#gemhelena

it's been a couple months since I last posted some severance fanfic recs and I wanted to do so again featuring new fics / linking to fics that were unfinished when I last referenced them but are now finished! (I am also re-rec-ing a few of my own, because, lol) if your fic is not on the non-exhaustive list i create, reblog and promote your work!! or work you love!!! for a fic writer I'm surprisingly behind on my reading so I know I'm behind on some incredible works!

(a polite note: if you read a fic you loved because you found it on this list, comment on the piece and share the love!! writers can't know how much you liked their piece unless you tell them!!!)

to be given a body - me!, 23k, ms. casey/mark scout & gemmark, E

Orpheus guides Eurydice out first. OR: AU where Lumon is less competent than usual and Mark S. saves Ms. Casey.

Bad News About Helly - AdotNonymous, 30k (unfinished), helena & helly, helly & mark, T

Helly wakes up on the table with no memory of how she got there or who she is. However, there’s one thing she is certain of: no matter what the voice on the speaker tells her, she is a woman. A trans Helly fic.

ascend and try again - me!, 3.1k, gemma & mark s. & gemmark, G

“We both really fucked it up, didn’t we?” If this was Mark, he would’ve started to interrupt. It’s not Mark, so she continues. It’s not him but she can pretend, with her body against his and her eyes on her hands.

a shadow on me all of the time - parac_osm, 3.6k, ms. casey/mark s., G

Mark S punches Dylan G in the face.

keeping a garden - lenaios, 2.3k, gemdev, T

Devon is the maid of honor. Don’t you have sisters of your own? Devon had joked. I want you there, Gemma had said. Or: things that never happened.

Knife At My Throat- @gemmafuckingscout, 29k, gemhelena, E

A year after the season 2 finale, Helena and Gemma are still picking up the pieces of their life. But when Gemma unknowingly matches with Helena on a dating app, things couldn’t possibly end well.

it's rotten work - fauchevalent, 3.1k, gemdev, NR

Gemma sighs. “You should sit down,” she says, and Devon feels her heart drop into her stomach. Still, she steps further into the bedroom, parks herself on the corner of Gemma’s mattress. Gemma sits up a little more, adjusts the pillow at her back, and aims a serious look in Devon’s direction.

i never sought to love you - me! 12k (unfinished), gemhelena & gemmark, M

Pre-canon, the fall before Gemma's disappearance - a year after their last IVF treatment, Gemma decides to pop into a local perinatal loss support group on a whim. There she meets Helly Riggs, a beautiful and equally awkward outsider who listens to her and sees her in a way Mark hasn't in a long time. Helena's motive for meeting Gemma becomes complicated as she wrestles with her duty to Lumon and her father vs. her first sincerely intimate relationship.

[r|egress] - @argentnoelle, 1.8k, gemmark, NR

Before and after Gemma's death. Or: Mark Scout goes shopping.

A Black Mile to the Surface - @actual-lea, 56k (unfinished), mark & mark, markhelly

Mark found Gemma, and together, they escaped. So why does he wake up without her, trapped inside Lumon? And why is there a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his own?

the house across the river - me!, 855, ms. casey & mark s. & helly r., G

Gemma is still breathing heavy, hunched over the wheel, when she hears a knock on the car window. She rolls it down.

“If you crash your car,” the woman says and her voice is unexpected: low, drawling, “your husband is going to have to identify the body.”

Or: Gemma picks up a ghost.

ok at first this started with "yes i can" but now im not so sure this is my third attempt at answering this question but LETS GO

I think i'm just very struck with how the same they are, which on its surface does sound kind of insane because they are different but at the same time they're not at all.

Writing The Stone had made me confront the way all versions of these characters compare and contrast to each other so I have a lot of thoughts.

Helly and Gemma have been directly paralleled in their escape attempts, their little drawings; this tiktok actually makes me insane the way their hair flip is EXACTLY the same and cut to Mark who is looking at both of them the same way WTFFFFFFF

Helena and Gemma have been paralleled in their self/externally imposed restricted diets, exercise, and severing. This being pointed out was what actually like unlocked Helena's character for me. I have always been obsessed with Helena (especially even when she really repulsed me) but I didn't like or sympathize with her until I made the Gemma connection.

Helly and Ms Casey are actually the most contrasting characters, really, even though they should have the most in common out of the quartet. They just have such polar opposite reactions to their circumstances (see: exports hall Milchick scenes vs everything Helly has ever done).

Ms Casey's personality most closely resembling not the woman she has the most in common with (Helly), or the other half of herself that she's been severed from (Gemma), but HELENA ON THE SURFACE IS SO BUCK FUCKING CRAZY.

Helenacasey fucking save me. Save me Helenacasey.

Mark only completed 25 files and there are 25 testing floor innies so really I don't buy that Casey is refined at all (I think Cobel calling her unsophisticated, synonym of unrefined, might be a hint at that who tf knows) and thus refining can't be the reason she is like that.

So: Helena's innie's personality closely resembles baseline Gemma. Gemma's innie's personality closely resembles baseline Helena; and by baseline I just mean pre-severing not like, innate personality (I don't even think "innate personality" is a useful concept in this arena).

When Helena was severed all of the fire and fight was finally able to spill out of her, she was finally able to express herself without the context of who she really was.

When Gemma was severed she is suddenly muffled and reserved; without a context for herself Gemma is curious but incredibly cautious and stiff.

Yes she probably went through a crazy orientation but idk walk with me here.

When people say Helly is just Helena without the expectations or trauma or that she is Helena's true personality, idk that never really does it for me. What does any of that even mean? And like, did we not fucking listen to Petey? WE CARRY THE HURT WITH USSSSSSS!!!!!

So Helly is still reacting to and informed by the trauma already wrought on Helena, she is just also gaining new traumas and learning new lessons that Helena can only barely eke out without literally going down to experience them for herself.

Until all of those experiences, the "Helly part" of Helena was buried pretty deep down, but it was there and in turn there is a Helena part of Helly that we see emerging ("Don't you mean Helly E?")

So like what part of Gemma is Ms Casey, guys. WHAT PART??? I've thrown out a racial reading of this before, which still makes sense to me.

The severance universe has something akin to real life racism which means Gemma has grown up as an asian girl/woman in a racist world. We see that Gemma values her cultural identity ("Chomolungma", "Chikhai Bardo") and we see that she is a confident, vibrant lady. Even down on the testing floor where every measure possible has been taken to beat her down and strip her of autonomy, she finds whatever ways she can to maintain a level of defiance (half-answering Mauer's questions, breaking his fingers, attempting escapes).

The world has told her to be one thing many times and she has repeatedly resisted becoming that, she has, against all odds, stayed true to herself. She is likely painfully aware of it the whole way through and maybe that's even a motivator. Maybe she sees the obvious racial undertones of what she's being made to do and that only fuels her righteous anger more.

Ms Casey has none of that context. Ms Casey doesn't know she is asian as much as Britt has said Helly doesn't really understand that she is a woman (in the sense that she doesn't know why she has to dress so differently and less comfortably than her male coworkers).

Ms Casey has no built up defenses against the way she is repeatedly encouraged to view herself: as an object, as expendable, as only valuable insofar as she is useful to others, as off-putting, as annoying, as cold, as stupid. She has no idea how loaded these ideas are, she has no idea why she has to feel this way when others don't, she has no idea it's wrong (IT IS WRONG! MARK SHAKES HIS HEAD NO WHEN SHE SAYS SHE IS VEXING! KILLLLLLL MEEEEEEEE NOWWWW)

The only time we really see her push back against the way someone else is treating her is when Dylan is hitting on her; that is the singular form of discomfort she simply can't tolerate (HMMMM FUCKING HMM I WONDER WHAT'S GOING ON WITH HER OUTIE RN?! YALL I THINK SHE IS CARRYING THE HURT WITH HER)

It feels weird comparing Helena's scifi cult baby trauma to real life racism, don't think I don't see that, but idk this is just what I'm feeling (as an asian "woman" myself).

Helena's entire context seems to be an attempt to shape her into something she really isn't, or wouldn't be left to her own devices. The testing floor is a literalization of that! Skip all the pesky abuse, just make your women pre-traumatized refined!

"She's easy to like" being a statement we could apply to Helly as a character for most audiences, while Helena is a tough pill to swallow. "She's easy to like" actually kills me so bad. The whole point of Mauer's experiment is to turn her into 25 people she's not, who are as little like her as possible, and then to kill her. "She's easy to like" I could chew fucking glass "She's easy to like."

AND THEN Jame, after so deeply fucking up Helena's upbringing and psyche, to then meet the version of her that doesn't fear him in the same way, doesn't respect the principles he forced upon her, and to decide that he prefers her actually and is probably going to essentially kill Helena in favor of...

CANT YOU SEE HOW THEY'RE THE OPPOSITE YET THE SAME!! IN ALMOST EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY!!! Every time, Hellyna and Gemmacasey prove to be inverted images. It's so fucking bananas y'all. THEMMMMMMM!!!!