So this "cat person" new yorker story that's going viral

I too expected a literal cat person :frowning:

or just more realistic? it’s cold reality that an out-of-shape body can be a turn-off, some people can overlook it if they really like someone. i say this as someone who has a hideous body shape tbqh.

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tbf physical shortcomings of any kind are used as shorthand for personality defects in so much art it’s a bit cringe in 2017. dont think thats why robert is fat tho.

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I pay £120 a year to have The New Yorker delivered through the letterbox. Haven’t read it yet, but when I do my opinion will be better than yours.

Use to be £80, then sterling tanked after the Brexit vote. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to hate Johnson and Farage.

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“I don’t understand why people are treating it like a polemic that they’re meant to take a clear lesson from.”

this - it’s like people don’t really understand what fiction is

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New Star Wars film out this week.

there’s nowt wrong with jar-jar’s face.

chuds are pushing the fatphobic angle online

I don’t think that the story is fatphobic (as you say, just because a character is, doesn’t mean that the writer is), but some of the gleeful responses to it have been.

It’s also a convenient label to sling at the piece if you don’t want to engage with what it’s saying, too.

Yeah but if you feel like “the baddie” in a story like this hits a bit too close to home you’re going to clutch at whatever you can to deflect. So the chuds have picked accusations of body shaming and misandry as the go to this time around.

BUT does the way someone reacts at the end of a relationship for whatever reason, dictate who they are/could have been as a person for the entire relationship?

Also she really wasn’t very nice and handled it really immaturely. Letting her friend send a blunt message to end a relationship, telling everyone about how bad he was in bed etc.

Basically neither of them come out of this looking amazing.

Still don’t get why everyones losing their shit over it.

Tried to give it a second go
Sorry, nope

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the way he acts does really. her, not so much

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Why do you say that?
(genuine q)

Nor do I, hence my second point… that I’ve got a feeling (obviously with no evidence) that many people taking that view are using it as a stick to beat the writer with to avoid addressing other points.

Exactly. The story would not have been as relatable or perceptive had the characters not been so unremarkable.

(I may have gotten confused with my double negatives there)

I think it’d be helpful to distinguish between stories with intentionally morally ambiguous characters and stories that have unlikeable characters because of bad writing. This falls into the former I should think.

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Shush Ruffers the grownups are talking now

I don’t see any.

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hes 32 and starts being a total creep at the end and calls her a whore, someone doing that is bound to make you think twice about how theyve acted the whole rest of the time youve known them surely? and shes 20 and a bit daft making her pal text him to say shes not that into him but theres the whole uncomfortableness of her feeling obliged to shag him after shes started having second thoughts when she gets back to his. the whole thing is an uncomfortable read. i thought it was good, like. just despair at the idea people (men) are trying to reframe it as a fatphobic thing just coz she talks about his belly a bit

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