How all the Severance ships connect + how the Severance barrier effects them (nature vs. nurture):
The Severance barrier doesn’t affect innate traits, and innate traits are what contribute to the characters’ ability to transcend Severance.
Burt and Irving: Love of art that exists through the Severance barrier. Both innocent and pure on the inside, even though they’ve killed people on the outside. This purity endures even though they’re working on opposite sides of the story. (Anti-Lumon vs. Pro-Lumon.) But as their most innocent selves, they find a true connection.
Connection: Love of art and beauty.
Innate Traits: High sensitivity to aesthetics or emotion, strong imaginative or introspective tendencies.
Mark and Helena: Very similar to Burt and Irving. Rather than loving art, it’s their sense of humour that connects them. Especially dark humour to cope with trauma. Both are good people with baggage. Both have daddy issues. (Mark’s father making him drink whiskey since he was a kid, and Helena’s father stripping her of her autonomy and independence.) Both are rebellious.
Connection: Humour and rebellion.
Innate Traits: High intelligence, high autonomy, low agreeableness, openness to new experiences, high sensitivity to injustice.
“You should meet him sometime.”
“Taking me home to dad, already?”
“Yeah, I think it’s finally time.”
(Joking while demonstrating a high openness to new experiences i.e. humour and rebellion.)
Dylan and Gretchen: Although we’ve seen less of them than the more central ships, Gretchen connects to iDylan because she sees a version of her husband that used to exist a long time ago, before life has worn him down. Luckily for her, oDylan is showing signs of still having iDylan qualities inside of him.
Such as him reaching out to iDylan and seeking to heal parts of himself, as well as complimenting him (thus complimenting himself.)
Innate Traits: Emotional sensitivity, strong imagination.
Mark and Gemma: Different from the other pairings so far, since the other pairings seem to connect over intrinsic / innate things like art, kindness or humour. These two connected over knowledge. Especially advanced knowledge they both learned as adults. This knowledge is completely lost to the Severance barrier, since it’s not innate. It was learned later in life.
Innate Traits: High intelligence and possible curiosity.
Innate traits that lead to the love of art —
• High sensitivity to aesthetics or emotion
• High openness to experience
• Strong imaginative or introspective tendencies
Innate traits that fuel rebellion —
• Low agreeableness (some people are naturally more skeptical, questioning, and less likely to conform.)
• High openness to experience (these people crave new experiences and tend to question rules or traditions.)
• High sensitivity to injustice.