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Crapsack Only by Comparison

237 statements
43 feature instances
30 referencing feature instances

Crapsack Only by Comparison	type	FeatureClass
Crapsack Only by Comparison	label	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison	page	CrapsackOnlyByComparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison	comment	This world is actually quite okay, at least by standards that can be expected by the audience. However, it is very much a matter of perspective whether a certain world is a Crapsack World or a Utopia. And thus, sometimes a character or cast of characters are faced with a world that is awful for them without being particularly bad in itself. These characters might come from a world where boredom, lies, poverty or even death itself simply doesn't exist. When they encounter a world just like ours (and a rather kind version of it at that), it looks horrifying in comparison. In some cases, they learn to appreciate this new world after a while. In others, they remain repulsed by it. If the character is unbalanced enough, this could possibly lead to him wanting to Put Them All Out of My Misery. Compare Appeal to Worse Problems, Humans Are the Real Monsters, Life Will Kill You, and Perfection Is Addictive. Deliberate Values Dissonance and Culture Clash are bound to come into play. Needless to say, this is Truth in Television. In the modern world, it can be easy to forget that access to electricity, plentiful food, clean drinking water, effective medical care, the internet, and innumerable other things simply weren't as widely available as they are today if they existed at all. And still are not widely available in many parts of the world. What the contemporary population saw as luxuries or opulence might be easily available in today's worldExample Hundreds of years ago, spices and dyes used to be more valuable than gold. Nowadays you can find dozens of different spices at the local grocery store, and even the cheapest clothing can be dyed with colors like violet and indigo that were literally worth a king's ransom. if they're not looked down on as primitive or barbaric.Example Medical care used to be very unpleasant, especially before the advent of modern anesthesia. In light of this, any real-life examples are simply redundant.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_14d341dc	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_14d341dc	comment	Star Trek Online is this compared to hard canon, especially compared to TNG. It's almost half a century later, the Federation is at war with the Klingons and newly commissioned officers are being fast-tracked to their own full commands because of losses incurred, Romulus and Remus have been destroyed, the New Romulan Empire is largely trying to make a new home for its people but is wrought with internal conflict, the Borg are making a new incursion, most of this has been set up by Species 8472 infiltrators, the Iconians are researching how best to break the various species when they come back and are hinted at manipulating Species 8472 into manipulating the conflicts into existence to soften everyone up... it's much bleaker than even DS9 at the height of the Dominion War. It's still Star Trek, though, so most civilizations, certainly Federation members, are still post-scarcity and despite the various conflicts going on, it's paradise compared to any actual Crapsack World. It's especially nice compared to the Crapsack World shown in-game. One storyline shows what would have happened if the Enterprise-C from the TNG episode Yesterday's Enterprise hadn't made it back to correct the timeline; the Federation lost the war with the Klingons,note the war from that episode, not that Federation-Klingon War from the game which takes place decades later and doesn't happen in this altered timeline, a resistance movement got going, but then the Dominion invaded and crushed all opposition (and the Tholians cut a deal with the Dominion and now has a greatly expanded territory and large amounts of humanoid slaves). The cutscene when time changes shows the player's character going from captain of their ship to captain of a run-down freighter, with some of the player's bridge officers living dreary lives elsewhere.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_16712475	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_16712475	comment	The Jetsons. George Jetson is always complaining about how hard his job is, even though he's living in an idealised Zeerust future and his hard work consists of pushing a button. Mind you that might have something to do with the way Mr. Spacely is constantly on his backnote that, or the carpal tunnel syndrome from all that button-pushing.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_1beda93b	comment	In Sluggy Freelance, the Perfect Pacifist People of the so-called Dimension of Lame are rather disturbed by being visited by someone who's willing to use violence in self-defence and swear, which definitely implies they couldn't handle his world either. It kind of works the other way around too, because they're doing okay there before the demonic invasion, but Torg from "our" world gets really fed up with such a conflict-phobic and wussy dimension. This is an inversion since the world is too nice for him. Their world is so utopian, they don't even understand the word "evil" - they use the expression "rather nice" to describe anything less than utopian.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_1cba4fec	comment	In Fine Structure, characters from universes with high numbers of spacelike and timelike dimensions, where intelligence arises spontaneously everywhere, land in our universe of 3+1 dimensions, where the laws of physics are limited and intelligence is barely tenable at all. It's compared to a kind of hell.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_27817af1	comment	The Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams episode "Real Life" shows us two version of a future: one that is only slightly ahead of us (most things look pretty much the same, but some tech is more advanced), and one that is the stereotypical "flying cars and holograms" distant future. The distant future turns out to be the real one.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_2ea6ae26	comment	Star Trek: Picard Has Raffi complain about how she lives in a "hovel" with practically nothing. That hovel is a luxury cabin inside a protected national park, with all the necessities, communications, and luxuries like narcotics, that she wants even after being fired from Starfleet and not working in any other profession. She might not be living the best 24thC life, but it is still a pretty fantastic life by any objective standards.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_343830b9	comment	The Night Unfurls: Eostia has its flaws — the Fantastic Racism, the slavery, the war, and the imminent threat of a PMC aiming to make a No Woman's Land Sex Slave Empire. The last one would've been realised if it weren't for Kyril's intervention. Despite these flaws, the country is a functioning place rather than a miserable shithole. Several P.O.V. characters have indicated that in spite of the war going on, life moves on, with the merchants making money and the townsfolk buying stuff and all that. To give a comparison between Yharnam (the place where Kyril hails from) and Eostia as illustration, Yharnam collapsed, while Eostia persisted for centuries. One thing is certain though: if you are a dark elf, or an Innocent Bystander from an outermost village, you are screwed.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_37b56f7	comment	Baldur's Gate II has Aerie, a winged elf who lost her wings in a traumatic backstory. If recruited into the party, she spends a good chunk of the early game whining about how awful life on the ground is. Charname can eventually convince her that it's not so bad.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_39fe00f1	comment	Dragon Age: Inquisition: The Greater-Scope Villain turns out to be your elven companion Solas, who is revealed to be an ancient elf from the days of Arlathan, a world said to be so resplendent that â€œit would blind you with its beauty,â€� filled with immortal and magical elves and magical wonders like floating cities of shining crystal and other similar wonders. He finds modern Thedas (a standard medieval fantasy setting) to be an utter hellhole (which isn't completely wrong) beyond saving by comparison, and would rather destroy the current world to magically restore the old one at the expense of those still living in it. A friendly Player Character can vow in their final confrontation that they'll prove to him that the current world is worth saving, and he sounds half-hopeful that you'll succeed.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_3d5c05c9	comment	In one Bob the Angry Flower comic, Bob dies and goes to heaven; he realizes that everything up there is so awesome that people still living on earth are in agony, relatively speaking. He then jumps down to earth, saying "I've gotta kill everyone!" (doubles as a cruel parody of Damaged Soul).
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_513f5832	comment	The characters in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home find themselves as Fish out of Temporal Water in The '80s, and Doctor McCoy in particular is horrified by modern-day medical practices, angrily comparing them to "the Dark Ages" and "the Spanish Inquisition". Since it's a rather lighthearted film, the whole thing's treated as comedy rather than serious criticism.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_56e10d85	comment	In Tolkien's Legendarium, Elves were really meant to live in Valinor, the land of the gods; the ones in Middle-earth either never made it there or returned (see The Silmarillion). By the Third Age they basically cope by living in mini-utopias created by the rings' powers, but once those are gone they must either leave for good or fade away into obscurity as humanity rises to prominence.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_5999b1ec	comment	Most citizens of Xanth (magical realm) who travel to "drear Mundania" (non-magical rest of the world; in other words, modern-day Earth) feel that way about it.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_5cd1aa89	comment	A big part of George Orwell's classic Nineteen Eighty-Four is the idea that the entire world in the book has been Conditioned to Accept Horror. The world is only an utterly nightmarish totalitarian dystopia to the reader; to an Oceanian citizen, this kind of horror world is all they really know. Even if the Party was ever overthrown, the world order would stay as-is because political and intellectual freedom have long since ceased to exist as concepts in the human psyche.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_5eb3c0ea	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_5eb3c0ea	comment	Inverted in Amakusa 1637. Modern-day Japan sounds heavenly when described to 17th century persecuted serfs.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_740815bb	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_740815bb	comment	Inverted in Interesting Times, with a traveler who considers Ankh-Morpork to be not crapsack because his own homeland is so much worse. Rude and obnoxious guards are celebrated for not torturing random innocents to death, and so on.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_7832b74c	comment	Steven Universe: Zig-zagged all over the place. The Crystal Gems are permanent residents of the Earth and have been for a good while now. On the one hand, Earth's a far cry from their own Homeworld and they're not very impressed with humans. On the other hand, they're also more than willing to protect both the planet and its inhabitants, up to and including starting a war for their sake, because Homeworld seems to be The Empire and their initial interest was to bleed the Earth dry... However, as time passes, this is revealed namely to be Pearl's issue. Amethyst was born on Earth and was closer to humans than anyone else except Rose, and her natural attitude tends to be "whatever". Garnet, meanwhile, has her future vision and being leader to occupy her time. Pearl, however, tends to look down on humanity the most (which is painfully ironic given how Pearls were a Servant Race who only surpassed Pebbles in Gem society's caste system). Though the massive reveal that Pink Diamond was Rose Quartz means that Pearl serving her meant she had a higher status than her fellow Gems. Furthermore, thanks to Steven, the Gems grow fonder of their newfound home, with Amethyst rebuilding her old friendship with Vidalia and the Gems interacting more with humans.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_78db2b3b	comment	Gulliver's Travels would constitute a Trope Codifier in that Swift was using the fantastic societies Gulliver encounters to viciously lampoon British society at the time.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_7c537173	comment	Destiny 2: The Awoken people got their start as the crew and cargo of a human colony ship sucked into a pocket dimension, transforming them into blue-skinned, ageless Transhuman Aliens at the cost of near-complete Loss of Identity. Nonetheless, on the new world of Distributary, they built a Crystal Spires and Togas utopia almost from scratch. Then a demagogue, the Diasyrm, began claiming that when the colonists first entered the pocket universe, they could have been transformed into transcendent godlike beings, free of pain or want, but that the Queen of the Awoken (the first to awaken on Distributary) had made a deliberate choice to incarnate everyone as humans, murdering their potential and condemning them to an eternity of the struggle and suffering inherent to being human. Which, again, they had just built a utopia as. This new philosophy triggered a civil war. (The Diasyrm was completely right about the godhood thing, but accused the wrong person â€” the real first Awoken agreed, but believed transcendent godhood was a trap that could only lead to stagnation.)
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_81692f99	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek is consistent in its negative portrayals of 20th-21st century life over several different shows. This is especially prevalent in any episodes in which the cast is sent back into time. You can often expect characters to reference the period as barbaric, ignorant, greedy, or hateful this despite the fact that the modern era has seen far less war, illiteracy, poverty, or genocide than any era preceding it. It should be noted, however, that the 21st century of Star Trek takes place during, between, and after multiple global wars. At a minimum there's the Eugenics War in which Khan Noonien Singh and his genetically-enhanced followers attempted to take over the world and a nuclear World War III in which ordinary non-enhanced humans nearly wiped themselves out. While World War III is only vaguely alluded to, the Eugenics War and Khan Singh himself are central to a TOS episode and two movies. A particularly pointed example appears in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth", as Gary Seven looks out the window at a 20th-century street and disgustedly mutters, "You're right, Isis. It is primitive. It's incredible that people can exist like this." Played for laughs in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Message In A Bottle", where The Doctor finds himself aboard a prototype Starfleet vessel, the Prometheus, and bickers with the Prometheus's own EMH program. Star Trek: Picard Has Raffi complain about how she lives in a "hovel" with practically nothing. That hovel is a luxury cabin inside a protected national park, with all the necessities, communications, and luxuries like narcotics, that she wants even after being fired from Starfleet and not working in any other profession. She might not be living the best 24thC life, but it is still a pretty fantastic life by any objective standards.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_847bc578	comment	Brandon Sanderson's The Reckoners Trilogy has Calamity, the being that gave humanity their powers, come from a world where they are basically intellects, and so our world with its bright lights and sounds seems shockingly terrifying and therefore evil. In the first book, Steelheart, some would consider Newcago to be this compared to pre-Calamity Chicago — sure, you could be killed by an Epic just for looking at them funny, but in comparison to the rest of the world, Newcago is about as close as you can get to a stable place to live, with electricity, career opportunities, and education, among other things. But as Prof points out, Newcago is "good" by comparison only.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_903a9871	comment	In Dark Heresy, the source of most of the mundane crapsackiness on any given world is attributed to the Imperial Tithe, a tax of resources extracted from every world, whether it's ore mined, goods manufactured, military regiments raised, or something more unusual. The worlds that suffer the most under Imperial rule are those with particularly high tithes to pay, which forces them to abuse their workforces to meet quotas and avoid the wrath of agencies such as the Adeptus Arbites and Inquisition. One particular Anti-Villain introduced in Ascension is the idealistic governor of a peaceful, prosperous world who is driven to sedition after the Adminstratum suddenly levies a higher tithe than his people can comfortably provide.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_92801ac	comment	In Three Worlds Collide a human spaceship makes first contact with a species who eat their own young. This naturally horrifies the humans. Meanwhile, the Babyeaters are equally horrified that the humans don't eat babies, since they consider baby-eating the cornerstone of morality and decency. While both species grapple with this discovery, a third species show up: the Maximum Fun-Fun Ultra Super Happy People, who have eliminated all capacity in themselves to feel anything but absolute pleasure at all times, and are aghast that humans have not done the same.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_96773bf2	comment	The Number of the Beast by Heinlein has our protagonists run into several such worlds. One of these, merely described, indicates abrupt Earth Drift.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_9a7088bc	comment	A particularly pointed example appears in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth", as Gary Seven looks out the window at a 20th-century street and disgustedly mutters, "You're right, Isis. It is primitive. It's incredible that people can exist like this."
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_9d7ec380	comment	In The Good Place, Tahani Al-Jamil is shown both in flashbacks and real time to be talented in various arts, but is outshined by her sister and is made to feel inadequate by her parents' comparisons.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_a59b5e9d	comment	Inverted & played with in The Giver and Gathering Blue: Jonas at first thinks that he's in a utopia, but it's actually more of a Crapsack World. The town of Gathering Blue thinks itself a utopia, but it really isn't. Messenger implies that both towns genuinely get better with time.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_a5a0dd85	comment	In Brave New World, John the Savage views the "utopian" world of London as amoral, unnatural, and pointless, while Lenina sees John's home on the savage reservation as backwards, uncivilized, and barbaric.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_a62983b	comment	This trope, or possibly its inversion, shows up in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. The protagonist, Shevek, goes from an anarcho-syndicalist utopia on the planet/moon Anarres to its planet/moon Urras (it's a double-planet system, and the two bodies aren't too different in size), which is dominated by the capitalist parliamentary republic A-Io and the totalitarian socialist Thu (if this reminds you of anything, it should), both of which have rigid class structures. After encountering the way the lower classes live and then being forced to take refuge in the embassy from a post-apocalyptic Earth, he says that the planet seems like hell to him; the ambassador comments that, compared to the way things are on Earth, it looks like heaven. The Dispossessed has a subtitle: "An Ambiguous Utopia"; LeGuin takes pains to portray the problems of an anarcho-syndicalist system in practice, and Shevek frequently has his doubts about his own society.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_af2a147e	comment	Enchanted sends Giselle to a place where True Love doesn't exist and there are no happy endings... New York. Giselle spends most of the movie wanting to return to the brightly colored, musical, and happy land of Andalasia. The movie itself ends up not condemning either place — New York, for all the dirt and cynicism, is ultimately celebrated.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_bcadd7cb	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_bcadd7cb	comment	Warhammer 40,000: In the grimdark grimdarkness of the grim, dark future, there is only grimdarkness! Er, war. Except that the Imperium of Man (and to a lesser extent, some of the other factions) must have a vast agricultural/industrial base to support their colossal war machine, and some of the licensed novels show the places that aren't right on the front lines (especially the Ciaphas Cain novels). Presumably, it's possible to live a pleasantly uneventful life among the trillions on agri-worlds and forge worlds that doesn't involve being eaten by tyranids, chopped up by orks, enslaved by dark eldar, annihilated by necrons, executed for heresy by the Inquisition, having your soul ripped apart by Chaos, and so on and so forth. But it doesn't make a good story, and certainly doesn't work for a tabletop wargame. In one of the Eisenhorn novels, Eisenhorn makes his escape... on a first-class luxury train operating on a route that has been in service for nearly 1000 years, crossing the equivalent of the Rocky Mountains for several days. Of course, stuff eventually blows up, but for a few days you have the characters simply enjoying a wonderful time on a massive luxury train. Unsaid is that even after stuff blowing up, this train is going to keep operating thereafter as well (probably with a few new cars, however). Even forge and agri-worlds aren't exempt from this; in general, forgeworlds are cramped and terminally polluted and the Adeptus Mechanicus is not exactly concerned with the well being of its workers. Agri-worlds are supposedly better off, but even they will be subject to the occasional Chaos incursion/Tyranid invasion/Exterminatus. It should be noted that most of the worlds in the Imperium are what is known as Civilian Worlds, which are mostly on par with present-day Earth in terms of living conditions, but since they're not GRIMDARK they're rarely mentioned unless they're being attacked. Worth noting is that even the nice planets in the Imperium have laws where things like questioning the government and failing to follow the state religion are at least theoretically punishable by death, the Secret Police have unlimited authority to torture and kill whoever they deem necessary on the rare occasions one shows up, and hours are long and pay bad for the vast majority of citizens. Just because you're not actively being burned alive at a specific point in your life doesn't mean you're not in "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" (as GW's official marketing blurb would have it). The Realm of Ultramar is a good example of this. Compared to the rest of the Imperium, it's technologically advanced, well-ordered, peaceful and the population is both loyal and proud of this reputation. It's repeatedly stated that Ultramar is held up as the exemplar for all human worlds to emulate. But to us, it's still a fascistic dictatorship where any questioning of Imperial authority (either in general or the transhuman super-soldiers running it) and attempts at, say, freedom of religion or expression are universally put down. When you deal with the aftermath of an AI rebellion, loss of most FTL capabilities, allies turning on each other due to necessity and having to exterminate monsters and people who are unwillingly possessed by literal daemons who act as infohazards to survive and everything falling apart under a rebellion orchestrated by the same infohazard just as things were getting back on track; even the best places are nightmares out of survival necessity and simple ignorance (not helped by the occasional power hungry moron either). In Dark Heresy, the source of most of the mundane crapsackiness on any given world is attributed to the Imperial Tithe, a tax of resources extracted from every world, whether it's ore mined, goods manufactured, military regiments raised, or something more unusual. The worlds that suffer the most under Imperial rule are those with particularly high tithes to pay, which forces them to abuse their workforces to meet quotas and avoid the wrath of agencies such as the Adeptus Arbites and Inquisition. One particular Anti-Villain introduced in Ascension is the idealistic governor of a peaceful, prosperous world who is driven to sedition after the Adminstratum suddenly levies a higher tithe than his people can comfortably provide. The Tau have a tendency for using concentration camps, forced sterilizations, mind control and orbital bombardment to bring people into the fold of "the Greater Good". In any other setting, they would be considered the bad guys; IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE, THEY ARE TOO OPTIMISTIC AND TRUSTING.
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Warhammer 40,000 (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_bcadd7cb
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_c43df4d8	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who: The Silurians, whenever they appear, are usually appalled that evolved apes (humans) have, millions of years after their time, taken over Earth. Control, an alien who appears in "Ghost Light", considers Victorian London a nightmare. (We might think, too.) "The Girl in the Fireplace" has Madame de Pompadour briefly visit the 51st century, seeing the inside of the spaceship that has the unexplained windows into her time. This, combined with whatever she saw in the Doctor's mind, has her firmly convinced that she is better off staying in 18th century France. "Amy's Choice" has the Doctor trapped (possibly) in a dream world where his two married companions are in a humdrum rural town that is incredibly boring. The Doctor asks, "So, what do you do to stave off the self-harm?" Apparently the Call to Agriculture is a death knell to him.
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Doctor Who	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_c43df4d8
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ce60df80	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ce60df80	comment	Guardians of the Galaxy (2020): The alternate universe Phyla-Vell starts getting increasingly unhappy with Earth-616, since it's so much more unpleasant compared to the dimension she and her wife came from (well, before it got eaten). In fairness, Earth-616 legitimately is a Crapsack World most of the time, but Phyla's unhappiness is also not being helped by her wife merging with her much less heroic counterpart without even telling her.
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Guardians of the Galaxy (2020) (Comic Book)	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ce60df80
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_cf3e7a82	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_cf3e7a82	comment	Superman: Several incarnations of Supergirl were raised in incredibly technologically advanced, peaceful societies before being sent to a wartorn and - by her standards - primitive world. Earth looked from dull and backwards to awful in comparison with Krypton, and it takes some time for Kara to find what's good about her new home.
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Superman (Franchise)	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_cf3e7a82
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_d54b59cc	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_d54b59cc	comment	Demolition Man is this for John Spartan, as the future he winds up in is one where profanity is illegal, no one eats meat anymore, and product jingles are considered pop music. However, while the world of Demolition Man is, as Honest Trailers once put it, the world that conservatives think liberals want to create, it is a world that has gone so long without violent crime that the police no longer know how to deal with it, and where homelessness, disease, and hunger appear to be non-existent, barring the Scraps, who are people who chose to remove themselves from that system since they see Cocteau's rulership as tyrannical. However, that tyrannical rulership is helmed by the man who is considered the father of the modern age, where war, famine, and disease have been wiped out and a golden age of prosperity is in full swing, with only the people choosing to live outside of that system experiencing any visible hardship whatsoever, so YMMV as to whether that is worth the price of a peaceful world.
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Demolition Man	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_d54b59cc
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e27def28	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e27def28	comment	In the first book, Steelheart, some would consider Newcago to be this compared to pre-Calamity Chicago — sure, you could be killed by an Epic just for looking at them funny, but in comparison to the rest of the world, Newcago is about as close as you can get to a stable place to live, with electricity, career opportunities, and education, among other things. But as Prof points out, Newcago is "good" by comparison only.
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Steelheart	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e27def28
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e293455a	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e293455a	comment	In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season five ended with her pulling a Heroic Sacrifice; the sixth season premiere has her friends resurrect her. However, it turns out that she had been in "Heaven" (described simply as a state of pure contentment and safety) for what felt like a very long time, and as a result the normal world seems harsh and cruel to her. Her main arc for the season is basically coming to terms with reality again, which Word of God paints as a metaphor for the period when young adults need to figure out what they want to do with their lives.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e66220af	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e66220af	comment	Pan's Labyrinth plays this straight for a few minutes, as the problem with our world is claimed to be that it has bright sunlight and cold. Strongly averted for the rest of the film.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e8bca4f	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_e8bca4f	comment	Eldraeverse: Strictly speaking, the Voniensa Republic isn't all that bad, and would almost be a Utopia by Earth standards - for most unmodified organic species. It's just that, next to the Empire's extravagant prosperity, its own claims of superiority are starting to ring a little hollow.
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Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ee384546	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ee384546	comment	In Cyberpunk 2077, this is a major theme of the "Tower" ending included with the Phantom Liberty expansion. If V ends the storyline by cooperating with the NUSA and surrenders Songbird to them, they gain access to an experimental procedure for their Relic infection. Unlike what happens if you work with Arasaka or assault Mikoshi, this cure actually works at saving V from their terminal condition. Unfortunately, it also renders V incapable of using combat cyberware, effectively killing off their Edgerunner career and making them no more powerful than the average Joe on the street. This, combined with a two-year coma that made them distant from most of their friends and allies, has V incredibly distraught, potentially even wondering if getting cured was worth it at all. However, while the ending clearly illustrates how Nothing Is the Same Anymore, it also establishes that most of V's misery is simply borne from them being used to such a different life. They may not have the abilities or reputation they once did, but that just makes them another face in the crowd of people trying to get by in Night City, and they still have their whole life ahead of them and enough opportunities and connections to make a fresh start, painful though it may be.
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Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ee384546
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ef076a36	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ef076a36	comment	Played for laughs in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Message In A Bottle", where The Doctor finds himself aboard a prototype Starfleet vessel, the Prometheus, and bickers with the Prometheus's own EMH program.
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Star Trek: Voyager	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_ef076a36
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_f56582b5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_f56582b5	comment	Several of the main cast members in Sharin no Kuni live under extremely harsh legal restrictions which they have mostly come by undeservedly, and the main character was put through a nightmarish training program in order to become qualified to oversee and rehabilitate such individuals. However, the legal system of the setting, which is explicitly intended to prevent crimes and socially destructive behavior, rather than conferring fair and proportionate punishments on the guilty, is stated to result in much lower crime rates than our own, and such restrictions are implied to be very rare compared to imprisonment in Japan, which already has low crimes rates by real-world standards, such that a town which is considered to have an unusual concentration of social unrest has a grand total of three residents living under restrictions.
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Sharin no Kuni (Visual Novel)	hasFeature	Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_f56582b5
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_f6222924	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Crapsack Only by Comparison / int_f6222924	comment	In Invisible Sun, this world and existence are Crapsack since they're a diminished, twisted shadow of a magical realm called the Actuality; the only reason any magic users came to it in the first place was to flee a horrific magical war in their own realm. The other Suns, where magic is normal and only limited by the imagination, are far more imaginative and interesting (though not necessarily nice) places.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Crapsack Only by Comparison	processingCategory2	Psychology Tropes
Crapsack Only by Comparison	processingCategory2	Settings
Crapsack Only by Comparison	processingCategory2	This Might Be an Index
Doors to the Unknown (Fanfic) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Infinity Train: Blossomverse (Fanfic) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Renegade Reinterpretations (Fanfic) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Skitterdoc 2077 (Fanfic) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Enchanted / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Pan's Labyrinth / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Brave New World	seeAlso	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Brave New World / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Eldraeverse / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Nineteen Eighty-Four / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
1983: Doomsday / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Oceanic / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
The Arts of Dark and Light / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
The Dispossessed / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
The Number of the Beast / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
The Quintessential Mary-Sue / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
The Truce at Bakura / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Thieves' World / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Three Worlds Collide / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Mefhor Canon Bloc (Roleplay) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (Video Game) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Sharin no Kuni (Visual Novel) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
VA-11 HALL-A (Visual Novel) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Seattle By Night (Web Video) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
Bob the Angry Flower (Webcomic) / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison
My Gym Partner's a Monkey / int_2afa0da5	type	Crapsack Only by Comparison

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