[Certain]

Flo Real: I really enjoyed your approach, particularly in the more back-and-forth sections. There were a few stumbling blocks in the middle, when you gave each character a larger chunk of lines to convey points. It sort of stalled the concept a bit, but I think it was necessary. The flow also was a bit all over the place, an issue whenever extended dialogue is relied on. The rhymes were simple and infrequent. Still, this is a major improvement over your last verse, and I think the reason is because along with having more time, you had a clear idea with what you were doing. The ending brought a wide smile to my face, not quite laugh-out-loud funny but good nonetheless.

Adonis: This is an unusually dense (not in the insulting way) verse. There are so many different things to latch on to, but there also are so many puzzle pieces floating around the board that require deconstruction and further thought. I read your verse once last night and twice today, and I'm still not sure I've got all the pieces in the right spots. With that said, I think it's reasonable for me to say this could have been stripped down a bit. The introduction could have been pulled back in order to further the second half. Or you could have just added more to the second half. There were things that could have been omitted simply because they slowed down the story a bit, not because they were bad. I think that's where I fall on this verse: There was too much going on here, even though none of it was bad. The originality of the actual story line was great, and on the strength of that you could have easily won this battle. But the backstory, the story behind the story, took too long to develop. Random question: Did you choose the name James Halton IV as your alien/humanoid overlord for any particularly reason? I searched it on Google and came up only with a Soundclick page for a rapper named Catastrophe, which was weird unless it's your name.

Vote: Flo Real
I'm going to go ahead and take my explanation one step further than I normally do because this vote was so difficult. Generally speaking, I prefer stripped-down narratives and human stories. I read Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides. There's no question Adonis' verse featured more ambition, and there were sections of standout phrasing that were particularly impressive. But I think there's something to be said for a more direct approach. Flo Real had some fun with his verse and hit the topic pretty directly while throwing in the dialogue twist to avoid seeming too obvious. I don't know who will win, but I hope you get plenty of votes because this battle is so difficult and close. I think the votes almost could serve as a defining statement on what we expect from topical writing. So I really want you both to know that I stressed myself out over this vote and have no idea what anyone else will say about this battle and could easily imagine everyone else saying I'm fucking crazy and the winner was obviously Flo Real or Adonis and it wasn't even close.