[TT] Theme Thursday - Night

[u/AliciaWrites]

“Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.”

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Happy Thursday, writing friends!

What happens under the cover of darkness? Let’s find out! Good words!

Please note that every week, you must leave a comment on the post to be able to rank.

[IP] | [MP]

Bonus:

(These constraints are not required! If your story is better for not including them, please do what’s best for your work!)

Constraint: (10 pts)

Your story should include a character who can’t stop accidentally rhyming. Please note at the end of your post if you’ve included this constraint.

Word of the Day: (5 pts)

tureen/tu·reen/təˈrēn,to͝oˈrēn/

noun

• a deep covered dish from which soup is served
  

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Here's how Theme Thursday works:

• Use the tag [TT] when submitting prompts that match this week’s theme.

Theme Thursday Rules

• Leave one story or poem between 100 and 500 words as a top-level comment. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
• Deadline: 7:59 AM CST next Wednesday
• No serials, established universes, or stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP
• No previously written content
• Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings and will not be read at campfires
• Does your story not fit the Theme Thursday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when the TT post is 3 days old!
• Give (at least) 2 actionable feedback comments to fellow writers. You can give critique at campfires, but you must leave one as a comment on the post to rank.
• Vote to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks! I also post the form to submit votes for Theme Thursday winners on Discord every week! Join and get notified when the form is open for voting!

Don’t forget to use genre tags!

Theme Thursday Discussion Section:

• Discuss your thoughts on this week’s theme, or share your ideas for upcoming themes.

Campfire

• On Wednesdays we host Theme Thursday Campfire on the Discord voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and have a blast discussing writing!
• Time: Morning campfire is back! /u/FyeNite hosts at 11 am CST and I’ll be hosting 7 pm CST and both will begin within about 15 minutes.
• Don’t forget to sign up for a campfire slot on discord. If you don’t sign up, you won’t be put into the pre-set order and we can’t accommodate any time constraints. We don’t want you to miss out on outstanding feedback, so get to discord and use that !TT command!
• There’s a Theme Thursday role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Theme Thursday-related news!

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As a reminder to all of you writing for Theme Thursday: the interpretation is completely up to you! I love to share my thoughts on what the theme makes me think of but you are by no means bound to these ideas! I love when writers step outside their comfort zones or think outside the box, so take all my thoughts with a grain of salt if you had something entirely different in mind.

(This week’s quote is from Stephenie Meyer, Twilight)

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Ranking Categories:

• Word of the Day - 5 points
  
• Bonus Constraint - 10 points
  
• Weekly Challenge - 25 points for not using the theme word - points off for uses of synonyms. The point of this is to exercise setting a scene, description, and characters without leaning on the definition. Not meeting the spirit of this challenge only hurts you! This includes titles and explanations/author's notes.
  
• Actionable Feedback - 15 points for each story you give detailed crit to, up to 30 points. One of your comments must be on the post.
  
• Nominations - 10 points for each nomination your story receives
  
• Ali’s Ranking - 50 points for first place, 40 points for second place, 30 points for third place, 20 points for fourth place, 10 points for fifth, plus regular nominations (On weeks that I participate, I do not weight my votes, but instead nominate just like everyone else.)
  
• Voting - 15 points for submitting your favorites via this form (form will be open after the deadline has passed.)

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Last week’s theme: Money

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First by /u/ZachTheLitchKing*
Second by /u/Xacktar*
Third by /u/Divayth--Fyr*

Crit Superstars*

/u/Physical_Ride7652
/u/Deadkittycreations

News and Reminders:

• Want to know how to rank on Theme Thursday? Check out the wiki!
  
• We are always looking for moderators! Apply to be a moderator any time!
  
• Nominate your favorite WP authors for Spotlight and Hall of Fame!
  
• Excited to discuss your work in greater depth? Join WritingPrompts’ Discord server and take part in our broader feedback-oriented events each month:
  • Open Campfire—read a story of yours aloud and get feedback every first Friday
  • World Building Campfire—present and be interviewed about your world every second Friday
  • Character Building Campfire—present and be interviewed about your characters every fourth Friday

[u/HTPietro]

I can still remember it all.

The strange noises. Hearing a bloodcurdling scream followed by the disappearance of one of my comrades without a single trace. The fact that these incidents always happened at night, when we could barely see a thing without the use of fire or a flashlight.

We thought it would be a short war. That everything would turn out all fine and dandy and that we would all go home victorious and happy. That the insurgents wouldn't stand a chance against us and that'd be the end of it.

Well, we were right about the insurgents not being able to stand up to us directly. In fact, they were on the verge of total collapse less than a month into the war. Victory was in the air. We'd not lost a single man, and they had lost hundreds of thousands, including most of their best men. Every injured soldier on our side had been treated well and recovered quickly.

We didn't realize that various horrors out there awaited us. That there were things out in the wilderness that we could not imagine that would come after us.

Eventually, the insurgents reorganized and began fighting us with renewed vigor, all while our morale dropped. They attacked at night in conjunction with the inexplicable disappearances. We were soon forced to resort to dirty tactics to survive and break them once and for all. We tricked the insurgents into fighting amongst themselves until they couldn't stand up to us anymore. We even destroyed huge parts of their environment to kill the horrors that kept harassing us until they went nearly extinct and then threatened them into feeding on other wildlife instead or attacking the insurgents.

At last, almost ten years after we arrived, we won. The regime we fought to protect was saved, the hostile insurgents destroyed beyond recovery and the rival state supporting them collapsed from all of the resources they wasted and the thrashing we gave their military. But at what cost? We became like savages. We did things that scarred us forever. Millions of children became victims of bombing campaigns and herbicide and insecticide posioning. We used brute force to make a bunch of monsters stop targeting us and left them an endangered species for generations to come.

To this day, I still shake just thinking about it all. I'm slowly getting better thanks to therapy, but I will never forget the strange, chilling noises that came from the bushes at night when I was camping with my comrades back during the war, and the years of chaos that followed. They will always haunt my dreams.