Quirky Town

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
And just wait 'til you see the townsfolk.

The town is small and filled with quirky, lovable characters. There is a strong sense of community. The audience is a little torn between wanting to live there, and being glad they live someplace else where not everyone knows your business, and, more specifically, not everyone asks you for strange favors and acts in an even stranger way. Might also be a Cutesy Name Town.

Generally free of Small Town Boredom, and anyone who says "Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here" either has lived there long enough that the eccentricity of their neighbors seems normal to them, or is just plain lying.

This trope is very powerful, perhaps reflecting a desire to somehow make this place exist, even if only in fiction. The Disney Main Street is an example of the strength this trope has to force itself into something like reality.

Be careful, though, as it may have a dark secret underneath its quirky exterior.

On a smaller scale see Quirky Household.

Examples of Quirky Town include:

Anime and Manga

  • Mari and Gali has Hubble Gali, populated by deceased scientists.
  • The Stellar Six has a town made of a series of bazaars and shops, and everyone seems to not only get along extremely well, but most of the main cast have known everyone there since childhood, and everyone (for the most part) gets along.
  • In one of the Fullmetal Alchemist novels, Ed and Al arrived in a desert town named Wisteria where everything seems extremely happy and kind, and the main female character of the novel, Ruby, insists it's the greatest place ever. Unbeknownst to the brothers at first however, is that the poor of the village, at the behest of the mayor, are sold into slavery.

Comic Books

Film

Live Action TV

Music

  • Tom Lehrer has great fun parodying this in his song "My Home Town."

Radio

Theater

  • River City, Iowa in The Music Man.
  • Mapleton, Ohio in several plays by Moss Hart.
  • An unnamed Connecticut town in Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill.
  • Richard O'Brien was inspired to write the Rocky Horror Show by his experiences living in Hamilton and Tauranga, New Zealand, during the 1950s.

Video Games

  • Half the fun of Animal Crossing is letting you actually live in a Quirky Town.
  • Just try to name a town in EarthBound that's not this. Go on, we'll be waiting.
    • Well, except the overpriced tourist town of Summers.
      • And Fourside, the big city.
      • And Moonside, the other big city.
    • Saturn Valley totally counts, though.
  • Mother 3 has Tazmily Village, which is arguably a Deconstruction. It's a Quirky Town because it's cut off from all other civilization. When outsiders start showing up, it quickly becomes less quirky and a lot less idyllic.
  • Greenvale in Deadly Premonition. Some of the townsfolk are downright goofy, which just adds to the Mood Whiplash regarding the horrific murders you investigate.
  • Falderal from King's Quest VII. The china shop is run by a bull, the snake oil salesman literally has scales, and Archduke Fifi le Yip Yap is Mister Muffykins in Louis XIV attire. Be sure to take the Faux shop with a grain of salt.
  • Let's not forget about Harvest Moon. I mean, the game is all about knowing people of the town and living there.
  • Basically every small village you come across in Professor Layton and their puzzle loving inhabitants. St. Mystere in the first game and Folsense in the second.
    • Though the idyllic little villages are far from it. By the end of the game, you find St. Mystere's residents are all robots and Folsense is a product of hallucinogenic gas!
  • Thamasa in Final Fantasy VI.

Web Comics

  • Generictown in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob
  • City of Reality, full stop. For starters, their mayor is a bunny rabbit. Hawk even goes to great lengths in order to test how close it is to being a Town with a Dark Secret, thinking that secret is pent-up rage.
  • Life Sketch Takes place in Hannah, Montana, where vampires, zombies and dragons are commonplace and nobody seems to bat an eye when people go out in public in full cosplay regalia.
  • Questionable Content eventually lampshaded this. After they return from a long trip to Asia, Hannelore asked how Winslow's day was. Since the honest summary was "licked by a reindeer and saw an invisible emu", she panics and calls Faye's robot repair shop. On the next page they sort it out.

Hannelore: Oh, thank goodness. I forgot how strange this town can be sometimes.

Western Animation

  • Calling South Park quirky is an understatement.
  • Hey Arnold!'s Brooklyn-inspired neighborhood, which is (among other things) known for throwing tomatoes at the British during the Revolutionary War. Aren't you jealous?
  • Mission Hill, even though it's a neighborhood of a large city.
  • The Simpsons's Springfield.
  • Bluffington from Doug.
  • Arthur has Elwood City, which is only slightly quirky.
  • Ponyville from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. The first impression asocial city-girl Twilight Sparkle gets is "All the ponies in this town are crazy!"

Real Life

  • Cassadega, Florida
  • Seaside, Florida. (The Truman Show was filmed there.)
  • College towns in the United States. Other countries tend not to have these, as their universities were built in major cities.
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