I feel like with a couple of exceptions you can mostly avoid trouble in the Kingverse if you don't go looking for it. Like, Ludlow is safe as long as you listen to the old fuck and stay away from the Pet Semetary, Chamberlain is safe as long as you aren't there on the night of the Black Prom, don't get arrested and end up at Shawshank, you know?

Obviously some places are more dangerous than others, but I feel like the odds of getting caught in crazy shit by pure accident are better there than in Arkham where stuff doesn't blow over as easy and I could get nightmares from some shit happening in the ocean miles away.

>>25265272
Best thread on /lit/ too bad i havent read any of the two

In a similar vein to what >>25265280 said
Part of the horror of King's works is that his stories are often times mundane and take place in locales and situations that are easy to relate to due to how normal it all seems on the surface. Misery is about a crazy woman but everyone else in the town is just living their lives, in IT there's some elder god spider monster living in the sewers but pretty much everyone in Derry goes on about their day not knowing anything related to Pennywise. Similar things can be said about Salem's Lot to some extent and Cujo.
There are exceptions to the rule like Carrie or Mist, but generally speaking you can live a mostly normal life in King's universe as long as you don't go around looking for trouble

Lovecraft on the other hand. You are fucked. Live anywhere near Innsmouth? There's a good chance your ancestors are fish people. Live in Arkham? Either you or one of your loved ones is going to go mad just for being in the vicinity of the asylum. Try to do literally anything on a normal day? Guess what dipshit the hounds of tindalos can materialize out of any surfaces that have angles, like walls. Oh and there's a whole pantheon of gods that can wipe away your entire reality if they fart in the general direction of your dimension

>>25265272
I will never not find it extremely funny to think about the fact Shawshank Redemption is canonically set in Stephenking verse and thus the same world as a ton of supernatural fuckery despite being such a down to earth story. Like Shawshank just happens a little too early, but if Red and Andy live another 15 years they could conceivably see the national news coverage of the Black Prom and the following congressional committee or read a magazine about the Castle Rock rabies incident (both of which were public and reported).

Most map depictions based on story descriptions put Shawshank not too far from Derry, Haven, and Chamberlain.

>>25265313
>>25265313

From the perspective of our random Maine dweller (so like you arent special or anything) to get in trouble in a King story you usually either need to go looking for trouble(I’m gonna go bury some things in the spooky pet graveyard, I’m gonna go investigate the weird rumors I’ve heard about in Derry) or have a massive case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time(What are your odds as a random Maine citizen of being in Bridgton or Chamberlain during the one specific day everything goes to hell)

Now plenty of Lovecraft stories are also like that (Maybe DON’T go into the town with all the deformed people who smell like fish that all the neighbouring towns don’t trust), but you’ve definitely got a higher risk of being caught in higher forces than with King.

>>25265342
There’s definitely a lot of smaller scale stuff in Lovecraft you can avoid by staying away from weird stuff and not sniffing around. The Color Out of Space is in one very obviously fucked up valley and a lot of locals would tell you to stay away. Don’t join any cults, don’t go exploring weird places. But the density of danger in Arkham County is definitely higher than in Stephen Maine, and the occasional large scale insanity that you will not be out of range of in Arkham tips the balance.

Also if you leave Maine in the Kingverse you’re mostly fine, like there’s the occasional killer car, but nothing Pennywise tier, meanwhile there’s a ton of other nasty hotspots in Lovecraft’s world and you’re never quite safe.

>>25265273
Just curious – where here is Dunwich supposed to be?

Lovecraft's Massachusetts was objectively better than modern-day Massachusetts.

>>25265466
I always pictured it to be near Vermont, or otherwise northeast MS. Though personally I also always thought the city of Arkham was deep inland, not a few miles from the coast.

>>25265469
I would like to feed myself to a Lovecraftian entity somewhere within Massachusetts by the end of June.

>>25265272
Massachusetts. Stephen King's Maine would be too uncanny. Not at all in a scary way, but in a flat, generic, really bad at writing way.