You’re lying half-naked in bed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey next to you. The glow of your laptop’s LCD screen barely illuminates the room and the sound of your sobbing drifts through the air. Tears are streaming down your cheeks and your face is scrunched into a miserable contortion of eyes, nose and mouth. You have been rendered an emotional wreck after watching the final episode of Lost. The ugly cry has consumed you. When dealing with pop culture, you’ll be inclined to have a lot of feelings. But when exactly are you most susceptible to ugly crying? Here are the moments that may result in a need for tissues and ice cream.
Movies: When Peter Parker has to decline Gwen Stacy because of his promise to her dying father
Peter spends almost the entirety of The Amazing Spider-Man courting blonde bombshell Gwen Stacy, only to promise her father at the climax of the movie that he won’t see her for matters of safety. Although he ends up breaking that promise, the possibility of the two not ending up together is completely heartwrenching. When two characters in a movie are so obviously meant to love one another, and that happiness isn’t achieved, it’s hard for audiences. If even people on the big screen can’t find love, then everyone in reality is sort of screwed. And the thought of that will surely open the floodgates of tears.
Video Games: When you keep on dying in Kingdom Hearts while fighting the last boss
This is frustrating for two reasons: There’s the long-ass video you have to sit through every time you fail and, well, you keep on dying. Instead of sadness or happiness summoning the ugly cry, it’s aggravation in this moment. You’re so close to completing the level, or even the whole game, and a boss is just too powerful for you to finish off. Then the video is almost there to just tease and piss you off even more, punishing you for not thinking of the right strategy to take down the villain at hand. And the only thing worse than a sweaty game controller is one lubed up with your own tears.
Television:When Joss Whedon kills off one of your favorite characters
To avoid any spoilers, I’m not going to go into specifics of who dies within the Whedonverse. But for those that are familiar with Whedon’s work, they understand the emotional pain that comes from one of his character’s deaths. And even when it’s not Whedon killing off people, it’s emotionally stressful seeing any characters you’ve been attached to being written off. Especially if you’ve followed the show since the pilot through six seasons. Prepare to be on ugly cry watch for any season finales.
Music:Whenever anything Vanessa Carlton comes on
Let’s be honest, who wouldn’t start bawling during one of the female songwriter’s ballads. When you’re driving by yourself to school listening to “A Thousand Miles” or “White Houses”, you better make sure the tears don’t blur your vision. There’s a lot of different music that will most definitely incur ugly crying. With music and lyrics, there’s such a connection to the soul that you practically start throwing up emotion if just the right memory is called upon with a single song verse. If you ever find yourself in need of a good cry, try listening to “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind. Shit’s intense.
Books: When you see yourself as Katniss and your little sister as Prim in the Hunger Games
As kids, we envisioned ourselves as the storybook characters in tales of dragons and far off places. Nothing is more stressful than putting your feet in the hunting boots of a character that gambles her life in order to save her sibling’s. So when Katniss shouts the iconic, “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” things get pretty misty. We exercise our imaginations and fantasies by vicariously living through these figures in literature, all the while teaching us lessons about life. And whenever those lessons are the hard ones, you might just break down, envisioning yourself in the situation. Just try to keep the tears off the pages if you borrowed the book from the library.