Our front page content should put our community’s best foot forward. That includes Trope Depictions.
These guidelines apply whether you chose to submit through the open submission process, or whether your submission was requested by TV Tropes. Troper community discussions of Trope Depictions led to the creation of these guidelines. To give feedback on these guidelines, visit this thread
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We’re not interested in censorship - we can’t stop anyone from publishing their own depictions on their own site or social media. We are interested in curating a space that depicts the best of TV Tropes.
We ask ourselves of each submission, “If a first-time site visitor saw this, would it be a good reflection of TV Tropes?” To answer that question, we refer to three guidelines:
Quality
Your submission should be self-contained, self-explanatory, original, and entertaining. It should be a comic designed to be readable within the Trope Depictions frame. 1 or 3 panel comics are easy to fit into the space, but the number of panels is flexible.
It should be comparable in quality to professional efforts in the medium in which it exists. For example, a webcomic should be inked and colored, by hand or by computer, and not scribbled on graph paper with a #2 pencil. All submitted work should be original, which is to say, created by the submitter.
Accuracy
Do your research before entering your submission. Tropers are, by nature, thorough. It’s why they’re tropers. If you miss the point or nuance of a trope, you better believe they’ll call you out on it!
Appropriateness
TV Tropes is not a site intended specifically for parents picking out the most inoffensive movie for the babysitter to play. With that said, TV Tropes is not monolithic, and all tropers do not share a unified sense of humor. All people cannot be pleased all of the time. We aim at an audience that is PG to PG-13.
So, certain topics should be avoided in trope portrayals. Yes, this means certain tropes will probably never be depicted under these guidelines. Since we have thousands of other tropes, that’s probably okay. Examples of stuff to avoid:
- Content offensive to any identity group, including but not limited to racial, ethnic, sexuality, gender, disability, or veteran status.
- Content reliant solely on shock value: for example, blue humor, gross-out humor, or jokes about dicks and farts. In moderation, or as a component of another trope, these can be ok, but our goal is to have a front page that we’re happy to show off to new visitors.
Put more simply: don’t be a jerk.
Other stuff to consider
Also note that, just like your contributions to the wiki, your Trope Depiction submission will fall under the same use rights listed in the Your Content section of Administrivia.
If your submission was rejected, don’t forget that rebounding from rejection is a normal part of the creative process. Don’t let it get you down! Review the guidelines, put ink to paper, and give it another shot.
Good luck!
