tlt reading time

is this how it happens?

[eggsistential-basket]

for the first time in two years you're allowed to wear your own clothes. you get led to your own death and black out. you suddenly wake up to see your husband you haven't seen in two years. he's absolutely SOAKED in blood. you two embrace and kiss and then run down hallways and shove a dead guy out of an elevator. you black out again wake up to him ignoring your screams for him and going back to hell and walking away holding hands with another woman. happened to my good friend gemma scout

[douwatahima]

y'all, it was always going to end this way. from the moment mark scout told mark s. about reintegration, it was always going to end this way. mark scout literally looked mark s. in the eyes and said "we're going to have a life, and it's going to my life. we're going to live in my house with my wife and have the life i want. and you're going to like it because you're an extension of me." he didn't see mark s. as a person and that, in the end, was his greatest downfall.

mark s. did what mark scout asked. he fought his way to the elevator and he ran ms. casey to the stairs so she could be gemma again in the outside world. he saved the poor, tortured, woman trapped in lumon's basement because that was the right thing to do. but then, when faced with a choice between dying forever or turning around to try and somehow have a life of his own? with the woman he loves? of course he turned around.

this doesn't have anything to do with which ship is better or what was the most logical thing to do or even what mark and helly are going to do now. the point is mark s. stood there at the door, at the literal precipice of death, and said "i want to live. i want to live. i want to live." and come on, wouldn't you do the same?

[thelockedneet]

(season 2 severance spoilers) about to watch the last episode. I'm going to be so fucking mad if Gemma either dies or ends up in a cliffhanger. do NOT kill that gorgeous Asian American woman or so help me god

[thelockedneet]

severance spoilers: I'm apparently an optimist because I'm praying to every god out there that they won't pull a "ohhhhh nooooo they were just seconds too late to save her :'((((("

[birdplushie]

thinking about the other survivors recieving carol's second video and being like "haha she's only just now figuring out the milk thing she doesn't even know about the bodies yet lol lmao. let's not tell her anything"

[birdplushie]

the thing about this line that makes me so sad is that she's not just talking about the risk she runs of pushing them all away again by not giving up on saving them, it's also that succeeding will literally involve making them, as they are now anyway, disappear. that's what she's trying to do, dismantle the hive, give everyone their individuality back. but doing that means she will most likely end up alone again. nobody will feel obligated to stick around her without the hive's need to please, and she knows only one person has ever truly chosen her, and she's gone. i think what she was going to say there is "even if it means that i'm going to be alone for the rest of my life." she knows just how difficult that is now, but it is a sacrifice she's willing to make to do the right thing

[dangerouslyfleetingmanticore]

Given the promo pics, can we finally stop theorising that Manousos is going to brutally murder Zosia? If seeing him refraining from harming the hive in situations where he could easily have done so -- when they were following him as he walked alone, when they emerged out of the forest to surround him, when he literally had a scalpel at one of their throats so that they'd let him leave -- wasn't enough to convince you, then surely seeing Carol and Zosia together after they meet him will??

[thelockedneet]

I've seen theories that say Manousos is going to become violent or outright nuke the hive with atomic bombs and I'm like. Seriously? The guy who went on a two month journey to save the world while learning English to communicate the one other person who Gets It is going to cause irreparable damage to it? *That* guy?

I can't help but feel like people are being racist/xenophobic when speaking of Manousos like this. If he saw it morally correct to physically harm the hive he's had plenty of opportunities to do so. He held a member of the hive as a hostage while escaping the hospital, yes, but he was scared and wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible, but he has no interest in harming them because he holds hope that the human beings the hive has absorbed are still there.

[thelockedneet]

Watching severance now and starting season 2 I can only assume that lumon must've been inspired by Japanese work culture And unethical experiments upon humanity. Can't figure out a reason for half these happenings if pure morbid curiosity isn't part of it

[fractally]

I literally can't believe there appear to only be like four or five people on tumblr who have a serious problem with what Koumba is doing (again, trafficking and raping women) and like, hundreds who fucking despise Carol

.....or maybe I can

[thelockedneet]

Idk what I'm going to do with myself after episode 9 releases. What do you mean I'll have to wait a whole year for more pluribus

[thelockedneet]

Where's the post that's like zosia's the most abused character in pluribus because I think the abuse is going to get so much worse in latter seasons. She's either slowly becoming more individual (which I doubt a little but. Waves hand), or she'll be one of the first people Carol turns back, and either option is going to leave that poor woman so mindfucked

[20genderchild]

I said this in the tags of my other post but wanted to expound on it a bit, I’m not really sure it tracks for Zosia to be regaining individuality through that body being treated like an individual and bringing Zosia’s memories to mind. Laxmi is treating Ravi like her son, cooking him his favorite foods, having him live in his own bedroom, etc. If all of that isn’t bringing Ravi’s individuality back, I’m not sure why Carol’s treatment of Zosia would be different yknow?

[thelockedneet]

I think the main difference between Laxmi (& the others with families and friends) and Carol is that all of them already have a set "role" to play that they have lived their entire lives. They don't need to think and improvise, they can simply keep behaving the same they always have to make their individual comfortable. Koumba, too, gives the hived he interacts with roles to play, but these seem to be simple in nature and he's very easy to please. On the other hand, the hive needs to meet Carol at her own terms and she's unpredictable to the point of being a danger to herself and others... I don't know if zosia is regaining individuality or anything, but I think the way the hive needs to behave to interact with Carol is forcing small changes within it. At the very least, it seems to be adapting to Carol's specific needs, which is tricky since the only person who truly knew Carol is Helen, and Carol doesn't want them to behave like Helen, so it's gotta be a strange experience for the hive imo.... Hmmmm

[thelockedneet]

Nothing could've prepared me for director: ben stiller upon finishing the first episode of severance

[thelockedneet]

Man. I love pluribus. I wish people talked with me about pluribus. Batting my eyelash very hard at anyone who stumbles upon my wee little posts......

[dangerouslyfleetingmanticore]

"He's a very good boy" *proceeds to watch the dog with a polite detached smile while he sits and waits to be acknowledged*

Do you take care of him? Do you, really?

Because I get the feeling that this dog sniffed out the only person there who was going to give him the affection he was used to getting from his owner a long time ago. You feed him and you exercise him to his needs, I'm sure.

But how often have you taken the time to bend down and ruffle his ears?

[dangerouslyfleetingmanticore]

Stursia kiss? Zosia's reflection slowly obscuring the view of Helen's grave? Zosia nostalgically describing her childhood and then dropping it because she can see from a drone that someone else is operating, because that isn't the Zosia who experienced that, that's the entity who rebuilt Carol's diner and served her in the possessed body of her favourite waitress, parroting the memories of another woman whose life it subsumed and completely changed everything about?

Sure. Delicious indeed. But what got my heart all aflutter was this.

MY turn???? MY????

This is genuinely the most exciting sentence of the episode for me.

This is before Carol asked them to start using singular pronouns. Before they struggled through referring to themselves as Zosia. Because this isn't 'Zosia'. This is the Hive developing their sense of self!! This was preceded by them joking and then actually teasing Carol.

Yes, the manipulation has ramped up. They're keeping her busy and distracted. The mask slips during the kiss and at the end. It's likely that they were channeling Helen here. But the simple fact that they're able to do that like this -- instead of showing up looking like a smiley Raban and hoping for the best -- shows growth. Seriously, can you imagine ep 2 Zosia going "or maybe... you just suck?" with such a devious look on her face? Or playing into her own earnest and naive demeanour to make Carol think she's serious about the orgy? Grenade Zosia would not sit in awkward silence without filling it with fun facts. Because awkward silence is human.

Can you imagine Larry genuinely being passionate about a plot point in Carol's work?

Right now they're still totally inhuman. But they're changing. And right now it makes them more dangerous, because they're able to be more manipulative, but aren't at the stage yet where they recognise how wrong it is.

Idk I just love my eldritch horror child maturing and developing as a character. I genuinely don't think I want Zosia broken out. I want Zosia to remain who she is, because I want to see this being evolving even further.

[dangerouslyfleetingmanticore]

Correction to this. She wasn't watching from a drone, she was watching what was happening in the hospital. Because she's simultaneously the doctor getting threatened and all the other people there :)

[thelockedneet]

Man. It's so incredibly sad to me how the hive has this genuine love for art and human expression, yet no drive to create for themselves. The fact they said "we'd love to have something new to read", as if the hive doesn't include hundreds of thousands of writers, creatives, daydreamers. I think this might be, ultimately, the thesis of pluribus: to be human is to create, to enjoy art and writing and music and human connections, but these are all things that the hive cannot do anymore due to its very nature as a being, but that love for all these things, that need, is still *there.* there's no point in creating because anything any individual mind thinks, has already been learned by the rest of the hive, rendering its execution meaningless. There can be no new thoughts among the collective. Their only source of art, as it stands, are the 13 individuals, and carol might be the only one with a creative drive (we know next to nothing about the other 12 but just going by what we've been shown so far), so of course they'd be ecstatic to know she's writing again and cheering for her...

I don't know, man. I know the hive loves being the hive, but i think one of two things will inevitably happen to it: either they will eventually go collectively insane as their humanity is denied, ooorrrr as they learn more about themselves, they might learn to isolate fragments of their instance so artists and writers and musicians can create and introduce new material into the creative ecosystem. Like that's one of the few things I don't understand about the hive. They'd do *anything* for Carol and the other 12 individuals, making themselves available in every way imaginable and willing to create anything for them, but without individuals to behave around, they're like worker bees, and nothing but work is a bleak, unnatural, depressive existence for any human being. I think the individuals are a need for the hive, because without them, they'd have no outlet for their humanity, yet they still want to convert them. They don't even intrinsically want dogs around even if dogs have been humanity's companion for millenia. Scary stuff.