[Diablo]

The topic itself is pretty open to being utilised in a raft of ways, I find that could be advantageous to whoever comes up with the better (more creative) take here. It will essentially be decided by which of you pulls off that flip to the foremost degree, in my opinion, having not read either at the time of writing this. Interestingly, to me, the female seems to have no lower half. Why is she there, is that someone falling apart at the seems - or someone turning over a new leaf (the pages). Is she a remnant of someone’s past, slowly dwindling away, or is this somehow a new beginning for her with her reassembling all that made her who she was and starting a new chapter in her story? For me, it could be either, but the initial thought maybe allows the more creative and unpredictable route so that may be what I personally would have preferred to go for here. Let’s see how you guys have it:

Adverse: I think you played to your strengths well here, there’s a lot of poetic licence and tie-in’s to the image topic, the visual imagery as ever is a strongpoint to your own work - “glistening droplets rippled” was an early standout I enjoyed. As the story progressed this was along a similar theme to what I mentioned in my vote intro, definitely close along the lines of what I may have attempted, the imagery and emotion powered this forward for me but maybe lacked a conflict at its heart to really drive the storyline forward into something different all together. I think with stuff like this the character development is so important, for the reader to feel invested in the character and to care about their eventual outcome, I can’t say I really connected with the female lead here this week - for all the visual imagery etc going on (which was very strong) she was almost just a character sketch, you know? It isn’t a slight, as many do this, just letting you know so as to better yourself even further.


Mr. J: There are sections to this where the rhyme scheme was to my liking and some of the mentions like “absinthe lemon” helped bring it to life by lifting it off the page but I mean, straight out the gate, the macaroni and cheese thing just seems a bit out of sorts with the scene set in the picture to me. Kind of disjointed from what’s displayed, you know? The water looks far too calm for jet-skis. It doesn’t seem the place. The use of “laxatives” also seems a little out of sorts with the image, maybe it’s just me, but I definitely didn’t feel that connection to the image as I did with say Adverse’s here - who really seemed to hone in on the visual aspect and create a world inside of it that this female inhibited and fleshed it out. It’s a complete contrast, which isn’t particularly a bad thing on its own, but when you’re comparing two vastly different approaches and you see one do something so well that the other doesn’t - it really highlights that difference between the two and magnifies it. I think, for me, that’s what happened here in a few areas. Firstly, the line lengths of Mr. J with them being shorter and more compact made a huge difference in terms of implied rhythmic cadence and “flow”, but Adverse’s visual imagery and storytelling shone here by doing something his opponent didn’t really - so while Adverse maybe lost out in the area of flow itself, he counters that two-fold by doubling his advantage in terms of visual imagery and storytelling. It presented a huge gap between the two, both stylistically and in their execution, and that for me was a huge deciding factor on this one. You can call it personal preference if you wish, but overall I just felt Adverse was the better of the two in more crucial areas of writing I look for this week.