"Research"
Where do Mulder and Scully live in IWTB?
The data I have collected:
1) Scully works in a big-ish looking hospital, which means it is probably in a reasonable sized city. Small rural hospitals do not do brain surgery.
2) It's in the mountains, in a rural area.
3) It's vaguely in the DC vicinity, such that my boy Mo can come find them, and they can work a case out of DC.
4) The Evil Russians are in "Somerset, WV 22013," which is a fakey-fake place name (there is no Somerset in West Virginia, 22013 is not a real zip code, which I should have guessed becaust it's got an "013" in it, shut up, it took me a minute to realize the address is on "Belliflower Road," so I'm kinda slow).
So we're looking for a place with mountains and a real city, a reasonable distance from DC, and in or near West Virginia. Now, I'm pretty sure 1 rules out anywhere actually in West Virginia; the largest city in the state is Charleston, which only has about 50,000 people (by comparison: my zip code: 75,000) and is nearly 6 hours from DC. I also think it rules out Maryland; no large cities near the WVA border. That leaves us with western Virginia, which has mountains, and is (mostly) driving distance from DC, though far enough away to give our ex-fugitives some sense of peace.
I think I have just about settled on Scully working in Roanoke. It's got a population of nearly 100,000, is just under 4 hours from DC, and is right in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Perfectly plausible. Picking a town is a little harder. I'm sitting here, staring at the Google map, plugging town names into Wikipedia. Shawsville is a "census designated place" that had a dispute with neighboring Elliston over where to put the "Welcome to Shawsville" sign on the Elliston Road. Bradshaw is an unincorporated community with a regional landfill. Ironto doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, though it does have an Italian restaurant with a website. Now, this does leave them nearly 2 hours from the West Virgina border, but that's because the roads are for shit, as we saw demonstrated in the movie.
There's also the chance that that Scully works in Blacksburg, which is small, but has a university. (With a vet hospital, not a human one, but close enough.) That would leave me with a whole new range of little towns, like Kimbalton, or on the outskirts of Pearisburg, or Goldburg or Klotz; it would also put them less than half an hour from the WV border. But it puts them nearly five hours from DC, which seems, frankly, like a bit much.
Where would you have them live? What did you assume, before you thought about it?
And can anyone tell me why I'm spending more time looking at a map than Chris Carter did?
The data I have collected:
1) Scully works in a big-ish looking hospital, which means it is probably in a reasonable sized city. Small rural hospitals do not do brain surgery.
2) It's in the mountains, in a rural area.
3) It's vaguely in the DC vicinity, such that my boy Mo can come find them, and they can work a case out of DC.
4) The Evil Russians are in "Somerset, WV 22013," which is a fakey-fake place name (there is no Somerset in West Virginia, 22013 is not a real zip code, which I should have guessed becaust it's got an "013" in it, shut up, it took me a minute to realize the address is on "Belliflower Road," so I'm kinda slow).
So we're looking for a place with mountains and a real city, a reasonable distance from DC, and in or near West Virginia. Now, I'm pretty sure 1 rules out anywhere actually in West Virginia; the largest city in the state is Charleston, which only has about 50,000 people (by comparison: my zip code: 75,000) and is nearly 6 hours from DC. I also think it rules out Maryland; no large cities near the WVA border. That leaves us with western Virginia, which has mountains, and is (mostly) driving distance from DC, though far enough away to give our ex-fugitives some sense of peace.
I think I have just about settled on Scully working in Roanoke. It's got a population of nearly 100,000, is just under 4 hours from DC, and is right in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Perfectly plausible. Picking a town is a little harder. I'm sitting here, staring at the Google map, plugging town names into Wikipedia. Shawsville is a "census designated place" that had a dispute with neighboring Elliston over where to put the "Welcome to Shawsville" sign on the Elliston Road. Bradshaw is an unincorporated community with a regional landfill. Ironto doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, though it does have an Italian restaurant with a website. Now, this does leave them nearly 2 hours from the West Virgina border, but that's because the roads are for shit, as we saw demonstrated in the movie.
There's also the chance that that Scully works in Blacksburg, which is small, but has a university. (With a vet hospital, not a human one, but close enough.) That would leave me with a whole new range of little towns, like Kimbalton, or on the outskirts of Pearisburg, or Goldburg or Klotz; it would also put them less than half an hour from the WV border. But it puts them nearly five hours from DC, which seems, frankly, like a bit much.
Where would you have them live? What did you assume, before you thought about it?
And can anyone tell me why I'm spending more time looking at a map than Chris Carter did?