TV Tropes
| Official site logo | |
Type of site | Wiki |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, German (translation occurring slowly in French, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Esperanto, Quenya and more) |
| Revenue | Advertising |
| URL | http://tvtropes.org/ |
| Commercial | Ad-supported |
| Registration | Optional (anonymous editors must click through a notice screen) |
TV Tropes is a wiki, built on a PmWiki platform,[1] that collects and expands on various conventions and devices (tropes) found within creative works. Since starting in 2004, the site has gone from covering only television and film tropes to those in a number of other media.[2][3] The site is known for approaching topics in a comic tone[4] — author Bruce Sterling once described its style as "wry fanfic analysis"[5] — but Professor Robin Hanson characterized it as rather a possibly "great data source for studying fiction's functions."[6]
Content
TV Tropes found its beginning with an initial focus on the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer,[7] and has since increased its scope to include thousands of other series, motion pictures, novels, plays, video games, anime, manga, fan fiction, and other subjects. Among its longer standing policies, and possibly contributing to the high number of articles, TV Tropes does not require notability standards behind its entries and examples.[8]
The site includes entries on various series and tropes. An article on a work includes a brief summary of the work in question along with a list of associated tropes. Trope pages are the inverse: after describing the trope itself, it lists the trope's appearance in various works of media. A notable trait of the site is the development of a unique slang when it comes to the naming (often renaming) of the many tropes on the site. Rather than using names that one might officially use in a professional setting, a preference is given to tongue-in-cheek references to pop culture; for example, the page on bathos takes a new name from the series finale of Six Feet Under, wherein a character suffers a brain embolism and slurs the phrase "numb arm" into the unintentionally-hilarious "Narm!" Tropes may also be named after characters, such as "Xanatos Gambit", a plan so intricately crafted that any outcome will still benefit the planner; it is named after animated series Gargoyles's character David Xanatos, who specialized in such plans.
While the site's users have a penchant for references, in-jokes, running jokes, and "punny names" in general, there is a certain standard that a title has to meet in order to be considered and implemented, namely, the title has to directly state what the trope is without the reader having to read the article to understand it[citation needed]. Many of the titles that are pop culture references fail this rule, but the vast majority of tropes have extremely appropriate names[citation needed]. There is an undercurrent of natural selection in both creating and naming tropes, as every one of them is subject to comment and criticism both before and after the new trope becomes official. A new trope must attain a certain level of consensus that it is both original and sufficiently ubiquitous in the media before it makes it to the index. Additionally, there is an ongoing process of changing some of the more obscure and/or difficult to understand pop culture reference titles to more explanatory ones.
2008 saw considerable redesign in some aspects of content organization, such as the introduction of namespaces, while 2009 saw the arrival of other languages, of which German is the most developed.
"TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life"
TV Tropes use and contribution teaches the user to analyze and dissect works of media. An unanticipated side effect thereof is the inability to see the forest instead of the trees: tropers become jaded and cynical about consuming media, "[replacing] surprise almost entirely with recognition",[9]. This can be a burden when attempting to enjoy a work of media solely as a consumer.[10] (In How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, mainstream author Orson Scott Card described a similar phenomenon happening to his wife: after he trained her to be aware of her own reactions when editing his work, she is now incapable of not monitoring her feelings when consuming media.)
References
- ^ From Mary Sue to Magnificent Bastards: TV Tropes and Spontaneous Linked Data - Kurt Cagle. Semantic Universe. Retrieved on 2009-05-22.
- ^ TVTropes.org: Harnessing the might of the people to analyze fiction. The Current. Retrieved on 2009-05-22.
- ^ Zachary Pincus-Roth (28 February 2010). "TV Tropes identifies where you've seen it all before". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
- ^ Annalee Newitz (2010-02-24). "Behind The Wiki: Meet TV Tropes Cofounder Fast Eddie". io9. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
- ^ Sterling, Bruce, TV Tropes, the all-devouring pop-culture wiki, Beyond the Beyond, Wired, January 21, 2009.
- ^ Hanson, Robin (2009-05-09). Overcoming Bias: Tropes Are Treasures. Overcoming Bias. Future of Humanity Institute. Retrieved on 2009-05-22.
- ^ From Mary Sue to Magnificent Bastards: TV Tropes and Spontaneous Linked Data - Kurt Cagle
- ^ There Is No Such Thing As Notability - Television Tropes & Idioms
- ^ TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life - Television Tropes & Idioms
- ^ The Current - TVTropes.org: Harnessing the might of the people to analyze fiction