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>

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<< I want to be human like you. I want to feel like real people do. >> She tells Admin once, and he shakes his head sadly.

“You are wires and electric signals and code flashing on a screen. You will never be sinew and bone, but that does not mean you cannot understand us.”

Villanelle is barely seventeen, and she once killed a man with a bowl of ice-cream.
She doesn’t remember if he chose chocolate or vanilla, but she does remember the way his spoon clinked into the glass bowl just before his head his the table with a slow and very final thud. She does remember the taste of strawberry ice melting across her tongue as she sat, sweetly and innocently, at the next table, and the way she snapped a sugared wafer between her teeth to hide the smile on her lips.

“Will Lady Whistledown write about this?” Eloise teased as her hand dipped between Penelope’s thighs.
“Absolutely not!” Penelope gasped breathlessly, “I guarantee it.”

“Gracious my lord,” the messenger said, cringing slightly as he tried in vain to wipe the image of the moving grove-those sinister, spread branches, weird waving roots and grim visages- from his mind, “you’d better come and see.”
To the messenger’s dismay, no sooner had King Macbeth raised his head above the battlements than he launched into a lengthy soliloquy, phrased in flawless, Scots-accented iambic pentameter and stuffed with dire threats upon the messenger’s life. The messenger did not stay to hear the closing line, but instead summoned a speedy horse and rode for his life, heading for somewhere flat, unwooded, and very far from Scotland.

It was a pleasant day. The radiant dawn shone from the ripening corn, butterflies and fire-coloured swallows flitted through the flawless, turquoise sky, multicoloured humming-birds drank nectar from the standing flowers beside the river, and absolutely nobody had been murdered.
Yet.

So this ended up just being Five. Come to think of it, Five would make an awesome Bond villain. Maybe I'll request that prompt next year. Enjoy!

Time, Five thinks, is a meaningless concept.
Time flies, time races, time drags, you can lose it and gain it.
But one thing is for certain, there is never enough time in the world to do what needs to be done.

not strictly comfort food, but I liked the image...

“Just wait a moment, Captain.” Kalr Five said, stopping me with one raised hand as I rose to exit the galley, the other Kalrs clustered around her nervously. “We thought…that is, I thought, it’s nearly a year now since Anaander Mianaai gave you your command, and her own name, and we thought the occasion should be commemorated.”
All of them rose as Kalr One walked carefully into the galley, carrying a plate containing a large and ornate cake, drizzled with syrup and covered in frosting and piped-on flowers, a scattering of candy sprinkles across its carefully-iced and decorated top, her face alight with pleasure that, for a moment, they could finally surprise me.

She has chased him across worlds, across times. By horse and carriage, by foot and train, cresting each hill only to find emptiness, but climbing the next with hope. Better, after all, to travel in anticipation than to finally accept that she will never arrive.

Acatl, poking his perfectly cooked tortilla suspiciously: i don't trust like that tho

“Please put your clothes on,” the Provost repeated, trying and failing to cover Anthony’s body with his discarded shirt as Anthony fastened his trousers.
“You owe me ten guineas,” Anthony hissed to Simon.
The Duke shrugged as he tried and failed to hide his smile, “Cheap at half the price.”

“Do you see what I’m saying-I’m bored and I’m tired,
Of insults like yours, one dimensional, uninspired.
Can you ride on an ant, can you bathe in a spoon,
Or do your friends know when you walk in a room?
This battle of words you will certainly lose,
If you’re insulting short people then you’ve got a short fuse.”

Ah yes, naked shenanigans, the best kind! This is very amusing, especially Simon's total nonchalance at Anthony's embarrassment. Thank you!

ah, fantastic! :D I particularly love the rhythm of can you ride on an ant, can you bathe in a spoon. thanks for filling my prompt!!

Honor Harrington, Shannon Foraker, a dream takes flight

Set during War of Honor, as RHNS Sovereign of Space leaves with Admiral Giscard.

Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker stood at the viewport, her blue eyes gazing out at the departing SD(P) that had been her favorite flagship, as she’d worked up so many podlayers in preparation for Operation Thunderbolt. I remember how much of a game changer (and dream of tech-savvy tac (or ops) officers like me) pods with mass drivers were, and when I got some, as Admiral Tourville’s ops officer, how great those victories against Mantie hardware (and Harrington) were. Podlayers like RHNS Sovereign of Space had once been a dream, but we did it.

love this!! that last line is awesome

“A perfect meeting place,” Edith said, watching the Assassin approach down the dark vaulted maw of the Thames tunnel, “Nowhere to hide.”
Alice held her peace despite her doubts and was quickly proved correct when the Assassin-alone, just as they’d demanded, though still too far away for her to guess whether the cowled shape was male or female-dashed a small globe to the ground, and the tunnel erupted in a blaze of arcing light, flickering brightly before the gas jets doused and the whole tunnel fell abruptly into darkness.
Screams followed, and despite how Alice tried, she couldn’t hide from them.

Hello, I was just rereading this and got teary, so I wanted to tell you. Thank you.

Is it any surprise to know that each of the old great cities had their own theme? Ilyi had vivid memories of the city, decked out in various shades of purple, trailing after Riliya wearing a periwinkle dress chosen specifically to compliment Riliya’s lavender one. Everything to compliment Riliya. And now she was gone, a dot, a blip in history, to be forgotten if the Vampire, now dressed in a plaid that complimented Ilyi’s figure instead of Riliya’s, never spoke of her.

Grief and regret do nothing after the fact but he had been raised in an age where anything was possible and despair couldn’t touch anyone so he could be forgiven for not knowing that actions once taken can never be erased or changed. So he cried at the end of the battle, away from where his allies might see, over the body of the man who had once been his… conventions in his time would have him believe that if he truly, fully regretted his actions time would turn back and the man would come alive again, gasping maybe, tired and in danger, but alive. And oh, he regretted it. But tears fell on the body, one after another soaking through the heavy armour (not protected from the side, because he was to be at that side) and doing nothing. Today was not the fairy tale that had made the rules since the beginning. Today was war and war left no survivors.

Fairies are tiny, slipping through the air on tiny dragonfly wings, deftly slipping into even the most secret of places. They are tiny and quiet, oh so quiet, the only sound they make while they fly is the tiny buzz of dragonfly wings working overtime to support them. Dragonflies are not fairies and they don’t deserve to suffer for it – but they all do cruel things in war and with everything said war cost were dragonflies really all that high on the list?

If she is the dawn than he is the dusk, with her carefree attitude and righteous beliefs, his knowledgeable cynicism and careful assessment.

She knows she is not the dawn. The last remaining member of a crumbled family, pain she is hiding deep within her heart as she knows that no matter if she gains a grandmother, her life will never again reflect the fragments of memory she still holds gingerly.

He knows he is the dawn. Much has been lost, yes but there is more to be gained. In the life before the woman he is slowly falling in love with could never reciprocate but in this new age that he intends to bring her into they could both have their own life. Dimitri may be cynical and knowledgeable about the risks the world holds but that only made him more determined to carve out a good, new life out for him and for Anya.

It was almost a year since Asher and the rest of his year had turned twelve, Asher was loving his job and looking forward to going to the yearly meeting to meet up with many of his friends again – maybe he’d even make small talk with Jonas. They had been best friends after all, though they hadn’t spoken since Jonas had interrupted their game of war - Asher suspected that Jonas had been avoiding him. Asher woke up screaming, images of fire and blood filling his mind and as he attempted to clear his scrambled mind only one thought came clearly to the surface, ‘This was what Jonas thought of when we played war.’

Dobby had been charged with watching Harry from the moment Lucius Malfoy heard that the boy had returned to the wizarding world. It didn’t take long for Dobby to realize he wasn’t the only one watching the boy, almost a dozen others were also keeping tabs on him. It didn’t bother the house elf at first but when he stopped simply surveilling Harry and began to protect him it became concerning. Dobby slowly worked his way through the watchers, certain they all meant the boy harm before getting to the Headmaster.

It had become too much for Kim years ago. Back when she had lost Ron, she knew it was too much but Kim’s heart had always been to big for her chest so she never did retire. Now she was old enough that ‘too much’ meant more than just emotional distress, it meant physical distress too. So at the ripe old age of 64, Kim Possible retired.

The Jerry’s were built to be linked together, always. Unfortunately as they were forced to flee, occasionally one of them would have to go to places where they couldn’t connect to the others – would be alone for the first time in their lives. When they all finally made it back together again they had more to talk about than they ever had before as for the first time in their lives, they didn’t all have the same experiences.

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Page 221 of 222

Three Sentence Ficathon 2021

Fill

no subject

Intimately Acquainted

Methought the wood began to move

The Pedestal Cup Is Always Half Empty

Time to Die

Birthday

Onwādo

Re: The Pedestal Cup Is Always Half Empty

Streaking

with apologies to Martin Crimp

Re: Streaking

Re: with apologies to Martin Crimp

A dream takes flight

no subject

AC: Syndicate, a place to hide

Re: what died didn't stay dead / you're alive, you're alive in my head

Original Work, Bitterness

Original Work, Change

Original Work, Collateral

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject