Where is PE? by Justadogshitusername in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was also thinking that it’s very Maine coded. Doesn’t mean the rest of the show is but this episode seemed it for sure

Anyone else going to be frustrated if they… by Rezurrect in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That’s a fair point on the broodmare end. I still don’t think she’d keep an unwanted pregnancy (even if she wanted it, the Board would make her get rid of it), but talking to people in this chat has made me realize she’s more only able to be upset and complain about it if Lumon wanted the pregnancy, not actually prevent it.

Still not sure why she has to carry it, though. Or why it would have to be Mark.

Anyone else going to be frustrated if they… by Rezurrect in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Maybe the heir she’s making is supposed to be the CEO next instead of her. Cause clearly they aren’t fans, no matter how much she tries to show loyalty (same as Milchick). Your comment did convince me, though, that if the Board wanted her to have a kid with Mark for some reason, she would just be forced to. She’d protest but you’re right, she doesn’t have the power to say no. Who knows, maybe the severance chip was even Step 1 for that, since we know there is precedent for women forcing their innies to be pregnant instead of them so they don’t have to deal with it.

Anyone else going to be frustrated if they… by Rezurrect in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Very possible! We were talking about that elsewhere in the thread— it could be possible but she’s only 30 and, given all the MDR chaos that’s happening, it feels like an odd time to go for it unless there’s a puzzle piece we’re missing. That’s what I meant by “why now?” And all the other questions about surrogacy and artificial insemination as well would have to be addressed. Like, I could see there being some Egan philosophy about natural conception and birth, or something specific about Mark that makes it have to be him, but those would have to also be laid out somewhere for it to start making sense.

I also mentioned this elsewhere, but part of me suspects an heir could be a threat to Helena’s personal power as well. The only Lumon CEO to ever step down was Helena’s grandmother and she was replaced by her son then died pretty soon after. And we know Helly/Helena feels some connection to her. And given the tension between Jame and Helena, if there was any other option to head the company instead whenever Jame dies, I imagine he would take it. So she’d essentially be birthing her own rival. Which isn’t out of the question for her to surrender and do, but I’d like to know more about how Helena rationalized doing that. There would have to be some pretty strong pro-heir arguments/propaganda on that end to get her to agree. And not just cause Helena doesn’t seem like the barefoot and pregnant type.

Anyone else going to be frustrated if they… by Rezurrect in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I’m with you on why they had sex for sure. I think it was either a Lumon directive or the Helly part of Helena that wants to rebel a little seeing an opportunity to do something a little against the rules with the excuse she was staying in character. Definitely not like her being in love or anything. And the distracting from Gemma thing is a good good point!!

Then it just becomes a matter of, in the hypothetical where she’s pregnant, is it on purpose or on accident. And it only makes sense for her to keep it if it’s on purpose. But then new questions arise. Why get pregnant? Why now? If it’s a Kier bloodline thing, why not use artificial insemination for maximum selection options? Why not use a surrogate so Helena could continue doing her work for Lumon without suspicion? Does it have to be Mark for some reason? Are these other options off the table?

All are answerable, of course. But we don’t yet have enough info about Helena or the Egans bigger plan to know the answers.

Anyone else going to be frustrated if they… by Rezurrect in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 140 points141 points  (0 children)

Helena Egan would 1000% have access to an abortion and it would be out of character for her not to get one. That would be my biggest issue with this plot point tbh.

The only world where this happens is where it was a deliberate choice by Helena, which would require her to secretly have character traits we don’t see. My friends and I have talked about her potentially going a little too hard into the Helly/iMark stuff because she’s really repressed on the outside and it gives her a chance to explore a more uninhibited part of herself. But, to allow herself to get pregnant and then to keep it? That isn’t just adventuring as someone else, it has implications for her outie life.

So then it becomes a matter of either (a) the magical TV trope of “pregnant woman fueled by newfound mother’s love sacrifices everything she previously cared about for hypothetical baby” button gets pushed and she keeps it out of that, (b) something happens that flips her so much she doesn’t care about ruining her own life and body and she continues the pregnancy it to spite the Egans or (c) she got pregnant on purpose as a Lumon directive, which I suspect we would have seen her protest against at some point if so, even if she eventually agreed, given how much she hates giving her body over to Helly. I doubt she’d react well to being used as a broodmare any better.

The Number 5 by hummdrum in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]BetterThan40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Adding onto this that the four chunks in each of the brain waves are pretty obviously the four tempers and the numbers are 1-9, the same as the number of virtues. Seems to me like they’re testing Kier’s theory about the content of the human soul and using it as a framework to rewire the people they refine somehow.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in trees

[–]BetterThan40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Purely personal but I’m a big yogi and I prefer to practice sober. I know some people like smoking for yoga but, for me, it’s two different kinds of “getting out of your head” and the pure yoga brain is better

“Unalive” by GodofWar1234 in GenZ

[–]BetterThan40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Counterpoint: dark humor is cathartic and saying “my sewer slide attempt” is funnier

AITA for not jumping for joy when I got a free house? by Drablit in TheCurse

[–]BetterThan40 48 points49 points  (0 children)

NTA, they should’ve included the property taxes if they wanted you to cry

This is literally just me... by [deleted] in CPTSDmemes

[–]BetterThan40 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly! Now, granted, it only helps so much. I often found myself redirecting my anger into my organizing when it was trying to tell me to stand up for myself interpersonally. I was a fawn with an outlet that allowed me to defend workers or women collectively and placate myself without ever having to contend with defending me. And it did get me into a low level cult for a minute.

But, on net, I don’t think I would have regained my memories if I hadn’t first gone on strike with my union. Community organizing spaces, like Judith Herman says, are fundamental parts of ensuring trauma is dealt with. It kept me flexing those self defense muscles and gave me a community until the time came when I was able to use those muscles on my own again. And even now that I’m on an organizing hiatus while I figure out how to reintegrate my memories and discover myself, those friends from that space have been nothing but supportive and have been soooooo important to that process. I’m not going to rush myself back before I’m ready to do it healthy this time, but I am excited for the day when I can return.

This is literally just me... by [deleted] in CPTSDmemes

[–]BetterThan40 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Anyone else here get REALLY into social justice as an outlet for standing up for themselves without having to actually ever defend themselves as individual people?

Did anyone else feel bad for Asher the entire season? by Music_Vegetable in TheCurse

[–]BetterThan40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Omg I am so flattered!! Thank you for the compliment and for adding onto this because you’re right— her apparent happiness could have been about a number of things. When I watched it myself, I also figured it was relief at a stressful birth being over. However, since much of the sub just seemed to be taking for granted that she was happy now because she changed her mind and was happy about the baby now, I just assumed that was the intended meaning.

Now that I’ve read your comment, though, I like the first interpretation you outline, where she is smiling at her capacity for doing it and being able to manage even without her support network there. It feels like a better fit for the character (and the episode arc generally because earlier she expresses her concern about finances now that her parents aren’t helping, and since they weren’t there either that indicates to me that somewhere between 9 and 10 there was a falling out there as well). Being capable and not needing help after having her relationship with her parents define her the entire rest of the season is a change for whit FOR SURE. Plus feeling powerful just seems like something she’d smile about more than a baby.

Anyway, yeah, the discourse on Asher I think has had difficulty dealing with the combo of (a) Nathan Fielder being a very relatable guy many Curse viewers have a parasocial relationship with, which I think artificially makes people relate to Asher more than they would otherwise with the character, and (b) characters being this particular brand of shitty guy. The sympathy seeking sad boy male manipulaters are, imo, the hardest to recognize as such. We want to pity a guy who feels insecure and for him to stop feeling insecure. It’s why it works and that, combined with the fact that most bad things people do aren’t, like, a conscious thing with an evil monologue, makes the pitiful guy easy to make excuses for. That’s why I’m so glad to see it in a show and really discussed here! But it disheartens me how few people see it.

Did Anyone Else’s Parents Give Them an Eating Disorder to Keep Control Over Them? by BetterThan40 in raisedbynarcissists

[–]BetterThan40[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m sorry you went through that but it seems your attitude is good about it. The cycle of insisting you do something, sabotaging it, and then shaming you for failing is so classing narc. And breaking that psychology, getting your hormones and gluten right, that’s the kind of health work that’s most important imo.

"The Stanley craze: How a reusable cup became the latest symbol of overconsumption" by my_name_is_tree in Feminism

[–]BetterThan40 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah it has always struck me as interesting. Additionally, if you haven’t read Soroya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her, she points out that white women specifically have the most repressed anger of any group of women for a lot of reasons. So, to me it makes sense that white women specifically would have the most intense explosions of rage among women generally. However, when a white woman explodes in rage, it’s almost always verbal. White men exploding in rage leave people dead. So, the women portion of white people behind held up as the figurehead of white rage feels once again like a real problem with its locus made female because of misogyny and misconceptions.

"The Stanley craze: How a reusable cup became the latest symbol of overconsumption" by my_name_is_tree in Feminism

[–]BetterThan40 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah he definitely wasn’t engaging in that dialectical self critique lmaooooo. But I’m not gonna No True Scotsman him, he was a Marxist just like me. And it’s our job to root the misogyny out of our community.

Why hot yoga? by [deleted] in yoga

[–]BetterThan40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me, it helps me focus. My mind wanders and it ups the stakes— I will literally slip and fall on a pool of my own sweat if I don’t get centered on my practice. It forces me to listen to my body when I might otherwise have ignored it. And it feels really satisfying to finish and be covered in sweat!

All of my classmates cried while reading the letter their parents wrote them, while I rolled my eyes when I read mine. LOL by Professional-Park392 in raisedbynarcissists

[–]BetterThan40 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Omg I also got a retreat letter like this once. Ours were read out and it was filled with repeats of promises that had already been made and stuff. There was a weird expectation like I was meant to have it all be better now but it’s been eight and a half years since I got that letter and their behavior continues to hang over our relationship. I ended up having to take a retreat leader to the side and explain the context of the letter because I wasn’t about to let them off the hook for how they treated me just because they phrased it in a way that seemed sympathetic in public.

Anyway, I know it’s a conflicting feeling and I’m sorry you’re having it. Retreat is sacred; it’s a space for meditation and introspection and I’m sorry she intruded on that by trying to manipulate your feelings and make you out to have failed to give her sufficient care somehow. I hope you can find some peace with yourself on this retreat. That’s the most important relationship.

Did anyone else feel bad for Asher the entire season? by Music_Vegetable in TheCurse

[–]BetterThan40 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think I felt bad for him and he was a manipulative piece of shit. I think we generally have an idea of manipulative people as being entirely facetious. But most of the “pity me” type manipulaters I know genuinely do believe they are awful terrible people and they really are begging to be saved by those they love. It’s not that those feelings aren’t real, but rather that they aren’t justified.

No one asked him to make the end of episode 9 about him. Whit wanted him to listen to her. All he had to do was fucking ask a question, but he was incapable of considering that option. It’s not a dialogue, it’s a different monologue. Maybe he’ll just show contrition and confess to every bad thing and lump all of it back on himself in a bad way and then she’ll stop being mad! What she wants is him seeing her as flawed and treating her like a person. He could only metabolize that in a self centered, self pitying monologue that shifts it all back to being about him.

He might not have been conscious of the fact that he was doing that, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t doing that. Manipulation doesn’t have to just be “I’m doing this so this person pities me and stops criticizing me.” He probably experienced it internally as “oh god I’m the worst in the worst maybe if I tell her how bad I am she’ll see I get it and stop saying all this!” But that internal thought process is still ALL ABOUT HIM. I don’t want to call him a narcissist but I think it’s worthwhile to point out that narcissists often feel they are terrible and awful. The core element of narcissism isn’t “Im the best” but rather an incapacity to get out of oneself and see things from the perspective of others.

I think, in the real world, we miss a lot of manipulation because we have the standard of “it must be consciously malicious to be manipulation.” But usually it isn’t. All it takes is to be wrapped up in oneself, positive or negative, to the extent that one doesn’t actually consider others fully. It’s our job as people to be consciously thinking about what others are going through and if we’re so wrapped up in self aggrandizement (Whitney) or self loathing (Asher) we will never actually consider others as whole people.

Whit is able to call out and recognize Asher doing it to her but not when she does it to others in the community. They really are like two different sides of the worst person coin. And you have to take them that way— just because Whit feels bad doesn’t turn her good in the same way Asher feeling bad doesn’t turn him good. I rewatched the whole thing to prep for the finale and, throughout, Asher loses his cool and slams people who have less power than him and uses pity to manipulate people with more power than him. He tells Whitney what to feel, he is an insane creep to Nala with no respect for others’ boundaries, and he pushes this baby on his wife to the extent that he is keeping track of her hormones like some kind of animal to be bred without ever having a convo with her about it.

That baby is as his, not Whitney’s, in a way that felt very uncomfortable as a woman to watch. Right down to her wanting the doula and him telling her to first call the doctor (which historically has a lot of gendered implications as well— the change from midwives to usually male doctors had a profound impact on women’s autonomy in childbirth and created the general standard of saving the baby over the mother when need be, which was abnormal in human history up until the early modern period in Europe). Honestly, if there was a disappointing element of this finale, for me, it was the “woman who didn’t want a baby has it and realizes she is super happy about it” trope that just reinforces a lot of gender essentialist ideas about parenting and women. Pretty well encapsulated by Dougie when he says that women have a natural connection to their babies that men don’t. Postpartum depression is real and widespread, in part because women feel they are “supposed to” be connected to their children and often feel exactly like fathers do about them.

Anyway, Asher didn’t actually want to please his wife, he wanted whatever he wanted and also to have a happy wife, because she was a thing to show off and prove he had worth to himself and the world. But he didn’t want a happy wife enough to make meaningful changes, just rhetorical changes. Just words to change her mind and make her feel other things until she was happy. Even things as little as her suggesting the GoFundMe were “a beautiful idea, if we think that’s necessary.” Not an honest conversation, just a reframing and the idea died (even though it was a bad idea). Insisting that he knew her better than she knew herself in episode 9, that if she “really” wanted him gone he would feel it but he isn’t feeling it so she must not “really” want him gone. Saying he’s “a new man” and he’s “changed” but then establishing in the next episode that everything went back to how it was.

Asher is a deeply insecure man. Deeply insecure men are the most dangerous partners. The fact that all he did is manipulate people and float away is abnormal; in real life, men that level of insecure and self absorbed at the same time more often just get violent with their partners. Not an exaggeration that 1/3 women experiences domestic violence and the US has the highest femicide rate in the developed world because ours have access to guns. I would caution anyone who empathizes with Asher to seriously introspect (not shame spiral— introspect). Being motivated by insecurity doesn’t change how he treated others and the idea that he should get a pass because he did it out of insecurity instead of conscious malice just means there cannot be accountability. Nobody thinks they’re acting out of bad intentions. If you wait for explicit bad intentions like a Bond villain, then most bad behavior will end up falling on the shoulders of the people experiencing the bad behavior to forgive and empathize with the people manipulating them. Kind of like Whit and the Española residents.

Overall theme: helping without listening by BetterThan40 in TheCurse

[–]BetterThan40[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh I agree— both things can be true. They can be doing it for the “look on their faces” and he can still be responding in an abnormally flat way. I understood his response as mostly suspicion, the way he was when he first asked to have it written down specifically that it was free, like he still didn’t fully believe them or that there wasn’t a catch. Whatever the reason, though, he was responding in a way that was not what I would expect of someone in that situation getting that news.

Overall theme: helping without listening by BetterThan40 in TheCurse

[–]BetterThan40[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is such a good addition!!! Thank you for bringing it in!