What's you're favorite CMOA that you've written?

Actually, it can be more than one, but I think it'd be cool to see what other people have thought up.

My two? A character drowning a shark- as in, the shark is underwater and drowns- and the main character's ultimate determinator moment at the end- first, volcanic eruption. Keep fighting. Hurricane. Keep fighting. You're one of the only good guys left. Keep fighting. You're body is clinically dead. Keep fighting. You are crushed in a man-made black hole- encourage others to keep up the fight.

So what do you guys have?

My protagonist, Gant, holding back a tank with his bare hands to protect a downed friend. Hes been getting shot up for the past five minutes; now he has to actually keep his ground when a 70-ton vehicle is trying to crush him. He does.

edited 23rd Sep '10 5:32:34 PM by Morgulion

I have a few so far.

Colonel Roy Jansen's Big Damn Heroes moment when his ship the CSS Endeavor is under attack by enemy fighters in Chapter Three "The Endeavor of the Endeavor".

Colonel Barry Smith's Big Damn Heroes moment near the end of Chapter Eight "The Descent Into Hell" where he and his Badass Crew of Assault Team Bravo arrives when the main characters Mat, Tenchi and Daniel are facing a full company sized Preyaran counterattack and they are the only three survivors of their first wave troops.

The entire fight in Chapter Nine "Big Brother Comes" between the green haired Preyaran Soras and Mathias. Especially after the Tear Jerker moment.

Another is the fight/banzai charge at the Preyaran Loyalist camp with Anzan, Parus and the commander of the nearby troops the Hilancer Talen. They hold off dozens of troops after a massive rocket artillery barrage and a banzai charge cuts those three off from the rest. When it's all over only 7 Loyalist troops remain including those three. The rest of the chapter certainly qualifies especially the fight against the Oni M-Tech and the other Tear Jerker moment where Parus is killed.

The last and most recent one I have written so far is the entire vehicle sequence in Chapter Fourteen "The Defense Of Henry's Point". Basically its Badass Driving meets shooting gallery carnage and Made of Explodium coupled with super high speed chasing (at one point the speed exceeds 200 kilometers per hour) and trying to shake a Preyaran Tengu gunship. Couple that with the ending of the chapter where Mat and company call down a Kill Sat (complete with Pillar of Light and A Twinkle in the Sky preceding it) to utterly annihilate the Preyaran assault carrier currently docked in the city.

My protagonist, Thraex, delivers a Groin Attack to a femal Western Terrorist after she attempts to seduce him. Oh, and he cuts her arm off, then smashes her skull in with a shield. EPIC. WIN. Also, shows how much I hate the Double Standard. Would he retain your sympathy, however?

In a couple of posts I've mentioned a fantasy story I tried to write, and how I couldn't figure out how to end it once the characters got the magical sword they'd spent the entire story looking for. I decided to work out what the characters would be likely to do given their previously established personalities, and I realized that Kyle, my supposedly "lovable" Anti-Hero, would kill the rest of them and go on to commit genocide against the nonhumans in the setting.

But that was only one ending of five.

However it went, his first target would be Rose, a kind-hearted Nature Hero who he'd kill before anyone else even realized what was happening, and his next one would be Gail, a mage whose best chance would be to run for dear life. But there was one other surviving character, a fellow named Frederick who claimed he could see how the future was supposed to go but never how it actually went, and who'd supported Kyle solely to avoid worse results if the villains got their hands on the sword—a fellow with very little skill in wielding the staff he carried, but with a great fondness for Rose, and with a preestablished invulnerability to the sword's magic.

In one ending, he stood silently for a moment and looked at Rose's corpse, his expression blank. Then he reached into his pack and took out an empty bottle, not looking at Kyle, who stared at him in bewilderment. He tipped the bottle into Rose's pooling blood, scooped up a little, and threw it in Kyle's face. Then he started swinging his staff and did not stop until what was left was barely recognizable as human.

Yeah, I'm not likely to publish this story.

^^I would love this character. Actually, just for this I want to read your work.

I never have those. More like

Crowning Moment of Everybody Just Lost

for me.

Or is there a Crowning Moment of Awful?

Dr. Kerzach killing his opponent with a letter opener after vicious hand-to-hand battle.

Tre, who breaks through a glass window at high speed in an attempt to break out of "jail" (read: a mall's security department), and survives with minimal cuts. 8 hours later he does it again without any wounds whatsoever.

There's a few awesome moments I have planned for my story.

In one storyline, the city is under attack by a necromancer summoning a horde of zombies, and the heroes have to stop him. Howard, the group's spell caster, attempts to face off the necromancer in a wizard duel, while Zaran holds back the zombie horde (the 3rd protagonist, Phil, is mostly useless here, so he just helps to get some bystandars to safety and provides a distraction). Zaran beats the crap out of the zombies for a while, but since there's hundreds of them she gets overran. Howard can't match the necromancer's power and is barely able to shield himself from his spells, but when the necromancer gets distracted he smashes him in the face with a quitar (it makes sense in the context), and point out that while he may be not as strong magically, he's not a frail old man like the necromancer.

In another storyline, Phil manages to stop an evil cult from committing a ritual sacrifice by shooting the sacrificial dagger off the cult leader's hand, ruining the ritual in process (so what if he was actually aiming for a headshot?).

Not quite as epic, but still kinda awesome, quite early in the story Zaran, after leaving after an argument with the other protagonists, comes to help them when they're getting their asses kicked, after which everybody apologises eachother.

The most awesome thing in the whole story is probably the final battle. The Herald (Big Bad and a Physical God), has captured Zaran in order to lure her father lord Maladath to him, and demands his life in exchange for her safety. He declines and says he will not just surrender without a fight. This is despite the fact tat he has pretty much no chanse of winning and he knows it. They have a fairly long fight, but all of lord Maladath's attempts to harm the Herald are fruitless. He does, however, buy everybody else enough time to cast a very powerful spell that incapacitates the Herald, atleast temporarily, after which Maladath uses his last strenght to drop what is essentially a Magical Nuke directly on the Herald (who is now unable to counter the spell or shielf himself). He was prepared to die in the blast himself, but Zaran manages to get him to safety (and has a smaller awesome moment when she picks up her father's sword to hold off the Herald who is starting to slowly regain his power as they escape).

Earth fleet is like "wooooooooooohooooooo" mopping up the remnants of the alien fleet.

Then, alien mothership jumps in and is like "lol hi guize".

Then, a different alien race's fleet jump in and is like "need some help, Earth?" and Earth's fleet is all like "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE THE BEST TIMING EVER".

Battle ensues. Alien mothership jumps out and the two other fleets remain.

Earth fleet is like, "so... uh... who are you exactly?" because they just got assisted by an alien fleet that they didn't even know existed.

Does this count as a CMOA? I dunno... everything's pretty awesome in the middle of the night.

Is there a reason Tre is immune to glass cuts? Because that's heading more towards a crowning moment of implausibility. Besides, it's more badass if he actually does get cut.

I'll leave the crowning to any fans I somehow manage to pick up, I think; only they can really decide on the difference between something I thought was cool but didn't work and something that makes them say HOLY FUCKING SHIT right out loud.

I do quite like Dare and Lucy's little moment to shine at the end of my magical girl thing. The Dragon has been beating the shit out of Dare, all while delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her, finally ending off with...

Aaron: *malicious grin of triumph* ... I dunno, whaddayou think?

Dare: *coughs up blood; whispers something*

Aaron: What? *leans in, cocks an ear in mockery* I'm sorry, I couldn't hear over the sound of you failing miserably.

Dare: *raises head; smiles dreamily up at him* I said, I think you didn't watch enough children's cartoons as a kid.

Lucy: *shoots Aaron in the head at point-blank range*

Dare: *winces* Aw, dude, did you have to go for the headshot?! *coughs* I've got open wounds, here!

^^ I guess. I guess it might be a good way for him to (partially) get over his fear of blood. (I have to save a bit of that though, because one of the later parts of the book relies on it still being there.

Oh, Character Development, so hard to pull off, but so rewarding eventually.

After spending fifty-plus chapters killing heroes, devastating continents, and causing some very forceful remodeling of the space-time continuum, my Big Bad ends up having his powers sealed, his movements stopped, and is on the receiving end of a ghostly Shin Shoryuken by the hero.

But it doesn't end there. After getting brutally beaten down, the baddie stumbles to his throne and takes a seat - defeated, but still under the impression that he's still the king. The hero's response? Punch his heart out and take the throne as his own.

It's kinda cool, is what I'm trying to say.

Saving Japan from a nuclear powered Kaiju by actually going into the creatures mouth and activating a bomb before jumping out of the creatures mouth and using an experimental and tempremental jetpack thats shuts down while flying 200 feet in the air, surviving all of that and ending up with a permanent white streak in his hair.

Schwarzenegger. Willis. Stalone. PUSSIES!!

There is only Roberts.

Several from the Doorstop, either written or yet to be:

• A living computer stymies a millions-strong interdimensional invasion fleet's attempts to evacuate by encoding its communications into badly-translated Swahili, before erasing the whole armada by modifying the right person's memories.

• A cornered naval officer, his ship crippled and at the mercy of the enemy, plays along with his opposite number's Hannibal Lecture long enough for the rest of his fleet to escape... before detonating a badly-damaged Wave Motion Gun in her face.

• A mage, who is nearly killing herself shielding her partner and said partner's psychotic little sister from a supernatural hellstorm, reacts to an enemy squad sent to retrieve said sister by... expanding the shield and offering them shelter as well. All inside the shield survive, mostly because the enemy troops insisted on giving their saviour medical assistance.

• A Deadly Doctor pauses in the middle of a battlefield operation to stop the forty-metre-tall death-machine rampaging towards her field hospital by opening a small portal into the pilot's skull, sticking her fingers inside his primary motor cortex, and wiggling them around.

• A very determined bodyguard gives an Eldritch Abomination the Friendly Handshake.

• A deranged Xanatos Sucker gets his own back on the Big Bad, another Eldritch Abomination, by stealing its powers using only his own weaponised daddy issues.

edited 27th Sep '10 5:22:07 PM by Iaculus

The Ensemble Dark Horse translates his fury at the Magnificent Bastard creator of his rickety little bubble Universe into action by bending the spacetime mutations of his world, which manifest as Eldritch Abominations, and using them to burst through into the real universe, whereupon he uses them to break through the hospital building and shoots said universe-creator in the skull, then another time, and again, just to be certain.

edited 27th Sep '10 2:37:03 PM by Dormouse

I don't think I've written any yet...although I'm not sure whether my readers would agree.

However, this side story is meant to be over the top that way. Summary of the plot (yeah, fairly simple; it was a nice break from my usual stuff):

• "There's a zombie out there."
• No, there's not. Zombies aren't real.
• -nightmare sequence-
• OH SHIT A ZOMBIE! EXCEPT IT'S A ROBOT!
• -kills with a pair of pinking shears-

Ironically, the main character here would cringe at being listed as a CMOA. He doesn't really like being seen that way; it's nowhere near as fun as it sounds.

edited 28th Sep '10 3:12:36 AM by harmattane

The invincible Dark Action Girl is defeated by the weak wizard by temporarily turning him into a boy, and then kicking him in the balls with ROBOT LEGS.

A mysterious waif girl relieves a mother of her guilt and torment by driving the car crashing headlong into the concrete wall. They aren't killed, if you wonder. It doubles as a heartwarming moment also.

edited 29th Sep '10 9:08:26 AM by QQQQQ

The Byronic Hero fights Archdemon Cartarus. After unleashing his demon side unwittingly, hero proceeds to pwn Cartarus in a particularly painful Curb-Stomp Battle harshly contrasting the earlier Curb-Stomp Battle Cartarus delivered to the Hero.

^ I think we need a trope for that. The villain curbstomping the hero only for the hero to realize his full power and curbstomp him right back in the climactic battle is one of my favorite narrative tricks. Counter Curbstomp, maybe?

More on topic, I'm inclined to agree with Furiko Maru that it's a bit presumptuous to label your own CMO As — and besides, most crowning moments are only awesome because they've been carefully built up, and have a lot of supporting context. Still, it's fun to dish about the scenes we're most excited about, and far be it from me to poop a good party, so here's one I thought was pretty cool:

Reowan, the character in question, gained some notoriety in his youth for supposedly taking down a dozen men singlehandedly. The rub of it is, the situation got much exaggerated by rumor and hearsay, and he actually lost that fight, and pretty badly.

Wind the clock forward forty years. Reowan's a badass grandpa these days, but far past his prime. He's also blind and crippled now. In a moment of anger-induced carelessness, he allows himself to get cornered by a hunter-killer team about a dozen men strong. Naturally, they pick up on the irony and mock him before attacking.

Through some ingenuity and some *very* underhanded tricks he scrapes through by the skin of his teeth and puts them all down. He barely survives the encounter, but manages to genuinely pull off the feat he was dishonestly acclaimed for when he was in his prime.

Thanks...that fight was my favorite to write. Cartarus the Archdemon was a fun story element, well, until his Tear Jerker of a demise after that fight.

Cartarus had a Crowning Moment of his own when he utterly Curb Stomps the previously undefeated Prince Lucas of Phoebonon. Prince Lucas is a Psycho for Hire Ax-Crazy Hero Killer, but his fight with Cartarus showed there is always a bigger fish when your evil. Adding more awesome? Lucas was directly responsible for Cartarus turning to an Archdemon in the first place, so it was very cathartic to write that.

Another CMOA for Johnson: Kall E Vaalnicus has released Chimera Palamicana, a creature which is basically High Octane Nightmare Fuel in a physical form. Johnson shows that he controls his demon side and fires a Cero-like blast through it in fifty places, but since he cannot control the exact amount of energy he uses yet, he actually had launched 100 beams, but only fifty of them connected. Kall follows that up by merging with his monster, literally devouring his Dragon.

Two scientists are talking. Both roboticists. Byron, my Main Character is asking Dr Tael to show him Tael's Greatest Work so that he may Steal it.

Tael disagrees because he's Genre Savvy. Byron gets pissed at Tael and steps close to him, nose-tonose. (is there a trope for that. Almost Fighting Nose to Nose stance?)

Byron: You almost got me there. Tael: What gave it away. Byron: Tear ducts. You forgot to put them in. For such an amazing programmer, your robots really are second class. Tael: Very well then, would you like to know what happened to the real doctor? Byron: Not really. Now I'm going to turn you off, take you home, and reverse engineer you into my work.

/FIGHT ENSUES\