Crapsack World/Playing With

Basic Trope: A terrible setting to live.

• Straight: The world is full of corruption, betrayal, despair, hopelessness and Angst, and villains are often Karma Houdinis. And there is always a traffic jam.
• Exaggerated: Humans live under the oppressive totalitarian government, being attacked by nightmarish daemons, space bugs, undying soulless machines, space elves, evil space elves who love to torture other creatures, and other humans.
• Up To Eleven: Everyone in the universe, be they good, evil or neutral, endures intense suffering - almost every waking moment consists of pure torment.
• Justified:
  • After the End
  • The Powers That Be in charge of the world are monsters.
• Inverted: Sugar Bowl
• Subverted: A World Half Full
• Double Subverted: At the last moment, the writers Yank the Dog's Chain and snatch away the happy ending the heroes had worked so hard for - Craptown ends up just as crappy as ever.
• Parodied: Everyone is either an extreme Jerkass or a Butt Monkey.
• Deconstructed: Because life in the world is so terrible, many people fail to see the point in living and are Driven to Suicide as a result. Those that aren't Driven to Suicide simply end up loathing the world more, and are further entrenched in their hopelessness.
• Reconstructed: The heroes tries their hardest to make the world a better place, and after a long time of hardships they actually do make it better...but not without great sacrifices and casulties.
• Zig Zagged: The heroes earn their happy ending, but then Yank the Dog's Chain leads it to be taken away. Then they discover a section of the world that's a great place to live, until it turns out to be a Crap Saccharine World.
• Averted: The world in question isn't a particularly good or bad place to live.
• Enforced:
  • The author is living in a real-life Wretched Hive.
  • The author's a pessimist.
  • The author is creating a horrible place as a part of his sociopolitical commentary.
  • The author knows that these kinds of worlds produce lots of conflict, and thus plot.
• Lampshaded: "This place sucks."
• Invoked: A villain causes an apocalypse to turn the world into a pile of crap.
• Defied: Alice and Bob immediately start working to make the world better.
• Discussed: "Why does this place have to suck?"
• Conversed: "It's really popular that 'crappy place' has come to mean 'realism'."

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