What fictional place would be the worst place to bring up a child?

Cafe Society
101

I’ve lampshaded this in one of my game worlds. There’s a country in which the sentient undead are generally accepted as regular citizens, and necromancers are ordinary professionals who provide services for the metabolically challenged segment of the population. It’s seldom discussed, but the cemeteries, elaborate preservation techniques, catacomb and tomb burials, and grave goods like armor and weapons have a purpose: prepared emergency shock troops. If trouble is brewing, and it doesn’t look like the available guards can handle it, all it takes is a necromancer and maybe some diggers to provide reinforcements.

As it happens, that county, where undead stalk the streets day and night, and one of the rulers is a vampire, is a pretty decent place for kids (for a medievalish-fantasy setting). As one child-haunt put it when asked how he was faring, “Not bad, except for being a little stiff.”

Well, there was the alien kid with the religious parents…oh, wait.

102

Camp Green Lake, in Holes. Okay, so it’s a juvenile correctional facility, not a town, but still. (Note that I haven’t seen the movie, so I’m referring to the way it’s depicted in Louis Sachar’s novel.)

103

There was also that Markab child in the episode with the plague… damn.

104

The country of Midsomer - aka where the show Midsomer Murders is set. It’s a small, tightly knit community - that has hundreds of murders each year, every one a new, exciting mystery.

105

I’ll vote for New Crobuzon and add any other setting from China Mieville !

106

Balance, I think that’s the niftiest example of worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long while. :cool:

Anyway, back to the OP, I guess I’d have to say…a comic-book universe, like Marvel or DC.

For all the superheroes running around, neither one actually seems any safer than our world. In fact, they’re both probably more dangerous, even for the average citizen on a day to day basis.

I’m having a hard time deciding which is worse off—the future of Marvel’s Earth usually seems somehow doomed two at least two, mutually incompatible, yet simultaneously inevitable “bad” futures. DC’s future centuries seem generally to be better off—but the entire universe seems to rewrite itself in a cataclysm every 15 years or so.

In Marvel, the relationships between governments, superbeings, and the general public are much more acrimonious than in DC’s Earth—but DC’s Earth seems to suffer much more horrendous disasters, wars, and crime sprees, and more often. ASIDE from the universe resetting. (I think DC’s outright destroyed more Earth cities, including real world ones, and had it stick.)

More super-tech filters down to civilians…Barely. I think…in DC’s Earth, and many of it’s biggest superheroes are certainly among the nicer ones in existence. On the other hand…Marvels’ heroes are more likely to kill supervillains.

Issues of morality and societal role models aside, if I were raising my child in that world, I’d certainly feel safer knowing that a costumed maniac had gotten a bullet in the head instead of a frown and a trip back to the insane asylum they’d escaped from. Again. (Death may be cheap in the comics, true…but it slows you down longer.)

So, yeah. The comics. Not the best place to live…but a very good place to die. :eek:

107

Dodge City - In television; Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Matt Dillon were killing people all the time. In at least five movies I can think of, people were being killed regularly…Tough town. It makes Cabot Cove look like a quaint fishing village…Oh yeah, it is…well never mind. The irony here is I lived in Dodge for just under a year and I was only involved with one gun related incident…bank robbery with hostages…I covered the story. No one actually shot, though.

108

They’re not all infested with undead, just the ones you visit. Otherwise you’d have nothing to do. It’s like the old catch-all movie excuse: If it wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be an adventure.

Besides, a world where you could theoretically be raised or resurrected (or at least communicated with) might be one where people are less interested in having their bodies completely destroyed.

109

Ooh! New monster idea- Lich-Golem. Cover someone in clay and then fire them in a kiln so their bones and ashes are part of the clay.

110

Haven, Maine. People are dropping like flies there every week. I’m surprised there are any people left by now.

111

I’ve seen a similar idea done, but in anime rather than an RPG. The sorceress Urasue in InuYasha created clay warriors and slaves by mixing the ashes of people whose souls she wanted to use into her clay. Most of them were just grunts, but she did produce a few who retained most or all of their abilities and personality.

Speaking of which, the version of feudal Japan in that anime seems to be a pretty rotten place to be a kid (or anyone else), what with demons, rulers, and everyone else going to war over slivers of rock that make you evil and powerful if you mess with them.

112

Midwich, England, as described by John Wyndham.

113

Hell.

114

I nominate Deathlands from the novel series of the same name.

115

The thing I never quite got is that if Catachan is so inhospitable and its people are so tough and martial, they seem like natural Space Marine recruits to me. But instead, they’re just Imperial Guard cannon fodder.