Week 12 Story Laboratory: TVTropes

TV Tropes

This week, in lieu of a story, I chose to do a story laboratory. For this story lab, I wanted to research something that I hadn't seen before. This lead me to doing some research on the website entitled "TvTropes". I had never seen nor heard of this website, meaning that I had no idea what to expect when I began looking around on the site. The summary on the story lab page claims TV Tropes to be a website where people compare common plot devices used in all types of stories.

When I began looking around on the site, I was a bit confused. Initially, it appears kind of confusing and difficult to navigate. I scrolled around on the home page for a while looking for a theme or show title that I might recognize, but had no luck. I think this is because the link provided goes right to the page that houses the most recent tropes, which is more or less a miscellaneous collection of tropes from all sorts of TV shows, movies and stories. However, when I clicked on the Tropes tab at the top, I was able to get a better understanding of the purpose of this website. After providing a brief definition of what a trope is, the page then provides an index which organizes all of the different categories you can read and write about. There are four main types of tropes found in the 'Main Index' section:genre tropes, media tropes, narrative tropes, and topical tropes. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the media tropes link and was greeted by an index of tropes about topics ranging from video games to music videos. I am a huge fan of music and all things involving music, so I chose to do some research on music album tropes. I was immediately drawn to a page titled "Fading Into the Next Song". On this page it both discusses what this means and gives tips on how to avoid a too-long fadeout. It also provides folders of examples from each genre of music, which I thought was super cool.

I like how this site not only provides a fun forum for people from all over the world to discuss topics that are important to them, but also provides concrete, applicable tips and tricks that help navigate these common tropes. Another cool feature of this site is the section at the bottom of the page that provides links to both the pages that you have already visited and the pages that they think you would enjoy to read next. This made for easier navigation once I selected the trope I wanted to learn about. Overall, this was a fun and educational assignment, and I can definitely see myself returning to this site to learn about tropes that I encounter on a daily basis!

This is Sinatra! album cover, TVtropes