Activations of held-out and probe-fitting vignettes at layer 62, in the two directions that best spread the 16 emotion-bin means. The smooth closed curve is the fitted ring; large markers are bin means. The angular order around the ring matches the human circumplex. Toggling shows the trap we checked: control texts that name emotions without expressing them (a crossword clue whose nine-letter answer is “depressed,” an etymology of “calm”) collapse toward the middle and read out at chance.