"Moments" cleanup and maintenance (Awesome, Funny, Heartwarming, Shocking, Tear Jerker)

So can we restore it?

I'd say yes, it does look like a very well-written example.

Thank you everyone! I loved that example and was extremely sad to see it go! Thank you so much!

Restored; also removed two real-life examples.

What do you think of the page image on Pokémon (Anime)? It is from an episode that hasn't even been released outside of Japan yet, so I not sure if it should be removed as a spoiler or not.

I mean, you already started an IP thread for that, so I guess youve decided.

From Awesome.Ben 10:

• Saving Kai is also pretty good. The Omnitrix refuses to work, so he just hops over buildings, jumps on a barrel, grabs Kai, and jumps for an awning. That goes into the hero book, no matter what ANYONE says.

I agree thats a pretty awesome moment, but what the hell is that last part about? Was that in response to something else?

Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 24th 2020 at 6:39:51 AM

It should be kept. The episode already aired in Japan.

Started on Season 1 for TearJerker.Sponge Bob Square Pants and I propose keeping:

• Pizza Delivery: SpongeBob goes through an arduous trek to fill a guy's unreasonable order as best as he can, only to get belittled for "not thinking about the customer" when he doesn't give him something he never ordered.
• Home Sweet Pineapple: He says goodbye to his home while Patrick begs for him and his parents to stay. Squidward is cheering while all this is happening.
• Karate Choppers: After SpongeBob swears off karate (or else he's fired), Sandy's ambush costs him his job through no fault of his own.

These are all the examples I think children would find really sad (you'll notice all these examples are a childlike character getting torn apart for something completely out of his control). Most of the others are fridge/meta, "character cries," ZCEs, too minor to count (multiple examples admit this), or disingenuous (the moment for Fools in April is a ploy on SpongeBob's part, F.U.N.'s is a soap opera spoof). Any else that should be kept or cut?

As a kid I never found those sad personally; but I'm just one person.

Agreed. And I'd say the sad feeling goes away by the end of the episode for each. "Pizza Delivery" ends with a famous moment of awesome from Squidward that manages to cheer SpongeBob up, SpongeBob, his parents, and Patrick are happy to see the house regrow in "Home Sweet Pinapple", and "Karate Choppers" ends with both SpongeBob and Sandy re-hired at the Krusty Krab.

Yeah, the main problem with TearJerker.SpongeBob SquarePants is that a majority of the examples are just “character cries or feels sad for a bit”, regardless of whenever those scenes actually have any significant emotional impact or not.

Y'all make some good points. Starting to wonder what would qualify on this page. "Gary Come Home," maybe? Even then, the actual episode has jokes throughout the song...

Maybe it's better off cut. Can't find anything that moved me to tears as a kid, at least.

Edited by datfunkyjellyfish on Oct 31st 2020 at 2:31:28 PM

There are legitimately sad moments in the show.

I think Spongebob's breakdown in "Santa Who?" is pretty sad- even though I know it ends happy it's still pretty upsetting, more than in other episodes because we know how much trouble he went through only to be crushed.

That seems good. How about the fake-out death in the first movie, too?

Since when does a tearjerker not being permanent disqualify it? It's a moments page. If it makes you sad in the moment, it counts. It's not like Fridge or even Nightmare Fuel where the implication is it stays with you.

I think it depends on how quickly the mood changes. If you don't have enough time to feel sad, well, then you won't feel sad.

Moments are inherently YMMV. We're not supposed to be judging the quality of the moments themselves, just if they apply to the trope. People using Tear Jerker when they mean Heartwarming is the most common one I've seen.

It's also not a question of scale. A minor sad moment still counts as a Tear Jerker if someone cares enough to add it, just like how a minor funny moment still counts. That's why they were all renamed from Crowning Moment.

Technically YMMV isn't just about individual opinions but about fandom-wide opinions and trends. If there's no evidence anyone actually found these scenes sad, then they aren't Tear Jerker. If even one person came in to claim they found, say, Spongebob crying over the pizza delivery to be sad, it'd count. But we can't keep exaggerations up. It makes the site look like it's full of overly-emotional babies- it affects Nightmare Fuel the most, but all Moments have these issues. 'Cept maybe Shocking.

I think SpongeBob crying over the failed pizza delivery was pretty sad in the context of the show, especially with how they animate him. Didn't make me cry or anything, but it really brings down the mood in the moment. It's also clearly meant to be sad in context, since it gets Squidward so upset.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 31st 2020 at 8:56:48 AM

I just used it as a random example; I'm not necessarily saying that one doesn't count, it was just what came to mind first.

I guess if we want these pages to be more accurate to the fandom, we could add some requirements a la The Scrappy but that's a discussion for somewhere else.

For now, I'll try to come up with some research (meme browsing) to make my argument for which ones should stay.

"Gary Come Home," for example, is somewhat◊ well-◊supported◊.

Edited by datfunkyjellyfish on Oct 31st 2020 at 10:15:20 AM

There absolutely doesn't need to be any sort of requirements other than that the reactions are genuine and aren't just there solely because Spongebob cried for two seconds. These things need to cause emotional reactions in people- that's literally the entire point of them and is the metric we need to use.

TearJerker.Mad Rat Dead

The page got deleted because there was just one example, but I actually wrote three and found more:

• Mad Rat tries to warn his fellow rats about the scientist who might kill them, but his fellow rats refuse to listen, preferring to die by a human scientist instead of dying by the dangers outside. Mad Rat's prediction ended up coming true: his fellow rats got turned into zombies due to cerebral experimentation. Trapped there, Mad Rat is forced to fight them. Heart and the Rat God are remorseful that Mad Rat had killed his former friends, whereas Mad Rat, even if he denies being emotionally hurt by the process, is still haunted (literally) by their ghosts.
• Mad Rat and Heart end up bickering so much, the two end up in a fight... that is, a literal boss fight. Once Mad Rat wins the boss battle, he gloats at Heart.
• Mad Rat finds some outside rats hallucinating that they are getting lots of cheese. Mad Rat tries to warn them, but a cat immediately kills them.
• Mad Rat would have died to the same cat, had not a girl picked up Mad Rat in time. Later, they find out that she had died in a car crash. This spurns the normally cynical Mad rat to rewind time and keep her from dying.
• Depending on your answers in the beginning of the game, the scientist may have good reasons behind doing the experiment with Mad Rat and even expressing regret with his actions. The scientist might even outright say that Mad Rat should live. Despite this, Mad Rat can still kill the scientist anyways, despite Heart's protests.
• Once Mad Rat deals with the scientist (either through mercy or murder), Heart and Mad Rat go to terms with their death meaning that they would no longer be able to be together.
• The Rat God uses her time powers in rewinding Mad Rat back to before his vivisection, clearly knowing that she is not only separating Mad Rat from Heart and preventing him from living his life his way but also dooming the outside rats and the girl to their fates. Worse still, Mad Rat was not really being vivisected, but rather undergoing a heart transplant... which failed. In other words, even if he does defeat the Rat God, he is still going to die before the day is over.
• Before and after Mad Rat defeats the Rat God (which was actually a parasite), Mad Rat insists on preventing the transplant, despite knowing that he would die. He just does not want Heart to die, too. Mad Rat keeps overriding Heart's protests all the while.
• When Mad Rat goes back to before the transplant, he manages to leave his cage... but, because of his bad heart, he is having a very hard time walking. Despite this, he frees Heart and insists that he leave free without him because he does not want to have Heart see him die.
• Heart himself is actually a cat. He hid that information because Mad Rat's instinctive hatred of cats risked overriding the friendship he had with him. Thankfully, Mad Rat does not care.

Some of those need more context. Focus less on the "what happens" and more on the emotional reaction and why.