Two very different approaches here, but one stood out more than the other to me.
Cashius, you managed to put together a good story but there are some things that didn't resonate well and others that did. First off, mechanically, you were pretty solid, and this read fairly smoothly. I liked some of your play on words but you also had some bad ones. What really took away from this being a very well written piece is the content & direction. You had some lines that could have been written much better in the sense to bring more imagery and life rather than being simple phrases that just... rhyme. And there are parts that read more like swag & flow than a topical, and this outweighed the few that actually synced well together. What is a bigger downfall for me though, is the ending part. Where it just came about rather than having some sort of back drop to what made the woman do what she did. On top of that, that ending reads off more of from the man's perspective, which I believe a different voice should have been used, perhaps the woman to enhance it, IMO, or a narrator, it could have better made up for that unfinished plot to that ending. I thought your story as a whole was put together and flowed nicely, but those hiccups kept it from being even better.
Bags, I remember back in the topical league on the original netcees reading some of your pieces, and I feel you had a bit of an advantage coming into this one. I always felt you brought a fresh style, very unique from everyone else, though, it has it's bumps like in this piece here, but where Cashius lacked, you gained. Firstly, I wasn't feeling the "I bus yo head trick". I know it's your idea to how you wanted to open, but maybe you could have done it in a way that would mesh well with your story, which I feel was conceptually on a high level. I have a thing for "dreams" and when I have opportunities to write a story that I can use that realm, I go for it. And I liked what you did here. The guy uses "dreaming" as his escape from his reality, living with this woman named Doris I suppose, who he apparently loves & hates, hate more so than love. I liked how you disguised it though, this concept of him dreaming, because instead of showing what he is dreaming about, you describe his feelings towards this Doris, which I thought is pretty creative. Your piece flowed just as well as Cashius' but I feel your concept and creativity here was better. You also had some wording that could have been done differently just like your opponent where it seemed for swag & flow, but there wasn't much of that once you get into the meat of the story. You could be hit and miss with topicals but here was one of your better pieces.
All in all, Cashius told the more rounded story from beginning to end, but I felt that it was missing the creativity, especially conceptually as Bags piece was. The ending was the main fault whereas while the opening and ending parts of Bags story wasn't really necessary, everything was put together very nicely & I liked the creative direction more so than the basic storytelling from Cashius side of the fence.
MVGT: Bags. Good job by both competitors.
|