[Dominate]

Adonis,
This was superb take on the topic IMO. Not just the initial idea of distortion = radio white noise, but the way you used that noise, the changing of a radio station, to show changing eras and styles of music, and building into your assertion that what passes for music in the modern day is itself a distortion. Brilliant. I've never considered or seen how you would spell that noise before, but "kuuuxxx" seems right hahaha. That opening couplet was really well written. "signifying nothing in ballad" was terrific. There were a lot of instances of good turns of phrase throughout actually, and you successfully hit some nostalgia buttons along the way. I've now got LA DI DA, SAY DO YOU REMEMBER stuck in my head, so thanks for that. This is definitely the strongest piece you've written all season IMO. The only aspect of your writing here that was a little weak was the rhyming. You typically had just a single syllable end-of-line rhyme. You didn't need to try to match what you probably knew your opponent would bring in that respect, and content/wording is definitely more important, so if it had to be a choice for you due to time constraints or whatever then you made the right one... but still, you did the absolute bare bones minimum with rhymes and it did stick out as a weakness. But overall, a strong piece. Great job.


Frank,
Conversely, your rhyming immediately stands out as an enormous strength. I've seen and written verses where the same multi is held all the way through, but this is even more than that - the density of the rhymes is phenomenal. Not all the multis line up perfectly in terms of matching syllables, but I think the density of the rhymes actually turns that into something that gives the piece an interesting and unique rhythm rather than being a little jarring as it would be if the not-quite-perfect rhymes were more spaced apart. I didn't get around to voting on your battle last week, but I did read your verse, so I understood you picking up here where that one left off. Not a lot "happens" here in terms of action/narrative, but that's not at all a criticism - I've read and written a number of 'complete' stories here in the past weeks, and while that format is fine too I really appreciate the difference you're bringing here by just writing single scenes and writing them well. Really impressed by the way you bring the small details to life and develop the taxi driver's character in particular. This was an excellent piece of writing even aside from the impressive rhyme scheme it adhered to all the way through. My only gripe here is that I felt like the connection to the topic was a little tenuous. There are lines like "The drizzling storm drowned out everything sounded so distant and thwarted" and "There faces twisted & contorted until there expressions became flipped and deformative" that fit the word DISTORTION but it's more just like some of the details of the piece are inspired by the topic rather than it being a central theme. I guess you could call the taxi driver's ignorance of who his passenger is a distortion... maybe... that's a bit of a reach to me. The rhyme scheme being inspired by the word you were given helps a bit I suppose. One other technical gripe - you're clearly over the line limit here... even allowing for stylistic/formatting choices, 40 lines max x 15 words/line max is 600 words and you're at 728. Not sure how your opponent and Adverse feel about that... I'll leave that to them though and not consider it in my vote.



Vote:
I thought both pieces were quite strong. Quality of writing in terms of content alone was fairly evenly matched. The two major points of difference here for me were that Adonis had the better take on the topic, but that Frank had the far superior mechanics. Ultimately I'm a little more impressed with Frank's writing, so I'll vote for him. Really good battle.

V/ Frank