|
The Grumbles posted:Finally watched it all in the space of about 2 weeks, and I really loved it. The episode with the goats felt a bit slow and saggy and I worried that it was running out of steam/just creating more mysteries with no answers, but it all picked up straight after that. Adding to cues on the Helly twist, this very good video on the costume design of Severance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8iNde_ZMFY Basically her wardrobe and style are extremely expensive and curated, which doesn't jive with the basic living situations we see of her immediate coworkers. Given that's something that would be hard to notice if you're not into that particular brand of fashion, but I have every confidence it was intentional given how much attention there is to the design of this show. The color design and anachronistic styles were basically screaming at you the whole way through, and the costuming was just as highly selective.
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 10:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 17:21 |
|
Open Source Idiom posted:I mean it's literal slavery sooooooo Is it though? Severance is pretty drat permeable, they’re called innies/outies but are 100% the same person and part of that person decided this was all fine. Das Boo posted:Adding to cues on the Helly twist, this very good video on the costume design of Severance: I thought an huge tell was what she said when she woke up (are we human cattle or something to that effect) and her innies aggression towards the whole thing. Also she walked like she owned the planet. i am a moron fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Oct 22, 2022 |
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 12:49
|
|
|
i am a moron posted:Is it though? Severance is pretty drat permeable, they’re called innies/outies but are 100% the same person and part of that person decided this was all fine.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 12:55
|
|
No Wave posted:It doesnt sound like they're 100% the same person if one consents and the other does not? They’re the same person and that person continually shows up for work to eat waffles and have MDEs
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 12:59
|
|
|
“Are the innies and outies the same person” is one of the fundamental questions of the show. Given one of Helly’s early threads is being held hostage by her outie, and Burt says he’s never met anyone on the severed floor it seems to come down hard on no they’re not.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:01
|
|
|
It's not informed consent because the outie is never actually told the truth about what it feels like before it happens. Just a few episodes in and we're all thinking "hell no". This isn't the information anyone gets before undergoing the procedure. Helly is an exception because she seems to have no qualms self-torturing to further her outside aims. Some horrific pathology there, her nature is very different to what has been nutured by being an Egan.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:05
|
|
|
I don't think it's a fundamental question at all. It's basically obvious that the experience the innies go through is hellish awful and immoral, Egan is a psycho, (almost) no one on the outside knows just how insane it is, etc. We understand the innie situation so well that "are they the same person" is an uninteresting language problem it doesnt tell us more than we already know. Are we asking if Helen Egan is a better person because Hellie R is a cool person? isnt that kind of a crazy way to look at this?
No Wave fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Oct 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:07
|
|
|
that doesn’t really seem to jive with the world they built. There is hostility towards severance and it’s pointed out how hosed up it is. The outtie is plenty informed, they know they aren’t privy to what goes on and chose to do it anyways. Helly demonstrates how part of their lived experience might be locked away from them but they’re still the same person imo
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:11
|
|
|
I just don’t see how it’s slavery when the innies supposed existence is based on the outtie clocking in every day. It’s true they don’t have agency, but it’s because the totally conscious/aware part of themselves willingly did it. I think the more interesting thing is what kind of psycho fucker sacrifices 2080 hours of their own consciousness every year to the altar of weird capital and something about the pregnancy severing seemed way more bleak than Office Space severance
i am a moron fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Oct 22, 2022 |
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:25
|
|
|
You can't sell yourself into slavery either even if you were totally conscious when you agreed to it. Well, ok, you kind of can by signing up for the military or student loans but those are "special exceptions".
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:29
|
|
|
Severed workers are completely separate identities; they have different memories, different experiences, and are capable of making different choices. They are, to all practical extents and purposes, two personalities sharing a single body. It's slavery because you're creating a separate person who does things for you without compensation or the ability to consent, and who only gets to live as long as you find use in their work.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:47
|
|
|
As I mentioned I'm only 3 episodes in but it doesn't seem at all ambiguous, the innies are trapped there, can't quit, and get tortured for misbehavior. I don't think we've been told how long any of them have been there so far, but I'd be shocked if they all didn't go crazy very, very quickly. If anything, they all look shockingly well adjusted for now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:55
|
|
|
They don’t have different memories or experiences though, it’s why mark made the tree and knows his outtie is sad. Part of the severed’s lived experiences become inaccessible at some level but calling them different people is wrong imo
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:56
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:As I mentioned I'm only 3 episodes in but it doesn't seem at all ambiguous, the innies are trapped there, can't quit, and get tortured for misbehavior. Burt was very easily able to get out of it. Quitting also entails ‘killing’ the innie
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 13:57
|
|
|
i am a moron posted:calling them different people is wrong imo i am a moron posted:Quitting also entails ‘killing’ the innie You can't have it both ways. Also, Burt is experiencing massive trauma and hallucinations while conditioning himself (possibly with help from others) in order to break down the walls. Nothing that could be considered "easy."
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 14:30
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:As I mentioned I'm only 3 episodes in but it doesn't seem at all ambiguous, the innies are trapped there, can't quit, and get tortured for misbehavior. Mate you should not be reading the latest pages of this thread, it’s a live-fire spoiler zone here
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
It’s why I quoted it. We really don’t know how hard it is to stop doing the severance stuff but they were like okay bye Burt when he made too much trouble
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
i am a moron posted:They don’t have different memories or experiences though, it’s why mark made the tree and knows his outtie is sad. Part of the severed’s lived experiences become inaccessible at some level but calling them different people is wrong imo They might have knowledge of their other self on a subconscious level, but Mark knowing is outie is sad, is largely down to context clues, and probably spending a lot more time thinking about his outie, this his outie thinks about his innie.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 15:45
|
|
|
Speaking of innie/outie bleed over, Dylan describing MDR as Hufflepuffs and O&D as Slytherine was good foreshadowing for the kid. I assume Dylan reads to him every night, which is why it was able to bypass severance just like Irving's painting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 15:51
|
|
|
Most of my workdays are me looking forward to going home. Imagine never going home. You never get vacation, you don’t have a choice of changing jobs, you never get to spend the money you are supposedly earning, you don’t get to say no. You have no control of your life at all. That seems like slavery to me. It reminds me of that black mirror episode White Christmas. You’re essentially creating a cookie of yourself. And then it gets trained to make your life easier.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 16:23
|
|
|
i am a moron posted:They don’t have different memories or experiences though, it’s why mark made the tree and knows his outtie is sad. Part of the severed’s lived experiences become inaccessible at some level but calling them different people is wrong imo Mark making the tree is eyebrow raising because otherwise the innies and outies are having completely different memories and experiences.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 17:50
|
|
|
That isn’t true though. They aren’t total blank slates. A huge amount of the innies personalities and understanding of the world is based on the outties personalities and understanding of the world, they just don’t have access to everything. I don’t think it’s cut and dried as saying they’re separate people.
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 17:56
|
|
|
The marketing face tells you they're separate people while at the same moment, the inner machinations are dealt a huge blow to that very claim- which they respond to with denial and a cover-up. The tech is very obviously flawed because the two sides are not completely separate, which Harmony has been surreptitiously testing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 18:03
|
|
|
They definitely aren’t completely different people, if they were then all of them would essentially be devoid of personality. They would have nothing but their obedience to their job because they would know nothing else. They all have extremely distinct personalities still and Mark’s innie/outie are generally very similar, too. Outie Mark is jaded and a drunk but if he wasn’t carrying that trauma with him he’d be the same guy. Helly is a very different story but I think that’s just a blunt commentary on the disconnect that having unlimited money gives a person.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 18:03
|
|
|
The entire point of the show is that when you hear the premise of the Severance procedure, you might not think much other than "Oh, that's a neat little sci-fi concept. Heck, I'd consider it if it means not having to endure work!" And then it spends the first three or four episodes completely spelling out to you everything it implicates that you didn't think of and what an absolute nightmare it actually creates. You probably didn't even consider that it creates a separate slave person of yourself. If you re-watch, it's actually a little jarring just how much the first few episodes spend laying it all out for you (pretty sure a character even says to Mark that the innie is basically a slave or something along those lines), though this was necessary for the second half of the season.
SweetMercifulCrap! fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 19:47
|
|
|
I fundamentally question how much the innies really exist as agents of free will considering they, themselves decided to bifurcate part of their life. It is absolute pedantry on my part. Whatever they are it is a terrible existence. I think the potential that they’re employing what are basically zombies is far more horrifying on just about every level. But I also suspect that part of the story is going to go in a different direction than Lumen trying to build up a supply of cheap labor.
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 20:36
|
|
|
The innies aren't the ones who signed up for severance. The entire point of the elevator sequence is to show that they are separate personalities.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 21:26
|
|
|
Literally the first scene of the first episode shows that the Innies wake up on a conference table with no clue where they are or why. At no point do they freely choose to do this to themselves.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 22:18
|
|
|
I've never seen such consistency of username/post combos before.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2022 22:54
|
|
|
It’s maybe more accurate to say that they have similar personalities while having totally different experiences and desires. Both Hellys are imperious and immediately leap to threatening and harming the other one when each’s will is thwarted. Helly’s elevator suicide attempt is orchestrated in a way where the other Helly will become conscious just as she dies, presumably realizing that she’s being murdered out of spite by her other self. This is the same principle that the outside Helly operates on when she promises to make time in her days to torture inside Helly until the day they die. However, inside Helly isn’t a selfish scumfuck capitalist and in the absence of wealth and power, makes friends and does good for others, and understands that other people are people. Perhaps something will happen in season 2 to show outside Helly that she can be this way too, as I’m guessing it’s unlikely we’ll see much of inside Helly after that finale. There are some hints that maybe outside Helly doesn’t really understand the true nature of severance and might come around to joining our crew of regulars in their resistance if she meets up with Mark or something on the outside. She asks Milchick some really basic questions and seems confused about why her other self wants to leave, and her dad’s monologue in the final episode leaves open the possibility that she’s been very sheltered and doesn’t really know what the plan is aside from using severance to alleviate everyone’s suffering
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 01:16
|
|
|
It's nature and nurture. Physically the innies and outies are the same people and so there's some innate core of being that's identical between them, but we're also shaped by our memories. And the innies don't really have that. We know some things can be accessed on some level but it's clearly not the same
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:11
|
|
|
The innies have knowledge without context, they know things - Dylan talking about bodybuilding competitions but not understanding how the rewards are divvied up for example, or them discussing what the world is like for the Outies, they even know how to drive and inherently understand concepts that have no bearing on their interior work (why would an innie need to know that cars exist? Or what a sister is? Or anything outside their work really) - but they have no philosophical or contextual framework for the world outside what they've experienced at Lumen. They're formed, fully created, from the ether by the process, and experience the world as weird, sentient babies capable of forming their own unique mental paradigms.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 12:12
|
|
|
Having just finished the series, I'm glad to see the Severance thread doing the classic TVIV thing of taking a show that's obviously enjoying keeping itself a little fuzzy round the edges, and in the process of desperately trying to draw neat little boxes round everything, miss the entire point. It's doubly funny in the context of this show because the whole premise is that our bodies (of which our minds are a product) are more than our memories, and here are both goons and Lumon are trying show that there's a hard line between the innies and the outies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Or even just evidence that points to ''its not so simple and there are no clear answers''. Edit: In response to the poster at the top of this page talking about the ;;;;;helly;;;;;; twist, I did spend a lot of the show thinking that it was disappointing that they cast this beautiful actress and then dressed her so snappily - when all her colleagues are kind of schlubby. Even Adam Scott's lookin like a pigeon nowadays. It felt like dumb hollywood style casting as opposed to interesting character actor casting . But then when all was revealed it was like oh no that's perfect The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Oct 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 12:32
|
|
|
For the most part it treats the Innies and Outies like different people Buuuuut Innie Dylan sees that Outie Dylan has a kid, and says “Is that my kid?”
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 12:39
|
|
The Grumbles posted:Having just finished the series, I'm glad to see the Severance thread doing the classic TVIV thing of taking a show that's obviously enjoying keeping itself a little fuzzy round the edges, and in the process of desperately trying to draw neat little boxes round everything, miss the entire point. No no you see I’m stupid because I don’t agree with the hive about philosophically what makes us ‘us’. Didn’t you see where the bell rings and they change? I’ve been checkmated
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 13:27
|
|
|
No I think it's like... the show makes it clear that the innies are well, 'entities', like you can't claim that the innies and the outties are exactly the same because they have disjointed subjective experiences, their internal narratives are completely distinct, so of course the question of personhood is philosophical but the show kind of takes a stance on the ethical question, for innie Helena existence is a torture, I think there's an element of moral judgement there, why are the subjective experiences of the innies any less important than those of the outties? Like I agree that the show has mystery and ambiguity, but I think it's all in all it frames the whole severance process as immoral and rather horrific.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 13:42
|
|
|
They exist in one very specific context the outties chose for themselves. Also, did everyone miss the entirety of the scenes with innie Mark and his sister lmao not even the innies agree with the way you’re defining them
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
emanresu tnuocca posted:No I think it's like... the show makes it clear that the innies are well, 'entities', like you can't claim that the innies and the outties are exactly the same because they have disjointed subjective experiences, their internal narratives are completely distinct, so of course the question of personhood is philosophical but the show kind of takes a stance on the ethical question, for innie Helena existence is a torture, I think there's an element of moral judgement there, why are the subjective experiences of the innies any less important than those of the outties? Yes of course it takes a clear moral stance on the severance programme being immoral/evil/etc and I don't think anyone is doubting that in this thread- that's a given and if you're not rooting for the innies in that last episode then the show hasn't worked as designed. Most people are talking about the philosophical aspect - innies in some ways consider their counterparts versions of themselves, and sometimes consider them different people. Often their bodies remember things that their consciousnesses don't (how to drive, emotional responses to certain things, last night's hangover, having just been crying etc). whenever this stuff happens its a huge narrative moment given every significance by the framing/soundtrack/pacing. The show's constantly probing the question of whether we are more than our memories. But my point is that it's just that - probing the question. I think the only thing the show really seems to strongly argue for is that we think with our bodies, and as such our memories are only part of what makes us us. It's good sci fi because it's taking a weird thought experiment and then just kind of poking at it, but I don't think its making any distinction (or lack of) between the two counterparts clear at all. And so much of the narrative momentum comes from Lumon wanting that distinction to be clear when its so obviously messier than that. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Oct 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 14:09
|
|
|
On a totally different note: Lumon gives me big Black Mesa from Half Life vibes; in the sense they've created a very interesting location that is implied to be bigger and more expansive then we see. It's something I wish I could explore more of. (But like so many things, the mystery of "whats behind that door" or "what's down that hallway" is part of why the setting is so tantalizing)
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 14:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 17:21 |
|
|
Yeah. I'm interested to find out what exactly "Macrodata Refinement" actually is. The Lumon building reminds me of the Oldest House from Control. Normal looking building from the outside but then when you start to explore it, it's way more sinister than you guessed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2022 14:59
|
|
