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tv tropes: labeling and recategorizing
I am here posting a link to one of my favorite sites, TV Tropes. Hopefully no one takes this as incentive to waste several hours.
I am surprised I didn't think of it sooner when we discussed resorting genres, to be honest. TV Tropes has myriad pages about tropes, cliches, themes, character types, and anything imaginable that is present in books, movies, anime/manga, comics, television, internet culture, and even real life. By doing so, works of all different genres and even mediums are completely resorted based on common ideas that are present in them.
I have occasionally found anime and manga series not by their genre but in fact by the tropes and character types present in them. I have noticed that across genres and mediums that are quite varied, I like different archetypes.
I do, however, think TV Tropes would be more fun if it were used by more academically-minded people. The userbase seems to consist mainly of people present in geeky fandoms, but I'd be interested in seeing more examples from classic, modern, and 21st century literature as well. [I am only saying this because to me, it seems like the anime/manga articles usually have longer lists of tropes, and for any given trope, there are more anime/manga examples than there are for any other category.]
TV Tropes is also an example of an online community with a purpose. It's more interactive and fun than Wikipedia but still consists of people working together anonymously to compile and sort information online (like an archive of information?). Since its users often include opinions and reactions in the examples they post, it's kind of like a collaborative tv/anime/whatever blog. I think I may finally be back on topic.