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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

















eagleoftheninth: (Default)

Fill: Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, Seizhi/Miramie

[personal profile] eagleoftheninth 2021-01-31 10:55 am (UTC)(link)
you don't need to hide my friend, for i'm just like you

Eventually you have to admit that a life free of pain is not going to be an option for you. That there is no destiny to give you a place in the world. That nothing can fix you and make you new. That you're not real, and not meant to be here, and that's going to be agony forever and you just have to deal with it.

You very nearly die of that realisation. If the world is never going to want you, if you'll never be more than an unwelcome intruder, then why inflict yourself on it? Why not do the right thing and cut yourself out like the tumour you are?

And if you were alone, if it was only you that was like this, you would. But by some strange and backwards miracle, you're not.

She's not the same kind of monster as you, but she's still a monster. Creation's fabric hates and hurts her even more than it does you. And she is beautiful, and fierce, and kind, and so good that you can't believe she deserves any part of the pain. And even that's not all—

—because it's not just that she understands you, as if that weren't gift enough. It's that she loves you.

(And she loves the same way you love, too. Like hungry, like don't-let-go, like prized-jewel, like mine-all-mine-forever.

"You are my treasure, my-vizier," she tells you, clever artist's hands tracing your face and stroking your hair, voice warm with affection. "There's no better evidence for the world being wrong than that it doesn't love you.")

And no, it doesn't take away the pain, any more than you can love away the curse that claws at her.

But it makes it all so much more bearable.
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)

[Narnia] armies march on their stomachs, wearing hand-knit socks

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:05 am (UTC)(link)
"Everyone did business with the Witch, of course," one of the Robins tells Susan one of the first mornings she's Queen, "no mother wants her babies to starve, and it's not as though there's earthworms in frozen ground."

Susan allows herself thirty seconds to long for Oxford's library, or at least Professor Kirke's, or even the several volumes of nonfiction on Helen Pevensie's shelf. Then she begins asking who might teach her and Lucy (and their brothers, she hopes) to sow, salt, smoke, stew, steep, and spin.
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)

Re: MariBanana

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:07 am (UTC)(link)
heeeeee!
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)

Re: Miraculous: 'Etched in their Bones'

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:08 am (UTC)(link)
oh ouch

good ouch though
Edited (this was meant for the 'bone deep' prompt, I think?) 2021-02-01 03:11 (UTC)
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)

Re: Miraculous: Kneads more puns...

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:08 am (UTC)(link)
*cackling*
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)

Re: Sandman, Matthew, commentary on 2020

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
pffft
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)

Re: Maybe Less, Maybe a Little More (Anthropomorfic, Time vs 2020)

[personal profile] alexseanchai 2021-01-31 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
accurate

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 11:12 am (UTC)(link)
Susan has just melted down another group of stone soldiers when her brother falls from the sky- “Miraz has Caspian locked up in the tower” Peter tells her as he reaches out to her “Edmund and Lucy are meeting us there”.
Susan sighs as she holds onto her brother, this has never been her favorite mode of travel, and the winds come to gather them up just before the next squadron of stone soldiers would have crushed them.
When they arrive their siblings are already there, stone soldiers pierced by twisted roots or wet and smashed to bits lying in a circle around them, and together the four of them storm the tower and rescue the prince.
eagleoftheninth: (Default)

[personal profile] eagleoftheninth 2021-01-31 11:14 am (UTC)(link)
Pathologic, the three playable characters, 'but it refused'
eagleoftheninth: (Default)

Re: [Narnia] armies march on their stomachs, wearing hand-knit socks

[personal profile] eagleoftheninth 2021-01-31 11:17 am (UTC)(link)
I love this.

Re: [Narnia] armies march on their stomachs, wearing hand-knit socks

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 11:18 am (UTC)(link)
This is great! I love Susan being her practical self
eagleoftheninth: (Default)

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

[personal profile] eagleoftheninth 2021-01-31 11:44 am (UTC)(link)
For years he's been fending off their opinions; the scorn is easy to dismiss, but the concern is harder. Eventually his defences aren't good enough. He stops believing. He loses his best friend.

It is so very lonely being without Hobbes. It is even worse, being obliged to believe that he never had him at all.

But as months turn into years, defiance rises up in him; where do they get off, thinking it's better to be like this? To discount anything that doesn't live in their neatly bounded world?

It takes him a few false starts before he remembers the trick of how to make cardboard boxes into machines, but once he has, it's easy. His airplane barely has to fly any distance at all before he sees the familiar striped shape padding through the snowy woods.

Hobbes is leaner and scruffier than Calvin remembers, less cared-for, and he cringes with guilt for abandoning him, wondering if he'll even want to be Calvin's friend anymore. But when he yells down to him, the tiger's answering roar of "You came back!" is joy, not anger. And when he lands—

—well, Calvin may be taller and stronger now, but it turns out that a madly-purring tiger can still bowl him over with an affectionate pounce.
undeadrobins: (Default)

Original fic

[personal profile] undeadrobins 2021-01-31 12:32 pm (UTC)(link)
She could look into the future and see what it holds for her - she's done it many times since she discovered the ability - but there's something about him that makes her want to trust in his potential, and not know for sure.

He steps towards her, hands held out, asking for permission to come closer, to touch, to exist in her space, and she nods her acceptance.

As he kisses her, soft and sweet and everything she dreamed of, she is grateful that she made this decision - if it is destined to end badly, she doesn't want to know - and she kisses him back, the future be damned.

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 12:33 pm (UTC)(link)
the old guard, quynh, freedom

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)
harry potter, ron weasley, chess

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 12:35 pm (UTC)(link)
leverage, eliot spencer, vulnerability

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 12:36 pm (UTC)(link)
asoiaf, Arya Stark, running with wolves

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 12:37 pm (UTC)(link)
asoiaf, Brienne of Tarth, maiden and warrior
undeadrobins: (Default)

Teen Titans

[personal profile] undeadrobins 2021-01-31 12:42 pm (UTC)(link)
[My first failing to stick to 3 sentences this year! But Happy Birthday [personal profile] conuly!]

"I don't understand the purpose of this... thing," Starfire grumbles as she stretches a balloon between her fingers, yelping a little as she releases it and it snaps against her skin.

"You fill it with air and it just sort of sits on the floor until someone bounces it at someone else," Robin replies, staring at the offending item, beginning to understand Star's confusion; it really doesn't have much of a purpose.

A war cry comes from across the room, where Beast Boy and Cyborg are hitting a balloon between them using whatever part of their body they can; they're smiling and laughing, with Beast Boy changing into a different animal with each pass and Cyborg laughing hard enough that he'd be crying real tears if he could.

Oh, Robin thinks to himself. Maybe that's the purpose.
jjhunter: Serene person of color with shaved head against abstract background half blue half brown (scientific sage)

RQG, Cel, updates for Yuko

[personal profile] jjhunter 2021-01-31 01:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Rusty Quill Gaming, Cel, updates for Yuko
jjhunter: irridescent raven against a background of autumnal maple leaves (world tree raven)

TMA, Martin, poetry in motion

[personal profile] jjhunter 2021-01-31 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)
The Magnus Archives, Martin, poetry in motion
jjhunter: Sketch of stork + woman beneath the text "apparently doing an impression of a lame stork attempting a mating dance" (Lame Stork Mating Dance)

SF, I.M.O.G.E.N., 1st Law Robotics vs. 1st Law Capitalism

[personal profile] jjhunter 2021-01-31 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Stellar Firma, I.M.O.G.E.N., 1st Law of Robotics vs. 1st Law of Capitalism
Edited 2021-01-31 17:58 (UTC)

(Anonymous) 2021-01-31 01:30 pm (UTC)(link)
I have not seen that film, but I'll take that as a compliment ;)
eagleoftheninth: (Default)

[personal profile] eagleoftheninth 2021-01-31 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa Heartilly, 'all witches are selfish'