This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8
I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.
This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.
As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.
Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:
Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.
There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.
And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”
The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.
This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.
From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.
Ah dang to go further; the floor is framed as a refuge. As if there is literally no other space in this house that hasn't been populated by his wife with flimsy inanimate fakery. There is no space for this man in this house save for the floor. There is no space for him on the sofa, oon the counter tops, and most notably, no space for him in the marital bed.
I’d also like to point out the use of the word “has.” The wife has filled the house with chintz. She isn’t filling the house with chintz. She doesn’t fill the house with chintz. She has filled the house with chintz. Use of the past-tense makes the wife a subtly removed element in the story, someone whose presence we see in the environment, but who is blissfully distant during the actors throes of passion. There is an element of physical as well as emotional separation from the wife that is catalyzed by being fucked on the floor. Use of the past tense is an end to the wife presence in the actors life, a carnal catharsis amid cold fragility and emotional distance.
happiest of birthdays to @seducing-a-vampire !! on this most auspicious day, i have baked you a very special cake.
dana and @starwarned graced us with the concept of the "property of tyrannus: underwear in their 2021 entry to crackfest and it lives in my brain rent free. (i have no complaints.)
Property of Tyrannus (E), 3k
by @seducing-a-vampire & @starwarned
Baz is reading in the living room, and he very nearly blushes when I come out of our bedroom, starkers except for those ridiculous red pants. He clears his throat and cocks an eyebrow at me. “Bit warm, are you, Snow?”
“I feel great, actually,” I say, really laying it on thick. I walk slowly into the kitchen, Baz watching my every step. He puts down his book when I bend over to pick up a pen that I’d dropped (an actual clumsy moment, not a seduction technique).
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5 times Simon called Baz 'Tyrannus' in bed and 1 time Baz asked him to.
lstien i know simon says he wasnt trying to be seductive but like. come on. we all know whats going on here...
(To be sincere for a second: I adore both these Simons, but we changed it so that he and Baz would look closer in age and so that he would be wearing clothes he wears in the book.)
Today I’m signing the Waterstones special edition of SCATTERED SHOWERS. This is a limited signed edition. (It’s the one with the rainbow edge.)
I drove around looking for open-stock Sharpies in a color that would match the interior ink… (The interior is printed in two colors of ink — a minty teal and a purply burgundy.) I think Rocket Red is the best choice, but I’m open to Berry. I spent … a lot. Of time. On this.
(My husband hates to cut the tulips, but this week is so hot, they would have fried anyway. I talked him into bringing them in, and now I’m signing in Wonderland.)
SCATTERED SHOWERS is a collection of short stories, including characters from Fangirl, Attachments and the Simon Snow Trilogy. This is the Waterstones edition. They ship internationally. You can preorder it here.
Jamie was already sus abt the Vegas vampires… maybe it’s him and Lamb 🥰 every good Salisbury boy deserves an enemies to lovers plotline with a hot vampire
If Lamb has a million fans I am one of them. If Lamb has 10 fans I am one of them. If Lamb only has 1 fan, it is me. If Lamb has no fans it means I am gone from this earth. If the world is against Lamb then I am against the world.
Rules: List the first lines of the last ten (10) stories you published. Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.
Thank you to @captain-aralias @prettylightsbigcity @skeedelvee and @aristocratic-otter for the tags. As it happens, I have exactly 10 fics now, so I can actually do the full list! I’m a little surprised!
10. Slings and Eros
Great! O you, Muses, who create fine words, grant me, your supplicant, skillful tongue!
this fic opens with an invocation courtesy of epic poet Shepard, so also including first line of prose:
It's early when I get the summons.
9. Chamber by Chamber
Baz is squirming beneath me.
8. The Thrill of the Hunt
I’ve been doing better lately, I think.
7. It’s a Kind of Magic
I can tell it's happening almost before it does.
6. Sleeping with the Fishes
Oddly enough, Snow, that’s not the weirdest photo I’ve ever received.
this is the first text I wrote, rather than the first line of the fic, since this was co-written with @the-greater-grief. I’ll also include the first non-text line I wrote:
Simon Snow is an absolute fucking disaster.
5. Lotus-Eaters and Sirens
"Better tie you to the mast," he said, like I was Odysseus tempting fate with sirens.
4. To the Manor Borne
In the end, we wind up at Pitch Manor.
3. A Man of Letters
Dear Penny,
I know that you won't be surprised when I tell you that I do not like writing letters.
2. Use Your Words
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this.
1. At the Top of a Tower, With You
Strange that it should end here, where it all started.
I very clearly hate starting fics with any useful information unless it’s to do with setting a scene, and even that much is debatable. Short sentences, stating a fact, in the middle of a thought that won’t be explored in clarifying detail until at least the second sentence. This must be a method that works for me since it’s every single one. I think my style is usually slow build so this makes some sense.
No dialogue, except as one flashback/reflection, despite the fact that I love writing dialogue, and usually start working on potential character convos in my head prior to writing anything down. I guess this is good to know, that I’m not overly privileging dialogue.
POV-wise, we’ve got one Lucy, one Penelope, one Shepard, three Baz, and five Simon. One of those Bazes is the text fic where I’m only writing his parts, and the fic starts in Simon POV, so maybe it doesn’t count. I always feel most comfortable writing Baz, so it’s interesting to see I actually start with Simon most often, but he is our main character and most frequent canon narrator.
I will tag @the-greater-grief again and @bazzybelle @bloodiedpixie @stillmadaboutpetra @unseelieseelie @seducing-a-vampire @jasonfunderberkerthefrogexists and @snowybank to do this or to say hi or both! 🥰🥰🥰
I tear off the remains of my flannel shirt, and I don’t think about how to fly; I just think about where I want to go—Up. Away.—and it happens. It’s colder up here, so I think about being warm, and my skin starts to flicker with heat.
Baz’s house is below me now, in the distance. The fire I started is still burning; I watch the smoke pouring out of the forest, and try to move closer—but I can’t. I’m made of magic, and there’s no magic there anymore.
I hover in the sky.
I think about putting out the fire. The clouds are full of freezing rain—so I think about pushing them towards the forest, and they go.
And then I think of Baz telling me to go, so I do.
And then I stop thinking.
Chapter 72 / Carry On by @rainbowrowell
thank you @stardustasincocaine for helping me make the wings look less weird <3
also shoutout to @makohjey — your post on color theory blew my mind, and i was really excited to take your advice!
so that original story i've been sharing...yeah. supposed to be a short story. but my brain is the opposite of cath's so the world absolutely exploded to life and now it definitely needs to be a novel or a novella. thanks be to rory, korinne, lauren, and dana for helping me when i was absolutely spiraling over this <3 i love you all very much. wanna know random details of that world? i know everything about it now.
i still need a story for class, though! so i wrote a short story set in the same universe from another character's perspective. her name is glorious mayhem, and she is a sixty-year-old woman at her breaking point. as long as y'all will let me, i will continue to share original things, so here's a little bit of the old woman's story:
“I can do it. I’m ready, Ma.”
Ma.
You stand and cross the room to her in an instant, and you take her face in your hand just to keep her from running.
You are Glorious. You are Mayhem. You are the after. You are what comes home in the dark to roost.
You are your people, and your people are not Ma.
and then here's some more from the original story because ottoline is my favorite character possibly ever:
“Don’t,” you snap, and you sit up so you’re in her face. She looks confused, doesn’t she? Ha. She doesn’t understand yet. She doesn’t know that you know which side she turns for. The trouble with dating an Oracle: they know you better than you do. They see who you become before you’ve even thought about your own becoming. “Just…don’t.”
She tries again. Because she knows you better than you know yourself too, but it’s only because she loves you. “Ottie—”
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
