WEEK V: Ender vs King Ra.[ENDER WINS]

[Inno]

Ender vs King Ra: This is the battle of the week right here, and also the stupidest names LOL I don't get what either of your names are meant to reference and I never care to ask but here we go:

Ender: I find you're good at storytelling but the technical merit holds you back somewhat. You mismatch a lot of multisyllables and then at other spots you're fine at it, it's an odd one for me reading your joints haha! What I like about you though is it's always content first and conscious characterisation. You never let the rhyme dictate where it's going, you have a clear point to get to from A to B and that stays as your endgoal regardless of the mechanics. You showed that here (and somewhat last week too). It may mean you meet someone more proficient in the mechanics and technical side and lose to them the higher up the ranks you rise but for now it works and you definitely have a good grasp of how to put a verse together well. As I said, the syllable mismatching needs addressing somewhat, if you get that fixed you'll be a force to be reckoned with here as there's a lot to like about this. You mix up the rhyme schemes pretty well and bounce them back and forth throughout. You detailed the plot well as it unraveled to quite a polarising ending. Conflict drives great stories, and even though this one has somewhat a "nice" ending for the lead character it could maybe have ended on a bad note which would have felt more in keeping with the criminal underworld he was involved in. Just an idea more than a criticism of any sort really. It may come in use over the coming weeks.

King Ra: I'm not really familiar with your work, or at least as this name if you're an alias of some sort. I like it though. Your style sometimes reminds me of Cereal Killer, but your work reminds me more of UnbornBuddah in the general tone and writers voice and general concepts you choose to write about. This was fresh to me. Your wording is quite graceful but had a poetic vibe to it I fucked with hardbody, and technically you're very proficient in terms of multies and scheming and whatnot. This is more my thing from a technical standpoint even though I guess Ender had an edge on storytelling ability but yours was more like a topical here. It felt somewhat of a slow burn but I enjoyed the use of yin and yang and duality at the beginning and the "Sirius is born" line was dope to me. I think this is BOTW right here. Very tough to call off bat. This is one of those where you have to look at what the both guys didn't do so well. Ender was the better storyteller for sure, the dialogue of the characters sometimes didn't feel all too natural if you wanted to nitpick over it, he could have used short met phrases and back and fourths. Again, I come back to his mechanics and King Ra did better in that area for me. King Ra has more a sort of topical verse here IMO than a literal story and I kind of like that fact, you don't see many actual "topicals" wrote these days so there is that, even though it had a story at essence, it's more a kind of hybrid between the two in some respects. King Ra'z reached a solid conclusion even if he didn't seem to flesh it out all that much, it felt very brief, that could be due to his shorter line lengths or the format but as a read it seemed to end pretty quickly as I read it while Ender's was a complete tale from start to finish. I liked how he detailed his torture methods with the toe peeling and whatnot, I'm a fan of that weird disturbing shit lol. I think I've read these three times now and come to the conclusion that while King Ra has more I usually like in a verse, Ender may have edged this overall because I found more I enjoyed as a whole in his joint than I did in King Ra's epic finale. I enjoyed his mechanics and technical skill more here, but I'm gonna go against my usual grain and give Ender the nod this week actually even though I believe technical skill to be somewhat of a measuring stick that seperates the good from the greats in terms of making it look effortlessly easy. 9 times out of 10 I'd go King Ra's way but Ender just did enough for me to put him over here.