Semi Finals: Seymour Butts vs. SlutMachine - [seymour advances 5-0]

[Adonis]

THE SEMIFINALS

http://i.imgur.com/v82crFN.gif


Verses are due Saturday, August 23rd, 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time. Friday August 22nd 11:59 western
No Extensions. No Exceptions.

Verses must be a minimum of 10 lines or a maximum of 48 lines or 650 words.

Votes are due Sunday, August 24th, 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time.

View other rules: HERE (http://netcees.co/showthread.php?t=84794)


TOPIC:

http://i.imgur.com/Nd7D9n3.jpg
- The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.



Seymour BUTTS SlutMachine

Good luck to both competitors.

[Seymour BUTTS]

ayo the trolley car vibrates. . .
but the richter scale pales compared to young Johnny Cobb's mindrate
window designs break, and everything is spinning and moving
Johnny could see it right away - they were in for a doozy
all breaks in a flash...it's so simple and moving
a mighty city brought to its kness, crippled and luring
glass glitters; the concrete's sharp, shimmering jewelry
The disease, man. and earth administers curing.
It's slightly cynical, in line with Johnny's faltering flow
his wife and her lover left him to father a daughter alone
honestly she's little miss Melissa Clotterman's clone...
'Frisco squeaks in intermittent, teeter tottering groans.
The trolley car tips...fear peaks and time warps to a crawl
the conductor's shriek morphs, now he morbidly drawls
atop one of these welcoming rises and loitering falls -
the hand strap - it swings away as nature bouyantly calls.
Johnny stretches and grabs, the car's wrecked in the crash
there was no blood before, but now in seconds - a bath
Melissa's silent and wide-eyed, Johnny holds tight to her blouse
His other shoulder dislocated - pain he hides in his brow
the screams and the groans, they're so surreal it seeps to his bones...
he pulls Melissa single-handedly to the street by a phone
Fork in the road. they run down during the pause to a park
then lie on rubber. The quake rises and violently sparks.
On their stomachs, a view of falling beams and detritus puffs
sometimes disaster can enlighten more than mescalin does
as nebulous buildings...tower above in skeletal bluffs
strength mates with the unknown,
in this potentiated, eloquent dust.




.

[SlutMachine]

Earthquakes... Earth breaks for mother nature's demonic traits,
Lucifer masturbates as a lovers favor to move her tectonic plates.
To orchestrate against the goddess praise is part of his hedonic ways,
marked as dark is God's lazy grace, it's how he plays on his office days.
A modest case for the modern craze of religious politics
leaves prolific believers behind, nothing is viscious for critics.
These tidbits please cynics when stars gets aligned,
it sparks the design of physics when books is lost in devine.
Hit pause, start and rewind, then repeat the discussion,
the defeat is construction, you can't really complete the destruction.
Can't you see the reduction in thinkers when moved to the edge?
I pledged my allegiance to keep me on the right side of the hedge.
So when I go for the wedge I need a release from the trap,
I don't care if we lose, just remove that part of the map.
Entrapped in our insanity is how we define lucid profanity,
mask the facts that matter and contradict the truth in vanity.
If you want to preserve humanity it's already a lost cause,
cuz when push comes to shove it's mostly a faux pas.
I applaud those that made sure to show data on the matter,
San Fran in 1906; earth was serving Chinatown on a platter.
When thousands of deaths go ''unnoticed'' it makes communities shatter,
you could say it's chaos control... I tend to go for the latter.
Like a game of ''would you rather'', who really cares what happens after?
The stream of consciousness, fuck it, we'll ride it as a professional rafter,
even with God's intervention it would still induce Lucifers laughter.
100 years later it's considered a statistic for another disaster,
like any other chick that you're screwing.
What's up 2011 Japan, how YOU doing?

[Richard Schwartz]

Seymour, you took the straightforward approach to the 'on-the-ground' perspective of the disaster. I thought it may turn out a little stale, but you colored it in nicely. A backstory that makes you feel for the characters but doesn't draw you too far from the storyline. Breakneck pacing, which really matched the action. I thought it was really cool. My one qualm was there were a few errors in here - 'mindrate' isn't one word, you misspelled 'knees' and you bungled the pronunciated of 'detritus'... (its duh-TRY-tus). Those bugged me in what was otherwise a very engaging and entertaining read.

SlutMachine - the highlight of your verse was the flow and rhyming mechanics - it had a steady pace and was easy and fun to read. The drawback for me was that it seemed unfocused and went a little too far into the realm of stream of consciousness. I couldn't really follow a conherent storyline and that was disappointing, especially after Butts had such an engaging story. There were also a few spelling errors that also drove me crazy - "viscious" "devine". Overall, I liked the ride that your verse gave me, I just wasn't too pleased with where it actually led me.

Vote -- Seymour Butts

[Adonis]

Seymour took a very vivid and descriptive route, filled with so much imagery you HAVE to read it multiple times to actually understand what was penned. butts essentially wrote the story of the trolley crashing and a the split seconds ensuing using a handful of personal accounts. The writing was done in a meticulous fashion. Each line was an image, each image held a flow, and each bar was seamless in the grand scheme. This style is actually best suited for the short verse topical tourney, me not knowing who you are, but with this verse I have a strong sense. Anyways, I really did like the verse, so much so that I can't give you a single thing that I did NOT like about it. RARE occurrence, good shit.

Slut wrote more of a traditional topical in my eyes, opting out of the visual verse, instead going with a rather opinionated verse. Saying the quake was man made for population control?? Not sure if that's where you were going, but that's where it took me. Anyways, the rhyme scheme was cool, and for the record, the scheme you went with is very hard to pull off because often times the writer throws in words to match the scheme rather then progress the story, but you did not. I liked the verse for what it was, had some knowledge and very solid writing. I don't really have any complaints other then you covered a few different fronts rather then keeping focused and covering more ground on one of the three topics you had here. With that said....


I am voting

SEYMOUR BUTTS

Butts kept focus and had the better writing, although Machine too had a very enjoyable verse, it was simply over matched.

[Pharaohs Army]

I do think Seymour for the most part pulled it off-- "it" being: a story with characters, a bit of personal background on them, descriptions of the action/disaster going on around them, with good imagery, and capturing my attention on what will happen next.
there were a couple areas where i felt the phrasing was forced or trite, but overall it was good. and the rhyming and rhythm were strong points to aid the creativity.

slutmachine's verse has a good flow with a lot of quality rhyming. however in my view there appeared to be a lack of focus on the 'message' being conveyed. now i realize some pieces are just for the sake of themselves, not conveying a message..but i felt that this verse "wanted to" have a message, but did not do a substantial job at conveying one. another way of looking at it is to say: it perhaps touched on a lot of things-- jumped around and tried to tie them together-- but not as well as it could have.
..."Earth breaks for mother nature's demonic traits,
Lucifer masturbates as a lovers favor to move her tectonic plates.
To orchestrate against the goddess praise is part of his hedonic ways,
marked as dark is God's lazy grace, it's how he plays on his office days.
A modest case for the modern craze of religious politics
leaves prolific believers behind, nothing is viscious for critics.
These tidbits please cynics when stars gets aligned,
it sparks the design of physics when books is lost in devine."...

"nothing is vicious for critics"-- even in context, i am left wondering what this means.
i am not speaking out of ignorance..i'd like to think i know about nature/religion/politics/
so do not get me wrong-- it is a good verse with quality rhyming. the wording is just too convoluted or perhaps just "trying too hard". good verse but does not beat Seymour's

Vote Seymore Butts

[Certain]

Seymour BUTTS: This was about the safest route anyone could go this week, given the topics. But you did it really, really well. I was skeptical of the back-and-forth movement between the unitalicized man-on-the-street perspective and the italicized grander perspective because those types of narrative changes often make verses in this genre feel stilted. Instead, yours worked so well that one could make the case the italics were unnecessary. You also gave us just enough detail about Johnny Cobb and his daughter. I didn't like the Melissa Clotterman's clone line because I don't quite understand why a clone was invoked. But you had strong rhyme mechanics, clear writing and a solid structure. That made up for the hyper-direct approach.

SlutMachine: The other obvious approach this week was to examine the disaster on a grander scale, rather than with the specifics of the single disaster displayed in mind. That's what you went for here, and I'm torn on the success of this verse. You started really slowly, then picked up a little. I didn't like the "Lucifer masturbates" line at all because it seemed like such a dull, trite metaphor. There were a few other similar moments, where I had to roll my eyes at a cliché or bland turn of phrase. Mostly, though, I didn't like the logic of this verse, which is important when you're trying to writing a persuasive verse. You never convinced me of anything because your explanation was thin. "Humanity deserved it" doesn't explain enough. And the writing didn't carry you through, as there were some forced rhymes and turns of phrase that didn't work, such as "I tend to go for the latter" after not providing two options. This wasn't a bad verse by any means, but it didn't reach the caliber required in a semifinal against an elite opponent.

Vote: Seymour BUTTS

[oats]

Butts: This was good. Your approach wasn't much, but your execution was. You gave life to the scene in a complete way, providing characters and plot backdrop - all done nicely with good, technical writing and strong rhyming (though detritus is not pronounced how I think you think it is). Overall few complaints, nothing great, but everything good.

Slut: I may have liked your approach better than Butts', but the actual writing was not as deft. To be honest a lot of the wording felt clunky to me, and it was difficult to suss out any meaning in certain stretches. Like this:

A modest case for the modern craze of religious politics
leaves prolific believers behind, nothing is viscious for critics.
These tidbits please cynics when stars gets aligned,
it sparks the design of physics when books is lost in devine.

A lot of these phrases were not anchored with any clear meaning to me. Like what is the modest case - the earthquake? I don't know what "nothing is vicious for critics" means either, nor do I understand what it means to spark the design of physics or what it is to get lost in divine. Not trying to be a dick, just pointing out what didn't work for me. I think what could help is having a more clear framework for the direction of the verse, and then it's easier for readers to attach meaning to otherwise elusive concepts.


Vote: Seymour Butts