Just Add Prompt

A 4657-post collection

Challenge #02729-G172: Tis the Season

Human 1: so what about you?

Human 2: I learned how to make paper cranes so I'm going to make them in different colors and put them in everyone's bedroom with notes like "this little bird told me xyz"

Human 1: ...

Human 1: epic. -- Anon Guest

Aprilfools: A Human holiday/tradition involving trickery, deceit, pranks, and practical jokes. Owing to many Terran Colony calendars becoming out of sync with the planet of origin, the entire Terran month of April has become a collective season of silly jokes. Always find out what kind of Prankster your Ships' Human is. Such foreknowledge has saved many lives. -- A Galactics' Guide to Human.

Humans have an interesting sense of humour. Attempting to discourage them from things they deem harmless has been a long and arduous journey. However, most of them do indeed prefer to share the laughter rather than cause lasting harm. Dye in the bathing water supply is a popular. Bubbles in fountains. Tiny writing somewhere inaccessible with the words, took you a lot to get up here and read this scribed carefully there.

Why the Humans insist on doing this is unknown, but it is known that the celebration of this peculiar holiday helps hold off Silly Season during that particular time of the year. All things considered, many species preferred the individualised shenanigans of Aprilfools to whatever mass hysteria occurred during Silly Season. It was easier to clean up for one.

Support me on Patreon / Buy me a Ko-fi

Continue Reading

Prompts remaining: 93 Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!

Challenge #02728-G171: Inner Motivation

I am thou, thou are I, from the sea of thou soul I come forth. Pity a man who yearns for their own protection, and become the spearhead that pierce through the oppression! -- Anon Guest

[AN: Thee, thou, and thy are hard pronouns to use. My grammatical arse had to provide a correction to balm my soul: "I am thee, and thou art I, from the sea of thy soul I come forth." I have no idea why, but I can

Read more »

Challenge #02727-G170: Doing What You Can

The human was not the ship's human. They were a passenger. They were also paralyzed from the waist down. When she ship crashed, when the human's movement assistive device was rendered inoperable, when the human found themself trapped in the wreckage with half a dozen fellow passengers, all either injured or too distressed to move... Well. A sufficiently determined human with two working limbs, several cases of dental floss, a non-operative movement assistive device, and six people to rescue...is still going

Read more »

Challenge #02725-G168: A Matter of Technicality

Human1: Damn if Australia pushed our level 4 deathworld to a 4.5 I’m worried about you guys exploring the unexplored 70% of our ocean.

Human2: it’s not 70% it’s 95%

Crewmate: wait what? -- Anon Guest

"Ah... that's a mis-assumption," said Thorq. "The Deathworlder classification is based on how many environmental factors are hostile to the development of intelligent life. In the case of most of the Earth, it's the fauna, the weather, the flora, and the ocean.

Read more »

Challenge #02724-G167: There Goes Mischief

Ze was confident in zer ability to handle this. Ze was a level three deathworlder who worked with dangerous animals for a living! Watching a human toddler for an afternoon and evening would be no problem.

Of course, ze had made an elementary mistake...ze had failed to realize that just because the child still spoke Scribble and could only walk at a slow, bobbling shuffle on two legs didn't stop them from booking it on all fours, or climbing the furniture.

Read more »

Challenge #02723-G166: Just Add Zombies

This prompt issues to an earlier story from two years ago. https://steemit.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-01928-e104-tag-you-re-undead. One that gave me a wicked little grin, though I did have to search a bit to find it again.

Zombie tag. That was a game, and an experiment, that was both famous and infamous. Since its inception a few years ago, it had become a wildly popular thing that became a new sport. How long could teams last against the "zombies"? Rules were drawn

Read more »

Challenge #02722-G165: A Rough Gem

Me playing support: get the f back here so I can heal you!

Some dumbbutt: but dps go bam... -- Anon Guest

"WHY, in the name of the Living Light, do you keep forgetting that you're squishy?"

"I'm used to being strong. I'm used to fighting the world. On the plus side, I have a pretty good grasp of tactics, so I'm not squishy for long..."

Gaarsh snorted an aborted growl. Being a Cleric of the Light wasn't always easy, but being

Read more »

Challenge #02721-G164: Hail Poetry!

The sign said "Old Terran style poetry for sale! Custom sonnets, written for you about what you love, in GalStand! Please fill out form and provide one Hour; finished poem will be sent to you within the next ten days. 50% discount for JOATs." The human seated at the table the sign hung from had a large stack of blank forms, a couple of completed forms, several one Hour notes, a notebook, and what looked like several kinds of dictionary. They were

Read more »

Challenge #02720-G163: A Short Sharp Lesson

Have you even seen humans stomping their feet while chanting the same thing all at once? It’s sometimes hard to believe they’re not a hive mind https://youtu.be/PmILOL55xP0 -- Anon Guest

[AN: Video linked contains swearwords and is a war scene]

They said the Human colonists were sessile. They were weak and vulnerable. Look at them, not a single weapon in their entire set of settlements. They were fat and lazy. Allegedly. I learned, just as many of

Read more »

Challenge #02719-G162: Played For a Sap

Come on body, just hold it in. Suppress the emotion for a few more hours. We can die from embarrassment when we get home. -- Anon Guest

He might have said they called him Sap because he was a blunt instrument. There was a story he told about being found in the woods, covered in tree sap and using it to trap and eat small animals to survive. The truth was, he was a City Tief[1], raised in the gutter, educated

Read more »

Challenge #02718-G161: One Cozy Afternoon in a Test Colony Complex

They'd been surveying the planet for several months now, the haven-worlders and their human friends. The planet was more than sufficient for colonization, that seemed to be sure, but they wanted to see how the changing of the seasons played out in full. Sitting within the large shelter base they'd set up, the humans feeding more wood into the fireplace they'd absolutely insisted on building into the design of the base, the captain had an odd feeling of peace as they relaxed

Read more »

Challenge #02717-G160: A Plot From the Slush Pile

A human gets body-swapped with a short avian havenworlder just before a band of vorax attack, they find the 'human' cowering, and the chirpy bird missing... -- Anon Guest

[AN: Mind swaps are silly episode ideas so this is entirely non-canon to my pet universe]

"Aw, what the hell?" complained Human De, currently Thelid De, since hir mind was in Thelid Vaax's body. "This is like every badly-written filler episode in the history of everything!"

Human Vaax, once Thelid Vaax said, "I

Read more »

Challenge #02716-G159: An Oldie But a Goodie

The ship is being raided by pirates, you and the human locked yourselves in the storage bay. The human is applying some liquid on their skin, asking “could you help me put on the shield generator?” You assisted them asking what they trying to do. “I’m gonna do a old scare tactic” while talking they snap their fingers and flames begin to cover their arms -- Anon Guest

Humans are insane. Many people acknowledge this on an intellectual level as most

Read more »

Challenge #02715-G158: A Delicate Mist

"They played us like a violin!”

“Actually violins are quite difficult to play, I played you like the cheap kazoo you are" -- Anon Guest

There is a vertiginous feeling to being betrayed. It's worse than falling because the damage has been done before the sinking of the heart even begins. It's the realisation that kills. It kills trust. It kills faith. It kills hope. Once those are dead, there is very little left to lose.

Nevertheless, there are those who insist

Read more »

Challenge #02714-G157: The Extra Option

Humans love stories. Humans also love adventure, and choice, and danger. Thus was born the "choose your own adventure" style of story. A small group of level 5 havenworlders, in an attempt to improve their genetics, undertake reading one of these stories, with the goal to "survive" to the end of the book. They quickly discover that survival alone does not always a "good" ending make. -- Anon Guest

Level Five Havenworlders should not exist. Just as Level Five Deathworlders should not

Read more »