This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Some Sort Of Troper: Discussion on a rename going + here
+. Crowner for new names +++here+++.
Update: Countdown complete- Missed Moment Of Awesome has 22 votes for, 6 votes against- a net of +16. The nearest competitor is Epic Letdown which has +6. The names have gone up and down and I think we have settled on a winner.
Some Sort Of Troper: Based on discussion here and this proposal, Critical Failure is being made into a page for the game mechanic in RP Gs and the like that work on the basis of the Dn D Critical Failure rules and so now this name is being used for what people pretty much use Epic Fail to mean outside of this site. To be more precise, I give our laconic definition "A failure that is far in excess of what is typical (or even possible)"
Some Sort Of Troper: removed a Complaining About Shows You Dont Like wife swap example. Really, really not epic in scope and also not really a fail since they managed to get an interesting result out of it.
SSOT - removed another complaining example that had nothing to do with the trope nor any form of story telling but was the sort of production critism that we specifically wrote this up to avoid.
Morkais Chosen: I'm considering adding a ref to Final Boss Preview here, but I'm not sure- the idea is that the hero's feeble attempt at an attack, followed by the inevitable response, could sometimes constitute an Epic Fail. Is that reasonable or too tenuous?
Some Sort Of Troper: It seems reasonable but probably quite dependant on context and portrayal. Maybe if there was a particular example in mind, that could go into the page with a reference to Final Boss Preview and then perhaps some more video games examples with such crossover may also pop up.
Morkais Chosen: I think it may be reasonable, seeing as I just spotted the following on Final Boss Preview: "The sequel, The After Years does this numerous times with the game's primary antagonist. At one point you have the option to send a single weak playable character into a matchup with the villain that buffed out parties before him couldn't touch, and upon the first weak shot landed she effortlessly casts one of the most powerful spells in the entire story to rid of you. " EDIT: Or, indeed, this. "Played with in Final Fantasy IX, where the Big Bad actually requires getting beaten around by the heroes in order to gather enough energy to transform into his final boss form, which naturally results in a preview of how insanely overpowered you've helped him become. "
Some Sort Of Troper: We should have made this clear some time ago since it came up back when the page was being rennamed/crafted. This page is not going to degenerate into a collective store of all bad attempt by tropers to mark anything they don't like from the real world as being an Epic Fail. Nobody did any of it for your amusement and possible nobody else shares in your sense of self-gratification. I promised to burn any such complaints-hidden-as-examples, I'm sure many others will leap to do so and thus they will be purged.
