rthstewart: (Default)
rthstewart ([personal profile] rthstewart) wrote2022-01-15 12:00 pm

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022

This post is NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS!  PLEASE POST YOUR NEW PROMPTS HERE, IN POST 2!  Do continue to fill prompts here but please put all new prompts in Post 2.






 
Welcome to the Three Sentence Ficathon!

Here's a Friending meme!

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 at bit after about 2 weeks and especially once we open a new post because this one is approaching 4,500 comments.
  • 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.

Here's my attempt at a text box that might go horribly awry.






How long will it go?

The 3SF closes to new prompts on February 13, 2022. The entry stays open permanently and people post fills all year long.  (There were a bunch of new posts to the 2021 3SF this week!)

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 (and much more). 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, protect yourself, 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 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.

 

Here, have some icons and banners and let me know if you've created your own!



      


















little_lady_d: (Default)

[personal profile] little_lady_d 2022-01-29 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
aaah lucy being a war medic, facing wounds her cordial cannot fix. and she's still there to support the wounded, and peter is there to support her. good for them!
little_lady_d: (Default)

Re: i haven't failed at keeping a tsf fill to three sentences in YEARS but it's worth it for edmund

[personal profile] little_lady_d 2022-01-29 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
it was worth it, ed, darling. i'm glad he got to prove himself a little, and his siblings still got to laugh at him.
little_lady_d: (Default)

Re: to sleep, no more (Hamlet/Ophelia, Laertes/Reynaldo)

[personal profile] little_lady_d 2022-01-29 09:14 pm (UTC)(link)
oooh ouch. putting all these little snapshots of despair together, they become part of one continuous chain, the grief of all those who love someone beyond saving. (and you hope it's not, in the end, you hope laertes will come out of the dark room. but there's a history behind him.)
little_lady_d: (Default)

Re: that very night a forest grew (Umineko)

[personal profile] little_lady_d 2022-01-29 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
ooh this is some real good mythology-building, even without the context umineko, but that context makes it that much deeper and richer. it's about telling stories, and finding meaning, and those are the themes of umineko.

also i'm gonna scream about drowning for a minute. look. if you didn't already piece together that drowning is a thing ... i don't believe you, you must have.
ernest: (Default)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-29 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
yes, that spirit and defiance from the film is exactly what i was going for, only now she gets to have teeth, too! thank you so much!
ernest: (Default)

Re: Umineko, Battler/Beatrice

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-29 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
thank you so much! i love battler, even though it takes him a long time to figure out what he's doing
ernest: (lemony snicket)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-29 11:33 pm (UTC)(link)
thank you! this is something she has to learn about, and she also has to learn that she doesn't have to do it all alone.
ernest: (Default)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-29 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)
would you believe that line started as a half-accident and was just vaguely about letters and messengers before i realized what i was doing and made it explicit? sometimes my brain is much smarter than i am XD
and thank you, i loved writing that bit about the coats of another world!
ernest: (Default)

Re: i haven't failed at keeping a tsf fill to three sentences in YEARS but it's worth it for edmund

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
ed deserves to have both of these things, the feeling that he's a valuable person and the reminder that he is still a kid whose siblings love him enough to laugh at him when he's being silly.
ernest: (lemony snicket)

Re: to sleep, no more (Hamlet/Ophelia, Laertes/Reynaldo)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 12:48 am (UTC)(link)
gosh, that's exactly it, you have to hope the person you love isn't beyond saving, or how can you go on yourself? but that history just keeps piling up and making the grief harder to bear, so it would take someone with a certain will to help laertes make it out of there, thank god for rey!
ernest: (Default)

Re: Narnia, Edmund

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
i think animals can understand at least a little when edmund speaks, even if they can't or won't speak back, but of course susan has to look out for her little brother and hope he won't get his heart hurt too bad.
ernest: (Default)

Re: Narnia, Edmund

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 12:55 am (UTC)(link)
thank you, i love ed <3
ernest: (What disadvantage?)

Re: Umineko, Natsuhi and the cousins

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 01:02 am (UTC)(link)
thank you! some of those fragments had specific people connected to them as i was coming up with them, and others were more vague and shared among all four of them, and it was a lot of fun to figure out what order would tell the best story. and heee, i hadn't specifically been thinking of that attwn scene, but now that you've mentioned it i can totally see it.
natsuhi is so brave to answer that phone, considering her history.
ernest: (Default)

Re: more trans ed because who's going to stop me?

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
"maybe if she was more innocent her siblings would believe her" oh no, that's what she thinks, that's so sad and true. she really is tangled up and doesn't have the words for it, and no one seems to want to help her figure it out.
ernest: (Default)

Re: Umineko, Shannon & Kanon & Beatrice

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
i sure have! that moment with the butterfly marks is great because it's subtle if you don't know what it's saying and extraordinarily obvious once you do. i was so fixated on the themes of obligation and inescapable fate from the moment that magic circle was introduced, and it really did help me unravel the identity and motive of the culprit (though it tripped me up for a bit and i really wanted it to be natsuhi!) and sometimes a chain is just a chain, but even then, this is umineko so it works on multiple levels.
ernest: (Vortex)

Re: Umineko, Maria

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
thank you! "children get fixated on the littlest things, but those things aren't little to them, they're the size of a world." ahhhh maria! and beatrice understands that so intimately, so of course this moment keeps showing up in so many gameboards! i think it was even very briefly in the episode tea party. (hey ow, nice reference to another story about witches and abuse and loneliness)
snacky: (Default)

Narnia, any, Bism

[personal profile] snacky 2022-01-30 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
Puddleglum always swore, after his great adventure, that he'd never leave home again. Who would want leave such a lovely place as the Northern Marsh with his cozy wigwam, all his wiggle friends close (but not too close), especially the fine ladywiggle, Drizzlerue who knew how to keep a visit short and the eel stew warm?

But when King Rilian pays a visit, talking excitedly about finding a passage to Bism, Puddleglum knew he must leave again — after all, the King would need his steady, upbeat presence on this new adventure.
ernest: (don't panic)

Re: that very night a forest grew (Umineko)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
thank you! i honestly went back and forth a LOT about whether to call this umineko or fairy tales, because it's one of those things that only means something if you already know what it means, and the same with figuring out what character even fits here, because there are several options and none of them is quite right on their own - thus the pretentious title to sidestep the whole issue.

and excellent, i was hoping to make you scream about drowning <3
snacky: (Default)

narnia, original character, a hundred years turned to stone

[personal profile] snacky 2022-01-30 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
The last thing she remembers is the White Witch glaring at her and pointing her wand.

The next thing she knows is the feel of warmth spreading over her, creeping up from her toes with a tingle — but not pain, no pain at all, just a feeling of relief, and a desire to yawn — as if she's woken from the longest sleep of her life, and from what the two girls tell her, that seems to be exactly what happened.

When she finally reaches Cair Paravel, it's just as she remembers it, every stone, every step, every window where the sun shines in — but it's completely changed, completely empty of life, her family gone forever. The Lion explains that she's no longer a princess, but he didn't have to say anything, she already knew.
ernest: (Default)

[personal profile] ernest 2022-01-30 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
thank you! they love each other enough to learn and then keep on learning
sincereously: night sky above mountains (Default)

Re: narnia, original character, a hundred years turned to stone

[personal profile] sincereously 2022-01-30 03:16 am (UTC)(link)
Very lovely, and the ending is so poignantly sad!
sincereously: night sky above mountains (Default)

Re: Porky Pig, Showtime

[personal profile] sincereously 2022-01-30 03:21 am (UTC)(link)
I love his matter-of-fact practicality in the middle of all the madness.
scytale: (Default)

[personal profile] scytale 2022-01-30 04:58 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you!

Re: Final Fantasy X, Auron/Braska

[personal profile] anonne 2022-01-30 07:41 am (UTC)(link)
Ah what a coincidence! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the prompt – I think this must be one of my favourite tropes.
elementalraven: (Default)

Re: Narnia, any, Bism

[personal profile] elementalraven 2022-01-30 10:07 am (UTC)(link)
Oh my god, I love Puddleglum XD