[Certain]

Just Write: You had a good general idea here, but it needed more development. You start with the day before Freddy comes home, and you never get to the day Freddy comes home. That was a bit of a disappointment. There were a lot of ancillary details of various levels of interest. The writing was exceedingly straightforward, distractingly so. It was tough to place the narrator because of it. And this story didn't make much sense the more I thought about it. Everything was written in past tense. When did the teacher inform our narrator about his brother's actual reason for going away? Also, in what world does a kid who accidentally kills his father get sent away to prison for a long time? When you're writing something this straightforwardly, you need to be very clear and deliberate about these kinds of developments. Also, the rhymes weren't very good, mostly simple and often single-syllable. In execution, this was one of the worst verses I've read from you, and you know I'm a fan of your writing, particularly storytelling. I think you had something here but didn't put the pieces together quite right and consider your approach closely enough.

oats: Your writing far outstriped your content. The depth of the rhyme scheme was impressive, and none of those rhymes were forced. The voice of the narration was very easy-going and understood, not nearly as serious or unhuman as most terrorism-themed verses tend to be. You made our bomber a real person, a person who made the same kinds of decisions we would make. That was appreciated because I've read so many fucking terrorism-themed topical verses that inherently the plot points were trite. The sense of humor really is what won it for you, with the Super Bowl line and the sandwich line and the other stuff. It could have been tightened a bit in the early going to then allow a little more imagery and exposition on that key scene. I wish you would have incorporated the Clockwork Orange T-shirt at least a little bit, but Just Write's verse was far less directly related to the topic, so that didn't affect your standing here. You won because you told your story better and your story made more sense, even if your idea wasn't ambitious.

Vote: oats