[oats]

Cake: there's an undercurrent of nostalgic yearning en route to detachment that the voice is marinated in. it was sad, but not sentimental, and it reflects the melancholy of growing up/the understanding that the YOLO brah of our youth is fading away. I don't think anyone else here could capture that feeling nearly as well as you did here - lines like the nothing matters/everything does and my favorite "I've had moments that lasted my entire life up to now" were home runs. This is one of my favorite verses from you, up there with the Hipster one for sure, looks like the time off really helped.

Nyc: this took me a few reads to really get into it, but it's hard not to enjoy the fanciful storytelling of the journey of a kidney stone, born in the womb of the kidney from the hosts' voracious drinking of spirits (of 7). There were flashes of humor - both highbrow and slapstick (idk why the "dick mad tight" line was so funny to me) - as well as moments of almost mystic descriptiveness. If I were to pick a nit, I'd say it could have cool to have some sort of ending that generalizes that idea of a life coming full circle, felt like a bit of a missed opportunity, but the final line is excellent as is.

Vote: This is probably BOTW, it's not easy to discern which, if either, were better than the other. I think NY's rhyming was stronger, but Cake's diction and language were better. It comes down to an existentialist meditation on growing out of adolescence and a comical story about the life and times of a kidney stone. It's hard to choose, but I gotta give it to Pancake for engaging me more with his subject matter. Great battle.