Emoblog/2015/12/25/Inside Out

• written: 2015-12-25
• topic: Inside Out (2015 film)

Goddammit Pixar

#firstWorldProblems

We were going to watch Shrek at home, because that had just started playing over at the kids' grandparents' house when we left – but it turned out that the DVD case was missing its disc, so instead we watched Inside Out which we had gotten ourselves for Christmas.

I knew it was going to be an emotional roller-coaster, but apparently this is a case of foreknowledge that can't be used to change fate.

At least now I have a way to characterize my inner life: my Joy fell into the pit decades ago and hasn't been able to escape.... and I can't go home to Minnesota, because nobody lives there anymore. I can't even blame Jenny; she was/is just a symbol of Joy, or at least of Hope (maybe Hope is Joy's understudy), and not Joy herself.

I think Joy got sucked out of the control room sometime around age 5, spent ages 7-14 trying to get back while the islands slowly fell apart, and finally fell off the cliff when Jenny died. Sadness has been able to keep me going, but I miss Joy. I don't really remember her except as an echo, and I'm not even sure she was ever really there; the pictures could all be Photoshopped, for all I can tell.

I wonder if there's now a genre of fan-fiction in which people retell their own life-stories using metaphors from this movie. It seems too potentially useful not to be a thing that the internet would have already discovered.