Week 1: Diode vs. neutral \\ Diode wins 6-4

[Certain]

Season 3

The Basics | Read the full rules here.

Verses are due Thursday at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Deadline extensions of 24 hours are available on request and cannot be denied.

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

Verses may not exceed 48 lines (or 650 words if formatted in a paragraph style) unless agreed upon by the opponent.

Voting on three battles is required. If you win and don't vote, you will receive a loss instead. If you lose and don't vote, you will receive a one-week suspension. Please post links to your three votes in this thread.


Topic


"The Idiot"


Good luck, @Diode and @neutral.

[neutral]

It’s tightly coiled.

Snake-charmers sedate farmers who praise Rama,
Truly the job of one unafraid to face Yama!?
It’s a beautiful spectacle, the flute’s tune
Moving a serpent through its receptacle,
Though false it’s a pulse… in the heart of a festival,
& to a curious child; it’s arguably memorable,
Indeed it still sometimes sparks from the perforant path,
Years back as a young virgin to the serpentine act.
Clasping my uncle’s hand so fast it constricted,
Between nervous fear and awe, each gasp was conflicted.

I’m tightly coiled.

Practising yoga under massive pagodas,
I’m sanitary… sober, inhaling prevailing planetary odours,
& wafts of incense burning from a golden foot,
Finishing grains in the shade of a cobra’s hood,
Pretend I’m paralysed (a meditative state),
Like the Old Ones would,
Trying to extend the paradigm
& walk on scorched rock which a Nova cooked,
Or more immediately… where a soldier stood,
Framing with crosshairs; assorted scholars holding books,
& I can only watch like we are told we should,
Spiralling from the source, you’d have intervened, of course!
If only you had known you could.

We’re tightly coiled.

Cycles are unending, never undone; just timeless,
So while bending like I’m young & spineless,
I open my third eye while I shun the iris,
Unfold the base of my spine to an arrayment of lines,
Disabling my ties to the most flagrant... dumb lies,
One thought contorts to uncoil the kundalini,
On a nameless plane where its energy couldn’t leave me,
My conclusion is not a new one:
I confess. Man’s stupid.
& any image from the mirror‘s at best… translucent.
Our forms in this entire realm is cropped,
I try not to forget, thus tie myself in knots.

[Diode]

"La Idiota"

lo***ion: ciudad juarez

twenty years old, doubly bold, got a rap sheet equally thick
working my way up the cartel with a new car smell that's equally rich
obscene, seeming sick, but vividly slick
opulence follows me haughtily, ascension is quick
women and children? a villain's own villain? that label will stick
i kill killers and fill dealers with bullets thicker than bricks
cross the boss, you've lost the cause, and justice is swift
your bucket'll kick.. soy don eladio's el brazo derecha
comprende, you prick?

lo***ion: juarez cartel estate

two chilenos in our business and i'm overcome with sickness
their presence is offensive..
apprehensive and unpleasant, i show it through my grimace
then their speech is finished.
metanfetaminas en los estados? a pair of junkie aficiondos?
don eladio is listening though, perhaps gauging their bravado
now he points at un hermano, by the name of Maximeno
and we laugh as his head becomes avocado with my .45 caliber acero


lo***ion: nueva mexico

mi sobrino calls me tio but la familia's devoid
deferred from a finishing choice, prefer dismissing his voice
except for the bell, my personal hell, by which he's annoyed
but our metafetaminas and steroids somehow keep him employed
confined to die under his care in wheelchair, unspeaking, destroyed
so we vemos la tele until these gringos upset me
when i notice that their motives are to murder with a poison that's deadly
"tuco, come get me!" .. doesn't translate in dings
and these hijo de putas lead mi sobrino tuco to his heavenly wings


lo***ion: casa tranquila

one chileno remained stuck in the game, taunting me weekly
internally seeking, searching for meaning, pretending he'd pique me
"hector, you're mudo! so estupido!" it's useless, though.
he'll never find vengeance being relentless to a man that's plateaued
between visits i'm surprised to see that the gringo suddenly showed
and with a deft hand planted a pipe bomb in my seat down below
so when the chileno returned a lesson was learned with my final coda:

"hola, gus fring, soy hector salamanca,
y yo tengo una pregunta.. quien es la idiota ahora?"





*boom*

[Just Write]

Idk, i have mixed feeling about this battle.

Neutral, i really like where you went with the whole snake charmer route. My only priblem is i read it a couple times and i dont know if i got your point. I believe it had something to do with man being like the snake and we are consistently "charmed" by all these materialistic things ect ect. Now i could be wrong, and herenin lies my problem. I hate having to work to understand a verse and connect it with a topic. In a topical battle i feel that should be pretty clear. None the less i really enjoyed the verse.


Diode, i really enjoyed the first verse amd really thought you were going to edge this out but you went and fuckin wrote in another language. And while thats great for the people who can understand it, it's also a turn off for the people who can't. I kinda just said blah blah blah in my head on those lines and it rwally took away with the comfortableness i had reading your verse. I don't know, imo that hurt you because i really was leaning towards you after that first verse cuz this in right up my alley in terms of favorite subjects to read about.

Vote-neutral

[H4ZE]

Neutral- I really enjoyed your verse, you had nice rhyming,wording and imagery through out and you went at the topic in a way that made the reader think, and I like that.
Overall- your verse was good in most aspects, flow,rhyming,story telling, imagery. I thought it was dope.

Diode- I enjoyed the first bit. The schemes were good,Flow was on point, and you had nice imagery. But after that when you started writing in another language that threw me off. I knod of lost interest because I couldn't understand what you were saying. But I think through out the verse your rhyming slowly fell off in the lines I could understand.
Overall-this was alright. I think it would've been much better if you would've wrote the whole thing in english. But thats my opinion. Others who understand the language might think differently.

V/ Neutral

[Objective]

Neutral: Love the first two lines. As you go on I'm kind of questioning what is going on, but I'll take it for what it is. It sounds great and I think I got an understanding of your main character here but at the same time I still kinda wonder what hinduism got to do with it all and why he's the idiot. Perhaps I'm the idiot?

When I read the last verse things get abit clearer tho'. And as it goes on I understand why he's the idiot and its connection to the topic, afterall we're all idiots if we should understand his enlightment on the issue. Or I'm I interpreting this in the wrong way?

Either way I enjoyed the execution quite a bit. Well done.

Diode: Enjoyed the first verse, looking forward to where you'll take this. After reading through the second verse I got add that I enjoy how you use the spanish language to make the piece more atmospheric, it makes the whole thing seem more realistic. Also like that you add locations to tie the story together. The rhymescheme is on point as well.

The last two verses equally great and I felt you completed the task pretty well. I don't know spanish that well but I could still make out what you were saying either way, and I thought it was pretty dope.

The ending lines was cool as well.

Vote: I feel like this battle is kinda close tbh. Neutral took a pretty cool and creative approach which I felt Diode equally measured in how he executed his story with the locations and blending in spanish to wrap it up. I really feel like I want to vote for Neutral, but Diode's execution of the verse as a whole was pretty cool.

After going a bit back'n'forth with myself and reading both verses again my vote is ending up in favor of Diode.

Enjoyed the battle, and hope to see more like this in the AOWL. Keep it up.

[Frank]

neutral

i'm having a tough time associating your rhyme with the theme of idiot. perhaps i am one, and you must forgive me. i did enjoy this 'write up' - it had a good grasp of wording and showed hints of higher vocabulary level. i just can't wrap my head around how it relates to the topic and ultimately, that's what this is all about. if the topic was 'the snake', you'd be a shoe in though.

diode

for the average reader, this read would make them FEEL like an idiot. and for that angle alone, I award you victory.

metanfetaminas en los estados? a pair of junkie aficiondos?
don eladio is listening though, perhaps gauging their bravado
now he points at un hermano, by the name of Maximeno
and we laugh as his head becomes avocado with my .45 caliber acero
^gangsta

vote - diode

[Lars]

Neutral: What I enjoyed most about this piece was your rhyme placement and how the piece seemed almost ever-evolving with the rhyme scheme used, it showed a deft touch and great pen game. It almost reminded me of English who posts here in that respect, it can come off effortless but there's really a lot of time spent behind the scenes here. you keep it understated, but I can fully appreciate what you did from a technical standpoint. I honestly didn't see too much of the connection here, though, maybe I missed it and I'm the idiot for not understanding? I don't know, your writing is crisp, wording is great, there's a lot to like about this it just didn't seem to tie in with the topic, for me at least.

Diode - I love Breaking Bad, my spanish isn't on point but my Spanglish is and there wasn't enough of it to give me any real trouble understanding what was going on as I read through like it was for some voters, it wasn't a big deal IMHO. It was a cool tie-in to something I loved watching, a nice angle with the topic, and the characters were relatable as I was already familiar with them if that makes sense? I suppose in one sense that means you didn't have to do as much character-develop wise but that's really just picking fault.

Diode did more than enough to get this.

[Pinot Grij]

Neutral, I liked your verse and felt disappointed in it. I thought the separation worked well, and the first two stanzas stood apart, but the third one didn't bring them home for me and I was left kind of puzzled. Although I really liked your style, having never read anything by you. Careful wording and diction that's specific to the topic, it just voerall didn't hit for me with this installment, but I look forward to reading more from you going forward.

Diode, this was interesting - although you can say relying on a story that's already been told is a bit of a crutch, the use of the Spanish and the diction really made it fun. I hated the opening (equally think/ equally rich)... but once I started getting the picture that it was Breaking Bad (metafetaminas), I got into it. I wasn't so much bothered by the Spanish, and I think that's an unfair criticism since Neutral's piece also opened with Hindu shit (don't tell me you didn't google "Yama"). I just had more fun reading Diode's and felt it connected to the topic better.

Vote - Diode

[dull boy]

I have mostly no idea what Neutral was talking about. It sounded pretty, and the scheming was top notch, but I found the story to be dull and boring. I had to make myself read through it. Diode's verse was less technically sound, or complex, I should say, but the concept and decent execution made for a more entertaining verse. I honestly hate voting on these things, because it's highly opinion based, and there's little in the way of outline for what we're striving for as writers here.

Vote = Diode, I guess.

[Exoduzt]

neutral: I love the approach you took. The whole snake idea was cool and i loved that festival section. Nice flow. really nice verse from top to bottom in that aspect but I feel you didnt execute on the topic that well. I dont know if its just me but I feel you kinda lost the direction. A little off base.

Diode: I loved the first bar...that shit was awesome with the new car smell. you came out swinging. That flow was really stand out so fluid in so many different lines. lol @ that avacado line. you killed this verse. I thought you stayed on topic throughout with really well worded lines that made your flow stand out.

MVGT: Diode...another close battle but he really shined in this one. I enjoyed his verse more he was more on topic for me with a killer flow

[Greed]

It is close

Neutral 2nd and 3rd were solid. Diode came from left field with that verse and it was going good but the ending fell flat to me

V neutral

[Ink]

Found it interesting that both of you chose a similar format to your pieces

neutral-
I liked the beginning, and was intrigued by your snake charmer concept. You kept the theme going throughout your piece with your word choice, and the imagery kept me immersed into your story. Your tie-in to the topic, though, felt a bit weak..

diode-
I couldn't understand what the hell some of the lines meant, so i had to whip out google translate, which isn't always the most accurate.. at least i tried though. The storytelling was cool, but like the previous verse, I wished the tie-in to the topic was more solid/unique.. I liked that you told parts of the Breaking Bad story from a perspective we didn't particularly see in the TV shows, but alot of it was still riding off the story the TV series already told.

This ones hard to vote on.. Both had good aspects and aspects I thought needed work, and I wasn't particularly impressed with either writers take on the topic..

Vote- Neutral. His was more creative in his approach, and that's the tie-breaker for me in this one