Week 6: Clutbuck (0-0) vs. Nigma (1-0)-- CLUTBUCK WINS 5-1

[Split Eight]

AOWL Season V, Week 6


SUMMARY OF RULES:

Verses are due
Monday at 11:59 p.m. Western / or Tuesday 2:59 Am Eastern / 7:59AM UK
There are NO extensions.

Verses MUST be a minimum 10 lines or a maximum of 48 lines (or 650 words).

Votes are due Thursday at 11:59 p.m. Western / or Friday 2:59 Am Eastern / 7:59AM UK. Failure to vote will result in automatic sign out for the next week.

All competitors must vote on THREE battles and post links/ references in the voting thread.

Read the full rules here!

TOPIC:
STORY PROMPT WEEK:
"I knew our mission was designed with the inevitability of failure in mind. I accepted it. Understood it. But what struck me hard, out of nowhere, was that Wilcox didn't know..."

Good luck!
@Nigma @Pent uP

[Pent uP]

In.

Story prompts are gay

[Nigma]

In

[Nigma]

Fall of the Mind.

Although few believe it...

The haze, it starts to set in.
My horizons door froze.
I gaze into the heavens and the skies a lifeless portal.
Minds of mortals falling like the rain in eyeless storms do.
And it pains me like a thorn because I plainly tried to warn you.
They say bravery's a gorgeous thing. Absorb and respect it.
Crush the flaura and fauna with a mortar and pestle.
Snort and ingest it, ascend within primordial vessels,
Or be torn, burnt, and settle, too warped to be rescued.
Be seen as great, respected, or be lost through the cracks.
The scenes are stained across the page. I often look back.
A breed and their forgotten ways, been squandered to black.
Surreal and somber fables of the monster in man...
I feel they're false, and maybe there's resolve in that fact,
Since vision is a prison on the foggiest planet... Yet,
I've seen the tip of wisdom and eclipsed it's vicious, distant levels.
Hell I've seen the fallen angels, must assume there's risen devils.
Saw the blizzard settle, now I'm resting since my breath is fading.
Slept to see the blemishes invented from the quests I've taken.
Set me on a bed of razors, rescue me from death and hatred.
Stressed and I'm depressed and all this medicine perpetuates it.
Destined to that path in which I'm pointing, like the mast of ships.
Filtering the poison from the noise before it pass my lips.
Embarking onto darker waters, dance across the path to it.
It's black, as if packs of Atlantis transients inhabit it.
Imagine if the ballads rift was drawn onto the canvas.
It's synonymous to all of it like knowledge is to glasses.
Grab the picture, draw a match, watch the photo fall to ashes.
Draft an almanac of the sunken castles and twisted nations.
Drift away with the strongest axis whose since decayed,
And then stick and paste all misplaced pieces and situate it
Till the picture is repainted and this mist has dissipated.

[Clutbuck]

Need a verse writing on short notice?

Holla 1800-CLUTBUCK!

[Split Eight]

Posted by Clutbuck as a stand-in verse



"I knew our mission was designed with the inevitability of failure in mind. I accepted it. Understood it. But what struck me hard, out of nowhere, was that Wilcox didn't know..."

We were a colony of ants with a home built on unity
a proud product of our ancestry and own ingenuity.
A close-knit community with everybody playing a part
from those soldiering dutifully away in the yard.
The women raising their larvae through adolescence,
while males were discarded as having only one use within essence.
To reproduce at the zenith of their physical primes
in a herculean effort to deliver new life.
Those picked at the direct request of The Queen
were risking their lives to attend to her needs.
Her sentry stampeded through Tunnel Two up ahead
with antennae defeated, hanging loose from their heads.
Gewgar chewed for a second, standing upright as he clacked,
“She wants you to be next,”
he sighed in our path.
Wilcox eyed him erratically, despite my jostling limbs,
“Yes sir!”
he bites without asking or stopping to think.
“What are you drinking, pond water?!” I tried intervening
Wilcox was implicit
“I’m making sure my life has a meaning,”
“By dying!?” I pleaded for my friend to see sense
“By trying,” he reasoned.
“Remember me, friend.”
I guess in the end he chose to ignore my advice,
He wouldn't accept it back then because he thought he was right.
For him the order that night had made him a martyr,
but what I saw was my lifelong friend make his faithful departure.
Bravely he fathered a new generation of ants
who would break from the larvae freshly laid in our camp.
The day that they hatched signalled the day of our doom
with The Aged surpassed, then displaced by the new.
While the brave and the foolish quietly sleep,
The cradle of youth rocks gently, as the cycle repeats...

[2tripple0]

wow I was really impressed with clutbucks verse he told a really good story and was on point throughout... once again I could go nitpicking his verse for not having included some stuff but I wont because by itself it was dope and held its storyline of an ant colony very well. I think I read a book about ants and their counterparts so I kind of related in that way.... would have wished for maybe a bit more colour and tone so that you could have written something much more disgusting... but anyways good job for dropping...

as for nigma I just felt this verse was bland and generic... it was dope for what it was,..but I just felt like you were using multis and kind of forcing a lot of the meaning... I wont doubt that someone else may feel differently about your verse but for me it just wasn't what I was looking for.....im not trying to be a bad guy its just I think u forced your verse a bit even though it was clean rhymes that you were dropping.... this was a close battle but for me I just felt that clutbuck had a better storyline and stuck to his topic throughout his verse.........so.......

vote: CLUTTER

[timeless]

dope battle.

at first read, i felt clut deserved my vote because of his use of the topic, whereas it looks as if nigma wrote this verse before this week and decided to use it now. couldnt find your connection to the topic at all my dude. However, as far as writing and enjoyment out of each verse goes, I have to give this to nigma. I really appreciate cluts dialogue use, I myself have went that route numerous times and it is not an approach that is easy, let alone "respected" by other topical heads, it always got the reader lost somehow. But i enjoyed it, flowed/read smooth, etc. Nigma started out slow, but his multis and overall context really excelled as the piece went on and I didn't want to stop reading. Tough vote all around still tbh, but I feel if buck had more time to evolve on his approach, he wouldve had this.

V. Nigma

[Woke]

I enjoyed nigmas verse although some of lines were winded grew too much in syllable to have raw cadence, but the sentences all worked. The verse is a beast to decipher, but on face value it is a war of mind, the good and evil, and how the process can change but only by covering up what was done before, so not really change, just update. Clutter had an interesting concept and story line. His is obviously easier to follow given that it is a narrative as opposed to something that will make you look deep and explore. Clutter gets kudos for executing topic however, dude hit the ball on the head? is that the saying? Sounds weird as fuck man, I digress. So while this is a relatively close battle that I enjoyed reading. I will typically side with the verse that made me think more or opens my mind up. However, in this case the eye opener was pure use of topic and execution. While Nigma too used his topic well, and painted a nice picture in the literal and abstract sense given his concept, clutter just narrowly out dueled him

v/clut

[UnbornBuddha]

Obviously, Nigma had the stronger rhyming. Lars went with the narrative, which usually forsakes rhyming for the passage of the story. I do think this week's topics basically were suited best for stories. I mean the entire topic is presented as a what if, essentially.

Albeit, Nigma, went for the more bold approach which is abstract to something that intrinsically calls for a progressive movement to continue elucidating the events in the quote. I do believe while a nice presentation, there was a lot of flash and not all of clarity. There were many themes, which basically happen in the mind as it declines and then rearranges itself based on perspective. Almost like a tale of depression being lifted.
Lars had a straightforward story, as he usually does. Albeit, it was a little bit too straightforward, which I do feel sometimes is the weakness and strength of you. But, sometimes you go for something completely out the box and you still maintain this simplicity while talking about something very vast. Those verses are when your skills truly show. Here, your mechanics were displayed, although there was nothing that was overly stunning, yet you managed to shine in clarity, which in this week I felt was very important, especially because of the nature of the topics.

Vote: Clutbuck

[PancakeBrah]

Nigma -

The writing here is arguably the best I've ever seen from you. The rhymes were complex and unforced, and some of the phrasing and visuals were just top notch. From a technical viewpoint you crushed it this week. The problem I have is I can't really make a connection between your verse and the topic. Maybe it's there, and if I squint hard enough I can kind of, maybe, make a theoretical/metaphorical connection but it's thin and even if it is there it isn't the main thrust or point of your verse. I'm of the camp that says an unrelated verse basically disqualifies a writer in a topical battle. Which is a shame because you wrote the fuck out of this.

Lars -

Your rhymes were solid if not a bit below your usual standard. You were probably rushed. They were still good but the schemes weren't as complex or intricately interwoven, which is your norm. There's not much to say in regards to the story; it was told well and straight forward. In terms of adhering to the topic, you obviously outdid your opponent.

On face value, I think Nigma wrote the better verse. Which was unexpected, to me, coming into this. That said, the topic is the topic, and Lars had a clearly adhering verse. Whereas Nigma had a tangential relationship at best. I'm not one to dislike metaphorical ties but this was a real stretch to me. The writing was close enough to warrant heavy weight being put on the topic concept.

v/Lars

[YDK]

Short vote sorry fellas.
Nigma had a very fluent verse with quite a few off rhymes that actually tied it nicely. I'm usually not a fan of the off or slant rhymes but they were done so cleanly that I didn't mind. Clut I swear I've read this verse before or something similar, not too manypeople writing about ants so these verses stand out lol also a smooth read but I will admit I did like the storyline a bit more than nigmas.
It really all boiled down to preferance to me because the mechanics were used nicely differently but equally on both sides and clutbuck had the morr entertaining storyline.
Vote pentclucklars