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

Oh, this is absolutely delightful! I love Misty's caution (Yelp reviews!!) and Shuri's confidence; it feels very much in character, and ends on a great note.

I love this!! What a great place for her to end up; I can totally see it. (ETA: Also, the last line is AMAZEBALLS.)

Edited 2021-02-05 10:13 (UTC)

Ahaha, wonderful! I love having her get to be competent in her own way!

NATASHAAAAAA

Hahaha. This does sound like something that would happen to him!

He's definitely having a DAY. (Or an endless series of them.) Thank you!!

Oh no, my babies. <3 This is great!

Awww, this is lovely; I like seeing Han in the caretaker role here.

Aster learned on her own what to do with the cards and bones and burning herbs, and she knew for long years that it was all a grift; people heard what they wanted her to tell ‘em and paid for the privilege, provided she give ‘em mouse bones and raven skulls and a bit of blood in a bowl to satisfy expectations, and any real magic, she knew, it was best to keep to herself.

The princess whose gown was black and silver as midnight learned on her own to stitch dreams into cloth; it took blood, fingers pricked on the spindle and the needle, and it took time, and it took courage to pin a plain brown cloak around her throat and leap from the tower window, trusting plain brown wings to carry her.

She said she needed a place to hide, when she landed outside the cottage with the bramble hedge, and Aster had no lies to tell even for all the gold around her wrists, so she asked the cards instead how to find a trail safe from hunting hounds: mouse bones and raven skull to point the way, a bit of blood to bid the trees bend down and shield them, and when they reached the clearing at the forest’s heart, the princess threw her midnight gown around them both as a concealing shroud; beneath that sky she was hidden only by her hair, and Aster, who had never let herself dream before of anything but riches, had to look away – until the princess took the witch’s weathered hand and placed it upon her breast, above her heart where the same magic beat, and the rest of that night’s story is a very different one indeed.

The trick to crossing hot coals barefoot is not to run, for that will drive your foot deeper into the heat, nor to slow, for that will let the heat linger: instead walk briskly, so the path warms your feet without burning them.

Lava can't be that different, can it? thinks Ladybug, facing down a volcano in the middle of Paris. She and Chat Noir have their Miraculous to protect themselves and everyone else, even if he doesn't look much like he trusts that right now—not that she can blame him, really—and as long as he's by her side smiling, she can do anything; if it takes a moment to think of a pun to throw at him that isn't someone to lava, that's no one's business, not even her own.

Spectacular!

"We could have met on Ceres," Anderson Dawes said, and Camina smiled at him, her lips pulled back tight from her teeth in what she hoped—had practiced, even—was a convincing smile.

She was thinking many things, behind that smile: thinking how much she did not want this man on her ship, thinking of how (a lifetime ago) she had accused Ashford of wanting Belters to be like the Inners, smiling false smiles and speaking words they did not mean. Fake. Plastic.

Now she smiled a fake smile and she used what she had learned from Ashford, from Fred, even from Oksana: about diplomacy, about controlling her temper, about saying the right words to make Dawes believe her faction was bigger than it was, and that they could offer him things Marco could not—a direct line to Inner trade, for example.

He still thought of her as a young girl, a runner for the operations on the Ceres docks. She could tell by the way he spoke to her, like she was naive and young, and did not know the things she knew. She kept her back straight and her smile in place and did not hit him. Marco had used her temper to mock her. She would tame it into a spear pointed straight at Marco's cold black heart.

"There is profit in war, ke?" Dawes said, spreading his hands.

"There is no profit in the UN send warships to Ceres, in Mars throw stealth-painted rocks at us, now that Marco has taught them how. There is no profit in die slowly after we lose our source of trade for live soil and biologicals. Marco thinks he will supply the entire Belt from Ganymede. Marco," she said, "is a fool. He has not studied history. Or perhaps he has studied only the wrong history. Nations are not asteroids. They do not exist alone. Power is not make everything we need to live; that is only survival. Power, it mean not waste our time making things we can trade with the Inners for, when we have something that they want."

She raised a hand to the screen with an image of the Ring that she had made sure to have on the wall of the room before Dawes walked in, set up so that it was the first thing he saw. This was an Ashford trick, one that she had learned by watching him and then used to great effect when she first began to carve out her faction's piece of the Belt: let your enemy see your strength and draw his own conclusions. Guide him gently, do not drag him. You can use force later, when you have let his own mind do half the work for you.

So she wrapped her offer in Ashford and seasoned it with a little of Fred Johnson and maybe, just maybe, there was a little bit of Dawes as well—for all the earliest tricks that she knew, that were not her own, had been learned from Dawes on the Ceres docks. Dawes' preferred tactics, of course, were the private room with the drain in the floor, the thugs with big fists and a willingness to do what they were told. But that was not something for today. That was the steel waiting in the velvet glove she offered him, and how much of that was Dawes and how much was Camina, she did not know and did not care to judge.

"Marco is not the future of the Belt," she said, pouring out drinks for them both. "Marco is dead end. Marco care only for Marco. He think only of Marco."

Dawes laughed. "Well, that sure is true."

Camina raised her glass. "Marco is not the Belt. His faction is not the Belt. It only one faction of many. No matter what Marco want."

"You going to run your own faction now, mali? You run whole navy, like Inners do?"

He said it mockingly. And she wanted to say, I already do, sabakawala. I run it right up your ass.

But she did not; she smiled and said the right words and coaxed him around to joining up Ceres with the faction he thought she had.

After, after ...

After, Fred Johnson would smile and say, That's good, Drummer. That's good. Ashford would laugh and crack open a bottle from his private stash and try to top her on insulting names for Dawes until they both collapsed in laughter. Oksana would smile and say So proud of you for not lose temper and kiss her and—

And she had none of them. Because of Marco.

Piece by piece, she was going to chip Marco's support out from under him. She was taking the Belt back, no matter who she had to team up with or whose shit she had to eat, and she would watch Marco Inaros walk vacuum by the time she was done.

Edited (minor text edits) 2021-02-05 11:24 (UTC)

Also posted on AO3:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29217162

Hahahahaaaa. I love this.

OH WOW. This is so apt and perfect!

This is DELIGHTFUL and perfectly in character!

Aaahhhh, nice.

any, any, soft sweater

TIMMY.

Erich is just so baffled about all of this. It's great.

Ahhhhh! This is excellent!

HAHAAHA. Perfect.

And so the princess was locked in the tower, waiting for her true love to rescue her -–-
After rearranging her room for the so-manieth time, having explored every inch of the gardens and grounds, and even finding herself look forward to a meal with the Beast, it was clear: Belle was bored, and she desperately needed something to do (it was only when she opened a door in a hall she had thought long-explored, and stepped into a massive room filled to the brink with books upon books, that her boredom finally eased).

The battle was fierce and glorious, and at the end the hero emerged triumphant -–- A coppery scent invaded her nose as blood bubbled out over Belle’s hands, and she cried big ugly tears and begged the Beast not to leave her, but in the end there was nothing she could do to stop his eyes from closing.

And they lived happily ever after -–- It was an adjustment, beast to man: for her love, of course, but also for Belle herself- but as she watched the former-Beast stumble through the room to reach her side (and almost drop the teapot in an overestimation of his strength) Belle smiled and thought maybe an imperfect happy ending wasn’t so bad after all.

"I didn't mean to break your ribs."

Yon-Rogg scowled at her while the medic applied a healing matrix to his side. Vers kept her head down, hands clasped in her lap, but she kept peeking up at him, and she was somehow managing to nail the simultaneous look of being both slightly guilty and not exactly repentant.

"It's my fault more than yours," he said, and ruthlessly crushed any awareness of how literally true that was. "And what's our goal for the next sparring session?"

"Not throwing the teacher through any more buildings," Vers recited dutifully.

"That's right." He might have to look into having her power suppressor turned up.

Samuel was beginning to regret encouraging his grandson to follow in his footsteps.

It wasn't that working with Pokémon would be a challenge for him; he was a strong-willed, fearless boy, already desperate to embark on his trainer's journey. Ten years old was too young for many, but Blue would certainly be a worthy challenger by the time he reached that age.

No, it wasn't that - it was the way all this had affected Blue's relationship with the other boy. The quiet, determined kid who lived next door: he and Blue had initially bonded as a result of their love of Pokémon, but now that connection was changing into a fierce rivalry. And Samuel knew both were too headstrong for it to end well - he'd seen the same thing too many times before - and he feared what each child would become without the stabilising influence of the other.

"Ride ze shoopuf?" Please, if we don't get two hundred passengers today, we're not eligible for our subsidy, and I'll have to go home to my kids and tell them there won't be any fish tonight because I had to use my own money to pay for shoopuf kibble again -

The Guado woman looks him up and down, looks at the shoopuf, looks at him again, and then says, "Not today. Thank you."

Oh fuck. "Shoopuf's waiting!"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 114 of 222

Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

Re: A Few Small Repairs

Re: Cookie Season

Re: Darcy & Thor

Re: A Soul Restored (Natasha)

Re: He Looks Better In Red

Re: Agent Carter, Peggy & Jack, Time After Time

no subject

no subject

A Fairy Tale

[Miraculous Ladybug] red carpet

Re: Discworld: Weatherwax

The Expanse, Camina Drummer & Anderson Dawes, season 5 spoilers

Re: The Expanse, Camina Drummer & Anderson Dawes, season 5 spoilers

no subject

no subject

Re: Expanse spoiler for S5:9 - It’s Lonely at the Top

Re: Expanse spoiler for S5:9

no subject

Re: Expanse spoiler for S5:9

no subject

no subject

no subject

Carol & Yon-Rogg on Hala

Pokémon, Red & Blue

FFX, the shoopuf driver