This blog post contains spoilers for season 2 of Battlestar Galactica (a small one, but very irritating if you haven’t watched it) and The Lies of Locke Lamora (a major book ruining one, which I’ve censored very thoroughly). If you are big ol’ psycho about spoilers, I wouldn’t read this post at all. Move along, you crazy people. Nothing to read here. If, however, you are only normally obsessed with avoiding spoilers, and are not frightened away by the brooding psychotics that are currently glaring at this post, continue down and discover why I this post has got such an emo title.

In true John Scalzi tradition, I’ve finally managed to sneak in a K. Dick inspired title in my blog. “The Android’s Dream” and the forthcoming “The High Castle” are both novels which titles originate in Phillip K. Dick’s masterpieces, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “The Man in the High Castle”. The reason why I’ve ripped of K. Dick’s “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said” is the latest Natsecorma Blog Challenge; write a post about a scene in a movie/book that made you cry, or at least made you kinda sad.

Let me first define for you what I mean by the term “crying”, ’cause I feel that there is room for much confusion within it. I seldom or at least very rarely cry in the sense of the word that I sob and whine and splatter tears from my two overflowed canals on random furniture and such like. I can’t remember the last time I really cried in that sense. It must have been some time long, long ago. You’d have to kick me in the nutsack* or break a bone to get that sort of reaction from me now.

*If you did go after My Merry Merchandise, I would probably not cry as much as I would audition for the new opera in town.

If I were to cry today, I would confine myself to what can best be describes as weeping. My eyes would swell up, my throat would choke and after I had emotionally digested it all, a single tear would slowly make its way down my cheek.

The last time I remember something like that happening while watching a movie is all the way back in February, when I watched Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center”. That movie hit me in the heart; making me think of what it must have been like on 9/11. That movie deserved a tear in commemoration of all the innocent lives that was lost that day.

Crying while watching TV-series is something I do more often than with books or movies. I cried a lot during season 1 and 2 of BSG, simply because that show contains so many scenes that can do that you if you love the show enough. I remember being all red eyed after the episode when Starbucks goes down during a Cylon attack and the fleet gives up hope of ever finding her on that rocky planet. Most of the time I shrug things like that off, merely thinking that whatever happens to them is going to awesome either which way it ends. BSG makes me care, and that’s probably why I love it so much.

I’m giving an honorable mention to the only Buffysode that touched me enough to warrant its own review; “The Body”. That’s art, people. Pure art that silently swallows you whole. Crying is mandatory while watching it. Even stones would weep…

Crying while reading is something that happens so seldom that I have a really hard time even coming up with an example. The ending of “The Lies of Locke Lamora” was more sad than weepy, all though I admit cursing a certain Grey King so badly that I’m kinda afraid he sent a Bondsmagi after me :)
Today was a slow day at work, so I spent some time dwelling on those weepy moments in literature. I came up with two good examples where I remember actually letting my tear shuts fly. The first, and most well known for you, I suppose, is “Deadhouse Gates” by Steven Erikson. I wept several times during that book. Gotta reread “Chain of Dogs” sometime in the future, ’cause that must be the best “book” in the whole Malazan series.

Example number 2 brings us to a very unknown book which I doubt many have read. “Where the Red Fern Grows” is a children’s novel which I happened to stumble over a short excerpt of it in school (!), and decided to rent the whole damn thing. The story is really generic and predictable, but at that moment in time it really moved me. I remember thinking that this was a story that I would like my kids to read when they grew up. That thought as stuck with me ever since, and every time I think it, I revisit the experience of “Where the Red Fern Grows”. I revisit the happy times in the book, I remember the deaths (nearly everyone died…) and most of all, I remember a tale about a boy much like myself, giving everything to fulfill his dream just to have it snatched away from him when he needed it the most.