#Ricken hale

[agir1ukn0w]

let’s look at the highlights: mark scout is reintegrating his innie consciousness and his outie consciousness, creating a secret third personality made up of an amalgam of both. helena egan is obsessed with mark. irving bailiff is being wooed by burt’s outie, who may or may not be involved with the same company he’s been trying to bring down from the inside. outie dylan’s marriage is struggling and his wife isn’t happy. devon has been kept completely out of the loop about mark’s reintegration. ricken is a corporate sellout and possible cult leader. dr. reghabi has left mark scout. mark s is being reintegrated with his outie’s consciousness against his will while also trying to get it with helly r. helly r is still rebelling against her outie while also trying to get it with mark s. irving b is dead. dylan g is having an affair with his outie’s wife. seth milchick is having a crisis of identity. harmony cobel is at large. miss huang is a creepy kier youth and definitely a victim of child abuse. gemma scout is alive and currently living thru the most nightmarish dante’s inferno imaginable. nothing is getting refined in the mdr department.

[theunsleepinghimbo]

severance, since episode one’s dry, substance-less and foodless dinner, has been a fantastic vehicle to showcase how social and personal philosophies built on the backs of established hierarchies can both be interesting to unpack and still riddled with problems. it goes from ricken’s friends’ imposing questions about mark’s severance and their earnest belief that either he’s a child being taken advantage of or a grown adult on easy street and in full control, to the conversation with fields in season two about how innies have distinct souls. in both cases, the audience is shown the naked self-interest of these ideas. ricken’s friends are obsessed with either simplifying their lives or treating mark as an absent political cause to improve their moral image, and fields + burt Have to believe that innies have souls because if not, they won’t go to the same place. these are both fascinating positions to hold, but i don’t think the show shies away from trying to truly grasp them, and i’m happy the audience won’t either.

[eclecticbasementenemy]

Okay I think something subtle a lot of people are overlooking about ricken is that I don't think he was always the way that he is now. In the flashback he just seems like a normal, if somewhat eccentric guy. The way he holds himself and talks seems completely different, and the dynamic with him and Devon and him and Mark also seems completely different. Also regardless of anything else, Devon seems like an intelligent and capable woman, and I just can't see her being initially attracted to ricken if he was full conspiracy woo woo mode when they first got together. Additionally his odd "quirks" and almost magical thinking all seem to relate to protecting the people he cares about. He's especially going practically insane around his child's birth and doing things that just make no sense in a bid to make things work out well.

My theory is that Gemma's sudden tragic death propelled him into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and magical thinking all related to desperately trying to avoid a similar fate for him or his loved ones. Before Gemma's death he was eccentric but not to the level we see in the show, but after Gemma's death he just went off the deep end and has been getting increasingly deep in the rabbit hole. This also imo explains why Devon hasn't divorced him yet even though she's obviously incredibly irritated by him now. He wasn't always like this and she's holding out hope the man she married will come back.

[roughhewnends]

*flash warning

But what, indeed, is You? How can You mean different things to millions of readers around a vast earth? And, perhaps most importantly, who are You?

[ananke-xiii]

pay no attention to that man behind the typewriter.

Severance S2E5 "Trojan's Horse" Severance S2E7 "Chikhai Bardo"

(also, thefact that the episode is title "trojan's horse" is really bugging me, why that suffix "'s", it implies so many contradictory, juicy things, but also how can this man write a book in under two weeks? even if it's badly written or whatever, I still hate him, unjustified confidence really makes you advance in the world, I hate him, okay I'll stop rambling but think of the "'s"...)

[yourpalkamil]

i really like the implication that the only one who can like your profound self-help life philosophy book is a guy who has literally never read a single book in his entire life

[digitaldaffodyl]

mark finding out that his innie is obsessed with ricken’s shitty book so funny to me. imagine learning that your worksona was revolutionized by colleen hoover. i’d kms

[kublakola]

I know some people view Ricken as the "self-centred and bumbling but ultimately well-intentioned buffoon" archetype but I personally think he's a genuinely bad person. Imagine being so completely self-obsessed and delusional that you can't deprioritise yourself even for the length of time it takes for your baby to be born. Imagine your integrity being so fragile that attention from a beautiful woman and a paycheck is enough for you to dilute and inverse every moral you've ever proclaimed to hold, insofar as you willingly produce propaganda for the company that you know for a FACT has malicious intent (including the imprisonment and torture of your brother-in-laws innie). Being such an insufferable prick that you attend no-dinner dinners and host readings of your own shitty literature and book birthing cabins, without even for a SECOND pausing to make space for what your wife and the mother of your child might want. She rolls her eyes behind your back; she has to make apologies for you when you leave the room. She is beautiful, intelligent, funny, kind, and she is giving away pieces of herself (helloooo innie/outie metaphor) to make more room for your ever-inflating ego, and you don't even have the decency to notice. I need to take him out with a shotgun.

[dykesynthezoid]

Ricken rlly does start writing propaganda for a cult organized around the abusive ideas of a dead white guy, and then after being challenged on that issue, immediately tries to assert his authority as a patriarch, when he’s spent so much time beforehand organizing his ego around his sensitivity and supposed intellect and apparently more “evolved” masculinity. And then is like!! Surprised and upset when it goes badly for him. And none of that is shocking because it’s clear he’s actually always been woefully emotionally immature, but man what a quick turn around huh. Little bit too real actually

[barbara-on-myspace]

Devon in Ep.2.06 of Severance.

[antikier]

The fact that Ricken spoke face to face with Mark’s innie who said “I love your book, I love you, it changed my life, YOU changed my life, this book is wonderful, it’s incredible, thank you so much” and still wants to write an inverse copy of that book so he can make big bucks because Beautiful Nat made gooey eyes at him makes me see red I fucking hate him I HATE him

[linusbenjamin]

#devon should be allowed to kill people Severance 2.03 "Who is Alive?"

[sageshouldknowbetter]

[adam-scott]

SEVERANCE (2022–) #02.02: ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig’

[randomfandomss]

Ricken becoming a cog in the very machinery he denounces in his book...VERY HIM

[manwholovescabins]

i understand why people say gemma is a non-character or something along those lines but i believe it’s actually much worse than that, because we know things about her. we know how ms casey acts and talks and moves and there must be some gemma in there. we know she was also a teacher. we know she did crafts. we know she was allergic to nutmeg and liked other people’s dogs and thought cardigans looked ridiculous and when she sneezed, she always sneezed twice. we know she and mark went on hikes with devon and ricken. we know she was nice and supportive to ricken and had conversations with him about his ideas and was grateful for his throat singing dedicated to her, but she did still laugh at it with mark. we know what her loss did to mark, devon and ricken. we know that devon and ricken wanted to name their child after her, but mark didn’t agree. we know she made mark wonderful. we know a bunch of things about her and her presence in and effect on people’s lives, and we know all of it through the people who love her and lost her. and that is so much worse than her just not being there.