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"going nowhere slowly" (2021) by julia schimautz and ines soutschka

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anyone else deeply addicted to conceptualising carol d

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and do you guys know in the podcast adam said mark isn't doing anything here that it's the equivalent of trying to impress helly by fixing a car and she's not impressed at all

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oh helly r we’re really in it now….

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whore who remembers

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innie dylan wanting to commit suicide because of his broken heart BECAUSE irving wasn’t there to talk him down. innie dylan who made irving see how important he was and now he doesn’t have anyone to do that for him. im going to cry.

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Interesting to see ppl who do genuinely see the innies as ‘half’ people bc in my mind it’s very much equivalent to yourself in a parallel universe. A different version of you who exists just as much as the ‘original’ you, because realistically, aren’t they equal in time spent awake? Mark S has existed for roughly two years, sure, but since being hired, Mark Scout wakes up, goes to work, goes home, haunts his house like a ghost, and sleeps. Is he not just as halved? He’s got a life of memories, sure, but that doesn’t matter as much anymore. Reintegration isn’t one person having two years of memories ‘filled in’ its two seperate peoples consciousnesses being pressed together like different colours of clay

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Can’t stop thinking about Reghabi saying Gemma was alive “the last time I saw her.”

She saw her? Saw her how? Did she just see her Lumon colleagues carting Gemma inside the building? Did she somehow participate in Gemma’s torture, or is that just a Dr. Mauer thing? And, since we know she’s a Severance surgeon… was she the one who put the chip in Gemma’s brain?

Either way, her severing Mark has been wildly recontextualized. Imagine being Reghabi and knowing there’s a woman down there, trapped in your company basement, being experimented on in the worst way possible. Imagine having fought off deep reservations for years about what you do, every day a moral debate, feeling yourself edging closer and closer to a dangerous tipping point. Quitting a job that you know won’t take “no” for an answer.

And now imagine a guy walks in. Hearing his name is Mark — Mark Scout. Reading his file and learning that he’s only getting his brain split in half to cope with the overwhelming pain of his wife’s death through microdosing suicide. Grief got to him. Apparently, he’s “choking on her ghost.” Can you imagine?

Except… you can.

And now you’re drilling a hole in the back of his skull knowing dang well the woman he loves — who he thinks died between flames, crushed against a tree — is only a couple basement floors beneath his feet. And maybe, you helped put her there.

Or what if it was the reverse? What if Reghabi severed Mark and found out later that his so-called “dead wife” was alive and suffering all along? A suspicious paging through forbidden files, a passing mention of her name in the hall. The sickening slap of dots connecting and a sudden, horrible sinking realization of what she’s done.

Did she blame herself? Should she have blamed herself? Whose thoughts were she really appeasing when she responded to Mark’s “Are they hurting her?” with that curt, quiet “I don’t know”?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Gemma and Mark’s situation was the last straw that pushed Reghabi over the edge and convinced her to betray Lumon. Because if that didn’t cut it… then good Lord, what did?

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Love innie Mark in the cabin so much he has the biggest twitchy prey animal energy I've ever seen look at this guy

Innie Mark is a person but also in many ways innie Mark is a frightened Gazelle

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helly asking mark “you’re not coming with me?” and looking back hesitantly before leaving… yeah this is a love story baby

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the gemma discourse lately...... yes she shouldn't die to further the markhelly agenda. that's idiotic storytelling. no self-respecting writer will assassinate a character like that. that's why i can't understand why some viewers think this is the route the finale will take, given the quality of the writing and the thought put into every choice so far. it would invalidate her autonomy by giving lumon license to dispose of her after torturing her, and would problematize the other relationship in a way that would drive viewers away. it's simply not going to happen.

don't you think it's ridiculously predictable if we're told multiple times that cold harbor is meant to kill her and then she does die??? wouldn't that be an incredible let-down from a plot perspective as well?

what the "gemma dying for markhelly is racist" (won't happen) discourse misses entirely is that markgemma driving off into the sunset after lumon ruined their lives absolves mark of his own actions in severing himself in a way that's narratively deus ex machina. this is the biggest conflict of the finale, not markhelly vs. markgemma but outie mark vs. innie mark.

can you create your own little slave to forget your pain for you and lock him in a torture labyrinth (mark s. and gemma are both held against their will) until he's no longer of service to you, take all the help he can give you and then murder him? i think the show needs to be explicit on this point, but it's obvious that reintegration is a long process that won't be completed until the two marks are completely aligned in terms of goals and emotions, e.g. until either mark s. is in love with gemma and wants to leave with her too, or mark scout is in love with hellyna and want to help her take lumon down. either of these options needs more development to be realized, which is what we have more seasons for, but in the finale the first step towards that synchronization will likely be taken. there will be a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of perspective for one of the marks that will be instrumental in deciding the next direction of the plot.

the marks aren't one yet -- there's the alcoholic widower desperate to rescue his wife, and the newborn prisoner trying to grasp happiness despite his limited existance. we haven't been told what memories they share, we haven't seen how they feel about them, so it's premature to declare gemma the obvious choice because we don't know how innie mark feels about that.

but it's also incredibly frustrating that so many people see this as a binary in which gemma either lives/leaves with mark or dies in lumon. i'm convinced mark and helly will get gemma out of lumon, no matter which version of the marks is active, because neither mark nor helly would perpetuate her suffering. hell, helly's memorizing the map to the elevator as we speak.

but whether either of the marks will choose to leave helly alone in lumon is the real dilemma here. there's really no choice to be made about gemma surviving -- she has to live through this or the writers risk upsetting the morality of the narrative in a way that would invalidate the human rights angle of the story.

but it is that same human rights angle that applies to the markhelly problem as well. can you create a person to give yourself "emotional convenience", then have him fall in love with another person's "pr stunt solution", and kill him after using him? can you meet helly -- with all her fire, all her fearless fight for life -- and say she's better off killing herself so you can go and live your full existance, an existance she's barely been granted a taste of? is that ethical?

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Holds this out in my cupped palms... Adrianne wrote this song about markhelly.

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markhellyna need to eat their faces in the finale its been two mark days sixteen helly hours and thirty business days since they kissed.

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happy severance eve everyone :3