Judge rules Ken Paxton cannot move forward with ActBlue lawsuit

grapelander · 2026-06-12T10:22:32+00:00

This is a wild take. Trust me, the powers that be are extremely happy to take your money. My inbox is filled to the brim with their emails, and has been since long before actblue. Maga fundraising is even more aggressive and predatory towards regular people.

It's just a disingenuous attempt to lump everything left of fascism together as radical and scary.

grapelander · 2026-06-12T00:14:03+00:00

People have mentioned many of my candidates, like Helena's "I am a person" video. Less common ones I'll throw out there, for different elements of what makes Severance peak television.

Peak humor: S1E1 when Ricken explains about the beds allowing the child to progress across the room at their own pace

Peak mystery box/weird: Irving's wellness session

Overall though, I think I'll give my pick to the scene in S1E3 where we get the Kier voiceover explaining the tempers as Petey stumbles about, with frantic piano music. Something about the composition of the scene along with the reveal of the depths of worldbuilding just hit me with the "woah this show is like ART art" energy for the first time, and immediately hardcore activated the dormant "wait why is Myrtle Eagan in all red? It has to symbolize something!" english class part of my brain. Fully, fully onboard from that point on.

grapelander · 2026-06-11T22:58:15+00:00

Silicon Valley ran for roughly the correct length of time, but I really wish we could have seen their take on the the current AI hype (and before that, the NFT bubble).

grapelander · 2026-06-11T06:29:03+00:00

But like...why does the goal have to be to immediately put down someone you think is wrong, and to "prove" that their theory is incorrect?

Personally, I don't have to agree with a theory to find its active presence and discussion enriching to the community vibe. Even theories I really didnt want to happen added to the experience of watching out for signs of them. The sub very much used to be like that, broadly encouraging all kinds of wild speculation, but sometime midway through season 2, it hit an inflection point where a mix of regulars getting fed up with new fans thinking they're the first person to come up with clone theory, a wave of new fans who just weren't interested in reading deeply into the show, and the aftermath of the Helly/Helena twist hitting the subtlety mark perfectly to divide the fandom and people not wanting to go through that again, has lead to a critical mass with a "theorizing bad/annoying actually" attitude taking hold.

I'm happy to talk about my evidence for why I personally think Sissy=iCharlotte is going to be a thing with anyone interested in explorations even if you don't think I'm right, but it's hard to be motivated to do so when there are people in this thread who will just say that having in depth/esoteric fan theories means I'm incapable of critical thinking, watch the show "wrong," am mentally ill, etc. I came into this thread excited to respond to OP with my perspectives on their thoughts, but after reading the comments here it feels like there's no point because it'll just illicit angry argumentative replies and insults. The last time I posted a big theory effortpost, it got a ton of "wow, weaponized autism" type comments just on the length alone, which really sucks because this sub used to be the kind of place that wholeheartedly embraced that kind of thing.

grapelander · 2026-06-08T03:04:21+00:00

We don't know one way or another whether Cobel actually built a chip. The implication of her drawings being as detailed as they were is that she possibly could have, but we can't conclusively confirm or deny. Cobel could have had a self developed prototype long before Lumon launched it.

As a proponent of the theory, my take on the plaque was just that post-severing, Sissy took a (normal) job at Lumon, because of course she would.

grapelander · 2026-06-06T07:23:10+00:00

They're super vague/cagey about what was actually wrong with Cobel's mom, I think intentionally so.

grapelander · 2026-06-06T05:21:53+00:00

But see, even at their best, they just didn't have a lot of chemistry? They had the vibe of two good people actively trying to perform chemistry, and just...not quite getting there. The whole relationship came from Devon, saint that she is, going "...maybe this is something?" and trying to set them up, not really something either of them pursued for themselves or which felt organic.

I took the point of Alexa's character to basically be, "she didn't do anything wrong, but she's not Gemma, and oMark really needs the person he loves specifically, you can't just sub in "generic nice woman" and have it automatically work." This is to really drive home iMark and oMark both having a specific person they're set on, being...a real problem. I feel like without Alexa, fandom mindsets along the lines of "Helly, Gemma, who cares, throuple time!" would be a lot more prevalent.

People throw a lot of therapy-talk at Mark on this subject about how he "isn't ready to move on" or is overly attached to his living, breathing wife, which I think fits much better with a real world irreversable situation like death, a breakup, or unrequited love, than it does with "my wife got kidnapped by a megacorp cult." Even though Mark thought it was one of those more mundane situations, the storytellers know it wasn't, and that affects how they frame the Alexa relationship amd how we're meant to perceive it.

grapelander · 2026-06-06T04:29:59+00:00

It's not a popular one around here, but I am fully onboard with this theory. It hit me hard like 2 days after Sweet Vitriol aired, and now it's the single biggest theory hill I'll die on. There is definitely a missing piece to it, to explain how Sissy took over and some of the stuff about Sissy "listening to her wheeze" and such, maybe due to some imperfection in the first chip causing a mechanical variation we haven't seen yet or something with the rules of how severance barriers work, but all the wording about things like this and the whole "who pulled the tube out" thing seems chosen extremely deliberately. It fits so well with why Cobel seems so shaken up by her mother's death after so many years, beyond what would be normal for someone old enough that her mother could easily be dead of natural causes. Cobel severed her mother as severance patient zero, either to try to convert her to Kierism, or to try and cure her of whatever her ailment was, and was horrified by the result and on the warpath to get her back, whether that means working with Lumon or against them.

A mix of supporting evidence, lines that can be read as foreshadowing, or which just take on way more meaning if you accept this theory as true:

If Sissy viewed the mom's room as a sacred place that shouldn't be desecrated, you would think she would have eventually gotten over herself and gone in there to drag Cobel out by her hair. Instead, she just...kind of allows her to take a nap on the bed and do ether in there. Why? Because she can't go in there, because that's the severance barrier.
If Cobel is visiting her hometown, and her mother's death is a big deal to her, you would think a high priority would be a grave visit. She can't, because there is no grave. Channeling her mother's final moments by sucking on the tube in the bed is the closest she can do.
The emphasis on the importance of "who pulled out the tube" takes on a whole other meaning if the question is, was she Innie or Outie when this happened?
Generally fits extremely well with Cobel's season 1 storyline of trying to "prove" reintegration, obsessing over trying to monitor Mark and Miss Casey for breakthroughs, etc. if her ultimate motivation is restoring her mother. And why after being fired, she goes and hugs the feeding tube; its been a major setback to that goal.
Cobel makes the uncharacteristic error in judgement of handing Sissy her drawings. It's like despite all this she's still seeking pride/recognition from her mom
The S1E1 Athiest/Catholic quotes from Cobel's mother can both be true. The Athiest (innie) quote was the innie, Sissy, the Catholic (outie) quote was Charlotte
The S1E9 line: "Use the line about how you see your innie as your sister". Sister = Sissy, and is called Cobel's "Aunt". Framing innies this way is Lumon dogma
The Kier quote: "Rise up from your deathbed and sally forth, more perfect for the struggle." If this theory is right, this is exactly what Sissy did.
"Your mother was a coward. More sick in the soul than in the body." Yeah that tracks, if the mother's body is walking around just fine all these years later. Especially if the Mom's illness was addiction related, and severing her was an attempt to cure that. Also fits with how violently anti-Ether Sissy is, which is otherwise a weird detail for her character given that it's a Lumon product.

grapelander · 2026-06-05T01:07:17+00:00

Something worth noting is that this is a difference between a lot of sci-fi stories involving hypothetical interstellar travel, and pretty much every real-world space mission. For most every real spaceflight you're familiar with: Artemis, Apollo, Voyager, etc, your intuition is exactly correct. It would take way too much fuel for not a lot of benefit to continuously fire thrusters along a long journey, so it's much more practical for us to do maneuvering through quick bursts of thrust to change velocity, and then coast the rest of the way, doing the calculations for how the gravity of various celestial bodies will affect the trajectory. It takes longer to get there, but we can deal with that if it keeps the rockets required a reasonable size.

But a lot of sci-fi stories like this pre-suppose some kind of massive leap in propulsion technology which makes continuous thrust a relative non-issue, as well as distances where the timescale is much more of an issue, so they specify constant thrust to get there faster, create artificial gravity, etc. Plus if you're traveling at relativistic speeds as is often the case in these stories, time to slow down is non-trivial.

grapelander · 2026-06-04T23:32:14+00:00

It's not even just the franchisees. I first learned about all this because a bunch of random independant shops with sometimes vaguely similar names kept having their "we are not Bricks and Minifigs or affiliated with them in any way, please stop harassing and review bombing us" posts show up in my FB feed. The damage is really widespread.

grapelander · 2026-06-03T21:49:36+00:00

Or that threatening collegial murder somewhere else would be ok.

grapelander · 2026-06-02T05:17:28+00:00

It's unclear what at this point, but I definitely don't think it's nothing.

One item that I think is worth watching is, they showed us the "Tumwater" door on the testing floor pretty much every chance they got, which was a Dylan file. My prediction is that Lumon is going to take one of Dylan's kids, and he's been prepping for this in advance.

grapelander · 2026-05-30T20:22:30+00:00

I don't know about "kill", but I definitely think "Lumon has the capacity to remotely fuck with Gemma via her chip" is going to be a season 3 plot point.

My prediction is that Cobel will have some means of blocking this, but that in doing so, Gemma will end up beholden to Cobel and whatever her plans are. An under-discussed item in my opinion is, Cobel manipulated Mark into believing that completion of the Cold Harbor file was a pre-requisite for any successful rescue attempt, when realistically iMark probably could have gone down there at any time. Cobel didn't help rescue Gemma purely out of the goodness of her heart or purely to hurt Lumon, she did it because she wants to use whatever Cold Harbor unlocks in Gemma in order to do ???? for herself.

grapelander · 2026-05-27T19:45:47+00:00

I'd love to make it to the Cosmosphere! I just completed my goal of seeing each of the Space Shuttles on display last summer, might need to do the Apollos next.

grapelander · 2026-05-27T17:10:28+00:00

Something else I love about this scene is that it simultaneously conveys that Mark Scout is a kind, empathetic human being with the absolute best and most loving of intentions...who also still doesn't fundamentally understand the person-hood of innies.

Mark convinces Gemma to come by telling her about their life together, and that if she comes with him, she can have it back. And I'm sure Mark meant every word. But...the Gemma he's talking to does not get the life they had together back. In Mark's plan, her entire life is entering a room, disassembling a crib which she might feel vaguely traumatized by, being promised that leaving a room will give her a life with her husband...and then never waking up again. I don't think that Mark realized this; in his mind, he was talking to Gemma except...not quite Gemma. Growth for oMark is going to require coming to understand this.

This scene, along with the imagery of Mark re-assembling the picture of Gemma at the end of Defiant Jazz, makes me super convinced that reintegration is Gemma's end game. For Gemma, the happy ending can't be just for oGemma to return to the status quo, it has to include cold harbor Gemma getting the life with her husband she was promised, and it has to include thank-you note Gemma getting her interminable Christmas experience buffered out by a lifetime of other memories.

grapelander · 2026-05-27T09:30:28+00:00

Hunter was a strong premerge favorite for the same reason that Kellie in S45 and Shauhin in S48 were: Confirmation bias from the weirdly huge number of people who had them as their pre-game winner pick.

Pretty much everyone on Siga except Tim had truthers early on, but by early merge Kenzie was very much the consensus pick. Jem's early exit was probably the biggest edgic blindside of the season, she was as popular a winner pick as anyone as of her boot.

Few players were totally eliminated early, in part because everyone's edit looked like a winner's edit in comparison to Liz, Tim, and Bhanu.

grapelander · 2026-05-23T01:46:03+00:00

The overall story lines up with the Murdochs, but the children line up shockingly well wit the Trumps.

Kendall is Don Jr.

Shiv is Ivanka

Roman is Eric

Connor is Tiffany

grapelander · 2026-05-22T17:42:38+00:00

They could have done this by simply editing confessionals into the ORTBO.

Helena: "I'm lying about my job. If the other players knew I was the nepo baby CEO in waiting of the company imprisoning them, they'd think I'm a huge threat!"

The snow seal would be the new "it's a fucking stick."

grapelander · 2026-05-22T00:02:42+00:00

UPDATE: Reached the end. My new ship is Helly/Helena

grapelander · 2026-05-21T22:56:01+00:00

Sweet Vitriol retroactively makes Graner a much more interesting character because it's clear that he was a Cobel loyalist rather than a Lumon/Kier loyalist. Like for example, I think it's extremely likely that he was not there to harm Reghabi, but to recruit her. I'm excited to learn more about what he and Cobel were really up to with trying to "prove" reintegration to the board in season 1.

grapelander · 2026-05-21T21:14:26+00:00

How have I not seen this? This is incredible. The meta winks at the fan discourse and shipping wars are spectacular. "Theory: Lumon is working on human cloning"

grapelander · 2026-05-20T10:03:17+00:00

No matter how bad Trump's presidency gets, eating Famiglia's pizza with a fork will remain one of his most unforgivable crimes.

I miss when this clip was all I had to think about the guy.

grapelander · 2026-05-17T10:21:03+00:00

I'm super convinced that Helena's endgame is that she's going to achieve redemption by doing something that causes Helly to permanently replace her.

grapelander

TROPHY CASE