Heroes can come from the most unlikely of places.
Ah, I'm back Heroes Wiki, with the unofficial Pure Good Wiki getting ready to create headlined pages for the first time, I figured now's as good a time as ever to do a write-up for a animated hero who I'm shocked has never been brought up as of yet. One of the leads from Inside Out.
Inside Out is a Pixar movie centered around a girl named Riley Anderson who's recently moved to San Francisco having to leave her old life behind. Riley's secretly controlled by a benevolent anthropomorphic emotions within her brain -- it's been that way since she was born. There's Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger... and probably some other emotions that Riley will develop as she grows up. Anyway... you read the title of the write-up and saw the picture, so you all know who the write-up's for. So let's get to it!
What Has She Done?[]
Sadness came into existence after Riley's first 33 seconds of her life; there, she met Joy. When she caused baby Riley to cry, Joy pushed her aside and fixed the situation. As Riley would grow up during her childhood years, Fear, Disgust and Anger would each come into existence getting a reasonable amount of turns on the console. But nobody on the team understood just what Sadness' purpose was in the group, and they would often avoid using her, aside from Riley throwing tantrums or not getting her way. Sadness was pretty much the black sheep of Team Emotion.
Then when Riley turned 11 and moved to San Francisco, California, things only got worse from there. Riley's father doesn't have time for her, their new house is in poor condition, the pizza place downtown only served broccoli pizza and the moving van wouldn't come for weeks. Sadness thinks that this situation is a good time to handle Riley's problems, but Joy still didn't let her get involved.
The next day at Riley's new school, Joy tells Sadness to stay out of everything and stay in a small white circle Joy made of chalk, so Riley won't be sad. When Riley is called up to introduce herself, Joy makes her talk about the good old times in Minnesota but Sadness accidentally causes her to cry and miss living there. The film reveals that Sadness was touching a memory that was originally positive and made a new Core Memory that is a sad one. The other emotions begin to panic as the sad core memory rolls into the core memory chamber. Joy quickly takes the core memory out and decides to throw it away. Sadness tries to stop Joy, but indirectly causes both them and the core memories to be accidentally sucked up into a tube and they end up in Long Term Memory. Joy decides to find a way to get back to Headquarters with Sadness as her guide.
During the long journey, they run into Riley's old imaginary friend from toddlerhood, Bing Bong, who knows a way back to Headquarters. Joy decides to have him show them the way back -- despite him clearly being an sensitive goofball. While on their way back, they go through Imagination Land, where they see that many of the childish aspects of Riley's personality are being removed, including Bing Bong's rocket that's tossed down to the Memory Dump. Bing Bong starts crying and Joy tries to get him to calm down by being goofy, but it doesn't help in the slightest. Instead of trying to cheer him up, Sadness decides to sympathize with him and let him express his emotions, which actually helps make Bing Bong feel better. Joy is shocked that Sadness could solve Bing Bong's problems without cheering him up.
The next day, the trio finds out that Riley is running away (thanks to Anger) and that all the personality islands are disappearing one by one. Joy decides to abandon Sadness and return to HQ via recall tube, but karma returns to bite her as her plan backfires when she falls into the Memory Dump, and Bing Bong comes after her. When Joy looks at all of the forgotten memories, she sees tons of sad ones and realizes that Riley's problems were solved because Sadness was the one in control during those times, and Joy finally sees that she went super overboard with trying to keep Riley happy. After several failed attempts to escape using Bing Bong's Rocket Wagon, Joy makes it out of the chasm, but Bing Bong sacrifices himself and fades into oblivion.
Joy tracks Sadness down and tries to get her to come back to headquarters with her, but Sadness thinks Riley doesn't need her and just cries her eyes out and flies away from Joy on a cloud. Soon enough, Joy creates a crazy plan involving a large stack of imaginary boyfriend and a trampoline as she's flung into the air and grabs Sadness, and the two (barely) make it back to HQ, just as Riley is about to run away. The others tell Joy to handle Riley's problem, but Joy tells that it's now up to Sadness to save Riley. After Sadness successfully removes the idea, the console becomes operative again. Joy hands the core memories to Sadness, who turns them all sad and places them in the core memory holder. At first, Sadness is unsure and nervous because she has never done this before, but Joy assures her otherwise. Riley comes home, and the sad memories help her tell her parents how she really feels about her new life in San Francisco and that she misses Minnesota helping them reconcile.
Just then, a new core memory materializes - it's both yellow and blue (which creates Melancholy), creating a bigger, cooler, greater, and updated Family Island. Joy and Sadness hold hands on the new core memory and several months later when Riley turns 12, Joy and Sadness finally become a proper team and the best of friends. Sadness is finally accepted amongst the other emotions and allowed to use the controller full time, now that they knew her purpose.
Corrupting Factors[]
Yeah, here's thig about Sadness. Her corrupting factors are probably not going to be centered on morality since she's shown to be an unambiguously good person/emotion. Her main issue her how resident she is to participate in various problems, and how often she weeps, cries and complains. Although maybe this can be overlooked for a number of reasons. Aside from Sadness being the literal definition and personification of sorrow and gloom, she's had an exceptionally rough 11 years as throughout her early life as she almost never got to use the console since Joy didn't want Riley to ever be sad, even when she needs to be, and was overall treated very poorly. So overall Sadness has a solid justification for being sad all the time. Also, she's never shown to be downright hostile to her partners or anybody for that matter, and offers some surprisingly smart and reasonable advice, and has shown to be a rather nice companion when treated fairly.
Admirable Standard[]
Joy was rejected from proposals due to often being insensitive to her teammates, refusing to share the console, mistreating Sadness, and infamously driving her into hopelessness by abandoning her by the recall tubes. And Anger, Fear and Disgust don't come anywhere close to reaching the Admirable Standard, basically serving as comic reliefs and even making things worse. So that leaves just one emotion left, the blue one: Riley Anderson's Sadness.
Despite her constant mistreatment, she'd continue yearning to earn her place among the other emotions, even though the others do not believe Sadness has a purpose in the mind and almost always prevents her from trying. She is the most sensitive out of all the emotions, as she felt genuinely hurt by Joy's abandonment because "Riley needs to be happy", which made poor Sadness feel she was truly useless and unneeded.
She's is also smarter, has more common sense, and is more pragmatic than the others, which proved to be essential and helpful in the journey through Riley's mind, as she knew her way around the looooong hall of memories, tried to warn Joy about the dangers of taking Bing Bong's "shortcut" through Abstract Thought, which was really a dangerous place to go through, but nobody listened to her. She also suggested scaring Riley to wake her up, but Joy thought that giving her a fun dream would wake her up, which it didn't.
Despite her pessimistic disposition, sarcastic demeanor, and negative attitude, she is very considerate and compassionate towards others; when Bing Bong was sad about losing his wagon, she sympathized with him and let him tell his true feelings, which made him feel much better.
Now before you call me out and say "That's just generic heroism, she's not true Pure Good material", stay with me just a little bit longer...
The whole thing with Bing Bong was a brief foreshadowing of Sadness's true purpose - her role is to tell others when Riley needs help by helping her let the sadness out so she can then let it go. Joy herself would realize this when she was stuck in the memory dump: Sadness was the reason everyone came to her aid when he miserable and alone, earlier. When Sadness is requested to take control after Riley's sorrow became evident at the final scene of the movie, she is able to let Riley express her true feelings and helps Riley find happiness at last, and stop being a stepford smiler. This would later result in the other emotions finally trusting and accepting Sadness as an equal to them, not only does Joy start treating her better, but Sadness gains more confidence in herself as well, now that she has finally found her place. It's the end of an age and the start of a brand new dawn.
Don't you see? Sadness was able to save the day in the climax by removing Riley's "return to Minnesota" idea from her mind and cause her to grow a conscience. And then while she's taking control of Riley's mind, she's helping the Anderson family reconcile, and Riley finally grow up properly and face her problems head on with support when necessary. Sadness makes you slow down, think about your life, consider where it's going next, and signal to others that you need a hand or a hug, or support. So... not generic heroism.
Conclusion[]
Like I said before, a true hero can often come from the most unlikely of places, and not all heroes have to wear tights and capes. Sometimes they wear drab turtlenecks and huge glasses like someone wore in the '80s. If Inside Out is Joy and Riley's coming of age story, it's Sadness's coming out story, as her indispensability and capacity for leadership are finally revealed by the film's end. Sadness hs the true hero off the film, even if you may not have known initially. Let's just see how the write-up goes.