What Makes You Emotional?

[Jennshark]

-Doggies and kitties in both perilous and happy situations.
-Scottish pipe and drum corps.
-Sweet little old ladies doing sweet little old lady things.
-And, kind of strangely for me, certain military things. For example, when I worked for the Navy as a civilian I got to watch a sub head out for deployment from San Diego to Japan; many of the sailors stood on the deck of the sub and waved until the very last moment possible (when it started subbing under the water). Really choked me up. I also used to work across the street from Miramar NAS and the fighter jet squadron maneuvers were really amazing and emotional to watch (and hear: BOOM!!)

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

Pretty much only animals (especially dogs) suffering.

Human suffering I’m OK with.
mmm

[Patx2]

@Dendarii_Dame

Characters dying in kids’ books. Beth in Little Women started it, but she’s not the only one. (And don’t warn me about Where the Red Fern Grows. Too late.)

Also, a number of scenes in 1776, including “Does anybody see what I see?”
“Yes, Mr. Adams. I do.”

I still cannot handle Bridge to Terabithia.

[Periwinkle]

@ivylass

Publix has some sweet commercials too.

Those are very sweet!

[anomalous1]

@Velocity

Desperation or despair in fiction or movies makes me emotional.

Like the scene in Saving Private Ryan where Captain Miller is lying immobile, and the German tank is coming at him, and will crush him under the treads like an ant, and there is nothing he can do to stop it…and he pulls out his pistol and shoots futilely, feebly at it.

(A P-51 destroyed the tank moments later, of course, but there was no way Miller could have known that at the time.)

A similar scene is the last closing scene in the game Battlefield 2: Modern Warfare, where the SAS special forces character “Soap” McTavish gets a pistol pushed to him by his dying commander and McTavish uses it to shoot the bad guys before he himself dies moments later.

Or Jack London’s *To Build a Fire, *where the man is desperately trying to avoid hypothermia, but all of his attempts at starting a fire fail - and finally, his very last attempt at starting a fire fails when the snow from the tree snuffs out his last hope for survival, and the man lies down and dies. Tears me up like almost no other story I’ve read, when I imagine it as a visual scene.

That’s Call of Duty, not Battlefield. stay frosty!

[HoneyBadgerDC]

@Machine_Elf

Elderly people, especially combat veterans. Old age invariably brings physical decline/suffering and loss, and those who have seen combat have often already been quietly carrying horrifying emotional baggage for decades. There’s an essay titled “What is a Vet?” that includes this segment:

It is difficult not to cry out loud when I read that.

Similarly, the beginning and ending of Saving Private Ryan - when he’s visiting Miller’s grave in Normandy - are by far the most gut-wrenching parts of the movie for me.

Unrelated:

Several years ago I visited Fort McHenry. It’s a national monument now, but about 200 years ago it played a pivotal role in defending the US from British attack, and inspired the poem that became our national anthem. There is a small theater there that shows a movie depicting scenes from the Battle of Baltimore. I imagine most people found it to be a hammy re-enactment, but I got swept up in it and enamored of the knowledge that this was real history: these people were being attacked by the world’s most powerful navy, and everything was at stake. The Americans of course ultimately succeeded, Key wrote his poem - and the movie ended with the most amazing choral rendition of the Star-Spangled banner that I’d ever heard. I started sobbing uncontrollably; had you seen me you might have thought that my dog had just been killed by a car.

Things like this get me as well. I feel a need to at least try and put myself in the shoes of the soldiers that day. I try ti imagine the young faces, fear, suffering. For some reason I feel very inadequate as a man when I walk away. I feel like I haven’t suffered enough to deserve what I have.

[Sailboat]

In addition to some of the things already noted in this thread, I’ll add: extinction.

Here is a passage from Hope is the Thing with Feathers, a nonfiction account of the extinction of several American bird species. In this, the last Heath Hen (a large prairie chicken relative native to the New York area) does not go down quietly:

[The observers] huddled in the blind watching the lone bird mosey about Green’s field. Then they caught their breath as the bird flew toward an oak tree—but not to the low branches for shelter. Instead, the heath hen flew to the very top of the tree, as if proclaiming his presence from the altitude might compensate for his loneliness.

Suddenly the bird—who had been silent so far that year—bobbed his neck, inflated his air sac, lifted his pinnae [spiky tail feathers] in the courtship V display, spread and pressed his wings against his body, lifted his tail and boomed. Far from the ground on which his companions once had walked, the world’s last heath hen displayed his valiance and desire from on high, the sounds of the moaning boom sliding downward to the drumming field where [the observers] could hardly believe their eyes and ears.

[Machine_Elf]

@Sailboat

In addition to some of the things already noted in this thread, I’ll add: extinction.

In that case, here you go.

[gigi]

This movie was so wonderful I sobbed throughout. I plan to go back to it every time I feel down about the world:

Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around the World

[Velocity]

@anomalous1

That’s Call of Duty, not Battlefield. stay frosty!

Ah, whoops.

[DummyGladHands]

Thinking of rhino poaching and the decimation of any species.

Dumbo-every time. Jeez, welling up writing it

An Affair to Remember, not the horrible remake
Thinking of Ruffian and that last race

Natch, the money sucking kitties and puppies in the SPCA

My mother sitting in the hospital in a hospital Johnny and nothing else last time she was in the hospital. Fukkers, couldn’t they give her a robe or something? And waited until I got there, she’s 90 FCS and they put her in the floor’s waiting room.

[Poysyn]

Guaranteed tears every time:

Because of who I am - The song “In My Daughter’s Eyes” - Martina McBride

And

Because of what I do:

The Young Men Cry “O Canada”

Highway of Heroes

[Poysyn]

@DummyGladHands

Dumbo-every time. Jeez, welling up writing it

Yes, but my daughter and refuse to ever watch it again.

[Poysyn]

@Poysyn

Guaranteed tears every time:

Because of who I am - The song “In My Daughter’s Eyes” - Martina McBride

And

Because of what I do:

The Young Men Cry “O Canada”

Highway of Heroes

Sorry - got the title right the first time

Soldiers Cry

[RivkahChaya]

@ivylass

Those videos where the military service member comes home and surprises his/her family. Double tears when it’s a doggy they’re coming home to.

When my husband was in Iraq, I couldn’t do the laundry he left behind, because his dog slept in it every night he was gone.

@TRC4941

I’m same way - animals suffering hits me harder than humans suffering. Not that I don’t feel anything toward the human, but I don’t have the same over-emotional feeling that I do when it’s an animal. I had a great childhood, so it doesn’t come from that.

Animals suffering hits me harder than humans suffering. I think it’s because humans are so commonly the cause of both.

@DummyGladHands

An Affair to Remember, not the horrible remake

Actually, An Affair to Remember is a remake too. The original is Love Affair, with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. It will make you sob like you have all the periods of your life at once. But if you really want a tearjerker, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in Penny Serenade. I have seen it once. I don’t know anyone who has managed to sit through the whole thing twice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[Patx2]

I get emotional at any type of cruelty to animals, children, the elderly, anyone or anything that cannot defend itself.

[Spice_Weasel]

Pretty much anything. I’ve cried at radio commercials for diamond rings, TV commercials for orange juice, and pretty much every episode of Full House. Usually, when I cry over that stuff, it’s because it’s so simple and real life is never that simple.

Where I get really upset is depictions of torture or prolonged human suffering. People are like, oh it’s just a movie, but no it’s fucking not. People have often suffered and died that way in real life. Lonely, painful deaths at the hands of sociopaths or fascists are not a fictional concept, and I can’t deal with it.

[Rilchiam]

“This Little Light of Mine”. IRL, I hear it almost exclusively at funerals, so if it’s sung in a movie or TV show, or recently, in a book, I naturally choke up.

[Count_Blucher]

My kids, trying to make me proud. (Me. ME!! Who The Fuck ever worries about making ME proud!?)

Those rare 1-2 times I my life when… that other person in my life… loved me back.

The more you actually have a Soul, the more important it becomes.

[Velocity]

@Spice_Weasel

Where I get really upset is depictions of torture or prolonged human suffering. People are like, oh it’s just a movie, but no it’s fucking not. People have often suffered and died that way in real life. Lonely, painful deaths at the hands of sociopaths or fascists are not a fictional concept, and I can’t deal with it.

Sometimes when I have insomnia, my mind goes to the topic of people getting napalmed in World War II or torture victims or things like that. Not something that helps with sleep.