I apologize, I had to spend a bit of time to figure out what a "female donation reader" was. I parse that as "female donations" needing a "reader" at first, but now I understand they're just people who read out donations.

I can't find any of the threads, but I don't think I'm surprised to learn the speedrunning community is tinged with at least a little bit of misogyny.

Regarding Marie in place of Skylar, I didn't know it at first either. It felt intentional to me, and I think I read generously into that.

I hope i can be a bitch wife some day

i was ignorant of the whole 'bitch wife being an impediment to the protagonist' thing until i read about anna gunn's experience on the show. now i see this attitude everywhere. and by everywhere, i mean /r/speedrun when a gdq event is on and people make threads complaining about the female donation readers.

didn't know about skyler originally being planned to appear in the bcs finale. i thought marie sitting at the table while negotiating a plea deal was such a strange choice, like this simply would not happen, probably.

Kids' shows rule

I have to admit, I can't think of anything since Steven Universe. I might have grown out of it?

She-Ra was fun, and the new ATLA probably will be too, but there's a tone of maturity and sincerity that SU hit that I haven't seen again.

That said, I have watched Gumball, and it's fucked up. It's a totally different thing but I can get easily engrossed in it, and I'm often shocked by how edgy it can be. (In one episode, the main characters perform actual surgery on another character, killing him!)

Stephen Universe was a good show for children. Do we like, make good shows for children anymore? Is it just anime now? Edit: Not Bluey that is for small child I'm talking about slightly larger child.

I thought about that exact scenario a lot, actually. I asked my dad about what it felt like to have an anesthesia during a surgery he had, and he told me he didn't remember. I misunderstood that as a kid, and I thought all it did was spare you the memory, but not the pain. I lived with that misconception for a good while :D

I have had the idea for a horror setting where there's an anesthetic that everyone thinks is really effective and a miracle drug, but it turns out all it does is paralyze you so you don't show pain, and make you completely forget when you come to. But the whole time, you're feeling everything.

Severance is a lot like that. But less body horror.

This is just like The Stuff (1985)

Yeah I lost it when I saw that blender! "What if cold harbor were a juicero pack? What if the lumon water drop was a juice drop? Lumon makes foodstuffs, ri- WOAHHHH DYLAN..."

the callback to the fruit in fruits in the sink... wow

The rest of it

This was too much to write out, so here are the plotbeats draft:

• Mark: The plan is to go into the office and refine data. But this time, he selects only the numbers which make him feel nothing, to ruin Cold Harbor. Harmony explains that Milchick will be happy to have him work after hours.

• He calls Milchick, who is indeed very happy, albeit conflicted. He is eating a salad, with croutons, and decides to take it slow to the office. (Fitting with his character arc.) Milchick calls the front-desk security to ask them to let Mark in.

• Mark gets to the office, is carded in.

• Gemma is told "that is enough juicing; it is time for your rooms. You're doing all of them today."

• Then Joe Biden breaks in to the Christmas Room, says "Christmas is Fascist", and shoots the Dr. in the head and breaks Gemma out through the broken severed door.

• Biden's brain is so old and calcified that it breaks any severance door he goes through.

• Gemma and Joe Biden are are confronted by James and Helena, who explains the master plan: Relaunch the Juicero by manipulating world events (see: Lexington Letter) to make it so that every person in the world is in dire need of a cold glass of freshly squeezed juice at the moment of launch. The flavor Cold Harbor is flavored like the release of death, with none of the dying, to really seal the deal.
• Joe Biden begins a confrontation like "Listen up Jack, no malarky-" but then bumps his head and dies instantly.
• Gemma, recognizing Helena, informs her about the conditions she's being held under, slowly realizing that Helena was already aware. Helena explains it's for the greatest good, and that the launch has already started, before walking away with James. As Helena walks away, Gemma says Helena is pathetic and has nobody in her life who loves her, and Helena walks back, and whispers in Gemma's ear, "I fucked Mark and I'm havi-."
• Before Helena can finish her sentence, Gemma bites Helena's eyeball out.

• Milchick is still eating his salad when he gets a PRIORITY ALERT on the status of Helena's gouged eye. He says, "God dammit," grabs his bag of croutons to snack on, and motorcycles to the office.

• Dylan and Gretchen see a commercial for "Juice, 2!"
• Natalie and Ricken are presenting it. It's literally just the Juicero again. But... It's so very compelling.
• Dylan and Gretchen breathe a sigh of relief. Things might be okay after all.
• Just then: Beehive mode activates, turning all the severed people into a brand new thing: A personality solely dedicated to protecting Helena Eagan.
• Dylan stands up with a newfound and unshakable purpose in life, and he makes a beeline to Lumon. He's not alone, and a montage starts. Every single severed individual is trying to get to Lumon. Even Irving is included in the montage. Even the Severed people in other continents are trying their best to get to Lumon. Also, all the goats are going crazy.

• Cut to Milchick, in the repurposed security room, having had activated the beehive protocol.
• One of the monitors is dedicated to the security profiles while the remaining monitors still have a one-image slideshow of Dylan and Gretchen.
• But Harmony calls and explains "don't activate it, by the way, it will be in reverso mode soon because of MDR shenanigans." But it is too late to unactivate it! Oh no! It's not like the OTC; once it's turned on, only Helena can deactivate it.

• Gemma, severed, is kneeling before smirking Helena. Mark quickly makes it down the elevator, also in deference to the queen.
• Helena, who has been ignoring calls from Harmony, receives a call from Milchick, explaining the situation she is in. She books it to the security room. She tells Gemma and Mark to stay behind, but they follow her closely, like dedicated security dogs.

• Joe Biden, who survived his bump, seeks nutrients in the nearby Cold Harbor room, recognizing it from the Juice packet. The inside is a black abyss. As he crawls in, we see only a constellation of mysterious lights in his eyes. Then, something like recognition appears on his face as he screams into the howling void. The screen goes black.

• The loyalty and deference in Mark and Gemma's eyes slowly turn. Helena and James are surrounded. James unbuttons his shirt, revealing a form of stacked rippling muscles. He explains that a diet of freshly squeezed raw juice has left him in perfect fighting condition.
• Helena and James are ready to fight, just as Mark and Gemma are overtaken by the insatiable bloodlust of the inverted Beehive Protocol.
• Just then, the elevator dings, and a hoard of Severed employees pour out, clown-car style.
• James stays behind to fight as Helena runs through the hallway to the Security room. They sure do love their Hallway runs on Severance.

• The next scene is a long, uncharacteristic, and single-shot action sequence with fantastic fight choerography. Very much "River Tam beats up Everybody", but it's "James Eagan takes on every Severed person we've seen in the series." He has a visible "NO FUN ALLOWED" tattoo.

• Helena gets to the security room, but all the buttons are destroyed.
• She looks at the security cameras. The perpetuity wing is safe. She takes a secret exit.

• Meanwhile, throughout Kier, people are clamoring to buy the latest in Juice-squeezing innovations. They can't get enough. They need it. The need Juice, 2! They will kill for Juice, 2!
• There aren't enough Juicero Juice, 2! to go around. It's the fucking apocalypse. Oh my God. People are killing for the Juice, 2!, and killing themselves if they can't get one.

• Helena approaches the deepest basement in the perpetuity wing.

• James puts up a good, long, juice-powered fight, but is eventually destroyed.
• As the crowd leaves James to pursue Helena, Harmony appears, drill in hand. She removes the Severance chips from each characters head, including the blue one inside James'.

• Helena unseals the hushed casket of Kier Eagan. His eyes open. The severance theme plays.

The credits roll, and then, a post-credits scene:

• It ends with Irving showing up late to the bloodbath in the hallways of the Severed floor, like Horatio at the end of Hamlet. He says, "Alright kids, I guess this is what's for dinner." He takes his blue Irving funeral mug, scoops up some of the blood from his ankles, and takes a sip, looking directly at the camera.

A line swoops in, but this time it doesn't adorn the words "Severance". It adorns the words "Juicero 2", with a new subtitle, "Announcement coming", and a subsubtitle, "WWDC 2025".

okay that's reason enough 8) yayyy

i do

thank you! you helped me solve a crossword clue: "TV show whose episode titles are formatted like file names"

At the risk of spoiling it, it's definitely a bit magical and very impossible. It's the most exaggerated part of the show, but I feel seen for lack of a better word.

I don't want to spoil too much, but every element of it, I can relate to with my dissociative identity thing.

The titles of all the episodes are made to reflect the filenames commonly found in torrents.

But I never knew how accurate it is regarding plurality. It seems rather ham fisted and over the top at times to me, a non plural.

I do love the show though, I've watched it through like three times I think.

🙌 I'm PMSing and just cried at the end of Rocketman

i just watched the first episode and enjoyed it a lot, thank you for making me aware of this show, I had not heard of it at all before this post.

that sounds really interesting

I'm happy to hear it! I have a lot of Caveats with my recommendation but I really do have to Commend it for all the things it does well

this is a very good sales pitch for this show, i might check this out sometime