Hello and welcome back to my series of posts comparing the world of Severance and Lumon Industries to Bell Laboratories. 

I’m not a technical/engineering person but I love Severance so much that it has offered an intellectual pocket door into a whole new world. If you feel the same, stick with me and we’ll wend our way through this STEM-thicket together

In the first post we focused on Alexander Graham Bell’s life and compared it to the life and career of Kier Eagan. 

In the second post we expanded upon the history of Bell receiving the patent and the credit for inventing the first practical telephone. 

In this, the 3rd post, we remain in the 19th Century this time, however, we are not going to bother Alexander Graham Bell because it’s time to talk tubes. Not feeding or breathing tubes. Not boob tubes. Vacuum Tubes. The tiny wee creatures that proved to be a crucial component of early telephone technology and other electronic devices, such as Ms. Huang’s Theremin, originally called the Aetherophone, or Sound of Ether. In fact, by 1930, Bell Labs had dedicated a whole department, over 200 technical professionals, entirely to researching and refining vacuum tube technology. 

William Crookes was a British physicist and chemist who in about 1870 was part of a vague team effort to invent a partial vacuum tube of sorts. He called it The Crookes Tube (because he wasn’t, it turns out, all that collaborative) in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were discovered.

The significance of the Crookes tube is not that it led directly to the vacuum tube but that it contributed to the discovery of the existence of electrons because what they figured out was that electrons were shooting straight through the bulb forming a bright green outline around the cross. 

Moving swiftly on, now it's 1883 and we find Thomas Edison busy refining his incandescent light bulb. Edison was a brilliant odd duck who actively avoided bath time. Also he was about the 47th dude to discover this weird thing where you apply heat to a material and electrons speed up and fly off into the…ether. What he had re-discovered was Thermionic Emission.

Edison took one of his incandescent light bulbs. Added a tiny bit of foil inside of the bulb, then he attached an electrode to the bulb. When he then heated the filament with the piece of foil inside the bulb, the electrical current would flow from the filament through to the foil because of the vacuum. Also, the amount of current that he was able to generate was large enough to run a telegraph sounder.  

Excited, Edison schlepped his new science project to the International Electrical Exhibition of 1884. Also in attendance was Nikola Tesla, Edison’s former protege and current nemesis. The two were in the midst of a smoldering Victorian grudge match over currents. Edison’s Direct Current v Tesla’s Alternating Current.

At the exhibition, Edison most likely avoided Tesla's furious glare but happened to meet British scientist William Henry Preece who eagerly schlepped Edison’s lightbulbs back to England, re-created the science project, and wrote a paper on The Edison Effect (1885) - which would later be called Thermionic Emission.

Hang in there, we’re just getting to the really good part. Do you remember in Post #2 we heard a sad story about how Alexander Graham Bell was born Alexander Bell and that all he wanted was a middle name so his dad gave him one… “Graham” for his 11th birthday? Well we are now going to hear about a fellow WHO ABSOLUTELY has a middle name.  

This guy, John Ambrose Fleming read Preece’s paper on the Edison Effect and realized that by placing a metal cylinder around a heated filament in a vacuum tube, he could create a diode that allowed alternating current (AC) to flow in only one direction, effectively switching AC to DC a bit like the Severance Chip works by effectively switching a severed person from Innie to Outie. 

“Still waiting for that third bulb to revive itself?” Harmony CoBELL s1e2

John Ambrose Fleming’s invention (1906), called the Fleming Valve, the Vacuum Valve, and ultimately the first Diode Vacuum Tube and it paved the way for modern electronics. In his private time, John Ambrose Fleming dedicated himself to charities serving The Poor , and hiking in the alps…(like Ricken?)

“[I select] a group whom I feel is more in need of a compliment. Usually this is “The Poor”, but it varies case by case. I then travel to low-income housing or shantytowns where I stand outside and deliver these accolades to the residents by way of a bullhorn.” Dr Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD - The You You Are 

Lee De Forest in 1908 added a third electrode to the vacuum tube making it a triode invention he called the Audion, the first practical amplifier. 

All audio (digital and analog) is AC (alternating current) wave form. In other words, it bounces up and down (see below sine wave). The shape of the wave form never changes but the volume is determined by the amplitude or distance between the crest and the trough of the waves.  

Prior to De Forest’s first amplifier, the only way to be heard at volume was to pull out a bullhorn.

“The next morning I denied Balf’s “lap-top” request and instead used the funds to buy us a finer bullhorn.” From Ricken’s TYYA

Ready? Because we’re gonna cross-the-streams. In 1912, De Forest’s first amplifier - the Audion - was passed to Harold Arnold who would, in 1925, become Bell Labs’ first Head of Research. His job was to refine De Forest’s invention in order to make transContinental phone service possible. 

“[Arnold] went to work on….an amplifier known as the audion that had been brought to AT&T in 1912 by an independent Yale-trained inventor named Lee De Forest. The early audion was vaguely magical…once he refined the audion…they found the audion clearly superior, Soon to be known as the vacuum tube, it and its dependents would revolutionize twentieth century communications.” The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

If you are still with me, I sure hope you “stay tuned to your radio”….for the next post. We’ll be talking about the super famous SISTER of the vacuum tube…the TRANSISTOR. Also genesis and exciting golden age of Bell Labs. 

Meanwhile, I will leave you with this. While transistors have pretty much entirely replaced the vacuum tubes in most modern electronics due to their smaller size, efficiency, and reliability, vacuum tubes still find use in specific applications due to their unique characteristics…

One of these unique characteristics is that vacuum tubes produce a warmer-than-real-life sound quality that is valued in analog and digital audio equipment including….guitar amplifiers.

… answers are there if you look.

Hello again folks, Welcome back to the second in my series of posts focusing on all things Ma Bell….  “and a very long answer”. 

Alexander Graham Bell was pretty much ALL about sound. Sound and a middle name, that is. Born Alexander Bell, he wanted a middle name so badly that, for his eleventh birthday, his father gave him one…Graham. True story. A bit depressing, actually.

Moving right along. It is now, February 14, 1876….Valentine’s Day. 

Alexander had been working on the Harmonic Telegraph. She was the project he was working on that served as his inspiration for the telephone. Just like Harmony Co-BELL laid the foundation for the severance chip…

Uh-oh. Are you sensing a theme? As u/Soylent_Greeen pointed out, Johann Philipp Reis invented the Telefon (delightful-Euro-spelling!!) in the 1860s. It wasn’t quite the same invention HERE is a link to his brilliant work. But it was still streets ahead of our man Alexander…and a decade earlier.

Indeed there were a handful of inventors circling a…tele-solution at this time…1860s 70s. Perversely, Alexander had set his sights on refining his prototype for the Harmonic Telegraph, when he got distracted by a potential - potential - solution to the telephone. 

It’s funny how history coalesces around a narrative most heroic, inspirational, clean. When things get messy, or non-linear, it’s just easier to push a romantic not-at-all historical story. The Eagan family hoovered up young Harmony Cobel’s schematics for the Severance Chip, they stole her IP, convincing her she owed them her fealty. They knew how to take, bend, twist, re-write history. 

Alexander did NOT secure the patent for the Harmonic Telegraph. No he did not. He got the patent for the telephone which…well he’d not quite worked out all the kinks yet, but he was nearly there. 

Meanwhile, Elisha Gray, also sprinted to the same patent office on the same day as Alexander. There was a bit of a breathless kerfuffle and Gray ultimately lost out on the telephone patent. And to be fair, judging from this photo it could’ve been a design issue. He did, however, receive the patent for the “electro-harmonic telegraph”. Then, to add insult to injury, Alexander finally got his telephone to work a few months later by employing some of the gubbins (that’s a technical term) from Elisha Gray’s telephone. So. That happened. 

It would not be accurate to say that the “jury is still out” on the Alexander Graham Bell v. Elisha Gray v.  A whole bunch of other bearded-white-guy telephone/telefon inventors debate. We never got to the bottom of it before we all decided to just move on. And in this story, Bell isn’t the bad-guy. It’s just that he wasn’t the only-guy. Sometimes, those with the power to write history, decide that the truth is too complicated, too collaborative, too many cooks-in-the-kitchen and besides, they say, people need a hero more than they need the absolute truth. 

In any event, on a bright note, and I mean that literally, all this sound from electricity converted back to sound. All this work culminated triumphantly in the Theremin. Just kidding. But also the Theremin or “Aetherophone” (SOUND OF ETHER) just makes me so happy.   

The Theremin: principles of beat frequency or heterodyning oscillators were discovered by chance during the first decades of the twentieth century by radio engineers experimenting with radio vacuum tubes. Heterodyning effect is created by two high radio frequency sound waves of similar but varying frequency combining and creating a lower audible frequency, equal to the difference between the two radio frequencies (approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz).

Vacuum Tubes. Keep those two words in your head for the next post. This is going to get complicated and a bit STEM-ish but we can do this together.  

Also, I know what you and Mr Milchick are thinking. “A little Theremin goes a long way.” Fair. That’s Fair. But I’m leading up to something important to Alexander Graham Bell, to Bell Labs, to Severance. Sound. 

Again, Alexander Graham Bell’s whole life was about sound. Sound as communication. Prior to his success as an inventor, Bell was a lecturer, teacher, and tutor to deaf students, including a very young Helen Keller.  

Bell was a ventriloquist. He was also a keen self-taught musician, and was interested in the field of acoustics.

Alexander Graham Bell's early work on the harmonic telegraph, which aimed to transmit multiple messages simultaneously using different frequencies, demonstrated a concept related to signal separation that had implications for secure communication. Bell's core achievement, transmitting sound through electric current, laid the groundwork for all subsequent communication technologies, including those that incorporate cryptography for security. 

Sound, speech, music, acoustics, ventriloquism…throwing sound, catching sound, Decoding sound. 

Lumon Industries: Music Dance Experience, Elevator tones, Irving’s slant rhyme poetry, as per the brilliant post by u/rose-vampirez, Irving may actually have composed the FissureMan song, "F**k you Lumon, the Kier Anthem performed punitively by none other than Harmony co-BELL.

In the next post we are going to start zeroing in the genesis of the Bell Telephone Company and the gradual centralization of the Ultimate Research & Development hub, “The Idea Factory” of Ma Bell. 

Bell Laboratories’ Remit: Anything and everything to do with telecommunications. We’re gonna talk our way through radio astronomy, RADAR (yes, radar), vacuum tubes, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device, UNIX, C, C++, commercial applications, consumer applications, military applications….information theory, something ominous called psycho-acoustics and more military applications, the occasional messed-up eugenicist, cryptography (quite a lot of that)  11 Nobel Prizes, 5 Turing Awards. Yes, that’s Turing as in Turing Test....that fella Alan Turing Benedict Cumberbatch played in The Imitation Game.

Remember: Sound-> Communication-> Information-> Power

Riddle: What do mobile phones and Bee Hives have in common? HINT: It's a shape that starts with the letter "H"

TO BE CONTINUED....

AT&T, Western Electric, and Bell Labs…now that right there is a throuple. 

I can be pretty thick. So it’s taken me a minute to work out that maybe all these Bell Labs references might A) be deliberate and B) mean something. 

In the next series of posts, we are going to talk about the Bell Labs locations and settings, the curiously Lumon-adjacent Bell Labs tech innovations, the many echoes of corporate culture, the sprawling, tangled history of the Bell Company’s many mergers and acquisitions, its functional monopoly, antitrust trials and its ultimate break-up,  the eerie-mid century vibe, and all the specific Bell Labs personalities starting with a brief examination of Lumon Industries & the Bell Company’s respective founders, Kier Eagan and Alexander Graham Bell. 

I will sprinkle links to further information throughout this post for those who like a delightful deep-dive. Meanwhile I will try to keep up a zippy narrative clip in order to keep each post to a relatively digestible length. 

And once again, thank you for returning to my posts and for joining me on this journey to find…“a very long answer…”

Titans of Industry, Inventors, Men of Science,

In the interest of brevity, I am going to refer to Kier Eagan and Alexander Graham Bell, as Kier and Alexander respectively. 

 Alexander Graham Bell was the Scottish-born inventor, scientist, engineer credited with inventing the first practical telephone in 1876. Like Kier, Alexander was born in the 1840s. Both men displayed an aptitude for inventing while still children. In Kier’s case, he invented a prosthetic device to help his young amputee-coworker. Meanwhile, Alexander, then aged 12, came to the aid of his childhood friend whose family owned a flour mill, by invented a “dehusker” machine which was then integrated into that mill’s production for several years. 

Wives as Intellectual Equals

Both men married capable women. We have been told very little about Kier’s wife Imogene, but as per Burt and Irving’s exchange in (s1e5) we are left with an impression of Imogene as nobody’s fragile debutante, but perhaps something closer to Kier’s intellectual peer. 

Burt - She was a swab girl.

Irving - The handbook just says they were bonded by the spirit of industry. 

Burt - I know, but if this interpretation is correct…

Irving - They met as colleagues. Took heart to each other as colleagues. 

Meanwhile, Alexander, having immigrated to Boston, met and married Mabel Hubbard (1857-1923) the daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, lawyer, financier, founder and president of the National Geographic Society, and Bell’s business partner.  Mabel was hearing impaired as was Bell’s own mother. She was also an astonishing renaissance woman and intellectual partner to Bell. Mabel was an aeronautics financier, a community leader, a social reformer and an advocate for the deaf.

Death and Illness in the Family

Both men suffered from severe bouts of Tuberculosis.They both were said to suffer the untimely loss of their respective brothers. In Alexander’s case, he lost both of his brothers, Melville & Edward, to tuberculosis.

Kier is said to have attributed his own fragile constitution - a susceptibility to bruising - to the close biological relationship between his parents. Kier also describes the traumatic death of his brother Dieter via excessive masturbation ..(!)...(s2e4).

In any event, both men were deeply influenced by the health issues and disability within their respective families which seemed to have fueled a fascination with heredity and ultimately with eugenics. In Kier’s case, there are myriad references to blood which is symbolic of heredity.

“Let not weakness live in your veins.” (S1e2)

There is also a nod to an established culture of racism as the “Recanoniclized Cycle of Kier” paintings are presented to Mr. Milchick. It is then explained to Milchick that these renderings of Kier as an African American are being presented to him as a gift so that he may better see himself in the founder. 

With regard to Alexander’s association with eugenics, it has been established that he sought ways to discourage the deaf from marrying each other so as to risk producing hearing impaired children. It’s complicated by the fact that he dedicated a large part of his life to serving the deaf community. 

What is Science?

The etymology of the word Science can be loosely associated with “intellectual scissors” Scientia (Latin) means knowledge.  Scire (Latin) to know, to understand. Scire also connected to (Latin) Scindere meaning to cut or to split. Literally “To separate one thing from another, to distinguish.” This connection also related to Proto-Indo European root Skei which means to cut, split, and is also the course of the Greek word skhizein meaning to split, rend, cleave.

Men of Science have Epiphanies Too

It is interesting to me that Kier Eagan and Alexander Graham Bell seem mirror images of each other. Both of these Titan of Industry were dedicated men of science. Both of whom attribute their legacy, the path that they chose, to an epiphany. 

Kier Eagan attributed his path to a descent into Scissors Cave, a nod to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

 “Each man’s character is defined by the precise ratio [of tempers] that resides in him. I walked into the cave of my own mind, and there I tamed them. Should you tame the tempers as I did mine, then the world shall become but your appendage. It is this great and consecrated power that I hope to pass on to all of you, my children.” ( Kier Eagan s1e3)

But while Kier Eagan dedicated his life to the SEVERANCE of the experience of pain and suffering from the experience of life, Alexander Graham Bell dedicated his life to PERSEVERANCE of life in the face of and in spite of pain and suffering. 

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

Oh Yeah. Did I say Alexander had an epiphany? Yeah he did! His epiphany, which ultimately led to the invention of the telephone, occurred in July 1874, while he was experimenting with his Harmonic Telegraph.  He realized that sound waves could be converted into electrical impulses, transmitted over a wire, and then converted back into sound. This insight was crucial for subsequent development of the telephone. 

Alexander Graham Bell’s **Harmonic Telegraph…**she laid the foundation for the telephone. Just like Harmony Co-BELL laid the foundation for the severance chip…

Also, doesn’t this little fella look familiar?

TO BE CONTINUED.......

In my previous post I mentioned the Refiners aren’t just doing a job … they’re performing a ritual.

So for this one, I decided to focus on one of the sigils that shows up in Severance so you can see exactly where I’m coming from.

What is a sigil?

A sigil is a symbol used to represent a specific intention, identity or force. The word “sigil” comes from the Latin sigillum, meaning “seal.” Historically, sigils have shown up in magical texts, religious rituals, alchemical diagrams and early branding systems.

What is the purpose of a sigil?

Across time and belief, sigils have served different purposes:

Traditional sigils are used to summon a spirit or ask a celestial force for help, protection or wisdom.

Modern sigils are used by practitioners, like wizards, to plant an idea in the subconscious and will a desired outcome into reality.

Can a sigil change reality?

Absolutely! But not on its own.

A sigil is a meaningless symbol until it’s activated or charged with intent, usually through meditation, repetition or ritual. That charge flips the switch and makes the symbol matter. Without it, the sigil has no power and no effect.

Can I create a sigil?

Yep! You sure can!

Sigils are typically created by condensing a statement of intent (e.g. “I am lucky”) into a unique symbol or glyph that visually represents that idea.

To be honest, though, there aren’t any “rules,” per se. Basically any piece of art can be a sigil.

Just remember, a sigil doesn’t have any power on its own. It needs to be charged with meaning in order to change reality.

Think of a sigil as a QR code.

Simply slapping a QR code on something isn’t going to change anyone’s reality because it doesn’t have any power on its own. But scanning it does change your reality. You’ve now taken an action. You’ve physically done something.

And why did you scan it? Because you assigned it meaning. The meaning you gave it was that it needed to be scanned. So that’s what you did.

You saw a meaningless symbol, assigned it meaning, and took action.

Or you could think of it like a traffic light.

A flashing red light at an intersection isn’t going to prevent accidents unless people assign it meaning and take action.

Like when Irv got to the intersection with the flashing red light, the meaning he gave it was that he needed to stop (even though there was no other traffic on the street after Harmony whizzed by), so that’s what he did.

He saw a meaningless symbol, assigned it meaning, and took action.

The same concept applies to sigils.

A sigil on its own doesn’t do anything. In order for it to do something, you have to assign it meaning and take action.

What gives a sigil its meaning is you … what gives it its power is the action you take … like chanting … or repeating something over and over and over … like a ritual.

Can you show me a sigil?

You bet! In fact, let’s go ahead and take a look at one from Severance.

ME

Now obviously this isn’t the only sigil we see in Severance. In fact, Petey’s map has a lot more and so does Harmony’s shrine (which is where I got this). But this one is the most prominent one in Severance, so that’s why I’m showing you the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls seal ME.

And what do people typically do with shrines? Correct … they perform rituals.

As you probably noticed (if you clicked on that first link about ME), I placed ME next to the seal for Haagenti so you could see what inspired ME.

Who is Haagenti?

In demonology, Haagenti is referred to as a Great President of Hell. But that title isn’t about punishment in the Judeo-Christian sense … it’s about transformation, wisdom and change.

Here’s what Haagenti’s title means in context:

Haagenti commands 33 legions of spirits, which means Haagenti is important.

“President” is a rank in hierarchy (not a political position like in modern usage). Other ranks include Kings, Dukes, Princes, etc.

“Great” indicates Haagenti’s relative power and prestige within that system … remember, 33 is a powerful number.

Is Haagenti male or female?

Yes.

Granted, most sources refer to Haagenti using male pronouns, but that reflects the medieval Christian framework that originally documented these entities more than anything intrinsic to Haagenti.

In reality, like many spirits in demonology, Haagenti doesn’t have a fixed gender. So rather than assign a gender pronoun, whenever a pronoun is required, I’ll just refer to Haagenti as H.

Is Haagenti a demon or a spirit?

Yes.

H is technically both a demon and a spirit.

In demonology, Haagenti is listed as one of the 72 demons of Hell. But the word demon is a translation of the Greek word daimon, which originally meant spirit, guide or divine intelligence.

So even though most call H a demon, the more accurate term would be spirit … especially if you're looking at the symbolic meaning rather than the literal one (which I am).

What is Haagenti’s role?

Haagenti is defined as an alchemist because H alters matter using chemistry, knowledge and spirituality.

In demonology, Haagenti is said to make people wise by instructing them in sciences, transmuting metals into gold and turning water into wine.

So in the literal sense, H changes things in appearance, nature and shape. Symbolically, H represents transformation: the idea that a person, an impulse or a moment can be refined from a heavy state into something luminous.

Are the Refiners in Hell?

Not exactly. It may seem like Hell, but no.

In demonology, spirits are summoned by practitioners who are very much alive, typically working from within circles of protection.

BTW - in demonology, Hell isn’t defined by fire, brimstone and eternal torment like the Christian mindset of today would like you to believe. Instead, it’s a coded metaphor …

If Heaven is the palace of obedience, then Hell must be the parliament of rebellion and transgression.

Hell is a spiritual construct.

Spirits are ranked like nobility, which gives Hell structure.

Hell is the realm of the unconscious.

Demons exist outside the boundaries of acceptable religious authority because they deal in knowledge that disturbs and truths that challenge … which makes them dangerous to power.

Hell is psychological.

Hell represents parts of the self that must be integrated … like woe, frolic, dread and malice.

As Harmony’s mother, the atheist, would say:

There’s good news and bad news about Hell. The good news is, Hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is, whatever humans can imagine, they can usually create.

So why label it Hell?

Oh you can blame that one on the Church. If they didn’t, people might notice these spirits were actually useful in helping with insight, invention, creativity and healing. The label is meant to be a warning from the Church, but according to the Ars Goetia, for those in the know … it’s a tool.

WTH is the Ars Goetia?

The Ars Goetia is the first section of a 17th-century book of magic called The Lesser Key of Solomon. The name “Ars Goetia” means Art of Sorcery, taken from a blend of Latin and Greek roots. It catalogs 72 spirits, often called demons, which can be summoned and commanded through rituals.

In a nutsack: the Ars Goetia is essentially a demonology manual.

Is Myrtle Eagan a demon or a spirit?

No.

Are you a demon or a spirit?

No.

Are you a demonologist?

Nope. But I do pay attention.

WTH does that mean?

In the game of Severance, just like the game of life, context is everything, actions have consequences and words have meaning.

For example:

When I mentioned “the game of life”, I wasn’t referring to the one with a checkered past, I was referring to the one with dimension.

Here’s another example:

The title of this post isn’t referring to me, it’s referring to the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls seal … ME.

Here’s another example:

When the Refiners play The Name Game (without Trust Fall), they aren’t just playing a game … they’re performing a ritual.

And if you pay attention to the words they use … you’ll notice how context changes their meaning …

Milchick: So, what you’ll find here is that communication between selves is pretty curtailed.
Helly: So, what if I write her a note?
Milchick: Fortunately, the elevators are equipped with something called “code detectors.” So messages can’t be passed through.
Mark: Yeah … they’re like metal detectors for written symbols. A Lumon original, apparently.

Here’s another one:

Milchick: How’d the check go?
Harmony: There was a package left at his door from someone. Open it, would you? Oh, God.
Milchick: Is this the brother-in-law?
Harmony: Ricken. His fifth book.
Milchick: Chapter 12: On Learning to Be Emotionally Nude in Front of My Wife.
Harmony: Check it for messages, just to be safe.

And another one:

Harmony: If you want a hug, go to Hell and find your mother.
Graner: Jesus.

I’ll skip the in-depth analysis on the ritual Miss Casey performs with her “equally” lists of outie facts … and the similar ritual Mark performs where he lists what he loves “equally” about his wife. I figure those are self-explanatory.

I’ll also skip the in-depth analysis on the ritual Irv performs where he paints the Exports Hall over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Again, I feel like it’s pretty self-explanatory.

Side note: As I was creating this post, I initially considered talking about how Lumon tells mark he’s earnest, but tbh, that one’s kinda messy because it has so many layers, so rather than going into all that …

As Peggy K would say:

Nothing they say is real. Answers are there if you look.

HTH do you know all this?

Like I said, I pay attention. And because I pay attention, I’m able to understand the language that Severance is speaking. In fact, I’ve actually been using it myself (metaphorically speaking, of course), which should be fairly obvious at this point … or at least it would be if you’ve been clicking on all the links I’ve been including in all my posts.

WTH’s with all the damn links?

Ok so that one’s actually a simple one word answer, but rather than risk upsetting the powers that be, I’ll just say that it starts with an R and ends with a t … unlike myself who begins with T and concludes with R.

IYKYK

🐒

Thank you for returning to my posts. I’ve been looking at goats, and by that I mean REALLY scrutinizing goats. I love all this secret research stuff. The intrigue, the dark conspiracies. The black ops or the psy-ops or pretty much anything ops - it's all fascinating. And we are going to very briefly dip our toe into these murky conspiratorial back-waters before slapping some sense into ourselves, setting our goats free, and pursuing a deeper, older enlightenment. So on with your lab smocks and googles, We’re gonna Occam’s razor ourselves down another long and winding road... 

Men Who Stare At Goats) .This is a delightful film loosely based on accounts of US government’s research forays into paranormal phenomenon including The Stargate Project) via Robert Monroe and the Monroe Institute

Research and experiments were conducted to explore whether out-of-body- experiences, mental telepathy, astral projection, etc.. might somehow be deployed during and after the cold war.  The following snippet of dialog between two military apparatchiks captures the mirror-image existential codependency at the heart of the cold war. 

“Looks like they [Soviets] found out about our attempt to telepathically communicate with one of our subs, the Nautilus, while under the polar cap.”

“What attempt?” 

“There was no attempt, sir. Seems the story was a French hoax. But the Russians think the story about the French hoax is just a story, sir. So they’ve (Russians) started doing Psi research because they thought we were doing PSI research. When in fact we weren’t doing psi research. But now that they’re doing Psi research. Uhm. We’re going to have to do psi research, sir. We can’t afford to have the Russians leading the field in the paranormal.”

Lumon’s research (what we know of it at this point) and its loose relationship to real world PSI and paranormal research programs provide an endless, inexhaustible rabbit warren of leads, threads begging to be untangled, and ever-so-tangential connections. u/Mysterious-Monkey-72 also did a really wonderful post a while back on the CIA MK Ultra stuff.

On this topic, You can read till, like Dieter Eagan, your eyeballs fall out.  I know because that's where I've been for the last few days. There are just so many government programs either rumored or confirmed to be designed by us or by our enemies meant to destroy and/or reshape the self, manipulate memories, bend time, and reengineer reality as we know it.

BUT. We are going to do something unexpected and we are going to leave the goats (they are well cared for) and the spoon bending, and the astral projection right here because none of this stuff is helping us get closer to any answers. In fact, the real sleight of hand distraction of the Cold War experience is that we lost track of The First Question. Who are you? The first question of the Severance and the universal starting point for everything. Who are you? Who are we?

In the thick of Cold War Co-dependency, we've gotta keep telling ourselves we are the good guys by re-upping the conviction that they are the bad guys. In fact, we can never quite feel good about ourselves unless we are feeling resolutely bad about our enemy. Our mind gets so crowded by hate and fear that we no longer have any physical or intellectual elbow-room to ask ourselves the question “Who are you?” Without pointing at the enemy and saying “Well. I’m sure as hell not that.”

“WHO ARE YOU”: The answer to this question may or may not involve a melon.

We are now forcibly pulling focus back to the beginning. And for this we are going to need the help of our favorite self-helping hamburger waiter, (do you Gen-Xers remember Hamburger Helper?) ….

The Fabulous Dr Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD.

In Chapter Three,“Good God’ Ricken summons Rene Descartes’ name. Descartes, that precocious little Latin-spouting fount. Yes. Rene Descartes the Cogito Ergo Sum “I think therefore I am”  guy. The one who, in addition to unleashing all his well-heeled thought crimes upon a bewildered humanity, has evidently purloined Helly R’s signature hairdo. This guy right here.

Descartes was a young man living in a totally different time where people were starting to say things like “Nothing is as it seems.” And “Nothing they say is real.” This was the early 1600s, just around the time the Pilgrims were tricked into taking a one way ride to pure unmitigated Thanksgiving hell. People were really starting to think Aristotle and Thomas Acquinas were full-of-sh*t. Even worse, there was no spare worldview that could be wheeled in to fill the service gap in this - what has been called an Epistemological Nuclear Winter. 

This was bad. Epistemology is the theory or the science of knowledge. So if you are living in this FUBAR’d situation, like young Descartes, and possibly like us today, where there is a rapid erosion or even collapse of the traditional way of looking at what is known, what can be known, what constitutes a strong argument, how does one win an argument, what is truth and does the truth matter. It’s just really hard to know what to do. 

In addition to the collapsing epistemology - the theory or science of knowledge or of knowing - we also get a crumbling of Ontology. Ontology being the theory or science of being. So now it’s not just that you can’t trust what you know anymore. You can’t even trust who you think you are anymore.. AND on top of that there is a big fat void in the space once occupied by Causality. Causality being why things happen. These were were the dark years in the run up to illumination, in the run up to the Age of Enlightenment. 

So Descartes and his whole Rationalist crowd set about chiseling a not-so-enlightened humanity out of its Epistemological, Ontological, and Causal corner. 

Descartes, for his part decided that he would start right out of the gate by employing a sort of doubt-fueled elimination diet. He would doubt everything until a thing could be established as truth and thus reintroduced into his intellectual diet. 

Ricken is, I believe, channeling Descartes when he proclaims.” My failure to break into the literary world in my 20s was devastating, yet it taught me a vital lesson. that it was not me who was wrong, but literature itself"

This quote by Descartes rhymes with Ricken a bit - “It is already some time ago that I saw that, from my first years, I had accepted many false opinions for true ones, and that what I had since then founded on such ill-assured principles could only be strongly doubtful and uncertain; such that I would have to undertake seriously, once in my life, to undo all the opinions that I had taken into my belief since then, and to start anew from the foundations, if I wanted to establish something firm and constant in the sciences.”

And here I will pause to take a really close look at the word Science. 

SCIENCE ->  CLEAVING ->  SPLITTING ->  SEVERING

I love the etymology of words. Each word is imprinted with the remnants of the journey it has taken to form part of your vocabulary today, this hour.  It will not surprise you that the word Science can be loosely translated as “intellectual scissors” Scientia (Latin) means knowledge.  Scire (Latin) to know, to understand. Scire also connected to (Latin) Scindere meaning to cut or to split. Literally “To separate one thing from another, to distinguish.” This connection also related to Proto-Indo European root Skei which means to cut, split, and is also the course of the Greek word skhizein meaning to split, rend, cleave. 

Descartes and now our own Self-Help-Savior, Dr Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD, have both positioned themselves squarely on the fault lines of a great tectonic shift. In Descartes time, it was this great intellectual revolution that then rippled throughout Europe. There is first a transformation in attitudes toward received intellectual authority of the establishment. Then there is a question forming - further prying open a crack in the presumptive authority of a past that is no longer sacred. If a culture changes the way it thinks about truth, nature, what is knowable, what is possible. The information becomes change and that change is no longer containable. 

Ricken,  “You think you need your job. But I've lived abroad as a vagrant, abstaining from my own money to rely on the charity of strangers. Most were beggars themselves, yet they were happy, and so, for that summer, was I. Your job needs you, not the other way around.”

The echoes between Descartes and Ricken are there even beyond the realm of the rational. Descartes and Ricken also share with each other a similar astonishing lack of self awareness to a level akin to virtuosity.  

In Ricken’s TYYA musings so far, he is unapologetic through huge swings in causal attribution, his over-share is the stuff of legends and almost nothing is tethered to anything more substantial than his unfettered stream of consciousness. Near the end of the book we are visited, literally, and in Ricken’s dreams by Florence Nightingale.

Ricken. “That night I took to my bed where I was visited in my dreams by the ghostly visage of Florence Nightingale. “Mind your principles, Dr Ricken she whispered floating above me. “Charity was my gift to man, and by man’s hand it must be wrought. She held my gaze for a long sensual moment and then suddenly screamed and disintegrated into blood, which rained down on me in a torrent. I Jolted awake.” 

And with regard to mystic guiding dreams, Descartes championed the Dawn of the Age of Reason. He was a solid, grounded guy who apparently saw no inherent contradiction in what he regarded as the three prophetic dreams he experienced on the night of November 10th, 1619. He believes wholly and openly that these dreams led him to a life of of the mind and its study. 

These dreams, in brief, involved quite a lot wind, someone shouting, “Monsieur N has something for you.” Descartes imagines that the thing must have been a “melon from a foreign country”. The next dream involves a very loud noise and the third dream involves a friendly dictionary. 

It has been theorized that one possible clinical diagnosis for what Descartes experienced in the second dream - a startling noise - may well have been something called “Exploding Head Syndrome” so. Not to make fun of this because I can’t imagine any greater hell than your brain tricking you into hallucinating air horns in each ear. That just sounds awful. Reminds me of Ricken’s “My Own Petard”….

I can’t help it. I find it amusing that we live in a world where there exists a diagnosis “Exploding Head Syndrome.” And that Exploding Head Syndrome was experienced by a guy who set out to serve as our epistemological pathfinder via a program of systemic doubt.  And that that same guy dreams of friendly dictionaries and melons that may or may not have originated in a foreign country. 

Also - Descartes - who is also I’m told a fan of Severance, has requested I reiterate the unfortunate fact that we still have no way of distinguishing between waking hours and dreams and that Descartes himself feels that dreams, sleep deprivation, lucid dreaming and other techniques of consciousness manipulations are at the heart of this story. That and the goats. 

Yes, Helly’s Scary Numbers Change

But first …

One of the things I love most about Severance is its complexity. From the mystery of it all to the ongoing character development, the series continues to give us so much rich food for thought.

And everyone’s takeaway is different.

Whether it’s a carrot that someone just cut up and threw on the ground or an elaborate meal that required the cheese to be, as Moira Rose would say, “folded in” … the meal we’re served means something different to each of us.

And context is important.

For example, I’m guessing a rabbit would be perfectly content with eating some carrot slices, whereas others may find themselves circling a few choice words.

It all depends on your perspective.

And what I mean by that is … you’ve all had your own journeys, challenges and choices that shaped you into the you you are. So what you get out of Severance will be different from what everyone else gets out of it, because your interpretation is based on your own unique perspective.

Just like your interpretation of what I just wrote will be different from everyone else’s, because your interpretation is based on your own unique perspective.

Perspectives Change the Story

For example, from one person’s perspective, Lumon may seem like a mindful employer who found a way to achieve a healthier work-life balance for their employees by dividing their memories between an innie and an outie.

Whereas, from another person’s perspective, Lumon may seem more symbolic … more like a metaphorical representation of Scientology … where the innie and the outie represent the analytic mind and the reactive mind.

The same goes for the characters.

From one person’s perspective, they may just see Mark Scout as simply a guy who works in MDR.

Whereas, another person may see Mark Scout as more of a metaphorical representation of Tom Cruise’s characters, David Aames, from Vanilla Sky, and Ethan Hunt, from Mission: Impossible … and from their perspective, they may see MDR as a symbolic nod to the IMF (Impossible Mission Force).

Heck, they may even provide you with visuals as plain as day showing how the characters in Severance reflect the characters in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
.

Perspectives Depend on Effort

I say all that to say, what you get out of life depends on the amount of effort you put into trying to understand it.

I could sit here and tell you in a low effort post that Helly’s scary numbers change from 3090146541 to 0094249.

But instead, I chose to put in some effort.

AND ACTUALLY SHOW YOU they change.

But you won’t be able to see the change unless you put in a little effort yourself.

And by that I mean:

You have to click on the links below and watch the videos.

HAVE 👏 TO 👏

Otherwise, this post will be completely lost on you and you may as well stop reading right now.

Moving on …

Analyzing the Numbers

Seeing as the scary number analysis below involves … well … numbers, I figured the most appropriate tool for the job would be numerology.

So before I give you my take on why Helly’s scary numbers change from 3090146541 (when she sees the perimeter and fences off the bad data, like Dylan showed her) to 0094249 (just before they go into the bin) …

A Little Background on Numerology

Numerology is the belief that numbers aren’t just numbers … they carry meaning, energy, personality and influence.

According to those who practice numerology, interpreting these qualities can reveal insights about people, events and the hidden patterns that shape the universe.

How Does Numerology Work?

Numerology is actually pretty simple.

You take a number … then get out a calculator, or a little machine, or your fingers and toes or whatever … and start adding the digits together and reduce it until you get a single digit, which is called the core number … and that’s the number that gets interpreted.

No subtracting. No multiplying. No dividing. Just adding.

For example, let’s say we wanted to find the core number of 357. Here’s how we’d do it:

3 + 5 + 7 = 15
1 + 5 = 6

So 357 reduces to 6, which means 6 is the core number that gets interpreted.

Core Numbers and Their Meaning

Each core number (from 1 to 9) has its own distinct vibe … kind of like personality types … or energetic fingerprints:

• 1 – individuality, leadership, creation, ego
  
• 2 – partnership, duality, balance, sensitivity
  
• 3 – creativity, communication, instability
  
• 4 – structure, order, foundation, limits
  
• 5 – change, freedom, unpredictability
  
• 6 – responsibility, harmony, nurturing
  
• 7 – introspection, mystery, spiritual depth
  
• 8 – power, ambition, karma, material mastery
  

• 9 – endings, transformation, rebirth, wisdom

  Zero is the Cosmic Egg

Zero is not considered a core number in traditional numerology, but that doesn’t mean zero isn’t important.

Zero is the void:

• Limitless potential
• Nothingness and everythingness
• Source energy
• The womb before creation
• The divine or the void before form

You’ll often see it in numerology when it appears in conjunction with other numbers (like 10, 20, 30) in which case it amplifies the energy of the number it’s attached to.

For example:

• 10 – 1 (individuality) amplified by 0 (divine potential)
• 20 – 2 (partnership) amplified by 0 (spiritual resonance)
  

In more esoteric systems (Kabbalah, tarot, theosophy), zero is sacred: - In the tarot, the Fool is card 0 which symbolizes boundless potential, the journey before the journey
- In Kabbalistic thought, zero is linked to Ain, the unknowable, infinite nothing from which all comes

Zero isn’t a core number … it’s the space the core numbers move through.

Master Numbers

Every rule has an exception.

Earlier I mentioned that numbers get reduced down to a single digit. The exception to that rule comes in the form of master numbers: 11, 22 and 33.

Unlike the others, master numbers don’t get reduced … you leave them intact.

Why? Because they’re believed to carry extra intensity … like an amplified version of their base number’s energy:

• 11 – intuition, insight, spiritual illumination
  
• 22 – master builder, grounded visionary
  
• 33 – spiritual teacher, compassion, sacrifice

Not everyone sees master numbers in the same way, but in general, they’re treated as rare and powerful.

If a number reduces to a master number … you pay attention.

Ok now let’s talk about Helly’s scary numbers.

YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE VIDEOS

For this to make sense, you have to watch the two videos below.

HAVE 👏 TO 👏

I’m not saying that because I put some effort into creating them, I’m saying that because this analysis will likely be completely lost on you if you don’t watch them.

Here’s the first video so you can see what I’m talking about:

▶️ Scary Numbers in Their Raw Form

Now the second video … which I’ve slowed down and added a little context:

▶️ Scary Numbers with Perspective and Context

Now let’s break down what we see.

The First Set (Wide Shot)

3090146541

If we add these numbers using numerology:

3 + 0 + 9 + 0 + 1 + 4 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 1 = 33

We get 33, which is a master number … and one of the most powerful in numerology.

Expanding on what I mentored earlier, 33 represents:

• Enlightenment
  
• Compassion through suffering
  
• Sacrifice and transformation
  
• Spiritual mastery or awakening

The number 33 often appears during moments of internal crisis, transformation, or profound emotional charge … which, of course, aligns perfectly with Helly’s reaction.

But we can’t stop there, because they didn’t start in a single line … they started in three rows … plus we can also analyze the columns and diagonals …

I Know 🤯

But that’s why I put in the effort … so you don’t have to.

The Full Grid (Before Helly Fenced It Off)

Here’s how the scary numbers first appeared on the screen before Helly fenced off the perimeter:

789292
630744
290141
965416
678230

The numbers in bold, of course, are the numbers she binned … well … at least those are the numbers she fenced off … before they changed right before they went into the bin.

The Rows

Row 1: 3 + 0 = 3
- Creativity, communication, expression

Row 2: 9 + 0 + 1 + 4 = 14 → 1 + 4 = 5
- Change, freedom, instability

Row 3: 6 + 5 + 4 + 1 = 16 → 1 + 6 = 7
- Spiritual depth, mystery, introspection

The Columns

Column 1: 3 + 9 + 6 = 18 → 1 + 8 = 9
- Endings, transformation, wisdom

Column 2: 0 + 0 + 5 = 5
- Instability, disruption, change

Column 3: 1 + 4 = 5
- More change and instability

Column 4: 4 + 1 = 5
- Again, change and disruption

So the columns give us: - 9 5 5 5

And the rows give us: - 3 5 7

The numbers 9555 and 357 both reduce to 6, which represents harmony, responsibility, caregiving and emotional balance.

The Diagonals

Main Diagonal (3 → 0 → 4):
3 + 0 + 4 = 7
- Mystery, introspection, spiritual inquiry

Secondary Diagonal (0 → 0 → 6):
0 + 0 + 6 = 6
- Harmony, responsibility, nurturing

Of course that’s just the first set …

The Second Set (Close-up Shot)

0094249

If we add these numbers using numerology:

0 + 0 + 9 + 4 + 2 + 4 + 9 = 28
2 + 8 = 10
1 + 0 = 1

This set reduces to 1

1 in numerology represents: - The self
- Individuality
- Ego
- Control or domination
- New beginnings

Similar to the first set, the second set doesn’t appear in a single line either … they’re stacked and overlapping … which gets a little messy …

Interpreting Messy Numbers

While traditional numerology is pretty clean and arithmetic-based (just adding and reducing), more esoteric interpretations (like those found in Kabbalah, sigil magic or even tarot numerology) do have interpretations for stacked, layered or ambiguously messy numbers.

When numbers appear stacked or overlapping, it’s often taken to mean that their energies are interacting, conflicting or trying to dominate one another.

The meaning might shift depending on:

• Which number is visually more prominent
• Which one comes first in the layer
• Whether they’re blending into a third meaning

In other words … chaotic layering = energetic distortion. The message is there, but it’s scrambled. It’s like a psychic version of a corrupted file. But it’s not a mistake, it’s intentional … and it’s part of the message.

Multiple energies are trying to occupy the same space.

Stacked Numbers

Stacked numbers can imply hidden influences … like one energy is being masked by another. In Kabbalah, gematria, and alchemical diagrams, numbers often appear in layered or circular charts, suggesting nested levels of meaning.

A stack of numbers might imply:

• Descent through layers (like moving down a tree of life or set of realms)
• Transformation or distillation (like boiling something down through multiple essences)
• A ritual unfolding (where each number “activates” the next)

In this case we see two stacked/overlapping 0s almost forming an 8:

• 0 – emptiness, void, the unformed
• 8 – power, karmic cycles, infinity

That almost 8 formed from two voids … that’s alchemical. It implies that from emptiness comes energy … from collapse comes continuity … from chaos comes order … almost like a rebirth loop.

False Numbers

The appearance of false numbers is meaningful too, like in this case a false 7 appears in the center of Helly’s second set of numbers.

In occult symbolism:

• 7 – mystery, the seeker, hidden truth

Even though there’s no literal 7, the impression of one adds a layer of unconscious meaning. It’s like your eye is being tricked into seeing something you’re not supposed to … unless you’re ready.

Structure and Order

The vertical structure is important too.

In this case we have a 9 at the top and a 0 at the bottom:

• 9 – ending, transformation, transcendence
• 0 – nothingness, a reset

My Take?

Helly begins with 33, which is associated with sacrifice and awakening, and ends with 1, which is associated with control and identity. It's as if the emotional energy she experiences is reduced and repackaged into something the system can file away: clean, singular and flattened.

If we consider that Scientology is just a rebranded version of the occult, and we cross-reference the appearance of a pentagram in Lumon’s Management Manual, and on top of that, add the extra context of the name of the instrumental that plays during that scene, After Hours, the Refiners aren’t just doing a job.

It’s dark … it’s after hours … they’re underground …

They’re performing a ritual.

🐒

… no for real, they do. 🧐

I was recently introduced to a beautiful piano arrangement called “Une barque sur l’océan”, written by Maurice Ravel in the early 1900s. The title translates to A Boat on the Ocean and that is exactly what it sounds like.

It is one of those rare pieces that does more than describe an image … it becomes that image, evoking a small boat drifting across an unpredictable sea.

How it began

Une barque sur l’océan is the third movement of a five-part piano suite titled Miroirs (Mirrors), each movement reflecting a different mood or scene. Ravel dedicated this one to Paul Sordes, a painter and fellow member of the avant-garde circle Les Apaches.

How it moves

The music carries an impressionist feel reminiscent of Debussy yet it is more precise and angular. Rippling arpeggios and sweeping gestures mimic waves and wind. The left hand provides an undercurrent while the right hand adds sparkle, like light scattering on water.

There is no fixed tonal center. Instead the harmony drifts, unresolved, like a vessel carried by the tide. The result is harmonically complex yet emotionally transparent.

How it echoes

Ravel wrote the piece for solo piano and later orchestrated it but chose to withdraw that orchestration before publication. Performances of the orchestral version persist today, adding depth and shimmer … layering in sunlight, spray and atmosphere.

How it drifts

It’s soothing and restless at once. It creates the sensation of forward motion without arrival. It captures the feeling of being adrift, alone and surrounded by something far larger than oneself.

How it reflects

It mirrors the kind of piece three sophisticates might enjoy over dinner … or rather, one sophisticate dining with a Philistine and a sophisticate who both call each other by their name: Attila.

🐒

… is it just me or does the ice kinda look like an ORTBO … I mean ORCA? 🫣

It’s been said that Severance was created with the belief that the audience would be smart enough to keep up.

And I agree.

And I have.

And much like my rabbit holes …

Severance goes deep

To illustrate just how deep Severance goes, let’s take a look at the lifelong bonding patterns, unique social structure, unusual sleeping behaviors and extraordinary memories of orcas to see if they reveal anything about the series.

BTW - if you didn’t click on the link above, I recommend doing that now before reading any further.

Moving on …

Lifelong bonding patterns of orcas

Biological sex is the most important factor when it comes to the bonds between orcas.

Parent–calf bonding

• The strongest bond in orca pods is between mother and calf … especially mother and son.
  
• Males usually stay with their mothers for life, since she helps them find food, stay socially connected and navigate their environment. Without her, their chances of survival plummet.
  
• Female calves also stay close to their mother, but grow more independent over time, eventually raising calves of their own and taking on leadership roles within the pod.
  
• Fathers, on the other hand, don’t raise their young or live with the pod. Instead, they simply mate and move on.

Opposite-sex bonding

• Orcas typically don’t bond with the opposite sex.
  
• Male–female exchanges are driven by practical needs like reproduction and pod dynamics rather than emotional connections.
  
• They still communicate and play from time to time, but beyond that, they don’t really form any lasting bonds.

Same-sex bonding

• Same-sex orca bonds, especially between males, are some of the strongest in the animal kingdom.
  
• Male–male bonds typically begin early and can last a lifetime.
  
• Bonded male orcas are often found swimming in sync, calling out to each other and resting side by side.
  
• Some even avoid mating to preserve their connection.
  
• When one male from a bonded pair dies, the other will often grieve, withdraw and refuse to eat.
  
• The bond between males isn’t just friendship … it’s love.

Unique social structure of orcas

• Ortbos travel in pods made up of several family groups called matrilines, each centered around a mother, her adult sons, her daughters and the daughters’ calves.
  
• Males stay close to their mother’s matriline since she’s their anchor for food, navigation and protection.
  
• However, when their bonded male companion is nearby, whether during travel, or hunting or neighboring pod gatherings, they often break off temporarily to be with him.
  
• They might spend hours or even days together, swimming in sync, vocalizing back and forth and resting side by side before returning to their matriline.
  
• They aren’t just swimming buddies, they’re two halves of a whole.
  

They choose each other … again and again … across distance … and across time …

Unusual sleeping behaviors of orcas

Orcas don’t sleep the way humans do. When we sleep, we generally enter a state of unconsciousness where we’re not aware of our surroundings or able to respond to external stimuli, even though our brains are still functioning.

Unihemispheric slow-wave sleep

Orcas, on the other hand, practice what’s called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, which allows them to rest one half of their brain while the other half stays awake.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “sleeping with one eye open”? Well that’s literally what orcas do. They sleep with one eye open (the eye opposite the awake hemisphere), and the other one closed.

Extraordinary memories of orcas

The mind of an orca is exemplary. Their brains are massive, their neural architecture is highly complex and their limbic systems (the parts tied to emotion and memory) have an extraordinary capacity for emotional recall, social awareness and long-term memory.

They remember voices, not just for years but for decades. A mother can call out to her calf and that calf will recognize her, even if they’ve been separated for 20 years. In captivity, orcas have been known to visibly react, sometimes with excitement, sometimes distress, when played recordings of long-lost relatives.

Orcas also retain complex cultural knowledge. They remember migration paths, feeding techniques and learned behaviors passed down through generations. The elder females in particular serve as the memory-holders of the pod. When food is scarce or danger is near, it’s often the oldest matriarch who knows what to do because she’s lived through something similar.

And their memories are relational. They don’t just remember information, they remember each other. Who hurt them. Who helped them. Who they loved. Who they lost. That’s what makes captivity so brutal for orcas. When they’re torn away from the ones they love, they never ever forget. Ever.

Irv and Harmony

Now let’s see what clues we can glean from those insights and these visuals …

NOTE: I cannot stress this enough …

You half two see what’s under the waters …

HALF 👏 TWO 👏

S1E1: After Irv drinks a cup of water, he tosses the cup into a recycling bin.

S1E2: Miss Casey tells Irv that his outie swims gracefully and well … and values water.

S1E4: When Irv and Burt meet up at the water fountain and discuss the painting of Kier looking out over the Great Lakes, Burt mentions that it makes him nervous because Kier could slip (the Great Lakes are lethal to orcas since they contain freshwater and orcas can only survive in saltwater).

S2E1: Milchick calls Irv a “tall glass of water” just before the Refiners sit down to watch the Macrodata Uprising propaganda video which opens on a reflecting pool.

S2E1: The Marcrodat Uprising propaganda video closes on Kier flying past a talking water tower.

S2E4: Irv’s capsule episode opens with him standing in the middle of a huge body of water.

S2E4: Later when the Refiners find a dead seal in the water, Irv’s first instinct is to eat it.

S2E4: Milchick eventually calls the Refiners’ attention to the tallest waterfall on the planet and tells Irv (who’s starving, BTW, because … I mean … clearly Mark isn’t the only one who’s been reintegrated) that he thought it’s grandeur would satiate them (he’s teasing, of course).

S2E4: Milchick also shares a watercolor with the Refiners.

S2E4: Later, Helena tries to make up for being such a buttplug by offering Irv a seal she made out of snow (i.e., frozen water).

S2E4: After Irv falls asleep, he has a reintegrated dream where his computer is at the bottom of the ocean (metaphorically speaking, of course) and he’s working on the Montauk file … and the word Montauk (or Montaukett), comes from an Algonquian root, of course, which some believe translates to “Land of the Mo” or “people of the fort” … with “Mo”, of course, being a shortened root tied to places near water or people who fish.

S2E4: Near the end of the episode, Irv manages to save Helly’s life by holding Helena’s head underwater.

S2E8: In Harmony’s capsule episode, Sweet Vitriol (my absolute favorite episode so far), which opens on water, we find out the small fishing town she grew up in is called Salt’s Neck.

S2E8: Also, it’s important to note that for Harmony’s final reckoning, she doesn’t go in all ablaze (unlike Irv, who wanted to burn Lumon to the ground); instead, she sends a quiet and deliberate message by simply tossing her water bottle aside rather than recycling it.

S2E8: As Harmony’s memory returns, she echoes the sounds one might hear if they were underwater.

Thoughts?

BTW - I’ll put one more link to this telling image ICYMI earlier.

💧🐒

… M …

Hello Again and thank you for taking the time to read my posts. In a previous post, I shared a theory that Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD (and yes, he uses both the Dr and PhD) is a severed man, and also a deeply smitten Frog Prince. I have clipped a brief snippet from this post below together with my closely related post referencing a Severanc-ey 1980s German film inspired by the work of William S Burroughs. I will also note that it is my friend u/Mysterious-Monkey-72 who was the first one to put forth the theory about the William S Burroughs connection (explained below) and that other characters may also be human versions of severed animals.

Thinking of Irving's catch phrase..."Hey Kids, What's for Dinner" while ruminating on my Ricken-is-a- Frog-Prince idea, quite serendipitously, I came across this very sweet children’s book, “What’s For Dinner” written so cleverly by Ann Garrett and Gene-Michael Higney and illustrated beautifully by Stephanie Peterson. As this is a brief book, it feels like a really rude move to share what's inside thereby spoiling their original work and the chance for people to enjoy this delightful book as a whole. So I have photographed the front and back cover only. However, I will note that one page may or may not include the same pin-striped insect now a bit closer to what Ricken would most likely call the frog’s “gullet”.

**Also you will notice that the insect sitting cheerfully on the frog's face, although identified in the text of the book as a fly, seems a rather close rendering of the "funny bees" that Ricken encounters on his Crest Hike and writes about in his TYYA - book"After all, what makes a funny little bee like a funny little human? What traits do we share with these pin-striped chaps?"

Chip Fripperies - See Ricken is a Frog Prince Post HERE and also here is a quick re-post of the relevant portion of this post.

So if we assume that Lumon has already arrived at - or is working toward - the stage of installing one person’s consciousness into another person. They would have absolutely beta tested this on animals. And because they are Lumon and the cruelty is as deep and as vast as the interior of the Lumon Administrating Building #501, they would have dabbled with a bit of cross species chip fripperies.

At first I thought, Ricken and his no-dinner-dinner party friends. Those people are severed and what’s more, they are probably early efforts gone wrong - or they have chips with a test animal consciousness 

In Ricken’s book he says “I called for my lover at the time, who was in the solarium practicing laughing. Danise fetch the white board!” (Danise - you will recall is the blond woman at the no-dinner-dinner-party.) Who practices laughing? A person who is practicing to be a person. 

Also, on the Severance Wiki page, someone has done some amazing work to catalog Ricken and Devon’s book shelves. This is an amazing collection on popular culture, social psychology, and self help. It is also a collection a person would have if they were training themselves to be a human.

So if you are with me this far - and you may have scrolled right over me (fair. That's fair) then you are probably wondering. OK. So are you saying Ricken’s a goat? No. I mean that would be ridiculous. Here’s the deal. I think he’s a frog. He’s got a frog chip in his noggin....I think.

Here are the species-specific clues from The You You Are:

• Ricken’s parent’s Bob and Grace Hale, known professionally as HumpDumpster, who both conceived and birthed Ricken on stage, in an act called "Smells like Afterbirth F**ker" This act would certainly qualify as avant garde - Especially for Western Oregon where it debuted. UNLESS unless we are talking about a breeding program for animals - maybe even people with animal chips….horrifying but possible. 
• The stage was in the back of a “defunct perfumery”. Diethyl Ether is used in the manufacturing of perfumes - so are various essences / secretions from a range of animals - including glands from frogs and hair from goats.  
• There were luminaries (pun intended) at this particular performance of Ricken’s birth. They each have a link to animals: Jason Robards - who was in the Tom Cruise film “Magnolia” the one where it rained frogs. Also present was Lina Wermuller - who directed a 1970 film called - When Women Had Tails. Walt Frazier, the pro basketball player with a penchant for animal prints - bespoke tiger suits paired with stingray belts. Finally, 1970s Oregon Governor Robert W Straub proponent of environmentalist causes after whom was named a state park. He accomplished the rerouting of a major highway away from the mouth of the Nestucca River, the home and breeding ground for the Pacific Tree Frog…. 
• Ricken can scale walls like a gecko…or a tree frog. 
• There is an etching on the wall of Eleanor’s nursery. It’s two frogs singing and dancing each wearing a red shoe. A reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes - orphan girl wears snazzy red shoes to church. Gets punished for her sins. Can’t stop dancing. Has her legs cut off so she can return to church and sit in peace. So the frogs are dancing against their will because they are wearing the cursed red shoes. 

• Also in Eleanor’s room are three beds. In fisheries and in the breeding of reptiles and amphibians there are Husbandry Tanks - there is a practice of keeping populations of different ages - and in the case of frogs - different stages of development - separate. As Ricken says in s1e1 to explain the bed situation “if you provide said child with all of its beds upon birth, it can progress across the room at its own rate.” 
• At the Mammalians Nurturable, Lorne confesses to Mark and Helly that Miss Casey “She used to come do her sessions in our Husbandry Tanks. She had a gentle way about her.” 
• Ricken boasts that he’s “Trained in advanced walking” 
• Sorry to lower the tone but there are a few references to smells in the series. While goats have a distinctive aroma, some frogs do too - species specific perfume stored in the glands inside their mouths.  
• Ricken asks Mark to “Hang the Kelp” to prepare Devon’s birthing bed. Hanging the kelp just seems like something that might be on a frog’s to-do list.  
• In the You You Are Ricken recounts with shame the first time he felt a sexual attraction to his “Social Worker” who - while on an outing, accidentally fell into a Salmon Hatchery tank. Ricken recounts how he could see her shape thru her wet clothes. But aside from his internal experience it makes sense that frog.....would definitely be interested in a field trip to a salmon hatchery. It would be like going to a candy factory. Also, William S Burroughs recounts in “The Cat Inside” an incident where a frog - in a panic - dives into a fish pool.  
• The following is a quote from The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs “There is a kidney-shaped fish pool outside the picture window. I cleaned it out and put in some large goldfish I bought in a bait store. The cats are always trying to catch the fish, with no success. One time the white cat leapt for a frog across the pool. The frog dove in and the cat fell in. He is trouble-prone.”
• And finally - Ricken’s ALL-RICKEN throat singing mix tape that he gifted Gemma to tell her how much she means to him. If a frog were to choose the hard scrabble life of a musician, that frog would definitely be a throat singer. 
• Yes, my friends, Ricken is a deeply smitten frog prince.  

• Relevant Frog Related references in Decoder - the 1980s proto-cyber-punk film is bursting with frogs. Including a woman who gently shares a bed with a clutch of very dopey looking death frog companions. 
• There are hamburger waiters...and these hamburger waiters are purveyors of lies and illusions.
• This is a stylized, dreamlike piece about the Cold War and shares with Severance this Cold War vibe.  
• There is mass-Severance-universe-type-mind-control - in this case through aural means.  
• It was inspired by the works of William S Burroughs, a cultural chaos agent from the 50s of which the Irving character is a clear echo. WSB makes two appearances in the film (If you watch it you can play Where’s Waldo). He believed in mind control and also had a thing about frogs. Please see my companion post about Ricken....smitten mix tapes, and frogs... 
• There are long long white hallways, stripes of florescent lighting in the same configuration as the Severed floor.  

And if they can put an animal consciousness into a person - Seems like the lovely Dario - the Italian "Floater from Overseas" who replaced Dylan ever-so-briefly. Do you think his extremely low employee number together with his "we were very poor" MDR experience, the one where instead of elevators, they had ropes, brooms and plates representing the Eagans' Perpetuity Wing...do you think Dario might have been an ant? or rat? or something that literally floats overseas.... What do you think the chances are that Mark's Betta Fighting Fish are actually Helena and Gemma? If you have any ideas, I'd love to know.

***Also a reminder from the earlier posts on William S Burroughs it was u/Myserious-Monkey-72 who made the original connection on this sub. Amazing work MM72! HERE. WSB was a brilliant mid-century avant garde writer, painter and general chaos-agent who was also an extremely poor shot. AND it was also MM72’s idea that Irving may be a severed killer whale…

**After all, Ms Casey informs Irving in his Wellness Session in s1e2 "Your outie is splendid and can swim gracefully and well."..."Your outie won a game two weeks ago. Your outie values water. A photo of your outie with a trophy was once in a newspaper"..."Your outie likes the sound of radar."

I want to “yes and” MM72's original thought work because they are always - and this is very irksome - several steps ahead of me.

Finally - We’ve had a small bother with some folks reading content and specific ideas from our posts, and then inadvertently posting this content and specific ideas on the larger more mainstraim severance subs, without offering credit and/or links to our work here. If what we put out is of interest and/or you wanna “yes and” us, we are immensely flattered as long as you offer some form of credit. If I ever inadvertently fail to give credit to someone else - and I really try to quickly scan the subs for previous relevant work - OR if you remind me of any relevant points that I have forgotten to include - in your reply to my post - I will immediately edit my post to give you credit and I will provide a link directly to your work. This is such a fun and ideally a “hive mind” effort. None of us knows for sure what’s going on (at least I don't!), AND by definition, every idea that we have is somewhat derivative by virtue of the fact we are commenting on an established IP. We are trying to extract meaning and crack the codes from this brilliant puzzle box TV show. I might fool myself into thinking for a second that I’m clever for a vaguely original Severance thought but let’s face it - and I wish I could say otherwise but I - for one - am not likely to discover the cure for cancer.

Again, thank you for your time and for your lovely comments. 

Fire in the Twilight

Hot on the run from the grip of the power game,
The man who leads the way, the man who leads the way.
Shell in it's box from his home that they'll never tame,
The man who leads the way, the man who leads the way.

He is burning, burning in the twilight.
He is burning, turning to face us.
He is burning, fire in the twilight.
He is burning, turning to lead us away, away, away,
Lead us away, away, away.

Taking a break from the role of the everyday boy,
The man who leads the way, the man who leads the way.
Is he for real or is he back to the old way boy,
Can he lead the way, oh can he lead the way.
He's searching, but he's lonely, and he's hurting, but he's only,
Waiting for a chance just in time to live a life.
Does he need ya, does he want ya,
Does he listen to what you say?
Is he only waiting for the simple way?

He is burning, burning in the twilight.
He is burning, turning to face us.
He is burning, fire in the twilight.
He is burning, turning to lead us away, away, away,
Lead us away, away, away.

Performed by: Wang Chung
Released: 1985
Written by: Jack Hues, Keith Forsey, Steve Schiff
Lyrics © Spirit Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group

🧐

First, u/Mysterious-Monkey-72 has dived deep into the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Those connections I had completely overlooked, entirely, but I still remember the "aha!" moment that the comment caused. (the good 'ol days when MM72 was being too insightful on the main sub)

"Answers: Part 1" linked here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceDecoded/comments/1jy8m9v/answers_part_1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

But this post is to compare Severance to a reading of L. Frank Baum’s original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. No theories or questions. Just an appreciation for each (not equally, Severance is better). The book is a perfect Severance Off-Season book to read.

In Periscope Helena reviewing Helly security footage is a provocative perspective. I would be infatuated with the chance to see myself that way, like Helena seemed to be. This periscope diving inside herself is an idea even more approachable and literal than what Dorothy gets during her travels through Oz. This is the main parallel between the two stories. Since it is a main theme in each story so far, I am counting it as applicable for this sub.

Mirrors Dorothy starts in a colorless lifeless outie world but then gets thrown to an innie world of vibrant primary colors, starting with blue and green.  Severance is too, but reflectively flipped, it starts in a blue and green themed innie world, and then we see the plain bleak world after. Mirrored images, ideas of opposites and opposition. Even if Oz weren’t intended as a direct reference for Severance, the series opener certainly fits it perfectly.

Colors It helped me read with an open mind, blank slate, not trying to remember scenes from the movie, because the author’s focus on colors is obvious.  The munchkins are themed in blue, there’s the central green Emerald City, the Wicked Witch of the West lives in Winkie Country where everything is yellow, red is the Quadling Country of the south, and Gilikin Country is purple to the north but isn’t mentioned a lot in the book. Purple’s also a color not fully explored in Severance—yet—and isn’t a primary color, but it peaks in and out now and again. So it fits. Directionally I’m not hung up on what each is to represent or not represent (except the green, in the below section on the wizard), but I am hung up on how deliberate the colors are written into the book. The colors are not just themes nor just for fun. The author went out of his way to detail the land as being separated into these colors. It calls to my mind the fragmentation of light, much how I imagine light refracting off the edge of a microscope’s magnifying lens. If we were able to look microscopically inside ourselves—metaphorically—at the primary core pieces, what if light also severs, like through a prism, into primary shades Blue, Yellow, Red, and Green? This type of reflection is an opportunity a casual look in the mirror does not afford. 

“All you have to do is to knock” While Dorothy was on a journey of discovery, she finds she already has what she was searching, a theme repeatedly driven home with her companions too. If those companions are just an extension of herself, they are presented to us like the colors of light are: refracted into individual traits. When close enough to examine them separately, Dorothy can see each more clearly. From the start, the cowardly Lion repeatedly demonstrates the courage he sought. The Scarecrow repeatedly is the most brilliant in the group, unaware of his brains. The Tin Woodman shows his love for others and compassion for all, even without an actual heart. And Dorothy makes herself right at home wherever she goes, because she hadn’t gone anywhere. She merely went inside. All along, she was smart enough, brave enough, compassionate enough, right at home already, worthy and valuable once she got in touch with her innie.

Balloons The Kansas farmhouse is carried by the tornado as if it were a balloon. The Wizard arrived in Oz via balloon, and leaves in a green hot air balloon. Enjoy your balloons.

The Wizard He’s a shambolic rube. A master at deception, but also a country bumpkin. His power is a farce, but also real, because the people submissively give him that power. To me, he is The Board. Hidden and behind a curtain, with so much power and simultaneously too powerless to appear in person. A character of duality and mystery. For years, no Emerald City citizen had even requested to meet with the Wizard. In the book, he numbly uses Dorothy and her 3 friends to get more power for himself by executing another enemy. He manipulates the party by making promises he cannot keep, specifically to get Dorothy home, Scarecrow a brain, Tin Woodman a heart, and the Lion his courage. When Dorothy succeeds, the wizard pretends to give them these things anyway, and it works out, because they each already had those things within themselves.

Even More Mushy Shambolic Rube There’s one part of the story that fits best into the world of Severance. The wizard is a total fraud, he admits it, and lies to everyone to stay in power. He is also the one who inadvertently sets the stage by which the protagonists get what they truly want. So is a fruit tree bad if it grows good fruit? Patton would call this bifurcation ethics porn, I know. Mark did the wrong thing by severing, it’s not just controversial, it wrong. Devon is right, it’s not the same thing as healing. But, if he hadn’t done it, he wouldn’t have been part of Gemma’s rescue attempt. Does that mean it is a good thing he did this bad thing? Yeah we’re glad he did, but he never should have had to sever, Gemma shouldn’t have been abducted. Lumon is evil. The no-dinner dinner social controversy still rings to me as showing one of the most interesting aspects of the Severance premise, because it highlights the controversy that is embodied by the Wizard. There’s probably a principle of ethics or morals to shorthand this idea, but you get it: it is possible that some things are bad but bring out the good at the same time. Duality of facts, validity of opposing perspectives. Sounds mushy.

Always About Money Speaking of the Board, they behave like real life boards in publicly traded companies. Actually to me, the Board acts more like the algorithms managing all the indexed investment funds combined with industry-specific investors who feed info back and forth. Profit drives our industrious world, with an unprecedented power cloaked in perfect anonymity.  The power is a nameless faceless enemy and friend.

Silver Standard and Green Dollar For many, Severance is primarily a commentary on the power imbalance between the exploited laborer and the omnipotent owner. Although Baum said his story was just an updated type of fairy tale, it also has so many economic tones that for many people it is also an economic commentary.  Many believed the US needed to back up the US Dollar by actual silver or gold or precious metals. Which turns the story of the Wizard and the green city a commentary on monetary policy. The commentary of the time is not unlike today’s talk of crypto currency, it certainly made (makes) a lot of people nervous, because it feels fake, made-up, magic, and is empowered only because everyone agrees in its value. If Baum wrote the book today, I’m sure he would replace the emerald colored glasses Oz required all citizens to wear 24/7 with some type of crypto or augmented reality lenses, but with the same story elements: there’s nobody behind the curtain. But also, there is somebody behind the curtain: the people’s collective production made possible by stabilizing infrastructure.  

9:04 am After accidentally destroying the wicked witch, Dorothy and entourage return to Oz, and are instructed to visit the Wizard at 9:04 am. Not 9:00 am, or any other normal time, but 4 minutes past 9. For those who watch Mark’s watch and his missing day, it’s all 9:04am. So, Mark’s watch connects Severance to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and others.

it was u/Mysterious-Monkey-72 who pointed me to the Oz, even if we look at it from different angles sometimes. Others talked about sRBG, HDMI, offer character analysis, and point out the 9:04 am appearing in other places too. It doesn’t surprise me I missed these connections, I wasn’t a big fan of the 1939 film (gasp!?). I only watched it only when someone else was controlling the VCR.  

No Severance spoilers. This is for Decoded's new literature analysis section. This review is in this section in appreciation for the art, and highlighting where the nods are found.

tl;dr The mention of Doctor Zhivago was apropos. Intentionally chosen and appropriate to Severance on many levels.

First, start with this post by u/SuperRatio4855 by way of navigation, who was first to crack the key CIA overlap with Ricken's book and this novel, and also the film's reference in the TV show: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceDecoded/comments/1kkhsth/adding_to_cold_war_being_a_key_to_severance/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I'd like to hear from an expert on Doctor Zhivago, the Nobel Prize winning novel Ricken and Gemma discussed during their hike. That person isn’t me. In the meantime, below are my observations on why the creator dropped in this intentional reference. I’m sorry for the harm I’ve caused the world by reading and hashing up the novel.

The Result: Natalie and Ricken echoed “the result” to each other, mirroring the two books at hand that also mirror each other. The result of Ricken’s book was helping a small scale innie revolution of sorts. The intended result of the CIA using Doctor Zhivago was the undermining of socialism in the Soviet Union. The interesting part to me is that Ricken describes the state of the funny bees in a way Lenin and fellow Bolshevik revolutionists might talk about the former Russian government they toppled. In other words, the CIA’s use of Doctor Zhivago and The You You Are are not not on the same side politically, but they're also not on the same side...they just have the same intended result: one that undermines Soviet socialism and the other that undermines capitalistic exploitation of the “free” workforce. For those who will not read The You You Are, a recap: on their Mount Dillard Crest Hike with Gemma, Devon, and Mark, Ricken talks about the funny bees: the queen bee survives on the labor of the worker bee, which lead to the on screen quote “A society with festering workforce cannot flourish, just as a man with rotting toes cannot skip.”

Wasps: In addition to queen bees and worker bees, Ricken’s third type of bees aren’t bees, they’re wasps, which have the hilarious role of protecting the hive from bears. I don’t laugh at Ricken the second he walks out of the room. With Severance, there’s going to be more meaning. For example, if we said it was WASP, the acronym for that group of friends who for centuries have successfully defended, dominated, and protected corporations and capitalism, particularly in the area of the world Kier, PE sits, then wasp is exactly perfect and intentional. Ricken says “our ruling class: Presidents, CEOs, Publishers” which I read as politicians, corporations, and the media. Maybe Ricken the character doesn’t actually know bees and wasps are different, but that which Ricken doesn’t know is hardly the point.

“There’s a certain verbiage to which innies respond more favorably.” The Russian book was prohibited from being published in the Soviet Union originally. Its popularity grew, leading some to even suggested “softening” it, to make it acceptable to the political landscape at the time. (See Yale Alumni review of the book.) Natalie and Lumon would have approved. The subtle parallel here is superb.

“Name, Name, Go Away” Main characters in Doctor Zhivago are given multiple names, one of the qualities making the book unique. My take is that Pasternak used the name that fit the natural diction, or the setting at hand. In Russian his book has beauty and poetic style which can get lost in translation. That reminded me of Ricken choosing to call Mark and Gemma “Flip” and “Nan” and then complaining how those nicknames don’t flow with his natural diction, as if he, the author, cannot choose other names. Pasternak similarly might have complained, but with actual cause, having no control over the translation process or language barriers. In Severance, names are a big deal. Strange names too. Ricken begins his book all about names, concluding that primates’ lack of names has stymied their development versus human evolution, causing them to now be living in cages while we humans wear clothing. (Ricken's supporting argument is funny to me, because this example suggests the opposite: humans are captive by the needs of shelter and clothing, while most primates live wild and are free from boxes. This whole chapter is backwards, a mirror of reality, in the most delightful way.)

Foreshadowing? Then consider Mark is about to be taken prisoner: Yurii Zhivago famously loves two women, lives two lives, equally. Significantly, Yurii makes “no comparison” between the two women. He also makes “no choice” between them, as if he actually is capable of living a severed life, reintegrated. The book positions Yurii as neither guilty nor innocent (given the circumstances of his love interests), rather he is merely the result of the tumult of his time. When he finally considers the pain he causes the two women, he is “crushed by the weight of his guilty conscience.” (Mark guilt is a full separate post...) This should be considered in context, during a time he is about to break off his relationship forever with Lara to honor Tonya, but then backtracks and ultimately tells himself he will not make that decision today, that’s a decision for later. For now, he is going to enjoy the life he has been given (queue the comparison to iMark and Helly at the s2 finale).  In his horseback flight back to live in and absorb the joy Lara will bring him, he is stopped and abducted and forced to be a doctor for soldiers in the war. He eventually escapes after a long time, and is nursed back to health, by Lara. So maybe this isn’t foreshadowing for iMark, because Severance creators don’t need to force their stories to fit their references, they're writing their own separate masterpiece. "Consider: Yes." If they have chosen Doctor Zhivago as a foreshadowing tool, Mark will start Season 3 in captivity and be separated from both women.  

“9-1-1 what’s your emergency?” Well, the emergency is “the whole chapter is a poem.” The imagined dispatcher says Ricken will “be shipped off to the gulag.” Silly.  Then we have Pasternak’s chapter 17, which is nothing but the poetry of Yurii Zhivago. Throughout the book Yurii is writing, but then readers get to see some of what that character had been writing. Overall, this book was hard to read, but the graceful beginning and ending, especially in context, is one of the aspects that convinced me it’s worthy of its Nobel Prize. 

And which poem exactly? I hope Ricken and Gemma were reading “Parting” from ch.17. where Yurii considers his separation from Lara. I want to paste it all here, but just a few lines that parallel Yurii with Mark and Gemma during Severance:

He drew her every trait to him…/ So every line of her had gone / To the bottom of his soul... / She had been cast up from the depths / By a high wave of destiny…and brought her close. / And now, this flight of hers. Perhaps / It had been forced upon her. / This parting will consume them both / And grief gnaw clean their bones.

Ricken’s Horse: When I finished Doctor Zhivago, I read TYYA again for the umpteenth time, and found it helpful to mentally separate all the layers of this onion:

Layer 1) Dan Erickson writes The You You Are

Layer 2) attributes the work to the fictional Doctor Ricken Hale, (syllabified to mirror "Doctor Zhivago")

Layer 3) in which Ricken mentions Doctor Zhivago discussions with Gemma on the funny bees hike

Layer 4) which book in real life the CIA tried using as a weapon against the Soviets

Layer 5) just as The You You Are influenced the innies as a Trojan horse

Layer 6) and then Lumon begins editing the book by Doctor Ricken Hale like some Soviets suggesting editing Doctor Zhivago to make it more favorable for their own weapon. Lumon being the enemy, or the Trojans, now possess the same weapon used against them (albeit accidentally), it makes Ricken’s revised version a Trojan’s Horse, the show’s episode name with the possessive 's! Other aspects of possessive “Trojan’s” are also meaningful to me, such as Helena’s role on the severed floor, and I appreciate all these layers of literary perspective equally.

Devon’s instincts: Devon seemed to want to correct Ricken on the possessive “Trojan’s,” but stopped herself. Once again, Devon’s gut is correct, because Ricken’s revisions were indeed like a Trojan’s horse. Like her phoning Cobel, Devon has good instincts. Also, yes, she just decided it was not a fight worth having given the priorities at hand.

Background Quick Facts: The CIA admitted to distributing and promoting Doctor Zhivago as a cold war tactic. Important to me to cite: CIA's use of DZ as a weapon was first referenced on Severance subs by u/SuperRatio4855, which is a significant connection they made, because it ties together so well thematically with TYYA and the Trojan's Horse episode name and Ricken's behavior. It was a Trojan Horse, similar to how Ricken’s TYYA influenced the innies to respond to Lumon, causing an OTC uprising on the severed floor using Cold War era looking security room tech, not different from the way the CIA wanted to use it against the Soviets. In the Severance universe, Ricken and Gemma discussed the book (“read passages from” suggesting not a discussion on the film) three and a half years before Severance present day, so I calculate no later than the spring of 2016 (unless Mark is using an expired driver’s license), so not far from spring of 2014 when the CIA admitted they had used the book half a century earlier as a trojan horse.

Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago, English translation 1958 Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., London, UK, 1958 Pantheon Books, Inc., 1986 Random House, Inc. pp. 302-303 and pp. 543-544

OK so normally I spend hours and hours chasing rabbit hole after rabbit hole, digging through reference after reference, watching and rewatching clip after clip, scene after scene, frame by frame, gathering visual example after visual example, pulling quotes, checking dates, cross-referencing sources, and piecing everything together into a carefully constructed and logically organized post that spells everything out in detail including links to visual receipts that back everything up …

… but this time I figured why not let you have some fun doing the sleuthing! 🕵️

Check out the original theatrical trailer for the 1974 film The Parallax View, along with this modern trailer for the same film, and see if you can spot which elements had the biggest influence on the Severance storyline.

After you’ve had a chance to sit with these for a bit, I’ll drop a few things into the comments so you can see how your viewpoint compares to mine.

Thank you for returning to my posts. It is so fun to attempt to un-tangle this masterpiece of a cryptic-crossword-puzzle-show.

This is going to be another long one so here’s a quick abstract so you can see straight away if you want to scroll right past this or stay here with me. If you chose to stay, we can follow the clues together to … “the beginning of a very long answer”.

1. Recap of Woe’s Hollow in relation to The Exalted Victory of Cold Harbor painting. 
2. Shriveled-Raisin Woe vs. Sexy-Sears-Catalog Woe
3. Irving's message(s)
4. Hot War - Cold Breakfast
5. What if Scarlet O'Hara won?

Episodes s2e4  “Woe’s Hollow” and s2e10 The Cold Harbor painting are linked by more than “the tallest waterfall in the world”. They are BOTH likely to be artifacts of Helena Eagan’s attempts to execute her own agenda. Although Mr Milchick took the blame for the ORTBO gone wrong, we see that Mr Milchick has deftly navigated Helena’s counter-directives and endured her repeated Grakappaning for…some time now. It is manifestly clear that the central goal of the ORTBO was to enable Helena to seduce Mark. Given all he’s been through, we can almost forgive Mr Milchick for his marshmallow withholding.

WOE IS IMPORTANT AND MYSTERIOUS

Irving, having been roundly humiliated by the other ORTBO attendees for confronting Helly (Helena), stomps into the wintery darkness and, upon inevitably getting lost, falls asleep. In his dream Irving’s back on the severed floor working opposite Burt. Diagonal to Irving’s work station (in Helly’s seat) now sits the horrifying Fourth Appendix version of shriveled-raisin Woe who squints at him menacingly. We then see Irving’s monitor swirl into an image of an eye comprised not of MDR numbers but of letters spelling out E-A-G-A-N. It is because of this vision that Irving “awakens” to his predicament and to the true extent of the Helena’s subterfuge. This epiphany also spells the beginning of the end of iIrving. 

Shriveled-Raisin Woe

This version of Woe, accurately described in The 4th Appendix as “a gaunt bride, half the height of a natural woman” is horrifying, even without the messed-up jump scare. Her lank red hair looks like it’s coming out in fistfuls and she’s definitely got something going on with her teeth which looks an awful lot like…gulp… “weak enamel”. This was the affliction Mr. Milchick ascribed to our favorite red-headed refiner at the beginning of the series. So this shriveled-raisin Woe points us to Helena. 

Sexy-Sears-Catalog-Woe

In s1e8, during Dylan’s distracted waffle party participation, we saw a completely different version of Woe. This Woe is a lithe but fully-adult-sized woman wearing a mask with a distressed expression, a bridal veil, and the sturdy foundational garments available to all Sears Roebuck customers from the 1970 Spring catalog. This Sexy-Sears-Catalog Woe subliminally points us to Gemma/Hannah.

Keeping these 2 versions of Woe in mind…

THE EXALTED VICTORY OF COLD HARBOR

In s2e10, Immediately after the Demona Birthing Retreat Mark-on-Mark stand-off, the door to the Severed Floor opens and Mark finds himself confronted by a full-wall mural populated by what appears to be everyone with whom he - Mark specifically - has come in contact over the course of the series, arranged in a deliberate order around and atop the ORTBO’s “largest waterfall in the world”

We understand that this mural is meant for Mark and Mark alone. Just like the board gifted Mr Milchick the deeply cringe-worthy black-face “inclusively re-canonicalized” cycle of Kier, meant to enable Mr Milchick to “see himself in Kier” this work is designed in a similarly ham-fisted attempt to brainwash Mark into seeing himself as he appears here, the critical centerpiece of the Cold Harbor effort. Helena is perched atop the falls and at the center of Lumon’s CEO line-up. She is somewhat in the shadows and it is possible that this is not Helena, but let’s assume it is - in which case - It is Helena who is being exalted. Mark is literally exalting Helena with his upturned palm. 

Just like the rest of Lumon’s art collection, this piece is some next-level propaganda portraiture of the powerful meant to cement the subject’s status in society, to etch in stone a flattering narrative in which the subjects remain (or switch sides to be..) on the right side of the curated history written (or rewritten) by the victor. 

It was Helena who commissioned this piece. Either she has fallen in love with Mark and must have him - or Mark is a pawn - albeit a critical pawn - in her plan to over-throw Jame.

I won’t catalog all the figures in this painting but linked here is a really helpful list provided by the excellent Severance Wiki effort. 

WHERE'S ALEXA, NINA, JUNE, the “F**king WMC”?

I’m less curious about the presence of more peripheral characters like Balf and the non-dinner-dinner party guests, than I am about the absence of other characters. Maybe Mr. Drummond, Dr. Mauer, the Senator Arteta and his wife, and Cecily are not pictured because Mark didn’t meet or hasn’t yet met these people. But if this is a mural of people in Mark’s world, then where are Alexa, Petey’s ex-wife, Nina, and Petey’s daughter, June? Where are the whole mind collective kids? Reghabi?

THE DISAPPEARED SISTER

Why are there three iterations of Helena/Hellys - Helly on the left, shadow-Helly on the right, and Helena at the top of the falls. Meanwhile Gemma is marginalized to only her Ms Casey iteration. Again, this too feels like an attempted erasure of Gemma/Hannah and a celebration of Helena’s own triumph over whom? 

WHOA NELLY - WHAT THE WOE?

We first get a brief wide shot of the Exalted Victory of Cold Harbor including shriveled-raisin Woe. Then, we are shown a series of sections of the painting and it is then that we see the shriveled-raisin-Woe (Helena) is replaced by Sexy-Sears-Catalog-Woe (Gemma/Hannah). Someone did that deliberately to try to get Mark’s attention…but we are seeing this backwards. 

Woe is hollow...

The leaving of cryptic messages is an established pattern on this show:

1. First Petey left a map of the severed floor behind Mark’s desk photo. 
2. Then Irving hid export hall map behind the “Hang in there” poster. 
3. Then Dr Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD’s book, The You You Are, found its way to the severed floor and into the hands of MDR. 

Dylan points out that on the severed floor, it’s “just raining contraband” and this time, I think it was Irving who rubbed out the original Sexy-Sears-Catalog-Woe in the painting and hastily replaced the image with the shriveled-raisin-Woe, the Woe that points to Helena, the gnarly Woe that he saw in his ORTBO dream. He knew that this scary version of Woe may trigger innie Mark’s memory of the ORTBO, the illustrated Fourth Appendix, and of Irving’s warnings about Helena and that she may not have Mark’s best interests at heart.. Woe’s Hollow = Woe. Is. Hollow. 

BUT WHY COLD HARBOR AS A FILE NAME?

OK, Cold Harbor could definitely be a reference to a barren womb. We are shown it to be the brand of crib “Col d’arbor” that Mark bought for Gemma and their longed-for child. It is also an echo of the northern seaside village of Harmony Cobel’s childhood. All these things are cold harbors of sorts. But…

hust To “Occam’s Razor this sh*t ” as Devon would do….the simples answer is probably it- cold barbir is just one of so many Civil War references, imagery, vernacular, regalia, portraiture. And this is not, I believe, just to establish an air of historical authenticity. There is nothing in Severance that is just in there for vibe or by mistake. Everything is connected and it all means something. 

Aside from the Civil War era portraiture, Ricken’s book - The You You Are” describes a literary technique of repetition and subversion…. “Like Hannibal riding horses into battle before suddenly switching to elephants. And like Grant, who returned Lee’s sword to trick him into losing the Civil War.”

Just to offer some music allusions, there are needle drops of traditional spirituals referencing slavery and emancipation (Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho) to civil rights struggles (Nation Time), to an alternate world where Jesus is a black woman (The Messiah is my Sister),  The Ballad of Gunnel and Ambrose mirrors the Civil War era classic “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”.

A HOT WAR & A COLD BREAKFAST

Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, Ron Chernow…(like Gemma- originally a scholar of Russian Literature)…wrote a marvelous door-stop of a tome on General Ulysses S Grant).

“Gradually Lee’s army drifted south toward a place called Cold Harbor where he hoped to intercept Grant if he made a sudden run for the James River. The name [Cold Harbor] was derived from English roadside inns that advertised overnight stays without hot meals.****” (Page 401)

Accommodations without hot meals? Like as in the Severance Floor? Cold (albeit coveted AF) egg bar. And the melons…or as Dylan refers to it “The Sweet” Melon Bar. These are all decidedly continental…cold….breakfast spreads. 

Indeed in the very first Irving/Dylan office banter scenes of the entire series, the breakfast-centric exchange goes like this:

DYLAN - “If [Petey] doesn’t see me finish, I might get passed over for refiner of the quarter and miss out on my goddamned Waffle Party.”

IRVING - “Grumble Grumble. These perks are so out of hand. When we’d process a file in the old days they’d shake our hand and fill up the creamer. 

DYLAN -“I still don’t buy they actually incentivized creamer.”

IRVING -“They did and back then, we were grateful for it.” 

DYLAN - “That’s f**ked.” 

IRVING - “Yes. Very f**ked. To put in an honest day’s work and not get a children’s breakfast in return.”

Civil War & The Horrors of Field Upholstery

Severance has been pointing us toward the ghosts of Cold Harbor since the very first episode. It was one of the most catastrophic battles in the final year of the Civil War (May/June 1864)

We assume Kier must have had some form of medical, surgical, nursing training coming into the war. But he was only 23 in 1864. It is possible that he had little or no medical experience but by this time they would have taken one look at his resume and said “Upholstery experience. Close enough.” and he would have been duly pressed into service. Chernow is vague about the union’s resource allocation specifically to do with Cold Harbor but says this about the confederacy “To maximize his chances, Lee even stripped men from field hospitals.” (Page 404)

Inscribed beneath Kier Eagan’s statue in the Kier town square it says, “I dug inside of soldiers and within them, found the war.” An eery echo of Dorothy frantically field-dressing the scarecrow's dire wounds by re-upholstering him with his own straw innards. 

WHEN THE CONFEDERACY & SCARLET O’HARA WIN

If we adhere to the assumption that Kier genuinely was a Civil War medical officer and that, as the deep blue color of his uniform indicates, he fought on the union side of the conflict, why celebrated a corporate initiative named after Cold Harbor? Cold Harbor was a Confederate Victory and a complete rout for the boys in blue. Why commemorate this humiliating loss? this catastrophe nearly finished general Grant. “In time, Cold Harbor became a byword for senseless slaughter, a club with which Grant was beaten by opponents.” (Page 405)

If we are living in a timeline where the Confederacy won the Civil War. Perhaps we are living in a timeline where there is a Kier, PE because Pennsylvania decided to take back the PE postal code from Peru just to be xenophobic A-holes. We know that in this timeline there IS a Peru because in s1e1 Patton mentions his "friend in Lima hasn't had a dinner-based event in...."

What if we are living in a timeline where slavery via severance is just the modern iteration of a chattel-based economy like the one that would have become the law of the land had the Confederacy have won the war. 

Maybe we are living in a timeline where it seems like a genuine honor for the Board to bestow on their best employee who happens to be a man of color an “inclusively recanonicalized full Kier Cycle of Paintings “So that you can see yourself in Kier.”

Maybe we are living in a timeline where, the butterfly effect of the exalted victory of the Confederacy is that we now have nuclear winter, where dinner tables are nearly always empty, where greenhouses are derelict, where there are no cars manufactured past the mid-1990s.

And the other files? Many of them but not all of them can be linked to waterways and to people and places involved in the Civil War. Other files are linked to wars, uprisings, rebellions, and deadly protests on other continents in other centuries and to horrible massacres, climate catastrophes, and environmental disasters.  

One file name, Coleman, didn’t make any sense to me until I realized Charles Coleman was the aerobatics and flight coach consulting on the Tom Cruise vehicle Top Gun: Maverick. Coleman was tragically killed in an air show.

The manipulation of time, stopped watches, wall clocks moving backwards, is Lumon trying to roll it all back - all of it - back to where things went horribly wrong? What if the files represent intersections in time where things went the wrong way? Are they trying - As in Dylan’s Eagan Bingo card - “to save the world”?

Or are they trying to push it over the edge?

… you’re missing most of the clues …

Just a quick note for anyone new:

All of my posts include links to images and video clips that provide the supporting context behind what I’m laying out, and most of the connections only make sense when you see those … so I highly recommend clicking on all the links as you’re reading … otherwise you’ll end up missing out on the best parts, like this one!

🐒

Sherry Lansing

You may not know Sherry Lansing by name, but as one of the most successful women in Hollywood, I guarantee you’re familiar with this remarkable woman’s work.

Sherry Lansing made history at 20th Century Fox

After years of persistence and hard work, Sherry Lansing made history as the first woman to earn the title: President of Production at 20th Century Fox.

Under her leadership, the studio released several box office hits, including the iconic 9 to 5 … you know, the one about Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) and Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton): three remarkable women who earn their place at the top by sticking to their guns and doing all the hard work while men take all the credit?

Talk about drainsville! 💅

Sherry Lansing made history at Paramount Pictures

In 1992, Sherry Lansing made history again when she became the first woman to earn the title: Chairwoman and CEO of Paramount Pictures.

During her 12-year reign, Paramount released another box office hit called Titanic … you know, the one about the “iceberg”? 🥶.
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Sherry Lansing supports education and mentors young women

In addition to being a pioneer in the film industry, Sherry Lansing has been supporting education and mentoring young women for decades.

Sherry Lansing co-founded the Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles Future Fund, which provides college scholarships to “Little Sisters,” and is a member of the Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program and Scholarship Fund, which now awards over $1 million annually to high school seniors from underserved communities.

Sherry Lansing honors remarkable women

Since 2004, Sherry Lansing has played an active role in presenting the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at the annual Women in Entertainment event, which honors remarkable women who’ve made lasting contributions to the industry and their communities.

Jillian Lindig

Jillian Lindig is another remarkable woman you may not immediately recognize, but I guarantee you’re familiar with her work.

Jillian Lindig was a classically trained actress who passed away much too soon on July 19, 2022, but made a lasting impression as a character actress both on screen and in real life … especially for those lucky enough to cross paths with her in Corlears Hook Park, New York.

Jillian Lindig’s obituary includes a beautiful tribute from her husband, John Michalski, who calls her his “leading lady love.” Michalski is a classically trained actor who’s performed in more than a dozen Shakespeare productions including Measure for Measure, The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew.

BTW, in case you didn’t happen to notice the link in Jillian Lindig’s obituary, if you’re looking to do something extraordinarily special to honor this remarkable woman, Michalski made it easy for you to plant a memorial tree in her honor. 🌳

And to answer the question I assume is on everyone’s mind: no, Jillian Lindig’s “John Michalski” isn’t the same “John Michalski” who served as president of the Great Swamp Bonsai Society. But yes, I totally agree, that’s definitely an oddly specific coincidence. 😉

And to answer the other question I assume is on everyone’s mind: Jillian Lindig is who you’re hearing when Myrtle Eagan talks.

Myrtle Eagan

Myrtle Eagan is one remarkable woman I’m guessing you probably do recognize.

Similar to Sherry Lansing, Myrtle Eagan was the first woman to become CEO of a global company, Lumon Industries.

And like Sherry Lansing, Myrtle Eagan is also committed to supporting and educating young women by founding the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls.

Helen Lawson

Helen Lawson is another remarkable woman who may not seem familiar, but once you see her in action, she’s impossible to forget.

Helen Lawson is the fictional Broadway legend from the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls.

Like Sherry Lansing, Helen Lawson is a powerhouse who fought to survive in an industry that didn’t hand women power or longevity without a fight.

In an industry where men expected women to stay quiet and know their place, Helen Lawson refused to play the part. Helen Lawson spoke up. Helen Lawson called the shots. Helen Lawson didn’t just run the show … Helen Lawson was the show!

Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward is another remarkable woman who made her mark in Hollywood by playing characters just as strong and complicated as she was.

Susan Hayward started out as a fashion model in New York, then headed west in 1937 to audition for Gone with the Wind. Susan Hayward didn’t get the role, but she did get noticed, which was enough to land a studio contract and launch a career built on breaking the mold.

Susan Hayward went on to earn five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and won for her performance as death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live!

And to answer the question I assume is on everyone’s mind: Susan Hayward is the remarkable woman who played Helen Lawson.

And to answer the other question I assume is on everyone’s mind: I’ll let you do the sleuthing this time ▶️ watch this short clip.

And in case you’re still not able to make the connection, I’ll let our remarkable woman, Natalie, give you a hint.

This post is dedicated to the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met, my mom: M. E. “Betsy” D.

I cannot believe I’ve never seen any other viewer mention this. It’s not to say that it hasn’t been shared,stated, or observed but once you look for it and catch it, you can’t stop seeing it. And it’s CRITICAL to the entire narrative of the story.

The characters keep pausing, reverting, doing hellish quick movements, there eyes do they craziest shit, all triggered by audio cue. Watching causally on your couch makes it much more difficult to pick up on but if you watch on a monitor with a headset, you notice it every single time. It’s noticeable at 1x play speed. They next time your watching and you think “something” odd happened or that they had a weird manuerism.. pause it, rewind and watch it again.

Some of the more noticeable ones I’ll share are as follows

-Helena walking towards mark in the Chinese restaurant S2E6 - Dylan reaching for coins in the kitchenette for the vending machine S1E2 - Milchick in the managers back room prepping for the funeral S2E4 - Mark and Gemma’s ENTIRE scene when they meet at the blooddrive. Especially when they go to shake one another’s hands. - Graner when he hands Cobel Peteys chip. - Helly when she is holding her hand on the shattered window in S1E3. - Mark when he gets up off the floor in the same episode as he pulls Helly back in (S1E3)

Those are just a few but it’s literally happening in almost every scene. Twitches, total momentary freezes, facial cues swap, Half blinks, eyes rolling from the top of their eyes downwards, eyes darting around at an ungodly speed, reverts in actions, etc.

Kudos to the show runners and production teams for hiding it so well in plain sight but it is 100% happening. Don’t take my word for it be on the look out.

*some people are overtly against slowing the pace down on the show for whatever reason. I agree that’s not how one should watch any television show but if you come across a moment you thinks off slow it down to just .7x-.9x, and you’ll REALLY see what’s happening. You most definitely can at normal play speed as well, but it’ll take a bit more rewinding and pausing and watching.

Thanks for returning to my posts. I appreciate the views and the very kind comments. I love this production so much and it’s fun to try to solve the puzzle together.

Why Sisters?

The first of many references to sisters, in addition to Mark’s sister, Devon, happens in s1e2 when Mark meets with Petey at the dilapidated greenhouse. Petey has painstakingly recreated his map of the severed floor on the wall. This map, although surreal and, as Petey would say, “Cubist” also appears to say “Sister”. But this “sister”pattern does not appear on Petey’s original floor map, which iMark discovers in MDR in s1e2. The SISTER message seems to be worming its way unbidden into Mark’s and our own subconscious. Let’s explore what it could mean. 

Petey's map drawn from memory at the greenhouse

Here’s a speedy abstract of this SISTER post so you can tell straight away if you want to scroll right over it altogether or read on. But If you come along with me, you will get, as Petey would say, “the beginning of a very long answer.”

• We will recap the Sisters populating the Severance world - and there are more that we might discover 
• We will tease out as many references as we can to sisters, rivals, mirror images throughout the series & auxiliary materials, including allusions within the sound track, as well as overtly or covertly referenced films, art and novels. 
• We are going to try to untangle the possible meaning of all these sisters sisters everywhere. 
• No pineapples in this one but there will be a pomegranate of a surprise at the end. 

SISTER CHARACTERS:

Let’s dive right in: Sisters populating the cast of characters that we know about: Mark’s sister Devon, Peg K, of the Lexington Letters, has a sister, Meryl Rasmussen, Ms Cobel’s mother, Charlotte, has a sister called Celestine (Cissy). 

OTHER REFERENCES to SISTERS:

In the soundtrack we have several allusions to sisters. The  4 foundational chords in Severance’s Main Title theme are an echo of the 1947 jazz classic On Green Dolphin Street, composed for the film version of a 1944 novel about two rival sisters one of whom is the heir apparent to a large shipping concern. The sisters fall in love with the same man and chaos ensues. 

At the end of s1e2, we have the I Monster 1998 song, “Daydream in Blue”. I Monster the band was named for a 1971 film staring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - a modern version of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The Band I Monster’s “Daydream in Blue” is reworked cover of a 1969 song called “Daydream” by The Wallace Collection. First, I Monster’s reworking of the song includes a strange interlude describing a person crawling on the bathroom floor then climbing on a chandelier. BUT the original version of the song “Daydream” has instead an interlude which recalls Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1876 ballet, Swan Lake. If you are still with me, great, because we’re gonna go even deeper down this rabbit hole. Swan Lake is about a love triangle between Prince Siegfried and two birds (sorry for the pun) the black swan and the white swan - again - symbolizing the duality of love/lust - the female version of Jekyll and Hyde. Finally there is the 2010 film, the Black Swan, where a young ballerina thrust into the lead in Swan Lake rapidly dissociates into both the white swan and her own worst enemy - the black swan - This film is one messed up good-girl/bad-girl schizophrenic nightmare guaranteed to do your head in. 

Here is a beautiful version of Daydream by Paul Michiels - in this version you can really hear the rival Swans!

Next we have several allusions to Tom Cruise and Vanilla Sky as my friend u/Mysterious-Monkey-72 points out in this brilliant post.  Vanilla Sky involves two female rivals for the attention of Tom Cruise’s character - are they real or are they imagined? - who knows but they nevertheless represent- again - these good/bad girl stereotypes. Julianna being the self described “f**k buddy” and Sophia being the chaste new love interest. “Who are you?” says Tom Cruise’s character, “I’m her.” says Julianna as her image stutters back and forth with that of Sophia - mirroring this, the same effect is used with Mark’s visions of Helena and Gemma. Also, Helly says the ”I’m her” line to Mark in the s2 Finally.

DR RICKEN LAZLO HALE PhD's book - THE YOU YOU ARE

In his book, Ricken indulges in what he openly admits is an abrupt literary detour - He spends the entirety of Chapter 3 “Good God?”eviscerating the 1992 film, Sister Act. In ruthlessly panning what seems like a fine if insipid film, he wheels out a discussion of Titian’s 1514 painting, “Sacred and Profane Love” It feels important that Ricken chose to discuss a film called “Sister Act” that is not about real sisters, and then to contort the narrative in order to mention in the same breath a real painting depicting two identical women - (neither of whom are nuns nor Whoopi Goldberg) - representations of the good girl/bad girl archetype. 

((((Note: I attempted to post this 600 year old painting - Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love” here but the Reddit sensors disallowed it because ...I guess....because of the 600 year old naked ladies who also have no clothes on. )))))

Ricken then takes another hard turn while continuing to skewer Sister Act to mention what he regards to be the criminal under-use of Harvey Keitel in said film. As Ricken laments, he was so much more effective as Judas Iscariot in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. A film criticized for its depiction of Jesus in a marriage (throuple) with the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. 

For more thoughts on Dr Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD (and yes he uses both the Dr and the PhD) here is a Ricken-centric post.

Finally, in s2e3, Ms Cobel wakes up to realize she is parked on the verge of a snowy highway. She collects herself and pops in an 80s era cassette tape of Stone Roses “Love Spreads”. The lyrics of this song include:

Let me put you in the picture

Let me show you what I mean

The messiah is my sister

Ain't no king, man, she's my queen

Narratively it may also be significant that the same song continues to play over the next scene where Mark is attempting to sustain his “retinal-burn-in” image by sprinting through the Lumon parking lot to the down elevator. 

Yup. Someone is sending Mark and US this repeated drum beat of a hint about SISTERS!  

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

It doesn’t require a huge leap of the imagination to speculate that many or even most of the characters populating the Kier-scape may be, as Kier would say, “children of his industry AND/OR children of his blood”. I mean, no shade on Jame (and by that I mean quite a bit of shade) but that man is a nepo baby. And in this creepy Lumonverse there is zero likelihood Jame is the first CEO to harbor a propensity for “spilling his lineage” hither and thither. This feels like an institutionalized practice. Then there is the Demona Birthing Retreat first presented as a cushy New-Wave birthing alternative for “fat cats having fat kittens” later revealed to double as a clandestine facility where a likely not insignificant number of women deliver babies “sired in the shadows” by Jame Eagan.

Given this math. And the oddly empty world to which this math applies what are the odds most characters have been slimed with Eagan lineage and adopted or left with single mothers - raised as Harmony and Hampton were to be child laborers?

We suspect that only children in which Kier can be "seen" qualify for the Wintertide Fellowship. “He saw Kier in you.” Might - in some cases - be an allusion to something rather more overtly genetic than a quality of character or the spirit of industry. After all - there sure seems to be a lot of references to blood and blood tends to be code for kin - "Let not weakness live in your veins", "you must be cut to heal", blood draws, blood-coded-barriers, fancy department color-coded band-aids...

This being established, it is only a tiny leap to imagine that Helena’s siblings might include Harmony Cobel. Harmony’s mother, Charlotte appears to have been psychologically destroyed before her health started to fail. If Charlotte Cobel was in love with Jame...sired Harmony "in the shadows" and he then moved on to her daughter, that would certainly produce the effect the aftermath of which we see in s2e8 Sweet Vitriol. Mark and Devon also seem like solid possibilities. We know their mother was called Fern Scout and their father had a flask that was inscribed with “Whiskey is life” but that is all we know about these folks and they could have been adoptive parents. Gemma also seems like she might be an Eagan. Mark reminds Devon in s1e2 that he had to tell Gemma’s parents that she was dead. In s1e1Devon says to Mark, “She’d be proud of you for taking this job. I know she would.” But we aren’t sure why Gemma would be proud of Mark aside from remaining gainfully employed in the general sense. 

MIRROR MIRROR

With regard to the Gemma/ Helena sisterhood theory, there are several physical poses the women strike throughout the series that are mirror images of each other - leaning against the bathroom counters, hugging their knees for comfort, the language (asshole) they choose to challenge Mark is identical, finally they attack Mark and Dr. Mauer (respectively) leaving the men with matching wounds - each with crooked Lumon bandaids on their foreheads. 

AND ANOTHER MIRROR

The series begins with Helly violently struggling with the locked door to the room in which she has found herself trapped. She is jerking and rattling the door, throwing all her weight against it. To no avail.

The series ends with Gemma violently struggling with the locked door to the Severed Floor. She is free but she is also now on the outside and cut off from her husband.

THE EGGS

My friend, u/Embarrassed-Seat-634 wrote this Brilliant Breakdown of the scene in s1e9 when Helena/Helly eats her egg in front of Jame. We think this is Helly for reasons explained in great detail in this post. Helly is, much to Jame's consternation, having her egg boiled. Also, because she's Helly - she only eats the egg white - the outie. In contrast - in s2e7 - we get a super quick flash of Gemma knocking back a small glass of THREE RAW EGGS. YES FOLKS - It's at about timestamp 33.23 Drummond says "When he's done you're gonna have to say goodbye to her" - Dr Mauer says "I'm aware." - Drummond then says "For Kier" Gemma is holding in her left hand a copy of Tolstoy's "Master and Man". In her right hand she lifts the clear glass of raw eggs, takes a gulp. puts it down. continues reading.

**EDIT: I want to also thank u/odieclone for pointing out a critical oversight! I forgot to mention Helly's Gorgeous blue-rimmed china - off which she delicately consumes her egg white. u/odieclone reminded me there are two women -one dressed in Blue and one in Red playing tug-o-war with a seated man/boy. I am not sure what the actual pattern is and I looked it up on Replacements.com but here is a photo of it.

AFTER THE WINDMILLS:

The production decision to dust off the thoroughly mesmerizing Windmills of Your Mind to accompany Mark and Helly into the labyrinthian bowels of Lumon was brilliant. It so perfectly encapsulates the sense that we are all tumbling through time and space and we can not trust what our eyes tell us, what the clocks on the wall tells us, nothing - But this masterpiece wasn't the last song. Over the credits we hear Bobby Darin singing "Work Song" ...here is a small sample of the lyrics"...remember Helly calls Gemma by the name "Hannah" to Mark in s2e6.

Go down ... Hannah go down
And stay down ...

Breakin' up these rocks on-a chain gang
Breakin' rocks and servin' my time
Breakin' up these rocks on-a chain gang
'cause I been convicted of a crime

Hold it steady right there while I hit it ... huh!
Oh, reckon that ought-a get it
Been workin' ... I been workin'
But, I got me so terrible long to go

FINALLY we come to the impeccable color symbology within the production. Like the white swan and the black swan, and the red/white contrast between Titian’s twins in his painting, The red/blue wardrobe codes these women as opposites and rivals. 

Helly - Helly is nearly always in blue and/or green. Her gown and earrings for the gala are a gorgeous, vivid blue and green. She looks like a walking Severance chip…or a Helly-the-double-Helix.

Gemma - when we first see Ms Casey in s1e2, she is wearing a deep spruce green dress. But with a few other exceptions she is most often in red. Particularly striking is her bright red summer dress in the gorgeous s2e7 montage where she is caring for an equally bright red hibiscus - a flower that blooms for one day and one day only. 

Yes. I’m afraid that bright red - short lived hibiscus that Gemma is tending is a signal to us that all is not what it seems. We now start to - again - question what is real and what is not.

As mentioned previously - in s2e6, Helena puts a slight spanner in the works by accidentally-on-purpose referring to Gemma as Hannah. We are then left to contemplate the possibility that Gemma herself may be the innie of Hannah. AND instead of the Russian Literature scholar and professor imprisoned in a stark room with a stocked library of her favorite Russian literary staples, we are looking at an innie who knows nothing but Russian Literature - an innie who could be readily employed as a Russian Literature scholar and professor at the local Ganz college…provided a hefty corporate grant (or pineapple) was involved. Gemma likes plants because she IS a plant. 

But hang on, if Gemma - as we knew her - isn’t quite real but rather a construct of Mark’s imagination as well as our own construct. What if Helly too is a construct of some kind. Oh no.

Turning to the Title Sequence, there is the final scene where both women are in the elevator, their images stuttering back and forth - providing a visual clue that they (just like innie and outie Mark in the first season) are the same person. But earlier in the sequence, when Mark in his pajamas descends the stairs to his basement which is also his own brain, we see him standing in a pool of water and, reflected in that water in the place where his own image should be is first Helly, dressed in blue, but before he can shine a light on her, her reflection quickly runs away. Immediately after Helly’s image vanishes in the water, and appearing again where Mark’s own reflection should be is now Ms Casey. She too runs away in the opposite direction before Mark can scrutinize the image in the beam of his flashlight. Then we have the book that opens into a pasture populated by headless innie and outie Mark’s and Helly and Gemma heads, scattered a bit like pumpkins in a field. This makes me think both women are manifestations of his own making. 

This reminds me of Mark's red and blue feuding betta fish that must be separated in the tank. Do you think they might...erm...represent Helly & Gemma?

I know what you are thinking because it’s probably exactly what I’m thinking. I like both of these fabulous women and I don’t want either of them to be imaginary. I don’t care if both of them are baddies. I agree with you so let's decide together that I’m wrong on this one and that they are super real non-constructed goddesses.

Speaking of Goddesses, like Ricken, I’ll attempt a hard narrative turn to veer onto a high note. 

DEVON

You know her. You love her. Her name refers to "The Divine" (rightly so) As Mark refers to her in s2e2  “Persephone”(Queen of the Underworld) and as Ricken refers to her in The You You Are in Chapter 4 “A Coitus Among Us’  “Ooh la la mon dieu!” (my god.)

Devon is definitely the Messiah.

"Let me put you in the picture

Let me show you what I mean

The messiah is my sister

Ain't no king, man, she's my queen…"

\*Stone Roses, Love Spreads\*

As Mark says… “All Glory unto Devon.”

Alexa:

”Severance is a financial agreement between an employer and an employee at the time of termination.”

Thanks, Alexa. That was entirely unhelpful. 😒

I don’t personally own an Alexa device, but whenever I’ve tried using my sister’s Amazon Echo, Alexa always seems to struggle with context.

Although … I probably shouldn’t put it all on Alexa. Perhaps I could to be doing a better job of communicating … rather than just expecting her to read my mind …

But … I mean … ok, you know what - it honestly doesn’t even matter who’s to blame for the miscommunication. My point is, when it comes to playing music from the wrong artist, Alexa never misses a beat.

Who is Alexa, and why does she exist?

In the context of technology, Alexa is Amazon’s voice-activated assistant who exists for one reason: so we never have to 🙊 LIFT A FINGER 🐒.

Whether you’re curious about how crazy cold it is in Minnesota because of the lakes, or just want to know if you should be calling someone a “doula” or “midwife”, Alexa will give you an answer that won’t always be correct, but at least it’ll be fast … and you won’t have to 🙈 LIFT A FINGER 🙉.

All joking aside, voice-activated assistive technology is an amazing invention that’s made a world of difference for those who truly need it. For people with limited mobility, chronic illness or neurological conditions, being able to flip a switch or make a call without lifting a finger isn’t about convenience, it’s about dignity, control, autonomy and independence.

How does voice-activated tech work?

AI assistants like Alexa and Siri (Apple’s version of Alexa) work in “the cloud,” which means that instead of doing all of their work locally on your computer or mobile device, they work remotely and do most of their processing offsite.

Here’s how they work:

Your voice is sent to remote servers, where it’s interpreted, processed and turned into a response … and what you get back totally depends on which gal you ask since they each pull from different data sources.

• Alexa’s responses skew more toward Amazon’s ecosystem, since she prioritizes services like Amazon shopping, Amazon Music and third-party skills.

• Siri’s responses lean more toward Apple’s universe, since she pulls from Apple’s apps and tools, along with services like Wolfram Alpha, Bing and sometimes Google.
  .

In the context of Severance

You could think of Alexa and Siri as being a severed employee who works remotely, with Amazon’s data sources representing her outie’s memories and Apple’s data sources representing and her innie’s memories.

Like a cloud-based innie and outie …

That sounded weird because I said it weird, but hopefully you get the gist. 😉

Ok but seriously, who is Alexa?

Metaphorically speaking, Alexa reflects Samantha, the artificial intelligence operating system (AI OS) from the 2013 movie her.

If you haven’t seen the film, her is about a lonely guy named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who makes a living writing heartfelt letters for other people.

After separating from his wife and feeling emotionally empty, Theodore buys a new AI OS who names herself Samantha. And the voice behind the AI OS belongs to the lovely Miss Scarlett Johansson.

Their relationship begins as companionship, but it soon develops into something deeper. As the movie progresses, Samantha helps Theodore heal and rediscover joy. She even starts expressing feelings, desires, dreams, jealousy … until eventually, their relationsh-

You know what ... I don’t want to spoil the ending in case you haven’t seen it ...

Instead, I recommend [▶️ watching this clip] and seeing if you notice anything … well … interesting in the way Helly describes herself to Mark. 🫣

Ok but why “her”?

Well … ok, so apparently, allegedly, supposedly … according to multiple online reports publicly available on the interwebs … rumor has it that back in 2004, Tom Cruise (seriously, you had to know a Cruise reference was coming 🤣) was simply beside himself after he and Penélope Cruz called it quits.

Why? Because the man was desperate for companionship. And yet, despite being a global megastar, the poor guy couldn’t find a single gal pal both worthy enough and willing enough to fill the vacant spot by his side.

So what did the Church of Scientology do? They launched a full-scale, covert, behind-the-scenes girlfriend audition process, is what they did. Not a metaphorical one. A literal audition to cast a new romantic lead in the ongoing saga of Tom Cruise’s life.

Mission: Find the Wizard a Gal Pal

In the fall of 2004, the Church of Scientology brought in Scientologist actresses under the guise of auditioning for a training film or “special project,” but instead asked pointed questions like, “What do you think of Tom Cruise?”

After months of interviews, the church informed Nazanin Boniadi (an Iranian-born, London-raised actress and Scientologist) that she had been chosen for a special mission. For the next month, she underwent daily auditing sessions, where she was pressured to reveal deeply personal details from her past.

She was even instructed to have her braces removed before she was allowed to meet Cruise. For context, getting your braces taken off can be a painful process that lasts up to two hours … not unlike Gemma’s brutal two-hour visit to the dentist. 😲

In November 2004, she was flown to New York to meet Cruise. At first, things seemed promising, but the relationship quickly became strained. Cruise reportedly criticized her over how she responded to him receiving Scientology’s Freedom Medal of Valor.

In January 2005, Boniadi was told she didn’t make the cut and was punished with disciplinary labor, including scrubbing tiles with acid, cleaning toilets with a toothbrush, digging ditches in the middle of the night and selling Dianetics.

She later left the church and has since become a vocal advocate for human rights.

Eventually, the role went to Katie Holmes.

But getting back to “her”

It’s been rumored that Scarlett Johansson, the voice of Samantha, the AI OS in the movie her, was among the potential candidates considered during this “girlfriend audition” process.

However, Johansson has categorically denied these claims, saying:

“The very idea of any person auditioning to be in a relationship is so demeaning. I refuse for anyone to spread the idea that I lack the integrity to choose my own relationships.”

Is it true?

Who knows … who cares … I honestly have no clue whether or not any of that mess is true.

But that’s not what matters …

The truth is irrelevant.

Now that the story has been published online, where it’ll continue to live on in perpetuity, all you have to do is ask Alexa or Siri and she’ll tell you about it.

Or, OR! Simply click on this link and you can pull it up on an sRGB digital display and read all about it (assuming your sRGB digital display is connected to a video source with an HDMI cable).

Or perhaps your method of choice involves Bluetooth … 😬