Tear Jerker / With This Ring

2010

• Alan Scott reminiscing how most of his friends died or suffered from injuries that they got in their superhero careers. Then how he loses the love of his life due to her own madness and she never recovers.
  • Most notable is the sad fate of Johnny Thunder, a Golden Age hero whose power came from a genie he could summon from a pen. He ended up having five strokes over the course of several years, the second of which screwed him up bad enough he had to move to a nursing home. By the time the fifth killed him, there was basically nothing left of him.
  • Any time relationship advice is discussed, Alan's only advice is "Make sure she's not a supervillain." Given that the woman he loved ended up cursing him with her last breath, consumed by her supervillain split personality, he has some strong feelings on the matter.
  • Alan confesses to Paul he briefly thought of letting Orange Lantern kill him because he was so tired of living without a real purpose, left adrift without love or companionship, just hanging on existence by sheer willpower and habit. Then he realized mentoring Paul could be his new purpose. A year later, Paul returns and gives him a new personal lantern - powered by the blue light of hope.
• When the Team first finds Wolf, the genetically enhanced wolf pup, she's still a newborn and doesn't even have her eyes open yet. According to Paul, he had to turn off the translation function on his ring for her, because it translated the pup's frightened whining, which turned out to be crying for its mother. Thankfully, she's adopted by Teekl who helps raise her.
• Watching Paul and the Team slowly gradually lose hope over the course of Episode 16: Contingency.
• When Klarion splits the world and separates adults from children, the urgency of tracking him down is high enough that Paul uses his ring to view people's desires as he flies over the Earth - meaning that he becomes aware of the hundreds of deaths that are happening at any given time. In this case, all of them children or teenagers.
  Mommy! Daddy! Help!
  Exultation, joy, speed, lights out.
  • In the Renegade timeline, the Renegade tells Wonder Woman why he handed over Felix Faust, Blackbriar Thorn and Wotan to China: because they suffered by far the most, due to it being day on their side of the world. Chairman Jiang of the Chinese Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs has a niece. He had a nephew.
    Renegade: He tried to cook some rice for his baby sister, because she was hungry. He spilled boiling water on himself. He lived until just after the worlds reconnected. It's the personal stories that get you, isn't it?
• Having Zatanna lose her father is just as painful as it was in canon. This is made even worse for readers due to the fact that Zatara was saved in the Renegade timeline.
  • It later gets worse for Zatanna after she and Paul find out that Doctor Fate is being made part of the Justice League.
    Her voice fades, replaced by a sort of buzzing. My mouth opens slightly and my eyes widen but other than that I'm paralysed by the horror of what I'm seeing as Nabu, dressed in blue and gold and Giovanni Zatara's body steps out of the Hall of Justice. Dimly I think I hear Zatanna gasp but my mind is empty. I just stare at his helmet as he takes his place in the line up.
    "How..? How could they do this..?"
    I think some other people are coming out after him. Miss Grant's mouth is moving. That's probably important? There's probably… There might be someone..? The camera angle changes to give a wider image and I find my eyes shifting over to Diana.
    How could you? How.. how could you? Why..?
    The world snaps back into focus as I hear Zatanna whimper. She shakily gets to her feet and I can see the tracks of the tears that are already running down her cheeks and I'm on my feet and putting my arms around her and resting my head on hers as she cries into my shoulder.

2011

• It's low key tearjerker, but still: Cassie Sandsmark's disappointment that she won't be able to meet her father while visiting Themyscira, since he's not present on the island at the moment. She doesn't know who Zeus really is, and is far too young to understand what a horrible father he'd be, but she's still a child and wants to know her daddy. Zeus is also one of the few major Olympians who has made no appearances in person, good or bad, but his track record with his kids isn't in his favor.
  • When Zeus finally appears in Episode 123: Coup Data, his reaction to Cassie is just as bad as expected - he doesn't care about Cassie at all, seeing her as nothing as another "by-blow" from his affairs, and states that if his daughter, his ten-year old daughter wants his attention, she has to earn it. It's no wonder Helena doesn't want Cassie to meet him after Hephaestaean overthrows Zeus and exiles him to Earth.
• Despite their antagonism, the Young Offenders only have each other left and Power Ring Blue steps up to guide them after their mentors are killed.
• It's heart-wrenching to see how Eliza Harmon suffered for still believing in the Flash after the Justice Lords were taken out of power. Her belief in the Flash is validated when she receives the Flash's Video Will and how he hoped to meet her after dealing with Luthor (who killed him in that universe). But unbeknownst to her, the entire thing is set up by the Renegade and the Justice Lords so the world can have a new Flash and the actual Flash never made a will or even heard of her.
• Justice Lord John Stewart and Shayera. They have the same passionate and deep love of each other as their Earth 12 counterparts do, but John had to spend a year watching the love of his life slowly and painfully die (until the Renegade showed up and healed her).
• Episode 38: Hullevow reveals that Captain Cornwall had his brother arrested and sent to a magic prison where the latter has been for the last twelve years. Cornwall Boy is outraged when he finds out that his uncle was actually innocent and that the real perpetrators of the crime, high-ranking members of the British government, had him framed when he was mistakenly accused.
• June Robbins, the only survivor of the Challengers Of The Unknown, stuck in a nursing home with severe Alzheimer, no longer being able to recall who she is.
• Akhlys, the personification of misery. Paul and the Ophidian fail to help her out.
• After the experiences she's had, Euanthe finds that she can't go back to how she was before.
  Paul: What have you been doing since I saw you last?
  Euanthe: Existing. Forgetting. Remembering. Having seen what I saw, I find I cannot simply cavort with my sisters as I once did. I fear that what I experienced has forever marked me as a thing apart.
• Future Orange Lantern succeeds in getting Nightmare Moon to not attack her sister after being freed. However, this involves getting her to leave Equestria, which greatly saddens Celestia as she has missed her sister.
• Helmut Schreiber's despairing reaction to finding out he's a genetic clone of Adolf Hitler. Other than his genes, he has absolutely no ties to the Nazi party, and is just a decent, normal family man who just discovered he's basically the reincarnation of one of history's greatest monsters. He's even married to a South American African woman and they have three children together. If the truth about him ever got out, his life would basically be over, which is why Rocket and Orange Lantern cover up his true origin.
• OL is genuinely depressed after his appeal to Luthor fails at the end of Episode 44: A Star Reborn.
• It's revealed that Martian Manhunter was both widowed and lost contact with his child for over 50 years in Episode 45: Demeanor, leading him to believe he has no reason to come back to Mars.
• OL ends up pressing Harleen's Berserk Button (and unintentionally Slut-Shaming her), despite having gone on a date a day before, in Episode 49: Escalation. Thankfully, he is able to apologize and explain himself almost immediately.
• In the process of empowering John into becoming a Lord of Chaos in Episode 52: Last Supper, he has to use Teekl to do so. The process actually kills her.
  "I just... Killed my Cat. And not just in a are-Construct-Lanterns-still-people sort of way. She's... Gone."
  • Wolf, whom she had taken to raising, misses her but doesn't know she's dead. And when she does learn later on, she ends up howling in despair at the fact that "Cat Mother" is dead. This is after Wolf lost the rest of her family before.
• Michael Siskin is killed in Episode 53: Falling Action while trying to restrain Nabu.
• The aftermath of Episode 53: Falling Action isn't pretty: The Team finds out that Paul and Zatanna were lying to them for months about Nabu, and discover that they didn't even trust them enough to tell them their plans, John's new powers are threatening to rip him apart and he tells Paul to lose his number, partially blaming him for the situation. Giovanni is horrified by the lengths they went to for his sake and thinks it would have been better to leave Nabu in control than to kill him, Adom had to tell Siskin's family about his death because Paul was unconscious, and when the Justice League finally calls him to the Watchtower to get his side of the story, Paul launches into a rant against them about the Nabu situation, alienating them when Word of God states that several of them would have taken his side if he had explained his actions a little more calmly.
• The Renegade's moment of triumph after defeating The Light comes crashing down when he goes to Jade, pardon in hand and ready to propose a date for the wedding, and finds her absolutely terrified after hearing about the League of Shadows being destroyed. When she finds out that the Renegade betrayed The Light after being offered a seat at the table, destroying the organization that she dedicated her life to without giving her a moment's thought or warning, she becomes so enraged that she physically attacks him and makes it very clear that she never wants to see him again. And then Darkseid shows up to have a chat with his son.
  • Made worse when the Renegade is confronted with his own memories and is forced to acknowledge that it was his own lack of communication, his lack of consideration towards Jade's feelings and inability to trust her with his plans that destroyed their relationship, and put her in a horrible position as a result.
  • When the two meet again after a few months, Jade still doesn't want anything to do with him. The Renegade has no idea how to fix their relationship.
• The treatment of Tamaranean slaves at the hands of the Gordanians and Citadelians.
• Even though they helped in oppressing the Tamaraneans, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for the Gordanians Paul had marooned on an asteroid with almost no hope of ever leaving in their lifetime.
  • Even after OL completely obliterates them and strands the survivors on a planet with no way off, they still don't grasp that they had done anything wrong, and the leader just promises that if given the chance, he'll repay OL in kind.
• Episode 63: Rapprochement has the Renegade return to Earth, Green personal lantern in hand, only to find Alan Scott has already passed away.
• Coutara eh'Jerrd, a woman who comes from a society that ritually removes the eyes of their females at maturity to ensure their servitude to the males of their species. She was heartbroken when the time came for her beloved daughter, who loves to paint, to go through the Rite of Unseeing. All she can do is get on her knees and beg OL for forgiveness because she thinks it's normal and that she shouldn't feel sad about it.
  • When OL overthrows the theocracy, you'd think everyone would be happy. Nope, without the religious foundation for their society, violent crime rises something like 200%, no matter how cruel and unnecessary it was. Dox even calls him out on how the Orange Lantern Corps now has to devote a ton of extra manpower to this one planet because it has to restructure both its culture and society within a single generation. Not that Dox thinks it's a bad thing to do, he just points out that OL gave them a ton of extra work.
• A Kryptonian left behind a hologram of himself on one of Krypton's moons, which OL and Kon find. There's something low-key sad about the way the program comes to terms with the fact that Krypton is utterly obliterated and the closest it can get to following its directives is ceding power to Kon-El, as he is the closest thing to the leadership that remains.
• Kara Zor-El's realization that she has lost thirty years of her life, as well as almost everyone she has ever known.
  • When she first wakes up in the Fortress Of Solitude, she has a brief Hope Spot when she recognizes the crystalline walls and "uncle" Jor-El. Sadly, he's just a hologram, and all that remains is her cousin Kal-El, now a grown man. That really hammers it home for her.
  • Later, she gets another brief Hope Spot when Wally calls Orange Lantern "OL," or "Oh-El," as the text puts it. She, for just a moment, thought that Paul was another member of the House of El that survived.
• All of OL's Praexis Demons end up being killed off in Hell. They were basically gluttonous monsters, but they were still around for ages.
• The Archangel of War, Karrien Excalibris, kills Ted Kord for supporting Paul. He gets resurrected later on, but still.

2012

• People who don't go to the Silver City (Heaven) aren't allowed to visit or see family members who did. Hades promises to bring this up with them and try to change it.
• Renegade!M'gann finally knows how the Renegade feels like all the time. She then decides to let loose.
  M'gann: This is how you feel all the time, isn't it? You try to fix things and everyone just-. [...] But if they want Grayven- [M'gann goes Burning Martian] -then they can have Grayven.
• At the end of Episode 81: Hoard, Paul finally has to put his foot down and tell Zatanna that there will never be any sort of romantic relationship between them, as the events of the story have made it clear that she isn't getting over him and that the Star Sapphire has been making the issue worse. Even if he wasn't involved with Jade, the age difference is just too much for him, and he simply isn't interested. The poor girl is devastated.
• It is revealed in Episode 82: Wing and Dagger that Kara isolates herself whenever she can because, although everyone looks similar to Kryptonians, the moment someone says something, they don't say it in Kryptonese, and she is reminded that her home is gone forever.
• The Renegade finds Magnificus Sivana slumped in the living room wearing his pajamas. He, understandably, is still suffering from depression due to the loss of his mother and siblings.
• The only way to prevent more bloodshed in America -14 is by the Syndicate assassinating President Wilson. VP Luthor realizing this really hurts him.
• Sunset finally reunites with Celestia and has a private conversation. We don't see what happens directly, but it ends with Sunset storming out of the room and asking to return to Earth. Both alicorns are upset, but the Renegade complies, against Celestia's wishes.
  • When asked, Sunset reveals that Celestia essentially accused her of cheating- finding a dangerous shortcut to ascension instead of the safe way that Twilight did. In the end, Sunset breaks down crying in the Renegade's arms, crying because she and Celestia cannot understand one another's point of view any longer- if they ever did.
• Even though it is a giant monstrosity that can destroy entire civilizations, there is something depressing about Paul seeing and hearing the last incoherent thoughts of a Mother Star as it dies.
  • It later revealed that what Paul saw and heard were basically the last dreams of the civilizations the Star Conquerors killed. Paul spends time recording what he experienced, as that is all that is left of them.
• There's something disheartening about seeing the Flash, someone who asked Paul to not quickly resort to killing as it might give the wrong message to other members of the Team, killing anyone in cold blood, even if it is the Sheeda.
• We see how Tangseid started down the path he would take, and it is sad that it was one mistake on that version of Paul's part that led to him deciding to Mind Control the League to create a better world.
• While preparing for Grayven's attack on Vega, the Renegade, Artemis, and Kanto 50 investigate a world that was recently attacked by the other New God of Conquest. They find that all the people and animals are missing, leaving an empty, desolate world.
• In the Renegade timeline, Magnificus Sivana attempts to go back in time to prevent the murder of his mother and siblings, which will also hopefully prevent his father from committing suicide in his quest to avenge their deaths. He fails, and all the Renegade can do to help is be there for him.
  "Why? Why can't I-?"
• After getting a first-hand view of an Earth functioning more or less the way he wants (semi-ruled by the Justice Society International, which is mostly benevolent but has done some very underhanded things in the name of the "greater good") as part of John Constantine trying to teach him a lesson, Paul decides that while he might be an effective Hero already, he needs help being a nicer Hero, and asks Superman for help. Not only does this not work, he almost ends up making Superman worse, making Paul feel even more guilty, as he can't stop himself from trying to fix the moral and logical fallacies superheroes invoke just by operating the way they do.
  Paul: I'm sorry, this was a bad idea. I'll go and bother someone else.
  Lois Lane: Yeah. You do that.
• After being exorcised, Kara 666 was sent to Reformation Island to try and recover from her trauma. When Paul and John Constantine visit her, they find that she's still severely traumatized from her experience. She asks Paul if she can go home, causing Paul to think on the possibility that the people of her Earth won't want her back.
• After Mannheim infects the entire Earth with the Anti-Life, we get to see through the eyes of various people who've been affected by it how it's altering their worldview in real time.

2013

• Doctor Mist expresses how disappointed he is over the fact that, in order to combat the effect of the Anti-Life, the heroes of the world must effectively becomes dictators, something which goes against some of his core beliefs.
• Euanthe is despondent over how much of the Green was destroyed by the Grey because of the Anti-Life.
  Euanthe: The souls of trees, ancient and primal. And now… They are gone. Mortality, even in the eternal Green.
• It's revealed that several people have already killed themselves as a result of the Anti-Life infecting all of humanity.
  • It's later shown that Holly is one of the people severely affected by the Anti-Life, and that all she can do now is literally hang onto Karon and do whatever her girlfriend tells her to do.
• Karon tells Robin that the reason she's still so functional despite all of the horrible feelings that the Anti-Life brings out of her is because she's always felt those feelings due to growing up in Gotham.
  Karon: This isn't a dark fantasy or a tearing away of the veil. This is Gotham, as most people lived it. From the mobs to the supervillains, nothing really got better. The way it manifested changed… But so what?
  Robin: You mean you always felt like this?
  Karon: It was always lurking in the background. It's not new for me.
• Mannheim gets Canis to break down by forcing the New God to realize that Darkseid cast him aside.
• Karon ends up a sobbing mess after Mannheim is through with her.
• In order to recover from their trauma, the various members of the Forever People tell Paul of the horrible things they experienced while captured by Apokolips.
• In order to start a plan to cleanse the Earth of the Anti-Life, Paul needs to alter Batman's brain with Joker Venom so that the latter can use a yellow power ring, straining their friendship.

Others

• Mr Zoat can imagine OL asking Alan to look up old friends, and when he returns, it's to Alan slumped in his chair, looking through a long list of crossed-out names.

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