{{Andyzero}}: Before relatively recent backstory cemented that it was always an AlternateUniverse, this is what the ''{{Pokemon}}'' world was in my mind.

Tulling: Alternate of which universe?

{{Tanto}}: Ours.

Tulling: I suspected you would answer taht, but it doesn't make sense under the circumstances. An AlternateUniverse is a twisted version of an existing fictional universe. A fictional world with some slight resemblances to our own which has a large number of sentient species coexisting with humans is a fantastic world, not an AlternativeUniverse of the real world.

{{Tanto}}: Nonetheless, it has the exact same history as our world.

MorganWick: Almost all shows set in the PresentDay do. Are ''they'' {{Alternate Universe}}s?
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{{Tzintzuntzan}}: The current entry seems to argue that the only choices in an AfterTheEnd story are between "badass bikers" and co, or ordinary middle-class white Americans/Brits. IIRC, Aldiss was complaining about another kind of people who get left out: ordinary people who are not badass bikers, but are not middle-class white Americans/Brits either. How many of these stories focus on ordinary poor people? Or on middle class Russians? Or people in China, or Africa, or...

{{Hasher Britarse}} Good question. I suspect the urban working class are assumed to have died in the catastrophe or else turned into gangs more quickly. Backwoods poor are often (unfairly) portrayed as dangerous rednecks who act as if they are in Scavenger World already. As English speakers, we know the Brit/US examples best; I don't know what kind of sci-fi they have in Russia and China. Can anyone help?

{{RossN}}: "It's widely held that British fiction is often cuter, cosier and quainter than its American counterparts." - is this really true? I don't believe I've heard this before (though to be fair I'm neither British, nor American). British comedy at least seems a good deal darker to me.

{{Earnest}}: It has some basis. The original american release and movie of ''AClockworkOrange'' is missing the 21st chapter, without it the story missess Alex's epiphany that violence and rape are unfulfilling. The author even comments in a foreword that an american friend said just as much "America isn't affraid of unhappy endings, brits are softies", this was before Vietnam, by the way.

{{RossN}}: As a counter example the film ''Brazil'' which was given a happy ending(!) in the American release. If anything I've always considered the Americans to be fonder of happier endings (and situations generally) than the Brits. ''BlakesSeven'' vs ''StarTrek'' for instance.

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RoseQuartz: Regardless of the genre's possible classism and racism or the differences in the science fiction of various Anglophone countries, as it stands, the entry reads more like a defense of cosy catastrophe stories than a discussion of a trope. I think most of what's there needs to be cut, and what's left needs to be reworked to be more neutral and less defensive--maybe something along the lines of...

->In many {{Scavenger World}}s, the survivors are rough, suspicious, and dirty--it probably isn't surprising that in many of these stories, those people who were rough, suspicious, and dirty before the end fared best [[AfterTheEnd afterwards]].

->But there are exceptions. That's where we come to the Cosy Catastrophe: TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt has arrived, and our {{heroes}} are a small group of clean-cut middle-class Americans--[[SortingAlgorithmofMortality the sort who are still alive at the end of the horror movie]].

->"Cosy Catastrophe" is a term coiced by Brian Aldiss to describe the work of fellow British SciFi icon John Wyndham. The term also appears on the Turkey City Lexicon, a widely-circulated list of words and phrases for science-fiction critique groups, with an extremely negative definition. As such, the term may be considered derogatory.

...as a very rough draft. What do you all think?

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{{Medinoc}}: When I read about ''The Survivors'', I'm thinking about Stephen King's ''The Stand''...

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Does ''{{Lost}}'' really apply here? First off, the survivors of Oceanic 815 include a dirty cop, an Iraqi soldier/torturer, a Korean gangster, a con man, a fugitive, and an African mob boss. Not exactly your typical suburban neighbors. Second, while most of the castaways could be considered middle or upper class, they pretty much have to be to afford tickets on a trans-oceanic airline.

{{Madrugada}}: I don't think so. I cut that example, because even though the survivors are largely white and middle-class, the conditions they find themselves in are far from "cozy", and I think that "There was a catastrophe but it doesn't really affect us" is far more important of a criteria than "white, middle-class survivors" and ''Lost'' fails miserably to meet it.

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What about Douglas Adams?? Arthur Dent???? hello!!!!

{{Madrugada}}: What about him? If you think H3G3 should be included, say why.

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{{Nornagest}}:

-->Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind isn't exactly unkind to "soft" middle-class folk.

Objection! ''Nausicaa'' takes place centuries after the primary catastrophe. ''Multiple'' civilizations have risen and fallen in the intervening time; we see a mature civilization in the story, not a post-apocalyptic rabble. We do see another catastrophe in progress later in the manga, but it doesn't end up being the kind of civilization-ending threat that this trope requires.

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{{theorc}}: What the heck is ''On the Beach'' doing here? The Australians may not suffer much at first, but there is that tiny detail that in less than a year every form of life on earth will be dead from radiation exposure. That's not cosy in my book.

{{Madrugada}}: I believe that it's included because, while things are going to get real bad in a year or so, the catastrophe hasn't directly affected the way they live ''now''. It's an interesting case, and I'm going to pull it out of the normal examples and flag it as a special case, because whether it's taken as a straight example or a subversion depends on the ''reader''.

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{{Camacan}}: I've never bought the idea that TheDayOfTheTriffids was a Cosy Catastrophe. The book is marbled right through with shock, keen grief, a longing for a return to normality and, finally, an acceptance that life is going to be crushingly hard and limited, with a return to a life like ours generations away, if ever. In what way is any of this cosy? I can see that the self-protecting survivor groups initially look like a warn fuzzy reinforcement of middle-class values, but surely the underlying message is that such values will ultimately be as strong as the skin of a balloon when civilisation ends.

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RobinZimm: Is it just me, or are too many of the examples [=~Complaining About Shows You Don't Like~=]?