All The Tropes:New User Introduction: Difference between revisions

This page is to help you [[Intro Dump|get acquainted]] to this the wide world of tropes. If you're coming to us from another troping website, you'll want to take the [[All The Tropes:So You're a TV Tropes Refugee|advanced tour]] instead.

If you look off to your right, you can see one of the very first tropes added to the wiki, the [[Gilligan Cut]]. This trope is named after the many times that the Skipper on ''[[Gilligan's Island (TV)|Gilligan's Island]]'' would vow to never buy into a harebrained scheme one minute -- followed by him enacting the hairbrained scheme in the very next scene.

A lot of our tropes have [[:Category:Esoteric Trope Names|funny names]], and the [[MacGuffin]] is no exception. This name was popularized by [[Alfred Hitchcock]], and describes an object that everyone in the story wants. Not that it actually matters what the object is -- it can be a [[Briefcase Full of Money]], and [[Artifact of Doom]], or a [[I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin|mysterious gift from a dying man]].

Our site isn't all about traditional media, either. As we pass into our [[Video Games]] section, you can catch a glimpse of our [[Distressed Damsel in Distress]] tied to a post. (No, you don't have to slay that dragon to rescue her, she's just an actress.) Often a princess in need of saving through some magical quest, she's almost always attractive, but is completely unable of saving herself.

But this leads us to an important point: the social message of tropes isn't always a good one. In modern society, we want women to be the equals of men, and not to be helpless. Yet extreme examples of [[Distressed Damsel in Distress|Damsels in Distress]]s still persist, often relics of a bygone era. This leads to what we call [[Values Dissonance]]: where morals and mores from different times and cultures clash and make you, the viewer, cringe a little bit inside.

Because stories are more than just a way to pass time -- they create our culture. David Morgan-Mar of ''[[Irregular Webcomic (Webcomic)|Irregular Webcomic]]'' suggests that ''[[Star Wars (Franchise)|Star Wars]]'' may be the world's most well-known fictional work, and the first one to be known by a majority of the world. ''[[The Wizard of Oz]]'' occupies a similar place in our global imagination. Even ''[[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]]'' is full of tropes, and it has influenced the style and substance of countless other works.

And finally, we talk about [[creators]]. Creators of cool stuff, like [[Joss Whedon]]. There are a lot of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy]]'' fans around here. Creators are real people, so we need to remain nice on their pages. Feel free to criticize the book all you want, but try to remain civil with actual people. As they say, hate tha playagame, not tha gameplaya.

* [[Omnipresent Tropes]] are things that are so common, they're sometimes not even noted. Like [[Plot]], for instance.

* [[WikiYour User Sandbox]] is a place that you can feel free to edit and test without worrying about completely trashing itan important part of the wiki. To create one for your user page, type <code><nowiki>User:[your username here]/sandbox</nowiki></code> on your browser's address bar. Or click the "Sandbox" link that appears in your user menu at the top of the page (in most skins).

* [[Forum:All The Tropes|The Forums]] are a great place to ask basic questions, and get to know fellow [[Troper]]s.

To link to another page in the wiki, use double square brackets around the name, like: ''<code><nowiki>[[Page Name]]</nowiki>''</code>. If you want to display alternate text in the link, put a pipe character "|" after the name, like so: ''<code><nowiki>[[Page Name|my link to a wiki page]]</nowiki>''</code>. Lines starting with an asterisk "*" make new bullet points.

And finally, ifIf you need to mark an "spoiler" -- like the ending of the show or a major plot twist so that you have to select it to see it, put it in a spoiler template, like: ''<code><nowiki>At the end of ''[[Citizen Kane]]'', we find out that {{spoiler| Rosebud is the name of his sled}}.''</nowiki></code><ref>This trope is called [[It Was His Sled]], since everyone has known the spoiler ending for likethe 50best part of a yearscentury already.</ref>