rthstewart: (Default)
rthstewart ([personal profile] rthstewart) wrote2022-01-20 09:54 pm

Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 Part 2

UPDATE 14 FEBRUARY 2022 -- 3SF 2022 IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS!  Do continue to fill prompts already posted but the 3SF 2022 is now closed.  We'll be back next year in a new comm (If I can get my act together).  Thank you again!

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 but please post new prompts here, not there.  And if you're asking, hey is just me, or did this get enormous really fast? Why yes, yes it did.  Last year, it took us ten days before I opened a new post.  This year, it took us about 5.5 days to get there.  So, by all means, go back and fill in Post 1 and post new prompts here!

Also woops, in an indication of how busy I've been with other things, I neglected to post that for a third year in a row the awesome [personal profile] conuly  started a master list of unclaimed prompts and has been updating it as time permits.  Obviously a huge task! Thank you!







 
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!























ruanchunxian: (Default)

[personal profile] ruanchunxian 2022-01-21 12:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Shang Chi, any, Spring Festival

(I'm posting this prompt so I can fill it in this post, but feel free to also write your own fill.)
ruanchunxian: (Default)

[personal profile] ruanchunxian 2022-01-21 12:05 pm (UTC)(link)

waters of the yellow river flow from heaven divine, with fish

White shirt, black slacks, leather sandals, like that night when he picked them up in Macau, Xu Wenwu looks more like a retired accountant than the leader of the most fearsome army in the world walking into Katy’s living room.  

“Sis,” Ruihua whispers to Katy, “I’m really convinced now that you just made up all that shit about what went down in Macau.”

Looking at the unassuming-looking man in front of her, if Katy hasn’t seen him attempt to murder both his children about with his magic Ten Rings, and then later, rescue those same children from the Dweller-in-Darkness by making the Rings choke the very lifeforce out of it, she probably would think she has been making shit up too.


Waipo gets on with Xu Wenwu like a house on fire; Katy has never seen anything so bizarre in her entire life: if she doesn’t know any better, she’d say Waipo is flirting???? with Xu Wenwu, who is also…almost flirting back??????

Or at least, they seem so lost in sharing memories of the village where Waipo came from, where Xu Wenwu apparently also spent many years (and for him to say many, it must be at least a hundred, Katy thinks), that they are ignoring the rest of the table and oblivious to everyone else staring at them with expressions ranging from confusion to what-the-fuckery-is-this.

He’s literally nine hundred years – give or take – older than her! Katy thinks, before she forces herself to also remember that, really, Waipo can take care of herself, anyway.


“In my youth, I identified greatly with the words of my friend Taibai, that 天生我材必有用﹐千金散尽还复来 (each of us was given talents, and ne'er born in vain, spend a thousand gold coins, and they would turn up again),” Xu Wenwu says. “But these days, I cannot help but feel more weight in the words of a man of a prior generation, 前不见古人 / 后不见来者 / 念天地之悠悠 / 独怆然而涕下 (Ahead, I see no ancient sages / Nor behind, those sages yet unborn / While, on and on, heaven and earth shall roll / Alone I stand, tears a-falling, forlorn).

“When he says Li Bai was his friend, he means that literally,” Shaun adds helpfully, and still an extended silence ensues, during which time Katy is sure no one else around the table quite know what they can possibly say to relate to this singular sentiment.


“waters of the yellow river flow from heaven divine” is the first line of the first poem that Wenwu quotes. Fish is always served at Spring Festival as in Chinese it is a homophone for “surplus” (as in money).

Edited 2022-01-21 12:35 (UTC)

汤(团)圆

(Anonymous) 2022-01-22 01:31 am (UTC)(link)
At the end of it all, what is she left to do? Her brother had a life — a shitty one, perhaps, but a life nonetheless — but she's only ever had her fighters and warriors and scrappy boys, certainly not anyone she'd spend the Spring Festival with.

As the winter starts to relax its harsh grip on the world, Xialing books a ticket to San Francisco, rings her brother's doorbell, holds up the plate of tangyuan she made hunched over in her crappy hotel room, and says, "I brought food."
ruanchunxian: (Default)

Re: 汤(团)圆

[personal profile] ruanchunxian 2022-01-22 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
This is so bittersweet <3 I love it so much!!
scytale: (Default)

[personal profile] scytale 2022-01-22 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
I'm in awe of how much poetry knowledge you have, and how you worked it in!
ruanchunxian: (Default)

[personal profile] ruanchunxian 2022-01-22 02:51 am (UTC)(link)
loool I just watch a lot of period dramas. Wenwu's quoting of these two poems are inspired by one of the brilliant scenes in Chinese period drama history imo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLzvDlmjBtg
scytale: (Default)

[personal profile] scytale 2022-01-22 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
OMG HE IS SO DRUNK AND DRAMATIC I LOVE HIM. And hearing the poems recited (defiantly, drunkenly) is so cool.

And hey, knowledge is knowledge, however you source it. :P