For the Creatives and Critics: The TV Tropes Wiki

Since you, my peers, are the ones served by this 'blog, I think you might find this either useful or interesting enough to bookmark and keep handy.

This link leads to the TV Tropes Wiki. This is a site, built using the Wikipedia model, that catalogs various tropes originally seen in film, television, comics, literature and so on. As the title states, this was originally a TV-focused wiki that expanded its coverage over time. The standards are not Wikipedia's; this is far more casual and subjective in its intention and execution (and yes, there is a trope entry for that.)

Because this is not a wiki that holds to Wikipedia's notability standards, let alone the standards we're accustomed to in academia, I warn you not to see this as an authority so much as a measure or accounting of common practices. The tropes cataloged here include so-called "metatropes" such as Executive Meddling, and some of them are contended as being tropes at all. (As with Wikipedia, users--"Tropers"--can and do get into fights over definitions, which leads to periodic overhauls of the site's content; e.g. "Did Not Do The Research" got merged into Artistic License, and there was a flame war in the Discussion tab.)

If you critique or create narrative fiction, especially genre fiction, having TV Tropes in your Bookmarks is worthwhile. The names coined here have spread throughout the 'Net, sometimes through direct linking to relevant entries--and I have done this over the years more than once--leading to a push towards a standardization of jargon amongst the 'Net-savvy population of genre fiction fans, critics and creators that's now pushing out to assimilate all forms of gaming, so it helps if you're talking about the next James Bond film and someone tosses off "What did you expect? Bond is a Badass in a Nice Suit." you can follow along. TV Tropes is especially useful when used alongside a more formal counterpart; the difference between the two can be quite helpful when stuck with some part of a story.

I hope that this annotated link proves as useful I intended.