Because nothing says "I couldn't even be bothered to look this up on wikipedia" like geography fail

[elspethdixon]

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:

Comments

[st_aurafina]

I read a guide to writing fanfic in New York once - I wish I'd bookmarked it, because it was so useful. I always try to work from a map, because I have no idea off the top of my head which side the bridges are on, or what goes where, no matter how much Law and Order I watch. I can figure out which is the East River and which is the Hudson, at least.

(At least I'd never send Doctor Chase on a surfing holiday in Canberra?)

I hear you.

[jazzypom]

I tend to use google maps, or I'll ask a fellow fen who lived in NY for five years, oor... I just tend to have the characters written in rooms. It's for the best.

[velithya]

....OMG, please tell me I didn't do this! *goes to check*

edit: SAFE *phew*

[valtyr]

I looked at a map of NY and was all ISLANDS. Wait, is that a bridge or a tunnel? Can Hank wade to Liberty Island? If Steve bikes from Hell's Kitchen to Liberty State Park, at what points will he see the Statue of Liberty? Is Hell's Kitchen to Red Hook a stupidly long walk? Fanfic is hard. I shall write Captain Midlands, I know what Leicester is like.

[elspethdixon]

It is all islands -- I actually always wondered how Spiderman was supposed to websling from Queens, where Aunt May lives, to downtown Manhattan, considering that there's a river in the way. A really big river.

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).

Re: I hear you.

[elspethdixon]

*nods* I know I'd screw up trying to write London or Manchester or something, but I'd at least look up a city map or something to make sure I don't put something on the wrong side of the Thames or put Manchester in Scotland or some other piece of blatant fail (I've seen HP fics where the writers assume that you can drive from anywhere in England to anywhere else in England in just a couple of hours, which even as an American I know is not true).

[valtyr]

He's going from Liberty State Park, because it's nice and close. I reckon 616 Hank can do it. *adds a paragraph in which Hank whines about poison mud in his socks.* Thank you for that!

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!

[elspethdixon]

I remember that guide -- I ought to have bookmarked it, too, but I don't think I did. It did things like list all five burroughs and beat people over the head with the proper way to spell Manhattan, right? And reminded people that the NYC subway runs 24 hours? (which is actually a mistake I've seen native New Yorkers make writing NCIS fic or X-Files fic set in DC -- the DC metro shuts down late at night).

[elspethdixon]

I'm still not quite used to how tangled all the highways are around New York are, because of the bridges and tunnels. You can drive the entire way around the DC or Richmond metropolitan areas in a big loop, using just a couple of highways and never getting off the interstate. This is not so in New York. I am not used to having to remember the names of more than three highways in order to go somewhere. (though DC does have the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which is infamously backed up with crazed commuters trying to get back and forth between Maryland and Virginia every morning)

[elspethdixon]

Not you! It wasn't a Marvel fic, but I threw Marvel in there in the list of NY fandoms, because everything in Marvelverse happens in New York City.

[velithya]

Well really I sort of did in my head ^^; Because the time I mentioned the Hudson I was imagining them going towards the other side of the island instead of the Hudson side. ^^; But I never actually committed the sin in the fic proper!