[Certain]

NYCSPITZ: The opening line let me know where you were going with this, which is where you often go with these verses: vague, elusive, intellectualized meandering. When I was doing seeding, I was torn on whether your writing style would translate because of how deep you go into metaphor and general weirdness. But here you made clearly that you got caught up in yourself, and the lack of clarity made this verse rather unsettled. There were some very nice turns of phrase, to be sure. The couplet beginning "Time's a dyanmic dissonance" was particularly good. You gave me some things to think about but didn't seem to put the thought in yourself. Your mechanics were as strong as ever, though.

jilti: I think this verse provides a pretty good template for a safe approach in this tournament. You came up with a clever approach on the topic, used that as a twist and kept the details interesting but vague until the twist was revealed. This works better in a short-verse format for three reasons: Voters are more likely to re-read, you aren't spending a ton of time working through intentionally vague details and the closing line has more weight as one of 10 rather than one of 32 or whatever. Nothing about this verse particularly wowed me except that your approach to the topic was very clever. But you didn't fall out of step with rhyme mechanics and kept the phrasing adequate and interesting without tipping your hand. I could quibble about some of the lines with respect to the twist, but I think things like "the strap chatter was ending in violence" can be interpretted liberally to a degree. This is a solid foundation to build off.

Vote: jilti