#gemma scout

[aro-aceattorney]

I regret to inform you that severance actually is that good

[love-and-books320]

And that’s why they need him specifically to do it, because he’s the best at knowing and understanding her and being able to sort her feelings or whatever. THATS WHY HE GOT THE DESK THING BC HE FINISHED THE FILE SO FAST WHEN HE FIRST JOINED. Bc the memory of her was so fresh.

I’ve think I’ve figured it out

I think I know what MDR is doing and what lumon is doing and where this story is going to go

It’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies and goes to hell, Orpheus descends down there and gets the chance to bring her back, but loses her forever because he turns round to look at her.

If mark is Orpheus, and Gemma is Euridyce, and the severed floor is hell, that means that by going down there as a severed employee Mark got a chance to bring Gemma back, but he’s going to lose it by looking back to find her. By reintegrating.

Gemma died. Like actually died. She wasn’t brain dead and intercepted by lumon. She died, mark identified the body. Somewhere between that and the cremation lumon took her.

Lumon is trying to raise the dead, presumably to bring back Kier (who’s body im sure is being preserved in some horrid cult place of worship somewhere in the depths of lumon) and has been pretty successful so far. At getting the body back. The mind is trickier, and that’s what MDR is doing. They’re tidying up brain waves, trying to bring a persons memory and conciousness back.

That’s why the files expire. The person gets too dead, their brain gets too damaged, and there’s no point trying anymore.

Gemma has been the most successful so far. She’s not just physically alive, but her brain is functioning too. Her position as wellness counsellor was an experiment to see how she interacts with other people, to see how well her consciousness is recovering

Coldharbour is her last file. When it’s done, she’ll be completely back and lumon will have successfully brought a dead person fully back to life, a major milestone for them. If it expires, she’ll be gone forever

Mark reintegrated. He’s going to be suspicious of lumon, suspicious of the work, and so caught up in looking for Gemma he won’t finish cold harbour

He looked back. So he’s going to lose her forever

[akajustmerry]

"Unfortunately, the sinister nature of corporate perks isn’t limited to the world of Severance. Wellness perks can be and are used every day, particularly in the US, to control workers and harness their data. Labour historians have described these types of perks as one of the features of welfare capitalism, a term that came about in the 1920s when American companies began offering employees subsidised housing as part of their job package, along with health insurance and retirement plans, with the point being to make workers more productive and dissuade them from joining unions."

In 'Severance', Office Perks Couldn't Be More Sinister by Rachel Choy | The Offcut

[happybirthdaydarling]

There’s like a 0% chance Mark actually gets Gemma back. But like. I don’t think her officially dying or being unable to come back to full consciousness is the only option - it is very likely that by reintegrating he’ll never finish Cold Harbor, so I can easily see the tragedy being that she can never leave Lumon, that she cannot live without them or function without the completion of Cold Harbor.

My proposal is this: Gemma lives. She is the same Gemma (not a clone) but she is completely divorced of her past and memories. She lives but she is no longer Mark’s Gemma. She doesn’t know this man. She won’t just exist to be his wife. She cannot make herself love this stranger who saved her life. She is grateful. She thanks him. But she is not his wife anymore; and he isn’t her husband anymore either. They’ve changed too much. She goes off to live her own life and figure out who she is since she awoke as a clean slate. The beauty and the tragedy is that she doesn’t choose him in every life just like he doesn’t choose her in every life. But they got the one time. And it was good.

[ecstasydemon]

lonely, looking, for someone to find me

[luckyclamrebelartisan]

Don't know how they'll deal with helly R knowing that she's an Eagen and that she and Mark already have shared so many things and have been intimate with eachother 🤷‍♀️

I really like their dynamic so we'll see

"Severance should not bring Gemma back because Mark needs to learn to grieve and let go" is a very likely and narratively satisfying development. However, have you considered that I want him to have his wife back? And to be happy? Just this once

[callmeselfish]

Thinking about how markgemma were professors at the same college. How they probably met there. How every professor and student there probably knew them as the "married teacher couple". How people probably used them as the example of "this type of love needs to find me" because they were just So like that, they lit up a room whenever they were together. And then the crash happened and everything changed. How they saw Mark try to return to work weeks later and fail so miserably because Everything there is just full of Gemma and reminds him of all the happy moments they shared that he would never be able to relive again. How they saw him quit the job that he probably dreamed of having as his flame and passion and love for life died with her.

[thedailydescent]

No you don't get it Gemma as a Haunting As A Narrative character isn't even about the romance; it's about capitalism. Out of all the characters, she is the biggest victim of late-stage capitalism. Her body is used as a tool to fit Lumon's needs. Her memory is wiped and temperament made manageable. Unlike other innies, she doesn't even have a outie to switch back into to have a life outside work; she remains entirely at Lumon. While the other innies can eventually grow up, she's kept asleep in the basement most of the time, only awake for half-hour increments. Forever an infant kept under control. She has no personality; her job is to tell others what theirs is. She's made entirely to service others, to keep them better under control. She provides comfort to those who need it. She helps Irving connect with Burt, takes the punishment for Mark connecting with Helly. She herself cannot connect or be comforted. Mark's "we're people you can't do this to people" was probably the kindest thing she's ever been told. She's a perfect worker for Lumon's design, because she doesn't expect to be treated like a person.

Giving up Gemma or thinking Gemma is merely someone Mark needs to "get over" misses the point, because whenever the team takes their mind off Gemma, they're allowing themselves to become comfortable with the way things are, further strengthening the hold Lumon has on them. We see this with Helena and Mark's relationship, and Dylan with his outie's wife. Irving had to literally die to get them to see that again. You cannot ever forget the cruelty of Lumon, else you'll be sucked further down in it.

[stop-saying-tootsie]

i don’t REALLY get the whole markgemma/markhelly debate. they’re two massively different relationships with very different dynamics. i personally don’t believe gemma is alive in any meaningful sense, not one where she and mark get a happily ever after. i feel like the point of his character isn’t giving him what he wants, but forcing him to face his grief and move forward. we’ve watched him step back from depression into bargaining and it’s not going great!

i feel like the point of the show is to ask, what are the ethics of creating so many different pieces of a person that all want and need different things, and there’s no definitively correct answer. it was never meant to be a competition and no pairing has been shown as better than the other. people say mark and gemma have no chemistry, we haven’t even seen true markgemma!! we’ve seen mark with ms casey and that’s not the same. same with outie mark and helena having some chemistry…that’s not markhelly!!

idk i feel like there’s a difference between acknowledging romance/love is a key part of the show and then obsessing over what ship is better so much so you ignore the insane intricacies of the situations but maybe that’s just me

[illuminatedquill]

That’s a college campus.

Oh, we are not going to make it out of this episode alive.

[dykeovsky]

I HATE YOU, LUMON! YOU TOOK MY FIRST LOVE! FUCK YOU, LUMON! IT'S NEVER ENOUGH!

[everythingalllatonce]

I can't stop thinking about this part from the opening credits in Severance.

A grass book that is somehow a mirror. On one side we have outie Mark carrying innie Mark on his arms through the Lumon elevator and the grass is full of Helly's balloon heads. But on the other side we see the opposite, innie Mark carrying outie Mark in a grass of Gemma's heads.

Is this foreshadowing a final decision for Mark?

[ughabz-blog]

helena wants to be like one of mark’s girls

[tanabeth]

My severance theory is that Gemma is gonna end up being fine. The ‘this shit isn’t ending well’ part comes from Mark just fucking dying at the end. He got experimental brain surgery with a 100% mortality rate. And then bonked his head.

Like five minutes after he helps her escape the Lumon torture basement he just starts coughing up blood and dies.

[cold-harbor]

tell your baby, that I'm your baby💔

[happybirthdaydarling]

as a romantic one of my favorite tropes is “finding each other in every life” and the idea that two souls can love each other so much that it transcends death and space and time.

which is why I need Mark to feel a sort of grief and guilt and shock about falling in love with another woman while his wife sat feet away from him. they found each other in another life and literally didn’t connect. their souls weren’t fated. he smelled her and heard her voice and saw her and felt nothing.

even as his body grieved enough to sculpt the tree she died against. he didn’t find her again. they didn’t fall in love in every life. it breaks both their hearts.