Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

[rthstewart]

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>

Comments

[thesebonesaregood]

Thank you!

[laughingpineapple]

Pyre, Volfred Sandalwood & any, mind control

[laughingpineapple]

Twin Peaks, any, intense ethereal whooshing

[rthstewart]

There's more!

Padmé’s blank expression as she slid the data reader over to Susan made her immediately alert; it was horrifically impolite but their Aqualish hosts, looking for every advantage, were surely surveilling their diplomatic suite.

As Susan studied the list of long, impossible demands, Padmé said, “Perhaps you are familiar with this conundrum, where your negotiating partner approaches everything as a zero-sum game...”

Nodding her understanding of her friend’s clear instruction and new mission, Susan rose and swept out to talk again with the delegates – and reconnoiter with the spies they had embedded their – to learn what the Aqualish would want more than just making sure the Naboo didn’t win.

[rthstewart]

Oh yes. Typically, Susan is portrayed as being the prude, so I wanted to be sure she got her chance.

[rthstewart]

Ahem, I have written a fair bit of this. Thank you! And... more fills coming your way today!!! Thank you for all the lovely prompts!!

[rthstewart]

Thank you!

[rthstewart]

Ahem. I don't write much smut at all but of everything in the Chronicles, the Revel in PC most influences my vision. I just ignore that bit where Susan and Lucy say they don't remember. Bacchus, Silenus, and and the Maenads are present throughout my GA work, even if just in the background with people always going out to look for them. Lucy makes an annual trip to the "Woodend Festival" which is uhhh, basically this - referenced in the first chapter of Father Goose.

You've already my Lucian and Edmund/Bacchus bacchanal Opens the Gates of the Hearth but I also have I love not man the less but nature more and Maenad of the Maquis

This is NOT a request for you to go diving into my own work -- you've got your own wonderful story you are posting!

Stardust (Unnamed player, SFW)

[wallwalker]

(It's been a while; hopefully I remember well enough to actually write fic for this?)

Humanity cannot live without its lights; what other reason would they have to call the moon-misers that burrow in the earth above them stars?

It is strange, thinking that the clusters of light that the zailors navigate by are living creatures, that they could scatter at some great provocation and leave them all lost in total darkness. But no stranger than anything else here, you think as you search the beach for what remnants of glim that the skimmers left behind (and is glim not stardust, in a sense, a way for humanity to hold bits and pieces of the firmament in their hands, even if it is not as firm as they had expected?)

[sawthefaeriequeen]

They do graduate into being the warriors of the fleet later (just watched the later seasons for the first time!), but they were such green tinies at first!

Re: makes three (Jill/Eustace + 1, Narnia)

[sawthefaeriequeen]

I'm so glad you think so! I love these two!

Re: makes three (Jill/Eustace + 1, Narnia)

[sawthefaeriequeen]

THEIR KID WOULD WREAK SO MUCH HAVOC. And know so many things! And haha, the wyrmling bit just rolled out! :D I think they would come up with so many nicknames during the actual pregnancy.

I could totally see Eustace liking the idea of passing his (or Jill’s) name on like it’s a kingly thing (ahem, one of his best friends was Caspian the TENTH after all) but being sort of torn because, what, they’re gonna saddle the poor kid with Eustace Clarence?

Re: At least the view is worth it.

[last_haven]

Nice. It's nice to know that Adora and Catra are as easy distracted by each other as each other.

Re: Let freedom ring

[last_haven]

Thank you!

Re: Because Anakin got his tinkering from Shmi

[rthstewart]

Thank you!

[last_haven]

Susan wouldn't make a bad winter, but I kinda fell in love with Winter!Peter. Actually, Susan would be great for any of them, she just kind of got fall by default.

[shallowness]

“Look where you’re go—“ Draco’s words stop as abruptly as he did when Luna Lovegood, of all people, bumped into him.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Draco,” she says, as if they crossed paths every day, and the worst of it is, she clearly means it, as if she were never a prisoner in his family’s dungeon, and owed him every courtesy. To make matters worse, she looks well, eyes dancing with a secret only she knows, and his body reacts as if Luna Lovegood were any attractive witch from an old magical family – he hasn’t got laid for far too long, that must be it – and he still can’t speak.

[last_haven]

Catra used to look out the windows of Horde Prime's ship and hate the stars--which was an actual star or a planet and which was just another of Prime's ships coming to bring back more brainwashed clones for a "cleansing"? Her opinion didn't get any better once she was on Darla, no matter how much Entrapta liked to gush about them.

She certainly didn't expect it to change once she got back to Etheria, but she also didn't expect Adora to drag her out into the woods to go check on some old lady who would start clucking over the two of them for hours. Raz should have been annoying, but she was so scatterbrained and doting that Catra's alarm bells never rang once. By the time Raz had them outside and laying in the grass, telling them stories of the constellations, of long ago nights spent with the former She-Ra, Catra looks up at the stars and is startled to realize she doesn't hate them quite as much as she did just hours before. When Adora takes her hand, she would have to admit, she could even come to love them.

[silveradept]

There's good reasons for an autumnal Susan. She seems warm and friendly to people who meet her at first, but if you aggravate her, or you stay past your welcome, you find that the chill and frost descends quickly.

Re: [Hadestown] Inheritance (3 set)

[last_haven]

Ooooh, I love the rhythm of each of these--I can almost hear them being sung as lyrics. And the bit of Orpheus learned his habit of looking back and the guilt Hermes feels--no wonder he keeps retelling the story in hopes that maybe it'll change! I love all of this, thank you.

[ernest]

Bill’s hair is long again. Harry, remembering how they both flinched at the scrape of Molly’s scissors yesterday, is glad he gets to look how he wants at his own wedding.

It’s not the same as what Aunt Petunia did when he was eight, because Molly Weasley loves her sons so fiercely and doesn’t consider them a waste of space; but it’s also not the same because Harry was only desperate not to be made fun of, and Bill was forced to shed the months and years and memories that went into growing it out.

Re: At least the view is worth it.

[silveradept]

I think they are, but I also think that Catra might like She-Radora a little bit more.

[last_haven]

So much has been lost; Cassian wonders if maybe they really did cheat death when that ship scooped them up from the beach just as there was a flash at the horizon. There'd been no time to go back for the others, no way to even retrieve K-2's processor to see about getting him another body; they are gone and all that was saved was him and Jyn.

There is little time to mourn--the rebellion needs them, so as soon as they're healed, there is a new mission as there is one after that and another after that and sometimes he thinks that it might be the only thing keeping him or Jyn upright. But there is a few precious moments between missions, where he finds Jyn holding a drawing--did he know she could draw?--of K-2, of Bodhi, but also of her father and of the others. She does not pray or offer incense, but there is a deep ache behind her face, so Cassian sits with her, silent and joins her in remembering what was lost.

[last_haven]

You make a good argument for her, my friend.

first two of four

[rthstewart]

Jack wants to go walking together, go dancing, cheer her on as she throws darts at the pub and buy her a cider when she wins another match and, maybe, even hold her hand over a tea table and kiss her cheek, but only if she does it first.

He’s trying, really trying, and Lucy nods as he talks about Boston and Harvard and steps a little further away as they match strides across the park.

But a thousand years ago, Lucy learned lovemaking from Maenads, the first male she’d had sex with was a god, her husband had been ten years her senior, and Jack is just so damned young.

* * *
Edmund stares at the rough paintings in the How and they are so fragile, he traces only the outlines with his fingers. He lingers over the image of a woman in what might have been Linch green and follows the line down, to a picture of a crowned man, in Lion’s gold and scarlet, with splashes of the same green, and from there, across, to a woman, and beneath them, too many others to count until the line fades to nothing. One of the Badgers or Moles would know the answer; Edmund turns away, deciding he doesn’t want to ask the question.