WEEK TWELVE CONTENDERS: NYCSPTIZ (5-2) vs BROKENHAL0 (6-4) SPITZ WINS 3-0

[Adverse]

First of all, good writing on both ends, especially the climaxes both played out well and I liked how much both of your verses mirrored each other’s in the same way that Dom/Soulé did this week as well. They weren’t exactly carbon copies but they both had the same sort of concept in mind, though I guess there’s not a whole lot of crazy directions you can take this picture in?

Hal0:
One thing I can always count on when you write is that you’re going to have vivid imagery, for better and for worse. Sometimes you use it to describe a beautiful scene, and sometimes you use it to describe - well

“ I heard you was the panty sniffer who was obsessed with her vital heart stench”

This.

But nonetheless I usually enjoy your pieces, my biggest complaint is how discombobulated the transitions seem, like I can tell you have a dope story in mind and you might even have it planned out to the T beforehand but as soon as you start writing it’s kind of like it gets lost in your narrative, almost like you’ve got way too much to say and you’re cramming all of this stuff in there that’s not really relevant, or just doing stuff out of sequence, it’s messy and honestly I felt that way a lot last season when reading your verses but that was the first time I’ve felt that way this year. Perhaps it’s because you had to cut 20 bars of content? I know that probably hurt and it’s definitely hard to get the details correct when you lose that much room. It just felt like this was sort of rushed and there was a lot of filler in it, also the rhyming was off, especially in the beginning “mortgage/lost one, abortion/heart stench” I mean we could attribute it to an accent or something but I’ve never seen you that far off rhyming before, I think that and the instances of bad grammar, the messy narrative just kind of combined together and made the flow of the verse rocky and rough. But when the ending started I think you upped your piece quite a bit and I did enjoy the whole dead sister thing and the visions from Buddah, this but right here I liked

“ images flood her thoughts and she couldn't believe it
she was looking through the eyes of her dead sister
who hung herself by the trees where the bees live
hidden again another face another pain-thing another suffering priestess
wearing the mask of her family's secrets reveling a very wholesome grasp for weakness
buddah stones start reaching out like little arms connecting to the tree limbs
squeezing at it's roots creating the shape of a phoenix holding a silhouette with a noose
a new excuse for a genius.”

Alas the last little segment ended badly IMO, I liked everything up to this point

“ she swung with a vengeance as if no contact was made
reality ripped apart now all that's left shall die in vain
a master of her art but in the end every mask wants a face
and in the end the sword entered her heart seppuku sign away....”

Literally the last three words fucked the ending up for me because this was forced in my opinion, could have found a lot better sounding way to end this. All in all this wasn’t your best attempt

NYC:
In classic Spitz fashion you called your opponent out on something he could have been DQ’d for and then proceeded to not post until way after the deadline lol it’s all good though.

I can tell you kind of conjured this one from thin air, perhaps thinking Hal0 wouldn’t fix his mistakes and you could run away without getting your hands dirty, sadly it didn’t go down that way. But no matter I thought if you came up with this on the fly then your knowledge of Japanese culture must be pretty on point, because the things you were referring to aren’t exactly common knowledge especially for people like us over in the states. So that’s dope to know, I could feel the rushed aspects of your verse as well, compared to your usual stuff this was shaky at best. It just seemed like you were missing the usual story beats you nail most of the time and it seems like as happened with Hal0 you had too little room to work, maybe you would have fleshed this out had you had more time or if had known if your opponent would come through or not. Whatever it may be this was smoother than Hal0’s entry.

The narrative was real anime-ish, a ghost rebellion with a sorceress at the forefront of things. Building an army out of Tengu (supernatural samurai creatures if I’m not mistaken?) felt some of the Kurosawa vibes. Loved the way you described all these different spirits she fought and the dialogue was cool. I liked the end game here as well, though this “war” didn’t go down quite as I expected and instead was more like a spiritual awakening than an actual battle, it was sort of effective? I mean the ending could have been of an engaging one but I guess it worked and everyone lived happily ever after. Japan was reawakened so to speak. The people were once again free until a few centuries go by and they need to be helped again.

Though NYC wasn’t at his top level here I think I enjoyed his approach more and it was hard to really credit Hal0 here even though his ending was pretty decent it was held back by mistakes, and just by the clunkiness of his mechanics this week. Decent battle

V/NYC