Arch Stanton Guest Post: Worst Fictional Towns to Live In

Do you ever get the feeling of resentment for your current place of residence? Traffic sucks, or shitty grocery stores, or sub par transport, or that weird homeless guy that is VERY opinionated on “the Zionists”? I find myself whining frequently in my Stepford Wives-ass suburb, but then I will watch a show and think, “well, shit it’s not THAT bad now that I think about it.” Without dragging this half-assed premise out further…

Gotham (Batman) – Obviously the first, so let’s just get it out of the way. Assuming you aren’t Batman (and you certainly aren’t because you’re wasting your time reading this), Gotham would be TRASH. The police force is nonexistent. It’s almost entirely rundown – do you ever recall seeing the “nice” parts of Gotham? The primary field of employment is “henchmen”. There are dozens of bad guys who are essentially domestic terrorists just constantly waiting patiently for their turn to blow up a school or hospital. On top of all of this, Constitutional rights are repeatedly trodden on. Batman is a vigilant who acts as judge and juror and, while he may not murder you (like everyone else in the town will), he will beat the piss out of you. Again, this is the GOOD GUY. Gotham in real life would be like Detroit but populated with the Son of Sam, Osama bin Laden, the villain from the Saw movies, the Zodiac Killer and like, a baby boomer who was really into crossword puzzles.

The worst part of all of this is Robin – put some goddamn pants on, kid. All these people/criminals live in this city most likely because this is their rock bottom, suggesting a far higher density of child predators/molesters than a normal city, and this idiot is wrestling them in his underwear.

Angel Grove (Power Rangers): Do you remember Power Rangers? Five ethnically diverse teens from an idyllic suburb put on outfits to fight guys in rubber suits/aliens from outer space and their henchmen; the Power Ranger gain an upper hand; the enemies up the game by jumping hundreds of feet into the air into their monstrous robots, where they fight again, but this time the teens are in robot-dinosaurs or some shit, until they form a robot-dinosaur-robot. When you really distill it to its essence, it’s a terribly bland and repetitive show, but when you were eight this was the fucking SHIT. ROBOT-DINOSAURS FIGHTING ALIENS!

You don’t want to live here because the insurance premiums alone would just be outrageous. Turns out, fights between monsters a dozen stories tall are bad for resale values.

Sunnydale (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): In a cosmetic sense, Sunnydale is basically the same town as Angel Grover. The only difference is Sunnydale is, unfortunately, on top of an area known to vampires, the undead, and various other demons as “Hellmouth”. Shockingly, you probably don’t want to live near Hellmouth, a literal portal to hell responsible for spreading darkness and all that presupposes across the regular world.

The premise of the show is a high school girl is a slayer, which is basically a super badass responsible for whooping the ass of all these demons while going to high school and maintaining a social life; “high school is Hell, but literally”. With all the vampires, I imagine the price of garlic in this town is RIDICULOUS. People must resort to throwing garlic bread and over seasoned Olive Garden as alternatives.

Dreadfort (Game of Thrones): To be clear, I don’t want to live in any part of Westeros – a land torn apart by generations of war, with vasts swaths of the population impressed into armies or reduced to homeless wanders, or just straight-up bandits. All the cities risk coming under siege, men being tortured or sent to die in fruitless battles while women can become prostitutes or (double checks notes) … whores. Yikes. The only good place to live would be Sunspear in Dorne. You’d still end up poisoned or with your skull dashed on the bricks of a faraway land, but… the wine and weather seem pretty neat.

Despite the lack of habitability of the entirety of Westeros (Essos isn’t much better – you are a slave, which would be bad, or a slave master who is about to be murdered ruthlessly, which also seems pretty bad), Dreadford has to be the worst. Consider: all the shit-ass weather of Winterfell, without being the seat of power or housing the ruling family, the lack of, ya know, ANYTHING like most of the North, with the addition of TONS of torture. Living anywhere in Westeros is like getting hit in the dick with a whiffle ball bat, but living in the Dreadford would be like getting hit in the dick with a whiffle ball bat covered in spiders.

New York City (dozens of films and shows, but let’s go with Gossip Girl): A serious lack of privacy, perpetually crowded, exorbitant real estate costs, and unending waves of people who are are obnoxiously pretentious or horribly delusional (checks notes) ahh I see people actually choose to live in this real-life butthole. It smells all the time, people are always touching me, and I have to take public transportation. Get all the fucking way out of here with that bullshit.

Bedrock (Flintstones): The dinosaurs would be fun, and checking out Wilma all the time would be great (‘sup girl), but c’mon, am I expected to use MY FEET to get around, and perform MANUAL labor? I don’t know if there’s an equivalent to “white guilt” for dinosaurs subjected to singular monotonous tasks, but I would be wracked with whatever-you-call it making dinosaurs eat rocks in the sake of neolithic capitalism. THERE ARE NO ETHICAL CONSUMERS IN CAPITALISM, FRED.

Maine (any Stephen King novel): Maine, in real life, is great. Maine in a Stephen King novel means you are about to get the everloving-shit haunted out of you by a dead pet or child. If you have anything in common with me, you are total chickenshit and scared of the basement with the lights off, unexpected knocks on the front door, dead bugs, and the idea of r/creepypasta. I would be one of the first deaths where the townspeople start to think, ‘hmm that’s unusual’ but still elect to do nothing while the terror escalates. Unrelated, Stephen King novel’s are lame, and you are lame if you enjoyed them.