| rdfs:comment | - Something terrible has happened, but a character finds him or herself unable to shed tears. (Or at least, says s/he can't). In the classic scenario, a bereaved hero will angst (or Wangst) over their inability to cry for a dead loved one, lamenting that they must be a terrible person, dried up and dead inside, a monster! They never are; they're usually just suffering an undiagnosed Heroic BSOD, or are working up to an Unstoppable Rage and can't let themselves break down, or swore they wouldn't let their enemies see them cry and now have an emotional block about it. Occasionally they cried so much over one traumatic event in their life that they seem to have no tears left for anything else.
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| abstract | - Something terrible has happened, but a character finds him or herself unable to shed tears. (Or at least, says s/he can't). In the classic scenario, a bereaved hero will angst (or Wangst) over their inability to cry for a dead loved one, lamenting that they must be a terrible person, dried up and dead inside, a monster! They never are; they're usually just suffering an undiagnosed Heroic BSOD, or are working up to an Unstoppable Rage and can't let themselves break down, or swore they wouldn't let their enemies see them cry and now have an emotional block about it. Occasionally they cried so much over one traumatic event in their life that they seem to have no tears left for anything else. In many works this will be leading up to a Big Scene where something triggers the character to break down in floods of cleansing tears, hopefully leading to catharsis, possibly leading to Narm. But alternatively, it can be simply a way of trying to explain/justify Men Don't Cry, in which case the tearless hero will remain stoical till the end, maybe shedding half a freedom drop at most. One common result of the Bearer of Bad News. A friend or relative may say "He Will Not Cry, So I Cry for Him". In some relatively rare cases, the character can cry over ordinary things, but has never wept for the one big defining sorrow of their life. Obviously this is Truth in Television to a degree, though fiction tends to be more Anvilicious about it. Compare Frozen Face. Compare Tears From a Stone, for when they shouldn't be able to cry, but somehow do. Examples of Unable to Cry include:
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