Dramedy cleanup

As discussed on Ask The Tropers, there seems to be a lot of misuse on the index for dramedy. To summarize, people have added drama series (including SF, horror and police shows) with some comic relief here, as well as sitcoms with a few dramatic elements, many of which could not by a long reach be classified as dramedy.

I\'ve removed some works from the Live-Action TV section. However, there are lots of works spanning every conceivable genre on the index, and I\'m only familiar with a small portion of them, so help is needed by people familiar with all those works.

The consensus on ATT seems to be to create a short-term project, so I\'m posting here. I hope I\'m doing this the right way - if not, please feel free to point out how it should be done.

For reference a dramedy is Drama/Comedy fusion. Or a dramatic comedy. It's similar to a sitcom but more dramatic.

Much of the misuse on the page seems to be cuased by tropers confusing this with either of the following:

• Drama that contains funny dialogue, where funny things sometimes happen, or there even are funny subplots (perhaps involving the dark, brooding hero's bumbling sidekick). This is comic relief, and happens in most drama, but doesn't make the show a dramedy.

• Comedy where dramatic, or even bad, things occasionally happen. This happens in most comedy (or it would just be a sequence of strung-together jokes), but if the drama is just intended to set up funny situations it's not dramedy.

edited 17th Jan '15 2:25:37 AM by GnomeTitan

I can't help with the anime and webcomics sections, but I want to delete the following if there are no objections: Deadpool, Saga, Red Dwarf, Family Guy, South Park, The Venture Bros, Futurama, and pretty much everything in the video games section apart from Ace Attorney and Tales Series (which I'm not familiar with).

Not sure about Breaking Bad, but I personally don't think it should be here even if it has a bit of black comedy. And even though The Sopranos is listed with a justification, it looks out of place.

edited 17th Jan '15 3:45:29 AM by supergod

I don't really see any wrong anime examples, it's something that is quite common in anime and VN especially Key stuff, but there are so many Zero Content Examples across all the examples it is not funny. I understand why as its just a genre listing but bleh.

In the video games. I would disagree with Final Fantasy being there, you could make a case for Final Fantasy V and Lightning Returns but the rest of them? No. Tales Of oh yeah it's dramatic save the world RPG but every time you hit that select button or win a battle it's something funny as hell. Ratchet And Clank and Jak And Daxter are borderline I would say yes to Jak 2 & 3 and the Ratchets after 3 but not 1-3.

edited 17th Jan '15 5:01:45 AM by Memers

@supergod: There doesn't seem to be any opposition to your suggestions, so why not go ahead with them? If you put a note in the edit reasons pointing here, people will know what what's happened and if they are not happy with the deletions they can always bring it up here.

My post had some objections....

Sorry, my bad. Unfortuantely, I can't offer any input on those examples since I'm not familiar with the works in question.

edited 18th Jan '15 6:42:52 AM by GnomeTitan

Judging from that, it doesn't seem like Tales Of counts. It needs to be more or less just as much a drama as it is a comedy, not just a dramatic story with some humor thrown in. I'm not extremely familiar with Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank, but from what little I've seen, it doesn't really seem to fit in the genre. I mean, if you removed the comedy, would it really be considered as part of the drama genre? My impression is that they're more along the lines of Indiana Jones or Back to the Future in tone. But I'll leave those there for now.

edited 18th Jan '15 10:17:45 AM by supergod

Oh it does have as much drama as comedy at least I think, the level of drama can vary with the entry but they always follow the big rule of serious dramatic main plot - funny ensemble interactions.

Tales Of Xillia 2 for instance has the MC (major major spoilers) murder trillions and trillions of people including his father, brother and potentially daughter and try to cope with all that or watching a little girl travelling with the party deal with the fact that her father was murdered by the MC and best friend was sacrificed. but has hours and hours of funny skits, side quests, and victory quotes and other character interactions.

Its a bit YMMV there as some see the main plots to be more corny drama fests that run on The Power of Friendship and are only there to watch the comedy.

Ratchets 1-3 and Jak 1 were a lot like indi but the series both take a darker more dramatic overall tone after those but still keep the comedy bits. The latest ratchet had him agonize over the loss of his friends but still kept the comedy moving.

edited 18th Jan '15 1:49:08 PM by Memers

When I think drama, I think strong focus on emotions and plots centered around relationships and personal dilemmas, rather than plots about survival, fighting bad guys, saving the world or other adventurous/heroic stuff (not that a drama can't have these things, but it's really more a matter of focus). And a dramedy would be the same, just with lots of humor. But not being familiar enough with those specific entries, I won't argue against their inclusions.

I've gotten rid of some of the entries in the Western animation, video game and comic book sections, but there are likely a lot more that don't belong.

edited 18th Jan '15 5:10:59 PM by supergod

The Tales series has funny skits in the same way that a lot of anime have Omake or post-credits goofy sketches and whatnot. It's par for the course and it doesn't seriously impact the tone of the game in my opinion.

Maybe a good criteria for dramedy would be: Can you call a work a "drama" with a straight face? Can you also honestly call that work a "comedy"? If the answer to both questions is yes, then it fits.

Would I call the Tales of series a comedy? No. It has its funny moments. I crack jokes now and again, but I'm hardly a comedian.

Would I call it a drama? Well, it's very dramatic, but honestly, no, I wouldn't, for reasons noted in supergod's last post.

Final Fantasy is right out. Maybe V, I'm not deeply familiar with it, but I'm pretty confident none of the other FF games fit.

edited 20th Jan '15 8:35:20 AM by SolipSchism