[Split Eight]

I agree with this sentiment, but believe that the idea was to maybe make people a little less reluctant to write by allowing more creative freedom

Not to mention- for as much as we collectively demand quality, challenging topics-- I think that "how well did each competitor write to the topic" is VERY often overlooked in favor of "which competitor wrote better and did they also mention the topic in passing"

Like, if you clearly repurpose an old verse everyone jumps all over it. But it's completely binary, like as soon as you *scrape* the surface of the topic the main voting criteria suddenly becomes heavily weighted towards everything BUT connection to the topic

It's like people want us to enforce the idea that writing to the topic is important because it eliminates voter bias/ skill mismatches, but then outwriting your opponent is all about showmanship and we as voters allow that to happen

It works both ways. People rarely write strictly to the topics because creative leeway gives them a competitive edge

This is why I think picture topics are superior. There are many ways to interpret them, you can incorporate them as the entirety of your story or a brief scene, and it's glaringly obvious if you grabbed something from the archives