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

[paxilam]

any, any, going for a walk

[paxilam]

any, any, an animal sneaked into the house

[paxilam]

any, any, old faded tattoo

[priscipixie]

Lymond Chronicles, Francis and Richard,
"We've taken different paths
And travelled different roads
I know we'll always end up on the same one when we're old..."
(or really, any other line you like from Kodaline's Brother)

[primeideal]

(Wheel of Time)

Lan raised his eyebrows at the dish; he would never complain, of course, but perhaps this was one of those ways in which customs differed. "What sort of noodles do they eat in the Borderlands?" Nynaeve asked.

"We eat them with meat," he said.

Fool men--couldn't enjoy something as simple as noodles without having to assert their killing prowess. "In the Two Rivers, we grow green things."

Of course, once Aviendha introduces them both to t'mat, they decide that red plants that merely look like blood make very good sauce, too.

[primeideal]

(Animorphs)

Rachel and Cassie had been inseparable growing up, and as different as they looked--Rachel tall and athletic, Cassie short and pragmatic--they bloomed like vines around the same tree. Having felt how different it was to become dolphins and wolves and flies, how dissimilar could two leaves be?

Yet now that victory seems close at hand and peace farther away than ever, Cassie does not know what she fears more--the sharp sting of a crown cut too soon, or the long work of nourishing an olive branch in difficult soil.

Re: King Edmund the Crowfessor

[priscipixie]

This is so perfect!! Now I want to see Edmund explaining the "eat crow" reference to Sallowpad :D

[primeideal]

Ooh, this is very neat. A girl who takes after Leto would have an interesting path.

[priscipixie]

Any, any, "I suppose I love my scars because they have stayed with me longer than most people have"

[primeideal]

"The Horn may open a wormhole and summon help from elsewhere in our coordinate system. But from their frame of reference, it might appear to cover a great distance in space and/or time. Therefore, I suggest we slowly disperse to locations where we think the gravitational instabilities may permit a wormhole to open--bearing in mind that if we go too fast, the sounding will not take place 'simultaneously' for all of us, so we had better be cautious."

[priscipixie]

Lymond Chronicles, Francis and/or Khaireddin, "The scars you can't see are the hardest to heal"

[priscipixie]

Lymond Chronicles, Christian and Philippa, comparing notes

Transformers G1, Hot Rod & Optimus Prime

[raisedbymoogles]

Optimus Prime knelt, his hands gripped around Hot Rod's arms. "It wasn't your fault," he said softly, unshakeably, "and I never blamed you. I'm sorry I didn't say it before it was too late."

Hot Rod had to reboot his vocalizer twice, three times, before he could clear it enough to respond. "It - it's not too late now."

[primeideal]

(Wheel of Time, late-series spoilers)

"Nothing I've done has broken Semirhage," Rand complained. "We list her acts of horrific sadism, and she just gloats!"

"You're going about it the wrong way," said Cadsuane. "What does Semirhage fear most of all? Not pain, not disapproval, but humiliation. You let me at her, and I'll have her begging for mercy in a week."

Rand shuddered. "If it's the only way."

--

Three days later, all the gai'shain were humming this catchy number:

Who's bored us with too much hate and wrath?
Tiresome, over-the-top Anath!
Who can't even do basic math?
Must be that dimwit, baby Anath!
Who thought she was a great Truthspeaker
But really, only a sheep is weaker?
Who only pines for the Age of Wonders
When she committed a bunch of malpractice blunders?
Who do we ridicule in this montage?
Everyone give it up for Semirhage!

"If you give me an animation budget I can come up with a really good clip reel of her being pathetic," Cadsuane added.

"Stop it, stop it, I confess," said Semirhage. "Just leave me alone."

[ernest]

They spent too long in that simulation; every so often someone’s vision will pixelate and they will conjure impossible beings, for who remembers animals anymore, who here remembers Winter, when the stars are quite cold enough?

Lucy got the worst of it, of course, her still-growing mind too malleable to withstand a time dilation twice the length of her physical existence and she keeps asking to return as if it were more than wishful thinking; Edmund swears he can remember the taste of Turkish Delight, but no matter how he fiddles with the food replicators he can never get the flavor or the texture right; whenever Peter gets too intense his subdermal nanobots act up and he glows as if under an impossible sun.

Susan has no ideas what signs she exhibits beyond so many false memories, though she’s sure she can’t be the only one who’s escaped, and she looks at her siblings full of sorrow, but the worst of it, the very worst, is that she’s scoured the ship library and can’t find a single record of a game or vid or history or anything even mentioning Narnia – they visited a place that simply doesn’t exist.

[priscipixie]

The Expanse, Marco Inaros, One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter

Re: Laertes/Hamlet (NSFW)

[ernest]

hey wow, thank you for the food! this gets so much of both of their personalities in a short and sexy piece - hamlet needing to show off, laertes feeling possessive but in such a loving way, and hamlet swallowing! and don't think i missed the layers of sadness wrapped up in "lest he be forgotten"! hamlet the play is about the narrative of kingship, after all, and hamlet the character is so constantly aware of the story he'll leave behind him. gosh, this is wonderful!

[priscipixie]

The Expanse, Amos Burton nee Timmy, what's in a name

[ernest]

"my lord, dear hamlet, light of my life, tell me one thing. would it kill you to talk about things directly?"

"literally, yes."

Gravity Falls, Stan and Dipper

[quillsshadow]

One of the mysteries of the Mystery Shack was how its floorplan even worked.

"It doesn't," Grunkle Stan grunted at Dipper, unimpressed by the sheaf of paper the boy was waving at him frantically as he half-yelled about his failed attempts to map how the various rooms fit together.

"Yes, but this is the first time it's eaten Grunkle Ford!"

"Say WHAT?"

Re: Pride and Prejudice, Elementary

[kalira]

Oo, this is delightful! *chinhands*

Sun and Snow (Tiger & Bunny; Keith/Agnes)

[kalira]

Agnes stilled, the nape of her neck tingling, warning her to stop - to flee - as a shiver of power rolled through her, bearing with it all the warmth - and the strength - of the summer sun.

Her spun-snow skirts swirling around her, Agnes whirled with a click of her icicle heels on the stone paving to face the Summer Knight.

"Hello, my lady." Keith said with a smile, extending his hand to her, dampening his power so that it didn't sting to be so near him, and Agnes slowly relaxed as she put her own hand in her lover's clasp, pulling in the winter winds that surrounded her so as not to bite at him in turn.

[priscipixie]

Discworld, Susan Sto Helit, crossover putting Susan into any fandom or universe

[priscipixie]

Lymond Chronicles, any, AU where Christian lives

Wen Ning

[quillsshadow]

Wen Ning has grown up knowing that it takes more than hugs to heal people; wishing that he could offer his sister more help than simply doing her small tasks and occasionally wrapping his arms around her when there's no one to see the vulnerability. After he died, after Wei Wuxian brought him back, he had to be even more careful so that his inhuman strength didn't make a hug from him a source of injury.

All his practice is worth it, though, to be able to hug Lan Sizhui who is Wen Yuan - and if hugs don't heal, they are certainly a worthy celebration of the healing discovery that he has family still alive in this world.