Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-32906717-20170820031216/@comment-28266772-20170821135032

MrDupin wrote: I also like the war stories idea. There is a dilemma there though:

Should the war stories have common things or should they be completely separate stories? I think having a common theme would be better, but it would have to be pretty general. Here's my pitch:

A group of soldiers come together to discuss their experiences at a support group (or a bar if you prefer). They're of all ages and the chronological/geographical setting is vague enough that you could, reasonably, have soldiers from all major wars of the 20th Century in one room. You might even have it so that some soldiers pass on tales from their grandfathers during the course of the story (so if you want to have a tale set in the American Civil War then it's possible).

Together, these soldiers sit down and realise they share a common experience; they all believe they have seen the face of evil but they all disagree over what it is exactly. So each soldier sits down and gives an account of the war-time experience that led them face-to-face with evil and explain how it informs their understanding of what 'evil' really is. Is it an external force that corrupts? Is it a reflection of our internal darkness? Is it the absence of light in our actions? Or is it something that exists outside of human experience, just waiting to sneak back into this wonderful world of ours?

I think this is flexible enough to allow writers to do anything they want content-wise, while still keeping us focused on a core theme (i.e. the nature of evil) and setting (war/war-time environments). I think a good historical spread would be also be beneficial to the anthology.