[sral]

It deleted my vote as I had typed out as NYC posted in between and the page had expired. Grrrrr.

I’ll type it out again.



So, on first look at the image topic, I’m obviously drawn to the two soldiers and war as an initial idea. The idea has no doubt been done a few times, so my first thoughts would be “How can I make this something different than what’s just at face value?”. I see the peace sign, obviously, so something with piece/peace comes to mind as they already have guns. The one soldier is smaller, possibly a child, so the idea of war through someone (or something) else’s eyes comes to me. Maybe through the child’s eyes trying to make sense of what’s happening? It could be done through the gun(s) perspective or a bullets perspective maybe (which could be fun). It could be a metaphor for the battlefield of love, maybe told via an argument between two people and not about war itself really. There’s a few different more out the box ideas off hand I feel could be interesting to see to this rather than just what’s on surface level directly. Let’s see what you guys have here...


Blue - You continue to impress me in here; I especially liked the marked improvement from you mechanics wise (from the first round) as I felt you showed a clear upward swing in that regard this time out.

there’s nothing more powerful than a nationalistic agenda
complicit it renders swift as a feather as it rips & dismembers

You were packing a lot into two lines there, it was a relatively difficult end rhyme also so I didn’t overlook that either.

that’s when reality reared it’s ugly head and winked

Lines like this are where I feel that you really excel, it’s quite simple, but effective. It has a punchline-esque quality to it that we don’t see used as much on the topical side of things but I think it works. It’s worded well, it’s relevant, and you choose to use it in the first line of a couplet (setup rather than punch) which was quite unconventional - yet it lost no impact. It was subtly done, but again, these little flashes catch my eye and keep my interest. I haven’t seen anyone else note that as yet.

The grammar aspect doesn’t bother me at all as I feel it’s pretty coherent here. I think Blue’s ended with him speaking from the photographs perspective. He was the image, if I’m reading it rightly, hence him being “lifted out the tray,” at the beginning. The slow rise maybe being him being held up toward a lighting lamp, there’s a few other deft hints between but I wasn’t completely sure if he was the photographer taking the pictures or the picture itself. I started off thinking the former, ended thinking the latter, especially with the “table displayed” right at the end. It was a fun concept, one I alluded to myself at the beginning as being a possibility with this image so I’m glad something along those lines was utilised.


Pharoah: I think your opening line was well worked here, you kept it conversational and believable, setting the time frame (with the date) and introducing the reader to the two characters off bat, but still sort of left a cliffhanger on “had a plan,” that hooks the reader in to want to read on and discover what their plan was. I enjoyed that aspect a lot, it was a cleverly used tool from the jump to set your stall out early and give you something to work from.

Training was hard; they hated the “Sarg”,

I enjoyed this one because of its simplicity. Both are relevant to what’s happening in the progression of the story, while still sounding very natural and conversational. It’s overlooked a lot. I think that small seven word sentence was very cleanly done, trimmed of all excess fat and precision sharp.

The thing with the story around Tom and Rick, in particular, is two-fold to me. Firstly, the characters are assigned names and a little backstory but it needed more to make the reader “feel” for what happened to the characters, you know? Which brings me somewhat to my next point in that conflict drives great stories - and when it came down to the conflict itself where
Tom is killed, we just got one line where he was dead from a grenade blast. The grenade blast idea itself could have given you options to inject emotion and visual imagery galore. It felt like you missed an opportunity there to capitalise on the conflict to drive your story, in an imagery sense and an emotive one. The closing lines in particular offered up something more universally bigger picture and I enjoyed that, I think the final stages of the story in the build up to its conclusion is ultimately what cost you this one (to me) when coupled against Blue’s more creative take.

Somewhat ironically Blue’s piece from the photographs point of view ended up the more processed and developed end product this round.