Are we reading Lumon’s version of Severance’s The You You Are?

Severance is the sort of present that begets hypothesis. Some followers have theories in regards to the present’s central mysteries (it’s gotta be a cloning factor!); others have sturdy opinions on numerous ships (what if Helly and Gemma each depart Mark for one another??). After which there’s me. I’m over right here fascinated with the seminal work of 1 Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale, Ph.D.

On this planet of Severance, Mark Scout’s brother-in-law, Ricken, wrote a self-help ebook titled The You You Are. An advance copy meant for Mark made its approach to the severed flooring in season 1, inspiring MDR to stand up and set off the OTC — you realize the story. In season 2 episode 3, Natalie from Lumon visits Ricken to pitch an “innie” model of The You You Are, edited particularly for severed staff. Not suspicious in any respect.

Out right here in our world, we had been additionally blessed with a model of The You You Are. It was launched on Apple Books on Jan. 31, the identical day because the third episode of season 2. And this model… nicely, pricey reader, it doesn’t fairly match what we noticed of the ebook in season 1 of Severance.

Absolutely it’s only a continuity error, I hear you saying. It could be actually time-consuming to write down a complete ebook only for a couple of pictures in a TV present. It’s in all probability half lorem ipsum. I imply, certain, if you wish to Occam’s razor it. However the crew behind Severance is fairly detail-oriented. In keeping with Patricia Arquette, showrunner Dan Erickson wrote 30 pages of The You You Are for the prop within the present. The writers launched one other tie-in on Apple Books in 2022, The Lexington Letter, so it’s not like that is their first rodeo. And it’s much more enjoyable to think about they’re fucking with us. What if… that is the edited model of The You You Are?

Let me current the proof.

The Apple Books model of The You You Are is incomplete. It opens with a notice from Ricken explaining that, whereas “the ebook was meant to launch nationwide this week,” he has hit a snag: “Sadly, occasions past my management have led to a short delay as I liaise with a number of company events as to exactly the place and in what kind the ebook ought to be launched.” Curious. Within the meantime, he’s launched the primary eight chapters, plus the introduction, which is what’s accessible for us to learn.

In episode 4 of season 1, “The You You Are,” after MDR finds the ebook in a convention room, Mark secretly reads it in a rest room stall. He’s studying the start of chapter 9, “The Quitting Bell” — and we will see the earlier web page, which is presumably the tip of chapter 8. There’s no lorem ipsum; it’s all Ricken. And it’s nothing like the tip of chapter 8 within the real-world model of the ebook. It doesn’t appear associated to our chapter 8 in any respect.

Nonetheless: In episode 5, “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design,” we’re handled to pick out quotes from Mark’s time studying The You You Are. Not each quote within the montage is current within the Apple Books model, however a couple of of them are, phrase for phrase, together with this insightful tidbit: “What separates man from machine is that machines can’t assume for themselves. Additionally, they’re fabricated from steel, whereas man is fabricated from pores and skin.”

And the place do we discover this quote within the Apple Books model? In chapter 8, in fact, only some quick paragraphs earlier than it concludes. Are we to consider that the writers of the real-world The You You Are paid sufficient consideration to the present’s model to incorporate precise quotes, however not sufficient to test if the tip of chapter 8 had been written already?

Different elements of the Apple Books model line up with the present’s model precisely. The introduction matches what Ricken reads aloud within the season 1 finale — he reads the primary two paragraphs earlier than it cuts to a distinct scene. Later within the episode, he reads the previous few strains of the primary chapter earlier than stopping for a break, at which level Innie-Mark is ready to discuss to him. (Ricken then mentions the Crest Hike and the “humorous bees,” that are mentioned within the real-world chapter 2, to a confused Innie-Mark.)

Dylan additionally reads a bit of the ebook in that episode — chapter 5, titled “Future: An Acrostic Poem Expertise by the Creator, Ricken Hale.” The actual-world chapter 5 is an ideal match for what Dylan sees, right down to the font for every letter of “future.”

What’s it about chapter 8? Why cease there, and why change it from what’s proven on display screen?

Earlier than MDR finalizes its plans for the OTC on the finish of season 1 episode 8, Mark begins to learn a quote from The You You Are that impressed him, which Dylan completes from reminiscence: “Our job is to style free air. Your so-called boss could personal the clock that taunts you from the wall, however my buddies, the hour is yours.” Dylan provides that “web page 197 slaps,” so it’s honest to imagine this quote comes later than chapter 8 (on my telephone, the ebook ends with web page 73, and that’s at a price of perhaps three paragraphs per web page).

In episode 5 of season 2, “Trojan’s Horse,” Devon reads and critiques Ricken’s Lumon-driven rewrite of that exact same line: “Your sovereign boss could personal the clock that greets you from the wall, however you get to take pleasure in its ticking, and thus ought to be completely satisfied.”

Clearly, Lumon would wish to edit out any overtly pro-labor sentiments from The You You Are, retaining solely sufficient to provide innies an phantasm of empowerment. (As Ms. Cobel says in season 1, apparently quoting Kier, “The surest approach to tame a prisoner is to let him consider he’s free.”) And the eight chapters on Apple Books don’t actually have a lot in the way in which of pro-labor, anticapitalist concepts. So far as we all know from the present, anyway, the primary commentary on the topic is available in chapter 9, which Mark reads aloud:

You assume you want your job. However I’ve lived overseas as a vagrant, abstaining from my very own cash to depend on the charity of strangers. Most had been beggars themselves, but they had been completely satisfied, and so, for that summer season, was I. Your job wants you, not the opposite means round.

It’s precisely the sort of factor Lumon would need closely edited, if “Trojan’s Horse” is something to go by, and it’s not one thing the corporate would need the final inhabitants to assume too laborious about, both. However that also doesn’t clarify why chapter 8 would have to be completely different within the edited model.

The subsequent paragraph of chapter 9, as seen on display screen, goes on to reference “our tragic concessions employee (whose title, I’ve since realized, is Alan Miller)” — as if this concessions employee was talked about in a earlier chapter. Alan Miller, on this paragraph, is used for example of a employee with the ability to withhold his labor. That’s additionally one thing we’d anticipate Lumon to need modified. And if the concessions employee was introduced up in a earlier chapter, that chapter must change, too.

Some could say it’s a continuity error. However I say it’s proof that the real-world model of The You You Are has Lumon’s fingerprints throughout it. I don’t assume it’s meant to be the innie model — primarily as a result of chapter 3 options an prolonged critique of the 1992 film Sister Act, which no innie would have heard of — however I do assume that Lumon gave Ricken a publishing deal he couldn’t refuse. In spite of everything, his writer’s notice says that he’s liaising “with a number of company events as to exactly the place and in what kind the ebook ought to be launched.” And this Apple Books version of the ebook was printed the identical day we noticed him meet with the last word company get together: Natalie. Perhaps, in alternate for publishing the innie model, Lumon required a couple of tweaks to the outie model as nicely.

Or perhaps the Severance writers are simply fucking with us.