetence in the role. Thankfully, Lord Dinnae is the dopey sort of dog that is so genuinely pleased with the world around him as long as there's food, soft beds, and good ear scratches, so when he hears the news, he only shrugs his boney shoulders.

"That's okay, your majesty--I'm told I make a better bed warmer than advisor anyway!"

Peridan shifts in his seat next to Edmund and already the king is silently chanting Don't say anything, don't say anything! at him on loop in his brain; unfortunately, neither he or Peridan have suddenly developed telepathy and his companion opens his mouth and inserts his foot directly. "Now, now, my lord, don't go trying to take over my job."

Across the table, Susan chokes on her tea; Lucy claps a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter, not that it works well. Edmund pinches the bridge of his nose and thanks Aslan that at least Peter isn't there to hear it, although he doesn't doubt his brother will be informed of this shortly. At least Peridan is already aware of what he just admitted and is quietly slumping in his chair so fast that he looks like he's melting in an attempt to escape.

Lord Dinnae only blinks. "Oh, I didn't know that was a royal position already! Do you warm all the majesties' beds for them?"

Edmund wants to die, but Susan clears her throat. "Oh no, my lord. Just King Edmund's."

Lucy has crawled under the table, stuffing her skirts into her mouth to smother her laughter, and Peridan is halfway under it as well. Edmund's tempted to join them, but then again, there is an open window--maybe if he throws himself out it, it'll be a swift end to the humiliation. "Thank you for the clarification, sister."

Susan has the audacity to smile at him. "Happy to be of assistance, my lord."

It's Lucy who delivers the devastating blow, giving up covering her laughter. "But not as happy to assist as Lord Peridan!"

ooooohhh, I love this! Really eerie and dark!

lol XD

oooohh I love this! A magical torch! It's funny and it actually happens to fit Edmund's role as king as well, which is fantastic!

Love this XD

Oh this is great, loved Susan's thoughts on having to sedate your god, imagine what Aslan would do if you tried that on him XD

This is lovely, ugh mr. Tumnus :(

LOL XD

Relations with Galma are always a delicate issue--while Galma is a duchy of Narnia, between various Narnian rulers and the White Witch, it often enjoyed the benign neglect of its colonizers. Every now and then, a duke came to power who tried to assert Galman independence, but it never won much favor with the population and usually Galma happily went back to what it was doing before without Narnia having to step in and muddy the waters.

Edmund and Susan were both very strict about this with Peter before he arrived for their first visit of state in Galma--do not overstep and upset the balance. He hadn't saw much need to at first; the Duke was cordial and deferential, not at all trouble making. His politics didn't tend towards independence and he was equally interested in maintaining the status quo as they were. It seemed like it had all been a lot of fuss over nothing to Peter.

And then he'd met the Duke's young bride--emphasis on young as she was Peter's own age, a good two decades younger than the duke, and while that perturbed Peter, he could have ignored it as a custom of this world that he would just never appreciate. The sadness in the girl's eyes, however, spoke another story, as did the desperation in her voice as she snuck into his guest room and threw herself at his feet, clasping his hands in supplication.

Peter had heard of selkies before--creatures like seals who could shed their pelts and look identical to humans. If you stole their pelt, you controlled them because they had no way to return to their true forms. He might have hesitated to believe her if she hadn't taken him to see the others, the literal children the duke had stolen, to be raised and traded away as brides and slaves.

Well, he thought, stalking towards the duke's chambers, his blood pumping like Aslan's roar in his ears and hand on his sword hilt already, I guess I'm just not cut out to be a very good diplomat.

_____
[A/N: Someone stops Peter before he literally kills the duke, but it's a close thing and then there's a big hubbub when they instead toss him out of power. I have no idea what happens to selkie girl afterwards, but I do kinda ship her and Peter. I have no way to work this into the fill though, so just enjoy this post script.]

I am HAUNTED by wondering what happened to poor Tumnus, along with their other friends, after they disappeared. It must have been so devastating and we never get to really hear about it.

Well, we're reminded that he's not a TAME lion, so honestly I can't imagine it going well.

Oh my god I love this! I want an entire fic of Narnian selkies, that sounds amazing

I really like the idea that Edmund ends up as a spymaster while king and it comes in super handy when he has to sneak out to meet informants and such.

Welp. That's an idea I'll keep on the backburner; there's always the Fic Exchange or even the Spring Bacchanal prompt meme later in the year where you can request it too.

Ooohh, I'll keep that in mind ;)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

Re: Twelfth Night, Viola

Re: Twelfth Night, Viola

Transformers - Bumblebee and Starscream

RWBY, Nora, Ren, and Oscar, The Kernel of Truth

Kingdom Hearts, Luxu, Avoiding the Greater Disaster

Edmund's torch, alpha version

Lucy/Sea Girl, i'll make this pairing a thing even if i'm the one who has to write every fic for it

no subject

I was going to make a joke about the "trauma train" but it seemed in poor taste

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Peridan/Edmund, in which Edmund is apparently dating a himbo

Re: RWBY, Ozma and Salem, Fairy Tale

Re: RWBY, Nora, Ren, and Oscar, The Kernel of Truth

Re: Edmund's torch, alpha version

Re: Lucy/Sea Girl, i'll make this pairing a thing even if i'm the one who has to write every fic for

no subject

no subject

Re: Peridan/Edmund, in which Edmund is apparently dating a himbo

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: Edmund's torch, alpha version

no subject

no subject