Three Sentence Ficathon Part 2

[rthstewart]

THE 2021 3 SENTENCE FICATHON IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS!

THIS IS THE NEW POST FOR PART 2 OF THE 3 SENTENCE FICATHON -- ALL NEW PROMPTS SHOULD BE POSTED HERE
You may continue to fill prompts (but not leave new ones) at the original Post 1 here.

conuly 's unclaimed prompt list here

Thank you all for participating! We had a rush of prompts at the end so be sure to check it out and if you want someone to fill something in particular, and assuming they don't mind being contacted (I know I  don't!), be sure to let them know!

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 does this just because she is an awesome person but should you want to write her 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/168256.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html" _fcksavedurl="https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.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]

Doctor Who, Doctor & Donna, don't stop

[buttonloops]

There's a parallel universe for every choice we make, and so somewhere out there is a universe where he had the courage to stay with Donna and help her live with a self fizzing with Time Lord energy, rather than wiping her memory and running away.

It could be done, of course--he's the Doctor, and whenever he wants something hard enough, the laws of time and space, of relativity and even fucking physics will bend around him.

But then he wouldn't be the only fast-talking asshole in the Tardis, and how could he bear that?

[wingedflight]

Doctor Who, any, time loop

The Doctor

[word_devourer]

...the thing you have to realize about the Doctor is that when you've lived that long, traveled that widely in space and time, you're bound to loop back on yourself every now and again. The Doctor has met himself, herself, themself, dozens of times, in any number of permutations, and that's to say nothing of the out of order shenanigans that they get up to regarding their various nemeses. And of course, every time it happens requires a new explanation because its usually with a new companion who hasn't yet grasped that the thing you have to realize about the Doctor is that when you've lived that long, traveled that widely in space and time, you're bound to loop back on yourself every now and again...

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Star Trek/Star Wars, any character, you came in that thing?

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Narnia, any, cow tools

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools

[wingedflight]

"I'm just a little confused," said Lucy in a low voice, "what the tools are for?"

If the petitioner in front of her was offended, the cow did not show it; she just nodded again to the collection of strangely shaped items and said, "Respectfully, your highness, everyone needs tools, even us cows."

At the side of the room, Edmund leaned towards Peridan to whisper, "Bet you three gold she gives them the seed money to begin manufacturing because she's too kind to think of an inoffensive reason not to."

[ernest]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, any
I feel marooned in this body,
Deserted, my organs can go on without me
You can't fly these wings
You can't sleep in this box with me

[sidhehound]

Any, any, Quiet Apocalypse (The Long Dark-style, no electricity, low temperatures, low threat of violence, elements and lack of food are the main concern)

[(Anonymous)]

My feet have been wet for days now, and last night I finally had to admit to myself that it wasn't just perspiration - my shoes are, in fact, leaking; I stuffed them with crumpled newspapers and obsolete supermarket brochures to soak up the moisture (I dare not put them too close to the fire, it will ruin the leather), and as I was doing so it struck me how many parts and pieces they have, how they fit together, it made me think of all the people, and the technology, and the machines needed to manufacture them; I don't know what am I gonna do when they fall apart. It's not just the shoes, my whole life is gone and I don't know why I keep pushing forward - I suppose that's what humans do, we persist, we survive even when there's no more China-made bulk-manufactured hiking boots in the world, or coats, or belts, or nails, and knifes, and tools. We make do and carry on, and I suppose as long as there's fire to warm myself by at night, I'll carry on too.

Also on my ao3
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29201325

[ernest]

Pathologic, Daniil Dankovsky, Talk to the mirror, oh, choke back tears / And keep telling yourself that "I'm a diva!"

[ernest]

Pathologic, Commander Block, You’re a regular decorated emergency

[ernest]

Pathologic, Clara, “This is gospel for the vagabonds, ne’er-do-wells and insufferable bastards”

[ernest]

Pathologic, Daniil Dankovsky, And I reach deep down within, but the pathways twist and turn / And there's no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn

[ernest]

Pathologic, Artemy Burakh/Alexander Block, Your grace is wasted in your face, / Your boldness stands alone among the wreck / Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck

[eagleoftheninth]

Pathologic, the three playable healers, when will it be over and when can we rest?

[wingedflight]

Narnia, Jadis & her sister, what die didn't stay dead (if I didn't know better, I'd think you're listening to me now)

You Left Them All to Me (wingedflight!Charn-verse)

[vialethe]

Word, always Words - and the mundane words too, clattering through Jadis’s skull at the most inconvenient times, as though all the life stopped in Charn when she spoke the final sounds for her lips has been absorbed inside her, echoing in the vastness of her mindscape.

But ah! there is one, one among them who listens, and there Jadis delights, with little comments and asides, a twist of the lips, the cruel hum of laughter.

When she sees the small boy in the snow, she knows Lazulis is listening, feels her sister’s dead interest unwillingly piqued, and smiles, showing all her teeth; thinking, now, sister; now you truly begin to pay.

I'm sorry.

[vialethe]

Doctor Who, Sally Sparrow, angels and demons

[rthstewart]

Doctor Who, Donna, Rose and/or Martha (optional Susan Pevensie), born to run

Running

[ravenlilyrose]

Rose Tyler was born to run—wind in her hair, ground under her feet, a hand held in hers, and a whoop escaping from her throat—there was nothing she liked more and no time she felt more alive.

Susan Pevensie had not been born to run (gold on her forehead, sister on one side, brothers on the other, horseback and thrones and negotiation tables), but she had learned it when it was needed and was fully capable.

So Rose ran for fun and adventure, and when Susan was around (that they couldn't figure out how she found them so frequently was something that greatly bothered the Doctor, but Rose was happy to have her around) she would make tea for them and sweetly ask the TARDIS for little cakes and listen to all of Rose's stories and troubles and tell her own stories and give advice, and would run only when she had to.

[rthstewart]

Doctor Who, Donna Noble, That’s where all the weird stuff’s happening. In the paperwork.

Worthy of Her Hire

[edenfalling]

Not that it's any of Donna's business, or that she's been looking in particular, but if you want to know how the marketing director spends his holiday bonus (very posh tastes, that man, in the best fucking-the-pig tradition) or where the hired lorries took the old office furniture after the big switcharound (not, shall we say, any of the usual places one takes old furniture, and she might do a spot of digging to satisfy her own curiosity on that point), she can tell you; she can tell you everything.

She files all the paperwork, after all, and scans and files the digital versions, too -- it takes a bit to learn what's normal, what's normal-weird, and what's proper weird for any company, but she has practice; she can pick that up in two weeks or less -- and it's beyond her why nobody ever expects a temp to read the papers she handles.

And if she should happen to spot something not just proper weird but dangerous... well, Donna may be a little fuzzy on the past few years of her life, but she remembers just enough to know, bone-deep, that she can make things better.

[rthstewart]

Doctor Who, Martha, This is me walking away.

Not To Play

[edenfalling]

Martha learned young that sometimes, the only way to win is to walk away: if your opponent controls the field on which you have to fight, makes the rules that define victory, and is determined to make you lose (and look foolish or presumptuous for struggling), you can't get anywhere running through maze with all its exits locked; instead, you have to step back, climb over the walls, and walk away to a place, a perspective, where you can show people how the game is rigged.

The Doctor learned that same lesson somewhere in his endless past, and he's very good at finding the place from which to see the strings and change the terms.

He's less good at understanding that it's possible for him to be the one running a rigged game (on Martha and on himself; at least he's an equal opportunity dispenser of social awkwardness and angst), but Martha thinks, as she walks away, that maybe she's finally found the right move to make him see.

She walks away. She loses. And that's how they both win.

[wingedflight]

Doctor Who/Narnia, Susan & the Doctor, lived so many years

Many Years

[ravenlilyrose]

He overhears her when she's talking to his companions one day: "I have lived so many years more than you would think looking at me," is what she says and it hits him, circling in his mind for days before he talks to her about it.

"I haven't lived as many years or seen as many worlds as you have, ----, but I have seen many things and know many things, I have grown old and then been young again and had to grow again," is her response when he asks her about it, and she addresses him by a name for his race long forgotten and only rarely used even when it was known.

And as they sit together later, she begins to speak in a solemn and far away tone and says something that will stay with him: "We who have lived so many years must remember; never forget, never let yourself forget, hold your people and your memories and your beliefs and your values in your heart and never let them go."

[wingedflight]

Narnia/Merlin, any, different sorts of magic

[wingedflight]

Narnia, any, an Old Guard AU

[elementalraven]

There is no hunt for the White Stag, the Wardrobe does not open to take them back, instead the Pevensies stay in Narnia: they live, they grow and they die – and then they get back up.

The first few times they think it is a fluke, or maybe a miracle – that knife must have missed her heart, that poison was not potent enough (or maybe he has grown resistant to it), Lucy got there just in time – but soon they realize this is something else, something more, and they stop aging (but keep dying, again and again and again).

Being immortal makes them invulnerable, it allows them to take risks they never would have dared to take otherwise, it gives them time to master countless skills- but it does not make them unbeatable, and there is only so much they can do against the vast and overwhelming numbers of invading Telmarines.

A thousand years later when Prince Caspian blows Susan’s lost horn, it is not magic that brings the Four back to Narnia, but hope.

[elementalraven]

narnia, the pevensies, what if the pevensies entered Narnia too soon?

[wingedflight]

Stepping back from the four thrones he had just finished positioning on the newly-crafted dais, the dwarf brushed off his hands and said proudly, "And there they are: the four thrones that will be filled when the four children of Earth appear to save Narnia in her time of greatest need...which, Lion bless us, is not prophesied to come for many hundreds of years yet."

"They're very beautiful," said the young girl whom the dwarf was certain had not been around half a minute before, "What a wonderfully large wardrobe this is!"

[wingedflight]

Doctor Who, Bill, over here doing my thing

left a selfie-stick at home?

[(Anonymous)]

The positioning is awkward, but Bill manages it, arm out, phone pointed at an angle that catches what she wants.

"Are you taking a selfie with a Dalek," Nardole asks, his tone not certain whether its censorious, curious, or disturbed.

Bill shrugs as she steps away from the forever-frozen machine the Doctor had defeated (again, apparently), and says, "Who's going to believe me, anyway?"

[elementalraven]

Narnia, any, Jadis and Miraz role swap

[embraidery]

Jadis may not have magic of her own, but she knows where to find it: magic to ensnare "her" subjects, magic to make them forget their true prince, magic to make the Prince sickly and slow. The one thing she hadn't anticipated was spending so much time away from the throne, acquiring her magic, gave her the reputation of a careless queen. It wasn't long before a few outsiders gave the Narnians the impetus for revolution.

[elementalraven]

Narnia, any, magic found back in England

Meanwhile, Edmund's playing lookout and is furiously wondering what Peter's doing to take so long

[last_haven]

"It's... it's not what I'd thought it'd be," Peter admits at last, gallantly trying not to stare at the bare woman or the garment of feathers she'd shed when she stopped being a swan. Apparently she's showing him a great honor by assuming human form and leaving the garment out in the open, although Peter's blood pressure would have been grateful to have skip it. "The talking in tongues, this True Name business, the..."

She smiles wryly as she turns to him, a box in her hands. "The Wood of Other Worlds and the rings that can get you there?" She opens the box, revealing the rings that were supposed to have been buried in the garden of the Professor's old house. "Or the Swan Maiden who stole the rings for safe keeping when she realized someone had hidden extremely magical artifacts anywhere a small child with a spade can find them?"

Peter blushes, accepts the rings, and prays Edmund won't force him to confess what he had to actually do to get the rings.

[wingedflight]

any, any, Shark Tank (or Dragon's Den, or any other counterpart)

[embraidery]

(with a hat tip to your Narnian cow tools)

"So you see," said the owl, "This tool quickly and easily strips the fur and bones from any small rodent, leaving it much more edible and without the trouble of..." She cleared her throat. "Owl pellets," she said, making it clear she disapproved of the phrase. She demonstrated how to use the tool on a mouse she'd caught moments before, gulping it down whole.

The mouse-eating components of the audience cheered, clapped, or flapped their wings as they were able. The herbivores and humanoids had to adjourn for a five-minute break before weighing in on the usefulness of the tool.