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lovely-lee · 7 months ago

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LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

I love stories where there is a journey MOSTLY because of how many settings can be crammed into it. A brand new setting for every leg of the journey, a new place to be introduced and have key moments take place..I can think off the top of my head some of my favorite books that have this including Lord of the Rings, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase (PLEASE if anyone has read this LET ME KNOW).

Adding to that list is the fanfic I've been reading along to since the beginning of this year, There Are Monsters Nearby by @uhohbestie. The original summary had the blurb “Desert Duo road-trip” in there somewhere and that little line drew me in so so fast. And the zombies, of course, as well. Very quickly I found myself the “Location Guy” of sorts. And before the epilogue of this fantastic fic, I have chosen my TEN top locations from Texas to Canada! I picked these locations mostly through just my own liking of them, but there's definitely key features that make it a favorite to me including plot importance, the overall atmosphere of the place, and just my own experiences as well. Also I’ll be looking back at my comments from the selected chapters to see what my thoughts were from back then, if I had anything to say about it then. So without further ado, we’re starting off with Number 10! (Also general warning for spoilers)

Number 10 – Chapter 17: The Grocery Store

“It’s a grocery store, albeit a small one, with a large sign above its door boasting an in-store butcher and fresh local produce. Even from a distance Grian can see that some of the plate glass windows that make up the front of the building are smashed, displays that had been stacked against them pushed out onto the parking lot, creating a mess of dented cans and broken bottles.

He hopes that means whatever had besieged the place has already moved on, leaving it empty and safe enough to loot.”

Ohh the battle of deciding which place would even make it on to the list was so intense. Choosing this location actually surprised me since it wasn't even on my rough list of my favorite locations. But it made it to the top ten for many reasons! This is defiantly as VERY important plot heavy location and it’s markedly special as its set in the first chapter where Grian and Scar are away from each other for a significant period of time. Grian is there with just Quackity which elevates the tense atmosphere so much already from being in a larger town with many zombies.

I think to me it’s just also such a zombie apocalypse location in general. A place of familiarity and sustenance now twisted with rotting food, broken glass, corpses, and zombies in hidden places. Also the Butcher Army references were REALLY cool. I think my past self just puts it all together very succinctly: “Grocery store….so scary….”

Number 9 – Chapter 20: The Hot Springs

“They follow the signs directing them where to go, taking an exit off the highway onto what rapidly becomes a rutted dirt road. The hot springs themselves are about six miles off the interstate—not all that far when they have the scooter to take them there. It’s a weekend destination, rustic and clearly mostly frequented by locals, but the location is beautiful, centred in a large open valley basin, hemmed on one side by a row of hills tinted jade in the haze of the distance, with an impressive view of a large, shallow lake spread out magnificently before them.

At a first glance it seems both secluded and empty. There are several small cabins set up where the dirt road ends, arranged around a single large central building with a low, sloped aluminum roof that Grian assumes must be where the hot springs are located.”

I’ve always wanted to go to a hot springs but all the ones near me have brain eating amoeba SAD. Anyways this whole chapter was SUCH a great vibe in terms of the locations. I honestly was struggling with either picking the hot springs or the house they get all the winter clothes from earlier in the chapter. Ultimately I picked the hot springs but it was close! Pour one out for Scar and his broad shoulders or whatever.

ANYWAYS. Hot springs. Making it to Oregon. Quoting my past self, “OMG hot springs how lovely..the whole place seems so quaint and nice..ough hot springs time”. Yeah. I think it’s funny this is the second place they had no plans of going to and Scar was like we have to go there. Thank you Scar for making this road trip an actual honest to god road trip. Honestly this chapter is funny to me. The two of the have miraculously gotten back to their tentative peace with each other after leaving Karlnapity and things are like kinda nice? We were settling in for another weird intimacy chapter but BOOM this is actually where they finally talk to each other about the same song and dance they keep on doing again and again. WONDERFUL location for it like it just heightens it so much with this backdrop of comfort and warmth they have found themselves in, that Grian let Scar take them too but it’s all for naught. And then booked with the next chapter? It’s a fun time all around.

Number 8 – Chapter 32 & 33: The Enormous Lakeside Cabin

“A single house.

Alone and enormous on the waterfront.

It’s clear that there’s no town associated with it—no formal community whatsoever. At the shoreline it has a pier, the dock protruding out into the water, but it’s difficult to make out any other details at a distance. It feels safe to assume that it’s a vacation property, though. No doubt for a rich family. Meant for hot summers, canoe trips, fishing, and cookouts.”

Thinking back on this location makes me realize just how nice these two chapters were. The time to feel safe and comfortable and just be happy with each other. The cabin and the surrounding area seem so mysterious to me. I remember they didn’t find much about who lived here since it seemed it was just used in the warmer seasons. Kinda spooky in its own way! Everything about this place though just felt like a respite, a beautiful oasis after being in this hellscape for so long already. It really was just a place to rest and no added scares or surprises. Also it had a generator which I mention in my past comment, “Finding such a big beautiful mansion cabin was so awesome, and a generator!!! I love generators they’re so cool.” Man I miss having a generator.

Number 7 – Chapter 16: The Hill in the Desert

“Together, they carefully pick their way down the bank, the dry earth cracked and dusty beneath their feet, walking in the direction that leads them away from the highway and towards a natural curve of the waterway that, over decades, had piled up silt at its bend, creating a hillock with a base of wind-worn sandstone that looms over them in the gathering dusk.

It’s picturesque but barren, though Grian supposes it’s as good a place to stop as any.

“Doesn’t it look like it should have a tower on it?” he asks, shielding his eyes as he peers up at the hill’s peak. The rise is the tallest thing around for miles, glowing red-gold in the light of the swiftly setting sun.”

There’s a bit more to this quote that I didn't add cause it was just getting too long, but soon after this part, Grian climb up the hill and imagines what this desert tower might look like. He then peers over one of the edges of the hill where it’s more of a straight drop than the slope he climbed. He then gets “an odd, weightless feeling settles in his stomach—indescribable, like deja vu.

Unprompted, he looks down and wonders if a fall from this height would kill him.” SO spooky god. Having this moment and more showing how the life series and hermitcraft are like past lives is just a really cool detail. Usually these moments are more feelings of familiarity or sometimes even dreams or similar kind of places from the life series, but having like a more physical exact callback of a location is ten times eerier. Especially that here only Grian is really pulled towards the hill. Scar doesn’t really hold too much interested from what we see? Maybe internally he was thinking something else, but Grian is the one who climb up the hill, images the tower he built, and peers over where he last stood in another life.

The timing of them finding it with Karlnapity is interesting to me. They’ve been in the desert for a while now but stumbling upon it with the other three and making this a moment of isolation for Grian even. It just makes it more creepy to me and a location to ruminate over. Anyways here’s past me’s comment, “Erm tower on a hill? A CASTLE? In a DESERT? Looks around nervously. HIM LOOKIG OVER THE EDGE.. ^_^ I love desert duo <3”. This is true I love desert duo.

Number 6 – Chapter 23: The Model Home

“Eventually they pass a billboard advertising a residential neighbourhood—construction dates and parcels of land remaining for sale splashed on top of pictures of a park with an idyllic mountain background, the kind of place families with young children would go to picnic and play catch. The area beyond it is cleared of all greenery, the earth pressed flat by the tire treads of backhoes and dump trucks, the skeleton shape of houses framed in plywood and two-by-fours looming up in the darkness.

Finally, Pops begins to relax, going so far as to pull a flashlight out of his bag and using it to light their way. They follow new roads with wide sidewalks, but only a single completed building stands out to greet them: a model home built with a sod lawn, a sign set at the end of the driveway offering open houses on alternating weekends.”

Jumping right into my past comment which puts everything I feel about this location very nicely, “Ough and yes the model home. I LOVE model homes cause I love looking around people’s houses and this is like the next best thing AND they feel kinda creepy as a bonus and that’s so true here. Empty neighborhood partially built and no one will ever live here now..” My family and I when I was younger used to go to model homes as a fun free activity to do like on weekends. I remember those times very fondly so yeah this model home defiantly stood out to me. But yeah this place is just SO creepy with the lone model home that never had anyone live in it, in a plot of land no other homes were ever built. Here being where Scar and Pops had a huge shootout of a zombie swarm walking by in the cold is just so unnerving too. I just like this place a lot.

Number 5 – Chapter 28: The Tiny Cabin at the Empty Campsite

“It’s an eerie feeling, walking along the road that winds through the location, imagining the place full of campers; pitched tents and vans, pickups towing trailers of ATVs with kayaks and mountain bikes thrown in the back. The place had no doubt closed for winter before the outbreak spread itself across the continent, but Scar can’t shake a profound sense of loss as they move through it, noting the lingering signs of human activity nearly everywhere he looks. Initials and dates carved into picnic tables, black coals and ashes left in fire pits, and small pillars of smooth river rocks arranged in cairn-like clusters along the shoreline.”

“Pops, on the other hand, seems to share none of Scar’s melancholy, ignoring the empty campsites completely as he leads Scar straight to a cedar plank structure near the centre of the campground. It’s a shed really, a seasonal residence meant for the forest ranger in charge of overseeing and maintaining the site. It’s boarded up but Pops makes quick work of it, stripping back the winterization of tarps and plywood in order to pry the door open, revealing a single room inside, large enough for a small desk, a wood stove, some shelves, and a cot.”

I’ve been camping a good couple of times, in tents and in cabins, and so seeing this campsite really remained me of the places I’ve been camping to. And Scar having that same kind of line of thinking of a guy that also had camped a lot with his friends is just an interesting feeling. Of going to a place so similar to one you have experienced many times but being fundamentally changed and different now. It being empty and going to be empty for who knows how long...It’s also just such a beautiful places described, deep in this forest and alongside the river. This is another place that has no real scares or surprises of zombies or anything, so it just being spooky from its emptiness is nice in its own way.

I love the little tiny cabin too so much. Just imagining the ranger that lived in this barely bigger than a shed place, with only is few furnishings but still being a comfort to Pops and Scar now, a place to rest and be out of the cold. I just really loved this place, and them leaving their initials behind just makes it more special as well. Also this is the chapter where I got the idea of doing this list which is fun.

Number 4 – Chapter 15: The Rancher Motel

“They approach the motel with caution, keeping quiet as they creep in close. It, like everything else, looks old. Vintage way that catches Scar’s attention. The large neon sign set next to the entrance to the parking lot reads The Rancher Motel, the mismatched letters on the marquee beneath it boasting: POOL, LAUNDRY, WIFI.”

Big part of course of the Rancher Motel making it so high up on the list is because of the Jimmy and Tango backstory CRYING. Like reading this whole chapter again makes everything just...shadowed under the tragedy of what could have been, and the story that this empty abandoned building tells. That every location that once was had people living, working there tell. This is also another place where we see the Grian’s and Scar’s physical intimacy with each other stagger and lurch around for its footing. With added bonus of SCAR initiating it. That’s another story though, I love this location for it being a weird and more than likely kinda dirty motel like the hundreds I’ve been to while on road trips. Nothing like an old and dirty motel!

Number 3 – Chapter 21: The Last Gas Station and The Surrounding Forest

“The gas station itself is small but looks reasonably well kept, positioned on the edge of a large concrete pad that Grian assumes must have been used by truckers who needed a place to rest for the night. A dinged marquee sign left out by the road advertises live bait by the bucket and nearby trail rides for both beginners and experts.”

Getting into the top three...This gas station is still so diabolical to me. I think one of my favorite themes from TAMN that comes up again and again is to not get too comfortable, too compliant about the dangers you know are there but are just so easy to forget. It’s frustrating because I forgot here too!!!They didn’t check the area if it was safe, if there were no zombies around. The gas stations had slowly became a symbol of rest, of stocking up and maybe even resting overnight in shifts. It became familiar and common place as they used to be, which I think made it even easier to forget the dangers. Especially coming down from the high escaping the mall with the wheelchair was. I think about how lucky the two of them have been for so long. So so many places that they were oblivious of how much danger they were in, but they always made it out alive. I think it speaks for the fic that realistically that luck had to run out somewhere if they solely relied on it. And it just all culminates into the physically manifestation of not being careful.

And then getting into the forest,

“He hopes that when he dies from this, he’s left out here alone forever, and he hopes that when he turns, he’s granted the dignity of wandering off into the woods never to be seen again.”

This is just one of my absolutely favorite lines of the whole fic. I really love this chapter.

Number 2 – Chapter 7 & 8: The Storage Unit

“Ultimately, the storage unit doesn’t have much for them to benefit from. When they finally get in, abandoning their attempt to force the lock and simply smashing a window, they find the front office empty and useless. The reception desk has nothing of interest on it, just a computer from the early 2000s and a phone without a dial tone when they lift it off its cradle.

Scar finds the staff room while Grian goes through the shallow drawers of the reception desk. The door opens into a small space with a thin slit of a window high up on one wall. There’s a sink and a sliver of counter, which is promising. There’s also an old fridge covered in takeout menus and hand-written betting pools for every sport imaginable in one corner, and a table with four plastic-backed chairs in the other. There’s no couch to crash on, but there is a door marked as a washroom”

Similar vein to the previous location, of an earlier time of getting too comfortable. This one was especially scary and frustration since I never expected a zombie to shove its way through a broken window!! That’s so scary, but also of course them going to bed with their supplies scattered and without sleeping in shifts. The whole storage unit also reminds me of all the ones I have ever driven by.

My family did use one for a time but I actually never went to it. Dropping my comment in here, “ohh a storage unit is another really great setting, it’s like such a weird kinda place in general” and yeah they really are. This place especially brings a lot of what I’ve talked about into one place. This being a place where people worked and just existed, seeing it in every little thing the two come across. It being another place where the two try and come together again and again, with Grian grasping for more and more and Scar wanting it in his own weird way as well. Which we see so clearly with him kissing Grian after shooting the zombie AUGH. This felt like a big turning point in how they realize the dangers of the world they are now in and how much they both mean to each other. It was just two really exciting chapters with a stellar location.

Number 1 – Chapter 3: The Farmhouse

“The farmhouse is a bad idea, but it’s the only option they have.

From where they sit, parked on the gravel shoulder of a service road that splits off from the highway, they can see the proper entrance to the farm. It lays at the end of a long road that skirts around the edge of several fields. It crosses a culvert and empties into a gravel driveway set between two large silos, a barn on one side and a simple saltbox house with a large garden next to it on the other.”

To me, there was absolutely no contestant for my favorite location. It was always going to be the very first place where I was like Oh. This is not going to be just your run-of-the-mill zombie apocalypse au that also has a cheating plot point as well. This was a story that was thought out on so many details that these locations Grian and Scar were going to felt like real places, taking up space and existing at that point of time. Of course, finding out that Lock and Key often times based these locations on actual places around the route Grian and Scar made so much sense. But it takes that skill and time to write these locations to feel like places that I’ve been to just through reading. And I first really felt that here at the farmhouse. The highway they park at, the fields, the silos, the culvert, the house itself and how it looks inside.

Here too is where we see how well Grian and Scar do actually work together, and where Scar gets his signature jacket. I think what really gives the chapter such an eerie vibe is of course that this is a home, where they even come across the people who used to live there, but already infected...It gives a finality that this has reached everywhere, not just the big city, or places frequented by many people, but even quiet outskirts of secluded homes. I really like my comment from this chapter, so I’ll just end it here with it, “I love every setting they’ve been to so far since leaving the city. The empty gas station and the restaurant on the stretch of empty highway and now super freaky farmhouse property off of the highway ough…”

#AH this was so fun to write im so excited for the last chapter..#hi Lock hi Key your fic is really awesome and great #I don’t know what to tag this..lays on the ground #lee things

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