TVTropes

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TVTropes.

It's one of the Internet's leading sources of Skub, so we'll try to confine ourselves to a few simple facts.

In essence, it exists to catalog the various recurring patterns in stories, characters, and general entertainment production and consumption. As such, it can be quite an addictive read (insert "TVTropes ruined my life" joke here).

It attracts a great quantity of weeaboos, neckbeards, fanboys, fangirls, fanhermaphrodites, other weirdos, and just plain losers as editors, and it shows frequently in the general writing style and the types of pages included. It's a great place, in theory, to go to find ideas for your next campaign - but don't overdo it, since that's only in theory. Unfortunately, TVTropes is the kind of site that lends itself to categorization for categorization's sake like a lot of other wikis, but amplified so far that its users can no longer see any kind of media (or anything else in the worst cases) as anything other than a collection of archetypes and cliches. Poorly written examples and argumentative sperging over the smallest and most seemingly insignificant of minutiae abound, and that's not even getting into the times where they try to force tropes into applying to the real world with predictably disastrous results. And then there's the horror stories of the old "This Troper" section...

Beyond that, it's worth mentioning here because, coverage of all types of media aside, it has had a definite influence on fandom and internet culture in general, being a product of such. It's also prone to in-jokes that occasionally leak out onto the wider Internet (sometimes known as a TVTropism). As such, it'll probably show up at your table, either directly mentioned by someone trying to seem more learned and experienced than they really are, or by other players using certain terms from it.

To speak of it any further is to invite madness.

WARNING

• You can find it here. Do not click that link unless you are prepared to accept the consequences. To protect people from butthurt, they sectioned off several other areas from the main page, including Flame Bait, Wild Mass Guessing, and so on. Remember, it can be very addictive, it may make you see entertainment as only a series of tropes, and it may cause you to start using their page names in normal conversation like an idiot.
• The most notable fork is found here; All the Tropes was formed due to censorship issues on TV Tropes - mainly a past problem with advertisers and the tendency for some of the site's moderators to (ab)use the banhammer for selfish reasons. Hopefully it is also free of the actual cancers that the main site previously allowed to fester. It's also a place where people can talk about PROMOTIONS-style material. Both All the Tropes wikis are also painfully out of date and need a Titan-load of work done to catch up with the inferior website - a rather obvious downside to being less popular. Despite being less popular, the staff are a lot more helpful than those on TV Tropes and you don't need a username to edit. Also they have no ads.