ERBoA Anno 5
My Personal Rank: #3
FB: Cage match.
Cons: That final rhyme is pretty awkward. Most of these lyrics feel natural for the characters (if they were suddenly compelled into rhythm and rhyme and soundalike phrases), but Bandit’s brand of quick-speech doesn’t have a lot to do with invented words like “un-Peacemake” and “leaderness.” And even if those were natural term for her, the stresses on “leaderness” seem they like they don’t match “free…I guess.” So we fumble the dismount a little, IMO.
The layout is a little cramped for the lyrics, something we generally avoided.
Pro or Con?: I waffle about whether the subject matter for this battle is an asset or not. Unlike all the others, it’s a “deleted scene” of sorts, a confrontation we never put in the main story but certainly could have. I said in one annotation that Syr’Nj and Bandit would never speak to each other after the event that severed their trust. But we could’ve done a prose version of this bit here, no one would’ve complained. The real reason we handled this court-martial more indirectly was that another direct clash felt too depressing…and when you remember how depressing Chapter 37 got anyway, that’s really saying something.
Like, to my mind, there’s only so much joy to be gotten out of watching these two heroines become bitter exes and snarl at each other in the ash-heap of their broken trust. But maybe that sour taste becomes an enjoyable flavor when seasoned this way? I think it depends on how close you feel to the story’s tragic side. Maybe doing this battle at the end of the series, when we had more distance from the conflict it depicts, allowed it to be more entertaining than upsetting.
And hey, at least I didn’t have to worry about any low blows feeling out of character on this one!
Pros: In terms of sheer wordplay, this might’ve been the best of these I did. Lots of sharp rhymes: “hometown/gnome clown/Gnometown,” “village/spillage,” “maim/same,” “backstabber/jabbered,” “Houses/spouses,” plus rhymes that lead in to each character’s kinda-sorta catchphrase (“You always have a choice” and “Not th’point”).
Solid alliteration/puns, too: “Croaked in a crook’s cracked voice.” “Silibus/silly bits.” “Guilty stage/gilded cage(/Guilded Age).”
Finally, the structure balances focus and variety. Syr’Nj’s first verse and Bandit’s last one are very free-associating, but the center of the rap stays close to the center of the conflict, with just a few digressions in the middle two verses.
P.S.: Janice didn’t have a lot of opinions on these when I ran them by her, but on this one she said, “Bandit clearly won. In a rap battle, whoever flusters loses, unless they can turn that energy back around into a comeback, and they usually can’t.” It’s true: rhymes aside, Bandit was closer to emotional recovery than Syr’Nj at this point. And it does kinda show, especially in verse 3, line 3.
I thought this one was the most balanced matchup (other than Penk and Harky, which was really more of a duet than a battle). And I think the strength of the sentiment in “I guess” outweighs any clunkiness in the rhyme.
hey, you stole my avatar!
I mean, of all the avatars to steal, you can’t say it’s not fitting.
:)
I’m bemused every time you say it wouldn’t have mattered if Bandit had actually given her reasoning. From where I’m standing, it looks huge that Bandit just said “Good” and then acted put-upon that Syr’Nj wasn’t treating her like she’d killed Brother Tom, not Byron. Like. I get that Syr’Nj was motivated mostly by her feelings for Byron, but even if she’d had perfect emotional detachment, I’m not seeing how she could have done anything but locked Bandit up and kicked her out of the Peacemakers as soon as she could: Bandit was broadcasting “I’ll kill who I think needs killing, and justify nothing to anyone ever.” One speech bubble in which Bandit said “he was already dead” or “I was trying to save as many lives as I could” or “I’m sorry your potion didn’t work” or anything more than “he belongs dead dammit” would have made Syr’Nj a lot less reasonable in locking her up.
As I think I said at one point in the annotated comics, I think Bandit took for granted that the way Gnometown had treated her–“You got one chance, now we’re going to throw you out with the trash”–was the way everyone acted. When Byron got an actual second chance, she saw it as inappropriate and even unfair, and her mind went straight to “it’s because he’s sleeping with the Head of House” and entirely bypassed the possibility of “it’s because she actually doesn’t believe in dealing with people the way the authorities in Gnometown do.”
All of which sounds a lot more on Syr’Nj’s side and against Bandit’s than I normally feel like I am when I’m not debating the matter here. Syr’Nj was clearly being selfish and irrational when she assumed nothing that the other Peacemakers had been doing merited consideration and Frigg needed to point out to her that Rachel was dead. That just doesn’t leave Bandit looking any better.
I do think the ending–both work in parallel ways, not interacting, each believing with all her heart that the other one betrayed their group and her personally–was really the best ending possible from the scene where Bandit was locked up: neither was going to say that they’d been more wrong than the other one, nor accept anything less than that agreement from the other one.
This was very good.
»you say it wouldn’t have mattered if Bandit had actually given her reasoning.«
…where does T state that?
Indepedendently, I think if either Bandit or Syr’Nj had acted less emotionally during the first confrontation, an explanation from Bandit might have helped matters. But after that scene, I don’t think it could have done much good. Syr’Nj had cemented her mental image of Bandit as an unreliable loose outlaw, and Bandit hers of Syr’Nj as the boss who’ll never listen. You can’t reason against her, because reason is her weapon of choice, and she will out-reason you if you try.
At that point, any attempt to explain would have come across as trying to re-frame your own past failures, independent of which of the two was making that attempt. I think the only thing that might help is if Byron came to a different conviction about what happened and annoyed Syr’Nj with it until she gave in (nobody else has a chance to get Syr’Nj to listen for long enough). But even then, it’s hard to imagine Syr’Nj and Bandit ever becoming anything resembling friends. Way more likely (though still really unlikely) that Byron and Bandit teamed up sometime in the future.
I really love the opening by Syr’Nj. The first 12 lines are really good and proper Epic Rap Battle stuff: Boasting, then dissing, in quick succession. I think the piece could have used an equivalent retort from Bandit. Maybe about having to run after Byron because the idiot just happily walked into an obvious trap. Or about keeping the Peacekepers alive when the Five were dead. She basically doubled their numbers! I think mentioning the fact that Syr’Nj “forgot” to fill her in on some details when Bandit took leadership of the peacemakers would also have been cool, even though in-universe Bandit wouldn’t have known about that, beyond some suspicion that Syr’Nj might be withholding some info.
The end is a bit weaker, I feel, since both are basically going on about how they have been wronged. Might have worked better (in Bandit’s favour) to mention in her last bit that prisons have a bad track record of keeping Bandit contained — or something like that.
Bandit did what had to be done at the time. Byron’s beserker virus has killed thousands in this storyline.She told him she would take him out if it was necessary, and it was necessary. The fact that Byron eventually reclaimed it and made it his own power doesn’t change the fact that it was uncontrollable by its nature and only an act of a demigodlike power made him awaken to using it for his own ends without it consuming him.