[dead man]

MMLP, you know i fuck with this verse, cause Candyman takes place in my city and it was always something i watched when it came on as a kid. it took me a couple reads to digest exactly where this was coming from and where it turned into a ceremony. at first i thought they had dragged you out into the forest for a murder-sacrifice ceremony or something. idk. your style is dialed in, similar to Lars in a way, but more matter-of-fact if that makes sense. rhythmically clean and simple, steady pacing, the whole style is kind of "vanilla" and safe in practice but dependable nonetheless. yeah, idk i'm a huge fan of Candyman so maybe i'm bias but the twist was actually awesome to me. i can honestly say i would not have thought of it without some real long meditation on the pic. very cool.

SCAR gives us a character study. it felt bi-polar and awkward, but certainly in the way you intended. some of the middle-age posh vocabulary got a bit clunky and strange at points, as did your language to suit the tone. there was not much subtlety to this device. it almost felt like a super american dude putting on a mustache and a poor british accent. but it didn't feel especially out of place with your dialogue. the story wasn't really, fleshed out in any revealing way. we got senses of who the main character was, a glimpse into her past and her dynamic with.... herself in the mirror? i wasn't exactly clear what this represented. lady in the looking glass? some sort of critique on materialism through this fancy woman and her mirror? i dont really know the story that well, only the motifs or whatever. if this was a spin on that, its definitely a commendable angle to take. ambitious and probably overestimating it's audience, but not for any fault of the verse. its not inaccessible, overall, but probably a bit more subtle and specific than it meant to be. the writing is solid, for sure, and the font adjustments actually may have aided the voice, which is something i'd usually always condemn for no good reason, but you pulled it off here. again, was not big on some of the folky era-specific word choices but i get it. and it was engaging enough to earn you a very, very close 2nd place.

i almost feel like i should be voting for Scar here, because his verse gave us so much more to think about and discuss. if the league had a different format, and he could give us an expanded work and not a glimpse into a chapter of something that felt much grander in scope, it would probably lend itself far better to his take on the topic. MMLP gave us something complete, concise, with a well-stated "twist" ending that made it all come together. i don't normally go for "neatly wrapped package" in a situation like this, but MMLP won it out for me here.

voting for MMLP.