So you know how frequently horror things are set in a facility? I wonder why that is.

The obvious answer is the alienation it gives us. We live in homes, and travel through the outside world every day, but Facilities are places we rarely visit. Hospitals, labs, prisions, these are places which we know people are at every day but which we ourselves only visit for hours or days at a time. And rarely at that.

What got me thinking about this was Ghost in the Hospital which was a story about a monster bursting out of people in a hospital that has some ties to his later Internecion cube story. That one also ties into similar themes, with the daughter being a result of the unknowable actions of adults from the perspective of a child. The fear and discomfort of things so much bigger then you, but which are still very human rather then imposed upon humanity by an elderitch force.

For some reason i've always struggled with this kind of writing. I think its mainly due to my struggle with writing lifelike background charecters, something which SSTWL did pretty well with the nurse in GitH. How the people who work at the facility, or worked in the case of an abandoned one, is a big part of what sets the mood and tone of the piece. Are they cold but helpful? Cheery but obstinate and misdirecting? Does the protagonist know any of them, or are they all alone here?