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perceptual) wrote2023-06-12 01:51 pm
perceptual) wrote2023-06-12 01:51 pm
INFORMATION.
INFORMATION
≡
❑
✕
Helly R.
NAME
Severance
CANON
Post-S1E9
CANON POINT
30
AGE
Human
SPECIES
Britt Lower
PB
> FIRST IMPRESSIONS
VISUAL Average height, slim and willowy, with shoulder-length red hair that she wears down and carefully curled.
AURAL Nonspecific American accent, quite low pitched (ex.)
DEMEANOR Determined, sharp, a little tightly wound but not overly serious.
> HISTORY
Helly, an employee at Lumon Industries, works in the Macrodata Refinement department, where a surgical procedure called 'severance' has separated her memories between work and personal life. Her access to memories is limited by physical location, preventing her from recalling outside experiences on Lumon's basement floor, or retaining work memories outside the basement. Helly feels effectively trapped at work, wanting to quit but unable to do so due to her outie, the version of her who opted for the procedure and lives a life outside Lumon's walls. Helly hates working at Lumon, and will do literally anything she can to get out – but if her 'outie' quits, the version of Helly that has only known Lumon will cease to exist. This matters little to Helly, who is determined to get out at absolutely any cost.
FULL HISTORY — SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE OF SEVERANCE
When we meet Helly, she’s a new employee on the severed floor of a company called Lumon. Severance is a medical procedure which permanently and irrevocably separates a person’s memories – outside of the severed floor, the person is who they’ve always been with the memories they’ve always had (the ‘outie’), but at work the person is a blank slate who only exists at work (the ‘innie’). All the innies ever experience is being at work; their memories are switched between outie and innie on the elevator which leads to the severed floor.
Helly is awoken by her colleague Mark S., who introduces her to the world of Lumon and specifically the department she’s working in – Macrodata Refinement, or MDR. She has two other colleagues, Dylan G. and Irving B., who are both severed, as well as a non-severed supervisor, Mr Milchick, and a demanding and strict boss, Mrs Cobel. Helly immediately tries to leave several times, convinced that the company is keeping her here against her will even after video confirmation that her ‘outie’ agreed to the procedure of her own free will. Her official request for resignation is, apparently, denied by her outie, so Helly tries a number of increasingly desperate ways to communicate to her outie that she wants to leave, even when Mark points out that the ‘innie’ version of her only exists on the severed floor, and so resignation would mean that this version of her would effectively die.
The work done by MDR is obscure, and none of Helly’s coworkers actually know what they’re doing. They are told to sort numbers based on emotions that the numbers make them feel, but they don’t know what the numbers are, or what sorting them does. Helly is uninterested in doing the work, especially after her denied resignation requests and failed attempts to smuggle messages to her outie. Irving suggests that their department goes on a trip to the Perpetuity Wing of the severed floor, a museum of sorts which documents the history of Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan, and his dynasty. Helly slips away from the group and tries to make another escape, and this time she’s caught and sent to the ‘break room’, where she is made to read a 55-word-long ‘compunction statement’ apologising for her transgression over and over again, while Mr Milchick tells her repeatedly that she doesn’t mean it, and to read it again. In total she reads it over a thousand times before she’s let out of the break room.
Undeterred by the experience in the break room, Helly grabs a paper cutter and threatens to cut off her fingers unless she is given permission to record a message to her outie. She successfully records her message, but is returned to the office a little while later with a recorded response from her outie, who tells her, ‘I am a person, you are not.’ Her outie categorically refuses to let her quit the job, and says that if Helly threatens harm on their body again, she will regret it. Helly seemingly starts to settle into her job at MDR, but that evening she smuggles out an extension cord and hangs herself in the elevator. Her outie briefly wakes up mid-hanging, but the elevator descends back down in time for Mark to save Helly.
Helly survives the suicide attempt with minor injuries, and returns to work three days later. Her return is supervised by the odd and slightly robotic but nonetheless earnest Ms Casey, who usually delivers wellness sessions for the innies where she tells them very vague facts about their outies, to which they must respond neutrally. Mark and Helly slip Ms Casey’s surveillance and explore the severed floor together in an attempt to map it out, stumbling on a strange department that consists of a single man raising baby goats. They are eventually found by Ms Casey, who is sent to the break room for having failed to supervise them properly.
When Helly reaches 75% on her refining numbers, Milchick hosts a party and tries to get Dylan to take part, but Dylan loses his cool and attacks Milchick, biting him, until Helly and the others have to pull him off Milchick. Dylan reveals that the night before, he had been woken up in his outie’s home so that Milchick could ask him a question. With the knowledge that they can become their innie selves outside of the severed floor of the Lumon building, they hatch a plan: Dylan will stay in the building and trigger the Overtime Contingency while the others have left, so they can each find someone they trust and tell them the truth about what’s happening at Lumon. Before they leave work on the day they’re going to hatch their plan, Helly impulsively kisses Mark, in case they never see each other again.
When Dylan triggers the overtime procedure, Helly wakes up at a Lumon gala, where she finds out her real name is Helena Eagan, and that she is the daughter of Lumon’s current CEO, Jame Eagan. The gala is themed around Helly, and it becomes clear that Helena opted to have the severance procedure as a PR stunt, with the whole gala presenting a glossed ideal of severance and working as a severed employee, which obscures the truth of the situation and also does not acknowledge that Helly injured herself and attempted suicide. Helly manages to get on stage and tell the audience that all of the severed employees are miserable and being tortured, before Dylan is overpowered by Milchick, ending the Overtime Contingency and reverting all of the escapees to their outie selves.