#doorverse

when i read stories about gotham it’s hard to reconcile these things in my head so that’s why i was curious as to your opinion :)

LOVE this ask!!! And thank you so much!!! This is something I also think about a lot, and I'm glad that it shows lol. There's a lot about Gotham's geography that's confusing -- I tend to go off of Oracle's rough, color-coded map given in No Man's Land for the relative position of landmarks and districts -- and there's a lot of good and bad in making Gotham an island(s). On the one hand, Gotham as an island makes for a much tighter, contained story. It allows for a natural buffer around the events that take place there, and prevents questions about spill-over to other cities from Big disasters. It also provides clear boundaries and scope of Batman stories, and that geographical plot-armor is what allows Batman & Co to be like We're On Our Own Out Here.

On the OTHER hand -- as someone who lives on an island, and has lived on other islands as well -- there are serious limitations to living on islands. Resources, access points, space, etc. Islands, especially heavily populated, overdeveloped islands, are INCREDIBLY reliant on imports for literally everything. They do not have the ability to support themselves. It's a sustainability nightmare. Some stories (like No Man's Land) try to use these limitations to their advantage in creating environmental conflict, but I often feel that they either don't go far enough, or that they take it to illogical extremes. No Man's Land in particular is a great example of the latter. As a story, it makes almost no sense at all -- an earthquake, of that magnitude, off the coast of New Jersey? Right Underneath Gotham? And Gotham is the Only One Affected? Geologically (and oceanographically, where is the tsunami?) this is balderdash. The U.S. deciding to just cut off access to the island and treat it as unincorporated territory? Also doesn't make sense! No Man's Land treats Gotham Island like it's miles and miles out to sea, which it isn't and can't be.

There's also the issue of the location of Bristol. Sigh. If you follow most maps, Bristol -- and therefore Wayne Manor -- are on the mainland. Meaning that you have to cross a bridge to get into the city. A bridge is a chokepoint, under heavy surveillance, and terrible news for any kind of secret identity or subtlety. We are meant to believe there is a whole mess of tunnels that go Under The Gotham River, maintained well enough to drive through, which is it's own baffling prospect. The Atlantic continental shelf is much gentler than the Pacific, and makes this slightly more believable, but it's definitely a huge undertaking to have tunnels that go under the water table and then back up into the city. This is just haterism on my part though, maybe, and an overly complex way of thinking about Comic Book Logicks.

As for the size and population -- that I find less difficult to grapple with. Cities as dense as Gotham make incredible use of small amounts of space. If we're talking about New York boroughs, there are over one and a half million people just on the island of Manhattan, which is only about 22 square miles of land space! You can fit a wholeee lot of city into just 22 square miles. Gotham has got to be bigger than that, significantly so, and it also does us good to remember that Gotham is actually Several Islands, closely connected by bridges. If you look at the several alternative maps given for these islands, almost Every Square Inch is City. The space is utilized to its utmost extreme. And there are several big bridge thoroughfares in and out of the city, which helps a little when you're thinking about the sheer volume of goods that have to be traded into the city to support islands that are so densely populated. I think it's still a logical push, and it's a significant change to the geography of the real-world New Jersey coast, but I mostly allow myself to think about it like it makes sense. Most of the time.

And YES, agreed about Atlantic City! Atlantic is also my real-world model for Blüdhaven. All the reasons why Gotham is an island (plot armor, story containment) apply to why Blüd is mapped as an island, too! Blüdhaven's islandism is perhaps even more interesting to me though, because it is so baked into the history of the city -- a whaling outpost that became a pirate safe haven, which became a lawless port town, which became a bigger port town, which became a small and strange and isolated city. I already have some amount of words written about Blüdhaven's infrastructure and spatial relationships -- including my own fantasy origins for canon place names -- that may eventually end up in a Dick-centric fic.

ANYWAYS. A lot of words written to conclude that you're absolutely right that there are confounding factors to Gotham's geography, and that there is an element of suspension of disbelief required if you don't work to acknowledge the unique challenges and limitations that go hand-in-hand with the relative isolation of a city like Gotham. I mostly work to grapple with what I can make reasonable, and try not to roll my eyes too hard at the things that I cannot lol

HELLO!!! 🫶 I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get to responding to this, but in my defense I've either been in the woods no service or frantically finishing finals since the last time I answered asks 💀 but for your patience I offer you a paragraph from a potential dickie doorverse fic in the distant future: