Red Light District/Playing With
- Basic Trope: An area of a town or city known for prostitution
- Played Straight: Troperville has a street where there are a lot of brothels and strip clubs, pimps and streetwalkers waiting for business.
- Exaggerated: The entire town is like this.
- Downplayed: There is trade for sex, but the women also have (and use) other talents, and are marketed as entertainers. They may not even actually perform sexual favors for their clients. Or they might use the sexual favors to get more money even though it's not required or even technically allowed, or sleep with those they entertain outside of a business context.
- The entertainment district does contain brothels and strip clubs and all that, but other forms of entertainment (even very family-oriented entertainment.)
- Justified: Troperville is a Vice City
- Every business has a district, and that includes The Oldest Profession.
- The prostitution is religious prostitution in service to some deity or other, and the "district" is more of a temple with priestesses or priests who engage in ritual sex with worshippers, among other priestly duties.
- Subverted: Only one prostitute is seen regularly working this street, and she may even be seen elsewhere.
- Double Subverted: But she reports back to a pimp or madame who lives nearby
- Deconstructed: May be a Crapsack World ridden with disease...and angry pimps and/or clients who abuse the prostitutes. Some of the prostitutes may, tragically, be minors.
- Reconstructed: No child prostitutes, everyone does "business" fairly and treats everyone fairly well, and use of condoms is de regeur, if not actually required. (Especially if prostitution is actually legal in this setting.)
- Parodied: Names of places seen on this street: "Whorefucks," "Slut in the Box," etc., all with logos parodying those of well-known chain stores and fast-food places.
- The district caters to not only horny humans...but their dogs as well.
- The prostitutes are all painfully ugly and fat
- Lampshaded: "Sure are a lot of hookers around here..."
- Averted: Prostitution is not restricted to one particular place in this setting.
- May not even happen in this particular setting
- Enforced: "We need something to show that this is a Vice City or Wretched Hive."
- Invoked: Lots of prostitutes hang out on a street, probably not far from other forms of entertainment, where they can more easily find customers.
- Defied: See "Averted"
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played For Laughs: See "Parodied"
- Played For Drama: A Disposable Sex Worker is killed.
- If it's part of the main plot, almost always is.