[symetrik]

ether:

it's cool to see you show out this tough - I know some of the "new to this particular experience" nerves are coming through, but you belong right alongside, you have an absolutely natural sounding voice for a majority of your pieces that I've seen in this context so far and still hit the flow, multis, etc.

a few spelling mistakes in this one slightly catch me up but not a huge deal - in this case, it's easy to determine what was meant.

crazy with the multis again: "governs / thoughts, lovers / gods, much / cost, suffer & cupboard & hover / fraught" in just the first two bars and continued multis throughout is dope - you hit them without sacrificing much of anything of the conversational tone.

I didn't quite understand "your impulses clot" - these two lines up until "urban and posh" could have used slightly tighter... punctuation to be honest, to more clearly guide how I was meant to read it, as I also tripped up around "friend is you, selfish, and stubborn you're two sides of a coin".

"ill logic" was a slightly tough rhyme to flow into, despite losses / logic.

"regurgitating / laws, reverberating / halls, perforating / skull" was cool.

I liked the use of quotations around "I", seemed to represent recognition of the system over the singular self.

ending was nice, I think it tied things up decently in a sort of laissez faire manner, a "ah fuck it, doesn't matter really", nihilistic.


Objective:

kinda meta immediately, nice. I like the idea of bringing the artist into the story but still creating a new story instead of like... I dunno, making a biography xD

this was a pretty straight forward read, clean, and a really clear story imo - transitioned smoothly from setting the scene, showing the obstacles "he" faced, etc.

"he had no passion, no sight, goals or ambition, cash or a wife." was a fire line, great flow.

didn't quite understand the "force him inside a for mula car" but I'm understanding it as a like "for-money" car with a little twist.

while I think you did far better than last battle at your starting and ending, it technically felt like you entirely skipped a middle (which, in this case, I think was fine - it just could have been there if the line count supported it).

I think brothers instead of brother would have landed better to indicate "this has happened a lot", imo and although some mistakes were made they weren't detrimental to my read-through.

I think the ending was fine, it wrapped it up, but it wasn't stand out in particular.

----

this is pretty tough for me so I'm gonna dwell on it for awhile. Objective's piece was clear and creative, taking the topic in a different direction than maybe expected but still honouring it to some degree. that said, I don't think it touched the topic nearly as well as Ether's, whose piece focused neatly and cleanly upon the topic as presented: a "thing" inside the brain/head, and delved into that (perhaps obvious) topic quite nicely.

on the flip side, there was also more abstract work in Ether's piece (if only by a bit) and while I love and support abstract, it can tread the line of too much; I believe Ether tread that line nicely, but the content did pull in a few directions at once, both in tone and the general emotional "vibe" of the character.

compared to Objective's: it maintained a tone and emotion throughout imo, even if that tone and emotion was slightly dampened - which, normally I would count against a piece, but if the character was a crash test dummy...

after far too much thinking,

mvgt Ether

I'm gonna lean into what makes me feel a little more for the piece (despite acknowledging it's on theme for a piece about crash test dummies to feel slightly less emotional)