Severance - Blog Posts
I guess I’m combining hyperfixations here but I literally cannot get the idea out of my mind & have to word-vomit it somewhere:
Wouldn’t it be wild if Ford had some sort of severance procedure sometime in his portal era as a way to try & stop Bill from possessing his body all the time? And what if the “innie” version of Ford was the one who came through the portal? & went through Weirdmaggedon? & had all those experiences? & then one day on the Stan O’ War II he just…wakes up as his “outie” somehow. He’s so confused & disoriented because that version of him is still in the portal. That version of him doesn’t realize he’s much older now. That version of him is still in survival mode. & the moment he sees Stan he’s confused, paranoid, distrustful. Imagine all the progress the Stan Twins had made just suddenly disappearing because of it.
THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE. THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE.
Almost every piece of media I follow is getting a new season, and I am the happiest person alive.
I'm curious about what a trans character in Severance would look like. Like, I can so clearly picture this person who gets the severance procedure to avoid being misgendered for 8 hours a day. Maybe they would even explicitly present as their birth gender at work so their innie wouldn't even know they are trans. Would they discover that about themselves? Would they feel that same kind of gender dysphoria and want to transition in the workplace? Idk I'm prepping for season 2 by rotting my own brain and thinking about it 24/7. Fanfic writers, please consider my idea and write a fic about a trans severed person. I would love it so much.
"Grow up."
A young Helena Eagan portrait.
The pose in this one was based on Mark Pugh's painting named "Girl Fixated on the Black Spot of an Apple". He's an artist I've always admired so it's a bit of a tribute to his work :))
(tries to escape) (tries to escape) (tries to escape) (series of failed suicide attempts) (nearly successful suicide attempt) (participates in department-wide whistleblowing scheme) (has sex with mark) (has sex with mark) (gives revolutionary speech) (locks you in a bathroom and hits you on the head with a trombone)
Severance —2.04, Woe's Hollow
your orpheus & eurydice parallels post has affected us in the following way no1 you are annoyingggggggg
Haven’t finished severance yet, but one of the themes of the show that I’m really appreciating is the idea that humans will find and create the meaning they need from the media around them, even if it is incredibly limited.
For those who haven’t seen the show, the central premise involves people for whom their entire lives, their memories and consciousness, is limited to just being at work in an extremely isolated office with no access to the outside world at all.
The only book available that they’ve ever known is the employee handbook, the only art they’ve ever seen is the art that hangs on the walls of the office. And of course, these pieces of media are incredibly heavy handed workplace propaganda. As viewers with outside context, we can understand its disturbing messaging. But the characters, having known only this book, have made a sort of religion out of it. It becomes a sort of scripture that they quote when trying to make decisions or are trying to explain complex ideas (even ideas that are against the workplace itself!)
And then another book shows up. It’s a ridiculous memoir full of very eye-roll inducing truisms by a very entitled and self absorbed author. But to those in this workplace, it is the only competing source of information they’ve ever had. It is something from the outside world that has shown up, unapproved by the company. They read it in secret, it is heretical and challenging. Basic truisms without much meaning take on enormous rebellious meaning to the people there. Basic ideas about valuing yourself and your friends, about working together for common goals, about deserving to breathe fresh air, become highly radical passages that they begin quoting to each other in secret.
It makes me think about how we all have different access and different life histories that influence what media and messages we’re taking in. And sometimes you’ll meet people, people who seem to have good values, who express a real fondness for what feels like objectively bad media. Or you can think back to some of the super problematic media you absorbed as a child before you knew anything about the world. And you have to sit there and think through, despite the reality of what this text is, taken with all of the context you know, you have to think about what lessons that individual took from it, what passages they projected their own values and human need for meaning onto.
There’s a poem called “Confessions of an Uneducated Queer” by Lauren Zuniga that involves similar themes– piecing together meaning and knowledge about ones self and one’s community from whatever scraps you can find, from random comments friends make, from tumblr, from books your friends leave at your apartment when they go to college. There’s a line, “This is for the first time I heard the term heteronormative and felt like I was handed a corkscrew after years of opening the bottle with my teeth.”
So many people have a strong sense of important ideas relevant to their lives, and go long periods without words to communicate them. I’m thinking about the profound, almost spiritual, relief of finding language to speak about these ideas, to communicate ones own experiences to people around you, even if you find that language in less than perfect places.
Severance is about rebellion, about people who were literally created to obey finally questioning and breaking through that conditioning. There’s a storyline about someone doing a complete 180 and choosing to rebel when they realise they have a child that they’re not allowed to see, and I love that the storyline wasn’t given to the female lead, but to a previously comic male character. There’s a storyline about breaking protocol because for the first time ever you have fallen in love, in intense, overwhelming, impossible love, and I love that the storyline wasn’t given to the female lead, but to a pair of awkward old guys. The storyline about grief and guilt also goes to a guy, to the male lead.
I love that the female lead is the only one whose radicalisation comes entirely from within, the person motivating her is her, she’s not doing it for anyone else, she wants her freedom, and failing that, she wants bloody revenge even at the cost of utter self-destruction.
ppl keep drawing Helly R with blue eyes and its fucked up. they're so clearly grey green blue brown & hazel all at the same time. get real
if helly and devon dont get to meet then what the Hell is even the point
Employee of the month
Helly R piece for severance, based on Norman Rockwell's "Double Take" Saturday Evening Post Cover from March 1, 1941. props to this show, weird punk art saves lives