I hate these war pics.
They almost dictate the way the verse has to go to an extent. Sure, there’s a few ways they can be ‘flipped’ to an extent. A game of toy soldiers rather than an actual war. A relationship (which I’ve done) or the usual soldiers point of view is a hero or a the villain conflict. Conflict drives good writing, so essentially that’s the route you want to go down somehow with these things but then you also don’t want to retread common ground so you want to somehow put a fresh spin on it. But they’ve been done, as I said, so it’s difficult.
Knuck has the by far better approach here in terms of his originality and not tackling the picture directly. The trouble he had here was that it lacked development, it was too brief, and it didn’t have that conflict I mentioned to drive it’s narrative. If he had done more of a story piece with some kind of conflict like wanting to best his neighbours BBQ last summer and out do him somehow and ultimately burning the entire yard down along with the neighbours fence or some shit, it could have done more. Trying to do too much with the scheme can hurt as well which maybe he’s also guilty of here.
Witty had a tried and tested route, but his writing and wording is always very crisp and concise. It unfolded well, not so much a story route either here and more a traditional “topical” in a sense similar to what Knuck did, which made this interesting. A story would have probably served both writers better in truth. Anyway, Witty didn’t have as good a concept but he excelled in terms of execution and the actual mechanics behind it and that can’t be overlooked here from a technical standpoint.
This is closer than it seems, and I often favour the more creative take but Knucks was a little too short and underdeveloped here for me to give it the nod over a solid showing from Witty with a decent idea that’s been done before (possibly unknown to him?). Witty didn’t have a terrible idea by any means, it’s just I’ve seen it utilised similarly before to a war topic so I personally steer clear of it. I gave Witty the nod here.
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