Tear Jerker / Overly Sarcastic Productions

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Hou Yi and Chang'e, the original Star-Crossed Lovers.

When you're learning about history and major figures from mythology, bad times, real-life parallels, and constant struggles with every known foe possible are always inevitable to be had in every story. At this point, every listed example from any of OSP's videos speak for themselves— after all, what'd you expect from "sarcasm"? Constant levity?

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Miscellaneous Myths

• Odysseus' dog Argus dying of old age right after getting to see his master one last time. Red certainly thinks so, given that there's a cutaway to her openly crying and letting out a Big "WHY?!".
• Apollo mourning the death of Hyacinthus, with who he had an actually functional relationship and whose death wasn't his fault. He's unable to save his lover, but manages to turn him into a flower.
• In the second interpretation of the "Hou Yi and Chang'E" myth, neither of the freshly-mortal couple want to take the single dose of immortality elixir and regain their divinity, since this would mean abandoning their partner, as gods cannot interfere with mortals. Then, one of Hou Yi's apprentices hears of the elixir, and attacks Chang'E while Hou Yi is away. Chang'E, not wanting this selfish man to attain immortality, sacrifices her happiness by drinking it instead, becoming a goddess once again. She goes to the moon, closer to earth than heaven, but they can still never see each other again. Even though this is the "good ending", it isn't exactly cheerful, as Hou Yi, still mortal, eventually dies, leaving Chang'E alone on the moon.
  Chang'E: :(
• "The Five Suns" has Chalchiuhtlicue being accused by Tezcatlipoca of only doting on her humans because she's such a "poser" and doing it for the attention. This hurts her feelings so badly that she cries blood for over 50 years and winds up inadvertently annihilating the civilisation she loved so much.
• In "The Animal Brides", there's something sobering about the selkie going through Happy Ending Override. One would think she had heard the last of her "husband" after escaping him and moving on with her life with her selkie boyfriend. But years later, that new life is negated by her ex-husband shamelessly killing her now-mate and pups. Thankfully, she gets back at him shortly after, but it's still to the extent of cursing him and everyone else on the island who wasn't responsible for his actions.
• Theseus firmly establishes himself as a massive asshole worthy of Zeus by abandoning his wife on a desert island for no reason (although later myths retconned it into Divine Intervention). Red draws her crying on the beach, until Dionysus kindly offers her a drink.
• "Pride Tales" has the story of Tamamizu, a fox spirit who fell in love with a human girl, but was aware that marrying a fox spirit would put her in danger, so instead spent years pining, becoming her dearest friend and even helping her get engaged to a nice guy. In the end, the heartache is too much to bear, so they disappear into the night, leaving a note explaining themselves. Red's illustration shows the girl in near-tears as she reads the note and finds out the truth about her friend and how much they suffered.
• "Hades and Persephone" has Red voice the saddest thing about growing up watching Disney's "Hercules": that sooner or later, their shining preconceptions of the Greek Gods becomes disillusioned with time.
  • In particular, she brings up how Zeus' actual "marriage proposal" to Hera is something she's unlikely to talk about in the series as it's so far from consensual that she can't make jokes about it^{For the curious} Hera knew the kind of person Zeus was and had no interest in marrying him, but he disguised himself as a cuckoo during a storm so she would take pity on the bird and bring it close enough for him to... well.. Additionally, she notes that when she does bring up the more pernicious acts of the Greek gods, it ends up feeling almost disingenuous to talk about anything else they did, as these actions are usually so disgustingly heinous that it feels like it negates the good things they've done.
  • She also brings up a sad but fitting parallel to reality, as the Gods' worse actions are often given the same treatment as the transgressions of real world celebrities—namely, "We love them for the stories they gave us and just pretend not to notice the part where they won't stop assaulting underage fans."
  • Even though she's a pretty possessive mama, one can't help but feel bad for Demeter when she's reduced to taking a job as a mortal nursemaid just so she can cope with her daughter's abduction and have somebody to mother again. There's even a theory that she tried to turn the baby prince immortal as a Replacement Goldfish, because men had more say in their marriage than women and a boy wouldn't be whisked away from her as Persephone was.
    Demeter: (to her infant charge) Never let the world change you, little one.
• "Loki" has relatively few moments that are mostly brushed past due to the overall comedic tone of the video, but there are a few stick out.
  • The story of the binding of the Fenris wolf. Because the Aesir can't just throw him away like they did with the other two children of Angrboda, they take the pup in and raise him as one of their own, with Tyr even becoming close friends with him. Eventually, though, they become nervous and start trying to restrain him, eventually leading them to tie him down for the rest of his life with Gleipnir, which causes Fenrir to bite Tyr's hand off. The image of Tyr kneeling in front of his once-friend, forced to betray him out of duty to his family, combined with Fenrir's defeated pose, is enough to make any dog-lover shed a tear. To quote a commenter, "He's just lying there, having been betrayed out of self-fulfilling fear, with his mouth wrapped around the one hand which dared to feed him." Ouch.
  • Hel being cast into Hel for the crime of having a prophecy about her. While the dialogue is comedic, seeing an infant alone in such a gloomy place with only ghosts for company would make any parent upset.
• Medea. Where to begin? Imagine being her and falling in love with Jason (because of the Powers that Be) and being convinced by him to sacrifice everything you hold dear and betray and/or murder your family for him. One world-winning adventure later, you two finally earn your fairy tale happily ever after, complete with two children. ...Except years later, despite his promises to stay with you, he falls in love with another woman (assuming he wasn't just a Gold Digger after kingship). And he isn't even grateful for all the help you lent him during his great adventures. On top of calling you a "barbarian princess", calling your home country "that icky place", and says to your face"[he doesn't] need [you] anymore". OUCH! On so many levels is this all tragic. First, it always hurts to experience betrayal from infidelity. Second, Medea's personal fears of betraying her family and kingdom for a stranger who didn't care about her came true after all. Lastly, they had a really good relationship (both as adventurers and a married couple), and as Red put it, it's surreally poignant to read their adventures knowing it would all end badly with Jason breaking his vows to Medea. As Red points out, they could've been life-long friends and lovers if only Jason had loved Medea more than his ambition to be king.
  • The children also suffer tragedy as they get caught up in their parents' drama. For one, their mother Medea makes the heavy-hearted decision to have them murdered, in the hope that their deaths would hurt their jerk father Jason in the slightest. Second, it's ironic their mother plans their deaths because she always loved them in a way Jason never did. Throughout the story, Jason refers calling them as "her" kids. And it's only once they're dead that he calls them "his" kids, making a tragic point that he took his and Medea's children for granted until he lost them. The cherry on this Tear Jerker sundae is Red's illustration of Medea's face dripping with regret at having set in motion her children's doom, while they share a (last) hug together.
  • In a way, it's almost painful to see Jason (jerk that he is) reduced to a miserable, unhappy man who dies alone crushed by his own dilapidated ship in his sleep. He once held such promise as a hero when he helped Hera across the river, but he threw it all away. Heck, Red even points out that said-dilapidated ship is but a crumbling monument to his heroism from another time.
  • And when Medea leaves, Jason immediately is hit with a Heroic BSoD, his last line on-screen being, as he stares off blankly and in complete and utter shock, "but... I'm the hero." He still can't understand that all of this tragedy is the consequence of his actions, and his alone.
  • One viewer notes that due to how Ancient Greece worked, city-state kingdoms are a dime in a dozen, meaning that being king isn't a big deal as they are pretty much everywhere. However, there is only one Golden Fleece in existence. As Medea has blonde hair, she could be taken as the actual Golden Fleece in question. The real prize in question was a genuine loving marriage with a powerful sorceress that is arranged by the Goddess of Marriage Hera herself, in which Jason threw away for what is relatively a hunk of dirt.
• In "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", our titular lovers' happiness as a Happily Married couple is short-lived when the Queen Mother of the West takes the latter away from her mortal life. It doesn't help that the Weaver Girl resuming her job in the Heavens is likened to resuming to a grinding job. And when her Cowherd husband and children use a magical rowboat to try to reunite with her, the Queen Mother of the West swoops in and tears a celestial rift in the sky to keep the two parties separated.
• "Urashima-Taro" explores the very tragedy of the trope Year Outside, Hour Inside, and how a fun fantasy adventure can eat away precious time. Urashima didn't think nothing of it when he married his wife and joined her in the dragon palace. But when he returns to visit his family and hometown, he's devastated to see they're all gone. And rather than return home where he can live out a happy marriage with his wife, Urashima's tale ends rather sadly when he realizes he doesn't know how to return to the Dragon Palace, but his opening the box his wife told him not to open strips away his immortality.
• In Red's Halloween talk about "Werewolves", there's something sobering and painful about Red teaching that the heinous practice of witch-hunts was born because one misogynistic little man named Heinrich Kramer badgered everybody into persecuting innocent woman who were just different. Even when the church kicked him out, he just wrote stories about how women are witches who deserve torture and death. And even when the church discredited that his writings would lead to countless bloodshed, it happened all the same.
• In "The Wrath of Demeter", there's something sobering about watching Erysichthon and his men simply deforesting a sacred grove, reflecting that this so-called king holds nothing sacred.
  • What's more, Red explains that Erysichthon's reasons for cutting down the grove aren't just vague, they're senselessly nonexistent! Most people can justify they're doing it for land development or because of agriculture, but this guy is just clear-cutting for the sake of clear-cutting! If you're an environmentalist, this will guarantee make a part of you die inside.
  • Later, Demeter's nymphs approach her when relaying how he essentially killed her favorite tree. Demeter may be more stoic about the issue, but the tearful look on one of the nymphs drives home this isn't just about some jerk destroying their hang out: this was about losing their home and their friends.
• The folklore of "The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon" is a rather brutal story from beginning to end. The beginning has a brother and sister orphaned as young children, forced to look out for each other for survival. Although they manage to get their lives together, that all changes when (while the brother is visiting his new girlfriend the Sun Maiden) the sister is eaten and subsumed by Hossiadam. Despite the gifts the Sun Maiden gave to him to keep him safe, something bad still happens to her boyfriend as the ultimate outcome has him split in two by the tug 'o' war between her and Hossiadam. But it just gets better... Although the Sun Maiden is able to use her magic to revive her boyfriend, she only got the half missing a heart, dooming him to die after a few days of being revived. She tries to find solutions and substitutes for his missing heart, but to no avail. One of the saddest images is of the Sun Maiden sobbing miserably as she clutches her dying love, who looks on with a sad, tired and defeated look in his face. And so, she banishes him to the night sky to spare the heartache of watching him die, their only consolation being that the Sun Maiden and her Crescent Moon Lover shall reunite on the longest day of the year.
  • Ironically, had the brother known his sister was already dead by Hossiadam's hands, he might've stayed in the heavens where he would've been safe and with his beloved Sun Maiden. ...But no, that's not what happens. Instead, he's forced to live a half life in the sky, away from his beloved.
  • Red singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is not only appropriate, but surprisingly poignant-sounding. It drives home the tragedy of the Sun Maiden's helplessness at permanently bringing her beloved back to life.
  Red: (singing) "Once upon a time, I was falling in love, now I'm only falling apart. There's nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart..."
  • Red also doesn't skip on the atrocities that Russia did against the indigenous peoples of Siberia. Most horrifying is the mention that the USSR actually planned to fucking nuke their lands to remove the permafrost and extract resources.
• "The Trojan War" has its sad moments here and there, when it's not bringing up things that ultimately cannot be changed, like Odysseus leaving his wife or Achilles losing his allies.
  • Achilles mourning for the Amazonian princess who was slain by his own hands, tragically mourning that under different circumstances, they could've been happy together. And even when he kills the guy who mocks his "unmanly" mourning (which unto itself adds insult to injury), his depressed expression doesn't change a bit.
  • Achilles' reaction to the death of Patroclus is given a much more heartbreaking edge here. In "The Iliad", while his reaction was played tragically it was also primarily Played for Laughs. Here, the second Patroclus is slain, Achilles immediately comes careening across the battlefield, tears of rage and sorrow streaming down his face as he drives his sword through Hector. For all the humor that their relationship has been played for over the years, it's unavoidably clear that the death of his beloved companion was a breaking point for Achilles.
  • Then there's Achilles' death, via the fateful arrow through his iconic weak heel. As opposed to "The Iliad" where it was unceremonious and Played for Laughs with a tiny "ouch", it's a dramatic moment. What makes it a little more heart-breaking is the devastated look in Achilles' eyes, as though driving home that he knew this war would kill him, he thought he had just a little more time to fight.
• In "Tokoyo and the Sea Serpent", Tokoyo has the saddest, most concerned look as she tries to find her father. Eventually, it gets to the point where her spirit is worn from trying to look for him. The sad part is, if they don't know the story, not even the viewer can be certain her father is still alive.
• It's no surprise that a legend as poignant as "The Epic of Gilgamesh" would have some sobering moments. When Enkidu is steadily dying of illness, Gilgamesh can do little more except helplessly cradle his dear friend, mourning how he's obscurely going out with a whimper. The next shot is a quiet scene with Gilgamesh holding Enkidu's body. No jokes, none of the usual jabs. Just an honest commentary on the events, and the heart-breaking image of a king grieving for his friend. After building the statue honoring Enkidu, the trauma has shaken Gilgamesh so badly, he decides he'd rather live forever without his dearest friend than rejoin him in the after life.
  Gilgamesh: (Solemnly) Sorry, Enkidu. Wherever you've gone, I'm never gonna follow.
  • And then, there's the video's cover of "Hurt". In a video covering the oldest, most poignant story of mortality, there's something to be said for how Red chose well to couple it with such a somber song.

Journey to the West

• Sun Wukong being nearly burned to death by the True Fire of Samādhi wielded by Red Boy, the son of the Bull Demon King, in Journey to the West Part 6. Seeing the invincible Monkey King being consumed by ethereal blue fire and faced with one of the few things in existence that could actually kill him is simultaneously disheartening and terrifying. Even the celestial army sent to aid them - the same heaven that Wukong wrecked, mind - is thrown into disarray by his fall. Sandy's horrified face as he holds Wukong's unconscious body is sad as well.
  • Sandy and Pigsy instantly recognizing that something has gone terribly wrong when the dragon's army call them by their celestial titles instead of their nicknames.
  Soldier: Marshal Canopy! Curtain-Lifting General! The Great Sage is down!
  • Showing that he has undergone character growth is Wukong's reaction to his failure. The warrior who at the beginning of the journey impulsively abandoned Tripitaka without a second thought, and had to be forced to stay, is more distraught over not being able to rescue his mortal friend than over the fact that he almost died. Even when so injured he can barely move, let alone fight, he does his best to push past the pain and exhaustion to aid his allies with what strength he has left.
  • If you take into account that Sun Wukong is representative of the human mind, it's basically a graphic depiction of extreme depression.
• Tripitaka and Sun's fight in Part 10 is icy. Tripitaka once again takes Sun to task for killing two of the group of bandits, as it and his subsequent actions do a disservice to the dead as well as goes against the ideals he's trying to uphold, praying to their corpses to only blame Sun instead of the rest of the group. Wukong spits back that he fought to protect Tripitaka, and that he wouldn't have to resort to such measures if Tripitaka wasn't a constant Distressed Dude. Their friction is so bad that Tripitaka even refuses water from (what he thinks is) a reconciling Wukong and the crew honestly believes that he's arrogant enough to finish the journey on his own—only to find that he's actively trying to work on himself.
• As detailed throughout most of Part 11, the situation of Princess Iron Fan is decidedly unpleasant. She’s been a devoted wife to The Bull Demon King and cares dearly for their son Red Boy, but she knows he’s been having an affair with a younger, prettier woman with a boatload of money from her father’s inheritance. She attacks Sun because she’s pissed that he’s fought her son and insulted her husband, even while knowing he doesn’t care nearly as much about her, if at all. Sun himself is actually fairly empathetic to her troubles…

Classics Summarized

• In "The Inferno", Red lampshades the implications that if Dante's hell were canon, poor Odysseus (who already went through hell and back to be reunited with Penelope) spends the rest of his existence literally burning in hell because he's a Greek hero.
• In "Frankenstein", there's the rendition of how broken and depressed poor Elizabeth looks after Justine is unjustly found guilty and sentenced to death, because (to quote Red) "she can no longer see beauty in a world that let her basically-sister die so cruelly." Helped by the more than apt Background Music.
  • The illustration of Victor (self-absorbed and jerkish though he may be at times) steadily gaining stark white hair instead of pitch-black, starting with a wisp of white locks due to the strain of all-nighters during the Creature's creation and each tragedy adding more and more white to his hair.
• The video on the Oresteia is full of these, whether it be from Clytemnestra's Broken Tears once her eldest daughter is murdered by her husband, the sheer terror of Cassandra once she reaches Grecian shores and realizes that Clytemnestra is going to kill her, Clytemnestra's horror upon learning that her exiled son is "dead", or Orestes being ordered to murder his mother despite still loving her. It is a tragedy, after all.
• In Don Quixote Cardenio's reaction to Luscinda apparently going back on her word to kill herself rather than marry Fernando (who had tricked her parents into accepting marriage between himself and Luscinda). After the whole fiasco, Luscinda is pretty clearly distraught at how much her plan had hurt Cardenio.
• Red's recap of H.P. Lovecraft's life in the H.P. Lovecraft Halloween Special. While it's clear that she thinks it by no means justifies his horrific racism and anti-progressive attitudes, Red explains that Lovecraft was in many ways a walking bundle of mental disorders and anxieties, whose writing— while irrefutably offensive— was motivated by a completely genuine fear of the unknown. In addition, she notes in a somewhat somber tone that Lovecraft eventually became a complete shut-in who died of cancer pretty much unknown and alone. Fortunately, the rest of the video is much more upbeat, with Red casually running the audience through Lovecraft stories and often making fun of the incredibly offensive and silly elements which repeatedly show up.

Modern Classics Summarized

• In the All Quiet on the Western Front video, Red describes the beginning, interlude, and end of Paul's journey through the First World War in a much more solemn tone than usual— which really drives home how serious the issue of war really is in both the book and in real life.
  Red (after a deep breath): Don't do war, kids.
  • After this, the ending song is the appropriately fitting "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", a solemn and sweet anti-war song about how great it would be if everyone agreed to end war forever. I'm not crying, you're crying...
    Red: Last night, I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before,
    I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.
    I dreamed I saw a mighty room, the room was filled with men.
    And the paper they were signing said they'd never fight again.
    And when the papers all were signed and a million copies made,
    they all joined hands and bowed their heads, and grateful prayers were prayed.
    And the people in the street below were dancing round and round,
    and guns and swords and uniforms were scattered on the ground.
    Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before,
    I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.

Trope Talks

• In the Trope Talks video about plot twists, we have the whole What If? scenario of What Could Have Been with Quicksilver joining the Avengers during the period between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame, which primarily focuses on him and Wanda conflicting over the Sokovia Accords, their separation via Thanos' Badass Fingersnap, and the ensuing emotional turmoil from Quicksilver's end in the five-year timeskip.
• The video on doomed heroes mentions how these stories often have a "Ray of Hope" Ending; yes, The Hero Dies, but maybe they died ultimately saving the world or someone they loved, or did something that will give future heroes a better shot at a happy ending. To accompany this, Red shows a very poignant illustration of a hero being consumed by tendrils of darkness with no hope of escape, but successfully hurling a single, shining star out into the black.
• Red concluding her Trope Talk about "Death Personified" with how the entire subject is simply sad. ...before she soberly remarks that in a way, it's okay that it's sad.
  • Red mentions how Terry Pratcher used to receive letters from terminally ill readers saying they hoped Discworld's Death would greet them. She describes that Pratcher would have a thousand yard stare from reading those letters.

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