Week 6 - Contender Match - YDK (3-2) vs. Frank (3-2) - FRANK WINS 5-4

[Mike Wrecka]

Season 2

Rules

Verse Due Date - Thursday 23:59 PST

Voting Deadline - Sunday 23:59 PST

Line Limits - 16 - 48 Max can be higher if both agree

Voting - Must vote on 3 battles and post voting links in this thread, preferably all in one post.

If you don't vote on 3 battle you will be given a loss. If you lose by votes and don't vote on other battles you receive a one week suspension.


Topic :** You must use this quote as the last line of your verse.**


"And they lived happily ever after."



Good Luck @YDK @Frank

[YDK]

Once upon a time a song of rhyme was written,
It went along the lines of modern times, love; smitten.
Boy meets girl, emotions swirl, and devastation must ensue.
End of the world when a heart breaks with the preservation of the two.

Incapable of facing the facade and the flaws,
Ignoring questions and suggestions, dodging them all.
Is it true love? Is divorce even an option?
Of course,
The coarseness of the beaten path is often left forgotten.
Yet its all for nought;
awful distactions plague and mock an authors thoughts.
He's lost in moments, where to hone it,
he must focus on the tone he sought.
A spoken truth, art; prevalent among those known as composers of plots.
But as a rose grows from the pavement; it still shows that the root will rot.
A weak base meant the speech faced criticism and backlash,
And with a cynical take on the rap he decides to trash that.
Scratch it and step back,
Let the piece lead him to where his pens at.
Started as a love story; ended as a brag track.
"...the fags wack!"
Is all he can finish with as he sees a verse that he laughs at.

Back to the present,
florescent light bulbs accent her essence.
The woman he married exits after making his entrance.
Head in a book again, staring at his nook with a grin,
Developing storylines ignoring the beauty that was looking at him.
Transfixed with the talent that balanced his moods,
Unfinished poems and verses lie scattered, lacking a Muse.
He tries in vain to hide disdain for his own emotionless pieces,
Unbeknownst to him,
his idols prospered in writing about love because they never achieved it.
Lonely authors speaking of things they only believed they perceived,
While he tried to mirror they're techniques about the one thing he received.
Monetary values were worthless to the men seeking more,
Yet to the man that chased adoration, the world lay ignored.

His wife of 20 years feeling like the authors that her husband loved,
And in a moment of self revelation she sighed as she shrugged.
She picked up a pencil and paper off the table he wrote at,
And with her own hopeless feeling she scribbled a note back.
"To the man that I married, and bore children for,
I write to say I love you, and I'll continue forever more.
You showed me the meaning of life, happiness undiluted,
But these past few years you've ignored me and our loves became polluted..."
She stopped there, weeping, trying to hold her composure,
But the lackluster effort faded as she gave up on closure.
Suddenly her husband walked in and noticed her tears,
Walked over to comfort her kissed on her ears.
He read what was written and became smitten again,
Realizing what he's been missing, had also been missing him.
The pain in a poem was more powerful than rhymes,
Love conquers all, but not all the time.
From that day forward he appreciated his wife,
For not only loving him but giving his writing new life.
He learned after years of failure that true agony can't be mirrored,
Sorrow is something only unhappy people can see...clearer.
He finished his heartfelt poems and ended the chapter,
While kissing his wife he wrote
"...and they lived happily ever after."

[Frank]

He shouted…


“I ain’t no sucka!”


as he strolled the pavement.
At the age of eight, he knew fate wouldn’t show to save him..
His uncle had been raped and his bro was wasted
His mother was great… but she only came in
The picture when the “Nigger” wasn’t home to say shit;
Home to - “Hoe, dough’s low, throw a loan for Jason!”
Maybe this caused the chrome to reload,
Pool of blood, clear enough for him to comb his waves in.



Uncle PJ seemed gay; feminine clothed
Waving his hands when he talked behind a delicate tone
He was a skeleton of elements; benevolent, bold
Affectionate, shine your shoes fore' he step on your toes…
But children these days always have something to prove.
“Jay - your uncles a faggot, he was hugging a dude!”
But Jay loved uncle P too much to wonder the truth;
Till the day this guy and his uncle were too comfortable
Cuddling on the comforter; rubbing knees, cheeks, blushing, amused,
Once in the room, PJ turned mellow and switched,
His attention to his nephew with a “Hello" and “Sit”
PJ smiled nervously as Jay’s eyes settled on his hip -
His hands in another mans; as he let go of the grip…
-
When Jay was bullied - his bro Steve was absent & such,
In the back of the cut, dumping guts, passing a Dutch
After a lunch, he’d fuck a slut, brag and then strut;
BUT when it came to kids beefing’ with Jay,
He’d just reach for his blade and say “Grab It, You Punk!”
Hansom & tough, weak in the brain -
A G to the game -
A Natural thug
Rather ask for some bud, a sneaker or chain
Then read from a page, or grab him a glove -
Jay’s sinkerball continued to split & dive –
Over time their relationship became that same pitch in disguise.
-
Mom was green in the eyes, lean in the thighs
Far from as black as Jason…
If you thought she was acting racist,
Know that the demeanor of the guy, who put a seed up in her - died
As soon as Steven had arrived, JUST LIKE THAT it was back to “hey bitch”
See Stacey was just a baby - 16 with his older brother -
Big dreams put on a quick lean till the boulders shuffled
Owning nothing, son in hand; book to her chest;
Couldn’t tell which was darker, her son, or the looks she would get...
She’d cook the best she could when the ingredients lacked
Saved tips; bought him Adidas with these jeans from the gap.
Elementary? Let me see - she dreamed it exact -
“Welcome Jason, tell your foster mother to take a seat in the back...”
From kindergarten to sixth, he had his mama to listen -
Except for days he displayed traits of his papa in him.

Poppa Chris, alcoholic – though they forced him to quit;
He’d just mumble & wave the cane that supported his limp
If I had a quarter for every unfortunate loss he would get
I could call the border of Georgia without it costing collect
It happened so often he wouldn’t cry, he just nod his head
“Lord why?” turned into a sigh & a ‘’not again’’
And when Jay was born; it didn’t help proceedings,
God knows they were barely doing well with Steven.
But a couple shots of the jack made there problems relax...
All of a sudden it’s “who needs a condom?!” At the drop of a hat…
Wake up hungover- fuck Folgers, no flirting or jokes,
Just a “Woman, get my slippers, why you burning my toast?!”
And this is just the talk at the start... cause once the brawling is sparked...
The words threw the air seem like a walk in the park.



“Jay, your uncles getting’ it, I’m hurting that clown, kid!”
As the laughter commenced;“OoOO’s” circled around him.
Tell his brother' “Yo son, this week I bat clean up!”
After the game it’s like “OoOoO – forgot bro - my bad, you see, we was…”
Brought his report card to mom and he'd be packed with joy -
That’s when the ‘’OooOo!’’ came before “That’s my boy!”
Pops used the word... it was thrown when the drama came…
“Stacey, you crazy?! – OoOoOo I hate your mama, Jay!”
The constant blame made a monster stage -
Himself in front of an audience as his conscience played -
The scene… over & over – his parents too broke to be glad, his
Brother, waking & baking,
His uncle too close on the mattress
It was past six, early morning; mom was knitting a shirt...
Steve, lighting a clip, his pops, riffing’ at work…
This was the system he learned, procedure he knew -
The morning disorder turned war zone as the evening grew;
He was cleaning his shoes, ready to bounce this joke -
Said “Peace” to Steve in his cloud of smoke
Bumped into pops who asked, ‘’gotta a few bucks, J?”
Grabbed his keys, leaving to a kiss from a bruised up face…
This was the last school he'd grace, the last flights he'd glide, son
The last “You’re killing my high” - last fight he'd hide from…
It just hit nine & his book bag was loaded with junk
Swaying his frail body side to side, as he strolled to the bus,
But sutin’ told him to cross the street, he rolled with his gut,
When barely off of the pavement, shoulders was bumped -
“Homie, you drunk?!”
Spoke sharply from the genes of his pops
When the kid flashed the steel, he turned into his uncle p on the spot
“Sorry man, I should’ve saw you move from
the gutter..”
If only he'd been.. calm...,cool like his brother…
That’s when the juice of his mother became clear, as the cars
Passed him & the onlookers, not a fear in his heart…
I guess the stress on his mind caused the punch to his peer.
The shots fired and "OoOoO!" to rest with him as it buzzed in his ear.
Bullets spelling disaster, Just another kid in a casket, with his family gathered..

and heres where I'm suppose to say




"And they lived happily ever after."

.
The End

[Geno]

Ydk
Good verse.
You did well writing, fell hardd at times though towards the ends of verses, it seemed like you just ran out of steem and stoopped caring about the flow of whaat u had going.
Content was cool, I feel like it could have been more creative and different, it seemed like something I've read a million times before, if that makes sense at all?

Frank
Pretty man
You have some of the most. Creative writing abilities I've seen. The story was great, the charracteers and diifferent descriptions were pretty amazing. The mechanics and style you used were great. Never seemed to fall off. Was long as fuck though. Even though not every line was a full line

Gotta vote frank. The concept and skill shined much brighter here
-frank

[patrown]

ydk - eloquently narrated. i enjoyed the transitions, actually. usually not my favorite technique but you pulled it off rather well here. favorite lines..

He tries in vain to hide disdain for his own emotionless pieces,
Unbeknownst to him,
his idols prospered in writing about love because they never achieved it.
and
But as a rose grows from the pavement; it still shows that the root will rot.

no complaints. great piece.

frank - i'm all for freedom of expression, most times. the fact you can write a story like that shows you're one of a kind. doing it well just shows your talent. however, i really did not enjoy this. and it was sad as fuck. you got a lot of emotion out of me but any shock value was overridden by disgust. however, you did showcase your talent. great rhymes. flowed very well.

/v ydk , i enjoyed his story much more.

[YDK]

http://www.netcees.co/showthread.php?t=28484
http://www.netcees.co/showthread.php?t=28469
http://www.netcees.co/showthread.php?t=28472

[breathless]

Vote - YDK

I dunno why people were bitchin about voting on this "ridiculously long" match up, I mean, shit, a hundred bars in audio is maybe 3, 4 minutes tops... Regardless though, these were both pretty killer pieces

YDK, lemme start by saying, this was fucking incredible, and I don't have a single complaint. Everything, lyrically, storywise, the use of the end line, spot on man. The comparisons were what mainly got me though.

***He tries in vain to hide disdain for his own emotionless pieces,
Unbeknownst to him, his idols prospered in writing about love because they never achieved it. ***
Lonely authors speaking of things they only believed they perceived,
While he tried to mirror they're techniques about the one thing he received.
Monetary values were worthless to the men seeking more,
Yet to the man that chased adoration, the world lay ignored.

I loved the wife's poem piece, how it was simpler than the rest and all, her not being a writer and using the man's hobby to him and their dual realization when he comes in to comfort her before even realizing she's about to leave. Amazing verse man

Frank... If these two pieces were say, made into film shorts, I think you may have taken it. Incredible imagery all throughout, that part where you used the OooOo's in different forms was pretty clever. Seriously though, not many writers have the balls or talent to put homoincestual molesty stuff in a verse and not be egregiously vulgar. I didn't think it was shock value, it was raw, real shit, and I commend you for that. I really liked the ending how you attached the relatives' personality influences to the main guy... But, I wasn't really feeling how you basically just threw the end line in there because you had to, and although you had some damn fine lyricism I just felt it wasn't quite as polished as it should've been for a story this deep.

[Certain]

You both put in a lot of work (perhaps too much, but we'll get to that) this week, and on top of that still managed to have the first open battle. Here, have an in-depth vote:

YDK: Your improvement over the past three weeks has been obvious and tremendous to see. I was excited from the jump to see you putting more into your rhyme schemes, and you showed a lot of confidence throughout this verse, which I think was a problem for you in weeks past. But I think you were too into it this week.

Here's the summary of your story: A writer is becoming frustrated with his writing and takes it out on his wife, only to realize that she is his true inspiration. That's a fine story. But it felt strained at 50-plus lines. This part was by far the weakest section but speaks to the issue as a whole:

A weak base meant the speech faced criticism and backlash,
And with a cynical take on the rap he decides to trash that.
Scratch it and step back,
Let the piece lead him to where his pens at.
Started as a love story; ended as a brag track.
"...the fags wack!"
Is all he can finish with as he sees a verse that he laughs at.

I'm not sure how to feel about the writer being a textcee, but I do know that there were better ways to broach that (mostly irrelevant, anyway) issue. Ending on the rotting root would have been a stronger structural conceit and allowed the story to push forward more. You spent a lot of time developing this protagonist, which was less relevant because the protagonist was us. Most of us will relate to him on some level.

The third stanza might have been the strongest writing of the story, but it made evident the reduncancy issue because it did so little to advance the story. In general, more details about the marriage or the wife would have been helpful to lay the groundwork for the ending. But I did like this bit of rumination on the writing process:

He tries in vain to hide disdain for his own emotionless pieces,
Unbeknownst to him,
his idols prospered in writing about love because they never achieved it.

There was really eloquent writing in parts of this verse, and the thoughts on the writing process were probably the highlight of the verse for me. When the verse was at its best, the story line seemed secondary. Unfortunatetly, that's because the story line was not particularly effective.

I've gone back and forth on the ending. Let me say upfront that I thought ending on a genuinely happy note and not using your topic ironically was the bolder and more interesting decision. It's fucking hard to write happy verse. I almost never do it, though that's more because I'm an unhappy person than anything else. And when you're given a topic like this one, the feeling is that you're stuffed into this happiness box. So I give you credit for doing what you did.

What I'm having issues with is whether it feels earned. From the perspective of the surface-level story of marriage, it doesn't. We just don't get to know the wife or the couple enough. It's difficult to understand her pain without understanding her. But I don't think this verse was really about the marriage as much as the writing. And from that perspective, the ending was perfect, all the way down to him writing while kissing his wife. He loved her more because she was his muse than anything else. The relationship is built on the foundation of his inspirations. It's kind of fucked-up from that perspective, and I can dig that. So I think ultimately that I really liked the ending for what it was.

From the writing perspective, you showed you can get out of the way and let the story tell itself when necessary in the fourth stanza and produced some eloquent lines in the first and third. The second stanza felt like filler, adding little and featuring the weakest section of the verse. The rhymes never returned to the level they seemed to be headed toward in the first stanza, but they were consistently effective. The were some awkward wording choices here or there, such as, "The woman he married exits after making his entrance." But mostly this was a major improvement. I think more careful consideration toward story structure and pacing would help you quite a bit, but you really aren't far off.

Frank: I'm not sure I've ever seen a longer verse for a topical battle. So that's impressive, I guess. But did you pull it off? I'm leaning mostly toward yes, but there were some issues that needed fixing in the process.

You almost have to write long. It's in your style. In switching from YDK's verse to yours, the difference in smoothness is ridiculously evident. It makes your verses exceptionally easy to read, but it also means you end up writing long almost every week because you simply don't pack enough in every line to go short. That actually serves as a breath of fresh air to a degree because your sense of pacing is strong enough that it never feels laborous to read your verses.

That laconic writer's voice makes it very easy to tell complex stories, as you did last week for example. But I still think this one had a little too much going on, and the biggest issue probably was Uncle P.J. He simply added nothing to the story and felt extraneous in every way. It was a bit distracting when you brought him up in the climax of the story because it didn't really seem relevant, unless you mean Jay gave a blowjob to the other guy. Beyond that, his individual section was the worst of the four.

Steve's was the best, and as a whole, your use of Steve worked the best. I didn't think much of the stuff about the mom and how Jay was interracial, and I'm glad I didn't because it seemed pretty irrelevant. I understand the purpose of characterization to provide depth, but Uncle P.J.'s felt too stereotypical and seemed to go for some sort of shock value about homosexuality, while Mom's verse was a bit too focused on the biracial aspect of it all.

The climax had the same sort of feeling of Jay-Z's "Meet the Parents," one of my favorite songs. I really liked the direct tie-ins showing nuture and nature. But the end somehow felt rushed, given that so much of the space was spent developing Jay and the family. (Aside: The intro stuff could have ben cut down to two lines, or even none.) We didn't get many details about the assailant or the circumstances, anthe clarity of the writing begins to peter off at about that time.

Then again, that's part of the cycle in these scenarios. Kids die without warning. We at least had that in this verse.

I liked the bleekeness of it, and I liked the slight twist on the topic. This verse was exceptionally straightforward, paricularly on the topic. The approach was that of a documentarian, and the take on the topic was very clever. The writing was in your signature style, with very, very few bumps along the way.

And that's why I'm siding with you. YDK had all his ducks in order and wrote a very good verse. Neither of you completely earned your lengths. But I do think Frank did more with his verse witht he flashbacks and familiar relations who ended up involved in this story. Frank wrote something memorable (albeit flawed). You both did.

Vote: Frank

[PancakeBrah]

I'm not doing a big break down. Because...fuck you both?

YDK, this was far and away the best verse I've read from you. I was interested all the way through. The story was earnest, real, plausible, and stood by itself. It didn't need some huge twist. I enjoyed it in heaps.

Frank, for a verse this long to not have any hiccups in terms of wording is stupendous. The characterization was excellent. In terms of pure writing you outdid your competitor.

Both stories were equal, in my opinion. Frank's a little bitch and shoehorned his topic into the piece, but with everything else being equal, he was just on a higher level of writing than YDK in this matchup. Which is a shame, because as I've said YDK showed out and wrote his best verse of the season. One that would've won most matchups this week. Praise to you both.

v/frank the loserface

edit:

i would like to underscore the fact that i think frank is a bitch

[zygote]

Easier contest to compare because both wrote in similar fictional storytelling styles. YDK some highlights: The third paragraph was excellent, every line was necessary and contributed greatly. Perhaps you could have omitted this section "A weak base meant the speech faced criticism and backlash,
And with a cynical take on the rap he decides to trash that.
Scratch it and step back,
Let the piece lead him to where his pens at.
Started as a love story; ended as a brag track.
"...the fags wack!"
Is all he can finish with as he sees a verse that he laughs at."

I feel like omitting that section would have strengthened the overall story considerably.

Frank, good character development especially with the dialogue sections. You have a good control of creating the mental image by appealing to different stereotypes. E.g., "Poppa Chris, alcoholic – though they forced him to quit;
He’d just mumble & wave the cane that supported his limp
If I had a quarter for every unfortunate loss he would get
I could call the border of Georgia without it costing collect"
Perhaps the only criticism, is there are too many characters and too wide of a timeline. The parts that seemed most effective where the individual sections, it maybe would have been more defective to expand on one individual section rather than try to present such a wide ranging effort. Voted for YDK.

[Certain]

Now it's 3-3.

[e11even]

The most epic battle this week. Period.

YDK- You nailed a beautiful piece about a decision too many people have the wrong answer to. I loved the story and the execution, albeit spelling out a naivete narration in the vein of lesson teaching and fairytales. This sounds like a autobiographical scene, therefore very relatable. I liked this a lot. You didn't miss a beat. Good Job.

Frank- I wanna be like you when I grow up. Lyrically.
This was a massive undertaking, as you made each element stand out separately, and finally merged them for a grand finale of tragically epic and epically tragic proportions. I was confused at first, looking for the linear progression, but when I saw the final blow, I immediatelky felt that satisfaction of closure. That ending though. I was hoping for some sort of upbeat swansong before the tragic event. Maybe you shortened it? I was hoping he'd been the one to shoot some one else as some kind of ouburst and cry for attention. Great verse though, all in all. And how ambitious of you. You million line-writing bastard. I wish I was allowed to indulge (legally) this week. I guess I'll live vicariously through you this time. Good Shit.

MVGT Frank. Clearly more epic, though both brought that real shit, fa real fa real. Please show up next week guys.