Fanfic / Intercom: Proper Communication

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A Fan Sequel to the Inside Out fanfic Intercom. With a slight Time Skip from the Left Hanging end of that fic, we instead jump into Wednesday Night, and a terrible betrayal that causes Riley and her emotions to get separated from each other and Headquarters to collapse. Now, with a little help from the rest of the mind, The Emotions have to rescue Riley and fix her mind before things get too bad. And that's not even the easy part with drama forthcoming both inside and out.

This can be found on both AO3 and FFN''.

This fanfic contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Disgust has a lot more self doubt in this story. Talking about her high standards now making her feel like she let Riley down.
  • Riley accidentally breaking her mind sends her mental health off a cliff, so that when she finally gets her memory back, she almost contemplates letting herself die.
  • Tracy was always a little insecure, but in chapter 21, we find out about her secret wound of her mother dying when she was younger.
• Adaptation Expansion: The Belief System gets expanded as part of the Unconscious, and all the different spaces around it.
• Adaptational Protagonist: Continuing the trend of Intercom all of the emotions have little arcs to face. Riley on the other hand has this inverted, as she isn't a leading protagonist for the first part of the fic.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Tracy was still being dismissive of Riley at school, but then, in the middle of actually getting physical with her, Ann screams this at Tracy which immediately shakes her into regret.
  Ann: RILEY'S IN THE HOSPITAL YOU IGNORANT COW! SHE COULD DIE!
• Artifact Title: The intercom doesn't even come into play after the first 2 chapters, but it remains a point of conversation in how it impacted their lives.
• Ascended Extra:
  • The cool girl who was afraid of being exposed who only had a single line in the credits not only gets a name, but now becomes a main character on the outside.
  • The girl wearing the skull shirt in Riley's class whose single line is calling Riley out in the "Not Wearing Pants" Dream as well. She's also given a name and begins her own journey of learning her own path to empathy.
  • One could argue that Riley herself qualifies as this. In the original, the emotions (particularly Joy and Sadness) were the main focus of the film while Riley didn't quite exactly have much screentime to herself. Here, the story focuses a little more equally on Riley and her emotions.
  • While the "new" emotions mostly have minor check in roles in the story, Envy meanwhile goes for a long walk with Disgust, and has a deeper impact on her emotional journey by comparison to all the others.
• The Atoner: Everyone is thinking about this now. The primary emotions need to redeem themselves for losing Riley. Riley even in her amnesiac state is also thinking about this as she begins to understand she made a mistake somewhere.
• Back from the Dead: Subverted but in a different way than the previous fic. As part of Riley learning about Bing Bong, she ended up not resurrecting him, but creating a new being that knows how he disappeared.
• Big "NO!": Envy screams this when Disgust falls into the memory dump.
• Call-Back: When Ann arrives at the Andersen house, she echoes Jordan's words asking, "Is Riley here?"
• Cast Herd: The rescue teams get up to 12 characters, and then there's all the minor characters met along the way. But for most of the inside portions, the group never gets bigger than 5 or 6 at a time.
• Continuation Fic: Continuing both Inside Out and Fanfic/Intercom.
• Darker and Edgier: Definitely! In the 4th chapter, Joy even uses the word Die. There's some dark tension when in the Unconscious with some genuinely malicious emotions. And there's clear tension in the outside about Riley not surviving her crisis.
• Easy Amnesia: Via hitting her head on a memory orb of all things!
• Ensemble Cast: Disgust, Fear, Joy and Riley all have leading roles in navigating what's going on.
• Fan Sequel: While the original author did give a snippet of what their endgame would be, this story takes that scene they shared, and pushes it farther by creating a story with an ending in mind for the future.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: "I forgive you. For everything. But I wish you'd said this sooner." Ann has complicated feelings towards Tracy after hearing how sorry she is about how she treated Riley. She understands they aren't so different, and the advice of those around her lets her be the better person. But she's still suspicious and upset at her for a year of being mean to her. Still, she decides to work on it after the first hospital visit.
• Freudian Slip: When Tracy is suddenly breaking down seeing Riley, she lets this slip that shows she has experienced something like this before. "Mama can't die!
• Go and Sin No More: As part of Ann building Tracy up again, her demand of her after the hospital visit is that to square everything away, "You have to apologize to Riley for calling her crazy!"
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Mind Manuals are at it again. They even have a special section on what happens if a headquarters collapses because of Consciousness Tampering.
• Group Hug: The first one surprisingly is given to Joy to pick herself back up after HQ collapse.
• Heroic Sacrifice: As the emotions are escorting Riley out of the Unconscious, Harry and Bing Bong Jr both close the gates to buy them some time. Then, Loneliness pulls Paranoia and Spite off the tower to keep them away from them too.
• Idea Bulb: Ann's Joy comes with the idea this time. With an idea to do practical actions.
• It's All My Fault: Several different characters feel that the fall of Headquarters was their responsibility. Joy, Disgust and Riley specifically all have moments with others where they think everything goes back to them.
• Meaningful Echo: As Headquarters starts collapsing, Joy, feeling responsible for bringing all this in, turns to Sadness and says, "What have we done?" And not a minute later, Riley, slowly hauling herself up, then says to Joy and Fear, "What have I done?"
• Original Character: Several! We have 5 new "troublemakers" in the Unconscious, a few new mind workers and Bing Bong Jr. Also, we finally meet Ann's parents too.
• Rage Breaking Point: Ann finally lost her sense of control hearing Riley getting what she deserved as "a crazy freak", causing her to lose her patience with Tracy.
• Tragic Dream: Following up from the original fic, Joy is still wrestling with the reality that she can't have a perfect family. Finally leading her to yell at "mom" that she needs real people to be there for her, and she can't pretend anymore.
• Undying Loyalty: Everyone to Riley. Even when she didn't know what to do with herself, her emotions and mind beings still are unflinchingly dedicated to bringing her back.