One of my pet peeves is stories that don’t take location into account. Think about it: cities are as distinctive as people. The pace, the climate, the geography, the architecture, all of these things give each city something akin to a personality and this, in turn, means that they affect people differently. Sometimes in an extreme way (Jerusalem Syndrome, for instance); sometimes more subtly. New York City for instance is very intrusive. Even though it’s undoubtedly true that you can become very isolated and lonely here, as soon as you walk out the door, something’s apt to happen. There’s such a constant assault on the senses that, for good or for ill, your plans are apt to change in a way that wouldn’t happen in, say, L.A. This is not to say that L.A. doesn’t exert a psychological force in people’s lives; the effect is just entirely different. A city, in other words, can be as much of a character as the flesh and blood ones.