#my friend this is very very good

maremote:

had the realization that the innie/outie terminology in severance is likely because innie/outie -> belly buttons -> umbilical cords -> severance -> rebirth and now. Thinking Thoughts. Birth & death are absolutely extremely high presences in the show. in terms of birth you have devon, you have the senator’s wife, you have mark & gemma not being able to have kids, you have the doula, you have dylan & his kid, you have helly being the daughter. in terms of death, well. you have gemma/casey, you have burt, you have helly’s suicide attempts, you have the daily death/rebirth as they become their inside selves. i think there’s something here with the idea of severance as tether; you have characters who want to become unsevered despite being previously very firmly pro-sever like dylan (and to some extent irving) which continues the thread of: why sever? is severance antithetical to love? clearly no bc dylans discovery of his son enables him to realize the innies as a family to the point where he transcends his desire to leave to find his son for his innie family & therefore both literally & figuratively becomes a bridge between worlds (holding two buttons at once that he shouldn’t be able to, knowing the outisde & inside, loving ppl on both sides)death on the outside (gemma) drives them to rebirth on the inside (innies) but then death on the inside (helly’s suicide, burt) drives them to rebirth on the outside. then of course u have the anti-capitalist message that soulless work cannot be compartmentalized and neither can the human be seperated from the employee without some form of violence, at least not permanently. permanence and definitive exclusion is not natural & will always necessitate violence in maintaining its borders. anyways birth & death are both tethers between worlds & this is also probably related to the heavily religious tones of the workplace, especially given helly’s jesus vibes, how her name is covered in certain scenes so it looks like “hell”. the idea of outside being real life & inside being the afterlife is also somehow linked to the moralized concept of afterlife in christianity (which i do not know too much about to be fair so feel free to correct me). something something you will be punished for your sins on the outside when you return to the inside. you get heaven or hell on the inside based on your outside performance

severance good