[Certain]

timeless: You really got lost here, and we got lost with you. I think you had a point to make about governance, but that middle stanza threw it away because your image of this strange hostile world takeover attempt was really unclear and underdeveloped. It's like you couldn't decide whether to go all-in on the narrative or use the narrative as a metaphor inside this greater piece, and that indecision left the narrative too large and undercooked. There also were more awkward rhymes than I've seen from you in the past week, partially because the content was so out-of-the-box. But what I liked was the point you made in the final stanza, which I thought worked well in the context of the topic. Writing about politics was a bit easy this week, though.

Adonis: I'm not about these gimmicks, so I'm going to judge your verse as though those word choices were not meant to reflect members of our league. Most of them work, though the Zombie namedrop was very forced. The theme of this verse was very straight-forward (as expected given your use of a a gmmick). But some of the writing, especially toward the end, was good. I didn't care for the beginning, as the namedrops were all forced to a degree early on and the content wasn't in focus. But there were some spots where the writing simply wasn't enough, like using "tunnel" twice in a couplet seemingly more from sloppiness than intent. Ultimately this verse didn't feel as polished as your best work, and your ambition (aside from the corny gimmick) was not as grand as your opponent's.

Vote: timeless