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"This was the "front page" of the original TV Tropes Wiki at the time the tropebase was forked in the Summer of 2012. It is preserved here as both a historical record and to ensure any links remaining to it in the pages of All The Tropes are not unnecessarily broken. If you are looking for the actual home page of All The Tropes, click on the "Home Page" item in the navigation menu to the left, or click this link.  If you have somehow gotten here thinking you were at TV Tropes, and want to know what the difference is, please see Why We Forked TV Tropes."

- -- The Mgmt.

What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The wiki is called "TV Tropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.

We are not Wikipedia. We're a buttload more informal. We encourage breezy language and original thought. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by the Wiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index.

Click on "Troperville" in the menu on the upper left of any page to find the places where the troper community gather to talk about things.

Go on, have fun!