The more I think about it, and the more I simmer on it, the more satisfied I am. I truly felt like this moment of the innie choosing a selfish act for himself was a long time coming. Innie mark wont accept always sacrificing for outie mark. And that’s a dynamic I can’t wait to explore
1 month ago | 67
I think it’s mostly about him, affirming his existence as a person and the idea that his experience and choices are just as important as his outie. Like he does the right thing and he gets Gemma out, and then he chooses in that moment, instead of sacrificing himself and everyone else for the happiness of like two people to do what outies and just take what they want and do whatever they want. I think, especially from Mark S’s perspective this is basically a moment of him saying no which he doesn’t often do.
1 month ago | 28
The way I saw the ending wasn't a transformation of Mark's character, but a transformation of the conflict. It almost felt like a "No, I am your father" moment from Star Wars, where the show seems like it's about about one thing - good vs evil, Mark vs Lumon - and suddenly it transforms into something else entirely - Mark vs Mark, innie vs outie. Which Mark is the actual Mark? Which Mark deserves to be Mark? Who gets to decide that? The impossibility of the situation is that there is no way where innie and outie Mark BOTH get their happy endings. Cobel literally says this, "Mark, there'll be no honeymoon ending for you." As a lot of others are mentioning, the shift happens because Mark's innie is claiming his individuality in that ending scene. When he makes this "choice", suddenly as a viewer you can't deny his agency within the narrative. Where before an innie's existence is dependent on the outie coming to work the next day, there is a power-reversal - outie Mark's existence is at the mercy of innie Mark leaving the severed floor. Where at first we see the innie world as a product of the outie world, now it exists independent of it, or at the very least along side it. I think this is one of the crucial paradoxes that the show is trying to explore. The severed floor and the outside world are separate, yet one fundamentally exists in the other. The same is true for the innie and outie personalities. The world that this show exists in is almost like a manifestation of this central innie vs outie conflict. I think the show also does an incredible job of is exploring this idea through many different dimensions beyond the storytelling - color, cinematography, framing, blocking, setting, etc. Honestly, each one of these could probably stand alone as its own individual exploration. In general, I think the show as a whole feels more like an allegory than a plot or character driven narrative. For me, a lot of the central tension when I watched these first 2 seasons didn't come from good vs bad or internal character conflict but more of "what the heck is going on? What is Lumon even trying to do?" I felt like I was more invested the overall world building than necessarily the individual character development. Not to say the characters aren't compelling or that they don't have inner conflict, but rather that maybe they aren't the focus in this show. I don't think anyone would argue that this show is hugely metaphorical. The first scene in S1E1 reminded me a ton of "The Metamorphosis", and tbh the whole show felt vaguely Kafkaesque. It makes sense that both of these stories explore really similar themes about the concept of a self and how you define it. I mean the first line of the entire show is "who are you?" and this theme recurs through everything -"the you you are", Chikhai Bardo, ego death, etc. The ending of S2 also feels like one giant metaphor. Helly at one end of the hallway, Gemma at the other, Mark in the middle, and what separates innie Mark from Gemma is literally a door between their two worlds. It reminds me of the opening passage from Ursala K. Le Guin in "The Dispossessed": “There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.” When you look at the ending scene from this lens, Mark's choice is a total reversal of our frame of reference. Of what is "inside" vs what is "outside". As an aside, it's also interesting to me the parallel in the ending of innie Mark and outie Gemma both being "trapped" on the severed floors and both sort of "escaping" in their own way. Gemma escapes to the outside, and innie Mark finds liberation from the control of his outie. And then that reversal of that last scene where you realize Gemma is "trapped" on the outside??? I also see maybe? a meta-conflict that develops between innie Mark and the narrative itself. The last thing we see before credits is Helly and Mark running down the hallway before it freeze frames and the shot becomes textured almost like a painting. I saw a reddit post somewhere pointing out that it almost looked like one of the propaganda paintings from O&D, as if Mark choosing Helly was being canonized into the Lumon lore. Like the Macrodat Uprising, or The Courtship of Kier and Imogene. Through this lens, there were 2 ways I interpreted the ending: 1. Mark takes control of the narrative by choosing Helly. 2. Mark didn't actually make a choice, he is at the mercy of the narrative. As if the story had already written from the outside. Maybe both are true, but what was interesting to me was that the 2 interpretations contradict one another. Which again feeds into that central conflict - who is in control? I think what we will see in Season 3 and future seasons is going to be an exploration of this conflict. If S1 and S2 were about escaping Lumon, now it's clear the innie world isn't going away. How will the innie and outie worlds coexist? Probably we'll get a lot more collision between the two worlds. How will Outie Mark respond to Innie Helly? What will Lumon do with innie Helly? Mark was like half reintegrated, but it was left unfinished...probably intentionally so. What does reintegration really look like? Is it even possible?
1 month ago (edited) | 13
Honestly I think a lot of the depth kind of "clicked" for me the more I thought about the song that played as he chose to run back with Helly (the windmills of your mind.) It describes the "circle in a spiral," the "wheel within a wheel," both of which are incredible interesting statements to make about a supposed final choice. To me, this seems like it is pointing to Mark S. trying to run away from this cyclical pattern he's trapped in, but notably in a weird way-he runs back into his captor's building, back into the place that is frequently described as "hell." I think in general this show is much more focused on philosophical ideas rather than character/storytelling based ones, but this is still an incredible character moment, where he chooses to fight to continue his life instead of against it, even though he has much more information about the circumstances of his life. It's no mistake that it's overlayed with Dylan's decision to not commit suicide. Idk if this makes any sense, I was kind of rambling, but that's what I got out of it.
1 month ago | 29
I love that you're interested in discussion about Severance's S2 finale cause my feelings about it parallel my feelings about Arcane S1's finale. In reflecting on that moment of Mark and Helly running down the corridor I thought about your Moral Ambiguity video. There's so many conflicting emotions that scene brings out of me. Happiness for iMark and Helly, despair for Gemma losing Mark right as she was about to get him back, anger at iMark's pure selfishness in what is essentially him taking his Outie's body captive, self reflection and empathizing with that decision because oMark treated him the same way, questioning the uncertain future of iMark and Helly and lastly hope that Gemma will be a primary character in the next season. And another thing from your Moral Ambiguity video I thought of was what you said about a character going on 2 different arcs at the same time. I feel that this show takes that idea to it's ultimate extreme. Here we're presented with 2 separate characters that inhabit the same body....Except they're not that separate cause they ARE the same person, just with different memories and experiences that shape them into different people. And here they go on similar journeys of being content with the status quo before going against it after learning the truth. And I don't JUST see it as Mark waffling to the Helly side. To me it's more like Mark WAS on the path of transforming entirely and reaching the end of his journey (reintegration), but then along the way the love he has for Gemma and Helly stopped him. Because of Gemma, oMark didn't want his Innie's memories. And here, because of Helly, iMark refuses the prospect of possibly reintegrating. It's like a caterpillar deciding to stop their transformation to a butterfly in it's tracks because of the bonds it's made with other caterpillars, bit of a silly analogy but yeah lol.
1 month ago | 5
When you consider Severance as a look at alienation, iMark’s final choice to run back with Helly is that alienated part of himself breaking free. The alienated part of Mark, the part of himself he created to be separate from his grief, has taken control of Mark as a whole. The part of him that “moved on” from Gemma in whatever way that meant. So often Mark has prioritized grief over moving on, and now iMark made a different choice!!! And it’s important to note that this choice started at the beginning of the episode, with the Mark conversation. oMark blew it in a MAJOR way- just like he despised when Helena got Gemma’s name wrong, he got Helly’s name wrong and iMark haaaaated it. Mark is always himself- even when he’s not himself. We’ve seen so often how iMark and oMark have the same reactions to things… I can’t help but feel what iMark did is an intensely Mark thing to do. This is the choice that brings us to season 3- what the heck do you do about alienation? How do you deal with it? How can it tear you apart? How can you heal? CAN you become whole again or will you always be this segmented self? Edit: also ties in with more Marxist themes the show has been hitting- the alienation of labor. The innies seem to have taken control of the office and the…. Uh… CEO? They like- have her as a hostage, essentially? This is a labor stand off!
1 month ago (edited)
| 6
It’s a power shift within mark that matches the one within Lumon. With solidarity, the innies were able to stand up against Milchick, and now Mark is about to stand up to his outie as well. Innies have realized the power they have. Wow!
1 month ago | 1
This was Mark committing to the decision to find a way to keep Helly R alive and separate from Helena. When Mark is refining Cold Harbor, Helly says, "But I'm her, I'm her." This tripped me up because both Helly and Helena have been adamant that they're separate people (which honestly might have been a sign that Helena re-engaged the Glasgow block for the completion of Cold Harbor...), so for Helly to remind Mark of that as a reason to choose Gemma only for Mark to choose Helly anyway has got to be, from his perspective, a statement on how Helly is (a) just as much a complete person with the right to be rescued as Gemma and (b) actually in more danger than Gemma now that Gemma has escaped the testing and severed floors. No idea what Mark could possibly be planning or if he's even expecting to be able to rescue Helly, but he wants "to live with you [not just to live]." In other words, he doesn't want to be trapped in his outie's happy ending. Another indicator is how he reacts to waking up in the elevator kissing who he knows as Ms. Casey: he's uncomfortable, and what's the one other time we know he had a romantic/intimate experience involving someone's outie? Helena violated Mark and Helly with that experience, and Mark S. is realizing that his outie fundamentally believes that he can just use their shared body unilaterally, including for intimacy with ppl the innie doesn't care about in that way. He knew that intellectually all season, but waking up mid-kiss with Ms. Casey was just too weird for him.
1 month ago (edited) | 5
I had a writing class that said that half of all scenes in a story are about a character making a decision. I forgot what the other half was. (Like action or something?). He said that writers are supposed to give their character's impossible decisions and they are supposed to chose something based on their core value. Characters are built on a core value that the theme is built around like if the theme is kindness then the main character will usually make decisions based around kindness and the villain will make decisions based around cruelty. The rule was that choices in a story had to lead to a sacrifice. He brought up a clip from that scene from the first Toby Maguire Spiderman with Goblin and MJ and the bus of school children to show what not to do. It was a simpler way of writing that what you tend to analyze probably because I was 14 when I took the class. So usually a final decision in a climax is the one that changes the way the world works in some way and says something definitively about the theme. With the one scene in Arcane, Jinx doesn't do the thing that everyone expects. They set up that there is a dichotomy between politics and personal relationships (like in your Sevika video) and until that point ever decision that Jinx has made has been relationship oriented and the people around her have been trying to steer her into the big political type of decisions that will effect the future. The ending is that she is technically making a political decision for personal reasons. It is inevitable that she would make a political decision at some point because every other character in the show had made at least one personal and one political decision by this point and there was a pressure to do it. It showed mastery of the world/return with the elixir point in the story. (I haven't seen those other shows. From your Last of Us analysis I think that the ending of that does something similar).
1 month ago | 4
I'm not sure what to think of this second season or its finale. Season 1 was complex, intriguing, disturbing, even frightening at times. We didn't know anything, we wanted to understand, and the further we progressed, the more certain previous parts made sense. Season 2 is much more convoluted for the sake of complexity. I mean, it feels like it's being complicated for the sake of complexity. Many things remain unfinished in season 2, but that doesn't give me the feeling that it necessarily requires explanation. The directions seem simpler to me, while season 1 was much more subtle and raised reflections on fundamentals (identity, free will, the foundation of the individual) without pointing them out. Season 2 guides us much more closely toward certain questions and confuses us on the rest. I admit I don't understand where the ending is leading us, and as far as I'm concerned, it could even end there.
1 month ago | 1
I liked it. This season was about how the innies feel as their own people and they feel separated from outies. On the other hand, outies don’t think of the innies as a separate person. They think of them as an imbedded part of themselves, as a complement of themselves. They never stop to think they have their own desire to live as themselves and a sense of identity. For them they are sub-parts subjugated to their main selves. Mark S and Mark Scout are not the same character and that was the point of that ending. Probably Mark S and Helly will never be able to have a life, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try, and the ending was to prove that point on how they feel separated from their other selves even if they share a body, personality and some sort of deja-vu memories. Mark S also saw how for Mark Scout he was just a part of him not worthy of keep living so he basically said: screw him! He still saved Gemma because they don’t have any chance anyways and also because they care about Miss Casey, it was the right thing to do for a co-worker and also because there might be some remanent feelings he has but Gemma is still not his own love. Even if the feelings they still feel are there as a remanent thing. Is like Burt. He still feels something for Irving that goes beyond severance but he won’t leave his husband, because at the end it was their innies love and not their outies. Mark S thinks that it Mark Scout reintegrates he will stop existing. They also think that the other is tricking themselves to see what they want the other to see. Is like a fight between themselves to have a different life in the same body. So I interpret those scenes you say that go one way or another as a fight between the two Marks and the only reason why Mark S agrees with the plan is because he knows their innies have no chance to succeed if they don’t do it anyways. There is also a part on the Gemma episode where she is discussing with Mark about the cards and there is one card that is a bout the fight with your own ego. This is foreshadowing of Mark S and Mark Scout fighting against each other even if they have the same body and brain and maybe just a separate counsciousness. Similarly to how in psychoanalysis they separate ego from the alter ego and how our own mind can fight against itself. Also, if I was Mark S I would have done the same…
1 month ago (edited) | 0
Man there’s so much intelligent discussion going on here. Wish I had something more to give. Just one question for Schnee, will you make a video on severance?
1 month ago | 12
I think Innie Marl's choice was significant because it was the penultimate decision on his altruistic nature. For most of the show he was an exemplary Lumon employee (he had his moments of doubt but ultimately sided with the company most times) even for a short time after Helly's arrival, but when faced with that ultimatum in the hallway, he decided against sacrificing himself for the greater good (which in a funny way is "his" own happiness with Gemma).
1 month ago | 0
I feel like the transformative decision IS innie Mark actually saving Genma thanks to Helly’s words, the two of them could have stayed together in their last moments but instead took the risk to rebel(especially for Mark since he almost died), imo if they fully prioritized the innie part of their lives they would’ve tried to threaten Lumon with the information they have/refuse to complete the Cold Harbor file or something
1 month ago | 1
Remember how Cobel said in Season 1, "who wouldn't you sacrifice yourself for?". Turns out it's himself... His outie.
1 month ago | 0
Sacrificial lamb symbolism, Innie-Mark made so many sacrifices for Outie-Mark but ultimately chooses himself. Also, Innie-Mark wanting to go to the outside world but ultimately deciding to stay in and find a way to save everyone. But I was multitasking while watching S2 sooo I probably missed a lot and my take isn’t very profound.
1 month ago | 0
Before all he did was try to make himself shown to his outie, to show Outie Mark that he is a person himself, and he should be respected. When talking to Outie Mark thru camera he started all smiling because he thought oMark was showing interest, but instead he was just needing something. Which pushed him to become antagonistic towards oMark. Helly was the one in S1 that started the revolution of all outies to make them show themselves to their outies, so when he comes back to Lumon in the last ep, she is the one he trusts and she pushes him to make sure he does help rescue Gemma, iMark didn't make that decision on his own. In the end iMark chooses himself over his innie, he doesn't care and fully takes control over himself. As far as I know, he never truly did that before. As for where I think his character will go, is that it will be compromise season, a lot of dialogue between Innie and Outie Mark using the Testing Floor, to figure out how to live together
1 month ago | 1
Hey Schnee, I've right now just thought of something regarding Victor and had to share it. You said in one of your videos that you're not sure what the astral realm is all about. Well, I've rewatched the amazing of the line if it strack me how lonely is the imagery of Victor in the astral realm and how it was such an integral part of your analysis of him in season 1. So I think the astral realm is an extension of that. Either it's a way for him to escape loneliness of delve deeper into it, that's what this is all about. And overall, I think it's worth to ask how does the stuff that Victor does in this season effect his loneliness. The more I think about it I think about more connections. Just as an example, there's the it was merely effection that held us together line at the start of the season and the fact that he can contact and interact with people from all over through the realm. It's an half baked thought, but I truly think there's something there.
1 month ago | 0
I just LOVE it for the potential set up. The innies have numbers now with the band, and they are essentially holding their outies lives hostage. With innie solidarity on the severed floor and Gemma who can testify about being kidnapped and experimented on, I would love to see the outside world finally be aware of the innies and try to negotiate and communicate with them. I want the innies to not go home at the end of their shift, for a true innie revolution to happen. For the innies to create their own lives within the severed floor. Of course this is going to be a complicated issue because the outies have lives too, but man I lowkey want the innies to have the power for once and with this ending, they finally do
1 month ago | 0
Mark's decision was entirely obvious the entire time, since the birthing lodge conversation. He had already solidly changed as a person in that scene and the final scene was just sealing the envelope.
1 month ago | 0
schnee
What did everyone think of the Severance finale? Specifically...
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(SPOILERS for Severance s2, Arcane s1, The Last of Us s1)
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All 3 of these finales end with impossible decisions, but with Arcane and The Last of Us, I felt like in making the decision, the character was doing MORE than just choosing one of the options. The whole build up felt like the character was waffling back and forth between one side and the other, but then in the end, it did not feel like just landing on one side of the waffle, but like reaching the end of a journey and transforming entirely and achieving something significant.
With Mark's decision to choose Helly, I didn't immediately get that sense of reaching a significant end and transforming. It DID feel like just making another stop on the Helly side of the waffle, but I feel like I might be missing some nuance. I understand that he's finally making a concrete decision to value Innie life as primary, but we already saw him leaning that way before. If this had been the FIRST TIME he thought of valuing Innie life, that would have felt like the transformative end like i was hoping for, but as is it still felt waffly. (And granted, I know this isnt meant to be THE end of his arc in the same way as was intended for s1 jinx and s1 joel.)
What did you think? Anyone have a deeper way of seeing his decision that feels more weighty than waffly?
1 month ago | [YT] | 428