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

[wingedflight]

any, any, superhero au

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[rthstewart]

This has an amazing Sky High feeling to it.

[(Anonymous)]

I have not seen that film, but I'll take that as a compliment ;)

[buttonloops]

I love this???

I love how you manage to deftly hint at superpowers in very clear & recognizeable ways without getting bogged down in explanation!

[(Anonymous)]

thank you so much! I'm glad it worked for you

[wingedflight]

This is so much fun!! Stone soldiers! Caspian locked in a tower! Peter can fly!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks! I also had fun coming up with it :)

[frausorge]

Marvelous!

[(Anonymous)]

thank you!

[harmony_lover]

Oh, my gosh, I love this! Such vivid visuals and hinting at so much. It really is a whole story in a tiny space. :)

[(Anonymous)]

thank you so much!

[romanajo123]

This is great!

[elementalraven]

Thank you! :D (this was me before I had an account)

Riverdale, Archie Andrews, Superhero AU

[liquidtears]

(OOC: let me tell you how thankful I am for 3 Sentence Ficathon! 2020 SUCKED for me writing-wise, I just couldn't put a single word to write when COVID-19 hit. So... THANK YOU so much for releasing my creative musing juices to flow again like never before! I hope you like it!)

Seven Years had passed in which Archie "Archibald" Andrews hadn't protected the town of Riverdale from evil-doers, including their Mayor, Hiram Lodge.

Because he had been off going on adventures of his own, of his college years and protecting new loved ones, not even thinking once of his gang the Justice Archie League.

But now, after having flown back to the town that had been a part of him ever since he had been born, and seeing how much of a ghost town the still current Mayor Lodge had turned it into, when his feet touched the ground, he knew that he would have re-assemble his team of Justice Archie League once again, yes, even Reggie "Reginald" Mantle.

Re: Riverdale, Archie Andrews, Superhero AU

[tellshannon815]

Love it, great one for this prompt!

Re: Riverdale, Archie Andrews, Superhero AU

[wingedflight]

The Justice Archie League! Ahaha I love it.

Incidental Heroics (Naruto; Sakumo, Kakashi, OC)

[kalira]

"Oh! White Fang! Bless you," Ryoko cried, clutching his arm for balance as she scrambled out of the rapidly-dissolving rubble around her feet, "when Pein claimed his minions had the Konoha Hero League all occupied we thought-" her voice broke. "We're so relieved he was lying, of course he was, but to think-"

"Ah, well," White Fang grinned at her, showing off gleaming fangs, "that may be the case, I haven't checked - but whoever said I was a hero?" he asked, putting her safely on solid ground before leaping down into the pit where Pein had dragged a white-blonde boy, disappearing with a sizzling flash of lightning.

Queen of Heroes (Tiger & Bunny; Keith/Agnes)

[kalira]

". . .isn't that your emergency alert?" Keith asked softly, nodding towards the bright band on Agnes' wrist; the green bands were flashing. "Don't you need to go?"

"Mm. . ." Agnes tapped a finger against her lips, her eyes going unfocused and limned with electric blue as she focused her power, looking beyond their surroundings and presumably tracking the emergency. "No, I think they can handle it without me for one night." she grinned, holding out her glass, and Keith happily reached for the bottle of wine to top it off.

I could not actually resist, though this is more of a role reversal, perhaps, considering. . .

Re: Queen of Heroes (Tiger & Bunny; Keith/Agnes)

[mad_madam_m]

FANTASTIC. <3 Queen of Heroes indeed!!

Re: Queen of Heroes (Tiger & Bunny; Keith/Agnes)

[kalira]

X3 She would be! . . .I don't know that I can see Keith doing her job though. *laughs* He probably runs a dog rescue or something. >.>

Fill: Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, Laodemus + Entropy II + Lilimund

[eagleoftheninth]

until i put on the mask (of my own face)

The superhero scene in Town is kind of like an hidden world in itself, one that lightly overlays the real one.

Most people with powers are just themselves. They're magicians, or warriors, or deviant scientists, but they're open about it. Or else they go the other way and hide truly, keeping their strangeness and strength under wraps.

If you're a superhero, you don't do either of those things. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that you do both. You take a new name; you wear a mask. (Perhaps a costume too, though that's not really necessary. Masks, after all, are a very effective disguise.) You don't let anyone see the everyday truth of you, the awkwardnesses, the flaws. You grandstand. You do great things. (Or terrible ones. Some prefer the mask of the villain to that of the hero.)

In the mask you're someone else, living your own Golden Age, in a world with simpler rules. In the mask you're brave and strong and while an enemy may physically beat you up, nobody can really touch you. Not where it hurts.

That's why Laodemus likes it. The world doesn't need to know about his insecurities. He looks the part of a big, dramatic, cheerful strongman, so that's what he'll be, El Técnico in flamboyant red and blue and gold, someone better than the guy who's been trying since forever to get his parents to just look at him—

—see? That's just kind of pathetic and sad. Nobody wants to know about that. Least of all Laodemus himself. He can choose who he wants to be, and he chooses to be someone who doesn't have those kinds of feelings.

It all gets a bit shaky, though, after he meets—and subsequently teams up with—the Angel of Fortitude and the Clockwork Guardian.

They're really something, those two. He wouldn't work with them if they weren't. It's not just their powers; the Angel's geomancy and army of monsters and mutation-inducing ichor, the Guardian's venomous spit and summoned barriers and mechanical genius. It's how well they use them—how clever they are about it, and how much they want to be of help. It's the way they'll never back down from a challenge and never let a problem go unfixed if they can solve it. They're just good kids, both of them. He cares about them a lot. But.

There's an etiquette to superheroics, to teamups and rivalries both. You never take off your mask, literally or figuratively, and you never try to look behind anyone else's. To Laodemus that's a comfort. But the Angel and the Guardian aren't nearly so good at keeping kayfabe. For them, the secrecy chafes.

They try, of course. (Like he said, they're good kids.) They really try. But then they'll let something slip. Blurt out some too-raw feeling. Drop a detail in conversation without noticing how alarming it sounds. And each of them worries when the other does that.

The Guardian explains, fidgeting, that she "really should not be outside my...my home, at all—I'm not allowed, it wouldn't be proper", and the Angel can't hide his horror and confusion, hands twitching like he wants to reach out to her, like he would be doing so were it not for how his palms leak corruptive blood.

The Angel casually mentions that he never had friends as a child—"nobody ever wanted to try, they knew my dad would hurt them for it"—and the Guardian's clenching her fists, visibly biting back such protective fury that Laodemus has no doubt; if she ever meets the Angel's father, she'll strike the bastard down where he stands.

So of course Laodemus worries too, so much, and the conventions get a little bit harder to keep to every day. He wants to find the 'home' that the Guardian's being kept prisoner in and break it. He wants to know who the 'associates of my father' are that the Angel has implied are trying to harm him.

But those things can't happen without masks coming off, and when masks come off everything falls apart. They'd lose this, the freedom they both cling to so hard, the safety of anonymity. He'd lose both of them.

So he doesn't pry, and he keeps kayfabe, and he supports them as best he can. And he wonders when it will become too much. He wonders which of them will crack first.

And sometimes. Sometimes he wonders—

—if, when they unmask.

What if he did, too?

Information Is Never Free (The Magnus Archives)

[edenfalling]

It's a truism among the powered set that you don't attack the Archives; their basement lair is as close to neutral ground as you can find in a world of heroes and villains, providing information to anyone who can afford to pay their price -- and even if they just helped your sworn nemesis achieve victory, even if you feel inclined to hunt down all accomplices and salt the earth around them, the Archives are off limits.

Most newbies ask why, eventually. What's so scary about information brokers? Why haven't any heroes or villains set up shop as a dedicated source for their own side?

The few who remember when the Archives broke free from their indenture to Mister Magnus -- who have seen the Archivist burn an intruder to ash under his pitiless glare, watched a trusted friend stab an ally in the back and flash the Changeling's quicksilver smile, waded through the carnage left behind by Stoker's axe, fought free of Blackwood's web of friendly, isolating lies -- shake their heads and say only, "Test them if you want; it's your funeral."

Most listen. Those few who don't, who dare to call the Archives' bluff? None are ever seen again.

The Archives always collect their price.

Re: Information Is Never Free (The Magnus Archives)

[wingedflight]

Oooooo I love that even in a superhero AU, the archives is every bit as creepy

in search of something (Narnia)

[waystokillathing]

Susan’s not sold on the idea and she’s not afraid of telling him, wary eyes and the barest hint of tension on her shoulders, but Lucy looks at him like Peter’s hung the moon and the stars, words a mile per hour, scattered haphazardly in half broken sentences entirely lost on her excitement and hope ― Susan’s old enough that recounted battles and hero stories have all but turned into cautionary tales of hurt, and she does not wield it against him, does not sharpen her words nor her gaze, and Lucy’s admiration carries the three of them through the highest points of it, through the news and the costumes and all the gossip ― Susan’s not sold but England is, and Peter shoulders the weight of his title with Lucy’s trust upon his heart like battle armor.

The Magnificent, they call him.

(Stupid, is what Edmund says, instead, voice flat, eyes furious, mouth twisted in a snarl of what Peter cannot say for sure it is anger ― stupid, but he lets Peter in nonetheless, stitches in place wounds Peter hadn’t dared look too close at, watches him like a hawk until Peter’s done with dinner, shares his bed without an uttered word of complaint ― stupid, is what Edmund bites, bitter, unkind, but he curls against Peter’s back like a five-year-old boy, scared of thunder and the rain and the cold, forehead pressed against Peter’s spine, stuttered breath against Peter’s skin, and doesn’t let go.)