Honestly, it helps with the suspension of disbelief. Some local author tried to tell urban fantasy stories in my home town… Its just too silly for me to read about a werewolf/vampire/alien fighting on the street I cross to get to the supermarket.
And of course it is absolutely masturbatoric, same as Japan and aliens invading Tokyo.
Funnily enough, I find NYC and Tokyo to be the least masturbatory targets for off-world interest.
NYC makes sense as a combined seat of international politics (see the UN building), economic power (largest GDP by city and Wall Street seeing 2/3rds of all public trade), and genetic representation for humanity (Queens being the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area on the planet).
Tokyo makes sense as the world’s most populous metropolitan area and highest GDP by metropolitan area.
So, aliens scanning the planet or the Internet or whatever and thinking “we need to go here first” for either location is believable to me in an objective sense.
It also helps that there is often some background lore adding to why a particular location is important, which also includes explanations for Earth itself being important on a cosmic scale, though how masturbatory those explanations feel is highly variable.
I know!! It’s like when Thor repeatedly put the story in Norway’s oldest town, the one I grew up in, and put it in a valley. The one very notable thing about the town is that it is on the opposite side of the country from the fjords and big valleys, and surrounds the castle on top of the mountain facing the sea.
Honestly, it helps with the suspension of disbelief. Some local author tried to tell urban fantasy stories in my home town… Its just too silly for me to read about a werewolf/vampire/alien fighting on the street I cross to get to the supermarket.
And of course it is absolutely masturbatoric, same as Japan and aliens invading Tokyo.
Funnily enough, I find NYC and Tokyo to be the least masturbatory targets for off-world interest.
NYC makes sense as a combined seat of international politics (see the UN building), economic power (largest GDP by city and Wall Street seeing 2/3rds of all public trade), and genetic representation for humanity (Queens being the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area on the planet).
Tokyo makes sense as the world’s most populous metropolitan area and highest GDP by metropolitan area.
So, aliens scanning the planet or the Internet or whatever and thinking “we need to go here first” for either location is believable to me in an objective sense.
It also helps that there is often some background lore adding to why a particular location is important, which also includes explanations for Earth itself being important on a cosmic scale, though how masturbatory those explanations feel is highly variable.
I know!! It’s like when Thor repeatedly put the story in Norway’s oldest town, the one I grew up in, and put it in a valley. The one very notable thing about the town is that it is on the opposite side of the country from the fjords and big valleys, and surrounds the castle on top of the mountain facing the sea.