we’re here because we’re not all there @severancedeciphered - Tumblr Blog

I try to understand Severance really badly and fail along the way

#📌#this is subject to change #currently working on severance analysis and theory critique video!

madisoncounty

i remember sky it was blue as ink or at least i think i remember sky

@pscentral event 36: trios

noknowshame

resurrected dead wife watching her own montage: wow I looked so hot in that

#gemma

senatortedcruz

I am in fucking tears

#severance

cherrysodasunshine

The 4 tempers, the Severance procedure and the 9 Principles

At the end of Severance it was revealed that the files that MDR was refining were actually Gemma's consciousness.

In particular, they were removing her 4 Tempers: Woe, Malice, Frolic, and Dread. Every refined file corresponds to a new blank-slate innie for a new room.

Many speculate that Lumon is trying to perfect their severance procedure. They can already remove someone's memories from them, and they aim to also remove their personalities, make them sheepish and malleable and ready to obey whatever command they're given without question and without resisting.

I think this theory has merit. The four tempers correspond to sadness, fear, playfulness and cunning spitefulness, all things that make innies more resistant to their oppression.

Waking up in a strange room full with strangers with no memories is definetly scary. Makes people want to escape or fight. Being locked in an office with no option to leave without ever seeing the sun or the sky definetely makes people sad, making them yearn to leave. Playfulness makes people want to, well, play and have fun instead of working. A certain amount of malice aids in formulating an effective escape plan/fight your opressors back.

If you remove all of the above, you get the perfect worker. The perfect plialable, trusting person you can exploit how you want with minimal hassle. It's a very useful feature in the product Lumon is trying to sell:"Make this other person do all the boring, scary, painful, anxiety-inducing things in your life. Also don't worry, they feel no fear and no sadness so you don't need to feel guilty. Also they are very easy to train and will not cause problems".

It's basically the perfect product.

And I'm sure they'll sell it as an enlightenment thing. Kier tamed the 4 Tempers, after all. This is nothing but a technological shortcut to do the same, right? And if Kier did it, then it must be a good thing.

Kier is seen, as many cult leaders are in real life, as an extremely wise man, who was able to rise above and gain perfect self-control over his emotions. By taming the 4 tempers. Of course there is no actual proof he was a righteus man. And many fans suspect Imogene was a child bride (and I also think that). He was probably the furthest thing from a righteous man, and yet, as it happens in real life, he was able to fabricate this image of "Enlightened man", and gain a massive following because of it.

The Severance procedure helps you tame your 4 tempers. But this is not used for enlightenment. It is used for exploitation. It doesn't help people be free from their emotional problems. It makes them more easy to abuse.

Also, it's note worthy to me how the 4 Tempers are something to tame (something you want to free yourself from) while the 9 Principles are something to embrace (something you want to always be). But these things are oftentimes in conflict with each other.

As an example, let's take Malice (temper) vs. Wiles and Wit (Priciples). I'm italian, and in Italian the words "Malice" and "Wiles" are translated in the same way, "Malizia". They mean the same concept. In english, one has a negative connotation while the other has a positive connotation (depends on context but it's overall less negative). This mirrors something I've seen in real life religion. The same exact act can be described in two different ways. The same way of being can be both something wrong to punish and something good to celebrate. This way it's extremely easy to punish someone for the same actions someone else is celebrated for. The discriminant is, of course, the level of power that peron holds in the organization. If a severed worker is cunning, that means they are wicked and malicious. If a high-level Lumon executive does the same, they are witty and masterful. A similar thing happens with Frolic (Temper) vs. Verve and Cheer (Principles). That makes it very easy to pick and choose who has a right to be light-hearted and have fun and who doesn't.

#great analysis!!#favorite

wildbeautifuldamned

cody Foster Playing Cards Ornament hand blown painted ace poker Xmas blackjack ebay thumperscupboard

#cute!!!#playing cards

novvaine

Perfectly fit …

#amazing

lousolversons

Blorbo Meme - 1/5 Blorbos - Gemma Scout / Ms. Casey Severance (2022 -)

ri5k

i’m giving up personhood to become a full-time abstract concept

mistressaccost

sycamorality

op disabled reblogs but i really wanted this post on my blog again

#RUBBER HOSE SHOWS #the animation is so charming and spooky but then all of a sudden you'll see the most racist thing ever put to paper #it's such a great and influential style I do not recommend watching any of the oldest ones

blessyouhawkeye

forever thinking about that girl at my uni orientation who, after being told to pour out her water bottle before entering an event, looked at me and said "they tell us to stay hydrated and then make us pour out our water, this is like totally kafkaesque" and then poured out what was very obviously an entire water bottle full of whiskey. hope she's doing well.

#helly r #<- prev correct

Caelestes cards I bought from Arynlei! I use this deck a lot

#playing cards

akashicrecord

starting a foundation that gives disadvantaged children one wild ass night at the club

overturned-toybox-of-thoughts

Why the fuck are you suggesting putting CHILDREN in a club?

akashicrecord

So they can sip grey goose, maybe have a cig, and feel the rhythm? Are you the fun police?

#but i'm a cheerleader

I keep thinking ny alarm didn't go off but no. I just slept to The Mars Volta. Who tf sleeps through THE MARS VOLTA!!! I'm a fake fan

#I gotta play a Soul Glo song now I guess

mantarella

tadc episode 9 and severance season 1 spoilers under the cut (warning: very long and rambly!)

i was trying to put my finger on why learning about the circus members' real lives in the episode 9 leak bothered me so much, but upon talking to some friends about severance i think it finally clicked for me. they don't react nearly enough.

for a disclaimer i am not done with severance season 2, so please don't spoil that for me! im watching it episode by episode with some friends and i want to preserve the mystery.

for tadc fans who haven't seen severance, an elevator pitch for the plot is that severed peoples' brain 'switches' from work mode (innies) to outerworld mode (outies) based on whether or not they are currently in their office. the innies know nothing about their outies and vice versa, and a considerable (but appropriate) amount of season 1 is dedicated to characters in the office musing about their outies.

dylan is seen wondering if he has a wife, kids, etc and joking about what his outie must be like, and irving has strange hallucinations and a budding relationship in the office that will be ruined when his boyfriend quits his job, thus effectively 'killing' his innie. it's to the point where office mental health check-ins can consist of merely hearing facts about their outie, which soothes their mind.

then, when dylan's innie is 'woken up' forcibly while he's outside of his office, just relaxing at home, and he sees that he has a son in the outerworld, he freaks the fuck out. understandably! when he's back in the office, he demands to know more about his family, and it's one of the moments that serves as a catalyst for the macrodata crew to really put effort into trying to escape. milchick tries to bribe dylan into abandoning this plan in episode 9 by telling him he can learn more about his family (or maybe even meet them, i forgor the specifics).

severance and tadc are obviously very fundamentally different stories with different characters and morals, but they sort of have a similar concept if you squint: characters are thrown into a different reality with no memory of certain aspects of their life, and made to interact with others in the same boat, with relationships unfolding in ways they wouldn't be able to otherwise. granted, severance doesn't have the same "this is all a game" ethos that tadc has especially with jax, but they're similar enough that one would think learning about the circus members' real lives would be agitating to them in at least a similar way as it is to mdr in severance s1e9.

take zooble and gangle, for example. both of them seemingly achieve their dreams in the outerworld! zooble opens their own bar and gangle gets a considerable online presence. ragatha escapes from her mother and becomes an awesome realtor! even jax pulls his life together! this is treated by the show as a comforting, happy thing, that even if the circus members are stuck here forever, at least their 'outies' lead good lives. shouldn't this be at least a little agitating? that this life will never be truly theirs? shouldn't they have a stronger reaction to seeing an alternate version of themselves living out the life they always wanted?

kinger has a very similar situation to dylan in terms of what he sees. dylan sees that he has a wife and kids, and immediately tries to do everything he can to claw his way back to them. kinger... sees that he has a wife and kids, and is just chill i guess? he doesn't want to know more? he doesn't beg caine to keep showing him things, doesn't seem to care that this life is completely intangible? he doesn't have ANY reaction to the fact that it's literally his fault that this is how things shook out?

another similarity is the dehumanization integral to the episode 9s of both shows. helena eagen views her innie as subhuman, just a tool piloting her body, and even tells her as such directly, which obviously causes helly a lot of internal struggle, especially as this comes directly as she attempts suicide to get out. the tadc gang literally learns that they factually Are Not humans, and yet this doesn't seem to cause nearly as many lasting effects as it does in severance. now, severance has two seasons of much longer episodes, so maybe there's just more time to explore the psychological effects of being treated like mindless drones. but idk, if tadc episode 9 stopped being The Jax Show for even 20 minutes we could have had more elaboration on what it feels like for everyone to be told they're basically just glorified NPCs.

it just bothers me that there is no repercussion for any of this, and that caine's attempt to soothe the gang by showing them their 'outies' literally works. it would have been better if the show played this for horror, emphasized caine's inability to sympathize with humans (or brain scans of humans) like we saw with him and zooble and their body dysphoria. or better yet if they did anything else. the soma theory being confirmed was just so. utterly, bafflingly fumbled.

the treatment of suicide is also. so weird? in severance, the fact that helly's suicide attempt isn't taken seriously is horrifying. she's sent right back to work after a recovery phase and her outie tells her in no uncertain terms that she doesn't matter. the treatment of her suicide attempt shows the huge power imbalance between innies and outies and is downright chilling the way she's treated more like a misbehaving child than a suicidal adult trapped in a harmful alternate reality.

in tadc, jax's abstraction (if we take it as a metaphor for suicide) is. handled the same way, without any of the horror? granted, his abstraction gets more responses from the gang than helly's attempt does from upper management, but it reads more as because this is The Jax Show than because the gang actually really has genuine feelings about this. then he's just kept around as the digital circus pet, which feels so gross to me. it's the same dehumanization and flippant treatment of suicide, except with severance it's horror, and with tadc it's... 'oh look it's fine because jax is our dog now and everyone else goes into a fishtank :D'

idk man, this was really long and rambly but i have a lot of thoughts on this, and it just... really bothers me, especially as i reflect back on severance in preparation to keep watching with friends. i understand that they are very different shows, but again, they have enough plot similarities that it makes me kind of squint judgmentally at how tadc tries to tackle similar concepts with a much more clumsy execution.

anyway im going to go rewatch severance season 1.

#YUPPPP #if want something sort of similar to TADC just watch Severance #granted it's still flawed particularly in season 2 but it's so much better