Inside Out reImagined

Disgust's Dream Duty

To be fair, Disgust started regretting the choice to go on Dream Duty almost immediately.

They were by no means a slacker, and whenever called for Dream Duty from an external leader — even a leader as questionable as Joy — they would gladly accept. However, they were a bit of a conformist, too, and putting themself in more trouble than necessary was something that they wanted to avoid.

This was not to say that Disgust never allowed themself to have opinions — after all, if they hadn't, Riley would gladly love playing in dirt and putting dirt in her mouth, almost constantly. Yet, ultimately, they knew that their own opinions had to be synchronized to Riley's, and it was figuring those opinions out, just by looking at the compendium of memories that had formed since Riley's childhood, that was the biggest difficulty of an emotion's work.

All of this didn't matter, though, because Disgust offered to go on Dream Duty, and they'd better follow up on their word, whether they liked it or not, as all the others had already gone to bed. They thus pulled away Joy's central office chair, put up the sofa for that extra amount of comfort, and put it in the office chair's place so that they would have easy console access. The sofa still turned out to be way too low to sit on, especially for someone as short as Disgust, so they also put a pillow on it for the complete ergonomic setup.

Ordinarily, Disgust wouldn't go for something as difficult and menial as pushing a sofa around, for the sole purpose of comfort. However, for one, everyone else was already dozing off, and calling for their help was out of the question. And for another thing, they had a duty to perform, and wouldn't take any risks in getting less comfortable, especially if they wanted to be of any use throughout the rest of the day.

Maybe it was just an inevitability, and Disgust would end up being just as much of a hindrance for Riley tomorrow as Joy was today. But somehow, they knew that they could prevent it.

Now that that basic part of preparation was done, Disgust could pass the time until the first dream of the night with their best friend, at least in circumstances like this — their own thoughts.

Just like Joy, Disgust saw the output of Dream Theatrical Studios as something that preferred slapstick over originality. After all, their goal was to provoke emotion, the essence of Imagination, in the strongest possible degree, and they would strive to achieve that no matter what, even if the end result ended up... sub-par for any critical eyes.

Unlike Joy, though, Disgust wouldn't really be one to complain about it. They knew that just like real movie studios, Dream Theatrical Studios existed in their own cultural bubble, with a "closed-doors policy" or whatever it was that Joy was constantly ranting about. And they understood that such a cultural bubble existed for a reason, and it was no one's, and especially no emotion's, business to complain about it.

They also would be the last emotion to try and wake Riley up in the middle of the night. Indeed, it was the case that Dream Theatrical Studios attempted to push every single one of their buttons, and those of the other emotions, at the same time. Yet, where Joy had exhilaration, Sadness had depression, Fear had primal terror, and Anger had primal rage, all of which were really good reasons for a premature awakening, Disgust just had shaking their head and crossing their arms — and more importantly, doing it away from the console.

Yet, they supposed, at least one other emotion that they listed in their thoughts didn't understand keeping her hands away from the console as a crucial part of Headquarters work, leading to her untimely departure.

Right, ugh, the departure. For whatever reason, for the rest of the day, Joy seemingly really didn't want any thoughts to fall on the incident, or even Sadness herself, and it almost seemed like she overheard not just dialogue, but also thoughts, instead directing them to something else, like how Riley will immediately out-class the best of Asian prodigies at hockey.