-THE WINTER TOPICAL SECOND ROUND MAGAZINE-

[PancakeBrah]

THE RESERVES
Profiles

Since they were subbed in and excluded from the Opening Round Magazine I’ll be giving a quick profile of the three remaining reserves from Round One and a short word on the reserve system.

(R)oats
-subbed in for #11 Bags, won against Just Write 8-1
oats is a Hawaii-based teacher, blogger, and a nutritional contribution to any type of morning meal. Known mostly for beating Bags twice, ruthlessly, oats also writes topicals/open mics from time to time. He’s requested me to ban him in the past so that he could spend some time away from Netcees, which is irrelevant in regards to his writing but I wanted to say it. When not online beating Bags in text battles constantly he enjoys playing the ukulele while rapping about the ocean’s significance and symbolism to the plight of man. In all seriousness, oats is one of my favorite writers on the site. He hasn’t been overly active recently but his performance in the First Round confirmed he’s still a force. His strengths are imagery, wording, and emotion/empathy. He has an intelligent, smooth style to his diction that never feels forced. When he’s telling a story or painting a picture he has a strong use of multi’s in the sense that they’re never forced and are often unique. He’s capable of using strong scheming but his best pieces have an effortless feel to them where the rhymes blend one to the next while the reader focuses on what’s being said instead of being overwhelmed by the rhyming. If he were to have signed in as one of the original thirty two writers he would’ve likely earned a Top 10 seed.

from ‘Divided Hill’
”stained gray behemoths slouch in slumbering stacks
concrete skeletons erected as a puzzle for rats
the heavens are hidden hellishly in eruptions of ash
but you don’t notice it – you’re settled in a hustle for cash
to stay ahead you keep on pedaling combustible traps
like your unquenchable elephant bent on guzzling gas
LED is the future, son! the sun is the past
so keep your shutters collapsed – just in case some light might’ve snuck in the cracks
living the plight of a proton; you’re stuck in a mass
and the further you float, the more the others’ll laugh
you hunt for you next meal long as it’s smothered in fat
and even though your veins are choking you keep stuttering back
amidst these sputtering facts, I didn’t mention the streets
the piss-warm air as it’s carrying the stench of diseas
this is how life’s supposed to be in 2011
business as usual in a cubicles till you’ve pounded your head in
counting the hours and seconds until the final whistle blow
so you can sit in front of a screen till you forget why you’re miserable”

uh-oh
-subbed in for #27 Coup, won against Soulstice 8-6
da God. Prior to last round the only writing I had ever seen from uh-oh were impromptu Discussion cypher posts in random, non-cypher topics. One involved the mention of solar flares and polar bears. I immediately wanted it HOF’d. uh-oh is, obviously, different from every other writer left in the field. He disdains the long-line text form that many writers use, even lines that most topical writers would consider short are two to three times longer than one typically written by uh-oh. Writing this opposed to the accepted norm for topical writing has its drawbacks as some may glance at his verse and immediately assume a lack of depth. Last round, though, his verse had some nuance to it hidden in all those caps. He pulled off the biggest upset of the round in defeating Soulstice while strictly adhering to the topic while his opponent wrote about everything but. His verse as a standalone, though, was good in a different way than we’re used to. Very much a rap-based verse, the flow was the strong point and the rhymes were solid. The overarching theme was surprisingly good, in my opinion. I said in my vote that it was a sort of breath of fresh air and ZYG thought it was the best verse of the round. It was something completely different. If he were one of the initial 32 writers to sign in I would have probably seeded him in the mid 20’s but he showed he has some ability.

from The Winter Topical Round One vs. Soulstice
”FROZEN FORESTS,
A TRAPPER WHO DON’T CONFORM,
WITH THE SOCIAL NORMS,
GOES FOR PORRIDGE BEFORE EXPLORING.
WHILE BEARS SLEEP HE BARES HEAT,
NORMALLY ITS IMPORTANT.
HENRY 44 RIFLE
TO SORT OUT THE MISINFORMED WITH
AMERICAN TO THE CORE, SHIT
BUT FORMALLY HE IGNORES IT.
THEY LET WHORES SIT IN POWER POSITIONS
LIKE HE ENDORSED IT.
THEY SPEAK BOUT GLOBAL WARMING,
WHEN THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT WARM IS
AND THEY CAN’T MAKE A NORTHFACE
TO SAVE HIM FROM THE NORTH WINDS.
TO HIM,
IT ALL SEEMED FOREIGN
AND BORING TO KEEP INFORMED IN.
AND AFTER AWHILE
HIS REALITY WAS DISTORTED.
HIS TRAP RUNS WERE ENORMOUS
AND HE NEVER MADE A FORTUNE
BUT THE LITTLE HE DID MAKE,
HE ACTIVELY PUT TOWARDS THIS.
TILL ONE DAY HIS POLARIS LOST TRACTION
AND SENT HIM SOARING,
OFF THE BACK OF IT.
CRACKED HIS WIG AND HIS SOUL CONTORTED
THE GODS JUDGED
AND GAVE NO REACTION TO HIS PERFORMANCE
BUT SENT A SOLAR FLARE
TO INTERACT WITH THE EARTHS ORBIT.
CLEARED THE SKIES OF STORMS
SO THEY COULD WITNESS THE AURORAS
WHILE THE TRAPPER TURNED BLACK
AND RABBITS SKITTERED PAST TO FORAGE”

(R)Nigma
-Subbed in for #29 Adonis, won against Frank 5-4
Nigma was one of the first people I “beefed” with on this site during my glorious first few months here. Memories, bros. Memories. He even made a diss towards me and everything. Now he just passive aggressively insults me randomly, and I can respect that. I like passive aggressive. It took me awhile to appreciate Nigma’s writing due to said beef, but he’s definitely a strong writer and someone not to be taken lightly this round, especially after upsetting Frank. He has a strong grasp of vocabulary and often writes about off kilter and unusual topics in his open mics (anything not about women, love, or alcohol is foreign to me). He’s a good rhymer as well, although his rhymes are bit too slanted at times, even for someone who employs slant rhymes all the time such as myself. At his best, though, he’s a Vulgar-type of writer, a comparison that’s been made more than once in regards to his style. He’s not afraid to go all out and write the shit out of a topic and he’s been consistently elevating for quite some time now. It’s a stacked tournament so it’s difficult to say he’s a favorite but he definitely has the requisite talent and drive to be a contender. If he was one of the initial 32 to sign up I would have seeded him in the teens, most likely as a Top 16 seed or right at the edge of that.

from ‘Galactic Fractals’
”I channel in on fractions of the matter that fulfills our needs
The spectacle of mesophyll perfected in acrylic green
The vessels like plastocyanin evoked within your will to breathe
They grow and leave their soul beneath them lonely in oval seed
The sun begun to glow, recede, re-show in even spoken sequence
Lighting up the seedlings breaching seasons coldest snow with ease
Eyelids both are folding even holding while I pull the screen
See loads of trees all growing freely, meeting up with roads mid-east
Build opponents for the filth the sinners know they breathe
And then my field of vision zones to a capillary of streets
Before I backstep my perspective and inspect the risen regions
It’s a scene of shock and awe, it’s such serene deposit, green and aqua
Sheet of rock beneath the fauna, even under deepest waters”

Props to the three reserve writers who didn’t advance for subbing in and writing on short notice. Except Orc, who made sure to be next reserve in before diode before no showing oXus. Diode took the #2 seeded Pent uP down to the wire, losing by just one vote. That was a perfect example of the imperfect nature of using reserves. In a perfect world I would have re-seeded everyone to avoid two great writers facing off so early but that’d be impossible as we were about five days in and people already had started writing or had their topics in mind. My only recourse was to simply fill the spots, hoping that the right equilibrium of sign out talent and sign in talent would be achieved. It wasn’t. oats was close to being seeded correctly, but after that only low seeds signed out (except ill nik-A, but Orc no showed for him anyways). I saw big baby’s post about how dumb it was that Pent had to face Diode in Round 1, but that was really the only way to do it. Same thing with Frank vs. Nigma. It indeed was an unfair situation. My response is that if you lost in the First Round due to an unfair situation like that it just means you wouldn’t have won anyways as you’d probably have to face that opponent, or a similarly talented one, later on. A little harsh, but you get what I mean. You have to beat who’s put in front of you, even if it’s less than ideal. Still, both Diode and Frank would have most likely been in the Second Round if not for the reserve system and that’s unfortunate. Again, props to the reserves and every participant who didn’t advance; the topical league will be starting immediately after The Winter Topical. Hope to see you signed in.

Pancakes are better than Oats.
Interview

[img]http://media-***he-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a7/81/84/a781844c0e7d42bea0ed14bfb4c8a8c5.jpg[/img]
Oats after another battle with Bags

PB:Aside from yourself, who do you think has the best shot of winning the tournament and why?

oats:Clearly it would have to be someone in the bracket that I'm not in. But in all honesty, whoever emerges from this round is (intuitively) a legit contender. Black is always a favorite but getting past Witty is no guarantee, English and NYC are dope, and Zygote/Big Baby are both unique beasts to throw in the mix. In my bracket pretty much everyone is a tough matchup. At this point in the tournament, I'd honestly say everyone has the ability to get to the finals, so it'll be fun.

PB:What/who has influenced your style of writing on netcees? You have your own blog and do some other forms of writing; is there any crossover between text and those other mediums?

oats:In terms of my topical writing, I really just emulated the styles of everyone I found dope and used my own words and voice. I'd read Black and Pent's work a lot when I first started getting into it, but I'm influenced by pretty much every dope verse I come across.

I don't know if there's any crossover between text and other types of writing I do. If anything, I think the confines of rhyme can create a lot of really interesting images and descriptive juxtapositions, because you're working with such rigid restrictions (meter, rhythm, complex rhymes, etc). It's stuff I probably wouldn't think of writing prose, but materializes frequently in topicals. That general sense of word economy and purposeful diction (I hope) permeates all of my writing - I try not to waste the reader's time.

PB:You once asked me to ban you from Netcees so you could take a break from this place. Were you able to escape the lime green? What do you learn about yourself in the time away from here?

oats:Lol I just had a lot of shit due for work and school that week, and found myself irreparably distracted by NC. But I've since taken a bit of a hiatus (which, for the record, works much better if done unceremoniously), not only from NC but from the internet in general. Deactivated FB and all that. It was nice, got a lot of reading done, found more time to be outside and just recalibrate my life a little bit. A little distraction is a good thing, but I just felt like I wasn't balancing my productivity and distractedness appropriately.

PB:Favorite album released in 2013?

oats:Trying to answer this makes me feel like an old man, I really didn't listen to much new music last year. I listened to MMLP2 a good bit, liked the album in general. I downloaded Yeezus and MCHG but only passively listened to them. I really couldn't say.

PB:Who do you think wrote the best verse(s) of the first round? What do you think about Frank's loss and subsequent tirade?

oats:There were a lot of really strong verses last round. Big Baby and Vulgar were probably my favorites though. As far as Frank's thing, idk, nobody likes losing, and it's not unusual to hear someone say that they thought their verse was better than other people did. I didn't actually read that battle, so can't say it was a robbery or not. But if he felt like he was robbed, I can see why he would be upset, especially following his AOWL loss. Who hasn't been a bit of a bitch at one point or another about taking an L.

PB:Your domination of Bags is legendary. How are you able to consistently beat the shit out of him in battles to the point he's viewed as a lesser man by the NC public?

oats:It's really not that difficult, to be honest. How does a bear consistently triumph over salmon? This last time, when he ducked, it just proved I've got a psychological edge on him. Fear and fatigue can make cowards of any man; luckily for me, all it took was birth to make a coward out of bags.

PB:This may be common knowledge to some of the longer tenured NC users but how did you arrive at the name oats? Seems like a weird name for an internet text writer (signed, PancakeBrah).

oats:I had a string of really embarrassing names when I first started texting. Pimpavelli the Don, Sagistic Misfit (thought it sounded cool), Atemporal. I think I was just eating a lot of oatmeal at the time, and figured it would work and stuck with it. Kind of a willy-nilly decision.

PB:How do you think your battle with uh-oh will go? What's your reaction to him beating uh-oh in a flurry of all caps beauty?

oats:Uh-oh is dope. Soulstice was def the favorite, and probably wrote a better verse than Uh-oh, but in a weird turn of events, voters (including myself) just couldn't give it to him since it was barely related to the topic. Uh-oh wrote a really good verse in his own right, and he's not an opponent to look past. I'm excited to compete against him.

PB:What is your favorite italian food dish?

oats:Pizza easy.

PB:Do you sometimes want to live in the continental US like a real American?

oats:In some regards, I do - there's more room to be ambitious out there, more space to accomplish things. Hawaii is home, and I love it, but I don't anticipate I'll be here for much longer. I intend to come back though.

PB:Any last thoughts/shout outs?

oats:props for putting together a stacked tourney, hope everyone keeps showing up from here on out. Young Money Myrmidons, watch out for that ebook.