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Old 08-12-2019, 02:52 PM   #6
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When I first look at the image topic, it’s easy to be drawn toward some kind of religious topic I think with something like “Heavens Gates” or maybe have the focal point character “arriving” at a realisation - a moment of clarity for him maybe, or an opportunity (a new door opens?), but I almost prefer the fact it’s a closed door he’s in front of. It gives it a conflict for you stir ideas as to how he goes about trying to force that door open to see what’s on the other side. The “other side” could be a few things, namely death, which would tie in more with the Heavens Gate I mentioned firstly. It doesn’t have to be, though, it could be him finding some form of escape through it. It could be art of some form. If we played around the theme of the sitting man being Blue Bayou perched on his barstool, with a famous grouse maybe to tie the bird in, then the locked door could be the door to his local bar having an after hours booze-up or it could be alcohol he is looking to escape from. You could even tie in Cheers with “You wanna go where everybody knows your name,” alluding to heaven. For Witty, the gates could have been the famous Guinness one. Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on what could have been done here, let’s see how you guys had it...


Witty: I’m not a huge fan of the constant stop-start read it creates when you use so many commas in such a short space of the lines between multies. It almost makes it have a stuttered effect for me, largely because I read the commas with a pause between them, I’m guessing you don’t when writing but that’s the gift/curse of this being subjective. You again toyed with thing in something more emotionally and musically driven, almost like a combination of your two previous pieces this tourney already. This one was less sharp to me, particularly the rocky start at the beginning of this one which you ironed out somewhat towards the end of the first section, but also the start to the second stanza had minor issues too. It was less fluid, more jumpy, again stop-starting flow wise which is unusual to read from you given your usual polish. The use of the raven was minimal, I thought, especially given the way you went about writing this. It felt like you could have expanded on the metaphor more, maybe utilised some word association or idioms to tie it in and make it more prominent a feature, stuff like the guy simply “spreading his wings”, “flying the nest,” or “reaching for the skies,” as a double meaning for heading for heaven. Let’s not overlook the more technical elements on display here though, especially how concise you kept things with the shorter line lengths, then you have the added degree of difficulty with the scheme which was ever-evolving and going back and forth, there’s some nice imagery and emotion scattered throughout which is well done, you’ve your usual flourish and mix it up well on the whole. I’m not overlooking that, even though it’s easy to get lost in it, or to overlook it as it’s deceiving in its simplicity which I’m a fan of. I’m seeing all of that here, I’m just finding more to nitpick at as it’s the semis and you’re relatively even matched in a lot of those aspects so the minutest flaws are what are left to pick over to determine a winner. This isn’t going to be a brown nosing vote seeking both your approval in the hope you return the favour, this is legit. My main issues were you executing the eventual topic, or the way you went about it, where I felt more could be done and also in the way you executed the rhymes - namely the stop-start commas that didn’t work for me. The rest was solid. Right, on to Blues, piece next...

I think this topic/image favoured a more Blue-esque approach here. It’s almost got a Deadman quality to it with a lot of profound visual imagery and snippets scattered around a central theme. It wasn’t so much a story, like we had with Witty, it was more a “topical” if you like. I’m generally of the storytelling > Topical breed because that’s how I came up, even though I’m not as stoically against topicals as some of my compatriots might be. I thought the main difference here wasn’t primarily in the execution, but in the experience. Witty had a very concise wording, shorter lines doing a lot within them, weaving through the patterns, the imagery, the emotion with a deft pen that is well aware of what he’s doing and there’s a great clarity to it as he does so - every rhyme is carefully chosen, maybe at times to his detriment, as there are spots where he seems to get caught in the rhyme rather than focusing solely on keeping the content as solid as he can. Usually people will sacrifice one for the other, he doesn’t really do that, he straddles the two well to give the reader the best of both worlds and very rarely has those dry spots. Blues verse reads as if he knew he had to compete with Witty on a technical level, the multies and scheming were there, there’s these flashes of imagery and he had some profound statements but ultimately the piece felt very flat to me. It never really got started for it to get going places. It was almost his naivety and inexperience that had him out of his element here and what he submitted was more a collection of well-worded couplets, drawing from his text battle background, rather than writing something that transcended the image given and world building around it. He basically wrote what he thought a topical head would find impressive, placing a higher importance on the technical side than just outright creativity and originality and being able to flip the image into an out of the box story or narrative in a way that people wouldn’t think to. Don’t get me wrong, Witty didn’t nail that either here for me, and that’s why this is closer than I felt it needed to be. Technically you were fairly even, i’d maybe give a slight nod to Witty in that regard because it’s more the style and personal preference I use, I also felt Witty’s verse from a storytelling POV had the better character development and the emotional attachment - but it was quite similar to the verse we’ve seen from him previously as I stated. I don’t like comparing the line lengths of both verses as that doesn’t tell the full story, Witty has more lines because he’s using less words in each, which is fair enough, but he’s also doing a lot with so few words - and again I take that into consideration when reading. It’s not just a case of story vs topical or one guys technical skill being clearly above and beyond the others for me, this was more a combination of what both delivered, how they were executed, and coupled with the degree of difficulty displayed from a technical standpoint - each of which I had Witty ahead in by the way - and that’s why I think Witty got it. It wasn’t one thing, but a culmination, his experience won out over the green (blue) Bayou.

Last edited by Adonis; 08-16-2019 at 08:08 PM.
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