cat person

The whole thing lacks any ambiguity really though

the narrator didn't really feel like a character, just an observer, a receptacle for the narrative. the story's sole purpose appears to be winding up/attacking mras, which is a noble enough cause, but the writing is kind of dull and the whole thing emanates a sort of calculatingly nihilistic dysphoria that brooks neither joy nor horror. nothing is left to chance. and in its obsessive recall of detail it comes off quite superficial

― imago, Monday, 11 December 2017 14:04 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmmm what else sounds like

#noteveryman was good tho it were right good

the narrator literally announces she has told this story different ways before now, how much ambiguity do you want

(amking my way through the interview now)

re: the last line. Kristen says it was inspired "by a small but nasty encounter I had with a person I met online", later on in the same interview she expresses nervousness in trying to capture a younger person's texts. So maybe all of that explains the crude ending but I liked it -- from where it started to where we got to. All the witticisms and weeks of flirting turning so ugly, to this one word left like that. It didn't stop from the story from hitting a nerve.

Fills enough time before the next time Trump tweets his thing so enjoy it, says I.

decent story, i also don't think the last line is in keeping with the rest but i don't mind an attempt to swing for the fences.

if he's this angry full misogynist creep it has less impact.

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

i guess i just don't believe that is the action of anyone but a particularly angry misogynist.

lashing out maybe, or getting angry - people get angry in dating. but calling someone a whore is like getting into territory where the word "violence" doesn't feel a misuse. to think otherwise i'd have to try to justify him calling her a whore.

i don't think you have to justify it to understand that it's possible for a person who is performatively kind to find that his kindness is not rewarded as he thinks it should be, gets angry, lashes out drunkenly in a way that is disproportionate to the way he feels he was wronged. it did not feel ott to me, though it was an abrupt ending to the story.

I think the last line would feel over-the-top if it was in isolation but the string of messages before it makes it more credible, imo. Within the context of getting angry/lashing out there are still plenty of guys out there who have no trouble responding like that, doesn't need to be a MRA.

Also don't think this story is supposed to "wind up" anyone, feels like a very weird way to look at it imo.

only a really warped person imo. like it's p much a hate crime, what he does. anyway i guess we won't agree on this - i can't claim to have a full perspective on this story.

xpost

also she basically initiated the relationship based on his apparent (performative) kindness -- that she eventually chose not to pursue further contact with him after their lackluster encounter is another choice she made, one he felt was uncharitable toward him, so he lashed out in anger. It seemed like a conceivable reaction of a man who felt the control had not just been wrestled away from him, but done so by a younger woman -- which is basically totally realistic. Whether or not your average "decent dude" would hurl that word around casually is not really the point. Although personally I don't think it's a stretch.

LG -- even if you believe that "only a warped person" would say/do this, it's a sign of how warped many people (men) are. More than you think!

seemed totally relatable to me and her perspective seemed valuable. i'm not that guy but i certainly know lots of that guys. it's really weird that people are so uptight about either being that guy or knowing that guy that they have to get all captain-save-a-cat-person on twitter but hey it's 2017 i guess.

lol, quite possibly. i was beginning to say "nobody i know would ever do this" but i can't claim to know. i can only use myself as barometer and i know for a fact i would never, ever do this. i don't say that to morally grandstand either, i have no sense of myself as righteous whatsoever, it just makes me recoil and for me personally it allows me to then dismiss him a bit.

a bit like someone using a racial slur - i label them a racist and that allows me to distance myself and kind of treat all their other behaviour with more suspicion. i feel it'd be a stronger story if he didn't get this angry at the end. but i also feel like it'd be a stronger story if it was exposing the creepy paternalism or patriarchal behaviours in ostensibly "normal, happy" relationships. more subtle maybe but more interesting too.

i've spoken too much itt

xpost i find it v annoying that people are getting lambasted for saying it's a bad story. it's a piece of art, you don't have to like it just because of what it's about.

xpost to ll there, sorry!

apart from the ending the story was v successful at casting a kind of awful vibe where a perceptive, intelligent woman drifts from one impulse to another without feeling able to stand up for her own shifting feelings, or even declare them

thought the ending served well to show the dark side of welcoming objectification: narrator finds his reduction of her to a precious doll initially sweet and attractive but the other shoe drops when precious doll discovers inscrutable older guy is shallow/gross/a shitty lay

i think the final "whore" in there suggests that maybe there _was_ danger in those moments and part of what makes the story compelling is that the decisions she made, that had some grounding in her mind in self-preservation, may ultimately have been more necessary than she or we thought in the moment.

yeah I would think the specifics of the story mitigate a bit against reacting to it as some kind of universal takedown of men/masculinity, though obv aspects of it have larger resonance. idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.

if anything the part that didn't ring true for me was her fantasy of seeing herself as young-and-beautiful-with-flawless-skin through his eyes--not impossible I suppose but young people are more insecure than that ime. that said, perhaps I've just hit the limits of being able to imagine myself as the object of the male gaze?

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.

xposts

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, December 11, 2017 7:58 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is extremely true, and your other point about kindness not being rewarded is also true. lots of guys i've known over time, there's this expectation i think that the kindness they show (that no one asked to be shown!) is deserving of some prize or acknowledgement or having someone in your debt.

truth bomb

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says). that's like why it's a problem.

lotta redundant xposts.

idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.
yes, you are sheltered. ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*, of which he was one. not a sad sack, but vulnerable. i might say that in some ways she took advantage of him too -- his attentiveness, his worship. she knew this, and it's why she was worried she would come across as a tease iirc.

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.
OTM x1000

*needy men

feel like tinder and the like (tho they meet irl in the story) have led to a lot of relationships with big age differences. i see this a lot now.

it has always happened? very much like the way it happened in the story! you flirt with some dude, he seems alright, you hang out, and then things go south faster and faster until whatever was there is definitely over.

ahem i am unfamiliar with this dynamic (pulls at collar)

i also think ^^^ is part of the point of the story

in some ways it seems to me a comment on the dark side of assuming sexual agency for all people when we are still playing on a field that is not just uneven, but full of landmines.

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says)

it isn't underneath if he straight out calls her a whore, imo. it's overt. if you're trying to talk about what lies underneath a veneer then you need to show that it lies underneath, which is actually more insidious and interesting. there's a diff between thinking a thing, or having it emerge in your mind, and saying it which would also be p good territory for this story, whatever way it was explored.

xp
good points, thanks LL

it's underneath if it comes out only at the dead end of the relationship, after like a dozen unanswered texts, as the last line of the story.

also i think the fact that it connects, at the last possible second, the nuanced and pathetic image you have in your head and the image of an alt-right shitposter, is pretty deliberate.

ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*

this is rly otm and i liked the stuff w her job at the art theatre: the way he blows up its sophistication first in flattery but gradually in anxious bitterness and insecurity was v true to the usual dynamic between older lonely men w what they think of as taste and younger women whose intelligence they praise until the day it stops working.

(the praise, not the intelligence)

it IS underneath!! he is hiding it, even from himself. it only comes out and breaks his veneer of decency when he knows she is no longer interested (again, her decision) he is robbed/"robbed" of his control over the situation and he lashes out (drunkenly) with what is buried beneath the flirting and jokes and attentive question asking and his urbane apartment and everything. anger at having his control taken away by a young woman he slept with, a person with whom he assumed (incorrectly) that he had the upper hand.

he is not an MRA shitposter -- he is a regular guy. otherwise she wouldn't have spent as much time with him as she did.

it's also a fairly difficult technical problem to have this mentality submerged but not overt when the story is first-person from her perspective

"Later, the bartender told me that he'd written 'whore' to me into the text window, but decided to erase it."

i dunno, i just think him saying that stops him being a regular guy. you don't just call someone a "whore". even thinking "she is a fucking whore" or whatever would be p strange. guess we're going round in circles.

if he's texting women calling them whores he is an mra shitposter, de facto.

i guess i just disagree with that

i think it's important to note that i don't think the author is portraying either of the characters as predatory; it's worse than that. this is business as usual.

a few years ago just turned thirty i hooked up with a girl that was i believe 19 maybe 20 at a and this is a creepy detail a 17 year old girl's birthday party that i went to with friends from work NOT KNOWING it was a 17 year old girl's birthday party. driving home the next morning, she asked how old i was and i couldn't even say it and had to shakingly pull out my drivers license wordlessly pass it to her. she said, comfortingly: no, it's cool, my friend is dating a guy who's like 42. i was smitten with her, got her phone number, texted once, got no response and agonized for a few days about sending a follow up but never did. about a week later? she said she was in the mountains skiing and hadn't gotten my message but she wasn't interested, and i never saw her again.

i can relate, folks. tbf this guy does seem like an mra shitposter right off the bat. story was okay.

xp So many details were true to life and experience imo. I want to use the words "gross" and "banal" somehow but both already seem cliched.

he should have used them about the student bar she suggested

he seemed insecure for sure -- would not extrapolate that to "MRA shitposter"

yeah clearly insecure and i definitely understand that part of it. i dunno, the slightly manipulative exchange at the counter starts it off, the way he suggests jokingly that she insulted him, referring to her as "concession-stand girl."

those were the parts that to me are creepy and more strongly so if the ending isn't as overt

i enjoyed this story. guy seems like a dickhead from the get-go but that isn't a flaw in the story to me

seems cool that a piece of fiction went viral. although obviously i had a quick look on twitter and saw some of the worst takes ever. someone who found it fatphobic. chuds arguing that the girl is "the baddy".

The way he withholds recognition and respect, uses small denigrations, pretends to take offense to stay on the offensive, is textbook. Seen it, lived it, dated it. Also struck by, on her part, the multiple times she's aware that she's smarter, abler than him but gets nervous or retreats into imagining the fantasy/image instead of taking control of the situation and being done with him. That she's almost afraid? to expose him, or to find out what could happen if she lets him down.

Her instincts here are probably good, which is what the end is telling us, but even without the literalness of the last lines it's just the water we swim in. Seeing someone be sure that they're better than you and know that they're wrong but keeping that secret for reasons of your own...protection, politeness, or finding a tiny sliver of power in being underestimated. Not realizing that you had so much power at your fingertips all along if you just claimed it instead of settling for the tiny bit that you had to deal with all their shit for.

yeah this story stings both ways

lots of good posts on this thread!

i really liked the story. i think it speaks to a transactional sense of entitlement commonly found among Nice Guys that is rooted in misogyny.

posts on this thread more interesting (to me) than the original story tbh

a good writing exercise would be to write this same story w the male as the narrator

you can't say that and then not share the gruesome deets! well i suppose you can but please don't. please don't not share the deets.

next story contains the phrase “Jeffrey Appstein”

whoa, trenchant

I like that we've just decided "cat person" is our genre term for a prose fiction writer whose stories land culturally in a certain way

I don’t love that but I do need to hear about the deranged sex scene

The story is called aheago. I don’t want to ruin it because the details of the very specific fetishes are important to the plot. There’s a lot of ejaculate.

this is not reading Tulathimutte liveblog but i just read the most deranged sex scene I've ever read in my life.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek)

for reference how much time have you spent on ao3? i ask because i'm interested in deranged sex scenes

deranged sex scenes wld be a v tempting thraed but no, that has the potential to go off all the rails and become some kind of train wreck orgy and we wouldn't want that now would we

https://64.media.tumblr.com/2d8df64803e02914b9654118dd91d131/tumblr_o1hx2zS9w11u3p4ujo1_1280.jpg

I changed my mind

yes

i'm glad that caek showed up here because "caek" is the sound my cat makes sometimes when it eats dry food too fast.

It’s an acronym for captain America Ezra Klein

copious amounts of ejaculate kink