Round 1: 13. jilti vs. 4. NYCSPITZ \\ jilti wins 8-5

[Certain]

Welcome to Round 1!

The Basics

Check-ins are required by Monday, Aug. 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. If you don't check in, you will be replaced.

Verses are due Thursday, Aug. 28 at 11:59 p.m. PT. THERE ARE NO EXTENSIONS.

Votes are due Sunday, Aug. 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Four votes are required from each competitor. For each missing vote, one vote will be deducted. Post proof of voting here.

Verses may not exceed 10 lines. If the length of a writer's lines is called into question, the standard will be 15 words per line, and verses of more than 150 words will be disqualified or required to be shortened.

Standard writing and voting rules are in effect. No biting. No recycling. Votes must be explained. No editing verses after the first vote or the verses deadline. Any other issues will be resolved using Art of Writing League Season 3 rules as the basis.


Topic


Last Call


Good luck, @jilti and @NYCSPITZ.

[NYCSPITZ]

Smooth scrolls of sentient jade encasing an iris
as the qualitative equivalent of breath...replaces the silence
an endless field; Bjorn and this one flower touching in space
that rushing release - it frees his mind's crushing embrace.
Heraldic blossom: The Mind at Large colors his vanity's hue
as void. He hears the distant call of sanity's flute...
Time's a dynamic dissonance. Space and material striving
lay behind this shining veil's ethereal bindings
it's...an imperial climbing. Bjorn had decided his fate
Doors of perception wide - that dying ring rises to space.


.

[jilti]

dead silence to temperature rising in a matter of seconds
as adrenaline passed thru my anatomy to act out aggression
while tryna gather my senses, the intensity heightens
its rather evident the strap chatter was ending in violence
so im ready and fine with it, checking what time is left
set to finish this business before it strikes midnight again
got my fist balled up to wallop when it eventually lands
all the tension condensed in the palm of a sweaty hand
jaw clenched and as i preceded to let go.. deaf tone, Damn!
call ended like that. exceeded the sex phone-line minutes i had

[CopyPat]

this is 100% personal preference with this vote but im going with jilti.
nyc that just wasn't my style at all, and i felt jilti was way more original with it and also brought a nice twist at the end as well as some humor. also a more universally relate-able verse than yours. on a technical standpoint the flow, scheming etc was pretty well equal. both very solid. nyc with more vocab but jilti with a clearer message.
V-jilti

[Darth Yoda]

lol. what.



tip: a fun exercise - reading both pieces and attempting to guess the topic is really neat. the language towards the end for jilti was something that compressed the dynamics of the topic 'last call' it was quite alright and the written physiology was coo. from 1-7 it was all just pretty alright. the ender was unexpected, but wasnt surprising. nyc tapped into another realm that was hard to achieve. it was quite alright as well. i enjoyed it, but if im going for quantitative effort over qualitative direction the curve starts leaning in one direction. it had little to do with the condensed rhyme efforts of jil and more of the repressed direction of nyc. im going with jil in a very close, pendulum swinging affair.

[Cormier]

hmmmmm, tough choice.

NYC, i think your verse was technically more advanced than Jilti's. the wording, vocab and imagery were all a notch above. I like Huxley, so i enjoyed the allusions. where i think this verse suffered was the fact that it had to be 10 lines. i think the topic gets lost a little in there and the whole thing just seems a little muddled.

Jilti, i always enjoy when people try to add some humor to their verses. i try to be humorous in my writing quite often, but too many people never even attempt it. it can be quite hard to do. the writing itself was decent, but nothing to write home to mom about. just solid. where i think you succeeded over NYC is that you told a complete story in your 10 lines. i think that is going to be the biggest thing for people going through this tournament. who can say the most in their 10 lines?

hmmm, NYC was better from a technical standpoint, Jilti was better from a completeness and clarity standpoint. I think in this format of i have to go with the verse that achieves wholeness because i think that's the whole point of this tournament. with a 20 or 30 line max i'm almost totally sure my vote would be different, but with 10 lines there it is.

VOTE= Jilti

[Mike Wrecka]

awesome battle guys . best ive read so far.

NYC really wows me with his mechanics and multis sometimes. this is one of those times. his word choice and diction was top notch and this piece really had a poetic feel to it (not structure wise but in its eloquent wording). I personally think that this format suits NYC probably more than any other competitor. his longer verses sometimes tend to go no where. in ten lines he could just razzle and dazzle in a flash and its over


jillti - I was impressed with this verse. I like how you strung a lot of the end rhymes into the beginning of the following line. I used to do it that a lot and now im wondering why I moved away from it. it reads smooth. you had the better take on the topic. it was creative. and the twist was entertaining.

real close battle. hard to pick a winner. the way I will do it in this instance is , which verse would I rather read again and the answer is NYCs. so im gonna

vote - NYC

[MKG]

Really enjoyed nycs verse, the flow was on point throughout his while piece the vocabulary was great and was even manage to squeeze in some emotion into ten lines. Like how you didn't take the obvious approach with your piece kinda put a twist on it and you did a good job of that. Jilti I must admit yours was a bit suspenseful in the sense that I didn't know how you were gonna wrap up the piece until the last line but I must admit I was a bit disappointed I didn't like the approach you took it's like there was this big build up and once I saw phone sex I was like oh, and let down. Mechanically your verse was solid but personally I enjoys the direction in which NYC went better,

Vote NYC

[Adonis]

I enjoyed both verse. Each had solid rhymes and both actually had a story to tell. One was a phone sex call, abruptly ending in the middle of climax. The other, a story of death. I preferred the story of a man dying and what he saw while dying

Vote nyc

[kannon]

Spitz. I gotta be honest, I had a hard time following your story. The vocabulary was flashy, but kinda lent toward over-explaining, in lieu of letting the story move. Which may have very well been your point. I don't know. All I do know is that my face was scrunched and confused while reading this. It seems like a dude named Bjorn (I don't know if that name is supposed to be relevant, or random), is dying. Seems self inflicted. As though the freedom from his own thoughts was more important than living with his thoughts. And that somehow he would find sanity on the other side. I would have loved to read more about what brought him to this point, but again, as a reader, I don't always know your intentions. That being said, as a writer, I know that I've written pieces with a lack of background specifically to focus on elongating a brief moment. So again, that may have been your intention. I don't know man, It's cool. but like, It seems like you just tied a bunch of bells and whistles onto a premise. And why is his name Bjorn? What kind of a name is Bjorn? Anyways, I can't even place this on a scale from 1-10 because I read it and give it a 4, then I read it again and give it an 8, then I read it again and give it a 5. This is going to completely depend on your opponents verse.

Jilti. Worse name than Bjorn. I KID (but seriously). At first read, I thought this was going to be a kid playing call of duty or some type of first person shooter. Especially since you focused on aggression and violence towards the beginning. Turns out this person is just an angry masturbator. My only qualm is that it sounds like he finished. So he shouldn't be so upset about the call ending. Sounds like it should be celebratory. My favorite bar was definitely the "sweaty hand" line. Um... I dont really know what else to say man. Pretty straight forward. Very literal interpretation of the topic. The twist was cool. Shit, I usually love humorous verses, there was just something about this one that felt a little dry to me. And the worst part is that I can't place why. Maybe it's because I'm coming off of reading NYC's verse. Damnit, man, I don't think we could have paired up two more different verses. This shit is doper than I am currently giving it credit for, and I know this. The set up lines were good enough to keep you guessing, but on a second read through it can all be applied to better develop the ending.

I have to go with Jilti. This is a tough one though. I wouldn't be mad at either one of you moving on. But I have to go with Jilti.

[Soulstice]

Wow. Two completely different takes. I think technically the more superior verse was nycspitz. Jill I had some slant rhymes in there that I couldn't follow along with completely. Both verses were enjoyable I'm different ways. Jilti was more straightforward and skillfully built tension as you expanded the piece until the twist at the end. The first 5 lines or so we're quite well done in that I was expecting a build up toward something explosive... just not that kind of explosive. Nycspitz serenaded us with a flow of imagery. I suppose the flower was a metaphor for letting go and ggoing to death. Time is dynamic dissonance was dope. The original description of the iris was cool. Overall if you had expanded the piece it would've been better but of course that is against the rules. Jilti managed to more fully capture a developed story arc and bring the reader through a flow emotion more naturally with what little space he was given so vote to jilti

[timeless]

wasn't sure how nyc related the mind at large and doors of perception theme he had going to the topic. dope wording though. jilti had less abstractness, I didn't enjoy the switching of tones for the sake of comedy in the end. not bad though

v. jilti

[Eŋg]

totoro - you were perhaps a bit too ambitious with your limited space to work in. i enjoyed the writing, the language (though it obfuscates at times), your poetic touch in putting it all together. there was an aesthetic appeal in your verse, but i don't think you nailed your topic - which felt almost periphery.

jilti - this was good. much more direct, and ultimately less solemn in tone. the rhymes were solid, kept your piece ticking along well, and nothing stood out to me as bad. i think with your much more consumable effort, you've done yourself favours here.

personally i lean one way.

v/nyc

[oats]

NYC this was an interesting take, as far as what I got out of it. Very reminiscent of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov, the last call for humanity as it becomes immortal in artificial intelligence, stripping itself of body and all physical anchors to become pure energy.SHIT LIKE THAT. But I can definitely see some knocks for lack of clarity here. Perhaps this single moment was packed with too much for 10 lines, hard to get a grasp of all the elements that matter in such a short frame. I enjoyed it, though, for what I believe it is.

Jilti: lol I liked this, def did a good job at subverting my expectations, and the humor worked. do people still use sex phone lines? either way, you built up to the moment well, and the writing itself was solid, if not as ostentatious as NYC's. overall this was good, the twist that it was hinging on was effective and you executed what you were going for. It was simple, but it worked.

Vote: This is really difficult. On the one hand NYC was more ambitious, but sacrificed some clarity as a result. Jilti had cleaner execution for a clever, if not easier approach. NYC had the better writing, but not so much so that it weighs in on this vote much. It's close as fuck, and it comes down to my personal appeals here, and as much as I enjoy a good jerking off verse, NYC captured something a bit more fascinating with his 10 lines. Great battle, hats off to both.

[Diode]

NYC did what NYC does. obfuscating any hope of a direct storyline, he uses pretty prose as an allegory for something. it's usually unworldly and he should be commended for always bringing us some kind of weird sci-fi creation of our reality when we give him mundane phrases. the rhyme scheme was advanced, as is to be expected. however.. ten lines was too little to paint the picture he wanted to paint. for someone who writes with a lot left unsaid, it crippled him. Too much vaguery.

jilti wrote an effective, direct piece with the kind of twist @CopyPat was going for in our battle. it's been done before, true, but not in ten lines. the writing and rhyming showed experience and it flowed smoothly. i didn't know where it was going to end and then *wham* - if you can catch me off guard, you've done something right.

v/ jilti with the upset

[Certain]

NYCSPITZ: The opening line let me know where you were going with this, which is where you often go with these verses: vague, elusive, intellectualized meandering. When I was doing seeding, I was torn on whether your writing style would translate because of how deep you go into metaphor and general weirdness. But here you made clearly that you got caught up in yourself, and the lack of clarity made this verse rather unsettled. There were some very nice turns of phrase, to be sure. The couplet beginning "Time's a dyanmic dissonance" was particularly good. You gave me some things to think about but didn't seem to put the thought in yourself. Your mechanics were as strong as ever, though.

jilti: I think this verse provides a pretty good template for a safe approach in this tournament. You came up with a clever approach on the topic, used that as a twist and kept the details interesting but vague until the twist was revealed. This works better in a short-verse format for three reasons: Voters are more likely to re-read, you aren't spending a ton of time working through intentionally vague details and the closing line has more weight as one of 10 rather than one of 32 or whatever. Nothing about this verse particularly wowed me except that your approach to the topic was very clever. But you didn't fall out of step with rhyme mechanics and kept the phrasing adequate and interesting without tipping your hand. I could quibble about some of the lines with respect to the twist, but I think things like "the strap chatter was ending in violence" can be interpretted liberally to a degree. This is a solid foundation to build off.

Vote: jilti