Monday, February 16, 2009

TV Tropes

Here's a site that I got lost in for a little while this morning and only broke it off because I had to leave for work: TV Tropes.
Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The wiki is called "TV Tropes" because that is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They exist in life, as we will be quick to tell you. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere. Right, so what is a "wiki"? A wiki is a web site where any user can create new pages, edit existing pages, link between pages, and search the site. You can even edit this page, if you wish. This may seem strange, but it can be an extremely powerful and flexible way to take notes, collaborate and work on the web.

We are not Wikipedia. We're a buttload more informal. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by the Wiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index. We encourage breezy language and original thought (and won't object to the occasional snarky comment, either).
Fun and informative. Thanks to Brer.

1 comment:

  1. i bookmarked this site two years ago, and yet i'm not even half close in reading all the tropes. nice thing to read at night.

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