Inside Out reImagined

Joy vs. Sadness

Before Joy even began, she needed to understand what she was doing, what she hoped to achieve, and where it had gone wrong so far.

First of all, what was up with Sadness being so high-maintenance, anyway? This must have been the third time Joy felt the need to pull Sadness away from the Headquarters action just to see what was up with her. This was clearly unsustainable, even throughout the course of the day.

Or was she even high-maintenance?

This was so difficult to think about, especially since no emotion had a definite model for how the other emotions thought - a very good reason why all of them needed to be there for Riley at all times. Yet, this sort of abstract thinking led Joy nowhere to understanding Sadness's true purpose.

Whatever. She would probably just ask her. The ideal mind is one where everyone's opinions are taken into account, right?

Okay, but seriously. What would the ideal mind look like?

Quite obviously, it would be one where everyone was engaged with Riley and... happy doing so- Was Joy even trying?

She couldn't help but groan, notifying the other emotions to her deep thinking. Yet, the other emotions seemed to largely not care, and Sadness didn't react at all, meaning that Joy's cover was not yet blown and she still had the time to think everything over.

Alright. Good. Where was she? Ideal mind. Right. And though Riley was better off when she was happy as opposed to when she had a connection with someone else in Headquarters, that didn't mean that the someone else in question's thoughts should be disrupted just because they didn't align with Joy's.

That was a good answer, right? Now that Joy thought about it, it did seem like an ideal of sorts: the ideal mind is one where every emotion has a chance to fully express themself in their own unique way.

Yeah. Let's go with that.

Finally, why was Joy unable to do this one thing - make every other emotion feel welcome in the job that they had no risk of losing?

Admittedly, she wasn't the greatest at dealing with other emotions. Indeed, she was a leader, but she wasn't that kind of leader; more so, she was showing everyone the path... and telling everyone what to do. There was another type of leader, who actually took their time to ensure the team meshed well, and they were definitely important, but no such leader had yet presented themself in Headquarters.

Regardless, Joy would need to at least try to fill in the other role, and in order to do that, she would need to approach Sadness separately, no matter how many times she tried that during the day.

And the current moment - a low-energy one, wherein Riley didn't seem to be doing anything and didn't need to be either particularly happy or particularly sad - was perfect.

Alright. Joy took a deep breath, raising brows from everyone else at the console, then stood up and approached Sadness.

"What is it...?" the blue emotion asked.

"Oh, nothing. You just seem... the opposite of fine, y'know?" Joy spoke, as though it was nothing. This time, she decided to let Sadness have her place by the console, but moved her own chair to the far right.

"Yeah... you could say that..." Sadness only lamented.

However, even an altercation as quick as this caught the attention of Disgust, sitting right by Sadness's side. "Ew! I didn't know these were going to become more frequent than my beauty naps!" they voiced. "Can you... can you do the headphones thing again?"