Week 4 - King Ra (1-1) vs. Zenland (1-2) - ZENLAND WINS 6-5

[PancakeBrah]

Zenland -

Pretty good. There's a lot of possible interpretations of your verse, I think. To me the themes of religion vs. the 'knowledge' of the Knower, the frozen in time in your mind, the sunsetting, and the single line post script seem to point toward maybe not atheism but freedom of thought outside of religion. Although the sun, which is usually a symbol of life, setting and freezing the religion in his mind gives me pause towards this interpretation. I'm sure I've missed your intended point but I'm sure if you explained it in plain talk it'd be one of the multiple I ran through while reading and re-reading this. As for the language of the piece and mechanics this was mostly good. I enjoyed your off-kilter rhymes at the beginning which is something I remember you employing against Rawn in Week 1. As in, taking two sets of multi's with the same vowel sounds and creating different schemes with them in the same lines. The rhyming throughout was a strongpoint; only one or two instances of rhyming that hung me up in the reading as a bit forced which is a very good rate of return. The 'flow' was smooth throughout. I'd say that my favorite part of your verse was its readability. I found myself reading it over a few times just because it flowed from point to point so well. The deft use of dialogue helped that. Dialogue is a difficult thing to write period, let alone when you have the constraint of rhyming but you pulled it off well. My only real nitpick in terms of wording was

"Never in our mind do we live to fall,
But the blessed will find the will to resolve."

where there should be no 'But' at the start of the second line. The ideas in each line are the same, not opposed, so the 'but' is incongruous. There was one spot near the beginning of the verse where you used past tense whereas the rest of this verse is present tense. Those are minor faults. I enjoyed reading this even if it was a bit to vague for me to properly pin down your meaning. Thanks.

King Ra -

Decent. There were portions of your verse where you had intricate styling in your schemes and fresh rhymes. There were other portions, though, were you used hackneyed rhymes with words people use to sound intelligent, all in succession. Specifically the end of your first verse. My eyes glazed over when I read that as I've probably read some combination of that specific rhyme pattern and wording dozens of times before. Your subject matter missed for me, personally, but I won't hold that against you. The subject matter you selected, that I didn't like, was written and handled well and that's what should count. The second half of your first verse, before the aforementioned rhyme scheme, was great in terms of relation to the topic. You gave the sun its due majesty and you can almost feel the awe and power bleeding out of the verse. I thought your last two 'verses' were much weaker than the first and just due to length. I can understand the inclusion of the second verse as it completes the idea and allusion of the first, but the third was a bit of atmosphere that I could have lived without. Sometimes less is more. Thanks for the read, it was interesting.

Close battle, two entirely different verses both in content and structure. I felt that Zenland's verse was smoother and was more effortlessly synchronized in idea and technical ability. Good battle, glad to have had read it.

v/Zenland