[Anguirel]

Right. Well, sorry about that hiatus within the non-hiatus. It has been, though, quite helpful for my point of view in retrospect; very rarely am I accorded an insight in a werewolf game which is not a bit deranged by me being in the thick of it. Now I can peruse a whole day of 'control'.

I was concerned after a couple of re-readings by just how much mob rule went on during the day of the double-lynching. Very few candidates were seriously proposed, and of course even fewer voted for. Nessa got half a quorum deciding against her before she had said anything (although admittedly partly because she hadn't). phantom said he thought her more cobbler than wolf. I thought that sounded sensible at the time but actually, that is the most passive and uninfluential way to play a cobbler. I reckon there's a slim outside chance she was a silent Mata Hari wolf, but that more likely the situation was Manwe all over again.

Neither, after some thought, did I like what happened to Thinlomien much, although it was even more unstoppable than Nessa, in a different way. Nessa had none but the most threadbare of defences; Lommy somehow enacted just enough of a defence to convince several big guns, otherwise mutually disunited, that she was lying (I'm thinking Boro, phantom, Mith). Not so sure myself. Her attitude reminded me of me. "So what, wolfy," you might respond, and I suppose that's a valid enough question.

But when one is in fact innocent, the mod has handed one a powerful but double-edged weapon - the absolute conviction of inner (sometimes self-) righteousness. Wolves (and cobblers) can try and imitate this feeling's outward radiation, but they never get it quite right. Cf Nogrod, I think. Whereas in my view Shasta, wilwa and Mith have taken that stand, this game, in ways that convinced me, amongs others, then and now. Obviously Shasta now matters less but I remain pretty confident about the other two.

I say that this inner glow of innocence is double-edged, and that it can be self-righteous, because it makes innocents liable to be defensive. They feel frustrated at their attackers because they know they are truthful, and it's tempting to launch into a retaliatory crusade in turn, where innocents hang each other all over the shop. As an innocent (in this case) who enjoys thinking, and is conscious of sounding, like a wolf (cf Fea, Aganzir), I am subject to a related but different problem - I tend to clear people who accuse me too easily, because I know it is reasonable to accuse me.

I shall therefore try to be quite even-handed about Sally, in negative as well as positive ways. She has brought up a persistent, undercoloured, half-jocular thought about me despite not having me to bounce off and react to about it (as Thinlomien got reacted against by her accusers.) She maintains that case into today despite considerable new event - a voting pattern, a double-lynch and a successful Glorfindel save. I can't remember whether she knows I'm a person people like to lynch, but against someone largely absent, I wouldn't call it the boldest of manouevres. I will give it this, though: it's quite original at the moment, more so than either of yesterday's candidates.

So much for Sally, who is one of my suspicions but certainly not supreme among them. That honour goes to Loslote. I believe her implication that she caused the double-lynch by accident, but her stress on this accident, a preemptive fanning off of blame, looks really bad. Also, read her posts yesterday's and no one else's. The consistency of wolf-perspective they show, given their rarity and brevity, is really noticeable. On the whole then I think her guilty of murder rather than of shoemaking. A cobbler wouldn't have bothered to try and excuse that double-lynch to her extent. I would like to lynch Loslote today well ahead of anyone else.

phantom is as so often in a sort of architecturally integral position, where no one has the spirit or strength to conduct archaeological research on him because the operation is megalithic, inconvenient, and a bit dangerous. Unfortunately I myself am firmly in that "no one." I don't want to lynch him yet (and that's a phrase that keeps coming up about him; Boro and Elron both said something of the kind yesterday). I will say this though - I disapprove of his ironclad set of instructions to the dead. We all need absolute flexibility to adapt to new situations, not further rules in a heavily ruled game...

Mith's amendment was therefore helpful as far is went, but it only diluted what I think is innately a bad idea. (I was uneasy too with the number of people who loudly OKed it; the expressive enthusiastic support of a detail; like constitutional reform supporters in other political struggles, they seemed technical, weird and playing a long game...)

Finally, a few observations on the few voices that seem to defy the convention wisdom - even if sometimes very oddly. sally's casually intent pursuit of me is one example. Legate's position that lynching Cobblers is a bad thing (the heir of Nogrod's theory) and overt suspicion of phantom is another. A Little Green, even more radically, still wonders whether Nogrod was perhaps truthful. Glirdan's defence of wilwa is strong, well expressed and convincing - even if arguably only a wolf has the knowledge to be so persuasive.

I think much of the stuff in that last paragraph is mistaken on specifics, but all the same if we want to face the full range of possibilities we need more thinking like it.

On the whole if I had to bet now I'd go for a triumvirate of Glirdan, Sally and Loslote, so I'd better check if there are any actual relationships between them...