[Certain]

zygote: I can't wait to read votes and see who called your opening two stanzas "paragraph-style," even though they resemble nothing of the writing traditionally referred to as such other than the presentation and decision against line breaks. Anyway, I liked this verse quite a bit. The storytelling was, as yours often is, very straight-forward. And the story was interesting and dynamic without being high-leverage. The lack of big stakes and drama falls right into my taste preference. And I initially was concerned that perhaps the grandeur of the topic was lost in your verse, but the more I meditated on it, the more I considered your unique approach to be rather worthwhile to this topic. Moreover, this is a major moment in history for your fictional jomsvikings, surely a major moment determining the future paths for generations. My biggest qualm is that your rhyming was really spotty here, put on the backburner more than you generally do because fo the heavily pointed name references and such. But there's also the persistent issue that sometimes you are unnecessarily wordy for no reason. If you did away with that, you'd hit a new level.

Zombie: The rhyming here right out of the gate was tremendous, a staple of yours as much as zygote's storytelling is for him. But I found myself floating through your verse and coming across splashes of awesome writing inside the load of good-but-not-great writing. I loved, "what most of us don't know, is that we only exist internally" and "told by an Old Marine General that Lt. Colonels don't wear stars, but Silver Oak Leaf's." The first stanza felt detached from the rest, and I didn't think you hammered home the connection to that stanza as well as the second in your conclusion. The final stanza was money, your place to fully stretch your wings and hit the topic. I enjoyed this verse for all the same reasons I'd enjoy anything you wrote, but the past few weeks you've done a better job of making things a bit more coherent without sacrificing anything from your fascinating diction and rhyme schemes. Here, the content felt a bit strained, particularly in relation to the topic.

Vote: zygote