Author's Note: I saw Inside Out today with my brother. It was awesome! It is now up there as one of the best animated movies I've ever seen.
I want to say something about the dream machine chapter. At the time when I wrote that, I didn't know about Dream Productions, and made my own way of how dreams were created. I was sort of right though in how memories were used to generate the dreams.
Anyway, enjoy the chapter!
The day had finally come. Sunday. Andrew had no plans, and neither did his brother, Mike, and so Joy had the wonderful idea to finally take the opportunity to see Inside Out.
Mike would have gone with his friends, but they were all busy that weekend, and Andrew could tell Mike didn't want to wait until next weekend, so he thought it would be nice to take him. It was one of those "Kill two birds with one stone" scenarios.
The two brothers were finally at the crowded theatre, and have found some nice seats where they could get a good view.
"OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!" Needless to say, all six emotions, even Logic, were all overflowing with excitement and giddiness. They jumped and danced and screamed at each other, but none were happier than Joy. They could barely contain their excitement even as the trailers ended and the short film began (Pixar's usual formula of having a short film before the feature presentation).
"I wonder how much of our predictions were right!" Fear shouted.
"I wonder if they'll use info we've picked up in all those psychology classes!" Anger added.
"I think the bigger question is will we remember what we learned in those classes!" Sadness said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"I can't wait to see shipping fuel between Joy and Sadness!" Joy exclaimed. "The two of them stuck together, forced to go on a journey and find their way back. The writers may as well be screaming at us 'ship them! Ship them! Ship them!'
Sadness quietly slipped behind Fear and Anger, farther away from Joy, his eyes shifting back and forth.
"Oh! Wonder if we'll finally see some ship fics for the two of them online!" Joy shouted, continuing his rant. Oh! Maybe some lemons! Maybe threesomes with Disgust! Oh it'll be so saucy!" He was hunched over, wringing his hands, and laughing maniacally like a mad scientist.
Everyone was quiet for second, all eyes turned to Joy with looks mixing between disgust and shock. "You're really weird sometimes, ya know that?" Disgust stated, finally breaking the silence.
The silence was further broken by a fax machine at the corner of the room spitting out more feed from the islands.
"More incoming messages from Fanboy Island!" Sadness announced merrily.
For the last half-hour, since arriving at the theatre, Fanboy Island had been going crazy and overloading with signals, messages and activity. It housed incarnations of all of Andrew's favorite movies, TV shows, books, video games, any work of fiction. The island was usually very chaotic. It was decorated with statues and idols of various characters; buildings that matched their counterparts from the movies. On a typical day, you would find the four girls from Team RWBY having lunch at a café, only for it to be interrupted by Gollum crashing down on their table. Zombies would be running rampant through the streets, being chased away and toasted by Fire Nation soldiers. Batman would be flying and grappling from one rooftop to another and wave high to the Dragonborn, who was riding Paarthunax. Aku and Dormin would be arm wrestling. Twilight Sparkle would be asleep in her castle bedroom, only for her dreams to be invaded by Freddy Krueger.
On days like today, when a particularly special event happened relating to any of these fictions occurred, the island would be in full throttle. Every character would be resuming their usual activities, but this time, seemingly in fast-forward, and occasionally shouting out how happy they were about the event, or the movie in this particular instance. Some were wearing Inside Out labeled clothing or waving flags.
Finally, the short film, which was about a volcano feeling lonely, ended, and the feature presentation started. The screen went black. Riley's Joy's voice started voicing over.
"Guys! Shush!" Fear barked. "Seats! It's starting."
"Oh man oh man oh man!" Joy chanted as he slid into his seat.
Twelve wide eyes and six enormous grins were pointed at the screen – the one that looked through Andrew's eyes at the movie screen.
Barely a couple of minutes into the movie though, the spell the movie had cast over them was interrupted by a chorus of high-pitched screams of terror.
The six emotions ran to the window and looked out to see the screams coming from Fanboy Island. Debris seemed to be falling off the edges into the Memory Dump below, and the characters barely struggling to stay on the island, clinging to the edges, pulling each other up.
"Even for Fanboy Island, that's a bit unusual," Anger stated, a bit of concern in his tone.
As he finished his sentence, on the screen appeared a notification for a FaceTime chat. The emotions ran back to the consol. Fear hit the button to accept the FaceTime request. On the screen in a smaller pop-up appeared a blue mind worker, the burning structures of Fanboy Island behind him. He was clearly exhausted and terrified and panting heavily.
"Worker! Report!" Fear barked.
"Sir!" The Mind Worker panted. "There… the island… there's so much hype energy! The Fanboy Island is so active! And one of the characters… absorbed some of the energy and now he's going berserk!"
"What character?" Fear demanded.
"Dor… Dormin... from Shadow of the Colossus!"
The worker looked behind himself and screamed before being knocked away by a giant hand of black smoke. The screen went to static.
"Shadow of the Colossus," Sadness repeated. "Such a sad story. And at the same time such a brilliant one."
In the real world, Andrew was constantly whispering over and over again, "Dormin, Dormin, Dormin, Dormin…" Though not loud enough so anybody else could hear him.
"We gotta get down there and stop Dormin before he tears the island apart." Fear announced.
"Wait!" Joy exclaimed. "What about the movie?"
"Huh, you're right," Fear replied, a finger on his chin.
"I'll stay and watch it," Logic announced, waddling to the panel. "Whenever you need an update, call me."
"Sounds good." Fear said with a nod. "Alright boys! Let's get down there!" Each of them grabbed a stun gun that was held on a rack.
They hoped aboard the Train of Thought and arrived at Fanboy Island. They could see characters scrambling around, trying to find a place to hide, pulling their neighbor to safety. A small orchestra who played Andrew's favorite soundtracks were playing the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack, "A Despair-Filled Fairwell."
The five emotions charged into the ruins of the city. It wasn't long before they came across a massive humanoid creature with a pitch black body, glowing blue eyes, and horns like those of an ox. The emotions recognized him immediately. He had a fist raised and was about to slam down on a small cluster of fleeing stormtroopers.
"Dormin!" Joy shouted.
The giant fiend hesitated his attack, and turned to face the emotions.
"Hey there buddy!" Fear called out. "Listen. Umm… think you can calm down a little?"
Dormin's voices said something in their usual deep, echoing, ghastly tone. None of the emotions understood what he was saying though. It must have been in Japanese.
"Anybody understand that?" Fear asked.
"Nope," Joy replied with a shrug. "None of us speak Japanese."
Dormin then raised his fist again and was about to lunge.
"Okay he's not up for talking." Anger said. "FIRE!"
The five drew out their stun guns and open-fired at Dormin.
The bullets of lightning seemed to hit the demon's chest with no affect, like a flock of birds crashing into a brick wall. The fist came down and slammed onto the street.
The emotions were scattered from each other by the shockwave.
His hand still down, Dormin, swatted across the street with the back of his hand. He struck Joy and Sadness, sending them both flying over towards the edge of the island.
Sadness grabbed the ledge with one hand, and Joy's hand with the other. Anger rushed over to help them.
"Come on!" He shouted. He grabbed Sadness's hand and pulled him up, then they both pulled up Joy.
"Retreat!" Fear shouted. Upon his command, the five emotions ran away and hid behind one of the massive statues of Rarity the Unicorn.
Dormin roared and unleashed a torrent of blue fire into the air.
"Now what?" Anger asked.
"Well I'd say this rage is enough to tear apart the entire mind," Fear answered. "I don't know what we can do to stop him."
"Oh hey," Joy spoke up. "I wonder how the movie's going."
"Oh yeah we should get an update from Logic," Fear nodded in agreement. He took out his phone and called Logic. Everyone else was silent, almost immediately forgetting the danger just down the street from them.
"Hello?" Logic's voice answered at the other end.
"Logic!" Fear replied. "How's the movie going? What's happening right now?"
"Joy and Sadness just met the pink elephant guy we keep seeing in the advertising." There was a pause, some inaudible dialogue from the movie, and then Logic spoke again. "His name is Bing Bong. And he is in fact Riley's imaginary friend."
"Okay great thanks!" Fear hung up and relayed the information to the other emotions.
"Okay, so imaginary friends can exist in here too!" Joy stated.
"Wait!" Disgust shouted. "If that's true, then that means-"
Before he could finish his sentence, a whirlwind of black smoke suddenly appeared next to the statue before him.
The smoke cleared almost instantly, revealing a man in a black cloak, much like the ones worn by the Sith in Star Wars. He turned towards the emotions and pushed back his hood, revealing a face identical to Andrew's. The emotions knew who this was.
"WERDNA!" Joy exclaimed. They all rushed out to hug and fist-pound Andrew's imaginary friend, the one Andrew would share his thoughts with on his tape recorder, the one who Andrew liked to talk in the mirror like Gollum would.
"It's nice to see you all," Werdna said ins a gentle, yet somehow unsettling voice. It was the kind of tone a scheming, charismatic villain might use when speaking to anybody. "A little backup is appreciated. I've watched dozens of mind workers try to shoot him and get thrown over the edge."
"What do we do?" Fear asked. "How do we stop him."
"Well I think the answer is quite obvious," Werdna answered. "We defeat him the same way he was defeated in the game: sealing him into a pool with the magic sword." He reached down one of his cloak's sleeves and pulled out the very sword he mentioned. "I took the liberty of digging through some of the rubble here and found this."
"Great!" Disgust exclaimed. "Now all we need is a pool!"
"We could head over to Workout Island," Sadness suggested. "There's a lap pool there."
"That should work!" Joy said.
"Oh! But of course, we'll all need our Lord Emon Masks!" Werdna said. With a wave of his hand, each emotion's face was enveloped in a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, each one was wearing a wooden mask resembling an owl.
They ran for the bridge from the island into Long Term Memory. Dormin had leapt across the gap and was now knocking down the shelves of memories.
The emotions all scrambled and split up and managed to weave their way through the maze and finally, one at a time, all arrived at Workout Island.
This island had replaced Swimming Island in Andrew's early college years. Swimming Island was around for most of High School when Andrew swam for the high school swim team. By his sophomore year in college, however, he no longer swam for a team, and found himself having more fulfilling exercise from running on a treadmill and lifting weights, and was going to the pool to swim laps less and less. Finally at one point, Workout Island appeared, and Swimmer's Island collapsed into the Abyss.
Werdna and the Emotions all ran past weights and treadmills and other exercise equipment until finally they arrived at the island's lap pool.
"I got this," Werdna said. Sword in his hand, he approached the pool. He raised the sword up in the air, as though letting the skies above see it, and then tossed it into the pool.
"Be gone foul beast!" Werdna shouted as the sword hit the water and sunk below the surface. A bright light engulfed the sword, and spread all throughout the pool until it became a rectangle of celestial energy.
Dormin slammed another case of the memory shelves, and then turned around and noticed his back being chipped away, small puffs of black smoke being sucked off of his body and towards a bright light coming from Exercise Island.
Dormin knew what was happening. He clawed at the ground under him as the winds pulling him towards the island became stronger and stronger. More and more smoke ripped from his body. He felt his form shrinking as more of his energy was yanked from him.
Finally he could hold on no more and lost his grip. What was left of him was flung threw the air towards the island, and finally landed in the pool. Once he was under the water, the bright light faded, and the water disappeared. No Dormin. No sword. Nothing.
The emotions were all silent for a moment, waiting for someone to say something or something else to happen.
"Well, I'm glad that's over," Disgust said finally.
"Man, look at this mess!" Sadness sighed, looking out at all the destruction.
"Oh don't worry," Werdna said, patting Sadness's shoulder. "Nothing serious. The Mind Workers can fix everything. But I think you guys should hurry back to Headquarters and see the rest of that movie."
Soon after, all six emotions were all together back in Headquarters watching the movie. The plot had reached the third act. Andrew had stopped repeating Dormin over and over again and was entirely focused on the movie.
Nearing the end, Riley's Sadness and Joy had come to an understanding together. Now they were both working together to give Riley a moment with her parents, allowing Riley to break down and sob about moving, and also be happy that she was in her parents' arms. Joy and Sadness were holding hands as they worked the panel.
"Oh my God! They're holding hands!" Andrew's Joy squeaked.
The next scene showed a new memory appearing in the shelf with a blue and yellow swirl; a memory that was both sad and joyful.
"Aw it's like they had a baby!" Andrew's Joy squealed.
"Dude, please –PLEASE -for the love of God -don't go there!" Disgust pleaded.