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]

Shadow and Bone, Darklina & Ulla, The Little Mermaid AU

[betony]

Shadow and Bone, Darklina, Towers of gold are still too little/These hands could hold the world but it'll/Never be enough

[betony]

Shadow and Bone, Any, I've told a million lies but now I tell a single truth/There's you in everything I do

[betony]

Shadow and Bone, Inej (/Kaz), When the days are cold/And the cards all fold
/And the saints we see/Are all made of gold (This is my kingdom come)

He Fell By the Wayside (Narnia, Jadis & Aslan)

[vialethe]

There exist things older and darker than the Deep Magic, and from these was Jadis born; Jadis who silences, Jadis who conquers, Jadis who ends.

Jadis who knows that magic comes from speech, from lips and tongues, formed of air breathed through throats and lungs.

So it is these she begins with, once the Lion lies dead; his tongue and throat and lungs vanishing into the red maw of her lips, word by glorying, devoured word.

Dolls of New Albion, Byron + the voodoopunks

[fullupwithfire]

They always come that first time wearing what brought them like glowing signs, bright and easy to read in their faces, the way they hold themselves: anger, fear, loneliness, pain, the weight of expectations, the weight of questions.

Byron takes their hand and shows them into the dance, he takes their problems and shows them how to spread it among the dead and the dancers, to let it be lifted from their shoulders by a dozen voices and hands, until it doesn't feel so heavy and nobody has to be alone.

They come weighted and leave smiling, and Byron can forget his own loneliness for a moment when they do.

Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves

[archersangel]

Friar Tuck was alone, practicing fighting with his staff; a knock to the head here, a quick thrust there, a low, sweeping arc to knock an imaginary man off of his feet.

"You fight like a cow." The comment came from Tuck's left, he turned to see Little John leaning against a tree drinking from a cup. "You lumber about and are as fast as one coming in to be milked."

He offered nothing more, not a suggestion or piece of advice, just moved away from the tree and ambled back to his hut. Leaving Tuck to regret giving these fools beer.

[vialethe]

Alina would be the best at telling scary stories!! The kids being "pleasantly terrified" made me giggle.

And then the last line is SO SAD, as is tradition.

[vialethe]

The way you write Aleks as so outwardly disconnected and cold and then turning on a dime into a slushy puddle for Alina is delightful. And the wickedness that lingers there, even among so many stars - what a line, what a concept!! He does see things in her no one else does, that's for sure.

Re: Can so write a happy-ish au! *laughs*

[vialethe]

I will take happy-ish!! Even if her little "I believe you" STILL breaks my heart, because I know the history and meaning embedded in those words for her, even as they flee the doom that might have been. It is still a much better ending, that's for sure.

Re: AU-ish from my own established Aeneas/Cassandra canon, I guess?

[vialethe]

Oh this is so lovely, and everything about it is so rich and full - Aeneas's attempts to discount the things she says, Cassandra's roundabout way of saying what she means, to that kiss and her calling it her own destruction. It's everything!!

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

[vialethe]

They are always sad, even when I give them a happy ending!

Baghra, sigh. Of course Aleks is responsible for himself and his own actions, but she was also an actively terrible parent right from conception. That whole family was just ruined all the way down.

Re: Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves

[primeideal]

Hahaha, oh dear! :)

[ravenlilyrose]

Narnia was only the first adventure that Polly Plumber would have in her very rich life. She never again left the world she had been born in (at least not until that final train crash) but she found adventures: in college research labs, in trips halfway across the world, in hospitals during wartime, in museums and libraries and roller-rinks and orphanages and meeting rooms. Because something had awoken inside Polly Plumber while she was flying over a newborn country on horseback and there was never any going back.

[ravenlilyrose]

When they step out of the wardrobe (or, rather, tumble: there is nothing graceful about their exit into the spare room) they find themselves more disoriented than they've ever been--which, after decades of training and war, and therefore head injuries, actually says quite a lot.
And it is not just that their bodies are smaller, but that they actually seem to work correctly. If they had spent less time in Narnia, perhaps they would have thought the opposite, would have been frustrated by untrained juvenile muscles, but even Lucy is--was--aged enough that her body had started to deteriorate, so the youthfulness is less frustrating than it could have been, though even that is not enough to make any of them at all glad to have left what had been their home for more than three decades.

[vialethe]

Oh, Susan! What a sad question in the end - it really gets across Susan's hopelessness and how pointless it all seems from her pov, left all alone to go on living.

Oxventure: Blades of the Dark, Zillah/Kasimir

[fullupwithfire]

When things go well, Zillah fights to unwind and comes home flushed with victory, knuckles bruised and otherwise intact. When things go badly, she fights until she's too tired for what should have been an easy block, and she tastes blood.

There have been so many people in her life -- parents, cousins, friends, lovers -- that have never been able to understand, that have looked at her bruises, watched her wincing after a loss, and wondered why she goes back.

Kasimir inspects the damage to her ribs with careful touches, and holds the bandages while she takes care of her scraped knuckles. He holds out an arm and lets her tuck herself in along his undamaged side, hand resting carefully below the healing wound in his other shoulder, his heartbeat steady under her ear.

"Feel better?" he asks, and she doesn't have to listen for the tension she knows won't be in his voice, the question he understands the answer to without asking.

"I love you," she says as an answer, and he understands that, too.

[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.

Re: Not a fill, but a book rec?

[kaminagi]

Ooh, I loved Jennet's leaf-dress, it was beautiful, and it was literally made with the magic of love. XD

My other favourite scene has to be when Cospatric tells Jenny that contrary to how the nobility see Isabel as ruined, commoners like himself heard her story and see Isabel as a hero.

[animus_wyrmis]

Oh, I love the idea that she had all these great things to learn!

[animus_wyrmis]

Oh, I love that idea -- like, wow, my back doesn't hurt at all....I forgot I could bend this way!

[animus_wyrmis]

Ohhhhh, I love this so much. In some ways it feels much more like what Lewis would have written (and honestly, I've never taken the ~official timeline~ seriously because it contradicts itself and the books a lot). We don't really know how long passed before the stag, do we? And this feels like they left Narnia very satisfied with what they had build. I love it.

Re: Ace!Peter is disappointed in all this lovey dovey stuff I go on about

[animus_wyrmis]

Awwww, what a great picture of them!

[animus_wyrmis]

Honestly, I would believe it all!

Re: Greek Mythology, Odyssey

[animus_wyrmis]

Ohhh this is so good!!