Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-02-15 10:02 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-02-15 10:02 am
Entry tags:
You're Easy To Pretend To Care About.
For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics. Ten thousand words isn't a hard limit; I allow myself a little flexibility if, as in this case, I get within a stone's throw of it.
Severance has qualified with impressive speed!
Severance
Severance first caught my attention in November 2023, when I saw this Dreamwidth post bysholio. It sounded like a really interesting concept! I think I'd heard the name before, but I hadn't really grasped that Severance and Succession were different shows. I didn't look into actually watching it, but it stuck in the back of my mind.
A couple of months later, in January 2024, some friends of mine on WhatsApp were discussing the all-pervasiveness of capitalism in modern life. I remembered the concept of Severance, although I couldn't remember the title. After refreshing my memory by Googling 'tv show where people lose their memories of work', I sent a message to the chat:
I've never seen Severance, but I recently learnt its concept (whenever you go to work for the day, your memories of your personal life are wiped, only to be restored when you leave, so while you're inside your workplace you remember nothing from outside it), and I'm sure employers are desperately trying to work out how to apply that in real life.
The chat in question included my housemates. Later that day, as I walked past the sitting room door, I overheard Tem and Rei discussing how interesting that concept was, and I poked my head in to agree. It was a shame it was only on Apple TV, so we couldn't actually watch it.
'We have Apple TV,' Rei said.
I watched Severance with my housemates at the age of thirty-five, and we all found ourselves absolutely gripped. It's rare for us to watch more than one episode of a drama in an evening, but we kept hitting the end of an episode and desperately needing to know what happened next!
Come to think of it, I recently posted a list of elements of my hypothetical perfect show, and Severance hits a lot of the points on that list.
Severance doesn't seem to have an especially lively fandom on the ficwriting front. In the last fortnight, only four Severance fics have been posted to AO3, and three of them were by me. But I'm just happy to be here; this is a show full of fascinating concepts, and I'm having a great time exploring them.
Favourite character: Mark is a self-loathing, traumatised wreck with memory issues. He's basically well-meaning but lacks self-control and hasn't made a good decision in years. I don't know why the creators of Severance decided to target my tastes specifically when developing their protagonist, but they've done a great job and I appreciate it. (Specifically, my favourite character is Mark S, the office-based Mark, rather than Mark Scout. I like both versions of Mark, but Mark S has an extra layer of isolation and naïveté that appeals to me.)
Favourite pairing: It's either Mark/Helly specifically or the Macrodata Refinement OT4 of Mark/Helly/Dylan/Irving. I'm a big fan of characters going through intense, weird and/or traumatic experiences together while isolated from the outside world. They're not made for each other; they're just people who ended up trapped in hell together and don't have anything else, and I find that a really interesting relationship dynamic.
Number of words written: 9,839
Snippet: Here's a brief exchange I ended up cutting from my Mark/Helly fic Across the Threshold; I may or may not end up trying to work it into a different fic. NB: this snippet contains mentions of suicide.
He’s not sure what he’s trying to express here. What’s that thing Ms Cobel says? “Death is something that happens outside. It doesn’t happen in here. It... doesn’t happen to us.”
“Well, hey, I gave you a new experience,” Helly says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I know we’re sorely in need of those around here.”
“I’m just saying it really scared me,” Mark says. “When you... tried to kill yourself. I’d, uh, I’d like to know it isn’t going to happen again.”
A small frown crosses Helly’s expression. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was trying to kill her.”
Mark hesitates. “But... you’d die.”
Severance has qualified with impressive speed!
Severance
Severance first caught my attention in November 2023, when I saw this Dreamwidth post by
sholio. It sounded like a really interesting concept! I think I'd heard the name before, but I hadn't really grasped that Severance and Succession were different shows. I didn't look into actually watching it, but it stuck in the back of my mind.A couple of months later, in January 2024, some friends of mine on WhatsApp were discussing the all-pervasiveness of capitalism in modern life. I remembered the concept of Severance, although I couldn't remember the title. After refreshing my memory by Googling 'tv show where people lose their memories of work', I sent a message to the chat:
I've never seen Severance, but I recently learnt its concept (whenever you go to work for the day, your memories of your personal life are wiped, only to be restored when you leave, so while you're inside your workplace you remember nothing from outside it), and I'm sure employers are desperately trying to work out how to apply that in real life.
The chat in question included my housemates. Later that day, as I walked past the sitting room door, I overheard Tem and Rei discussing how interesting that concept was, and I poked my head in to agree. It was a shame it was only on Apple TV, so we couldn't actually watch it.
'We have Apple TV,' Rei said.
I watched Severance with my housemates at the age of thirty-five, and we all found ourselves absolutely gripped. It's rare for us to watch more than one episode of a drama in an evening, but we kept hitting the end of an episode and desperately needing to know what happened next!
Come to think of it, I recently posted a list of elements of my hypothetical perfect show, and Severance hits a lot of the points on that list.
Severance doesn't seem to have an especially lively fandom on the ficwriting front. In the last fortnight, only four Severance fics have been posted to AO3, and three of them were by me. But I'm just happy to be here; this is a show full of fascinating concepts, and I'm having a great time exploring them.
Favourite character: Mark is a self-loathing, traumatised wreck with memory issues. He's basically well-meaning but lacks self-control and hasn't made a good decision in years. I don't know why the creators of Severance decided to target my tastes specifically when developing their protagonist, but they've done a great job and I appreciate it. (Specifically, my favourite character is Mark S, the office-based Mark, rather than Mark Scout. I like both versions of Mark, but Mark S has an extra layer of isolation and naïveté that appeals to me.)
Favourite pairing: It's either Mark/Helly specifically or the Macrodata Refinement OT4 of Mark/Helly/Dylan/Irving. I'm a big fan of characters going through intense, weird and/or traumatic experiences together while isolated from the outside world. They're not made for each other; they're just people who ended up trapped in hell together and don't have anything else, and I find that a really interesting relationship dynamic.
Number of words written: 9,839
Snippet: Here's a brief exchange I ended up cutting from my Mark/Helly fic Across the Threshold; I may or may not end up trying to work it into a different fic. NB: this snippet contains mentions of suicide.
He’s not sure what he’s trying to express here. What’s that thing Ms Cobel says? “Death is something that happens outside. It doesn’t happen in here. It... doesn’t happen to us.”
“Well, hey, I gave you a new experience,” Helly says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I know we’re sorely in need of those around here.”
“I’m just saying it really scared me,” Mark says. “When you... tried to kill yourself. I’d, uh, I’d like to know it isn’t going to happen again.”
A small frown crosses Helly’s expression. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was trying to kill her.”
Mark hesitates. “But... you’d die.”
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I don't find myself with a lot of fanfic ideas about Severance. Some stories set off a lot, some don't. I'm loving yours, though!
Mark S is great!
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I'm so glad you're enjoying my fics! I've always written a lot about characters having memory issues or struggling to grasp what's real, and Severance offers such fertile ground for that.
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this is a potential history professor who's working within the conceptual confines of life inside Lumon.
This line really struck me. Poor Mark. I wonder what he was like in his history professor days.
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