cat person

I don’t get treeship’s gripe at all

Why does this story keep reading itself to me??

treeship sure has a lot of pronouncements to make about this story
it just distilled a lot of feelings people had been talking about anyway.
maybe those feelings needed to be distilled in fiction that (apparently) makes people uncomfortable in order for us to talk about them more honestly

because it read like a (very well written) version of confessional literature of the type that used to be published on Thought Catalog.

The story starts in third person narration!

pfft, mere minor details

i dunno if thought catalog and ‘well-written’ have ever been used in the same sentence

For me it consistently brings to mind Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates.

the stakes aren't quite the same but the sense of creeping awareness and then the facade drops and the ugliness just emerges at the end

version of confessional literature of the type that used to be published on Thought Catalog.

lord this was WAY better than the shit on thought catalog lol

btw i thought it was great, felt very real, robert was too real tbh

xp -- re: JCO - i read where are you going, where have you been in high school english class
we even watched the movie with laura dern -- iirc it was good!

Yes good movie! Laura Dern was so good. My first exposure to Treat Williams!

i was kind of wondering why i hadn't seen any compare/contrast with Looking for Mr Goodbar
one thinkpiece i skimmed mentioned Erica Jong/Fear of Flying which I also thought was an interesting comparison

WAYG, WHYB is a much better story imo. It's genuinely terrifying for a start, and it deals with genuine predation

I guess we can have both though

I think Robert is supposed to be an MRA/pickup artist type, not an everyman. From the beginning he is always putting the narrator down or else ignoring or belittling her. He never takes a genuine interest in her life, to the point where it seems calculated. In each of their interactions, his first priority is to protect his ego. He’s more pitiable than loathsome, though he is that too. People like that — closed off, cruel people — are not even truly alive. You can’t imagine him loving anyone. The fact that there is a cottage industry training people to be like that is, you know, horrifying.

Any man can become like Robert in the sense that everyone is capable of killing the best parts of themselves, but he is really far gone in my view. There are people like him, and they are legion, but there is nothing ordinary about this pathological sort of existence no matter how common it is.

― treeship 2, Monday, December 11, 2017 9:24 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i strongly disagree. robert seemed like a pretty average insecure self-loathing dude w/ a pretty typical misogynist sense of entitlement. maybe ripe for an mra/pua conversion but not much more than any regular dude

I'm not sure Cat Person isn't its own kind of terrifying...

I guess we can have both though

cat person is definitely its own kind of scary. not cautionary life-at-risk scary but "you are in treacherous emotional territory" scary -- it's hard to know what the fallout of their encounter will be for either of them with the abrupt ending, and it seems to invite speculation.

does anyone else know Looking for Mr Goodbar?

Spoiler: protagonist gets brutally murdered after taking a guy home from a bar.

dude treeship2, this is just what a lot of dudes are like, i'm afraid......

we also already went over this
treeship is wrong

i strongly disagree. robert seemed like a pretty average insecure self-loathing dude w/ a pretty typical misogynist sense of entitlement. maybe ripe for an mra/pua conversion but not much more than any regular dude

― marcos, Thursday, 21 December 2017 16:00 (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do you think ilx has an accurate outlook of what a normal dude is like

oh fuck off

you're a big ball of bad faith, dmac

Tsk tsk

i strongly disagree. robert seemed like a pretty average insecure self-loathing dude w/ a pretty typical misogynist sense of entitlement. maybe ripe for an mra/pua conversion but not much more than any regular dude

― marcos, Thursday, 21 December 2017 16:00 (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do you think ilx has an accurate outlook of what a normal dude is like

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Thursday, December 21, 2017 11:15 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can't speak for "ilx" but robert's misogyny seemed pretty garden variety to me idk

hee hee ‘big ball’

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!

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, December 11, 2017 11:26 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is very otm

and LL u are right you all did talk about this already i dont mean to make everyone hash it all out again

dmac starting off my "friday" fresh

was watching the Netflix series Love, in which the Gillian Jacobs character’s ex calls her “whore” on two separate occasions, recently and thought about the discussion here about this story. She takes offense, of course, but she’s not surprised. the character reads as scary-angry, but not in a way that casts him out of polite society at all. gotta say I wouldn’t blink if a dude said that to me after a date. I certainly haven’t when street harassers switch from complimentary intrusive comments to “bitch” or “whore” when I didn’t respond in the way I guess they thought I should.

all of this is a long way of saying La Lechera otm

^^^i think this is similar to WAYG, WHYB. in that story she's a girl who's moving towards adulthood and at the same time is exposed to the danger that comes from the wrong type of man, in this one she's a vv young woman who has perhaps one of her first exposures to the arbitrary nastiness men can show to women when things don't go their way, or when they feel spurned as opposed to being the ones who do the spurning. i guess the primary difference in this one is it's perhaps the first (or the nastiest to date) example for this character of what she'll have to deal with for the rest of her life w/men. one story ends with a knife, another with a deep paper cut, the first of a thousand.

xposts

also tbf i am afraid of men and when I was single i hid in my house most of the time sooooo I might not be a representative sample in terms of my expectation of hearing a gendered slur after a date.

it's totally normal imo and during this thread's initial cycle i repeatedly closed tabs containing gis results for "queen gertrude gif"

(in response to various forms of the "his portrayal went too far" take)

so over this story tho lol, not its fault, or anyone individually else's really

lol Hamlet is the ur-Robert

the funeral red vines will coldly... nah gonna face it i got nothing.

(btw people do buy red vines, all the time; in my art theater experience they might be the most popular concession stand candy. had hoped to feel superior to the workshopped nyer writer over this detail in kind of an elmore leonard beat of the street way but then i remembered flirting isn't something you do because it's true)

saw the author got a SEVEN FIGURE book deal, well deserved imo for writing the first ever short story that went viral

i didn't find robert exceptionally toxic or misogynist. perhaps mra-leaning, but not really. he was sadly familiar and common asshole, his misogyny garden variety as marcos said.

ok i have a question about the reaction to the story when it blew up: saw a lot of people saying "NOO! Don't you see?? BOTH characters are loathsome." --- wtf? the girl is 20. 20!!!!!!!!! idk how you could interpret her words or her decisions as loathsome, she's a fucking college kid. idk what you could question her for, if it's going home with or falling in a crush high with this schmuck dude, ... she's a kid... come on. anyway i should look up these criticisms, which will be difficult, because they were tweets.

yeah the protagonist is maybe a bit naive and just, you know, young. she doesn't read the warning signs that robert is a prick, which imo are there the whole time. but that's hardly something to dislike her for or think she's an asshole

i like the part where her friends hustle her out of the bar and she thinks, am i being a mean girl? but i do feel sick and scared tho. thought that part was working on a much higher level than "they both suck" or even than "they both behave hurtfully"

i think there's something very subtly terrifying (and even moving!) about that seemingly minor moment bc it's both pretty universal in the experiences of women, i think, and it shows how sometimes you have to follow instincts and gtfo of there. terrifying in the sense that women sometimes feel the need to escape men even in seemingly minor social interactions (not just extract themselves from a conversation but leave a building) and moving in how her friends are there to protect her. i'd need to reread it to get more details. i'm also speaking from a male perspective, so i'm not sure how much my take here holds up.

xxp yeah the warning signs are there from the get go. but again, she's 20. she had a crush high. having a crush totally warps and narrows your vision, no matter the age, but especially when you're that young

i like the part where her friends hustle her out of the bar and she thinks, am i being a mean girl? but i do feel sick and scared tho. thought that part was working on a much higher level than "they both suck" or even than "they both behave hurtfully"

Right, that was great, and very real. she's figuring out how to live, how to interact, how to date. everyone knows that shit is often excruciating and confusing and very hard.

i gotta find these criticisms i saw bc wtf... now that i think about it, they might've been criticisms from people that are around the narrator's age

i would not underestimate her decision making capabilities on account of her age. i remember myself at 20. "college kid" is somewhat infantilizing imo.

I didn’t actually see the “they’re both awful!” reactions; was that about the moments, during sex, when she reacted poorly to his body? some corners of the internet seemed not to read that part of the story particularly skillfully.

she does seem narcissistic in moments, and I think she is, on purpose, not partic heroic or Mary Sue-ish. some people really want fictional characters to be “likable,” esp if they’re women.

the creepiest thing this guy did was go to the same bar she hangs out at (uni bar)

also the "signs" were only there bc she ended up not liking the guy

plenty of women and men wierdos that love each others' weirdness out there

he got an underage woman drink in order to fuck her. not entirely uncreepy.

saw the author got a SEVEN FIGURE book deal, well deserved imo for writing the first ever short story that went viral

― flappy bird, Thursday, December 21, 2017 12:41 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these numbers are always fake tho right, if she sells a million books then theyll give her the a million dollars, a publicity stunt

i'm not sure bc i didn't want to spoil the story- just remember seeing lots of people saying both characters were loathsome.

i would not underestimate her decision making capabilities on account of her age. i remember myself at 20. "college kid" is somewhat infantilizing imo.

college is infantilizing (at least ime- i'm 25). i don't think she's stupid or makes any obviously bad decisions- again, crush high- but at that age you're learning how to be an adult in the 'real world' for lack of a better word. the mistakes she made, not reading this guy's asshole behavior, she's learning how to live. that's what i meant- at 20, people generally have v little life experience, especially in dating/hooking up. it's not a putdown on her, it's a fact of life for many people that age now.