Misused for "they should have done this, but didn't".: Missed Moment Of Awesome

Okay, I hate changing my position halfway through, but I think the misuse actually does have its place (though it would need a different name, I think). There are a lot of examples on the actual work pages that are actually valid "wait, WHY didn't they do this?"

For example, in Infinite Stratos the main character gets his Mid-Season Upgrade completely offscreen, without any fanfare. If you're not paying attention, you might not even realize it happened. I think that is something valid, though obviously still YMMV.

And Offscreen Moment of Awesome is still perfect for what this trope is intended to be.

They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, What Could Have Been... I think we have enough "tropes" on the site to cover what the misuse has been. We don't need to create a new page that's certain to attract lots of complaining.

Is there anyone who does not support Offscreen Moment of Awesome for what this trope is actually supposed to be about?

Since there's been no objection to Offscreen Moment of Awesome as a name, I'm going to start up the page with a basic description. Y'all can put up examples and edit the description as you want.

@Discar:

"There are a lot of examples on the actual work pages that are actually valid 'wait, WHY didn't they do this?'"

As mentioned above, it's nothing more than fan ideas (which is already covered by other Audience Reactions on the wiki) - a fan-guided version of What Could Have Been.

Many of the examples I've pruned are either cases where scenes present in one work don't appear in an adaptation (more Aborted Arc / Adaptation Distillation than anything) or ideas on what they think should have happened (mentioned above).

"For example, in Infinite Stratos the main character gets his Mid Season Upgrade completely offscreen, without any fanfare."

Sure, that's somewhat subjective, but that's a valid example IMO.

edited 16th Jul '11 6:42:04 PM by crazyrabbits

This may be a little late to the party but what about Informed Moment Of Awesome? It precisely fits how we use the Informant family of tropes.

edited 15th Jul '11 8:02:54 AM by Stratadrake

I would say no, not quite. The informed tropes don't live up to the hype. An Informed Moment Of Awesome would be like a Wham Episode that failed to deliver. They keep telling you how awesome what you're watching is, instead of being awesome. The Offscreen Moment of Awesome is something you just didn't get to see at all.

Yeah, on second thought, right.

By the way, according to legend "Missed Moment of Awesome" was originally written under the title of Epic Fail. To me, this implies that the trope was born to be Fans Complaining About What Could Have Been, which means we're here to Name It Right This Time.

edited 16th Jul '11 9:37:54 AM by Stratadrake

Looks like somebody already launched the Offscreen Moment of Awesome page, though without subpages including the examples. Shall we start moving them over? What should we do with the subpages on Missed Moment of Awesome — cutlist them, or make them redirects?

Alright, I moved 'em and made 'em all redirects, subpages included. I took them off the YMMV / Audience Reaction indexes because I don't think "something massive happened offscreen" is actually YMMV. You didn't see it, how could you know if it wasn't awesome enough?

The discussion page from Missed Moment of Awesome needs to be moved.

edited 23rd Jul '11 2:32:35 PM by Tyoria

Discussion, Quotes and Laconic all moved. You have to make new subpages; you can't simply redirect them. (And please don't fix the redirect while someone else is working on the page.)

Now cutlist the subpages for Missed... — put a cut reason of "subpage for renamed trope page, all content has been moved to the new name." or something like that, and it's done. Locking.

edited 23rd Jul '11 2:43:22 PM by Madrugada

Unlocking this one (after chatting to Maddie) since the rename hasn't ended. In fact it hasn't really got underway:

Main/Missed Moment Of Awesome On 1256 page(s).

The bulk of the work here is wicks. Wiki Magic doesn't fix big chucks of obsolete wicks by itself. Are you happy to command the renaming effort Tyoria? (My instinct is big jobs like this work better if someone steps up to be responsible for 'em.)

edited 29th Jul '11 3:55:29 AM by Camacan

I've been trying, actually. I posted a thread on the Special Efforts board to see if I could get any help with the wicks, but I didn't get any response. I'll keep whackin' at em alone if that's what it takes, but it may take some time.

Couple things:

I can't get at the punctuated titles or JBM entries. I think they're false positives — I can get at Headscratchers, and make them vanish from the list, but MMOA isn't on the punctuated pages and is only on the JBM pages where I haven't gotten to headscratchers yet.

I hate to bring it up, but another trope you might want to consider hauling in here is What Could Have Been. It's the name. It is far, far too easy to start up a line of What Could Have Been if only Joey hadn't left the show, or if they hadn't killed off character such-and-such, or had let some other plot go forward which basically starts trending into the realm of pure fanfic. It's used correctly in a lot of places, but the misuse would be worth checking out.

Apparently Castlevania fans have some very high standards. Seriously, I'm seeing the incorrect use of Missed Moment of Awesome on that series more than any single other.

What Could Have Been ought to be listed in the Trivia/ namespace, anyway.

So where are we putting the misuse? Again, I still think many instances of "they should have done this, but didn't" are worth mentioning. Are you just deleting those, or moving them over to What Could Have Been?

EDIT: Also, I fixed the Laconic to fit the new definition.

edited 29th Jul '11 8:10:10 PM by Discar

Sad to say, I'm axing them. Putting them on What Could Have Been would just be shifting the misuse onto another trope. "What Could Have Been" is for things that were thought about and planned but discarded before final production. Not "anything under the sun that might have been cool."

I'd be happy to give them to another trope but as far as I know there isn't one. I kind of wonder if it is legitimate trope and not just... complaining, basically, but if people wanted it I wouldn't begrudge them it. Maybe you should YKTTW one?

edited 29th Jul '11 8:13:55 PM by Tyoria

Just...hold off on the mass deleting, okay? Move correct examples of Offscreen Moment of Awesome over, but if the Missed Moment of Awesome examples are tropable, I don't want to lose them all. So either copy them over to a clipboard, or don't delete them.

//sighs//

Please try to respect my position here. For one thing, you're about 400 pages too late. I thought I was the only person putting serious effort into this massive wick cleanup and what you're proposing is that I double my workload by saving anything potentially tropable while I'm doing it? I will either A-hold off on doing ANYTHING else with this until you have something in place that satisfies you, or B-continue with the chainsaw.

edited 29th Jul '11 8:34:37 PM by Tyoria

/sigh

Continue with the chainsaw. I'll get relevant examples in the YKTTW. Although I would like to note I did bring this up earlier (top of this page, even), I was just mostly ignored.

Here's the YKTTW, if anyone is interested.

Your YKTTW sounds exactly like offscreen moment of awesome as it is. If you're worried about me cutting nonhumorous examples of something major happening offscreen, you can relax. I'm cutting the stuff that's all about how "they SHOULD have done this" or "they had the perfect opportunity to do it" and so on. Stuff that's used correctly is being renamed and moved to the mainpage. It's just that misuse massively outweighs correct use, so it feels like chainsawing.

edited 29th Jul '11 8:47:41 PM by Tyoria

Yeah, Discar, I don't think you read my earlier post. I just went through the Professional Wrestling section - both examples were just the same examples as the ones on the wrestling subpage of Wall Banger - people complaining that the company didn't do enough to promote a wrestler/angle/etc.

The music page is even worse - all of the entries are What Could Have Been. No one seems to be understanding the trope, and indeed, I've had to remove examples from half the subpages due to misuse.

The entire point is that "they should have done this, but didn't" isn't the trope, and indeed, most of the examples I've pruned are long, protracted rants about how the event in question didn't live up to the image the fan had in their mind. That, and several others whining about how their favorite scene wasn't in an adaptation. The misuse was widespread - that's why we're going through it with a chainsaw.

edited 31st Jul '11 8:55:59 AM by crazyrabbits

My apologies for freaking out a little. I didn't realize quite what was happening; I thought it was more narrow than it is.

Shouldn't this page be YMMV since it's subjective whether or not the offscreen moment would be a Moment Of Awesome? I know this page was YMMV before the rename (though that took into account the widespread misuse) and I was wondering if it was decided that the page is now objective or just that nobody got around to adding the new name to the YMMV index.

edited 31st Jul '11 11:12:38 AM by djbj

I don't think it's all that YMMV. I mean the most important part is that it happened where the audience couldn't see it. It was the complaining aspect which didn't belong in the first place which pushed it into YMMV.

BTW, in one of your edits on the pages, you asked if I should be added to the misuse list. Did you forget the thread OP?