Friendly: kannon vs. Pent uP \\ 3.5-3.5 tie

[Certain]

OK, here's the deal: Pent uP is going to replace Lars by request. kannon advances via no-show. But since they both wrote to the same topic, we'll let this be open for votes even though it won't count toward either site records or the tournament. But it will count toward tournament voting, if you're so inclined.

Topic:


Touch the Sky


kannon

She held my hand and whispered that she never did enough
I listened up because I hadn't seen her in some months
I moved away at eighteen, our relationship kinda changed
Only saw her on holidays, or if family members got engaged
My grandmother... She blamed herself for us losing touch
Couldn't bring myself to tell her that I used to make excuses up
Her smile a mix of calm and worried, I held her and lied down
Knowing all that mattered is that we're both here right now
I whispered "I love you," and wrapped her cold hands up in mine
A tear fell from her eye, and her soul touched the sky...



Pent uP

Hand gliding

The brown dirt was vibrant under my gray and white Asic shoes.
Eyes widened to the amazing view that had my whole life racing through;
Half my hair sweat drenched and half of it waving in the wind.
Heart racing and in sync to Guerilla Radio playing while I think
“What better place than here? What better time than NOW?”
Dirt crumbled off the cliff as I head to finding out –
Blurry fern greens, dirt, leaves made the wind feel motionless
While a cascade of cool and rough hit me so intensely.
A flock of birds laugh as I slowly sink from my rush and high –
I’ll never be as grounded as the moment I no longer touch the sky.

[Objective]

Kannon - First half of your verse slightly touches the subject of what you're going for. I know it's hard to do in just 10 lines but I'd like to know if there was a reason to why you were losing touch with them. Just moving away doesn't really seem like reason enough for them to do so. That said the second half of your verse really picks it up again as far as content goes. It gets more emotional as you get to learn more about the characters, their morals/ethics and their emotional connections. There's definite love here and the last two lines really wrapped up the story and the topic as well with the emotional bond they got and put somewhat of an closure to all her worries before she passed away. (At least that was how I interpreted the last line knowing that might not have been what you intended.)

Well done, you did a lot with just 10 lines. Enjoyed the read.

Pent uP - Excellent wording, the first line really set the tone of your verse and you kept the consistency up throughout the verse. I'd say the verse is really dark and atmospheric, well done and stylistic. The last line really puts a cord in you but wraps it up perfectly.

Vote - Pent uP. Kannon's verse was heartfelt and real, the verse itself was executed effortlessly and shows that emotional verses with a basis of love can be executed perfectly without seeming redundant and/or boring. The family matters he portrayed can be related to most readers in one way or the other, and by writing it with a straight forward approach the verse should hit everyone at some level whether they're writers or not. He did a lot with 10 lines although the distance that was created between the character and certain family members is left unknown.
Pent uP managed to write an incredible piece with just 10 lines as well, stylistically I enjoyed his verse more. Mixed in with interesting lines from a writers standpoint it engages you, the way his lines and imagery is incorporated into a heartfelt piece written in first perspective makes you see it from the characters perspective and feel for him as he takes the leap of faith that inevitably seals his fate.

I really enjoyed this battle and it's my favorite so far, I hope it doesn't go unnoticed. Well done by both.

[Eŋg]

kannon - very solid, if a little mundane and uninspired. pretty smooth metre, and i supposed you contained something of a story with what was given. i liked it, just felt a bit by the numbers.

pent up - i fux with RATM. you flaunted a better talent for description. blurry fern greens, dirt, leaves reads nicely but sounds a bit off to me syntactically? you're probably just omitting an and for rhythm. i wasn't really bothered by it, js. impressed me more than kannon's verse.

cool battle.

v/pent

[timeless]

enjoyed kannons a lot, good display of emotion and the way you used the topic was dope. really like how pent opened up, the first 4-6 were dope then it just fell flat imo, lack of inspiration for the topic it seems.

v. kannon

[Soulstice]

Kannon. I liked the way you developed your characters but felt as though the limitations of this tourney kept you from expanding the piece to its full ppotential . obviously every piece will suffer from this but there were some dimensions that were lacking I felt. Although there were multiple family members that you showed I thought it would be better if you had even a more holistic description of the family tree. I guess I'm saying is I liked it but the key to this tourney is the choice of concept that won't feel like it's missing something when restricted to ten lines.

Pent. I think your first line was pretty bland scene setting that was kind of a waste of real estate. The verse was summed up nicely in ten lines though and the guerilla radio quote was pretty provoking. Also good

Voting Kannon for a more sprawling piece in ten lines although I had my complaints.

[Pinot Grij]

Kannon, your verse was cool.. it was that leaving a former love behind for college and then coming home for the summer kinda vibe. Very casual and straightforward, which I generally prefer. I liked the linear storytelling.. oftentimes there's a tendency to build the final line into some kind of Aesopian moral in these types of verses, but you actually kept the tone right on and didn't betray everything you'd been leading up to. There's a sort of audaciousness in doing that, which I was quite impressed by.

Pent, your title through me off, cuz I'm like "It's HANG gliding"... but then I wasn't sure if you pulled a play on words but actually I still just think you messed it up. I just struggled with the over-description in your verse. Like, I think calling brown dirt vibrant is oxymoronic and not in the deep, poetic sense. There was some build-up in the verse, but the payoff line was hampered by a double-negative that makes it hard to hit home effectively. I feel like you struggled to achieve what you wanted to with this verse, and that sucks.

I vote for Kannon for a more cohesive and relatable verse.

[Diode]

this should be battle of the round. big props to pent for throwing this together on such short notice.

everything there is fairly even - rhyme schemes, use of language, technique.. it's terrible that one person has to lose.

i usually do full breakdowns when i want to give feedback and criticism to each writer. you've both (almost) left me with nothing to do here.

pent gets the victory on imagery. no surprises here, his story is about a particular scene and the exuberance of life that is drawn from it. by contrast, kannon's is about an experience that requires references to characters and thus needs to spend the limited lines on filling them in. pent wins the descriptive portion of the battle on that by default, so it isn't even a knock on kannon.

otoh, nick tells a story. pent obviously isn't seeking to do much of that, and likewise, kannon wins by default here due to the aim of the piece.

so it all comes down to which is more important.. the impact of tugging on the feels or the technical mastery that can make a person exist in a scene created purely with words? hell if i know.

Certain, i'm voting this a tie.

and an fyi for Pent uP - if you'd left the title out, this could have been about an impulsive suicide.. and that would have edged it for you.

[Certain]

kannon: You told this story very cleanly, but I think you could have done a lot more to humanize the relationship instead of giving us the generics. The one half-line that really got me in that regard was "our relationship kinda changed." In something this short, I value the details more than the overview, but I know others feel the opposite. The other issue I had with this verse was the sentimentality. My grandmother died last year, and we were pretty close. But the last line and the "Knowing all that mattered" line were cheesy, saccharine. Again, I think there are ways to get those points across without being so direct and blunt and obvious. But these points are made in holding this verse to a high standard. You had a good approach to the topic and wrote crisply and completely. It was very direct, though, and I think a subtler touch might be a better move as we advance. Keep in mind that as tournaments go on, the voting tends to become more advanced because the best writers survive.

Pent uP: Well, it's hang gliding, for what it's worth. This verse was pretty good. The use of the topic in the final line felt really forced, not in the same way that kannon's felt sentimental but rather that you did it with the voters in mind, as though you were telling us that you were writing a topical. I didn't like that last line at all. But I thought the approach to the topic was pretty clever, and you used a few really good, specific details to give us a sense of this adrenaline junkie's personality. There were a few quibbles I had about the verb tenses, which kept switching from past to present, and the clumsiness of certain phrasing. (For instance, "hair sweat drenched" instead of "hair drenced in sweat" and then using "of it" which was unnecessary really hurt that line.) I also thought some of this seemed to be parodying the adrenaline junkie lifestyle, which would have been better, in my opinion, but you clearly didn't intend that to be the case. Your verse interested me more than kannon's even though I don't think your execution was as clean.

Vote: Pent uP

[Certain]

I'm leaving this open since it doesn't affect anything.

[kannon]

kannon: You told this story very cleanly, but I think you could have done a lot more to humanize the relationship instead of giving us the generics. The one half-line that really got me in that regard was "our relationship kinda changed." In something this short, I value the details more than the overview, but I know others feel the opposite. The other issue I had with this verse was the sentimentality. My grandmother died last year, and we were pretty close. But the last line and the "Knowing all that mattered" line were cheesy, saccharine. Again, I think there are ways to get those points across without being so direct and blunt and obvious. But these points are made in holding this verse to a high standard. You had a good approach to the topic and wrote crisply and completely. It was very direct, though, and I think a subtler touch might be a better move as we advance. Keep in mind that as tournaments go on, the voting tends to become more advanced because the best writers survive.
I generally don't reply to votes, but since this won't change anything, who cares, right?
This was autobiographical. My grandmother died last year too, and this was a brief look at the final conversation we had. We were really close when I was younger, but after high school, I moved across the country. I didn't see her for a long while. When I moved back to California, I moved to a different city, so I was still making excuses to not come visit. She felt guilty because she thought she didn't try hard enough to keep that connection. I felt guilty because I knew I had made excuses and not seen her as much as I should have. But I literally laid in bed with her and held her while she cried and told her that none of that mattered at this moment. Maybe it's cheesy, but sometimes life is cheesy I guess.

[Diode]

I generally don't reply to votes, but since this won't change anything, who cares, right?
This was autobiographical. My grandmother died last year too, and this was a brief look at the final conversation we had. We were really close when I was younger, but after high school, I moved across the country. I didn't see her for a long while. When I moved back to California, I moved to a different city, so I was still making excuses to not come visit. She felt guilty because she thought she didn't try hard enough to keep that connection. I felt guilty because I knew I had made excuses and not seen her as much as I should have. But I literally laid in bed with her and held her while she cried and told her that none of that mattered at this moment. Maybe it's cheesy, but sometimes life is cheesy I guess.

i figured this given i know you better than any other voter here (when i saw the moved away at 18 line), but i had to come at it objectively. if i'd been able to include the fact that this wasn't just a sappy, made up story you'd have gotten the w.

[Certain]

kannon, it's worth noting that I'm heartless.