Tear Jerker / Stand Still, Stay Silent

This page has been made compliant with the Spoiler policy that includes not putting spoilers on Moments pages, including Tear Jerker.

This is one of the pages that had many things in spoilers prior to the rule's enforcement, so read at your own risk if you came here without being aware of major story developments.

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Having Fuzz Therapy on hand is highly recommended

Adventure I

• We learn more about the battle of Kastrup, and get more insight into Mikkel's Dark and Troubled Past.
• Who would have thought that a horrendous spider-dog could break your heart into pieces? But, as said spider-dog is chasing Emil, the sunlight causes it to partially revert to its old self - and it whines in horror and despair at what it's become, before fleeing.
  Emil: Come back! You can't just go on living like... like... that.
  • Later, after they've buried the cats and Emil and Lalli are left outside, the dog shows up again, and lies down in front of them, whining. It wants to die.
• The Leaftroll. Yes, it's attacking our heroes and tears up Sigrun's arm, but remember that there's still a human mind trapped in that horrible body...and, judging by the size of the skull, it was once a child. Its death at the hands of the ghosts, as it struggles desperately and cries out in fear, are just as depressing.
• Sigrun's "it's hopeless" face before being dragged under the ice by a giant tentacle.

  Commenter: Sigrun's face shows the resignation of someone who's known forever that they were going to die by troll, and thinks that that day has come.

• And in keeping with the Alas, Poor Villain death of many other trolls, the (eventual, slow, painful) death of the Krakentroll.
  Commenter: D'aaaaaaawwww!!! it is actually heading for the WATER!!! It is trying to get home!! Why did I have to see that!
• What is Lalli's coma dream have? Sigrun respecting his personal space and acknowledging his accomplishments, Mikkel preparing a huge feast, and Lalli not needing Tuuri to translate everyone's graditude. Also Reynir saying he'll cut off his "dumb hair". Now what does Lalli come out of his coma to? Everyone outside, ignoring the fact he came out of his coma to focus on naming their new cute kitty, with Sigrun immediately roping him into work, and them being far away from the camping spot that he went into the magical coma in the first place to secure. No wonder he's so upset.
• The dreamspace change that the lovely church undergoes as the nice lady pastor tries to remember exactly where she is physically makes it plain how awful her final weeks were. And, why she really shouldn't be pushed into remembering too much.
• Siv's expression after the reading of the Odense hospital papers. As much as she disliked the idea of a cure found in Year 0 making her job All for Nothing, that Old World cure working, but still killing the patients for unknown reasons quite likely disappointed her even more, and made her job feel even more pointless.
• Ladies and gentlemen, page 655, which features Tuuri clutching a bloody shoulder after having very briefly been in the same room as a live troll. We all know what this means for her.
• Tuuri gives Torbjörn the news about the above and asks to talk to Onni. Torbjörn then has to tell her in what state Onni was found earlier in the morning.
  • Right after Onni blacked out from the strain, he fell to the ground smoldering, with smoke coming off of him.
• After certain events Kitty seeks out Lalli, who is definitely not hiding from everyone trying to cope with what just happened. He grumbles at her as usual, then picks her up anyway and promptly struggles not to cry into her fur.
• Terrifying undead skeletal horse, who masterminded the attack on expedition which led to Turri's death... is hurt. And it is moaning and crying in pain, while other undead creatures gathered around with... compassion?
• Page 676 earns some sympathy for the devil. If you can look past the menacing threats, the ghosts have simply gone mad with grief, their inability to even know who they once were, or how to pass in to the afterlife after ninety-ish years of tortured existence, as theorized by Onni.
• Reynir's response to Sleipnope's And Your Little Dog, Too! taunt: "I won't be able to go home.".
• It turns out that Lalli's mood is bad enough that Mikkel is now resorting to force-feeding him cookies to make sure he's eating something. Reynir's mood on the same page doesn't look much better.
• The whole sequence showing that Tuuri indeed has the Rash:
  • The first hint we get is Tuuri hearing Black Speech.
  • After an attempt of ignoring the first hint, the situation gets confirmed via Kitty getting scared of her, and outright biting her when she comes too close.
  • And then when Tuuri looks in the closest mirror, pulls down her collar, and sees the deformed, mutated skin.
  The Rant: "There's that definite confirmation, just in case there was any doubt or hope remaining."
  • She tries to have a casual conversation with Lalli, the subtext of which basically boils down to "PLEASE tell me there's still some sort of hope for those who have died from this." He shrugs it off as unlikely.
  • She silently takes her breathing mask off, likely considering it's now useless.
  • ... and drowns herself in the sea.
  • Then there is Lalli and Onni's reactions. Lalli literally feels her die, while Onni discovers what happened when he sees her following the Swan of Tuonela into the afterlife. The whole scene is heartbreaking
  Onni: No. Stop! Come back! Please... You can't leave me like this! ...I can't be alone...
• Nobody's reaction to the consequences of the above is easy to watch, but the extra the detail that Reynir is sitting in the driver's seat, a place on which Tuuri had a quasi-monopoly manages to make things even more heartbreaking.
• While Emil and Lalli are not dead, seeing Sigrun very obviously convinced they are is more than enough.
• The way Pastor A deals with Sleipnope manages to be oddly sad. She simply forces it to confront the truth of its existence; that it actually hates attacking people and is just plain tired of its existence. When told this, it simply breaks down into tears and shrinks down into its true form, a tiny and frightened looking sheep creature.
• "You're short a person."

Adventure II

• It's time to give out the paychecks, and Lalli gets two envelopes.
• Onni's semi-sneaky departure from Reynir's hometown. His announced goal is "going back home to Saimaa", he really doesn't want Lalli to follow him and he's basically unilaterally appointing Emil as Lalli's new Cloudcuckoolander's Minder. The whole situation gives plenty of "I'm off to do something very dangerous and I'm not expecting to come back" vibes, with a dash of Take Care of the Kids. Those vibes get all but confirmed when Onni tells Reynir they won't be meeting again after he manages to catch him on his way out.
• Tuuri's short orbituary in the newspaper.
• Lalli leaving to go after Onni while everyone else is asleep, leaving only a letter for Emil behind.
• The island on which the Hotakainens used to live has a graveyard that a lone skald is tending to, with markers for Lalli's parents and uncle... and a new one for Tuuri next to them.
  • It's also implied that something happened on that island that caused it to be uninhabited, seeing as how almost the entire island is covered in burned trees, the skald would only say that defense protocols have been updated so something similar won't happen again, and all the shown grave markers except Tuuri's have the date of death in Year 79.
• Rash-infected Hilja, turned into a hideous monster, is wounded and cornered... and she hides her head under arms, like a frightened child.
  • Ensi figures it out after Hilja is shot: she was infectious during the bake sale. The entire village has been infected with the rash. What's more, this is strongly implied to be Ensi's mistake that killed them all: Lalli had sensed something wrong with the package Hilja smuggled in (which contained an infected rat) and told his grandmother, but she let it go.(It's very likely the kade that possessed Hilja influenced Ensi when she told Ensi to let it go, as she had just looked into Hilja's eyes.) It's one thing to know about the Hotakainens' Dark and Troubled Past. It's another to see it in action.
• As Lalli leaves to bring Ensi's rifle to Onni and tell him what's going on, he asks what will happen to his parents and Ensi tells him not to worry about them. Jukka and Tuulikki's graves are among those actually shown to the reader in the previous chapter, so we already know the whole situation doesn't end well for them.
• The very, very bittersweet moments during which the reader gets to see Tuuri again. It doesn't help that she gets bad news within one page of being re-introduced, resulting in her being quickly seen crying.
• Thanks to 'Code O', Lalli, Onni and Tuuri are able to escape the island unharmed and hide out until the rescue boats come...but they never got to see their family again, or even say goodbye. Hell, the last time Lalli saw Ensi, she wasn't even able to look him in the eye for fear that whatever had invaded her mind would get him too. The only hints the children get of their parents' and grandmother's fates are gunshots and screams.
  Lalli: We were let out on the capital island, and it was just us. Nobody else.
• Good luck reading the scene involving the infected poodle without getting flash-backs to a certain other infected dog. And the comic itself won't let that happen, as Emil mentions his "issues with beast dogs" when refusing to be the one to put it out of its misery.
• Despite being a horrifying monster it's hard not to feel sorry for the Mother Bear. When she deposits the remains of her two cubs next to each other and screams to the sky is particularly heart wrenching, especially since she dies soon after implying reuniting her family, even in death, was literally the only thing keeping her going.
  • Not to mention the fact that the scene is almost Silent. Somehow, it makes her scream of Purest Sorrow all the more heartwrenching and audible.