#but in between the homoerotic tension with his high school bully

[mistysnat]

As promised my list (so far) of Toxic Obsessive Homoerotic Friendship book recs, part 1! This list is my top ten, from most favorite to not quite as favorite (but still awesome) according to my own taste. I wanted to include pictures but it was a nightmare. I will make part two as soon as I can! Please give me your recs if you have any :) A lot of these books have heavy topics so please look up trigger warnings!

1. Black Iris by Elliot Wake (formerly known as Leah Raeder and the book is under that name)

Laney, a fresh high school graduate, meets two older college students, a boy and a girl, and they form a friendship and have different dynamics between all three of them. At the same time, she’s still dealing with a boy who bullied her in high school.

2. If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

In present day, Oliver is being released from prison after being convicted of a violent crime. In the past we visit him and his close group of friends as they study at a very prestigious and exclusive Shakespeare acting academy, and learn what really happened.

3. These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

Paul meets Julien in a freshman college Criminology class and they start an intense and possibly dangerous friendship in the 1970s.

4. The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

August struggles when his childhood best friend starts having hallucinations.

5. Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

Three girls, one popular, one a rebel, and one a wallflower have tangled friendships with each other in the 1990s.

6. Underneath Everything by March Beller Paul

Mattie, a high school student, reflects on her lost friendship with her best friend, Jolene. Is it over for good or is there a possibility for friendship again in the future?

7. The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton

Laura, a high school junior attends a boarding school that was the setting of her favorite novel, and becomes obsessed with the church choir there and the very religious girl who leads them.

8. The Lightness by Emily Temple

In search of her missing father, Olivia goes to a mountain top Buddhist retreat and becomes a part of a group of girls who are obsessed with learning how to levitate.

9. Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

June is filled with grief after her childhood best friend dies. She commits herself to finding out what happened.

10. The Falling Girls by Haley Krishner

After Shade decides to join the cheerleading squad at her high school, thereby disregarding her longtime best friend’s feelings, tensions rise among all of the girls involved.

#book recs #lgbtq books #book recommendations #lgbt books #lgbt book recs #lgbtqreads #if we were villains #these violent delights #girls on fire #black iris #the world cannot give #dark academia #dark academia books #thriller books #the wicker king #underneath everything #please reblog and read them!! these books deserve the hype #you can ask me if you have questions about trigger warnings or plots

[callmeforasadtime]

#source: veep #i stand by the headcanon that daniel larusso’s headgame is immaculate #but in between the homoerotic tension with his high school bully #a full on karate war #and ptsd inducing senior citizens #where’s he gonna find the time ? #which is why i put my hand up #fuck u daniel i’ll do it if u want get outta here #SHE HAS TO DEAL WITH SO MUCH #SHE DESERVES SOME HEAD #DAILY #cobra kai #amanda larusso #incorrect quotes

[teeth-and-tea]

ANIME & MANGA I HAVE BINGED IN THE LAST MONTH: May 2021

I've Been Hunting Slimes for the Past 300 Years and Now Ive Maxed Out My Level: incredibly long name aside, cute af slice of life that suffers Same Face Syndrome. I'm still happy to watch it because of how feel good and fluffy it is though, Im probably gonna forget about it in two or three years tho. 8/10.

Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro: I found out this was a webcomic first and suddenly all the HORNINESS made so much more sense. A Femdom, Degradation, Humiliation, Dacryphilia Bullies to Lovers story disguised as a high school rom-com which, I'm not going to lie, misses SKEEVY CITY by mere inches on a regular basis. However, I'm a Dom/Switch and this entire relationship sets off my dom brain center like New York City just shy of midnight. So if you're into that sort of scene, this anime is for you. If not, it's still fascinating but you're probably gonna be a little put off by how mean the Girl!Bully is to the guy MC. Unless you find out something about yourself, in which case, congrats! Stay safe, sane, consensual, and learn about the traffic light system on top of safe words, I promise you'll have a better life in general after that. Still Ongoing, currently 10/10.

Fruits Basket: IM GONNA CRY I LOVE THIS ANIME SO MUCH???? The original anime came out when I was in... I think middle school and my parents were really strict on what I watched so I never got to experience the first wave and I never bothered to watch the show ever after I moved out of the house years later. However, now that I'm much older I honestly can say this is one of my favorite anime to date, and all the characters are charming, lovable, with their own problems that I can connect to or sympathize with, and I love the MC which is always a treat tbh. Except Akito. Akito can suck a sandpaper dick. I'm only on S2 tho so no spoilers! Anime 11/10.

Monster Girl Doctor: went in thinking it was gonna be a monster girl who's a doctor with a homoerotic assistant (her name is SAPPHY okay sue me for thinking it) and ended up watching the entire dubbed harem series. Honestly, I've seen worse and this one has consistent follow-through on interesting characters and backstory enough for me to shove aside the blatant under-monstrousness of the female monsters and the harem-ness of everything else. Dubbing is honestly really good, which is a treat, and the monster designs are not the worst and the MC is tolerable. Honestly, I don't mind having watched it! The mix of cgi and the traditional animation together work pretty strangely though, and it often doesn't flow super well. 7.5/10

So I'm a Spider, So What: Dubbed version which honestly isn't that bad. Took me a bit to get into it, but after realizing that it's got a mismatched timeline a la The Witcher, it made so much more sense. Heavily done in cgi, and you can definitely tell between the 2D and 3D animations, but not the worst in the world. I went in not expecting much but it ended up being an Issekai I can stand and even enjoy. On god has a decent story... with the spider. I'd be a liar if I didnt say I skipped some of the human parts just to get back to the best part of the show. 8/10.

Somali and the Forest Spirit: I'm so fucking nostalgic for this thing it makes me want to go and hug my dad. About a human girl under threat of being eaten with a monster-dominated world. Very obvious "humans fear what they don't understand" message but instead of the humans learning tolerance it's what happens when they get annihilated first so like, kudos for the mangaka for having the guts to do that. I cried like a baby regularly. It's really good, I watched the dub and ID WATCH IT AGAIN!!! 9/10.

To Your Eternity: Oh my god. O h my g o d. Fell in love on the first episode, ngl. About if an immortal being learned how to be a person from scratch. I love it. HOWEVER. Keep a box of tissues on you at all times because you're gonna need them. I'm only on EP7 because that's all that's out right now but just know. I love it. Not for everyone but certainly for my "what do we define as human and the human condition" ass. 12/10.

Those Snow White Notes: A sports anime without any sports. About shamisen playing which is cool because I never realized how cool this instrument was??? Its neat af. OP1&2 are by Burnout Syndrom so know theyre fire. Gonna be real, its pretty alright, but not extraordinary. You can tell they were using the characters as archetypes rather than actually characters which kinda kills a lot of the emotional value you could've had, but I'm still gonna watch it. It doesn't make me cringe as hard as other sports anime tho so I consider it toptier in that regards but if you're a big sports anime fan you might be bummed out by it. Every single musical performance is INCREDIBLE tho. A solid 8/10.

Toilet Bound Hanako-kun: THE ART OMFG IT'S SO GORGEOUS. Listen, if you took coptic markers and gave them an animation budget with some manga panel direction thrown in there, that's this anime. It's beautiful. Gorgeous. I'm in love with the aesthetic every second. Story? Really good. Characters? I love the MC and his evil little twin brother asshat. Demons? Not super imaginative but I'm carrying on happy as can be anyways. Dubbing? A bit shaky at times but I found the voices charming if a little off for some of them. I'm already waiting for the second season with popcorn at the ready. 10/10.

Prison School: I watched this directly after Hanako-kun and it was like I got slapped in the face by sweaty unwashed titties and some fedora wearing schmuck's piss kink. No character is likable or redeemable. I finished it, but at what cost? 2/10 and only because a character shit his pants and I laughed.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: watched this right after Prison School and it was NECESSARY tbh. Its so CUTE and honestly, im not even kidding you, the fucking funniest anime I've seen in months. I watched the dub and the VAs are having the time of their lives working on this anime not just giving it their all but literally just going ham. Its great. If I read this im sure id be bored outta my mind but the VAs giving it a joyous performance make it an insta fave for me tbh. 9/10.

Sk8 the Infinity: i watched the dub with my bro and I can confirm that its a spectacular show because we both loved it and we have vastly different tastes. Incredibly SUSPENSFUL AND STRESSFUL for an anime about skateboarding but we finished it in a single sitting tbh. The last episode is not dubbed for some reason but we still loved it. Like if Free! was less obnoxious but the only fan-service here is Joe ♡ a beefcake who owns my lesbian heart. I think there's exactly one named female character tho and I legit couldn't tell you what it was if there was a gun to my head. So, over all, 9.5/10.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: I'm going to be entirely honest, I went in thinking it was going to be a boring isekai of no value. I was right about the Isekai part. It was honestly pretty interesting and focused on nation building like you're playing civilization rather than the usual "Get Stronger" narrative or "Get Some Pussy" narrative most isekais take which is delightfully refreshing. Granted there are flavors of that in this which means it doesn't alienate the big isekai watchers out there, but it's not the whole dish and it doesn't make me want to cringe the same way others do. You've got a slime MC just vibing and building a nation of monsters nbd. Does lose points for making the female monsters more humanoid than their male counterparts but makes them back by only doing perfunctory fan-service and nothing that makes me want to cry... except the butt sumo episode but in fairness it was all a terrible dream. Literally, the MC refuses to dream anymore after that. solid animation, decent voice acting, decent story, made me realize how HUGE this is in the Light Novel community???? There's like 18 fucking novels and that's WILD. 8.5/10.

MANGA:

Spirit Photographer Saburo Kono: a one shot special by the mangaka of The Promised Neverland! Honestly a really delicate touch of both super creepy and really touching, and I'm not gonna lie I'm bummed that this isn't a bigger project but the single chapter makes it a good taste for their style. I've been wondering if I wanna read/watch The Promised Neverland and now I think I will. 10/10

Deranged Detective Ron Kamonohashi: from the mangaka of Hitman Reborn comes this Sherlock and Watson derivative! Not even 20 chapters out yet with a sort of spotty schedule, I honestly love it even thought it's exactly as you expect. HOWEVER. Kamonohashi the "Sherlock" character uses mental pressure to kill all confirmed murderers and it's up to Toto the "Watson" character to save all those people before Kamonohashi kills them! It's just recently introduced a "Moriarty" family of crime lords (not a big spoiler don't worry it was obvious) so the tension surrounding Ron's past is amping up rn. Personally, I think the art is GORGEOUS, the characters engaging, and the story quick enough to keep my interest. Most mysteries are solved within a chapter or two so you're not stuck 20 chapters into one locked room mystery which is just peachy tbh. RN, 10/10. If this gets an anime, I anticipate a legion of fangirls who ship the two main characters along with their many friends. I've been alive too long to believe otherwise.

Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro: Yeah I read the manga after I watched the show. A slower build than the anime, but it works for the format, if theyd done the same with the show then I don't think it wouldve done as well. Honestly? Cuter tbh but just as horny. You dont start really LEARNING about your character until like, chap 65 tho and no real "drama" happens until like 75. A good chunk of the chapters are like 8pgs so its a breeze to get through. I love these slow burn idiots of the century. 9.5/10 because you can DEFINITELY tell the mangaka does hentai too.

Yugen's All-Ghouls Homeroom: one-shot by the mangaka for Food Wars, it's no wonder there's this constant perviness from the MC, a guy who can see and exorcise spirits. Takes place at an all girl's finishing school with KICK ASS monsters tbh, kinda bummed its not longer. The MC? Blatant monsterfucker who is also a CONFRIMED monsterfucker???? Idk i vibe with that single emotion. Everything else is hit or miss. 7/10 for monsters and cool concept, lost points for the MC very pointedly being okay with admitting he'd wait for the teenagers to be adults tho. Creepy af. Could live without that.

Hell's Paradise: I finished the entire 127chps in 3 days and I was really enthusiastic about it 90% of the time thinking about how deep it was and then I actually thought about it and I ended up being very neutral about the whole thing tbh. The art is fantastic tho, but DEFINITELY deserving of the M rating. Tits. Tits everywhere. But not tits to be ecchi over, no, monster hermit tits on beautiful women-ish figures. Now generally I give that a pass but a huge theme in the story is that men and women are "no better than one or the other" but like, lady tits are what you see 99% of the time. Men tits are few and far between. I call bullshit on most of the "deep" themes is what I'm saying, so it's like the mangaka was trying for those deep thoughts but missed the margin a little too far for my preference. That being said, the MC is a married man who loves his wife which automatically makes him my favorite character so like... idk so many good things, so many misses, but overall really spectacular themes and imagery. Unique but classic all at once. It's getting an anime and I have NO IDEA how much censorship they're gonna be doing but they're going to be doing SO MUCH. Oh yeah, and one guy is a plant/human hybrid who fucks a 1000 year old plant-hermit which makes him a canon monster fucker. And one canon non-binary character who I, a nonbinary, actually like. So like... gosh I've got mixed feelings. 8.5/10.

Choujin X: From Sui Ishida, mangaka to the mega hit Tokyo Ghoul comes this brand new manga!... Of one chapter, lol. Not really binge-y because it's just the one chapter out right now but I'm already keeping my eye on it. The grasp on anatomy in the art is PHENOMENAL and you can see Ishida flexing his art skill which is great. Can't give a true rating but I'm giving it a tentative 9/10 because I'm excited to see more.

Shag&Scoob: technically not a manga, its an ongoing webcomic I binged an subscribed to in one day and I just think it deserves more attention. Starts off funny with "what if Scooby Doo had a gun" and has been led to "what if all cartoons are aliens that survive and receive their powers by the humans that love them in an epic war with Martians." On god, its good. I finished the current series in a couple hours so it's a breezy read, highly recommend it. 9/10.

To Your Eternity: Yeah I watched the anime and then finished all current 143 chapters in like 3 days. GOD IM WEAK. I don't buy physical manga unless I know I want to remember the story forever and I'm already budgeting for the current books out. Yeah, this is a good series. That being said, definitely not for the faint of heart or those who suffer under common triggers like suicide, molestation, death, etc. It's all framed as bad and necessary to the story don't get me wrong, but it's there and has lasting affects on the characters. Incredible story telling by the creator of A Silent Voice. Keep tissues nearby at all times. 12/10.

#i've been killing slimes for 300 years and maxed out my level #don't toy with me miss nagatoro #spirit photographer saburo kono #fruits basket #deranged detective ron kamonohashi #yugen's all-ghoul's homeroom #monster girl doctor #so i'm a spider so what #somali and the forest spirit #to your eternity #jigokuraku #hell's paradise #choujin x #shag and scoob #toilet bound hanako kun #prison school #sk8 the infinity #that time i got reincarnated as a slime

[imacrowcawcaw]

Banner and idea from @ao3commentoftheday 's post. I figured why fucking not post something? Maybe I'll get inspired. Plus, cool banner for my rockin fan fiction!!!

So, here are the tags and some piecemealed exerpts from a GvF high school fic I'm working on. Don't know when it will be done but I'm quite happy with it so far!

Title: Pink Rubber Bands

Pairing: Sam Kiszka/Danny Wagner (Sanny)

Characters: Sam Kiszka, Danny Wagner, Jake Kiszka, Josh Kiszka, Kiszka and Wagner clan, Original Characters (including a snarky narrator, a punk ass bully, the stereotypical awful high school teacher, and some other students)

Fandom: Greta Van Fleet (band)

Length so far: 2.6k

Goal length: 10k

Tags/warnings: fluff, humor, minor angst, Alternate Universe - High School, Greta Van Teens, tw for homophobia, tw for violence (homophobes getting their asses beat), smart ass Sam Kiszka, drama geek Josh, softie bad boy Jake, boyfriend of the year Danny, coming out, high school cliches, happy ending (as always), music, me being a music nerd through the characters in general, strong friendships, sp*rts, high school drama

Summary: Sam and Danny are best friends, closer than your usual pair. How close? Kissing close, as discovered by a cheerleader with a phone, and then the whole school in a frenzy of small-town gossip. Whoops. Adding being "the" gay couple to their list of extracurriculars wasn't exactly on their class request list, but were they going to do? Taking the newly gained attention in stride - mostly - Sam and Danny continue to navigate through their year as highschoolers and as budding rcok stars. All from the perspective of a casual class friend who suddenly gets thrown into the chaotic world of Greta Van Fleet in their teens, whether she wants new friends or not.

-----

I snickered quietly behind my hand, looking back and forth between the teacher and Sam from my seat in the back, like the rest of the class. Danny Wagner, right next to him, sunk back in his seat and practically disappeared among the tension between his best friend and the teacher -- something he seemed to be good at. Kiszka was in kind of a mood today, I could tell, and he never got along well with Mr. Rond anyways.

My personal theory was that Sam was way smarter, and he refused to bow down when Mr. Rond pulled out the teacher voice, which 40-something-with-a-mortage-and-a-half-assed-Bachelor's thought was just not okay.

Oh, and those two - Sam and Danny - seemed to be connected at the hip, like they were the twins and not Sam's older brothers. Where there was one, you could almost always find the other right next to him; and, if not together, then they always knew where the other was. Maybe they took offence at it being called out? But it was certainly handy whenever I needed to copy a few homework questions before class began. With Danny's height and Sam's laugh, I could always find the boy I needed. 

Mr. Rond continued lecturing after the door banged shut behind Sam, droning on about one of the fifty million trading tariffs the U.S. had made during its history. Now, don't get me wrong, I love history and find it very fascinating as well as knowing it's importance... "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" or something like that. But, this class had a way of sucking all the enthusiasm right out of otherwise interesting subjects that I haven't seen in any other classroom before. Maybe Mr. Rond was a vortex of boring or something (it sounded about right).

Walking to the next hall over after class, I swung my backpack to the front and rooted around in the small front pocket, looking for my ear buds. Damn! I must have forgotten them at home. So, I guess now I get to listen to the riveting discussions of my classmates talking about sneaking out, losing highlighters, and the new season of whatever Netflix thing. 

Oh, the joy. 

I then found Wagner - and Sam with him, of course - backed up against the row of army green lockers on the right side of the hall by the group of guys, scowling fiercely. The unamed-douchebag-supreme was on a homophobic tirade at the front, berating this attribute and spitting at that person and it was all a mess, especially Sam's face. No, he wasn't beat up or anything, but the rapid slideshow of expressions projecting on it was enough to give me emotional whiplash just looking at him for a second.

It sounded like someone may have had some repressed homoerotic tendencies and was feeling insecure in the face of the glorious Kiszka/Wagner hair (I am seriously jealous of both of their manes, by the way. Like, how did they get it that luscious?)

And then, as one collective, our heads all swung around to face the whistle that undoubtedly belonged to some school faculty member. 

Mr. Rond.

It was motherfucking Mr. Rond, with a finger still in his mouth like he was a dog who had eaten the homework he had passed out yesterday. 

At least five of us mumbled "Shit!" 

We all trooped into the office. The secretary waved back at me, albeit confusedly, when I smiled politely at her; I was in here every now and then for one thing or another, so most of the staff knew my face. Though, it was usually more for late slips and the copy machine, so I guess her confusion as to why I was being marched to the principal's office was understandable. 

Sam and Danny were practically cuddling on the bench next to me, by the way. Kiszka got up to get a cup of water then sat back down on thw vreaking leather. His best friend leaned his forehead against Sam's, closing his eyes and smiling a little when Sam pressed a gentle kiss to the back of his hand and whispered, "My hero." 

A door opened.

"This is the third time you've been in here today, Sam. I am NOT happy to see you.”

#tadaaaaa #work in progress #work in progress wednesday #my writing #lulucrowproductions #gvf #gvf fic #sanny #sam x danny #greta van fic #greta van fleet #fanfic #flufd #high school #high school au #sam kiszka #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #danny wagner #original characters

[prolapsarian]

‘Cat Person’ and Character-Analysis

My ill-advised tuppenceworth on 'Cat Person':

There was a peculiar history in the twentieth century in which, in psychoanalysis, the analysis of the ego turned towards an emphasis on quantitative factors (that is, towards an analysis of ego strength and ego weakness) at key moments. It happened in 1921 in 'Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego', the sister book of 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' now not amid war but instead subsequent social and economic ruin. It happened again in the writings of Reich, Fenichel, and Freud in the 1930s. Indeed, you can see a longer history of this sort of quantitative ego-analysis as significant to attempts understand the Nazi phenomenon reaching through to the late 1940s. And it appears once again in the 1970s. Needless to say, these are turns that have been made necessary - albeit through the darkest and most labyrinthine paths - by social and economic crisis. And more significantly they have come about as those economic crises have instantiated dominant social modes of the hatred of women, not so much by some abstract patriarchy but by new developments of homosociality, bound up in warriorship, male cliques and confraternities. And needless to say too that these developments have prospered in particular in circumstances of male mass-unemployment or the mass fear amongst men of unemployment. In short, this whole analytic nexus is bound up with women at work ("taking the jobs of men"), and how in periods of economic crisis masculinity can triumph through new extra-liberal communal modes of (anti-)social organisation founded on the hatred of women and violence against them, and from which women and their work is excluded. But from a psychoanalytic view, they are also stories about how these "new communal modes" are founded, in truth, on regression.

The great victory of stories like "Cat Person" - and perhaps the reason for its popularity - is that they inaugurate this question in the time of our own economic crisis - and in particular amongst a generation of men who, over the last decade, have graduated university into a collapsing economy. And although this story might speak in more lulling tones than, say, Jelinek did in the 1970s, the violent backdrop is even more extreme: one of Elliott Rodger-style massacres and the mushrooming of nasty 4chan-based chatter about a "beta uprising”, of “pick-up artistry” and the belief that being a “good guy” is the world’s best justification for being a pig in bed. That is, this story asks the crucial questions: “what are the burgeoning modes of the hatred of women amongst the male precariat? And how do they find their violent expressions?” In one particular way, the story’s diagnosis is extremely precise: in the moments in which it dwells on Robert’s fantasy of Margot’s return to a high school romance. Indeed, the present regressions in male mass culture (especially of the American variety) are founded on an almost constant return to schoolyard identifications, and the paired homoerotic sado-masochistic figures of jock and nerd. Just to add, as I will come to it in more detail, this doesn’t mean this should be responded to by a hatred of homoeroticism - which this regression will turn into; nor does it mean kids straightforwardly enjoy being bullied - and raped, symbolically or otherwise - at school; and nor is it to condemn as barbaric either childhood eroticism in general or sadomasochism. But these schoolyard identifications have been hardened by the discovery that they are already so strong that they present the perfect marketing opportunity to mass-cultural producers. This isn’t to deny that there is a long history in American film and television about the fantasy of the nerdy guy who - by dint of cunning - gets with some conventionally hot woman, who is invariably the butt of all the jokes because she is stupid, and therefore apparently deserves everything that this cunning metes out to her. That history runs from Woody Allen through to The Big Bang Theory. But this type of cultural production - by men, for men - is enormously more prevalent now than it has been at any time before, and it both produces and fulfils these regressive tendencies. They remain the most enormous source of profiteering.

I wrote this back in March on these phenomena, and my views haven’t changed so much, but it gives a more *political* view of how new forms of illiberal male violence play out in this scenario, and how the two figures find themselves bound together: “For people of my generation a lot of what is on offer in the way of websites, TV shows, music separates itself along the lines of "nerds vs jocks." Mass culture finds its market in taking sides in an enormous process of regression: marginal pre-pubescence is the scene of eternal fixation. What follows is some crude sociology: it is intriguing to see how this plays out as a collaboration between the two sides in the strains of contemporary misogyny - on the one side the Jockish Trump type, non-consensual hands everywhere, and on the other the Nerdish misogyny that has developed I guess through trends like "pick-up artistry", the hatred of women because they don't love you unconditionally. Maybe this collaboration between these two types, founded on a single type of psychic formation, marks out also the uneasy collaboration of Government and the Internet alt-right, an army of hateful hidden nerds, who think they are probably just using the likes of Trump and Bannon as avatars. But perhaps what is most striking here is the strength of self-righteousness founded on the feeling of oppression long ago, each side by the other. However much the internet warrior might have a nicely paid job and plenty of resources, he feels hard done by in a culture that seeks to perpetuate forever the violence of the school yard. He sees himself as a figure of vengeance, however little he might be oppressed. Mass culture becomes an arena in which the tensions and contradictions of something like a regressive anality are played out, in a world frozen into unambivalent sado-masochism. Be a man, be ego-weak, the TV bellows!”

Part of what has been most reported, and most interesting about Cat Person story has been the establishment of a sort of culture-war in the responses to it. What has been less spoken about, though, is how those responses have been conditioned by the complex of genitality within a mass-culture that thrives on pre-genital identification. What might in fact be the most provocative moments in this story for a lot of the men who have responded are the depictions of the failing penis: “At the end, when he was on top of her in missionary, he kept losing his erection, and every time he did he would say, aggressively, “You make my dick so hard,” as though lying about it could make it true.” What makes this so provocative is that the regressive forms of mass cultural play on the hyper-ambivalence developed in age towards one’s own pre-genital fixation within the culture. What is constantly produced and sold to and by a generation of men are sorts of cultural objects that both catch them in a homoerotic moment and then fantastically - and aggressively, violently - disavow it. This is to say, that today’s regressive male mass culture, despite being homosocial and indeed homoerotic, is at the same time very deeply homophobic. Yeah, that’s an old story from the 1930s too, but it also explains something of why a lot of people get very jumpy about it, especially when the women’s true fantasy is depicted as being with another guy who shares in laughing at the first’s failed genitality. It turns out, with that laughter, that she hates his anal fixation just as much as he does. Not that this is her fault either.

So who, in the end, is to blame? Maybe all of this sounds like a dodge too (or some verbose resistance) - no doubt it to an extent is, and the message of this little story is more straightforward: it tells men to reflect a bit, be more sensitive to how women are feeling; it adds to the perennial refrain that men need to “work on their shit.” And it does this well - I too found myself reflecting. But I worry that this also misses the mark in certain respects - and most extravagantly in its willingness to submit to the prevailing psychological doctrine that all matters of character can be exchanged for questions of behaviour. All of this, I think, raises the question of what we do about prevailing ego-weakness and its violences today. Traditionally in character-analysis the answers have been pretty poor: there is a hope - and one can read is quite clearly in late Freud - that this sort of illiberal male mass violence in crisis can be solved by the “return to work”. But here I can’t help but to think he is wrong. Yes, the experiment in the west of full-employment liberalism did, in effect, reduce the immediate power of male confraternities and armies over society, but it did this by allowing this violence to quietly return to the home, and by pushing women straight back into the unremitting violence of the home too. This is the history of the 1950s and 1960s, and it was not until the next crisis of employment that the pent up rage against it, by those women who had survived it, was able to be given some expression. Indeed, for all of its hopes of some kind of peacefulness, prevailing liberalism in periods of boom most usually simply institutes processes of social repression - privatising violence within the family - where psychological repression leaves off; while the forces of that violence remain intact. Meanwhile other solutions proffered have been “a new olympic games” (Ernst Simmel), new freer forms of communalist and more sexually free lifestyle (Reich), or simply “education” (for an Adorno immured in the post-war boom).

It seems to me that all of these answers are useless in one way or another - and that the culture does truly require a feminist response. One would hope that it would be as psychoanalytically sensitive as it is violent. I guess to invoke all of this history of character-analysis is rather unfashionable too. Not least because these sorts of arguments fell out of fashion because all sorts of terms - for very good reason - fell out of use. Things like “penis-envy” (and as I quietly have suggested here, in many ways I think this was often a misnomer for work-envy), or “repressed homosexuality”. Nonetheless, these sorts of discussions do - even deprived of vocabulary - offer some scope for addressing the problems of how the crisis of our age is rebounding into hatred and violence against women on a mass scale. In any case, basically I'm well up for a fierce critical discussion of ego-weakness and mass culture. F-Scales at the ready.