kitsey, kitsey, kitsey!

kinnie diary 19 admirer of femininity. (gender)queer black androgyne

[clarawinnie]

16 frame shooting star animation. January 2022-September 2024 Needlepoint

Frames from my shooting star gif. 16 frames total. Each frame is 8x6.5 inches on a 10” mesh. Designed and animated in photoshop and needlepointed by me. I started drafting this 1/14/22 and finished animating it 9/25/24. It took approximately two years and eight months to finish. This is one of the largest projects I’ve ever worked on and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

[mankillercalledbunny]

NEEDLEPOINT????

[hexjulia]

some pdfs are dusty. this is a fact despite their lack of physicality. you understand

[daydrinking75]

so like we all agree bunnys neurodivergent right

[dias-artistry]

Still life oil painting assignment (finished 9/26/24)

[papenesque]

a much-needed deep-dive into donna tartt's female characters

sometimes i see posts that commend the queerness of tsh and mmmm. there's a lot to unpack there. so let's begin.

tartt herself said the protagonist of TSH had to be a man because had it been a woman, "there would be the question, "Is she doing this because she’s attracted to [henry]? [...] There had to be no question, a way to keep it a purely moral decision and that was the territory of the novel. My main character had to be male."

yess donna tartt our queen internalise that misogyny!!!!

i hate this <3 and honestly, it really affects the moral weight of the book to me. for years, i've been discussing with people trying to find the role of camilla in the novel, and i remember saying years ago, 'either this is some really big brain move that highlights camilla and actually makes her point of view so much more important when analysing the book...or it's internalised misogyny.' im disappointed it was the latter.

this quote has turned me off almost entirely from tartt as an author and thinker. i think she has a shallow view of women. let's do a deep-dive (from TGF and TSH bc i'm currently reading TLF but haven't finished!):

Camilla Macaulay: the only woman in the greek class. has arguably the least lines and is most notable for her resemblance to and abuse at the hands of, Charles. the fact she's a twin i find very interesting, it's like an almost biblical sexism, like she was pulled from charles' rib and created as a counterbalance to explore richard's homosexuality (as the argument most make for this is 1. his encounters with francis and 2. how richard is most attracted to camilla's masculine/boyish elements, ergo her resemblance to charles). i argue camilla's role in the novel is akin to the role of (human) women in ancient greek mythos. she's madeline miller's interpretation of briseis in SOA, something that gets in the way of the novel's satisfying homosexuality. she's a kind of war prize, a cause for conflict between every character. she's beautiful, yes, and that's it. never is her intelligence or academic merit mentioned because it doesn't matter.

Judy Poovey: depicted as vapid and vacuous. yes, it's to depict the average uni student and one could very much argue cloke's depiction is the same, but the point i'm striving to make is that the plot relevance of the male characters absolutely outweighs that of the female. again, her intention is to highlight elements in richard; juxtaposed against the normal, hilton-esque cunty cocaine strawberry girl, of course richard's behaviours seem more insane, especially imagining them in a uni dorm bathroom, she getting ready for a houseparty, and he, for an ancient dionysian bacchanal.

(leading me nicely onto) Xandra: you're simply meant to dislike her. there is madonna (theo's mother) and there is the whore (Xandra). she's the exact textual foil and a literal replacement of theo's mother and she embodies that same hot pink tackiness that is the complete antithesis of academic sensibility. her general vibe is meant to evoke images of the working class, of a lack of decorum, as intruding. she intrudes on theo's life as she does on the novel's aesthetic integrity, a complete subversion of the dark brown antiques and the high-class "real" stuff.

Kitsey: it's getting boring, tartt...can be argued as vacuous, again, you're meant to dislike her (she cheats on theo and their wedding bears significance as the killer of the possibility of a romantic future between theo and boris). just another woman who 'gets in the way'. her name is also a homophone of 'kitschy', as in art and objects that are seen as lacking decorum--the very opposite of theo's biggest interest: antiques and aesthetic apotheosis.

there's the ones im not even bothered to cook too, pippa (love interest. camilla vibes--halts the romance between boris and theo), marion, depicted as irritating, kotku, who groomed boris, mona beale? sophie dearbold? laura stoker? am i forgetting anyone?

so this evidence with the combination of the above quote makes me inclined to believe donna tartt is pretty far from a feminist. which is not good guys! people talk about how tartt probably clenching her fists and facepalming at seeing us make DA/TSH pinterest boards but uhh. She did it first actually. us making TSH boards is the equivalent of donna tartt fucking writing TSH, because the book is a romanticisation of classism, sure, but specifically of masculinity. feminists are facepalming at tartt. as we put the greek class on a pedestal (esp henry winter), tartt puts men in academia on a pedestal also, so much so that she can't imagine a novel not centering on a man and a man's issues as bearing moral weight enough to support what i imagine she considered to be a modern epic.

tartt's got a pretty shallow view of women and just how i don't support novels being long to 'reflect the boring and painstaking length of day-to-day life (see crime and punishment)', i don't support philosophy or moral superiority as an excuse for writing poor female characters.

[papenesque]

Hmm. It would appear my intense lack of maternal affection and my being flogged as a child has given me an extreme lust for pain and borderline personality disorder.

[variegated-fairywren]

wlw tumblr post notes simulator

[papenesque]

so true acc. and to me this is quite victorian, the sanitisation of women's sexuality. it's also just belittling and infantilising lol like women can be and are horny. VERY much so lol.

it's just shame that causes this lol, the shame at feeling sexual attraction towards a woman as a woman (or anything but a man) and the need to distinguish oneself from the genuinely gross men. but this actually contributes more to the objectification of women bc it implies (LIKE THE VICTORIANS AND BEFORE) that women quite literally have no libido. rejkejdjs i want to have nasty freaky sex with a woman and that does not compromise my love for them lmfao

[annabelle--cane]

victor frankenstein had post partum depression

[cosmic-terrestrial]

ever since I was a young lad I knew I wanted to be a middle-aged man with an undone tie around his neck who’s having a crisis so he goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face only to look up at himself in the mirror and wonder at the stranger looking back

[papenesque]

the thought of being stupidly overeducated but my partner being smarter/the only one who can match my intelligence rrwarjfjrjek i crave the sensation of having someone so much better than me as my life partner. to become world-renowned in my field, to become a master at something but be constantly humbled by the knowledge i'll always be no.2, never as good as them.

i want to be the second best in the world in everything i do, and marry the person who's the first.

there's something so maddeningly alluring about a one-sided rivalry. idk, the thought of knowing thousands of useless, esoteric facts, and being with someone who's always got a fact or comment to accompany that. i chime in with latin, they finish the quote in ancient greek. a snarky comment in amharic always returned by some saucy riposte in swahili. insane scores in scrabble that only they can beat. idk it's a raison d'etre, an impetus to do better, be better.

is this a form of self-sabotage idk like share and subscribe & remember to hit the slag button

[papenesque]

RAAA I MISS BEING IN LOVE I AM A HIGHER QUALITY PERSON WHEN I HAVE A GOD TO WORSHIP!!!!

i want to devote my whole life to capturing the essence and life of my someone. i want to agonise over every stroke, mix paint with surgical precision, spend my every waking hour hard at work at the impossible task of translating perfection onto the canvas. and i want to be told it's not good enough. posterity won't see how many times i split, how many arguments birthed from this insane pursuit of mine, how many times i sulked because they said the nose was too big or the eyes misaligned, no. have you ever seen preliminary sketches of the mona lisa? da vinci's thousands of failed sketches? no!! posterity will only see the final product, the masterpiece i created from the masterpiece that is you.

this ridiculous sisyphean struggle, erotic in its impossibility. it's daft and masochistic but i want it sooo bad

[papenesque]

i'm gonna have a bpd rant

the actually bpd tag is a fucking mess. it's a self-harm melancholic echo-chamber with a constant stream of high-octane trigger content. everyone's repeating horrible sentiments about how they'll never be good enough, how their fp doesn't care/love them back, etc.

we're all sick and making each other sicker. invest in a journal, god please!! and don't utilise it as a medium for self-harm!!! don't do it!! BE NICE TO URSELF 😭😭😭

it's okay to talk about one's hardships every once in a while sure, but when the ENTIRE tag is just trigger content designed to further the incorrect overly negative sentiments in one's head, that harms not only you, but other people. imagine having a breakdown/feeling shitty about yourself and then the first thing you read when you open tumblr is "they don't love you as much as you love them" like ?? 😭😭 ofc blocking the tag is an option but idk this is supposed to be a community?

idk i actually dont mind having bpd ! its such a large part of my fabric, so tightly woven into the creation that is me that i couldn't imagine any other way. life without an fp feels like genuine hell and yes i struggle deeply with self-sabotage, don't get me wrong, but I WANT TO GET BETTER. i AM getting better. life with bpd does not mean a life locked to sadness and one-sided love. it means a life with potential, like every life. we as a community need to start sharing sentiments about improving one's self, loving one's self. and the actually-bpd tag makes that insanely difficult because the norm is sadness, the baseline is nihilism. we need to like not do that.

i promise you're amazing. i promise your fp doesn't think any of the horrible things your mind brews up. you'll find love & every day is a new day where the sun rises and the moon sinks in their never-ending waltz ok it's gonna be ok 😭🫶

[drifting-bones]

i love when i warn people over and over and over again that i have "ugly" symptoms of my mental disorders and that i won't always be easy to deal with and they assure me it's okay and it can't be that bad and say all these nice things then fuck off and leave when things start to get tough. cute.

[papenesque]

tik tok ill never forgive you for romanticising bpd

[theoptia]

Simone de Beauvoir, from Letters to Sartre; September, 1938

Text ID: I love you, with a touch of tragedy and quite madly.

[papenesque]

One hand held to me and the other to Kitsey, but that beautiful smile—I would never forget it—had been all for me...All summer long I had been practically delirious: tingling, daffy, energized, running on gin and shrimp cocktail and the invigorating whock of tennis balls. And all I could think was Kitsey, Kitsey, Kitsey!

donna tartt, the goldfinch (2013)

[papenesque]

hello i would like to hold someone and be looked at with devotion reserved only for god i would like to be a god in someone's eyes send tweet

[papenesque]

one thing about the iliad that i love is how vague the descriptors are. you read a victorian novel and it's all "she was terribly handsome, with a full women's bust and rosy cheeks and pale skin" whereas the iliad simply describes "beautiful eëriboia"; "golden-haired demeter"; "divine Aphrodite". it says a lot about images of beauty and where that's gone — where 19th century novels want you to imagine The Perfect Victorian Woman, the iliad allows you to imagine what the most beautiful person is to you. and then they repeat it. of course for mnemonic purposes, but i find it's such a simple, interesting way of characterisation.

for example, the connections between hera and helen are made by action, but also by them sharing the same descriptor, in my translation it's "white-armed." it's more subtle than them saying "godlike" as they do for agamemnon. when hearing it again one thinks 'where have i heard that before...' then when hera is mentioned again one thinks 'there it is again! that word!' and the two blend together. i think that is absolutely gorjus