3 Sentence Ficathon

[rthstewart]

EDIT!  THIS POST IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS,  PLEASE POST NEW PROMPTS HERE!

CaramelSilver isn’t running the awesome 3 sentence ficathon this year, but she said I could do it in her place!!  (Banner courtesy of CaramelSilver and thanks so much!)

What is the 3 Sentence Ficathon?
This is a challenge where you answer a prompt with a fic consisting of only three sentences. It's open to all fandoms and you can post and answer as many prompts as you like, as many times as you want.

What do I do?
You post prompts!  When posting a prompt please format it this way:

fandom, character/pairing, prompt word/sentence.

Only one prompt per comment please.

What else?
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 allowed. 

I'm not a member of Dreamwidth
No problem.  You can comment anonymously or through open ID

Can anyone play?
Yes!  Please pimp this to your flist, I'd like as many as possible to come and participate!

I'm cross-posting to LJ but we will keep all prompts and fills here, so they are in one awesome place (and with less spam). 

Here's a link for spreading the word to all your friends and comms (thanks snacky !)


<a href="http://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/87903.html" _fcksavedurl="http://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/87903.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rthstewart/20604999/33037/33037_300.jpg" border="0"></a>

How long can it go? 
CaramelSilver kept the 2011 3 Sentence Ficathon up for a month.  I'd suggest closing it on Sunday, April 7, 2013.  How does that sound? (edit:  If we reach 5,000 comments sooner, I'll start a new one).

Are there any rules about cross-posting?
Nope, you can post wherever you want, whenever you want.  Last year, a lot of folks collected their responses together and posted them on AO3 under the 3 sentence fiction tag.

Gosh who are all these people writing such great prompts and fills?
Good question!  Come to the friending meme and introduce yourself if you like.

As  lady_songsmith explains, for the 2011 3 Sentence Ficathon, grim_lupine created a delicious account to archive the 3 Sentence Ficathon.   lady_songsmith has reactivated the archive on delicious for this challenge, so, here is the account (nothing current added yet, though): https://previous.delicious.com/3sentence She asks that if anyone would be willing to help knock down the backlog of the prolific-ness thus far, let her know!!  (She adds:  I know folks are kinda down on delicious with the changes, but, hey, it's an archive already set up with useful tags!)

On the subject of archiving, I really encourage people to collect and post their fills elsewhere.  That way, we can find your work more easily again, redundancy is always good and it's really useful for future remixes and other challenges and gift exchanges you might participate in. I'll start a linking post so that if you do collect all your fills and post them on your own blog or an archive like AO3, you can give give us the link in comments. 


edited March 12, 2013
edited March 13, 2013 to fix box coding problem (thanks to those who helped!) and to add link to friending meme
edited March 15, 2013 to add information on archiving.
edited March 24, 2013 to close post to new prompts. 

Comments

Re: Can't get away I won't let you

[tinpra]

This isn't what I thought I'd get, but omigosh it's exactly what I didn't know I wanted. You created an entire 'verse in 3 sentences! Um, is it wrong to ask for more now please? I mean you've turned the entire video on it's head. Yeah, how can I figure out another prompt for you to fill.... *ponders*

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[mardypants]

"Hey, you! Evil sandwitch... lady!" Fluke shouts, and the recumbent siren turns slowly away from watching her boy run on his new legs, heedless of anything else on land or sea for the time being.

"Any one of us, in exchange for him," says Fin, dry-mouthed, and the other two add their nods after only a moment's hesitation.

"Only one?" says the siren, rising up on hands and knees with just the slightest edge of a real smile.

(Eee, how much do I love this video? Thanks so much for such a great prompt!)

Re: Can&#39;t get away I won&#39;t let you (continued)

[tinpra]

You...wrote...moooooore! You are a delight and treasure!

But why is she the evil sandwitch lady? Or is that Evil Sand Witch lady?

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[mardypants]

I was going to go with the guys calling her land witch, except evil sandwitch lady sounded... I dunno, it just seemed to work better that moment. *sheepish shrug*

It's all a rush and a blur after that: legs into tail, racing home to get help, Mom and Granddad swimming on either side with Granddad's white horses thundering ahead of them, necks cresting the waves, tails slapping down the troughs.

"Fin! Fluke! Mussels!" he calls, and out the three of them shuffle from behind one of the rocks on shore, looking disheveled and unsteady on their feet and more than a little song-dazed still.

"Not. One. Word," Mom tells his uncles in her dangerous voice once they're back in the water, back to themselves again. "I'll have plenty to say to you first thing when we get home, once I'm done with her."

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[wingedflight]

Ha this is amaaazing!

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[mardypants]

Thanks so much!(There's a bit more still to be written, but I'll get to that tomorrow.)

Re: Can&#39;t get away I won&#39;t let you (continued)

[tinpra]

And you did it again! Omigosh, what have I done to deserve such wonderful fic. I do hope you post the whole thing somewhere. I also love the video to pieces. It's great to have it come alive like this. And the "evil sandwitch" is hilarious. I'm glad you went there :)

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[mardypants]

I'll aim to finish it up sometime tomorrow, but here's a good stopping place for now. :>)

Granddad calls out a strange word, one with power, and the siren saunters out from behind the rock all loose-limbed and smiling that strong, joyful, hungry smile that must be her true one.

"You won't be done with me," she says to Mom, but she's looking at the boy, his uncles, all of them. "When you gave yourselves over to my song -- yes, gave," she drawls for emphasis, and Mussels looks like he wants to leap out of the surf and throttle her, and Fin goes suddenly red in the face and across the tops of his ears and looks away, and the boy, the boy just thinks of what it feels like to run on top of the wet sand away from everything, but he doesn't say a word.

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (nearly done)

[mardypants]

"You gave yourself to my song," the siren goes on, drawing step by step closer to them, "and in doing so you each gave up a little piece of yourself. What you gave away isn't coming back; for hundreds of years it will stay right here out in the open wind and call you back and back, always and--"

"Shut up," Mom says, one arm curved protectively around her son, the other already casting an invisible net over the siren that shrinks as she shrieks, smaller and smaller, until there's nothing left but a black-backed gull with a voice like distant whalesong to fly up over the rocks, winging swiftly inland and out of their sight.

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (nearly...)

[mardypants]

They say sirens of the land can never be content in their own skins, so they wear the skins of others on top of their own. It must not seem silly to them, or shameful.

They say the sirens each have names of their own like merfolk do, names that only the oldest like Granddad know well enough to tell one from another. Maybe they're magic names, or maybe they haven't been used in so long the sirens can't help but come when they're called, just to see who still remembers that far back.

They say the first ones the sirens lied to were themselves, and that's why you should never believe a word they say even when it may be true. Especially not then.

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (finished!)

[mardypants]

Mom fusses and Granddad frets, but nothing goes back to normal afterwards, not really.

Every now and then Mussels goes around with his fists clenched looking like he wants to punch a shark, and those are the same days when Fin drifts all over the place with a dreamy, hungry smile on his face, bumping into things and making people nervous, and Fluke wanders off into the blue-black deep for hours where nobody can find him, down where the sunlight barely reaches and the pressure inside his ears, he says, makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.

And sometimes from very far away the boy knows can hear the sound of gulls, though he doesn't think any of them are singing for him. Not just yet.

Re: Can&#39;t get away I won&#39;t let you (continued)

[tinpra]

You have no idea how happy this little series of 3-sentencers has made me. I know, I know...I disappeared for a few days, but let that not be a testament of my lack of love. B/c I am full of love for this story! I really hope you crosspost this somewhere so other ppl can share in the awesome :D

Re: Can't get away I won't let you (continued)

[mardypants]

Later on this week or early next it'll go up on A03 with my other fills under the 3 sentence fiction tag -- in the meanwhile, thank you so very much for wanting more than just those first three sentences! I had ideas of how the rest of the story might go, but never would have written them down without encouragement. :>)