This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
The below discussion dates from a previous iteration of the page.
Lale: Ripped from the Headlines.
Tanto: Also Dramatization and Inspired by….
Fast Eddie: Yeah, some sort of merge seems called for. Ripped from the Headlines seems the winner to me.
Hasher Britarse: True enough, hang on and I'll fix it.
Morgan Wick: Hmm. But this is a very common phrase applied to such things. But RFTH predates our fascination with overly original names.
Looney Toons: I seem to recall that somewhere someone suggested that these entries formed a continuum ranging from something unnamed which was almost entirely true all the way down to Inspired by Characters Created By Person Based On the Works Of Second Person. Can we make that work for real?
Lale: Just how far can splitting go before it reaches the narrowest point? The point it we already had a trope — Ripped from the Headlines. Why go making new ones with new, overlapping titles that cover the same thing?
Looney Toons: Because they're not the same thing? Ripped from the Headlines is one particular set of writer behaviors. Based On Characters Created By would be a completely different one.
Fast Eddie: What's going on here? Okay, there is a continuum of story bases that goes from "news report" and proceeds to something like "inspired by a story inspired by a news report.", with Ripped from the Headlines being that last "inspired by." Is that what we're interested in? If so, write up the continuum and use it as index. I'm a lumper, so the distinctions between Based on a True Story and Ripped from the Headlines seem vague to me. This one is up to the splitters.
Lale: There's no difference. Crime shows flash "Based on a true story" before an episode, the website and commercials use "Ripped from the headlines" to promote it. We had Ripped from the Headlines before this trope was made. Therefore, it is redundant. Therefore, cut it. The Internet is cluttered enough.
Mister Six: I'm a splitter by nature, but even I think this is merging territory. The only difference I can think of between "based on a true story" and "ripped from the headlines" is that the latter implies it's based on a recent event and the former could be based on something that happened twenty years ago. Both have roughly equal levels of fictionality. I also think it can be merged with Inspired by… and Dramatization, maybe Sliding Scale Of Truth In Television or something like that.
Lale: Inspired by… is different from Ripped from the Headlines in degrees of resemblance to the truth; Based on a True Story is not.
