Other Media / Awesome

We haven't forgotten about anything else, have we? Nope...not anymore. Extreme coolness even extends outside the realms of television and film, as discussed below.

CCGs Storyline

Legend of the Five Rings, being an Asian heroic fantasy setting, with over ten years of a continuous storyline, is of course chock-full of them, with most factions within the game having gotten several. Among the characters that have gotten the most:
- Hida Kisada, Magnificent Bastard , has had many of them, starting with the flavor text of his original version: "Your knowledge cannot save you. Your magic cannot save you. Nothing can save you."
  - But the greatest of them was perhaps outside the storyline itself: when Kisada died, he became the subject of an 80-person wake. On top of his achievements within the story, when's the last time you saw a wake for a CCG character?
  - What can you say when the writer creates what was supposed to be his original death (by being skewered by one of the most powerful Imperial artifacts), and had a hard time not writing "Is that all you fucking got?!?"
- Yoritomo had several of those as well.
  - On the day of the Final Battle between humanity and Darkness, when, after routing the forces of darkness' reinforcements, he threatened to attack the forces of Good unless the leaders of the storyline's seven great clans acknowledged his own (until then) minor clan as an equal. The gambit was successful.
  - When the Dragon of Water, a divine being, approached him to seek his battered clan's twenty strongest samurai to take them into the land of darkness on what was almost certain to be a suicide mission: "I am my twenty strongest samurai." (To which his adopted son, whose loyalties had been questioned until then, added, "And I am twenty-one.")
  - Which was echoed several years later when Yoritomo's daughter found herself facing her Arch-Enemy 's six strongest warriors alone. "Fool. Don't you know? Your men are outnumbered, twenty to six." she wins the fight, go on to fight her nemesis, then, after being disarmed and skewered, actually shoves both her nemesis and herself in front of a living cannon about to fire. They both die.
- Bayushi Kwanchai, an unkillable badass whose divine gift is luck that rivals the gods, had his moment of awesome when, after dispatching a dozen flesh eating demons, takes his dead uncle and cradles his lifeless body. Not awesome because of the drama, but awesome because the head of the Imperial Families is watching and ignoring Kwanchai basically hugging a dead body, which is a crime punishable by death in Rokugan, because he's afraid for his life if he tells Kwanchai to stop.
  - Kwanchai topped himself when he returned to the site of his uncle's death, opened the portal to the realm of the flesh-eating demons, and stepped inside so as to close the portal, condemning himself to an eternity of suffering.
  - And then there was Winter Court, a canon play-by-post RPG set up by AEG, in which two characters discussed throwing paper shurikens at Kwanchai, and not wondering how he would react, but quote 'how many survivors would there be?".
  - Kwanchai's luck was inherited from his master, Bayushi Tangen, who saw his inability to die as a massive failure. This trait also carries over to anyone who studies under their school. They are seen as suicidally insane and entire armies start getting scared when a single Bitter Lies swordsman starts running towards them.
- While on the topic of Winter Court, one cannot help but note that it was Bayushi Kaukatsu's (Kwanchai's aforementioned uncle) three-months-long Moment of Awesome, where nobody even breathed without his written say-so. Made all the more awesome when it was revealed he had conned the entire Court into ridiculously overestimating his faction's actual influence.
- Even then-Dragon Daigotsu has had his Moment of Awesome, when he launched an attack against the realm of the Dead, then allowed the very incarnation of Death to skewer him with his spear...so that he could get close enough to stick a cursed artifact on the incarnation's face, to force it to release Daigotsu's dark God Fu Leng, from the prison his soul had been trapped in.
- Moto Chagatai.
  - We found out the answer to the question: who could possibly kill Moto Chagatai? The answer turned out to be that the only thing that could kill the Khan...IS the Khan.
  - There was this one time Moto Chagatai went into death's realm with a friend to rescue his grandfather's soul. On their way back, they were confronted by the ten Gods of Death and their minions. His reaction? "You take the ten thousand on the left, you take the ten thousand on the right. I'll take the gods."
  - Even more than Hida Kisada, Daigotsu's plots that somehow always work out or the entirety of any other plot device used, Moto Chagatai's Karma Houdini there, as well as the lack of real caring displayed by the Empire at large to his roaring rampage that resulted in the death of the entire Toturi family line (in usual AEG hamfisted manner) and the Emperor's wife, is quite ridiculous. Even if you're a Unicorn player!
- One of the first major storyline tournaments brought forth two from the players. The players of all other factions went after the Shadowlands Horde with a vengeance since the victory of the Horde would spell "a thousand years of darkness" for Rokugan. There was much cheering when the head writer tore apart the "evil wins" ending script. Then at the finals the Lion and Crane players stated that they were not interested in fighting each other, only in stopping Fu Leng. This lead to the Lion and Crane champions cooperating to strike down Fu Leng in storyline.
To be fair, L5R is far from the only CCG with awesome characters. However, if all you have to go by are the art and snippets of flavor on the cards themselves (rather than being able to also draw upon extensive secondary sources), then deciding what is or isn't a proper CMOA isn't always easy. That said, I'm reasonably sure that this little guy is having one right there...

Eastern European Animation

Swans of Nepryadva is an animated commemoration of one of the most famous and glorious battles in the Russian history - The Battle of Kulikovo, which took place in the late XIV century and played a vital role in the liberation of Russia from the Mongolian reign. The movie is charged with badass awesomeness fuelled by magnificent music, but THE moment is the intervention of The Cavalry (literal) near the end. "Now it's time! Go forth, brothers!" Damn, I still can't watch the scene with a quiet heart.
Mowgli: unlike in most versions, in Soviet Russia Mowgli actually grows into a badass jungle warrior and the leader of the wolf pack. How badass? Well, he rips Sher-Khan's maw open with his bare hands, that's how.

Poker

In the 2004 World Series of Poker, during a side event, 23-year-old Scott Fischman faced Joe Awada heads up for the championship. Fischman was all-in (if he lost the hand, Awada would win), and only one of the two 7s left in the deck would save him. Sure enough, a 7 came on the river (the last card dealt in the hand), giving Fischman the chip lead. On the very next hand, he's dealt a pair of aces, puts Awada all-in, and wins the hand and the bracelet. One week later, he wins another bracelet, becoming the youngest player ever to win two World Series of Poker events.
The most awesome finish to the WSOP Main Event has to be the way it ended in 1998. On the final hand, a full house came out on the board, eights over nines. Scotty Nguyen raised his opponent Kevin McBride all-in, then gave the memorable quote, "You call, gonna be all over, baby!" McBride called, playing the board, and Scotty revealed the nine in his hand, giving him a better full house, nines over eights.
Jack Ury, the oldest person to ever play in the main event at age 96, is pretty much a living, breathing CMoA just for having played in the last three Main Events without fail at his age. But it's this hand where he proves that he is, in-fact, the Badass Great-Grandpa of the WSOP.
- Let's see how long Doyle Brunson lives (and plays), he might still beat him...
From the 2007 World Series of Poker $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship^Explanation, we had Quads over Quads during a hand of Omaha-8.
From Day 1 of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main event, perhaps the most unbelievable bad beat in tournament history—four Aces losing to a Royal Flush.
This hand from the final table from the 2010 World Series of Poker main event. Matthew Jarvis went all-in on pocket nines against Michael Mizrachi's suited Ace-Queen. The favorite going into the flop, Jarvis found himself behind after the flop revealed two Queens and an eight, giving Mizrachi a set of Queens. Then the Turn card was a nine, giving Jarvis a full house (Nines over Queens), and if THAT wasn't enough, the River Card was the Ace of Spades, giving Mizrachi an even better full house (Queens over Aces), and knocking out Jarvis in eighth place.

Interactive Fiction

For most of the course of Spider and Web, the player character is imprisoned in a chair. The manner in which he (or she) finally escapes is definitely awesome.

Parades

Somewhere between Moments of Awesome and Funny: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Rickrolling the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the man himself. Especially for the sheer "Holy What the F___?!?" factor.
- KISS' spectacular performance in 2014. Even the hosts were shaking their heads after that.
- 1991 marked the 65th anniversary of the parade, and they wanted everyone to know that it was indeed magical. How? By getting a real magician to help out with the opening! The entire opening isn't on YouTube yet, but an excerpt can be found here.
- The tribute to Jim Henson is a combination of this, Heartwarming Moment and Tear Jerker.
More a protest than a parade. The Westboro Baptist Church is again trying to "spread their message". They get gatecrashed by the local LGBT community.

Web Communities

When the Sluggy Freelance fan forum got hacked by a script kiddy who went and started to cause chaos, once the situation became apparent almost the entire collective forum proceeded to mock his piss poor planning, his bad grammar, and his power tripping in general. It was a glorious few hours.
The College Roomies from Hell!!! forum had a similar event minus the hacking when a troll posted a thread entitles "I just have to say..." with the text of the first post reading "...that I have no respect for anybody with any authority on this forum". After one of the regulars pointed out just how much of a lame trolling this was, this rapidly turned into dozens of pages of the locals having fun throwing lame insults at each other.
The Card Master Conflict forums have a habit of doing this too, as the mods seem to take an almost sadistic pleasure in picking apart trolls and spammers. For the forum regulars, it's become an event not unlike a random barbecue: everyone gathers to either watch or actively join in, and a good time is had by all!
Something like this happened on Court Records Forums. Someone calling himself "Cock Mongler" decided to try his hand at trolling. The problem? His trolling sucked. The Doctor's showdowns with him were hilarious.
HL2.net's Stern Ascension - a guy called Cpt Stern had almost 30000 posts, and for his 29999th post, he made a countdown thread, with everyone Wild Mass Guessing what the next member title is. Then a lot of regulars changed their avatars to the one Stern uses, or a variation (the French Ninja one comes to mind). Stern didn't post for a few days, so needless to say, the forumites got a bit bored and crazy, so Sulkdodds, a 'super mod' and possibly the most active member of staff on the forum went on a rampage, duplicating, merging and creating threads, with such jems as 'Stern's Countdown To Concealed Weapons In Poland' emerging. By time Stern posted, his post cound was reset, his member title was changed to 'sockmonkey' (without capitalization) and Sulkdodds had his mod powers taken away, albeit temporarily - everyone treated him as a martyr, and made requests for him to get his powers back. And so, the status quo was restored, barring a few Continuity Nods, such as Stern's new member title and the community blaming strange happening on 'the Ascension'.
Roleplaying a game of Paranoia on IRC. The character in question had the secret mutant ability to melt objects he touched. Thanks to the good-natured douchebaggery of the DM playing Friend Computer, the character was saddled with the annoying rank of "Team Groomer", having to make sure his teammates were properly hygienic. After one of his fellow teammates got close to murdering the head of the underground rebellion group he was secretly apart of, he used his title of Team Groomer to help the teammate by fixing his ruffled hair - And then pressed his hand onto his head and melted his brain.
If you're going to write legal threats to The Pirate Bay, don't use the same form letter twice.
On the Customer Service Forums of World of Warcraft, <GM> Batta had an awesome moment by delivering this smackdown. After somebody complained about getting banned for "discussing an in-game item," Batta told him that "There is still a distinction, however, between discussing the item as it pertains to the game, and commenting in the World Trade channel about said item in one's face while drunk at a frat party."
Found this in the entry on Moe:
In the Harry Potter books and movies, Luna "Loony" Lovegood is considered by some to be moe, even causing Anonymous to have the unusual reaction of "I want to date her and meet her parents" rather than "I want to have violent, squicky sex with her, then kill her"
- Yes, something actually elicited a shred of humanity from 4chan. The four horsemen should be arriving any moment now.
- Similarly, 4chan loves Yotsuba&! in the same way the rest of us do, by really liking her. Not the usual version of love for which 4chan is known. If 4chan goes out of their way to protect you, that is something. It definitely helps that she is ridiculously cute and pretty awesome herself.

Machinima

In the works of Oxhorn, from this alone, any and all of the musical numbers.

ARGs

Just what the hell was eon8? Nothing. But for a few weeks, the whole internet was wondering. And that was the point. Apparently, putting up a mysterious web page with a target-dotted map of the world and veiled references to various plans (and codebooks!) can freak out thousands of people quite easily if you cover your tracks well enough.
The March 1, 2010 update for Portal was a big Moment of Awesome for both the run-of-the-mill internet user and Valve alike. For the users, Valve first mysteriously released an unannounced update, the first in a long while. This update added an achievement, green lights to the radios, and a static effect when a radio is taken to a certain location. Working together, the users of both Steam User's Forums and Facepunch found the meaning to the code in some of the sound files, ran the other static files through a program that made pictures out of sound, solved the mystery of the photos, connected to a BBS connection, and worked until the official announcement of Portal 2. For Valve, they put together the puzzle, knowing that those of the Internet would solve it so they could safely announce the game. Truly a memorable moment for all those involved, solving and spectating.

"Dad's Home!"

The titular Dad of Dad's Home is so badass he deserves his own category. Among the many things he does:
- Puts out a fire that spontaneously ignited on the top of his head using the family cat.
- Jams a television set through the door of a fridge.
- Lassos a keg of beer from a moving truck and punches through the top, then kicks the keg clear across the street into someone else's house
- Pulls a broadsword out of his mouth, then smushes a fly with the flat side and throws it so it impales the neighbour's mailbox
- Snaps his fingers to disappear in an explosion and teleport to the front door with his head again on fire (before again using the cat to put it out
- Shoots Frickin' Laser Beams out of his eyes
- Pulls the old "whisk a sheet from under a table of plates and glasses without knocking them over" trick while balanced on one leg, then kicks the table over
- When the police finally arrive, he calls down a bolt of lightning to hit him and give him a totally bitching electric guitar, then creates a stage and massive speakers out of the ground and finishes by rocking out to a guitar arrangement of the F-Zero theme.
- Really, this is all summed up by the end - "And so, Dad was able to avoid having to face the consequences for his inexplicable acts of random violence... by rocking out really hard."
  - "Also, his head caught fire again. What's up with that?"
And the moments get added onto in "Dad's at Work." For starters, nearly every sudden movement he makes explodes, if not sounds like a gunshot.
And then in the newly released Dadgame, you take control of this unbelievably badass fellow and ruin your boss' shit as a starting level in story mode (he deserves it). He then goes on to:
- Block a ninja's attacks with his briefcase.
- Fight the police force single handedly.
- Defeat a slew of robots.
- Defeat two robots from previous works of the game's creator.
- Defeat the creator of the game himself.
- And completely obliterate the town's mall.
  - And at the end they had a barbeque. It was nice.

YouTube Poop

WalrusGuy's last poop.
Not really a YTP...but it kind of is...but it isn't. No matter how you look at it, though, this video is awesome!
The beginning of "MEET THE SPECTATOR": The Engineer playing "Smoke on the Water." Also a Funny Moment.

Wargaming

In The Battle of Brunei, a 1998 MBX using the Harpoon and Tac Ops systems as a ruleset, a player on the US side received from the GM an intercepted weapons purchase order between Iran and Malaysia. He spotted the word "Kockums" and did some internet research. Then he got a blurred pic of a submarine from the GM and figured out it was one of two sub types- much faster than the GM expected. The later US anti-submarine effort that resulted probably saved a couple of US ships.
In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California.
In a 25 mm-scale Napoleonic minatures game, one player was noted for having the entire Grand Armee - 600,000 beautifully painted figures. We didn't know just how complete the army was until a counter representing the "Fog of War" was replaced by what appeared to be a regiment of Imperial Guard cavalry...but which, on closer inspection, was revealed to be the Imperial Guard's BAND. And, as 18th and 19th Century regiments vied to make their bands as flashy as possible, the figures were things of utter beauty. It was simultaneously a Moment of Awesome and Funny.
Along the dame lines, someone was demoing a system for wargaming those plastic army men (called War P.I.G.'s (for Plastic Infantry Guys)). Pretty standard teams - we had more guys, they had a tank. Naturally, our first priority was to shoot the tank. In fact, whenever anyone started saying "Maybe..." the other people would interrupt "Shoot the tank!" As it happened, my squad was a bunch of riflemen, with one kick-ass sniper. The designer/referee/gamemaster ruled that I could shoot AT the tank, but it would take three sixes (the game used three six-sided dice, all rolled at once, to determine results) to take it out (yes, I know the odds were one in a million, not the one in 216 this implied, but hey, I wasn't going to object, and the other side didn't). Naturally, I managed to roll the one-in-216 that would explode the tank on the next roll. (We reached a negotiated settlement that the lucky hit didn't destroy the tank, just did lots of damage to the crew.)
This is more of a "look who had a wargaming past"/"one of us"-type "win", but when he was growing up in Birmingham, England, a bespectacled boy was passionate about wargaming. He also took up playing music and later became one of the biggest pin-up teen idol figures of the 1980s. His name? John Taylor of Duran Duran. Thus proving that a wargaming kid can grow up to be the object of many girls' fantasies.

The Talmud

Undoubtedly the most hilariously awesome moment in the Talmud is in Bava Metzia 59b. Rabbi Eliezer insists that his interpretation of the law is correct, despite being in a minority of one, and God himself speaks from Heaven to say "Uh, guys, he's right about this one." And then Rabbi Joshua tells God to butt out. And CITES SCRIPTURE for that request (Deuteronomy 30:12). And God backs off.
- Before that, R. Joshua had already gotten the walls of the building they were in to stop caving in just by saying, "HEY! We're studying Torah in here! You stay out of this!"

NaNoWriMo

Admit it, when you get down to it, actually finishing the novel is a Moment of Awesome all by itself. Just getting to 50k words certainly feels more like a Moment of Awesome, especially for first timers.
Plenty of people have had their NaNoWriMo novels published. Presumably, they spent the other 11 months editing.

Sports

The Wild Card berthed 2004 Red Sox's backs were against the wall in the 2004 ALCS they lost to their hated rivals the Yankees the night before to a whopping 19-8 at this point the Red Sox were going on an 86 year drought of no World Series titles. All hope was lost for Game 4 Rivera was brought in to shut the Red Sox down, until pinch runner Dave Roberts stole 2nd base, Bill Miller shot a single into center making sure Roberts made it to home tying the game. The game went on for 3 more innings till David Ortiz shot a Moonshot to right field winning the game keeping the Sox alive. The Red Sox managed to come back from a 3-0 deficient the first and only MLB team to do this and ended Winning the World Series ending the 86 year Curse of the Bambino

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