Mar 21, 2025
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SEVERANCE / Crimson Peak
starting a collection
breaking a bone by @fredoesque (gemma/devon, 2.4k)
SEVERANCE / L.H.Z
“it’s not a binary did love transcend question”
@helenaeaganenjoyer i've been thinking about your tags and i just wanted to say, there's so much to chew on here. it's not a binary did love transcend question!!!! i've been trying to put my finger on why we see that question manifested differently in mark/helly/helena vs mark/gemma—and the thing about making sweeping statements on whether love transcended in either case is that: it ignores the fact that love is not one single, static thing. in mark (both innie and outie form) and helena's case, chemistry and attraction transcended. in (i)mark and ms casey's case, affinity and trust transcended—as well as between (o)mark and gemma's final innie. (i personally don't think it's just a matter of him being the first real person she sees; hell, that man is covered extensively in blood. we know gemma can be strong-willed and combative too—she tried to break dr mauer's fingers!—so there must've been something about mark that made her 'blank slate' innie trust him.) and the thing i keep going back to is—i think mark and gemma have both just changed too much as people. once we've gotten to know the 'real' gemma in 2.07, it's so obvious just how different ms casey is from who gemma was. how much of that is because of her extremely short 107 hours lifespan? hard to say, but considering that helly at her 'blank slate' woke up absolutely feral... just what else did they do to gemma to turn her into ms casey, who had this somewhat eerie, unnatural quality to her?
the other thing you mentioned here is individuation as time goes on, which is definitely more interesting to think about in the case of mark, who has been severed for much, much longer than hellyna. the s2 finale that took two whole seasons to build to culminates in the conflict between innie and outie mark, a conflict that stems from the fact that they have different and incompatible desires (which the show uses helly and gemma as shorthands for, but it's about so, so much more than that; it was never about 'helly vs gemma'). and all of this is caused by just how long mark's separate selves spent accumulating experiences in completely different and segregated environments, thus forming different (divergent) identities; how then, do you recombine two halves with edges that no longer fit together because they have been reshaped in independent ways? is this incompatibility what caused petey's reintegration sickness?
one thing i do want to add though, is that even given all this, i still don't think it makes the innies and outies different people, but just the same person with different identities; each identity possesses a full agency as any other human being does, of course, but this also largely has to do with the fact that these different identities can't coexist at the same time—only one is in control of the body at any given moment. the closest analogy we have to 'co-sharing' is when helena was impersonating helly at the beginning of the season. and, like you said, helena has the unique advantage of having access to her innie's memories via external means (security tapes). all of this, i think, is the basis for why we saw this 'natural reintegration' (converging of personalities) happen between helly and helena towards the end of the season. most important of all though, i LOVE the point you made about strong feelings being the key to reintegration—because we did see reghabi attempt to use shame as a trigger for mark's reintegration. except the thing is, like you said, there's no stronger feeling than being in love. love, in whatever form, is what bleeds through the severance barrier over and over. being in love is the catalyst for both helly and helena's transformation. of course it's love. it's always love.
(on the s2 finale happening on the day of the equinox)
@ichabodcranemills i'm gonna fucking scream. the equinox being thematically significant for both gemma and markhelly. the corridor being the equator that divides innie and outie, the two halves of their worlds. gemma heading north into spring where the perpetual winter of kier will hopefully end now that she is back in the land of the living. mark and helly careening south into autumn, the beginning of the end. this is my new favourite severance fact.