TV Tropes

Short description: Wiki documenting plot conventions in creative works

TV Tropes

Screenshot as of July 16, 2020

Type of site

| Wiki
Available in| 13 languages[1]
Website| tvtropes.org
Commercial| Ad-supported
Registration| Required for all features other than viewing
Users| 15,000+[2]
Launched| April 2004; 18 years ago (2004-04)
Current status| Active

Content license

| CC BY-NC-SA[3] from July 2012
Written in| PmWiki (heavily modified)[4]

TV Tropes is a wiki website that collects and documents descriptions and examples of plot conventions and devices, more commonly known as tropes, within many creative works.[5] Since its establishment in 2004, the site has shifted focus from covering only television and film tropes to those in general media such as literature, comics, anime, manga, video games, radio, music, advertising, and toys, and their associated fandoms, as well as some non-media subjects such as history, geography, politics, and other real life occurrences, people, and events.[6][7] The nature of the site as a provider of commentary on pop culture and fiction has attracted attention and criticism from several web personalities and blogs.

From April 2008 until July 2012, TV Tropes published free content.[8] In July 2012, TV Tropes modified its license to allow only non-commercial distribution of its content but continued to host the prior submissions under a new distribution license.[9][10]

The TV Tropes website runs on its own wiki engine software, a heavily modified version of PmWiki, but is not open source.[4] Before October 2010, it was possible to edit anonymously. Registration is now mandatory for all other activities besides viewing the website.[11]

## Contents

* 1 Site description
* 1.1 Ownership
* 1.2 Content
* 2 Reception
* 3 Controversies
* 3.1 Mature content incident
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## Site description

### Ownership

TV Tropes was founded in 2004 by a programmer under the pseudonym "Fast Eddie." He described himself as having become interested in the conventions of genre fiction while studying at MIT in the 1970s and after browsing Internet forums in the 1990s.[12] He sold the site in 2014 to Drew Schoentrup and Chris Richmond, who then launched a Kickstarter to overhaul the codebase and design.[13]

### Content

Initially focused on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, TV Tropes has since covered other TV series, films, novels, plays, professional wrestling, video games, anime, manga, comic strips/books, and fan fiction.[12] It renders many other subjects, including Internet works such as Wikipedia (often referred to in a tongue-in-cheek way as "The Other Wiki").[13] Additionally, articles on the site often relate to real life or point out real situations where certain tropes can or cannot be applied. It has also used its informal style to describe topics such as science, philosophy, politics, and history under its Useful Notes section. TV Tropes does not have notability standards for the works it covers.[12] It also can be used for recommending lesser-known media on the "Needs More Love" page.

## Reception

In an interview with TV Tropes co-founder Fast Eddie, Gawker Media's blog io9 described the tone of contributions to the site as "often light and funny". Cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling once described its style as a "wry fanfic analysis".[14] Essayist Linda Börzsei described TV Tropes as a technological continuum of classical archetypal literary criticisms, capable of deconstructing recurring elements from creative works in an ironic fashion.[15] Economist Robin Hanson, inspired by a scholarly analysis of Victorian literature,[16] suggests TV Tropes offers a veritable treasure trove of information about fiction – a prime opportunity for research into its nature.[17] In Lifehacker, Nick Douglas compared TV Tropes to Wikipedia, recommending to "use [TV Tropes] when Wikipedia feels impenetrable, when you want opinions more than facts, or when you've finished a Wikipedia page and now you want the juicy parts, the hard-to-confirm bits that Wikipedia doesn't share."[18] Writing for The Believer, Chantel Tattolli commented that "It is deeply satisfying to go there and reckon with the patterns made over time, across culture, medium, and genre—and to catch them in rotation."[13]

In the book Media After Deleuze, authors David Savat and Tauel Harper say that while TV Tropes does offer a "wonderful archeology of storytelling", the site undermines creativity and experience by attempting to "classify and represent" every part of a work.[19]

## Controversies

### Mature content incident

In October 2010, in what the site refers to as "The Google Incident", Google temporarily withdrew its AdSense service from the site after determining that pages regarding adult and mature tropes were inconsistent with its terms of service. The site separated NSFG articles (Not Safe for Google) from SFG articles (Safe for Google) in order to allow discussion of these kinds of tropes.[11][20]

In a separate incident in 2012, in response to other complaints by Google, TV Tropes changed its guidelines to restrict coverage of sexist tropes and rape tropes. Feminist blog The Mary Sue criticized this decision, as it censored documentation of sexist tropes in video games and young adult fiction.[21] ThinkProgress additionally condemned Google AdSense itself for "providing a financial disincentive to discuss" such topics.[22] Pornographic tropes and works, as well as additional content deemed inappropriate for coverage, were also removed from the site following the incident.

## See also

* Archetypal literary criticism
* Archetype
* Meme
* Monomyth
* Motif-Index of Folk-Literature
* Television criticism

## References

1. ↑ "Language Indices - TV Tropes". TV Tropes. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LanguageIndices.
2. ↑ Tropes, TV. "Page Counts". TV Tropes Inc.. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/page_type_counts.php.
3. ↑ "Administrivia: Welcome to TV Tropes". TV Tropes. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/WelcomeToTVTropes. "Your Rights (Legal Stuff)"
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "What Pm Wiki theme does this site use?". TV Tropes. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13273333140A33622800&page=1.
5. ↑ Cagle, Kurt (April 1, 2009). "From Mary Sue to Magnificent Bastards: TV Tropes and Spontaneous Linked Data". Semantic Universe. https://semanticweb.com/from-mary-sue-to-magnificent-bastards-tv-tropes-and-spontaneous-linked-data_b11936.
6. ↑ "The Current - TVTropes.org: Harnessing the might of the people to analyze fiction". Thecurrentonline.com. https://www.thecurrentonline.com/2.14135/tvtropes-org-harnessing-the-might-of-the-people-to-analyze-fiction-1.1957948.
7. ↑ Pincus-Roth, Zachary (February 28, 2010). "TV Tropes identifies where you've seen it all before". Los Angeles Times. https://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/28/entertainment/la-ca-tropes28-2010feb28.
8. ↑ "TV Tropes Home Page". TVTropes.org. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage.
9. ↑ "TV Tropes Home Page". TVTropes.org. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage.
10. ↑ "TV Tropes Relicensed its Content - Without Permit". Soylent News. May 15, 2014. https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/05/15/1938243.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Administrivia: The Google Incident". TV Tropes. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TheGoogleIncident.
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Newitz, Annalee (February 24, 2010). "Behind The Wiki: Meet TV Tropes Cofounder Fast Eddie". io9. https://io9.com/5479423/behind-the-wiki-meet-tv-tropes-cofounder-fast-eddie.
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Tattoli, Chantel (March 11, 2021). "TVtropes.org's Treasure and Trash". https://believermag.com/logger/tv-trope-orgs-treasure-and-trash/.
14. ↑ Bruce Sterling (January 21, 2009). "TV Tropes, the all-devouring pop-culture wiki". WIRED. https://www.wired.com/2009/01/tv-tropes-the-a. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
15. ↑ Börzsei, Linda (April 2012). Literary Criticism in New Media. https://www.academia.edu/4570620. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
16. ↑ Kruger, Daniel (2006). "Hierarchy in the Library: Egalitarian Dynamics in Victorian Novels". Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. https://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep06715738.pdf. Retrieved November 1, 2013.
17. ↑ Hanson, Robin (May 9, 2009). "Tropes Are Treasures". Overcoming Bias. https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/05/tropes-are-treasures.html.
18. ↑ Douglas, Nick (February 12, 2018). "Use the TV Tropes Site the Same Way You Would Wikipedia". Lifehacker. https://lifehacker.com/use-the-tv-tropes-site-the-same-way-you-would-wikipedia-1822930619.
19. ↑ Savat, David; Harper, Tauel (July 28, 2016). Media After Deleuze. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 149. ISBN 978-1472531506.
20. ↑ "Google Groups". https://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!category-topic/adsense/i-dont-yet-have-an-account-getting-approved/T7-CeRf60B0.
21. ↑ Aja Romano (June 26, 2012). "TV Tropes Deletes Every Rape Trope; Geek Feminism Wiki steps in". themarysue.com. https://www.themarysue.com/tv-tropes-rape-articles/.
22. ↑ Alyssa Rosenberg (June 26, 2012). "TV Tropes Bows to Google's Ad Servers, Deletes Discussions of Sexual Assault in Culture". ThinkProgress. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/tv-tropes-bows-to-googles-ad-servers-deletes-discussions-of-sexual-assault-in-culture-9683495c786/.

## External links

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