sageshouldknowbetter

[sageshouldknowbetter]

mark s. acrylic on paper (had to play with the colors a bit to get the scan to look like the original)

[sageshouldknowbetter]

the philosophies of the divided self in the severance universe are insaneeeee. there's dualism purists (the divided self is two different individuals whose interests and needs exist independently of each other and are inherently engaged then in an unequal power dynamic with the owning-of-the-body class and the working-in-the-body class) ie. hellyists, and radical materialists (the divided self is not an ontological state of being but a social construct deviced to create the illusion of dualism with the purpose of keeping one's interests and needs at war with themselves and therefore paralyzed against the bourgeoise) ie. dylanists

[sageshouldknowbetter]

Okay at this point I gotta be real: season 2 of Severance has not been nearly as strong as season 1 for me. But I feel like a lotta the criticism I've seen from outlets and stuff has been kinda missing the mark a little bit on why it hasn't been working (to me). Like a lot of the criticisms I've seen kinda go on abt how the show introduces more mysterious elements without resolving them and people on reddit or whatever have their theorizing threads to occupy them but the show is only stringing them along, which is true to a certain degree this season but here's the thing: resolving all the little mysterious elements wasn't really the point in season 1. It kinda didn't matter what the numbers did because the show was really about the characters, and their arcs in terms of "waking up" from the indoctrination innies go through and fighting back. The show is a big ol allegory for working in a corporate office that treats you like shit so it kinda doesn't matter if the numbers do anything because they fulfill the role of mindnumbing busywork and a lot of the other little details are just worldbuilding set dressing and don't need the show to put a lot of attention on them. And of course once the show progresses to a second season we want some of these mysteries to actually get addressed. Of course we're invested in why Mark's dead wife is really alive and of course we're curious about what top secret evil thing Lumon is making the innies participate in through their work. But fundamentally that shouldn't GET IN THE WAY of the focus being on the core cast of characters, their relationship to one another, and the arcs they go through. The thing that, y'know, the show is about.

So the season started out pretty strong. Characters have new motivations since the first season based on where they left off, we have some intrigue with Helena's involvement from the outside (and inside too maybe wink wink), and some new variables introduced with Milchick promoted to floor manager and the "more ethical" changes made to their work environment. Fertile ground for exploring the themes and relationships we loved so much in the first season, oh boy! But then we get to Woe's Hollow and. The characters are dropped into a contextless environment, so we are pulled out of the momentum the preceeding episodes built. And it ends with one of the characters getting fired, so he's cut out of the core dynamic and spends the rest of the season divorced from the primary action, reduced to a secondary character. Then the season chugs along. Then we get an episode entirely devoted to flashbacks and another character divorced from the core dynamic. Then that episode is immediately followed by another episode entirely devoted to a different character divorced from the core dynamic. And then the next episode we see all our main cast again but they're all up to stuff that is, again, divorced from one another and the dynamic that made the first season so interesting, and we, the audience, are reminded of just how little time we've spent with Dylan and Irving and innie Helly this season. Their plot arcs are given a bit of a wrap-up in the lead up to the finale, and we're left to wonder how much more satisfied we might feel if the season had given them adequate time to establish further character development too.

And all this is not to say I hate this season or anything, in fact it's because I LIKE this show so much that it's so disappointing to me when it doesn't reach its full potential. There's plenty of stuff I enjoyed about this season, Milchick's arc in particular, and I liked what we do see of Burt and Irving, the idea behind Dylan's arc, etc. but it feels like wasted potential when we have barely enough time spent on them before their storyline wraps up. And none of the bottle eps are "bad" necessarily as stand-alone episodes, but when you only have ten episodes to tell your story in, it really detracts from the pacing to have like a third of the season draw us away from the stuff that made the first season so interesting. It's the shift away from character arcs and how the main cast of characters influence and interact with one another, and towards addressing the "mysteries" established earlier and then establishing more "mysteries" to build hype for a third season that really hurts the writing and my investment in the show. Even the commentary on capitalism and corporate culture seems to fall to the wayside (again, great ideas but where did they go??), which in conjunction with all the fucking CROSSOVER ADVERTISING we've been seeing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This show could be good. It could be so so good. Why were these choices made to make it less good. Jesus christ.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

I think innies don’t switch on in just any birthing cabin. Gabby Arteta paid for her innie to wake up at that cabin — likely didn’t mean all innies would, just her innie specifically.

I believe the wealthy can take advantage of the severance barriers in individual rooms. They can decide not to give birth and have an innie created, and that innie alone is activated if the body crosses the threshold. But the speciality suite to which Cobel and Devon take Mark? It switches any severed worker into their innie. Because while ordinary severed people could be visiting their families or even giving birth in the rest of the grounds, the only reason a severed worker is supposed to go to that cabin is to be “one of Jame’s.”

im sorry i get that its For Television but why did they allow Lumon severed employees to wake up in the birthing cabins

1) We see w/ miss casey that they have the ability to separate severance "barriers" by physical locations

2) They would have a complete lack of control of who enters which birthing cabin given we saw devon enter a severed cabin, whats to stop any severed employee from doing so?

3) It literally just doesnt have concrete proof that this makes sense technologically like the entire series its been linked to the elevator save for the OTC and now just some random other location also triggers the switch for EVERY severed person? why?

i havent seen like. Any good reason for this other than to make the plot progression easier and its a bit disappointing

[sageshouldknowbetter]

Devon: There's an innie cabin, maybe we can go there and talk to Innie!Mark. I can call Cobel, she might be able to get us in.

Reghabi: That plan is so dangerous and terrible, I refuse to be part of it. It's completely insane to even consider. Can we please just stick to my much better plan, increasingly risky basement brain surgery?

[sageshouldknowbetter]

"Your so-called boss may own the clock that taunts you from the wall. But friends," // "the future is for crips—"

musings on severance & disability | full citation list below the cut

Sources by image:

Rhys Dreeszen Bowman and Leah T. Dudak, "Cripping Conferences: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Disability in Academia", 2025. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2025/cripping-conferences/

Severance, 1x01 and 1x02.

Severance, 2x03.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, Health Communism, 2022.

Severance, 2x07.

Bassam Sidiki, "Severances: Memory as Disability in Late Capitalism", 2022. https://www.chicagoreview.org/severances-memory-as-disability-in-late-capitalism/

Alison Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip, 2013, p. 54.

Severance, 1x02.

Bassam Sidiki, ibid.

Severance, 1x06, 1x01, 2x01, 1x05.

Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 2017, p. 160.

Severance, 1x08, 1x06, 2x02.

Alison Kafer, "Crip Temporalities in Pandemic Times" in the plenary panel for the 2021 Society of Disability Studies, 2021. https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/120/2/415/173312/After-Crip-Crip-Afters

Severance, 1x02.

Bassam Sidiki, ibid.

Severance, 1x04, 1x02.

Ellen Samuels, "Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time", 2017. https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/5824/4684

Severance, 1x03, 1x04.

Severance, 2x03.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, ibid.

Severance 2x05, 2x06.

Rhys Dreezen Bowman and Leah T. Dudak, ibid.

Severance, 2x06, 2x07, 2x09.

Ellen Samuels, ibid.

Severance, 2x09.

Severance, 2x02, 2x03, 2x09.

Micha Frazer-Carroll, Review of "Health Communism" by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, 2024. doi.org/10.1080/02690055.2024.2316428

Severance 2x03, 1x09, 1x06, 2x07, 2x08, 1x03, 2x06.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, Health Communism, p. 61.

Caption of post is in reference to Ricken's quote as cited in Severance 1x08 "Your so-called boss may own the clock that taunts you from the wall. But, my friends, the hour is yours." as well as Alison Kafer's widely cited opening chapter, "Time for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips" (x).

Shoutout to the Severance Wiki Transcripts for the bulk of the dialogue snippets used here (all snippets with time stamps).

[sageshouldknowbetter]

She's not your wife... because no one would treat someone they love the way she's treating you. Like all the outies treat us. Like everything's for them.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

Helena, dentist guy, James Eagan. ok so like half of the lumon staff are sexual predators

[sageshouldknowbetter]

it’s still so crazy to me that outie mark is actually kind of the the innie by the standards of the typical innie/outie relationships. the selling point of severance is to create a version of yourself that does all of the unpleasant/boring/tough parts of life that you don’t want to do anymore. it was literally created to be an escape from the suffering in the factories. the outie escapes the suffering and passes it onto the innie instead. but while mark got severed to escape the suffering, he didn’t create an innie to suffer for him. he was already the one suffering. he was trying to create a version of himself that wouldn’t have to go through the suffering. in a way, he was an innie trying to create an outie.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

Hardly an original thought but one of the things I appreciate about Severance is its refusal to make a central issue - power - simple or straightforward. Like in real life, power on this show is contextual and relative. I think it's interesting how there's a subset of viewers trying to find the pure cinnamon roll versus the purely evil Bad Guy and the show just... doesn't let them. Cobel is bad. No, Milchick is bad. Helena is bad. Outies are bad. But each layer you pull back makes those flat statements less simple. We suspected that Helena wasn't as in control, but we know now that her life off the severed floor looks a whole lot like her life on it - in some ways, worse! But does that make her actions which hurt the innies any less bad? Same with Cobel. What about Miss Huang, not even old enough to be fully responsible for her choices (living with her parents! playing a child's handheld game! waiting for the schoolbus home!), nevertheless propagating Lumon's system of dominance over innies? The outies sometimes display a callous disregard for the innies, but aren't they ignorant or actively kept in the dark about what severed life is actually like, and aren't they beholden to or even manipulated by circumstances outside their control that lead them to choose severance? What about the severed floors' power relative to someone like Gemma? Or even that innies can, simply by inhabiting their bodies and acting with agency, potentially hurt their outies or their outies' relationships (Dylan G, but Irving/Burt too)? What about in the ways societal privilege bleeds into a world with severance- who sees themselves reflected in the white depictions of Kier, or the heterosexual relationships celebrated at Lumon? Who would need to worry about waking up pregnant and not knowing how it happened, and who wouldn't?

[sageshouldknowbetter]

"Mine! My designs!"

[sageshouldknowbetter]

DYLAN G NATION HERE’S HOW WE CAN STILL WIN

So… people have already pointed out that Lumon Industries’ LinkedIn posted this after last episode. In what I assume is a new Milchick reform (like how he gave everyone the opportunity to resign in S2E1), innies have more direct contact with their outies when they file a resignation request. They can cite specific grievances, some of which are definitely sketchy and reveal a bit more about Lumon than I think they should gamble. (“Why the devil does my innie working in what I was told was HR feel enough ‘shame,’ ‘despair,’ and ‘fear’ to kill himself? What are they doing down there?!”)

But that’s not the important part. The important part is that at the bottom, we see the outie has the right to confirm or deny the resignation request. That’s right: if Milchick is following protocol, then when outie Dylan wakes up in the elevator, it’ll be HIS responsibility to decide whether Dylan G is done just yet.

Unless Milchick is really, really fed up with everything and just tells Dylan that he’s fired and should go home (which I suppose is a possibility), Dylan will have the opportunity to deny his innie’s resignation request — and he has every reason to do so! He’s not just going to go, “Well, there goes my competition!” and happily skip out the door!

If he asks Gretchen what’s up or even thinks about it for five minutes, he’ll realize his innie trying to kill himself probably means his wife rejected him. And even if it didn’t, his innie wouldn’t request to end his own existence if he had reasonable belief he would see Gretchen again or had a deep romantic relationship with her! And even if he didn’t think of THAT, he’s a grown man with a family to feed! He needs this job, because he can’t get hired anywhere else!

I’m not sure why Apple would post this if it was completely irrelevant. So I predict — and I am fully prepared for this to age like raw eggs in milk — that Dylan, if given the choice, will deny his innie’s resignation request and just go in the elevator again. (That would be awesome for fans, but horrible for Dylan G — imagine being so heartbroken in an already torturous existence that you try to end it, and not even being given the bodily autonomy to do that. Helly can.)

The only reason I see for this not happening is that Cold Harbor’s imminent completion somehow means MDR won’t be necessary anymore — so Milchick was going to fire Dylan anyway and just doesn’t see the point of giving him the request in the first place. But even if the request denial doesn’t happen, I think Severance is way too good to end Dylan G’s character arc like this.

He’ll be back again… somehow. The sun (crappy fluorescent light) will shine on him yet again.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

tumblr is the only place where well articulated sentences get misinterpreted. you can say “i think it's fucked up that people can just go in the severance tag and spread rape apologism rethoric” and somebody will say “so you're denying that helena is a complex character with her own very real struggles?” no bitch, that’s a whole new sentence wtf is are you talkin about

[sageshouldknowbetter]

Hot take: I understand the plight of the innies fighting for what little they have and the outies only seeing them as tools for convenience which is obscuring the fact that Lumon’s shadow hangs over them all and that none of them will ever be free unless that company, along with the severance technology, burns to the ground BUT -

Gemma dying so the outies realize that innies are people too is not it. She shouldn’t be a “lesson” for Mark and everyone else to consider the innies as separate people with their own wants and desires. I know innie Mark is going to come in hot with his own valid points to argue next episode but this goes beyond those differences. Gemma is a fellow victim and NEEDS TO BE FREED.

She is a person. With wants, needs, and desires and humanity just like the innies who has been tortured by Lumon for years. Who has been fighting tooth and nail to get back to her life, even knowing that it won’t be the same but just because her husband and her sister-in-law will be there!

People saying that even if she escaped Lumon her life won’t be the same and she’ll have to go through years of misery and therapy to recover with the implication that it’s not worth it???? That she would be better off dead??? Yet those same people cheer for Helly saying in the trailer “They give us half a life and don’t expect us to fight for it?”

Even if it’s a half-life that she carves out for herself in the wake of her torture, is it not worth fighting for? Especially with people who love Gemma by her side, helping her through the whole process? Her life is worth fighting for! Because she still wants it!

Gemma is not some sacrificial lamb for people to rally around or a lesson for Mark to learn about respecting the innies.

Fuck. That.

If she dies, you can kiss any chance of Lumon being taken down good-bye with her.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

severance fans at the beginning of season two: fetid moppet and shambolic rube ahahaha 💗🙂 woahh mark’s reintegrating already! 😲‼️ props to the writers for such fast pace!!! 🥳😊

severance fans now: (arms bloodied to the elbows with those who disagree with them on the internet) (shaking hands clutching a viscerally scrawled, Goya-esque crayon drawing titled “HOW TO KILL JAME EAGAN WITH TEETH”) For every minute my ship isn’t canon a hostage dies

[sageshouldknowbetter]

My thoughts on Jame’s line at the end of the latest episode:

We don’t know what he was referring to yet, but the “My Helly” part of it has had my mind spinning. I’ve started thinking that maybe it was his idea to begin with for Helena to get severed, so in a way Helly is “his”. His idea. His brain child. Helena doesn’t get to own anything for herself, not even her own innie.

Helly “betraying” him could encompass everything from her first act of rebellion up to now, meaning that just being herself and not being perfect is the betrayal. She was supposed to be a model innie. She was supposed to propel the brand forward like a proper Eagan, even if she is not afforded the status. It’s giving that phenomenon of how genetically engineered children always inevitably feel like they disappoint their parents for not being exactly as they designed. Helly was made to be perfect (as Helena probably was as well). But she’s betrayed her creator for being human.

Along this line, I could see this paralleling Burt’s reason for severing. Helena, you’re not serving the company enough. We’ll make a version of you that will be perfect and will propel the company forward in a way that you can’t. You’re not cutting it, so your innie will do it for you. No wonder Helena hates Helly so much. Helly’s supposed to be so much better than Helena, so Helena despises her for being valued more, but at the same time, Helly is failing that purpose and making Helena look bad. But maybe Helena can come around and align herself with Helly. They work off of the same emotions, after all. Just one suppresses her need for rebellion and the other doesn’t.

Or idk, maybe I’m wrong on my interpretation of that line. It wasn’t my first theory, just my most current one. Only time will tell. What do you think?

[sageshouldknowbetter]

thanks!!! i hate it!!!!!!!!!!!!