Discussion Main / CrapSaccharineWorld

How do you even pronounce "Crapsaccharine"?

Someone should add the setting of The Emoji Movie as an example of a crapsaccharine world. It is similar to Reck-it-Ralph: people who don't want to live the way society expects them to face severe consequences like execution.

As funny as the picture really is, Majora's Mask doesn't fit the trope at all. The world is instantly shown to be a horrible place as soon as you start the game, with the impending apocalypse and forced transformations and all. It doesn't look cheesy or happy at all. The picture doesn't even make sense at all.

• Invader Zim: The Skool Facility that Zim attends is just like the metropolis he also lives in, modern, technological, and fair on the exterior, but cruel, mean, evil, fascist and totalitarian from within.

Reason: From a distance this futuristic metropolis looks okay to live in, but when you get a closer look at it, it’s nothing more but a filthy dystopian city. This so-called big town has it all, a shopping mall with a parking garage filled with despair-crazed rat zombies and a twisted parody version of a KFC with connections to security guards on sight ready to arrest hungry homeless people, plus the city has a Pizza-Arcade Restaurant complete with a disgustingly bloated pig mascot, and a hideous looking animatronic band. If you thought they were really that bad, check out the city Skool, from the outside it looks modern and relative, high-tech, robotic and state of the art. But within the Skool, The conditions are woefully inadequate: the bathrooms are filthy and graffiti-ridden, the cafeteria food has a mind of its own, and the teachers are often inordinately harsh toward their students going as so far as condemning them to Underground Classrooms against their will. Each student also has the opportunity to send another student to the asylum by using Crazy Cards. Once a Crazy Card is used, a device called a Crazy collar is put on the crazy person's neck. Then, a team of specialists will burst into the Skool, throw the crazy child into the back of their van, and take them to the Crazy House for Boys & Girls. If the child is thought to be crazy by scientists, they will be imprisoned for as long as the rest of their life. Even the Skool president elections are corrupted, a student president is chosen to help enforce Skool Spirit. If a president fails to live up to these expectations, even when they have a mental breakdown, they are taken away by gestopo Skool Security, never to be heard from again, and an election for a new president is held immediately. A student president candidate is chosen by their level of intelligence; the dumber the better. Once the president is elected, they are brainwashed into thinking the Skool is perfectly fantastic.

Ever saw the video "The Second Time" by Kim Wilde? Someone accurate described it in three words as "Vanilla Mad Max"...This Trope? Another?

Doesn't this trope describe distopias when the main character or viewer meets people who like the distopia before becoming informed about it?

As of this posting, there is a literature entry for The Great Gatsby that reads like this:

"The Great Gatsby show us that the world of the rich is not nice: Tom is a cruel bully because he knows his Glory Days are in the past and he suspects (rightly enough) that no one respects him, Daisy is a Stepford Smiler, both of them are infidel, alone and scared and they have to deal with noveau rich delinquents like Gatsby himself, and his only defence is being Jerk Asses themselves against people like Gatsby. And the scary part is that Gatsby world is Real Life world. How many of us wouldn’t jump at the chance to be rich even knowing this?"

I've added the emphasis on the part that strikes me as not only an oblique reference to Real Life that apparently doesn't belong here, but just flat out wrong: Sure, most rich people in the States may (or may not, IDK) live in an ugly society like what the book describes. Over here in Romania they've always been a lot worse, but what do we care? If I'd be rich, I'd have if anything more choices for whom to hang out with, and the "high society" may get stuffed at its discretion. I might have trouble maintaining my fortune without them, but there are other ways.

Otherwise the book is a straight example, though, with my limited understanding of it it does seem like Gatsby is force-feeding himself all that misery because he's being a dumbass.

I'm not too familiar with Pokémon, but to my understanding, the CENTRAL PREMISE is basically as follows:

Humans can and frequently do use special devices to capture and instantaneously brainwash various intelligent creatures. Creatures so brainwashed make loyal and obedient companions, but commonly are stored away most of the time and only released to fight each other for sport.

Have I got that right? I ask because if that IS right, it seems kinda odd that that part went unmentioned.

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I think there should not be a real life section for Crapsaccharine World, just like Crapsack World and Complete Monster. Crapsaccharine World is basically a subtrope of Crapsack World, and one requirement of Crapsack World is that the horribleness of the world should be clear to all the viewers. Since we live INSIDE real life and not the outside, our perspectives would be highly subjective, and people might start arguments about whether a certain place is a Crapsaccharine World or not.

The Medved anecdote doesn't fit the trope; some kid greening out (in a pretty unconvincing manner — blue and orange? Srsly?) instead of getting a more pleasant high is not a sugarbowl world with an underlying evil or whathaveyou. The "Navigators of drug-induced psychedelic experiences" entry is pretty tenuous too, but at least some of them are experiencing their 'saccharine world' before their trip goes bad.

Oops. I accidentally used the same image that this page has on Happiness Is Mandatory. :P I even edited it myself, not realising that someone else already took those exact same panels from Copper for this page... And then I followed a link to this page on Happiness Is Mandatory, and saw it. :P I personally think the image fits Happiness Is Mandatory a bit better...

I'm sure the guy who added Japan meant something like this: In Darker and Edgier Japanese works, Japan can look like this, giving foreigners an unjust representation of the country.

An entry on the main page said:

• Sweden as depicted in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy certainly fits.

Apart from the fact that the link goes to the wrong Millennium, the basic claim also seems wrong. Stieg Larsson's heroes actually win, and make a difference, whereas in a Crapsaccharine World their efforts would be thwarted (unless they make a total revolution).