Mr J - Loved the flow to this piece, the rhyme placement is on point so that helps the flow leaps and bounds, always seeming to throw a rhyme in where needed without convoluting the entire thing. The misspellings weren't really a big deal for me, however, I'm not a fan of rhyming the same word in multies and nearer the beginning you used "great" twice, with musician and instrument which may only seem a minor thing, but it was big enough to be noticeable to me on first read. Maybe i'm just hypercritical? Maybe. But, since the votes are cast on my opinion, there it is. Personally I don't like that, you had lines in there I liked such as:
take our pride and bottle it. sell it back dried of sponsorship
but around them, there was a lot of vague ideas or imagery (vividlyvague ones, heh?) that really didn't do you justice here. You've a lot of potential, but this came off rushed as I read it, a lot of rhymes felt forced towards the latter end of this one. This section near the end was nowhere near as clean as you've come before:
Hoping chance would bless us so we could grow close at last
exposed to trash a evil that has me cloaked. broke and damp
wet behind the ears as they all try to soak and gloat and laugh
like they lived the life I had...luck put them there with no advance
Maybe you were rushed due to 'computer difficulties'? Who knows. This wasn't your finest hour.
vividlyvague reminds me of Dic in ya eye, real similar style in approach, and first off that's a compliment. The style is really similar, to me at least, from the elipses between verses to how you pulled the story together. I think Mr. J's ended stronger, even though i'd have preferred him to do something other than quote the fugees line, but vague lived up to his name in so far as the overall plot. it didn't feel developed anywhere near enough, despite the length, there was a lot to do here regarding character development and even dialogue between characters, it all felt a bit wooden, one dimensional, not fleshed out enough - which is surprising given his line length really.
Overall I think Mr. J was rushed this week, but the better writer of these two, where as VV had the more complete piece but wasn't as good a writer mechanically to really grab me as a reader and make me care about the characters he was building up. It really is that scenario for me here, and I hate saying personal preference, there are probably a lot who'll be put off by VV's length and wont read this when they should.
I'm going to vote for VV this week but not for the reasons some might think, this is odd to me, Mr. J was the better writer of the two IMHO. The more enjoyable, with better schematics and mechanics to his verse, BUT he didn't seem to put forth the effort that VV had to his joint and in my opinion that's what this league is all about... Making yourself a better person/writer... so I'm going to go ahead and give VV the win here despite feeling that Mr. J came with it more.
take my vote for what you will.
100% real with it.
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