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

Re-Socialization (The Magnus Archives)

[edenfalling]

One of the first things Georgie did, after she regained enough of herself to feel -- not better, no, but like better might be a possibility someday in the future -- was look up a local RSPCA branch and volunteer to help socialize rescued cats.

"I have limited mobility right now," she said, "but I grew up with three cats, I can provide a warm lap and act non-threatening, and I do very good 'stop that' body language and hisses when kittens get too enthusiastic with their claws."

"Indoor work, then -- can you manage three to six on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons?" the volunteer coordinator asked, and that was that.

After a couple months of socializing traumatized cats, forcing herself into gradually extending daily walks, and slowly dipping her toes back into contact with her emotions (except fear; for some reason fear hadn't started to reappear, even in an attenuated, washed-out form like her other emotions had when they began to seep back), Georgie asked if she could switch to fostering instead. "I think I have enough energy back to give one or two cats my full attention," she told the volunteer coordinator.

Her first assignment was a pair of kittens, both gray tabby and fluffy enough to withstand an Arctic winter, who had been found in a box floating in circles on top of a storm drain. The rescuer had called them Dreadnought and Torpedo, on account of their nautical exploits.

"Those are terrible names," Georgie said as the male kitten (slightly fluffier than his sister, but distinguishable mostly by the widow's peak mark on his forehead whereas his sister's stripes didn't start until between her ears) cheeped in protest that she wasn't instantly refilling his dish of kitten-safe wet food, "not dignified enough or properly silly, and I refuse to use them. We'll call you Sir and your sister Dame until I think of something that suits. What do you say to that?"

The newly renamed Sir yawned, displaying his tiny, needle-sharp teeth, and squeaked.

"Quite right," Georgie agreed, and plopped another dab of food into his dish.

It was humbling, being responsible for two tiny lives -- and also made her feel more fully alive than anything else. Yes, the moment she died would feel exactly the same as this present moment, all things would end, and the universe was ultimately a machine slowly losing tension and winding down to futile silence, but here and now there were two kittens cheeping and purring and getting into absolutely every corner of her flat. Georgie knew it made no deep, existential difference if they died now or twenty years later, but she told herself firmly that those years certainly made a difference to the cats in question, as well as a difference to her... and for the first time since the corpse had spoken, she halfway believed it.

By the time the kittens were scheduled to be spayed and neutered, Georgie had settled on better names. The female kitten, now revealed as a daredevil with a penchant for escaping into the building hallway and loudly accosting Georgie's neighbors for adoration sessions, was the Pirate Queen. The male kitten, quieter and more dignified (insofar as any kitten had any sense of dignity), as well as more standoffish and prone to watching events from the top of the bookcase, was the Admiral.

"That way you both command your own fleets," Georgie told them, "and you can work together or against each other depending on the tides of politics, which explains both your spats and your cuddlefests." The kittens, busily engaged in a mutual grooming session, ignored her until she danced the bedraggled remains of a sock over the heads and they collapsed in a tangle of legs and eager chirping.

Georgie laughed.

She kept moving the sock on autopilot, too surprised by her own laughter to pay attention to her body. She would have expected it to sound rusty, awkward, like a battered engine coughing its way to ignition. Instead, it sound normal. Like she'd never forgotten how, like joy had been lurking within her all along.

The Admiral dug his claws into the sock and tried to climb it like a rope. The Pirate Queen stood on her hind paws and swatted at her brother.

"You're a heavy boy," Georgie said, and dropped the sock so the kittens could squabble over its possession.

The Pirate Queen won and trotted off with her spoils of war. The Admiral claimed Georgie's lap in compensation, and let her pet his belly, fingers sinking deep into his soft grey fluff.

"I think you've been claimed," the RSPCA vet said when Georgie hauled the two kittens in for their procedures.

"What?"

"Look at them -- she's off charming the world, but he's stuck to you like a burr," the vet clarified.

Georgie glanced down at the Admiral, who was, true to the vet's description, huddled in her arms like she was a knight in shining armor ready to defend him against the dangers of this strange, loud, bright place, purring up a nervous storm. Meanwhile the Pirate Queen was making love to the assistant vet tech's ankles.

Inexplicably, she felt herself flush. "I didn't mean for either of them to get attached."

The vet shrugged as the tech lifted the Pirate Queen onto the examination table. "It happens -- sometimes people adopt cats, other times cats adopt people. Is there any reason you couldn't keep him long-term?"

"I'm going back to uni this fall," Georgie started, then paused. "But he'll be old enough by then that I can leave him alone while I'm in class, and I can work to make sure I have a long break around lunch. Do you think I'd be approved, if I asked to adopt him?"

"So long as his health is good and your flat checks out, I don't see why not," the vet said. "There's always a percentage of foster placements that turn into forever homes, and you probably weren't going to continue fostering while attending university anyway. I can put in a word, if you're worried."

"I think I'd like that," Georgie said. "Yeah. I'd definitely like that. Thank you."

She scratched behind the Admiral's ears, and smiled when his purr rumbled through her slowly refilling heart.

Re: Re-Socialization (The Magnus Archives)

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, this is so good.

Re: Re-Socialization (The Magnus Archives)

[edenfalling]

Thank you! :)