rthstewart | Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

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Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

We have now opened a new post, for new prompts! Please leave all new prompts there. You may continue to fill existing prompts here. If you didn't get a prompt filled here, feel free to post it on the new post!

Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon!
2 Feb. 2021 See important edit below regarding where to find unfilled prompts.

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 a bit by mid-February.
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.

How long will it go?
The 3SF closes to new prompts on February 28, 2021. The entry stays open permanently and people post fills all year long.

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. 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 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 in subject lines 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.
Conuly does this just because they are an awesome person but should you want to write them fic in thanks, you can find a birthday wish list here.

Here is the 3SF 2021 Friending Meme to show of your new DW account.

Here, have some icons and banners and let me know if you've created your own!

text box you can try to cut and paste

<a href="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html" target="_blank"><img src=" https://imgur.com/f3B21LX.png?2" _fcksavedurl=" https://imgur.com/f3B21LX.png?2" _fcksavedurl=" https://imgur.com/f3B21LX?2" _fcksavedurl=" https://imgur.com/f3B21LX.png?2" alt="" /></a>

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Y E S

Owwww, my heart.

"The Milky Way," Arthur marvels, admiring the flow of stars and the airglow adding just a touch of colour to the night sky.

This is a dream, but he's still amazed when Ariadne raises her arm like a conductor and streaks of light appear between the stars.

"Corona borealis, Camelopardalis, Volans..." she murmurs, and he finds himself unable to look away as she sketches her favourite constellations onto a midnight canvas.

The egg had been left by a chocobo, its 'mother', as Mr. 288 said. Mr. 288 knew a whole lot, and told the rest of them that if the egg was kept warm, it would 'hatch' and become another chocobo.

"So the 'egg' is a box for chocobos?" Mr. 111 asked.

"Not exactly... But that's not exactly wrong, either." Mr. 288 replied, "It'll open under the right conditions, so we'll have to make a nest for it and keep it warm with lots of hay."

Mr. 111 and Mr. 33 immediately volunteered to look after the egg. As the pair who found the chocobo before she stopped, they were interested in seeing the egg open. Under Mr. 288's guidance, they used one of the huts to make a wooden box and filled it with hay to keep the egg in. The egg was warm and smooth to the touch, but a little bumpy too.

"Don't owls have eggs, too? We should look at their nests and see how theirs are made." Mr. 33 suggested. Mr. 111 thought it a good idea, so the pair went hunting for owl nests in trees.

They managed to find a few, and it was much like the nest Mr. 288 helped them build. There was wood, but mostly little sticks instead of the solid beams back in the village, and there was even bits of down like the straw. Mostly, however, they observed owls sitting atop the eggs very carefully. Mr. 288 explained that the birds kept the egg warm with their own body heat.

"Should we sit on the egg too?" Mr. 33 asked.

"Won't we break it if we do that?" Mr. 111 asked immediately after, voice full of worry.

Mr. 288 shook his head. "Our houses keep us much warmer than wild nests. As long as we keep the wind out and the house warm, it should be fine. Keep checking the egg every day."

Mr. 111 and Mr. 33 nodded. Neither of them were experts, but the two knew what nests looked like, and were determined to help the egg open. Soon, the chocobo inside would get out of the weird box, and join its life to theirs.

Wow, yes, good. <3

Oooh this is great! Of course Leia would want to do it right, and be frustrated when that is difficult

Oh my god, wow, this is so sad! But I also love it, the symmetry of finding an important part of her jedi training at the place that was once alderaan, while Luke did so on Tatooine *chef's kiss*

It’s always been the most difficult part of holding conversation with her, Colin reflects.

Certainly there’s no flaw in what she says; loath though he would be to admit it to his sister, he knows perfectly well that Eloise is no fool, and so, it follows, neither is her dear friend - indeed, Penelope has both a sly, cutting wit and the rare ability to make one feel truly seen and heard, which, as the middle brother in a loud and boisterous family, he certainly appreciates.

No, the problem is, well...rather lower than her mouth, and as the years go by, he’s finding it more and more difficult to remain a true gentleman in the face of such grand temptation; still, he would have thought it had escaped her notice - surely sweet, charming, innocent Penelope could have no idea of the effect of her assets on the male population - until the night she smiles up at him sweetly as she holds up her dance card for his signature and says archly, “You know, Colin, sometimes it is the things we want most in life which we most scrupulously avoid looking at - quite silly, wouldn’t you agree?”

Edited 2021-02-05 08:13 (UTC)

Oh my god I love it! Now I want all the scences of them practicing sword-fighting ;)

Good for you, Granny! I love her voice here, and Nanny's appreciation of her.

Oh this is so perfectly Leia. Poor girl, she needed someone more like Mace Windu as a master, (secondhand) Yoda or (dead) Obi-Wan are about the worst choices for her!

Poor Leia, all alone and yet not alone at all in that awful debris field. This is fabulous, if heartbreaking, interpretation of the prompt.

Ooh I don't know this fandom, but this is amazing! Especially the last sentence, I love it

wow, this is great! I loved the descriptions of her inner instincts!

Run, she almost says, when the first girl smiles at her for the first time – Run fast, don’t dare look back, there are wolves in these woods and they are hunting.

She wants to leave herself, just buy a bus ticket and keep right on going ‘til she reaches a coast somewhere, too hot and bright for wolves to live or woods to grow; she wants turn back the way she came and curl up in the dark belly of that house, where she’s safe with the covers pulled up to her chin, always warm and always fed.

This is what it takes to get out: another girl’s loneliness and the lure of a love too close to hunger; he honors them because he wants to honor her.

Misty watched as nimble brown fingers danced up and down the skeletal structure that sat on the work cradle. Her first arm, the one that had had been gifted to her by Danny and Colleen, sat off to one side. She reached up and rubbed her bare shoulder, missing the weight of that gift.

“Your first arm was good,” Shuri said absently. “Quite good, considering.” She looked up from the skeleton, flipped her magnifiers up and blinked quickly to refocus her eyes. “This one will be better.”

“You seem pretty sure about that,” Misty said. She eyed the much younger woman critically. “It’s not like you have reviews on Yelp for this sort of thing.” Shuri spun her screwdriver in one hand and grinned.

“If you need a reference, I suggest you speak with Sergeant James Barnes,” she replied saucily. “He will vouch for me.”

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” Avasarala says, the throaty gravel of her voice thicker than usual with what sounds oddly like sincerity to Bobbie’s ears, “about Mars, I mean.”

Bobbie just shrugs, her back still ramrod straight though exhaustion and grief and alcohol all scream at her to slump over; have been for longer than she cares to think about, really, but what does that matter now, with the dream of Mars burning down into its red dust; with Earth covered in a mourning veil of her own dust, grey and white and dying.

“Everything dies sometime, ma’am,” she says, though her voice comes out smaller than she’d intended, and when Chrisjen takes her hand, she doesn’t pull away.

Aww, this is lovely! What a pretty picture of them, and I love Arthur's awe at both the stars and what Ariadne can do.

Abigail sat on her bed staring down at the aged pages spread out before her. She lifted the last one she’d read, the words searing into her brain:

“...and this is the price we paid for our freedom. Our voices. Our songs. Everything that we carried across the seas, held like jewels while we were enslaved. Songs that were never meant for war will be given in service for that purpose.”

She ran her fingers over the signature at the bottom of the page, instinctively understanding why this name was never spoken when the women of her family recounted their origins. “You had doubts, that’s why. The price was too high,” Abigail murmured. “Molly Bellweather. I’ll speak your name and thank you for the warning.”

full disclosure that my favorite part about writing THAT is that, in canon (Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard, Aztec fantasy noir novels), while the events that push Teomitl into attempting a coup aren't actually shown, it's his mentor asking him to reconsider and his wife making it clear that if he Fucks Around, he will Find Out that stops him actually doing it!

oh, beautiful. The pacing is so good.

It’s Whitby she remembers best and most dearly: climbing the long way up to that crumbling churchyard with Mina in those days when the sun danced on the water and the ships were easy at harbor, before the storm, before the fog crept in. She shan’t see the sun again, she knows, nor ever cross the ocean; hers is a churchyard life, a burial shroud to wrap her and images she can’t cling to, of kisses stolen and laughter freely offered, that might be memory or dream.

But there’s a candle moving now up the long dark path to her mausoleum, a bright thing to call and captivate, and Mina’s pale hand holding it as the other reaches out towards her, palm up in fearless invitation; The Count is dead, says her sweet sunlit friend, and gone in truth, and Lucy wonders – does this make her free?

This is beautiful.

Undoubtedly!

Thank you.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 113 of 222

Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

Re: OH i love this crossover????

Re: FFX, Auron/Braska

Inception, Ariadne/Arthur

Brooding (Final Fantasy IX, Mr. 33 + Mr. 111)

Re: [Star Wars, post TROS] Coda

no subject

Re: Legacy

Just Can’t Get Enough

Re: Whoso Pulleth out This Sword

Re: Discworld: Weatherwax

no subject

Re: Legacy

Re: WWE NXT, Shotzi Blackheart

Re: Killing Eve, Eve/Villanelle

Fill

A Few Small Repairs

A Beautiful Fiction (The Expanse, Avasarala/Bobbie, S5 Spoilers)

Re: Inception, Ariadne/Arthur

Family Debt

Re: Obsidian & Blood, Teomitl & Chalchiuhnenetl

no subject

Fill: Dracula, Mina/Lucy, Vampire Lucy survives AU

Re: Obsidian & Blood, Acatl

Re: Larry the No 10 Cat (UK) [Real Cat Fiction]

no subject