[sacrifice]

timeless:

I can't say I agree with Just Write about centering text. I don't think it matters much at all. In reality, the formal structure of a piece can be used to denote some meaning beyond the language. Centering your text though really doesn't do anything to take away from the verse; I do it sometimes as well. Again, not sure it matters, and I can't think of any real reason why it should.

Definitely lots of humor built into this very strange story. You have the ability to rhyme fairly well, so that made the piece both awkward in some cases, but also dope in some places. The rhyming itself throughout was concise, but I take issue with stories in this format because a lot of time the rhyming starts to dictate the story, or at least it starts to appear that way. Not that that is inherently bad, I mean, this is the nature of our genre of writing, but I think writers tread fine lines telling stories, because the reader is trying to follow a narrative, and if the rhyming obstructs that narrative in any way, it can work against the writer. That said, I don't think you needed to be very profound with your word choices here, because of the comedic approach to your story, so in that sense, there were only a few places where I cringed at the language: the saddened but calmly/gallon of coffee was funny, but weird, fearing/clearance part was weird sounding in my head, but again, not so much that it works against you. It's probably just hte nature of the piece itself that causes this weirdness, because the story itself is really weird. All in all, there's nothing really here that I can say is absolutely amazing. I really wish people would not use names in these kinds of stories, because they always make me cringe... a convenient name that happens to rhyme with some scheme somewhere... haha, it just makes me stomach hurt.

Now, the verse does have some depth, in the few lines about the strife of the Sasquatch, being accepted but not desiring the cohabitation earned. One could use this as a launching point for interpretation, by comparing the Sasquatch to some other oppressed sect/culture/society etc. I don't know whether or not your were trying to speak on anything like this, but its there. All in all, I didn't laugh out loud reading it, it just presented itself as peculiar to me. Haha.

Oats:

Well man, you turned this topic into a fantastic piece. The inverted mythical creature scenario, from the "outside looking in" almost - what we must seem like to other creatures, and the perspective of beings "lesser" than the "greater" beings. The personification of the "lesser" beings serves as a window through which humans, or "men" are seen as mythical creatures. Your description was concise and fantastic, your rhyming was bonkers, your flow was dope except for a couple lines that seemed to cram in too many syllables - HOWEVER - even when that occurred, because I am an insanely dope emcee, they still managed to flow quite perfectly. (haha). There were many interesting metaphorical choices too: the broken rib idea resonated Genesis for me, indeed, there were many scriptural overtones, and I think that serves as a dope reinforcement of the mythical creature idea. It would be one thing to just speak from the perspective of a pygmy, looking up at human beings as Goliath(s) with description only, but you used metaphor interwoven with imagery. Superb.

I'm confident this line is probably the dopest line in the piece:
"whether they were God’s first creation or the other way around"

I wish I could sit here and break down every line like it's necessary, but great pieces speak for themselves in this regard. VOTW contender here.

Vote: Oats - After a few reads each, a break, a few more reads, the conclusion is rather clear. Though I love timeless's writing style, he was outmatched this week by a writer who probably deserves to be in anyone's top 10 all time.