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rthstewart ([personal profile] rthstewart) wrote2021-01-30 02:31 pm

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 [personal profile] 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

















last_haven: (writer)

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
It's not as if she never held something delicate or that gives with the barest press of her thumb, but there is something about the items in the Vault that unsettle Toast. Pillows might be a comfort to her head, but the fabric that clothes them disturbs her--thin veils, delicate sleeves, soft against her chest.

Easy to tear.

Toast misses the scratch of her old clothes, the molded hardness of her boots, and even the callouses on her hands after she is trapped for long enough. Just to be spiteful, she stays in the sun until her skin burns and flakes, just for some friction under her fingers once more.
scytale: (Default)

Re: [Greek Mythology] Exeunt

[personal profile] scytale 2021-02-01 05:32 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, this is lovely and eerie, and I love the rhythm of the language! I love the description of her family, the flower, and his hand at the end.
cofax7: climbing on an abbey wall  (Default)

Re: HP, Ron & Hermione

[personal profile] cofax7 2021-02-01 05:32 am (UTC)(link)
thank you!
ext_1576548: (Default)

Bridgerton, Lady Whistledown (SPOILERS, BEWARE)

[identity profile] ruanchunxian0.livejournal.com 2021-02-01 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
At the Danbury ball, the first major social event after Lady Whistledown’s Society Paper went live, Penelope Featherington found herself standing in a corner of the ballroom, smiling and feeling rather delighted with herself, despite of the horrendous lemon-yellow shade of the dress currently cutting painfully into the sides of her bosom. Save the young men and mamas with unmarried sons who were otherwise fawning over Daphne Bridgerton or staring in wonder at Marina Thompson, everyone in the ballroom was abuzz with excitement at the question of the identity of the mysterious Lady W, or incensed that they had been subject to some cutting commentary that was only too true; if truth be told, the grumbles delighted Penelope slightly more than the praises. Oh, she knew it wasn’t nice to be so chuffed that people felt so insulted by the equally not-very-nice things she wrote, but had she a man’s name and a man’s education, she might have been able to publish on some other, more worthy, subject and demand respect for it; as it was, publishing as a woman would gain her scorn regardless, surely there was no need to hide her own sharp teeth, especially when she had the delicious cover of such anonymity.
Edited 2021-02-01 05:34 (UTC)
arysthaeniru: (Default)

Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku

[personal profile] arysthaeniru 2021-02-01 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
Haruka's hair is something of a mystery to him, as it must be a mystery for so many other lonely fathers, but Kiryu doggedly learns how to braid her hair and help her brush it out—it's the least he can do.

"I'm old enough to do it myself." Haruka demurs, but there's always a pleased smile on her face when Kiryu offers to pitch in, to carefully tug his hand down the back of her head where she can't reach.

"I want to grow it out long, I think," she says, hesitantly one night. "But it would be a hassle, wouldn't it?"

Kiryu doesn't know how to talk to children, so he decides to treat her like the calm and mature rock she has always been for him. "You don't need to ask my permission to do whatever you makes you feel happier with yourself." She doesn't need to ask him for permission to take up time and space in their empty apartment. She is a boon upon his life, and if it takes fifteen minutes longer in the morning to do her hair, Kiryu welcomes it as a blessing, to see her radiant smile.
ext_1576548: (Default)

Re: Matilda

[identity profile] ruanchunxian0.livejournal.com 2021-02-01 05:35 am (UTC)(link)
Oooh! this is delightful!
last_haven: (Default)

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 05:35 am (UTC)(link)
Adult!Wednesday the college cryptid is the best and I hope more people decide to write more with her.

(Anonymous) 2021-02-01 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
Young Justice: Outsiders, Dick/Barbara, still working on a nickname, cuteness?
cofax7: climbing on an abbey wall  (Default)

[personal profile] cofax7 2021-02-01 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, that's good! Jadis leaves more than one story behind.
cofax7: climbing on an abbey wall  (Default)

[personal profile] cofax7 2021-02-01 05:42 am (UTC)(link)
oh, I like!
arysthaeniru: (capella pensive)

[personal profile] arysthaeniru 2021-02-01 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
Mary's coworker at her Dark Matter Studies Lab wears an oddly familiar perfume, and in the interest of not being creepy, Will doesn't try and ask her about where she'd bought it. Regardless, as he's sorting through data at eleven at night, he catches a waft of it in the air, and thinks of Lyra's sweet red lips against his.

Right. There had been roses in that beautiful field tended to by the mulefa.
last_haven: (narnia)

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
Conversation stops when she walks in the room, but it's not a silence Susan wants to recognize. Lucy's smile is so pained and loving while Peter stalks off and Edmund follows after him with a nod, but it's the apologetic nod of a diplomat and Susan feels frozen inside.

She doesn't ask what they were talking about when she sits with Lucy because it hurts too much already. It's like they're all children again and her brothers are squabbling over who gets to lead and Lucy is just annoyingly delightful, but she is just Susan the Bore.

But this is worse--Susan the Bore is better than Susan the Traitor and she wishes they could just put these games aside.

(Why can't they see that they weren't wanted--none of them, not even ever loyal Lucy and where the hell is the justice in that?)

She misses her siblings long before their funerals.
archersangel: ("awake")

[personal profile] archersangel 2021-02-01 05:53 am (UTC)(link)
He was sure he finally figured it out; what required cold water, what needed hot, what setting to put the dryer on for certain items.

Only to discover that a pair of red socks somehow ended up in with his white shirts staining everything pink.

After 5 minutes of cursing Draco wonders of there's a spell to fix it.
last_haven: (narnia)

As much as I hope someone does a literal take on this prompt soon, here's a metaphorical one for now

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 05:53 am (UTC)(link)
She speaks the Deplorable Words and the world ends.

"Narnia isn't real!" she finally shouts and everything is silence; the others are statues before her, staring and wordless. A winter storm rages in her breast as she stalks away from them, muttering curses that shatters the cozy world they've built together--but she is too old for that place, too much everything for it, so it can just burn for all she cares.
Edited 2021-02-01 05:54 (UTC)
last_haven: (Default)

Re: [Hades] Blizzard

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 06:09 am (UTC)(link)
Ack, poor Demeter. Those years must have been such hell and you've captured it so well here. Well done!
ext_1576548: (Default)

Nirvana in Fire

[identity profile] ruanchunxian0.livejournal.com 2021-02-01 06:10 am (UTC)(link)

“I have a letter right here,” Xiao Jingyan – the emperor as he now was – railed at the man standing sheepishly in front of him, flapping a piece of paper about the air, “from Lin Chen, the physician whom you swore up and down before you left for battle was the only person who could save your life – and if he declared you dead that meant you were dead – stating specifically, unequivocally, that you had died, so do you mind telling me, how, in the name of my esteemed departed eldest brother, are you alive, and only bothered to return to Jinling now, after we have already spent months mourning you?”


“I was wrong?” Mei Changsu - or Lin Shu – or whatever it was that he was calling himself now, who even knew for sure anymore – said with appropriate meekness in the face of the emperor’s temper, “or maybe Lin Chen was wrong, I’m not sure, but against all odds, I live.”


“And be grateful I’m refraining from killing you all over again!” Jingyan snapped, before grabbing his cousin and childhood friend into a rough embrace.

last_haven: (Default)

[personal profile] last_haven 2021-02-01 06:12 am (UTC)(link)
Quina has never let someone leave their table hungry. Oh, my poor heart! It's too much, I can't take it!

This was lovely.
ext_1576548: (Default)

[identity profile] ruanchunxian0.livejournal.com 2021-02-01 06:17 am (UTC)(link)
Narnia, this post: https://travelingstrawberry.tumblr.com/post/640133997407649793 (racoon artist)
Edited 2021-02-01 06:18 (UTC)
astrogirl: (Fictional Friends)

Re: Fill: we can't lose our selves, only mislay them for a time

[personal profile] astrogirl 2021-02-01 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, man, this is amazing. This has definitely done something to my heart.
alexseanchai: Katsuki Yuuri wearing a blue jacket and his glasses and holding a poodle, in front of the asexual pride flag with a rainbow heart inset. (Default)

[Miraculous Ladybug] (leather-studded) fashion baby

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-02-01 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
cn deadnaming (probably), parental transphobia (possibly), societal transphobia (definitely)


"Longer hair is good for a wider variety of hairstyles," Adrienne points out one month, and "Women's streetwear has fewer social constraints than men's," she observes another month, though each time she is told to be silent rather than to elaborate, and "Cosmetics are an art form," she says a third month, "didn't you listen to—" but she silences herself because to ask is to imply Father might not prize the memory of every word Maman ever spoke; Adrienne feels guilty enough about how her Tumblr bio says Val because Maman would have named a daughter Celeste, not Valérie.

She considers calling herself Minette Noire for about two seconds while figuring out how to use her staff (heh) as a balance beam, but the partner Plagg told her to find is clearly nervous enough already, and she can underline her own gender in the tradition of Batgirl and She-Hulk easily enough without that; "I shouldn't say any name that someone could use to find my family," she says, helping disentangle them both from her partner's yo-yo, and flicks her meter of golden braid back over her black-leather shoulder, and sweeps a ludicrously overdramatic bow to leave a neon green kiss print on the back of her partner's glove: "Chatonne Noire; enchanted, Mademoiselle."

The girl who will soon dub herself Ladybug blushes and giggles and says "Likewise, beautiful," before turning as red as her outfit and correcting herself to "—nightshade—warmonger—come on let's go save Paris" and noticing the droop of Chatonne Noire's cat ears and tail even as she's saying that, and so pointedly correcting herself back to a plainly sincere "Beautiful" that now Chatonne Noire is blushing too.


that's "belle—belladone—belliciste"; "chaton" is to "chatonne" as "kitten" is to "girl-kitten"; though translating "minette" as "pussy" is accurate in fewer than all senses of either word, you get the idea
vialethe: (Susan)

[personal profile] vialethe 2021-02-01 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
You know, I don't know why I leave sad prompts and am then all /shocked pikachu when I get tragic fills out of them! Poor, poor Susan - I love the callback to her childhood when she was the boring one, and Ed's nod being diplomatic - my heart, she is broken. Thanks!
vialethe: (Ophelia)

Re: [Greek Mythology] Exeunt

[personal profile] vialethe 2021-02-01 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
Your Hades/Persephone is always so good, and this is no exception. The creepy, wild atmosphere here is perfect, and the careful contrast between the gods.
arysthaeniru: (Default)

[personal profile] arysthaeniru 2021-02-01 07:00 am (UTC)(link)
She has been waiting her entire life for a Prince to ride in on a white horse and seize her from the unassuming crowd of extras, and declare her to be the special Princess--no matter what gender that Prince may be. It is about being valued, being special, being seen.

"You're beautiful," says the Prince of Ohtori Academy, his long purple hair caressing his neck, and Wakaba smiles, pretending that she and him both don't know how ill-fitting the Rose Bride dress is on her slender frame. A prince is a prince is a prince, even if the princess is only an understudy.
ladyjax: (Default)

[personal profile] ladyjax 2021-02-01 07:01 am (UTC)(link)
Single Parents, Will Cooper, "I never imagined I'd be in The Day After Tomorrow."
ladyjax: (Default)

[personal profile] ladyjax 2021-02-01 07:04 am (UTC)(link)
9-1-1, May Grant, Be the lifeline