How Did You Discover TVTropes? Tell a story.

Starting university is a time of difficult change on many levels. Dangers, and opportunities. Intent on doing something with them I joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Society first thing. They weren't big (often only a dozen gathered on regular nights, compared to the crowd that the Animation society I would later join drew), but they had a website with a forum full of interesting discussions. That seemed to have died down by the time I joined.

I looked up their archives and found a reference to Slacktivist's blog of Left Behind. After a few false starts it genuinely interested me; his analysis showed up the problems at the deepest levels in these awful books, related to being backed by an awful ideology, thought up by people with awful ego problems (I started about when he was moving to the first film adaptation). I read it quite regularly, though I haven't gone back in a while.

I know that at some point he linked to an article here. I glanced at it and left, and I can't even remember what it was. I had come across much earlier a website collecting film clichés, which was amusing but had no lasting draw.

Starting on the second novel, he linked to Not What It Looks Like to help explain why the writer was getting it wrong (and how it was a mix of bad writing and misogyny). This time I looked over the examples a bit more and clicked to another article. I ended up reading about Death Note (that I only knew from the live-action films). Something about the tone of the examples more than the articles drew me in. I kept coming back and looking for more.

(Unless I'm remembering it wrong and Not What It Looks Like was the first article. I can't even recall where the Death Note entry was.)

Oddly enough, I was interested in the tropes and their examples, but I had something of an aversion to work pages. This was back in the days of natter and troper tales. For months I kept telling myself "change the entry instead of angrily responding to it", "the article is valid but is way too subjective to have a list of examples", "someone is far too admiring of Joss Whedon" (serious problem back then) before I had the confidence to edit anything. My interest took a new surge when I discovered Bakemonogatari through the Animation society, years later.

After going about the wiki itself again and again, I turned to the forums. (I think it started with the Trope Repair Shop.) Now they are the big reason I keep coming.

edited 23rd May '15 6:45:47 PM by Reymma

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

Once upon a time, it was a dark and stormy night, and a high schooler was on some blog. The blog talked about how addicting this site called "TV Tropes" was. The high schooler was intrigued, clicked on the site, and the rest is history.

i discovered tv tropes 2 years ago when i was in when high school around my junior year. I discovered this when i type in female bully and the very first trope i came across was the alpha bitch. What actually made me create an account to tv tropes was the pantheon itself.

What? What is this?

Eons ago, I was a small weakling in middile school, with a penchant for using the Internet to do everything, instead of actually interact with anyone who wasn't a friend of mine at the time.

Then, one day, as I was chatting with my reading teacher, a man who would brush his teeth in class, and treated it like his room, he told me about a book of some sort, and I searched it up.

I never regretted that decision.

Though I only realized forums existed near the end of high school.

It happened back in November 2010. Our hero, a dashing lad by the name of Spino, was 12 at the time and obsessed with Scribblenauts. Hearing rumors of a list containing all 22,981 words recognized in the game, he Googled "Scribblenauts word list". One of the first results that turned was our very own article on the game. Having never heard of this site, he clicked the link. Reading the trope list, he discovered tropes that matched his interest in paleontology & mythology and discussed their portrayals in fiction. He was hooked & continued to lurk until officially joining the site in May 2011.

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

Sometime mid-2009, I was looking up random stuff about Giratina on google, 'cause I had just gotten Pokemon Platinum. Anyway, something I was reading happened to link to the TV Tropes page for Eldritch Abomination. So I did a Wiki Walk, and was hooked. Joined the forums in October 2009 and here I am over 7 years later.

Stupid doomed timeline...

I used to be a member of Gamespot and some user named Nintendoboy-16 used to link to this site mainly the Hijacked by Ganon trope. One day I clicked on the link he posted and I spent a few hours just clicking on random tropes and reading each page.

I decided to join after a year of visiting this site when I discovered it had a forum section.

Batman Ninja more like Batman's Bizarre Adventure

Looked Sailor Moon theories, found the WMG page. For whatever reason I found it a while later, I remember one of the first pages I throughly read was the Mind Screw page. It took me a year to sign up though.

One faithful day back in 2016, when I was but an 8 year old boy residing in Smyrna, Georgia, I was on my white Samsung Tablet. I had discovered that Mighty Magiswords (which at that point had been a series of online-exclusive shorts) would be picked up for a full series, I was ectatic! I searched up a list of all of the magiswords, stumbled across the TV Tropes page on the show, and instantly got hooked. I was an on-and-off reader of this site for several years afterwards, but my interest in the site grew exponentially following the COVID-19 Pandemic. A couple years later, I worked up the courage to create my Troper page, edited several pages and subpages, started quite a few forum threads, and have had so much fun reading pages, reflecting on my favorite works, and chatting with fellow Tropers.

Currently Reading: N/A

I just realized how I found TVT. Not through looking for writing tips, but something else. A damn crossover fan comic of Hollow Knight and Under Tale. It was Hollow Tale and I just recently found it at the time. I read through all the current parts, and wanted more stuff. So I searched up random terms (I forgot which exactly) or just Hollowtale. I eventually found my way to its TVT page...and I didn't understand much. I was like..."what?" I think it might have loaded wrong and showed the site without all the cool changes in UI so it looked like plain PM wiki, but the random trope button still showed up...my memory about it is so foggy.

I proceeded to unwittingly run into TVT again months or weeks later by searching through ways on how to write tropes correctly (I was using a template of "How to write X right. I meant on how to write it in a good, non-repetitive, and revitalizing way), and found Robot Girl.

I probably wouldn't have found TVT if it weren't for the time when I used to just follow vague directions/instructions to do anything. My writing was probably okay at the time and just had pacing problems I think.

Oh god, I don't even remember. It's been over 10 years ago. I probably found a link to the site somewhere or something.

I was in my early teens when I started using the Internet a bunch. I was binge-reading Wikipedia descriptions of Cartoon Network shows when I stumbled across the TV Tropes page for Naruto. I was intrigued enough to lurk for a long time. Five years later, I got an e-mail address and joined TV Tropes, both because I had been there a long time anyway and there were a few atrocious grammar mistakes on the TMNT 2012 recap pages.

It's been 3000 years…

I don't remember either; I do know that I found out about this site in mid, maybe late 2011 and I know the first TVT page I opened though.

"Life's worth living, no matter how bad things get." /// (Avatar: Kotobuki Tsumugi)

I was looking up things relating to Paper Mario and someone listed Mario and Luigi as Heterosexual Life Partners.

My friend sent me a link to one of the pages, but warned me to not click on blue links. I didn't listen and went on a Wiki Walk. However, I didn't seriously start to use the site until I went through a phase where I just googled a bunch of random literary terms, which brought me to some of the pages under Lit. Class Tropes, and I think that's where I actually got hooked.

Current Project: The Team

Do I even know at this point? I think I read info on FNAF or Undertale, when those games were big. Then I started reading different stuff.

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Someone in my family gifted me The Fionavar Tapestry. I've never really been into that kind of fantasy and I looked it up and discovered the site. Been browsing since.

Edited by Scarecrow4774 on Dec 15th 2022 at 10:40:19 AM

“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” - Lewis Carroll

I used to play and contribute to a game, OpenArena. The leader of that project once linked to the "Stop Having Fun" Guys page, back when the Wiki was... something else than it is today.

That link was the beginning of everything.

I heard about Mermaid Problem. I think fro the other site and googled it.

I dont remember how I learned of the site in the first place but I was at one point so in love with it in the early days I almost spent all night in a cyber cafe to read it.

Edited by AegisP on Dec 21st 2022 at 3:41:37 AM

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

sometime in mid 2021 or 2022. i was looking up the video game Lily's Well and stumbled on a link to this place. i thought "hey this place is pretty neat and funny! i'll make an account here!" ...and i've been here ever since.

"There is a day we must all fufill our destiny... That day is TACO DAY!!!" —Zoe, League of Legends