[Pharaohs Army]

brokenhal0:

Fairly entertaining- played to your strengths: rhyme, imagery, phraseology (for the most part), shock-value storytelling (what with Ms. Clause being pounded by Satan until Santa takes them out).

There are a few places where you perhaps forced a rhyme a bit, but for the amount of rhymes I'm actually pleased at how the frequency of "forceds" has gone down for you as the years ago by.
You have a few of your usual near-rhymes - kind of like hit or miss - I think most hit OK.

My biggest problem is you're a defending fucking champion... let me repeat that... SEASON IX CHAMPION-- and you STILL get their/there/they're WRONG all the time. Way too often for an accomplished writer such as yourself. All it takes is a quick google search for the rule if you can't edit it on your own.
Granted, you've cleaned up some OTHER bad grammatical errors since a couple years ago (&props for that), but the their/there/they're still stands out as a bad glitch. I believe there were 3-4 in this piece.

That being said, I'm not going to vote AGAINST you for grammar/spelling. As annoying as it may be, as you know, I go by what I started the vote with: your strengths in rhyme/imagery/phrasing storytelling/shock value, etc...

I could argue you maybe could have cleaned/cut a few lines from the long Satan-Ms. Claus sex scenes - because the reader already "got the idea"... but again, not a huge deal.

The premise is great and wonderfully chaotic. Crazy Santa (who might burn your housed down w lighter fluid), crazy/horny elves, horny Ms. Claus, etc.
Long story short, I LIKED this piece, but I didn't LOVE it, and when you're facing a topical beast like Lars you usually have to bring your A+ game. That, said, I think against a lesser opponent you'd have it in the bag. Nice.


Lars:

You have a lot of end rhymes, and the mutlis and flow are pretty much on point. Very enjoyable read for the most part. I WILL get this out of the way: In my humble opinion, I think the repetition HURT a little, rather than helped. At best neutral...I understand it's a "hook/refrain" type thing, and it wasn't a TON of repetition, AND I & others have repeated in the past...all that said, I think if every stanza was "new" it'd shine even that much brighter, with the risk of course being NOT emphasizing/repeating the lines you wanted to. Just an opinion to mull over, not really the deciding factor here.

Story-wise, it kept me fairly engaged. It wasn't groundbreaking, but I did want to find out the reason: ah yes, Dad's heart attack, etc. You dropped that info with your usual flair for a quality stanza.

Snowman imagery also a big part of this, which was well done. Nice.


This battle is VERY CLOSE to me" because I think brokenhal0 was more creative by far but Lars's technical/smooth writing is just better executed IMO and he also had a story-line which, while not as exciting, was driven home aptly.

V/ Lars by a hair