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The Routes of the Teen Titans

One of the main reasons that we wanted to study character routes is that you can analyze a lot about a character through their movements. At first, I tried to find a way to contrive the analysis of their actions on a map. For instance, there's an entire act that Starfire doesn't say any words even though she's fighting alongside the Titans. How do you show she wasn't talking, or how do you explain their lack of movement while the rest of them are moving? It became a problem that we had. As you can see in this video, it's a very simplistic view of their movements. While Fiona did give us some ideas of what we could do to fix it, I didn't get a chance to make it work due to leaving it to the last minute. The video shows moments where certain Titans are in one place while another is in another place. One good idea was the usage of timestamps. With the way we implemented timestamps, you can still get a sense of what the video is showing due to some dots showing up in different places at the same time.

The dots represent the Titans, each dot associated with the color associated with each Titan. The dot is coded using the action tag that has the attributes mrkr, with, move, and place. The place is the location with coordinates. The mrkr color codes them to their color. I found out later that with and move aren't helpful.

Mapping Decisions:

Though Teen Titans takes place in the fictional Jump City, many of the locations in the show were based on the city of San Francisco. When mapping, our team had to find coordinates in San Francisco that were in some way relevant to the story. Below, we've listed some of those locations and the choices we made when mapping.

Titans Tower

Titans Tower, according to the Teen Titans Wiki, has had several locations in various cities, but the TV show edition is in the San Francisco Bay Area. We chose a location off the coast of San Francisco to place it as accurately as possible!

Jump City Bay

Jump City Bay is based off of the San Francisco Bay, so we naturally mapped it there!

Jump City Streets

Many of the Titans' fights happen in the streets of Jump City, but often there isn't much description letting us know where they are exactly. Because of this, we essentially chose a random street coordinate in the proximity of the Tower and the other more frequent places in the series.

Forest

Several episodes feature a forest that the Titans either come close to or travel through. Lauren found coordinates for a forest area in San Francisco that is next to a park, because several episodes refer to a park that is described as being next to the forest.

Slade's Lair

Obviously, there are no secret evil lairs in San Francisco (Well...none that our team is aware of...), so for Slade's lair, Shannon found a bar called The Hideout and used those coordinates. This is one of the best examples of a time where we, lacking enough context for the exact location of a place, used a location that was named after something that was a reference to the story.

Chemical Plant

In episode 12, the Titans fight one of Slade's villains in a chemical plant. For this, Amber chose 'Chemoil Corporation' in San Francisco. It was within a relatively small radius from the other locations, and it was the only chemical plant whose listed address gave us coordinates on openStreetmap.

Amusement Park

In episode 10, Beast Boy and Terra go to an amusement park in Jump City late at night and ride roller coasters. This location was one of the trickier ones to find coordinates for in San Francisco. There aren't any major amusement parks in the actual city, and the ones that came close didn't have roller coasters. Because Beast Boy and Terra are shown riding a roller coaster, Amber wanted to find one that had one. The closest actual amusement park was a Six Flags, slightly outside of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. We figured this would be an applicable location because the descriptions in the episode's transcript made it seem that they weren't as close to Titans Tower as the Titans usually are, so it would be reasonable to assume they were somewhat outside of the city limits.

Ben's Diner

Terra and Beast Boy, before riding roller coasters, eat at a late-night diner called 'Ben's Diner'. Just like Slade's Lair, there is no actual Ben's Diner in San Francisco. To substitute, Amber found a 24-hour diner called 'Orphan Andy's' in San Francisco. It was close enough to the rest of the locations, was one of the only ones open late at night, and described itself as serving burgers, which is close to what was described in the episode.

Future

In episode 1, Starfire ends up traveling into the future. Rather than marking each individual location in the future, we decided to consider the future its own location. For this, Lauren found a small island off the coast of San Francisco to consider "the future". The island is called Treasure Island, and it's ironic because Starfire finds a future she dreads.

Museum

In episode 1, the main location is a museum. In order to find a location, Lauren first looked for museums in San Francisco. Initially, she eliminated the museums based on their subjects, and then came on a final decison by eliminating them by exhibits. The museum Lauren ended up going with had a time/clock exhibit which is similar to the villain of the episode, Warp.

The Pizza Joint

In episode 2, there was a pizza joint. Lauren looked up pizza places, and she was able to eliminate the options because the pizza place had to be near a park. The actual location is a pizza place called Pizzeria Delfina.

Drive-In Restaurant

Similar to the pizza joint, Lauren needed a drive-in that was around the same place that the pizza place and the park was; thankfully, she found a place that still fit these requirements. The actual location is a theater called The Castro Theatre.

An Alley

There wasn't anything specific to the alleyway, but similar to the other locations of episode 2, Lauren stuck to places that were around each other. There was an alley called Grafitti Alley.

The Sewers

One of the initial plans for this location was to have a layer of the sewer system. We decide to scrap the idea and just mapped on the sewer system further away from other locations to identify it.

Video Store

Lauren went through video stores, and eliminated them by their name. She brought it down to two options, and Shannon picked the place via which name sounded cooler. The actual place is called Video Vortex.

Football Stadium

Similar to the other methods to find locations, Lauren looked up football stadium and only got one result. Since there wasn't anything to choose from, she just went with that option. The actual place is called Kezar Stadium, the former home of the San Francisco's 49ers.

Planets

We wanted to go for a pinball effect meaning that they were situated in a circle formation. Since these are planets in space, Lauren avoided looking for locations in San Francisco. Lauren decided on Angel Island State Park which isn't that far from San Francisco. The interesting part of these locations is that each planet's location is a Point. Angel Islan State Park has five Points and the Titans visited five planets.

The Tournament of Heroes

Since this was a battle among heroes, Lauren looked for a fight club/dojo. When she searched for "San Francisco fight", she got only one result which was Rise Combat Sports - San Francisco.

Platform for Cyborg vs Gizmo

Since there wasn't a 'platform' in San Francisco that was searchable, Lauren looked up gyms instead. She doesn't remember the place having any great value. The actual location is called SALT.

Cage for BeastBoy vs Wildebeest

Similar to the Platform, Lauren wasn't expected on finding an actual cage for the location, but out of curiosity, she still looked it up. What showed up was a batting cage center, and she thought it worked for the location. The real location name is Batters Box SF, another reason to pick it being box is similar to cage.

Pipeline for Robin vs Hot Spot

Lauren looked up "San Francisco pipeline" and was able to find Ranger Pipelines Inc. While it's not really a pipeline, it was interesting to see that there was even a result/

An Asteriod

Whenever they're in space, Lauren goes for outside of San Francisco but also still land. She chose a place to the right of San Francisco. There's no other importance to the location.

The Master's Gem

Lauren's initial thought was to look for a jewelry store, but she was plesantly surprised by the results of "San Francisco gem". Apparently, there are stores specific to gems. The final result was a store is The San Francisco Gem & Mineral Society. Lauren also picked it because it was very distant from the other locations in the season.

Killer Moth's Lair

Shannon was poking around in the city for something that could relate to someone called Killer Moth. Similar to Slade's Lair being deemed "The Hideout," Shannon found and thought it fit to use the coordinates for Moth and Dagger Tattoo Studio.

Football Stadium & Underground Locker Room

There were a couple of stadiums to choose from around the city, but Shannon wanted to find one that would be big enough to give the sense of abandonment Cyborg felt, as well as have a sizeable space underneath for the portion of the episode in the locker room. Kezar Stadium seemed to be a good pick for this.

Underground Mine, Worm Tunnels, and Big Tunnel

What's with all the tunnels in these episodes? The Titans seem to spend a good portion of their time underground. The tunnels pass through the area deemed Stockton Street tunnel in San Fransisco, and are also strategically about 3 miles away from The Hideout, where Slade's Lair is. The tunnels are a not as close to the Titans Tower, but this is because the rate at which the worms were moving, Shannon figured that it would take about the same amount of time for the worms to get that distance with Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy following them as it would take Robin, Raven, and Terra to get to Slade's Lair on foot.

Prom Boat

When Robin had to go to prom with Kitten, the prom was held on a boat. It made sense then to have somewhere off San Fransisco Bay, but not out too far. Shannon chose to place it a little bit off of Pier 54, because that just seemed like the best place. The dock was then placed ON Pier 54.