Egoismt - Tang's Dream World

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I’m curious, what’s wrong with The Narrows?

Okay so...

It didn't exist.

At all. Until about 2010.

MORE BELOW THE CUT BECAUSE THIS GOT LONG AND I ENDED UP DOING A GOOD CHUNK OF MY GOTHAM CITY MAP RANT

Gotham had ludicrously detailed maps for YEARS. Here's a fun article about it.

This is the map from the No Man's Land novelization, created by Eliot R. Brown. It's the most legible, even if it doesn't have all of the details that some of the other ones have from the NML comics.

It's a good, established map, and it's relatively sensible. We've got Arkham on its own island, which seems like a relatively smart idea, we've got a decent spread of where people and things are; there are inconsistencies for sure and people changed this up; for example this map moves City Hall randomly

The thing is that Nolan changed where Bruce's parents were shot in his movies. He decided that Crime Alley (Park Row) wasn't appropriate and so he came up with The Narrows, his version of Park Row, to be the part of Gotham where the Waynes get shot in Batman Begins.

And then *hand wiggle* it's kind of unclear tbh but SOMEONE decided to use that, since it was so well known. So they just kinda... shove it into the space between the middle and lower island and move Arkham there and just say that Gotham has Yet Another worst neighborhood ever.

So THIS map came out in 2010, probably as part of the Batman: Arkham Asylum video game thing. Arkham was relocated to the Narrows, Arkham Island became "South Channel Island", Wayne Manor completely randomly swapped places with the airport, Bristol disappeared entirely with it instead being replaced with "The Palisades", Tricorner was renamed Sandy Hook, which did not age great, and then a bunch of things randomly got shuffled around, and the names changed. They lost a lot of fun details; bring back Finger River you cowards, and generally this map took out a lot of the fun

Frankly? despite being extremely fun to be able to zoom in on and providing a kind of more realistic look at how Gotham might work, I hate this map. It's bad. It's boring. It got rid of Amusement Mile; the decrepit boardwalk that's now full of great abandoned buildings for supervillains to take over, it got rid of all sorts of important landmarks like the Knights football stadium and Robinson Park, and just took all of the character out of it.

Batgirl of Burnsides Map: it's less pretty than some of the others; notice that Robinson is no longer shaped like a penis, which I think is a tragedy, personally. However, it's definitely brought back a lot of the uniqueness of the NML map; it's definitely bridging the gap between the two. It also adds a location for where the Kane Family lives, which is kind of fun. (It also puts Arkham back on its own island which, huge sigh of relief for everyone who lives in the Narrows)

But really, my grudge with the Narrows is how it serves kind of an in-between purpose and how it throws off Gotham's world building. The Narrows is clearly born out of Christopher Nolan hating the fact that he was directing a movie about a superhero whose parents died in Crime Alley (JUST USE PARK ROW, MY DUDE). And they've tried to continuously figure out an identity for it, and it's never really worked, because it feels like no one really has a feel for Gotham City as a character in this era, unlike in the era of Brubaker and Rucka, the two writers who I feel like used Gotham City's geography and character the best. [If you're wondering why I don't hold the same grudge against Burnsides: I mostly pretend that it's a replacement for a silver age area known as "The Village", and put its absence on earlier maps up there with Manchester's absence.]

Roughly, Uptown Gotham is the "rough" part of Gotham. It's where we have Park Row, Burnley, the Bowery, and the Hill (the Hill is the traditionally Black part of Gotham, where Orpheus is from). There's other parts of that area, but roughly, that's our geography. It's also the most likely former home to Ace Chemical Plants, which shut down at some dubious point in Gotham's recent history, leading to a massive surge in Gotham's unemployment and causing the bust cycle which has been taking Uptown into such rapid urban decay; Park Row was originally a "nice part of town" before the Waynes' death symbolized the death of that era.

Midtown has Gotham U, but it also has East End, which is another really shady area of Gotham; Selina and Helena's hometown. Mobsters and Mafiosos on every corner. Probably Gotham's equivalent of Little Italy. It's also got Robinson Park, Gotham's answer to Central Park, and Ivy's home turf, as well as the resivoire, every Gotham villain's favorite pitstop.

Downtown is the glitz and glamor, white collar crime area. Here we get the Diamond District, Old Gotham, and City Hall... the Financial District, Gotham Police HQ, the Clocktower, and Wayne Tower are all here as well. But we've also got China Town here, which textually is also a lower-class area with an organized crime problem and, connected to a shipping area called "Dixon Docks" (Yes, named after that Dixon), so it's not always clear-cut. Tricorner Yards, the lowest island, is also clearly a shipping area, and the two areas seem to be pretty connected.

Anyways, I digress. The point is that... the Narrows to me, doesn't really fit into any of that? It feels like they've said "we need to use this thing from the popular movies, uh... let's drop it in the middle of this river" and they've just... never managed to do anything with it that satisfies me with its existence. We have areas that I'd rather see fleshed out. We have this incredibly detailed world building right at our finger tips. But DC just kind of... isn't interested in that? And so I'm off in my corner, muttering to myself about maps and world building and Gotham City lore. Don't mind me. XD

Donate if you are able to <3

i am just now discovering the instagram of the makeup artist for spn who did all this to misha 😳

I ended up screen recording all of the trivia questions he did if anyone wanted to see it before it's gone!