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

A hired gun who started out as an idealist encounters a hereditary prince turned serial killer with a code and sees at once that they are the same.

“No, we’re not the same,” snarls Claudius, “I pick out those who know they’re doing wrong and have tried to stop it but find they can’t even repent, and I forestall them ere they come to fall – you just think there’s no one worth saving.”

Lombard’s laugh is dangerous, panther-like, and compels one to take a closer look at how sharp and white his teeth are, and he counters, “Nah, I just meant we’re all as bad as each other, and killing some poor saps for diamonds doesn’t make me any worse than the white men who sent me to do it.”

he does believe it, and he doesn't necessarily think he's better than those "wise men" but because he knows they're wrong, he thinks he can resist becoming monstrous :( but he's very good at grooming her feathers, he's got very nice hands.

this is bittersweet and good. that ending line is the doctor in a nutshell!

thanks so much!

Any, any, stand by, stand by, stand the pain, stand by, stand by

"You- I- There's a dead body just- Hanging around in the garden!" Izuna yelped, and Madara hummed, stretching a little more; he didn't even open his eyes.

"Yes, there is. He's not going anywhere, he's secured." he added, flapping a hand lazily before using it to brush his fringe out of his face, and Izuna looked back to the- the- the dead person, who was, yes, secured by a rope around his middle and by a ring of incredibly complicated-looking fuinjutsu.

"You are way too comfortable with this." Izuna told his brother; he could even remember when Madara would have been at least as alarmed by this as Izuna himself . . . before he'd spent so much time with Tobirama; before his lover had moved in, with all his mad focus and experiments.

hahah epic! but now I have the song stuck in my head

any, any, a night out

"The admiral will arrive tomorrow; you all know the drill," Kirk reminded his senior staff. "And Mr. Scott?"

"Aye, Captain?"

"Make sure that liquor still I'm not meant to know about stays hidden, won't you?"

This is absolutely lovely! Thank you!

Lan Wangji is opalescent, blue-white scales reflecting back flecks of coloured light wherever the light touches him. Wei Wuxian is pearlescent, a subtler shimmer over his black-and-red scales.

Lan Jingyi insists they both look unearthly and terrifyingly spectral in the swordglare from a poor innocent disciple's attempt to make his way back to his rooms before curfew, no he had no idea it was already past time for all good Lans to be in bed and why were there two giant dragons waiting in the dark to scare decent young men who were absolutely not doing anything untoward at that time of night and... his indignant complaints dry up at the very inhuman, very amused expressions of the two dragons, and he meekly heads back to his bed.

There's a slight lull in the hatching as the cloudy jade green and her Healer girl are led to food and oil; Sherna's midway through passing along the waterskin someone among the leadership had the forethought to bring to the sands when that lull ends, and lucky for the candidate coordinator (not to mention her weyrleader's boots), she only nearly drops the skin for her sudden, startled laughter at the hatchling who ended it. "Looks like a Baker came up with him," Z'ran crows in pleased amusement, and it's true - the newest Xanaduian brown is shaded very closely indeed to some sort of Bakercraft experiment with burnt sugar and fine syrup poured over pastries, all rich coloration and ripple-glistening variation.

"Laugh all you want, Sherna dear," Eelie drawls in a not-quite-exaggerated lilt, "but there, there he goes--ah, I think he's someone in his sights--" this is also true, all of it, as the caramel sauce brown has gotten to his feet and wobbled off to relative starboard; it's the boy briefly considered and then passed over by the last flower bronze, the Xanadu weyrbred son of a longtime hunter and equally longtime crecheworker, who finds himself with an elatedly-crooning dragon wrapped around his ankles.

Such a conscientious captain, reminding his staff about something he doesn't know about! ;p

You don't want to get Lost; you don't know what'll Find you. Ey grins as if ey's joking, slouched against the wall, and adds thoughtfully, Though you can Lose just part of yourself - parts don't get Found by anything.

Despite yourself, your gaze drifts to the hole under eir shirt, the one that - against all biology or logic - isn't bleeding at all; ey notices, and eir grin twists into something ugly as ey adds, Better guess right how much of yourself you have to Lose for what's left to be a part that can't be Found... worry drains eir smile as ey finishes, wait, how did you find me?

I like how Lombard phrases it as "doesn't make me any worse" instead of "doesn't make me any better" XD Claudius sounds like a fascinating character (I've never read Hamlet) that pairs really well with Mr Ex-Idealist Lombard.

Thank you for the fill!

Oh, that's really good. A wonderful sense of the depth of time since Elendil came.

Any, any, there you rest inside the walls of a frame

It wasn't a question any of his team would ever have asked--they knew too much; like Reynolds and Hammond and Ferretti, some secrets couldn't be hidden from the men and women he'd shed blood with.

But he heard it one night when he ducked into the canteen for a cup of the sludge-like coffee, some sort of internet quiz shared by the younger airmen: "What would you tell yourself if you could send a message back to yourself at 18?"

Jack didn't drop the coffee, didn't even miss a step; he knew that telling an eighteen-year-old, "Always secure your firearms!" would mean nothing, if followed by two decades of service, both clean and dirty, and the jittery need to have a weapon to hand at all times.

No message would have been enough, and absent being able to go to that specific day and remove the gun from his nightstand, there was no changing the past.

Jack is forever grateful that the possible use of the Stargate for time travel is unmanageable and unpredictable; otherwise the temptation would be too great to resist. As it is, he wakes in the small hours of the morning a few times every year, and spends an hour calculating how to strongarm Carter into making it happen.

He never mentions this to anyone.

thank you so much! lombard and claudius are both fascinatingly awful men whose philosophies intersect and conflict in some very strange ways!

serial killer claudius is from an AU of an AU of a very specific production, but the basic concern with damnation and repentance and knowing you're doing something awful but following through anyway is always at the core of his character even in canon -- so when he chooses his victims he's always thinking about his own mistakes, and the choices he's made in a situation that made every option a bad one.

and in attwn lombard admits so freely to the deaths he's caused, and in the miniseries almost seems to hope someone will condemn him, but the hypocrisy of the people who gave him those jobs is what really gets to him.

::cackles::

Oh, ouch. Poor thing.

You would think that Archenland would have gotten used to refugees after the Witch took over Narnia, but I guess there weren't that many humans? (And they were probably mostly white?)

"Oh sure," I told Bob, shaking my head, "and after that, if I'm still alive of course, I can go to the zoo and pet the actual tigers - probably less dangerous!"

"Hey, I just said you oughta reconsider declining his employment," Bob said, and I turned towards him, frowning, "but hey, if you want to go on so far as petting the mafia don. . . Actually, if you do I have some-"

"No petting!" I shouted, maybe a little too sharply, but I did not want to hear whatever Bob was about to say - as it was the thoughts I already had were making me . . . uncomfortable.

"Mistress, I do believe we are under attack," Castle Heterodyne said, and Agatha jumped, head snapping up, "a squad of small craft coming in from the west; I don't know how they got over the wall." it added, with a sulky tinge.

"How small?" Agatha asked sharply, concerned, already rushing for a window.

"Say the word, Mistress, and they can be even smaller - how do you feel about a hail of enemy craft over the west gardens?" Castle Heterodyne asked, and Agatha could feel the stones beneath her feet rumbling as it prepared for the attack; she relaxed a little.

That's adorable.

Awww. :D

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 84 of 187

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

Hamlet/And Then There Were None | Claudius/Lombard

Re: Hamlet/Ophelia

no subject

no subject

no subject

Blasé (Naruto; Izuna, Madara(/Tobirama))

no subject

no subject

TOS

Re: TOS

MDZS, Lan Wangji & Wei Wuxian & Lan Jingyi, Dragons AU

Dragonriders of Pern via SouCon MUSH's Xanadu Weyr, I did it again

Re: TOS

Ofic

Re: Hamlet/And Then There Were None | Claudius/Lombard

Re: Inheritance

no subject

SG-1, Jack O'Neill

Re: Hamlet/And Then There Were None | Claudius/Lombard

Re: OW, cn: major character death

no subject

Options (Dresden Files (books); Bob, Harry, (Marcone))

Sizes (Girl Genius; Agatha, Castle Heterodyne)

Re: Dragonriders of Pern via SouCon MUSH's Xanadu Weyr, I did it again

Re: Breath of the Wild, Mipha(/Link) & Zelda