In between the horrible Player Punches and the Tear Jerkers, occasionally comes a moment in SDM's roleplays that is just plain frickin' awesome.
- When the Black Spawn enters Gensokyo in Hellgate 2 Part 2, it comes with some sort of barrier that renders any damage dealt to it null and void. No one's attacks did anything to it. No one's, that is, except for SDM's god-aura powered Megaton Punch. Yes. A punch completely broke the Black Spawn's invincible barrier and rendered its form unstable. Commence wailing.
- Also, breaking out of the Black Spawn's nightmarish hold and dishing a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the weakened abomination was really cathartic. The same goes to the Spawn battle in Hellgate 2 Part 3.
- Arachnos' reaction upon figuring out how Future Flandre has been manipulated by Hellgate, full of cold, contained, yet unstoppable fury: "Demonic. Twisted. Evil. Sick. Perverted. House." has become legendary.
- Xat roleplay examples:
- Executor single-handedly stops T-Arachnos from wangsting, by roleplaying as Anathemus no less (made much Harsher in Hindsight after the revelation that the four Anathemites are, well, spawns of Anathemus). No act of unstoppable divine power will ever compare to the epic feat of actually shutting up a wangsting Arachnos. It wasn't a temporary solution either - both Orachnos and T-arachnos have been almost 100% wangst-free ever since!
- Once the Anathemites' powers are fully mastered, they pull off two in quick succession. One is beating the shit out of Nihilius in an epic revenge for stalking them through the Warped Realms and almost killing Executor in Equestria. The other is beating the shit out of Arachna for, well, being a major incompetent bitch. Yes, she really had it coming for a long time now.
- The Dark Beast arc as a whole is considered by SDM as his best work yet. Standouts include:
- Fluttershy gets one in the -Ursa- battle by being absolutely instrumental in the defeat of a Beast that seemed all but unstoppable. Granted, all she did was hug the damn thing, but anyone who says it doesn't take balls to hug a giant fucking bear wielding the power of the stars themselves and infected with a Hate Plague is welcome to try. Bonus points for doing it in full knowledge that the Ursa must and will be killed thanks to her distraction, despite her love for all animals.
- The last phase of the battle against Dark Beast -Arachnos-. Especially the epic speech of the heroes just before blasting him with the Elements of Harmony.
- While Dark Beast -Kanako- loses some points on the awesome scale for being the first Dark Beast to do absolutely nothing, he gains a lot by being the first one to actually snap out of the affliction on his own.
- The battle against Dark Beast -Celestia-. If fighting a planet-sized blazing Nightmare that attacks by throwing planets and gathering all the stars in the sky into an unstoppable superlaser is not awesome, something is wrong with your definition of awesome. Bonus points for being defeated by reminding her of how much her world and her friends mean to her, causing her sheer will to overpower The Corruption within her. And then she boots Nihilius out into the real world by obliterating her own Dark Barrier with a supernova. HOLY SHIT.
- And then the combined forces of the Factory take on Nihilius. And absolutely destroy him. Awesomely.
- The Anathemites finally Awakening and beating the ever-loving shit out of Nihilius, for good this time! (Sorta. He'll come back from it eventually, but probably not anytime soon.)
- During the battle against the Shadow Factory, Nihilius Remnant leader Vocus-Six managed to use his Device to steal part of the Anathemites' powers and combined them with Valis' Anti-Nihility into a powerful weapon. He managed to completely incapacitate both the Anathemites and the Rainbow Factory agents by firing massive amounts of Nihility and Anti-Nihility around, prompting SDM (who had already gotten an awesome moment before that by showing up for the battle and breaching the Factory) to perform a Heroic Sacrifice... except he fails to stop Vocus and gets disintegrated. Vocus starts gloating, and then it turns out SDM is Not Quite Dead after all - his KizCo carcass withstood Vocus' assault. The equivalent of SDM's skeleton proceeds to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Vocus' superweapon, winning the day, while Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann music is playing
. - The final episode in the Hellgate arc of Season 4, which otherwise was much heavier on dark moments than awesome ones, is pure epicness:
- The fused Hellgates try to use the Elements of Harmony as fuel for his new Pegasus Device that would drain the life from the whole planet and create them a new God Aura in the process. Turns out, they significantly underestimates their willpower - after just a few minutes, the Device stops functioning, buying the heroes time to thwart Hellgate.
- Despite being powered by three God Auras, Hellgate is still defeated in combat and the sick Factory destroyed.
- With no more plans in store, the Hellgates intend to crush the weakened group into paste with sheer power. Once again, they are counting without the Elements, who (now as immaterial spirits) imbue the group with untold power. Cue total domination of the Hellgate, who had up to that point never suffered any significant defeats from the moment of his introduction (not quite so for O-Hellgate). It all culminates with the Elements banishing the deadly duo from Equestria forever. It's Hellgate's reaction that seals this - after having spent most of his time breaking heroes, he finally finds himself on the receiving end.
- In Hellgate 2 Part 2: What If edition, the eponymous villain gets one by not only giving Arachna an awesome "The Reason You Suck" Speech, but also mortally wounding her. Arachna is a creator Goddess of multiple universes, putting her on a level of power superior to the Christian God. Hellgate kills her. Don't be quick to mourn her: she honestly deserved this.
- SDM jokingly called this moment his best:
SDM: Screw Hellgate. Screw Nihilius. Screw the entire Mythos. Screw making an Arachnos stop wangsting. THIS is my greatest achievement.- And pretty much everything starting from the end of Page 34 onwards. Just as everyone is starting to give up on defeating Hellgate, the two dying gods (Arachna and Enthropod, whose life is bound to Arachna's) have an Enemy Mine moment and infuse the group with their combined divine power. But Hellgate pulls a trick of his own — fusing with the Black Spawn, of all things! A massive battle ensues which sees things like Arachnos and his Chaotic equivalent Squirma Fellbug also joining forces and pulling their own Fusion Dance into a massive insectile aberration. And the climax of the battle involves the group managing to resist Hellgate's Desperation Attack (which involved ripping a rend into Nihility by the way) to deliver a huge No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the villain.
- At the end of Consternation of Fragmented Dreamland, Reimu and Marisa are taking on Phobos' creation: The Nightmare, a living agglomeration of the fears and horrors of everyone in Gensokyo. The Nightmare traps them inside impenetrable boxes as it attacks them, rendering them unable to fight back... that is, until Reimu just goes ahead and rips her spellcards to pieces. She proceeds to "float" out of her box and utterly annihilates Marisa's own. Then Marisa does the same to her own cards, and together they fire an enormous Yin-Yang Spark, which utterly annihilates the enormous meteor the Nightmare was trying to drop on them, as well as the Nightmare itself for good measure.
- Of all people, Cirno gets an entire arc of sheer awesome and Character Development in the Spellcard Tournament episodes, made better by the fact that none of it was planned (the tournament was entirely open-ended and involved quite a good bit of luck):
- In the first round of the tournament, Cirno goes up against Kanako Imrah, being her usual cocky self, and, despite her best efforts, starts getting utterly obliterated. Out of spellcards and on the brink of defeat, Cirno's arrogant facade falters, and she is on the verge of throwing the match until Kusakabe, Aurion, and the rest of the crowd start cheering for her to persevere. Unwilling to let everyone down, Cirno continues the fight, even if it has to be her Last Dance. Instead, capitalizing on a major error by Kanako, Cirno makes it to the draw and then obliterates Kanako in the rematch, moving on to the next round and shows gratitude to the others for, in her own words, "teaching her to hope".
- In the second round, she takes on Reimu Hakurei herself, gets utterly kicked around by Reimu's first spellcard, then flawlessly captures the second and pulls another victory from behind (without a preliminary draw this time). Of all her battles in the tournament this one was probably the least eventful character-wise despite still being very edge-of-your-seat, but the fact that Cirno went against Reimu Hakurei, The Hero of Gensokyo and originator of the very spellcard system and won is kind of a Wham Moment in and of its own.
- In the semi-finals, Cirno faces Aurion - deemed one of the powerhouses and favorites of the tournament - and, as usual, does not have a particularly shining start. Things don't seem to be looking up for her when Aurion is revealed to have turned Indignation, one of his signature Finishing Moves, an electric attack of epic proportions, into a spellcard - both the audience in-game and the players are quick to pronounce Cirno doomed. Instead of playing it safe and hanging back in an attempt to weather the storm, Cirno charges through the godlike attack head-on and delivers the mother of all beatdowns to Aurion while suffering only one hit in the process, then unleashes an icy hell upon him and once again secures an unlikely victory!
- The finale, where she faces Remilia, is kind of a subversion of the usual dynamic - while Cirno's first spellcard falls rather short, she gets into the swing of things much faster than usual, brushes off the vampire's strongest attack like a mild breeze, and dishes out an absolute curbstomp, becoming the uncontested champion of the tournament! The kicker is that, instead of the Unsportsmanlike Gloating you might have expected out of the braggart fairy, she seems genuinely sorry to have trounced the (mortally ill, it should be noted) vampire like that and expresses a desire to face her at her best one day, showing how much she has grown over the course of this tournament and her participation in the Rebellion in general.
