Due to its angst-heavy nature, the comic is full of these moments.
Spoilers Off applies to all Tear Jerker pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
- The entire comic can be looked at as one giant tearjerker, especially due to the premise. There is an incident that causes Lincoln and Sam to have a child despite them both being incredibly young, especially Lincoln, and Luna runs away, with the family getting torn up because of these events. It is made clear from the beginning that this is not going to be a happy story, to the point where Lincoln has tried to keep the whole thing hidden from Lina.
- Luna’s entire situation in the comic is quite sad for fans of the character. She did something so bad that it caused her to run away from her family and is in deep denial about the role she played in it. Throughout the comic, she has frequent hallucinations of Lincoln, which do not speak well of her mental state.
- In the opening, Luna returns home after over 11 years since she ran away but feels so awful about what she did that she cannot bring herself to face them again. The more you read into the comic, the sadder this scene becomes, as we get to see how everything went so badly.
- The incident where Luna mentions Sam’s father and it opens a deep wound in her can easily provoke this reaction. Luna, due to her jealousy of Sam and Lincoln spending time together, gets so mad at her that she brings up her father. Sam runs off crying, and afterwards, she just sits out in the rain crying. Lincoln brings Sam into the house and gets her dried and mostly calmed down, but this puts quite a strain on Luna and Sam’s relationship.
- When we learn about the situation with Sam’s father, it makes the entire situation even sadder. Sam’s family used to be happy, but her mom and dad started having marital problems, so her dad left. This caused her family to spiral downward, with her mother drinking heavily, her brother Simon going from a sweet and caring boy to a cold jerk and Sam herself self-harming.
- The events that happen from pages 103 to 115 are when the comic goes from being sad to nothing but sadness. First, Luna, having realized her mistake, tries to apologize to Sam, but due to how much Luna hurt her, Sam is not fully willing to accept it. Then when Rusty releases the fake photo of Sam and Lincoln kissing, things go From Bad to Worse with Luna raging so much that she straight slaps Sam and punches Lincoln. She had to be stopped by Mazzy before she beat them both. After this, Lincoln and Sam’s lives are destroyed, with both leaving school and Lincoln spending most of his time in bed.
- Before Lincoln leaves school, though, we get another moment. Lincoln tries to convince Stella that the photo was faked, but she does not believe him and ends up breaking up with him. After quite a few pages of getting the two together, having them just break up over a fake photo from a jealous Rusty is hard to see.
- Lincoln’s rape at the hands of Sam is disheartening as it is disturbing, and easily one of the biggest tearjerkers in the whole comic. Lincoln and Sam spend much of the comic bonding and getting to know each other better, but after Rusty’s fake photo destroys their lives, it makes Sam snap and commit such an unspeakable act to Lincoln. The moments after are just Lincoln in bed looking horrible, isolating himself from even his family and friends, just crying while replaying images of what Sam did to him.
- Sam is also doing badly, with her having eventually sobered up and discovering to her horror that she is pregnant. Despite what she did, it is hard to watch as she now realizes that she must have done something horrible and is now crying heavily and freaking out over what she is going to do. This is one of the rare instances in a rape scene where it is easy to feel bad for both people involved. After this, things are never going to be the same again.
