Inside Out reImagined

Focusing Inward

It was quite funny, actually, to see the roles reversed like that. For as long as Sadness remembered — and now that she had practiced her Imagination, she remembered a lot — it was Joy who wanted to talk about whatever, and interrupted her workday without so much as giving her her comms tablet, or even a forewarning.

Yet, as it stood, right now, Joy was the one being immensely troubled, and Sadness would need to serve her purpose.

The drawing said as much. Though a lot of it was already obscured by the blue streaks, the picture drawn before it was intentionally defaced was painfully clear to anyone who was in Headquarters for as long as Riley was in Shanghai. At the forefront was a familiar bright thought form, who seemed to serve the role of a puppeteer, holding all the other emotions — including, curiously, Joy herself — by either strings or her own hair.

Of course, the hair — as much as Sadness had seen Joy after returning but before the transformation — obscured her face, at least somewhat. That, however, gave the onlooking emotion her final clue: the blue streaks weren't just there to obscure the picture — they represented Joy's own point of view, and she still remembered being the puppeteer.

Inevitably, this was something that Joy needed to talk about, and Sadness was going to give her the space, without the other emotions judging. Overall, though, there was a lot to learn from the interruptions of the past — and what to do differently, now that Sadness had the opportunity to reshape the mind and heal all the wounds that the old Joy caused.

The first and most important aspect, probably, was consent. Sadness patiently watched Joy, trying to puzzle herself over the question she was asked, looking back and forth between her and the Consciousness Screen, before finally asking: "For what?"

"You drew your picture for a reason, right? And I think... I know the reason, better than anyone else." Sadness noted, once again speaking in simple words that the childlike emotion could understand.

"You do? Please tell me! Please help me!" Joy pleaded.

"Alright. But we might need to step away from the console. Is that alright?" Sadness asked.

"Yes! It's important! If it keeps hurting... I might hurt Riley, too!" Joy exclaimed, jumping straight into Sadness's lap. This was enough of a signal, and Sadness finally stepped away from the console.

That, though, was when she remembered the second aspect: that none of the emotions could be separated from Riley. Of course, being relieved of duty, and the subsequent departure from Headquarters, was an absolute extreme that had never happened in the history of Riley before and should never be allowed to happen again, under any leader or circumstance, but even momentary separations from the console — and Sadness had seen plenty of them all throughout Riley's life — really added up.

Therefore, once Sadness brought Joy over to the Headquarters sofa and seated her, she immediately rushed to retrieve the golden comms tablet, before handing it over to the childlike emotion. She then asked: "You know how to use this thing, right?"

It took Joy quite a few glances in order to figure out what Mommy was getting at, but eventually, she nodded. "Yeah! It's like..." She had already found the remote console app, and noted its similarities to the real console — and that told her more than enough. "You weren't taking me away from Riley, were you? You're so kind, Mommy!"

At that point, however, Disgust turned back, not even remotely pleased. "You just took the child away from the console during what might be the most childish activity Riley is doing in China?"

"I'm still here! I can still do things!" Joy shouted out, giving the comms tablet's side keyboards an awkward touch; as expected, the console turned gold and Riley was finally interested in drawing again, rather than trying to solve the riddles planted in each Chinese character.