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Because nothing says "I couldn't even be bothered to look this up on wikipedia" like geography fail
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elspethdixon Aug. 26th, 2009 04:01 pm)
elspethdixon Aug. 26th, 2009 04:01 pm)Dear fandoms set in New York City (including, but not limited to, Watchmen*, Marvel, CSI: NY, Law & Order, and Real Ghostbusters):
Learn to tell the East and Hudson Rivers apart. Please.
I will not notice if you get Manhattan's street grid wrong, though a life-long New Yorker might. Nor will I really notice or care if you put subway stops on the wrong line or make any other number of small or medium-sized factual errors -- sometimes canon does this, after all (ex: the first & second Spiderman movies -- there are not, nor have there ever been, cable cars on the Brooklyn Bridge, and lower Manhattan does not have elevated subway tracks).
But if if the Hudson River is anywhere in the vicinity of Queens, you're doing it wrong.
The Hudson River is on the west side of the island of Manhattan. The East River is on the east side. That's why it's called the East River.
The East River is also the one that the Brooklyn Bridge goes across, just so we're clear on that. You cannot fall off the Brooklyn Bridge into the Hudson River. Not even if you're falling out of a cable car.
Small errors are understandable ---seanchai and I once stuck an open courtyard in front of the main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum, until we belatedly realized while the fic was in beta that we were mixing the Met (museum) and the Met (opera house) up and took the courtyard out again. Translocating major bodies of water to new locations is not a small error.
*Just for the record? No one in 1985 had a cell phone, not even if they were as rich as Adrian Veidt. We're talking over 20 years ago. You can get away with small technological anachronisms because it's an alternate universe, but seriously, asjkwrgfg, 1960-1985 is a period setting. Just because many of us were alive then doesn't change that -- actually, it provides even more of an impetus to not have cell phones in the 80s and definately not MP3 players.**
**They would not have had MP3 players when Harry Potter was at Hogwarts, either. Harry's parents are killed in '81. He's going to Hogwarts in the '90s, before MP3 players were invented. Seriously, a portable CD player/discman was cutting edge technology in 1997. Most people back then had a walkman.
Baby dragon is disgusted:
Learn to tell the East and Hudson Rivers apart. Please.
I will not notice if you get Manhattan's street grid wrong, though a life-long New Yorker might. Nor will I really notice or care if you put subway stops on the wrong line or make any other number of small or medium-sized factual errors -- sometimes canon does this, after all (ex: the first & second Spiderman movies -- there are not, nor have there ever been, cable cars on the Brooklyn Bridge, and lower Manhattan does not have elevated subway tracks).
But if if the Hudson River is anywhere in the vicinity of Queens, you're doing it wrong.
The Hudson River is on the west side of the island of Manhattan. The East River is on the east side. That's why it's called the East River.
The East River is also the one that the Brooklyn Bridge goes across, just so we're clear on that. You cannot fall off the Brooklyn Bridge into the Hudson River. Not even if you're falling out of a cable car.
Small errors are understandable ---
seanchai and I once stuck an open courtyard in front of the main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum, until we belatedly realized while the fic was in beta that we were mixing the Met (museum) and the Met (opera house) up and took the courtyard out again. Translocating major bodies of water to new locations is not a small error.*Just for the record? No one in 1985 had a cell phone, not even if they were as rich as Adrian Veidt. We're talking over 20 years ago. You can get away with small technological anachronisms because it's an alternate universe, but seriously, asjkwrgfg, 1960-1985 is a period setting. Just because many of us were alive then doesn't change that -- actually, it provides even more of an impetus to not have cell phones in the 80s and definately not MP3 players.**
**They would not have had MP3 players when Harry Potter was at Hogwarts, either. Harry's parents are killed in '81. He's going to Hogwarts in the '90s, before MP3 players were invented. Seriously, a portable CD player/discman was cutting edge technology in 1997. Most people back then had a walkman.
Baby dragon is disgusted:
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(At least I'd never send Doctor Chase on a surfing holiday in Canberra?)
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I hear you.
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edit: SAFE *phew*
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Can Hank wade to Liberty Island?
Depends on whether one's doing Ultimates or 616 -- in Ultimates he has a fifty-foot height limit, so probably not (New York Harbor is 45-50 feet deep at it's deepest point). In 616 I think he might be able to, but it would be more like swimming with water up to your chest/neck, I think, than wading. Why did I actually go and look the answer to that up? *head desks at own geekiness*
Actually, I suspect it would depend on where he's trying to get to Liberty Island *from*. Also, he really wouldn't want his ankles in that river mud. General Electric used to dump mega-poisonous chemicals into the Hudson River, and there's a deposit of them submerged under the top layer of sediment in the river channel and harbor. It's actually an issue when they do underwater dredging and blasting, apparently (it's a major environmental thing. You actually can't eat fish from the Hudson River, even now, which makes me go 0.o, because conditions in the Chesapeake Bay never got quite that bad -- back home, the "you have to throw those fish back" laws were all about protecting the fish from massive overfishing, not protecting people from poisonous fish).
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I was always vaguely aware that Manhattan was an island, but I didn't realise how fractured NY was - and I was quite surprised the Statue of Liberty didn't look out over the ocean!
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