The route of all evil? Ominous as fuck.
Certain-
The opening two lines were strong. People love a good opener. In fact the entire first section was airtight, except for maybe the 'ounces of sweat' idea. There for the rhyme. Seems like a LOT of sweat. Small grievance. The second section was the weakest of the four. Lucky for you the other three are as good as they are. The second section seemed a bit choppy. I really disliked the wording of "my state is surrounded by drowning". I think you're better than that. Stilted to me. The ending two lines for the second section redeemed it a bit. The third section is probably the best, but they're pretty evenly great aside from the second section. This portion, in particular,
"Cautionary losses: Sell the stock at its peak.
But while we're rushing to deal, loyal to options and leaks,
they roll our souls out for the optimum lease.
It's obvious we're not up to speed. Trampled and bent
as we fight our way back up the same hills their mansions attend.
Saddled with debt, we've got our headphones turnt.
Beats By Dreams. The bass ensures the end won't hurt."
Was great. Very fluid. Your patented English prowess with strong flow, rhymes, and content. Your ending section was also good. You have a tendency to repeat for effect, I think I've seen you use the same technique in another piece that you do here (repeating a statement then saying the opposite). Maybe not. Who knows. It's cool, though. I liked the ending line. Tied everything in a nice little bow.
The message is pretty clear. Speaks on futility. Moreso about going about our lives oblivious, and kind of proud of it really. Maybe not proud but not necessarily endeavoring to change our behavior. While the evil goes on about it's business. Or something? I'm dumb. One last thing, it was nice to see a pretty pure 'topical'. You've done this before, weaving a vignette or semi-story, almost like a mask to hide the fact you're topicalizationing and pontificating. It's cool.
Well written piece.
King Ra-
@
Adonis I'm giving King Ra the benefit of the doubt and saying he added the 'definitely smart' to that line to accentuate the fact that the character is stupid. Like a joke of a line. It's so redundant that only a dumb person would say it. Nahmean? Because King Ra's my nigga and deserves the cred.
Anyhoo, pretty cool take on the topic. Sometimes taking a topic that every tryhard starving textcee will try to spin philosophically and interpreting it extremely literally is creative. It was refreshing.
The verse was decent to good. The rhymes varied from standard to a bit better than standard. You employed some non-normal tricks, like internal dialogue and
italics.
I think the problem here was you had your ending but didn't write up to it well enough. This seemed like pretty standard "i h8 girls who break mah heart" verse, with a cool connection to the topic at the end. I would've preferred some more fleshing out of the narrator. A lot of the lines were pretty idiomatic. There weren't many instances of clever wording.
I liked that this wasn't some epic, like usual. You did well in writing something you don't usually do, and that's commendable. Thanks for the read.
Good battle. Definitely the funner/better read of the two semi-finals. Ra had a solid verse, Certain had a great verse. Good job by both.
v/Certain