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

Home Front (The Magnus Archives)

[edenfalling]

The siren wakes Jenny at midnight, two hours after she went to bed and barely twenty minutes after she finally drifted into sleep: another air raid, the fifth this week -- or is it the sixth? Time blurs under sustained attack, and Jenny is no longer sure how long the war has lasted, nor how many days of work she's missed due to travel restrictions and ruined roads.

She staggers out of her bed, warm and cloying with the false promise of security, bundles the comforter around her shoulders, and climbs down six flights of stairs to the shelter in the basement. It's crowded and rank with the sweating, shivering bodies of her neighbors. Nobody speaks. What is there to talk about? More bombs, more destruction, more senseless violence -- everyone already knows the important things.

In the corner, a radio crackles to life and begins announcing targets: a bridge, a factory, a bank (just two blocks from the office, Jenny notes dully), a church, a high rise. Nobody admits to turning it on. Nobody dares to turn it off, and the litany of death marches on.

The ground shakes.

"Close one," somebody murmurs; "I wonder what--" A susurrus of irritated sighs rises until the speaker subsides, shamed back into silence.

The radio promises that the government has only their best interests in mind, and will institute new shelter regulations soon. The army is planning a counterstrike.

Jenny tunes it out until one of the specifications pierces through her shield of numb exhaustion. Shelters cannot have more than four stories of construction above them, to reduce the weight in case a building collapses.

Her apartment is on the sixth floor. There are two more floors above her.

"Our shelter's not up to code," she says, shrinks back at the sudden flood of disapproving attention, and then rallies. "Didn't you hear? Our shelter's not up to the new code -- where are they going to put us? What if-- what if we have to run down the street with the bombs falling? What if they turn us out of our homes?"

The ground shakes again. Small flakes of concrete dust fall from the reinforced ceiling -- it wasn't properly reinforced, after all, just quickly and enough to meet the last shelter code change.

Nobody has an answer.

Jenny huddles in her comforter until the all-clear sounds and she trudges back up the six flights of stairs to her apartment. There's plaster dust on her bed and a cascade of books have fallen off a shelf. She thinks about picking them up, putting them back in order. Then she leaves it for the morning.

In the morning, of course, Jenny has no time to tidy up. The radio crackled to life an hour before her normal alarm and announced delays on the train and the bus and the roads. She'll have to leave early if she wants half a chance to reach the office only an hour late instead of not till lunch.

She drives past the ruins of a church, a school, a Starbucks. What military value does a coffee shop have? Aren't civilian targets supposed to be off limits? What kind of animals are they fighting, over there, out where the war is? Why can't the war stay over there? Who gave them -- the enemy, the government, whoever; it's not like she's paid attention to world affairs, just lumped it all together under them -- who gave them the right to bring the war home and ruin Jenny's life?

The siren blares its warning while Jenny is still half a mile from the office.

She slams on her brakes, pulls over to the side of the road and double-parks beside a minivan. There are supposed to be emergency shelters every two blocks, marked with day-glo orange paint, but she hasn't been tracking them. Is the nearest one behind her? In front of her? Which way should she run?

Her cell phone beeps an emergency alert signal. As she thumbs her lock screen open, the car radio crackles and announces, "Corner of Lafayette and State."

Jenny looks up at the cross street name hanging from the stoplight pole. Lafayette, it says. She's driving on State.

She has enough time to hope her death is quick before the explosion blots out the world.

...

The siren wakes Jenny at 6am, an hour before her alarm. She blinks away her dream -- was she driving? and got caught in an impact zone? -- and staggers out of bed for the fifth time this week -- or is it the sixth? Time blurs under sustained attack, and Jenny is no longer sure how long the war has lasted.

She has given up hope that it will ever end.