#dcu geography

[heroesriseandfall]

Blüdhaven becoming Nightwing’s base has kind of overshadowed the fact that Dick’s first several years as Nightwing were in New York City with the New Titans.

In the 80s and early 90s, even Gothamites associated Nightwing with NYC enough to question why the New Yorker hero was in Gotham when he came to save Bruce one night.

Importantly, Dick lived in Manhattan during the entire time Jason was Robin, at least in preboot timeline. Jason associated Dick with NYC.

Enough that when Jason came back and Blüdhaven was blown up and Dick was nowhere to be found (traveling), Jason went looking for Dick in New York, expecting him to be there. And Dick did move to New York again, without even knowing Jason had anticipated that.

Blüdhaven certainly has its own special place for Nightwing, but so does New York. It’s one of the places Nightwing was born.

[whetstonefires]

It's been a few years since I wrote much DCU fan content, but I have gone on refining things like geography headcanons sort of absently.

For my purposes Gotham is typically in Rhode Island, quite a bit further south than Providence, which in this universe is a much smaller city than in reality because Gotham was there between it and the sea.

Possibly on Conanicut Island; sometimes material writing Gotham as a double for New York leans upon Manhattan's island status in some way. Possibly on the mainland, if you don't have any use for that. Or both. Regardless the 17th century history of the Narragansett is implied to have sucked even harder than it did irl.

It seems to have gotten popular since the Teen Titans cartoon to put Gotham in Connecticut; I can work with this too. Maybe it replaces New London. Any further west and you're fully in Long Island Sound and too close to New York City.

The important features of Gotham are that it's coastal, it's around four hundred years old, and it was founded by English colonists. There have been a lot of variations ofc, including that period where Metropolis and Gotham were hilariously right across a bay from one another, but enough of the history-of-Gotham-and-the-Waynes segments over the years have leaned hard into distinctively New England elements that I cannot accept a Gotham that isn't north of New York.

Also for weather reasons even New Jersey seems like quite a stretch, and there's nowhere to jam a city in there without getting sucked into the orbit of existing stars in the metropolitan belt and ruining the vibe anyhow.

Metropolis meanwhile is, as far as I'm concerned, in Delaware, on the west coast of Delaware Bay, having been established in the 1920s as an ambitious planned futurist city and sucked up a lot of the development that would otherwise have gone to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and taken a bite out of the population of DC also.

Suicide Slum is where the people hired to build the city were living while doing so, a common side effect of such planned construction, and it ballooned in the 30s when the world economy crashed.

Metropolis was saved by WWII, when the feds sited a lot of war production and military transport out of its harbor because the place had been built on a grandiose scale that hadn’t ever hit peak utilization due to the Depression, so it was convenient. There’s still a large Army base near city limits; Lois spent her teens in base housing because her dad was stationed there.

[winterthebeau]

more confirmation that gotham city is in New Jersey, but they havent seemed to decide WHERE.

[silverwhittlingknife]

sdfsdfdsfdsfdsfds it's beautiful. this is clearly Superman's fault!!!!!

OKAY LISTEN here is my galaxy-brain real-world take:

Gotham NML Map + Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area in New Jersey:

Blüdhaven + Atlantic City (I concede that this is sketchy but the sports stadium is in the EXACT SAME PLACE on the triangular bit to the left)

Gotham and Blüdhaven + map of the Great Bay area where Blüdhaven is Atlantic City and Gotham is the WMA place:

IN CONCLUSION WHAT IF Blüdhaven is Atlantic City and Gotham is Manhattan but transported to the Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area. What THEN

Also I cannot figure out the original source for this map (I mean it is clearly not official but also I can't figure out where it was originally posted), but LOOK, is it not marvelous:

(I am ignoring Metropolis. I do not see it. It is not there. If I don't acknowledge it it can't hurt me. It's in the Midwest and I don't care what DC has to say about it. >:/ )

so today for reasons I cannot explain, I copy pasted the novelization No Man's Land map and the Nightwing Secret Files Blüdhaven map onto the map of the Blüdhaven-Gotham coastline (also in Nightwing Secret Files), thus making a totally useless map.

it compels me though.

[soleminisanction]

I think i miss a entire fact that gotham is on island but that may be on me tbh. Distantly i can see it be similar to that of the batman (2022)

Like i knew its in new jersey but still surrounded by waters

But that maybe on me forgetting geography

I mean to be fair to you, geography can be quite fluid in the DCU. Back in the Silver Age, Gotham was located on the mainland of southern New Jersey, right across from Metropolis, which was in Delaware. I believe this was the set-up they went with in Batman v Superman and all the live-action mess that came from it.

But in the modern age yeah, Gotham's pretty firmly established as being on an island or a series of islands, similar to NYC. The entire conceit of the No Man's Land story line hinges on it -- the only reason the federal government is able to cut off Gotham City from the rest of the U.S. is because it's an island, they "blow the bridges" and set up a perimeter, leaving everyone who couldn't afford to move out behind to rot.

There's a few maps floating around out there, including a nice one that came with the Gotham Knights video game that I've got on my office wall, but I think this is the one you see most commonly. I think it even gets used as like a HUD display in-universe sometimes.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Blank Canvas

by Vampowerment

When Eric Border, an orderly at Arkham and an ally to Batman, tries to build a life outside of his work, he somehow keeps running into Gotham's darling, Bruce Wayne.

Words: 5676, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Gen, M/M

Characters: Eric Border, Bruce Wayne, Mahreen Zaheer

Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Eric Border, Eric Border & Mahreen Zaheer

Additional Tags: New 52 (DCU), Batman Annual 2 (2013), Comic: Batman Eternal (2014), Arkham Manor, (it's set during those comics but should stand on its own), Gotham City Geography, architecture, Arkham Asylum, Identity Porn, Gotham City - Freeform, Mostly Canon Compliant, There's not much to tag yet but this is gonna get long

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/46119691

[ao3feed-birdflash]

i see halos all around us

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/Y1cxHeX

by half_baked_ideas

Bart gets hit with a new, colourless, strain of Fear Gas while in Gotham to spend time with Tim.

The catch? This new strain lies dormant until the victim comes into contact with a specific 'trigger', something connected to their existing trauma.

They, understandably, doesn't have a great of a time.

Words: 1774, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Young Justice (Cartoon), DCU (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Bart Allen, Tim Drake, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Iris West, Wally West, Dick Grayson, Jay Garrick, Joan Garrick

Relationships: Bart Allen & Iris West, Bart Allen & Wally West, Bart Allen/Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Dick Grayson/Wally West, Bart Allen & Dick Grayson

Additional Tags: Not Beta Read, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Bart Allen Needs A Hug, Bart Allen-centric, Bart Allen is Impulse, Minor Bart Allen/Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Minor Dick Grayson/Wally West, Nonbinary Bart Allen, Continuity What Continuity, Out of Character, Panic Attacks, Hurt/Comfort, Hallucinations, Speed Force, Necklaces, Inspired by Dreams, Inspired by Music, Overuse of italics, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Bad At Summaries, POV Iris West, POV Bart Allen, Worried Iris West, One Shot, POV Alternating, I Tried, Inner Dialogue, hand wave-y geography, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Wally West is Alive, Timeline What Timeline, Beaches, kon and jay and joan are only mentioned, Time Skips

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/Y1cxHeX

[zylev-blog]

I read through the reblogs and I’ve decided to do my own thing. So hear me out. Danny’s from a parallel Earth. So anything ghost related doesn’t exist in the DCU Earth. Clockwork came up to Danny one day, asked him if he wanted to have an adventure, and Danny wasn’t busy so he decided “what harm could it do?”

Turns out, no harm, but a lot of confusion.

So foreign exchange Danny. He does this in human form bc it’s easier than explaining why he looks like an alien. And there ARE aliens on this planet, he was very interested in finding that out. He also has a lot of research to do.

The problem starts when he realizes that this Earth is almost nothing like his. So he’s severely outdated on what passes for “normal” on this Earth. (Thus the comments on the OP’s post make sense to him but not to the people of this Earth.)

Enter Tim. Danny’s academic rival. Where Danny excels in math, science, and chemistry, he fails at things like geography and history. (Not even the country lines are the same, you know? Danny is very confused and very lost.)

Tim catches Danny muttering in an unknown language and records it to try and figure out what he’s saying. Turns out though, that this language isn’t from Earth. (Ghost speak.) so now the mystery deepens.

If Danny isn’t from this planet, which one does he come from?

So the Ghost Zone counts as its own domain right? Then I propose foreign exchange student Danny Fenton.

He's very quiet and very smart but more importantly, he's pretty dodgy about his country or origin. He's never given a straight answer about where he comes from. Only saying things like "oh we're big on combat sports" or "technically we're a monarchy but there hasn't been a king since the last one was locked away for being a tyrant". It's to the point where students have made a running bet to see who can figure out Danny's country of origin first. And Tim plans to win that bet.

[heroesriseandfall]

It’s so amusing to me when characters within comics use the fun-trivia-for-fans maps. Like technically that’s a perfectly good canon map. But when Jim Gordon uses it he feels like a tourist to me.

Eliot Brown’s map from Batman: Gotham City Secret Files & Origins #1 (Apr 2000), in Commissioner Loeb’s office in Detective Comics Vol. 2 #25 (Jan 2014)

It’s more funny when it’s shown on a computer though. You’re telling me Oracle and Batman have super highly sophisticated computers but the maps of Gotham on those computers use a numbered legend, instead of anything more technologically efficient and helpful?

Batman: Gotham Knights #55 (Sep 2004) — how is she supposed to find the CCTV if it’s not on the legend? :( lol

Batman Vol. 1 #683 (Jan 2008)

Robin Vol. 2 #178 (Nov 2008) / Titans Vol. 2 #15 (Sep 2009)

Batman Vol. 2 #24 (Dec 2013)

Absurd. And hilarious. This is a very ineffective map for them to quickly identify deep details of the terrain. But it IS an effective way to get me to laugh in the middle of a comic intended to be high stakes and serious. Important mission who? I only know fun background map.

[lightdancer1]

And as far as the apartment seen in Song of Orpheus and Books of Magic:

No, that is not in actual fact the realm of Death of the Endless. It's not the Sunless Lands judging by Death: The Time of Your Life where the foothills of the actual realm are very different and have the same fluid geography and Death-willed shapes that the Dreaming and the other Endless realms do.

I treat the apartment as having its mirror on all worlds with life, and a marker of how Death and Destruction are unlike the other Endless. Destruction didn't use to be prior to his leaving, but even before he was, at some point Death built a place that's fairly humble and shaped like a 20th Century apartment to human eyes (in any other species it looks like a medium sized equivalent of an apartment) which has a wee bit of a TARDIS effect.

As per canon she has a kitchen, a tea set, Slim and Wandsworth (her goldfish, except in the Darkness Falls AU where for understandable reasons Division of the Endless abolishes the fishbowl and replaces it with a full scale pond and they go from goldfish to Koi), Cavendish, her teddy bear....and her floppy hat collection.

Along with her collection of Disney movies as the canon Death of the Endless is very much a nerd. I tend to downplay some of this mostly from specific circumstances of writing.....but it also plays its own part in writing scenarios where she does get more detached from things as a way of bringing out this side of her and of her interaction with the other Endless and with mortals.

In particular in the newest AU where she spends 100 years in a fishbowl it becomes a very deliberately worked in part of how she tries, more than slightly unsuccessfully, to pretend that nothing actually affected her and ends up clearly trying too hard.

But, essentially, the apartment notes Death as interacting with and living in the mortal world more than any of the other Endless, as it's physically located in each world that has life. Meaning she has a place and a form in every single world of the DCU (and thus that the Black Racer has a home somewhere on both New Genesis and Apokolips and that she has an apartment on Oa!) and the broader multiverse the Endless deal with.

It is essentially a glorified means for her to avoid making her depression worse by sitting alone in the dark with her thoughts spiraling and nothing able to disrupt them. The teddy bear and her pets are her emotional support stuffie and fish, respectively.

And the irony and failure of the Endless to communicate is that they fail to pick up on this, where humans that spend any length of time there and know it from either personal experience directly or with others figure it out immediately.

[heroesriseandfall]

Went digging for this post to use as reference so I might as well add these related New Teen Titans Tower references. It actually looks like the above images are based on what I think is the second (or later?) Titans Tower, rebuilt after Trigon destroyed the original in NTT v2 #5.

New Teen Titans Vol. 1 #7 (May 1981) - the original Tower, built by Silas Stone.

Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe Vol. 1 #23 (Jan 1987) - the second (?) Tower, rebuilt by Vic Stone using Silas Stone's designs with the help of builders who worked on the original Tower (NTTv2 #11)

The reason I think Titans Tower images in the original post from the DC RPG 1st Addition are for the second (or later) Tower is partially because the bedrooms start on Level 4 (for the first Tower they're level 3) and there are more levels than the first Tower had.

On top of that, it sounds very similar to how Donna describes the second Tower in NTTv2 #18: “Wonder Girl can count the many days since Titans Tower was destroyed by Trigon. But now, after anxiously awaiting its completion for months, the Titans have their Tower back. 315 feet high, 100 feet wide, built of matrix glass and reinforced plasteel. Fifteen levels; ten above ground, five below. Less than one quarter mile from Manhattan.”

Took the photos from this post, rotated them and merged them together if anyone would like to use them!

[superboy-fic-stash]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: DCU - Comicverse Rating: Explicit Warnings: Underage Relationships: Kon-El/Tim Drake Characters: Kon-El, Tim Drake Additional Tags: Teen Titans - Freeform, Humor, First Time, Young Justice - Freeform Summary:

In which Kon is bored and bad at geography, Tim has some time to spare, and kissing is the solution to life's problems.

[bewaretheboojum]

Fic: Twisting Vines - Tim/Jay

Title: Twisting Vines

Author: bewaretheboojum

Fandom: DCU

Pairing: Tim Drake/Jason Todd

Word Count: 5,500

Rating: M

Warnings: AU - Fantasy, Angst, Fluff, some violence

Summary: Fantasy AU - Jason is a nomad traveling through plains lands when he gets lost in a dust storm. Moments from death, Jason is whisked away by a mysterious creature...

Notes: Written for JayTimWeek 2020 Prompt - Fairy Tale; Thank so much to FictionSuit and SiennaCitrine  for the beta help and teaching me basic geography and Snow for teaching me about horses.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24513901

[ayonde]

My journey beyond MBA into Canada (Blog#10)

After graduation we went to Orlando to see Disney/Universal. That trip burned a hole in my pocket. Washington DC was the last leg and luckily the museums in DC are free to public unlike New York. We survived on McDonald's for couple of days as I simply ran out of money.

Signing bonus was a new concept. I had assumed that I would get that money the moment I accept the offer letter. Only to realize that I would actually get it 45 days after joining. I was running dangerously low on cash so I requested Cartesian to give me 50% of my signing bonus upfront which they trustingly did.

Location: Cartesian also gave me options for my location. Boston was too far up north and cold. Philadelphia was tough. New York was costly. Washington DC has nice summer and I was familiar with Northern Virginia due to its proximity to Williamsburg. So I selected DC.

My friend Vipul helped me get a lease at his apartment complex in Herndon, VA. My wife joined me in US to join me while rest of my family left for India. Doing grocery was a problem. Walking to the store and carrying big bags was too laborious. Ever since I drove Chris’s car I wanted to buy a Subaru Forester but as I had no credit history and my income hasn’t come yet no one was ready to give me auto loan. I approached Bank of America but they declined – even though I showed my offer letter with salary information they wouldn’t lend me a single cent unless I agree for 20% APR.

Once again, Vipul introduced me to Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU). DCU gave me the full $20,000 at competitive 2.29% APR. I searched online to shortlist few cars. Hilariously changed 3 buses and a Metro with my wife and traveled to Manassas, VA to buy my Forester. Now I could reach places within minutes – such a big relief!

2015: Luckily my first project was with Time Warner Cable and their office was a mile away from my apartment. I would come back home to have lunch or walk to office. 

Life was good. 

It became better as I got news from Larry that USCIS cleared my RFE and my H1-B was approved. Huge sigh of relief! The H1-B came into effect in October. I noticed that my take home pay decreased as now I had to pay into Social Security and Medicare.

I felt that this system was unfair. As foreign national working in US I was a non-resident alien but for tax purposes I was a resident alien. I could not benefit from SSN or Medicare but I had to contribute into those programs. Additionally, every time I exit US, I had to get my passport stamped and answer lot of questions at port of entry. Cartesian also had to file paperwork to USCIS whenever I changed apartments as my address of residence was listed in my petition.

2016: Having money felt great but my wife couldn’t work in US. We thought of starting a family but I wanted her to earn and be financially independent. I thought “If I can come to US and get work after US education, my wife and sister can do that as well”. We put our family plans on hold. Raising kids would mean a gap of 5+ years for my wife which could prove insurmountable in rejoining workforce.

She liked William & Mary’s Masters of Accounting. She enrolled in Northern Virginia Community College to get prerequisite credits. My wife and sister took the GMAT/TOEFL and applied to schools.

My wife got admits from George Mason, American University and W&M. My sister got admits from CUNY Baruch, Fordham, Johns Hopkins, American and Bentley for Masters in Marketing Analytics. Even though CUNY was 1/3rd the cost of Fordham and Johns Hopkins is a huge brand name, I advised my sister to enroll in Fordham as it is STEM certified. STEM allows international students to be eligible for 2 years of extended OPT in addition to the initial 1. This provides 3 years to find an employer who would file for H-1B.

For obvious reasons, my wife selected W&M. Since I could work from home, I decided to move back to Williamsburg to lower our living cost and be together. I did not have sufficient money for my wife’s education. Luckily I learned about Mpower Finance. They provided $25,000 without collateral at 11.99% APR both to my wife and my sister. This was a game changer. I took a personal loan from DCU for the remainder amount. I paid my sister’s monthly rent in NYC. By fall both enrolled in their respective schools. I asked Cartesian to apply for my Green Card (GC) but they asked to revisit in 2017

2017: I visited India in Oct and that’s when my mother fell and broke her shoulder. It became clear to me that I need to live together with my parents. I asked Cartesian again for GC but they refused to apply. To be fair I still had another year on my H-1B and could renew it for 3 more years. Usually companies exhaust 6 years of H-1B before sponsoring for GC. The problem is that USCIS puts a cap on number of GC applications per country. Which means that India with a population of 1.3 Billion gets the same number of GC slots as Lithuania – a country of 3 million. This cap puts a wait time of 10 to 15 years for Indians and Chinese to get GC in best case estimate. Worst case puts the waiting period at 45 years!

Even if I received GC, I still couldn’t stay with my parents. I started exploring other options and learned about Canadian Permanent Residency. My wife and I applied to Canada’s point based PR. During application I got to know another Indian applicant. He was 38 years old, had two kids. Worked in US on H-1B for 7 years. (2 renewals + 1 extended year) His company exploited him and gave him $138,000 while his American coworkers made $200,000+ He couldn’t leave his job as his company was filing for his GC, because of his age he scored less points in the Canadian PR process. He was in a pickle.

I decided I didn’t want to be in his shoes after 5 years. By mid-2017, my wife faced rejections at interviews due to companies unwilling to sponsor H-1B. Luckily she contacted Tim who owns La Tienda at Toano, VA and is a W&M Alumni. They hired her for a yearlong internship during the course of her OPT. My sister also found a job at NYC but the hours were killing her. Rampant racism existed in her company. English Hons fresh out of school American citizens are fast tracked into Managers while  Indian employees who had considerable experience in SPSS, SAS etc. and had a MS in Marketing / Analytics were made to work at grassroots. I decided to leave US when my wife’s internship and her OPT would conclude in July 2018. By December we had received our Canadian PR.

I owed my parents $80,000 for my MBA. I had little money saved. So I decided to buy a property in India. I would pay the mortgage on it and my parents would rent it out. The rent would provide them additional income to support cost of living.

2018: I was bleeding money from all ends – rent, auto loan, mortgage, education loan and taxes. Additionally, I couldn’t plan for retirement or invest in a property while in US.

Since both of us were earning and our cost of living was low. I decided to use snowball effect. First, paid off my wife’s education loan by making lump sum payments every month. That freed up the money going towards that loan. We used that additional money and attacked the next – auto loan was now repaid. Only mortgage remained as we moved to Canada in July 2018.

In September my H-1B expired. I resigned from Cartesian as a full-time employee and rejoined as independent contractor. This worked in my favour as I was able to get a 20% hike. I was promoted to Manager. I did not miss forgoing benefits like medical etc. as those are provided in Canada under universal healthcare.

We setup base in Toronto and my wife landed a job soon. We used the snowball effect once more to pay off my mortgage in India. After 4 years or so I recouped my Return on Investment on my MBA.

2019/2020: I was debt free and started saving money. Paying rent in the Greater Toronto Area was expensive and paying the same amount in mortgage made more sense. We bought a house and started a family. My sister also applied for her PR and joined us. I applied for my parent’s Super Visa – which allowed them to stay up to 2 years in Canada at each entry. After 6 long years we all were together again.

In conclusion, I feel lucky that I was able to successfully use my MBA to transition into consulting, change geography and attain higher purchasing power.

[wiqi4love]

DCU Doctor of Education (EdD) Scholarship in Ireland, 2018

DCU Doctor of Education (EdD) Scholarship in Ireland, 2018

The DCU Institute of Education in association with the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) is offering Scholarships for Digital Learning Area of Professional Focus for students wishing to commence on the Doctor of Education (EdD) programme in August 2018.

Specifically the programme aims to Educate to the highest international standards an existing and emerging educational leadership by…