"Emo" vs just sad?

[13_CBS]

Lots of people tend to complain that a character has gone emo whenever he/she sheds a single tear. On the flipside, characters who weather the stones and arrows of outrageous misfortune are labeled as Mary Sue/Gary Stus.

So where's the fine balance? How does an author make a character feel truly sad and depressed without going headlong into the two extremes?

[Winterwind]

I get the impression people only label a character as "emo" if said character overreacts as compared to the gravity of the situation. If something terrible happens and the character feels sad, that's fine. If something slightly bad happens and the character bursts in tears, babbling how everything is his/her fault (when it clearly is not), then the character is emo.

[Brickwall]

Sad characters have angst. Emo characters have Wangst (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.Wangst).

[TSGames]

The difference reminds me of a brief scene from 'Wayne's World"(potential misspelling). After the "Waynestock" concert there is trash all over the ground, and their Native American(yay! I'm PC!) companion walks up and sheds a single manly tear. That is acceptable. He was sad for the damage to the land. Had he begun weeping, or sobbing that would have been emo, and unacceptable.

[Querzis]

I never had anything against people being sad. Everyone is sad sometimes. But emo arent sad, emo just seems to hate happiness. But I hate emo so much its unreal. An emo is someone who doesnt want to be happy. Lets just take an example with the greatest emo ever, Sasuke from Naruto. I wont repeat all the dialogue but basically, as Sasuke was about to leave his village and his friends to go find Orochimaru (the BBG) to gain more power, Sakura come and tell him to stay because she love him and would do everything to make him happy. So Sasuke tell her that the moments he was with her and Naruto were the happiest moments of his life...and then he say that he still prefer to kill his brother or die trying then to stay with them and be happy. Then he knock her out and almost kill Naruto.

Thats a freaking emo. Its not people who are sad and/or angry when something sad happen to them, if it would then everyone would be emo since everyone has been sad before. Its people who are sad and full of angst when something happy happen to them and never seems to be able to be happy or even want to be happy.

[valadil]

Insofar as I can tell, sadness as a reaction to something is okay and normal. When you go look for an excuse to be sad is when you're entering emo territory.

[13_CBS]

Well, let's take Nimmel from Dominic Deegan. People complain how he's always emo, but to the poor guy's credit, he pretty much froze up while his classmates were slaughtered trying to fend off an evil mage. Nimmel ought to feel pretty guilty and all that, yet people still label him emo in the bad way.

Of course, this is Mookie's writing, so there's that...but people like Nimmel don't strike me as over reacting, yet they're still called emo. Is it just because of how they look or something?

[Haruspex]

I think there is a "look" associated with emo as well. Not sure of the exact definition, but it seems to involve black clothing and other stuff. I always thought that the term was being applied far too loosely and thus losing any real meaning.

[Winterwind]

Nimmel is not emo. He is dressed in a way associated with that, and at his character introduction he acted in a way which might be considered as such, but he's been over that for years. I never quite understood why people kept calling him emo.
Of course, given Mookie's writing, he might slip back into emo mode at a moment's notice. Because.