[Inno]

Razah: Always great to have the flow god back in the AOWL haha! The 'always stable as a heap of leaves' line was great, I liked the imagery and the idea (mainly because of the irony in it not being stable at all). I always enjoy a more comedic verse popping up as you don't really see them so much in these leagues, and that's a shame, so some lighthearted stuff like that is refreshing to see. Not everything has to be so serious and I think you've always held that belief (as do I). The ending was cool too with the use of fall, almost like a cliffhanger before you announced it at the end which again was used to good effect here.

Inno: I think the picture used was perfect for you here, leading itself to a lot of poetic prose and a more metaphoric monologue as it unravelled. I could already see what you could potentially do with it before I even started to read here. Sanitys sake and realitys break was super clean wording. "The one pulling the strings until life becomes a knot" was dope too, great tie in (pun always intended).
I like how you embodied (get it, because it's a body?) mortality here and made it about more than just what the reader sees in the picture there. You built the verse around the picture and created something wholly different, you didn't just describe what we weee seeing, you went further than that and just used the picture to kind of brainstorm this concept then write about that. You did very well this week. I doubt many would go beyond what was in front of them and create something very different, but you did, and that showed a great creativity on your part too.

Mr J: The comes first like parentheses line was ill haha! It's odd seeing that midverse but I liked it. This read almost like an Open Mic freeflowing cypher type joint from you. You probably have the best mechanics of the three battlers in this one. Technically you were superior, scheming and occasionally carrying over the same string into like 6-8 lines. "down on that green, golfing with a broken club" was another ill line from left field that kind of caught me off guard but I enjoyed it, it's good to see some humour injected back into topicals. I feel like this verse was a solid enough drop, it just felt a little jumbled really and didn't know which type of verse it wanted to be and ended up a kind of culmination of several different ideas put into one. The punchline type lines were cool, and quoteworthy, but the storyline itself felt a little missing with regard to plot development and while that's not always essential I feel it was on this occasion.

Okay, so I've got Innovator winning here with the better execution of his topic overall. It was creative, it was original, it had out of the box thinking and really seemed to take the topic at hand and create something outside of what was seen in the visual. He didn't just take the topic and write TO it, he wrote around it this week and that's the key here. Use it as inspiration but don't let it dictate the way your verse has to go. Do something left field with it, make it original, push those boundaries and it will make you a better writer. Furthermore out of Razah and J, I'd probably say Razah had the verse I felt more this week. I know I'm largely a fan of the technical side and prefer heavy multies and tighter schemes but this week Razah stuck to the topic and delivered the better angle on the topic he went with in terms of the execution and maybe the brevity of his verse helped in that regard, I know J writes crazily hard on short notice and this shows how quick he can put those rhymes together which I too like todo but Razah had a crisper feel to his, he delivered it clearer, he literally doesn't seem to waste a word - never mind a line. He is very concise about what he's writing to and makes every word count. That's what ultimately gave him the nod for me here. I've got Inno in 1st, Razah 2nd and Joker 3rd this time out.