Joy's soothing Riley's more... edgy emotions (Anger and Fear) as she goes to talk with Riley. Even though they're still scared for their girl, Joy's sound reasoning on how best to tackle the problem when there's already danger was surprisingly sweet.
The way Riley and Disgust seem to just click right away. While the other emotions have their stumbling blocks for Riley, Disgust she bonds with immediately over their shared dislike of Broccoli, and appreciating how well Disgust has done in keeping her from being socially poisoned too.
Chapter 4, You Mean I Look Like Broccoli?
When Riley gets home after spending the day around San Francisco, she's more than a little frustrated at having to focus on what's going on around her, and hearing her emotions talk all day long. After she finds out about the intercom, she asks whether she'll be stuck hearing them for the rest of her life, and Fear tries to make Riley a bit scared of that prospect so she'll concur with fixing it. However, the fear Riley feels instead is a fear of losing those voices, because...
Riley: "I want to learn more about you guys. I mean, what's it like in there?"
The way Riley and Fear converse over her possibly getting brain surgery. Riley doesn't want to hurt her emotions in the process, and Fear replies that no matter the danger they might get into, Riley is always their top priority. The fact that this was the first time Fear tried to promote something dangerous for the sake of greater health is kinda sweet, and helped endear him even more to Riley.
Chapter 5, Lucid Dreaming:
The moment Fear learns just how dangerous consciousness tampering is, he volunteers to go to Dream Productions to keep Riley safe. It also doubles as a moment of awesome.
When the other emotions decide to strike out to meet Riley in the greater mind world, Joy instructs them to go without her. She admits she wants to see Riley "more than anything", but doesn't want to risk Riley waking up unable to feel anything. That Joy would willingly sacrifice her first chance to see Riley face to face is somehow really sweet, particularly since talking with Riley was her idea to begin with.
Chapter 6, Welcome to the Mind World!:
Riley arrives in her mind world, in the middle of Dream Productions, and Fear, Disgust and Sadness are there to greet her. What's the third thing she does (after stopping herself from falling and easing Fear's doubts)? Sweep the three of them into a Group Hug.
Chapter 7: Riley: Recognized is just full of these moments:
This little exchange between Riley and Sadness, right before they step into Headquarters:
Riley: "Are you guys ready?"
Sadness: (taking her hand) "Are you?"
When Riley enters HQ, she gets a quick look around... and then gets glomped by Joy. While surprised at first, Riley quickly reciprocates the hug. Also doubles as a funny moment.
The emotions insisting that they guard and guide instead of control Riley, saying that no matter what they do, she still has free will to act on her own according to the emotions felt.
The little speech Riley gives when she names Possibility Island, during which some Tears of Joy are shed (by the eponymous emotion as well as Sadness and Riley herself), and the subsequent Group Hug.
Riley herself said she felt like she'd just won a hockey championship after all that had happened that night, and that unlike the odd self awareness in her first group hug, this one with her emotions felt warm and comforting.
Before turning in for the night, both Disgust and Fear admit that Riley visiting was cool to have happened.
Joy and Sadness both wish Riley goodnight while she's in REM, and both say that they like the new island of personality already.
Chapter 8, Scatterbrained:
A particularly sweet moment in a chapter otherwise filled with Funny Moments, while the mind workers may be annoying, it's touching that the Forgetters Bobby and Paula would send congratulations to Riley through a letter in Joy's mind mail on the new Island of Personality.
Chapter 9,Technicalities:
When Riley gets mad at the emotions for their saying "we" instead of Riley when talking about activities, Joy and Sadness both say that they know that Riley's emotions make mistakes, but what they're happy of is that Riley chose to accept them rather than reject them.
Chapter 11, Dangers of an Open Mind
In a flashback, we discover how Riley and Ann became friends. It turns out that Ann's supposed coolness got exposed when one of her former posse discovered she read and drew comics, and decided that wasn't cool. Riley stood up for Ann, and they became friends from then. (It also turns out this is what generated a more advanced Friendship Island, making the event doubly important).
This extends to the present, where despite Ann's emotions being uneasy about Riley's supposed knowledge about the mind world, Ann herself is still very much Riley's friend despite the reactions made in class.
Chapter 12, Wavering Focus
When Riley gets confronted by Tracy at Pizza Planet, Jordan doesn't know what's going on because he doesn't have Intro to Psych with them, but he still stands up for Riley anyway.
In the same chapter, we get more details about Jordan's inclusion in Riley's friend circle. He's apparently shy and unsure of himself, but Riley and Ann make him feel welcome.
Chapter 13, Hidden Depths
When Riley lands back in the mind world, she tries to smile, but it's forced. But when she and Sadness lock gazes, Sadness knows exactly what Riley really needs now. And so she and the emotions give Riley a hug of comfort after her...rough day before. One is reminded of when Sadness was there for Bing Bong, as Riley just let it out with Sadness, and then when she broke away, she was already doing better just like Bing Bong was.
Chapter 14, Pure Imagination
The emotions directed Riley to Imagination Land because they knew it was a place for her to perk up. Well, they were right. Because a multitude of fuzzies happen while Riley's in that land.
Riley first tries her imaginary french fries. She calls it the perfect fry.
At Trophy Land, Riley scores, and wins awards for all the emotions...even Sadness who got 1st place for once.
Then we see Riley got a custom trophy from the mind workers, telling her to never stop imagining.
Riley's utter..well...Joy when she finds out that in imagination land, she can make herself fly. It's like every child's dream come true. Only for Riley, she actually got to make it a reality.
Well to be fair, many people (including Riley, even before this fanfic) have had dreams that they could fly. And technically this experience was also a dream—just a very vivid one where she knows what's going on.
By the way, a lot of reviewers mentioned that they wished they could have an experience like that, which isn't really a surprise. What they don't seem to realize is that lucid dreaming is something people can actually learn to do, and while you won't actually meet your emotions or anything like that (well anything is possible in a dream, so I guess you sort of can, but they wouldn't actually be your emotions) you can in fact have very vivid experiences where literally anything you can imagine is possible. The catch is it takes a lot of practice, but it should go without saying that for many people the results are certainly worth the effort.
Chapter 15: Memory Lanes
Joy's about to take a leap of faith in opening the emotions up to condemnation by Riley for their actions during the first days of the move. However, before Joy begins their "confessional", Sadness steps up to let Riley know ahead of time that she might not like what she hears, and takes hold of Joy's hand. Sadness has the least reason to be nervous about telling the story, but since she also covers empathy, she takes her place alongside the friend she made on their adventure together.
Chapter 16: The Story of a Girl
Joy musing that for all the bad rap she gave Sadness for 11 years, Riley somehow managed to accept Sadness's call on Riley's memories in the story. Made her wonder why she couldn't be more like their host.
The next group hug. It's not a hug of total forgiveness, but it is a hug of solidarity. That even after finding out about her emotions sins last year, Riley will still keep loving them as they work through anger and regret together.
There build into it is positively heart melting too. Joy hesitantly begins by asking if they're still friends. Then once Riley says yes, she shakily asks if they can hug her. And when Riley says yes once again, Joy brushed away Tears of Joy (in an especially literal sense), and closed the distance, happy that their great sins were finally aired, but Riley still wanted them.
Chapter 17: A Hole in Her Heart
Riley saying that as long as 1 emotion remembers Bing Bong, he's not gone for good. And saying she'll never be alone as long as she has her emotions. And finally thanking Bing Bong for all he did for her. According to her emotional dream memories, it was a small spot of joy among the sadness, anger, fear and disgust.
Chapter 19: A Talk With Mom and Dad
It's not exactly helpful overall, but when Bill and Jill go to confront Riley about her current behavior, both their lead emotions reiterate 1 important fact: We can'tlet what happened last year happen again. That it wasn't just Riley who learned something last year. Her parents also learned more about parenting too, and now all they want is to make sure Riley's okay without putting too much pressure on her.
Also even though they're still scared of what's going on, Joy and Sadness both try and reiterate to Riley that the people around her want what's best, whether it's the emotions or mom and dad. Trying to help her understand there's no need for such drastic behavior among love.
There's something subtle about Fear's attitude towards the white core memory suddenly fading. That memory is the representation of all his buried fears about their new living situation with Riley. And yet, when he notices that it's losing brightness, he's not secretly glad that Riley's losing interest in them, or just wanting to take it out and be done with it or anything like that. No, he wants to save it. Almost like despite all that's happened, Fear considers Riley knowing them to be something worth preserving. That he's accepting their new living situation even though he knows there's emotional danger on the horizon.
Riley continuing to insist to her emotions that she doesn't hate them, even if her white core is fading.
Chapter 20: Mixed Emotions
Tracy's appearance in this chapter makes it clear that, while her methods definitely need work, she really is acting out of genuine concern for someone who as far as she can tell is struggling with a serious mental illness that's only getting worse.
Chapter 22, Fragile Mind
Riley has been...quite angry and defensive the last 2 days with Ann. But despite all that, Ann never judges, never gives up, and never snaps back in the process. At least, not externally. Only continues to show that Riley has a great support system both inside and outside if only she'd trust them.
Chapter 23, Rage and Betrayal
Ann apparently has her fear give her a vein of paranoia, as when she first met Jordan 2 years before the story (so, 1 year before meeting riley), she was afraid that Jordan wouldn't be her friend when she started making new friends. But what does jordan say about the whole issue and their new problems with Riley? "True friends don't give up on each other". And remember, Jordan's a bit of a airhead sometimes, so that kind of wisdom is really sweet.
Speaking of, when Riley refuses to join band practice, Friendship island takes a BIG hit, but doesn't fall. Because even without the core, Riley believes in her friends caring about her. And considering what happens to Family Island this chapter, they might be instrumental to saving Riley's soul later on even more than Bill and Jill.
Chapter 25, Layers of Truth
Fear successfully talking Riley out of taking medication on her own, leading to a group hug with most of the emotions.
The mind workers in general were more obsessed with just doing their jobs rather than actively helping the emotions. However, near the end of this chapter, several of them collectively come to a decision: In order to do what's best for Riley, they helped Joy find out what Riley's OTHER plan is.
General
In general, the interactions between Joy and Sadness in this story. Remember a year ago, Joy could hardly stand Sadness and always tried to keep her from working. And now? Joy lets Sadness go first in describing what they look like, gives her big hugs for great ideas, calls her an "expert" in the mind manuals, and when discussing what to do about their Dark Secret, is clearly trying to be considerate about how to handle it with Sadness's help. It's pretty clear that Sadness and Joy are now the closest among the emotions.
The communication issues they had in the film seem to be solved as well: nowadays, Sadness notifies Joy when she feels the need to touch a memory to influence it and Joy is quick to acknowledge it and let Sadness operate, as evidenced with the memory of the trip to Pizza Planet. And they don't even have to exchange a word for that.
