Well trying to sort through those PMs was a journey and a half, and confessionals are still coming in but I
think I understand all the chaos about as well as anyone ever will. One day this all needs to be written up into a proper recap blog because the confessionals so far are golden, even through all the frustration, and they flow beautifully into one another too.
I posted a kind of skeleton
stupid-by-stupid blow-by-blow for the Gallery because this stuff's too good not to share. But here are some bigger picture thoughts:
Diggle/YaxleyIf all the stupid hadn't blown up there, these guys would be the headline of the episode. From both deriding the potential of having a partner or reaching an ID reveal, telling their allies quite honestly that they had no qualms about working at cross-purposes, and barely even intending to work together in the short-term, the Mutual ID Reveal they so narrowly earned at the start of the round changed everything. Dolores can speak more to the Ghibli factor but both of them seem to hold the disintegration of their relationship there as a true ORG regret, and know each other to both be so wholesome that now neither has any intention of letting the other down again. It's adorable
![:<3](http://i.imgur.com/L3NpwEv.gif)
(Even if Diggle still hasn't mentioned his Item yet.)
But it's also a key strategic development. They're still kind of hiding it and could potentially make endgame together without being seen as a pair to worry about with is actually unbelievable. But their bond was thrust into the limelight and tested by the voting group split and the Switch Charm. Tonks intentionally thrust Diggle into the smaller voting group to doom Crouch, but Diggle recognised instantly that his partner's bond with Crouch was closer than anything he'd been able to make happen so far, and fully committed himself to the DE duo over Tonks. I don't think any of the other players (perhaps not even Crouch) fully believes that Diggle was locked in to vote Tonks even before he Crouch gained Immunity via Pair from Moody. But now that's an important power trio to watch, with Lucius effectively replaced.
Oliver WoodHe was probably MVP of the Merge vote scramble and I was super high on his relationship-building over he last week or so. But um... this was just downright awful. Lily's confessional pointing out every way he went wrong is not even slightly inaccurate, and she's missing some of the key information needed to point out the full extent of his missteps. For instance, Wood only feeling out and tipping off HK about the vote
because he feared Lucius was making a move against Wood himself is just
![:o](http://images.proboards.com/new/shocked.gif)
mind-boggling! Not necessarily baseless, because of their history and because... Lucius. But to join the dots in a manner that makes spilling the beans to HK not non-sensical requires bending over backward and leaping over all logic toward impossible conclusions in a way that I can only describe as... Lucius. I want to be able to say that Lucius wasn't entirely irrational in overreacting to the PM Lily posted in the wrong chat, minutes before the vote, compromising his own partner. Anyone would get paranoid to see that. But the fact that even Wood's inexplicable errors stem from Lucius' unpredictability is pure perfection.
Also eves as things were backfiring on his side of things, Wood made the time to tell Fleur that Diggle should be the target for the other group. And that's as inexplicable as Tonks throwing Crouch out at the same point last round, and potentially with similar consequences. So I needed to make sure I noted that here and put a pin in it.
Vote TargetsThis was a very curious point in the game to suddenly reduce the numbers and get two separate Votes moving at once. From a design perspective the cross-Side connections and the likelihood of a pairs/singles divide made a large but uncertain supermajority in the Merge vote quite likely, which is of course what we ended up getting. So it was a perfect time to ensure that nothing too certain would have the chance to solidify, resurrecting the Side theme for a round and thrusting the Pairings theme under the limelight with the increased importance of the Immunity Pairs and Charms too. We ended up with one voting group of tight friends who had no intention of targeting one another any time soon if they didn't have to, due to original Side bonds and PBvO partnerships, and another far less straightforward voting group of clear threats and clear targets.
The former group had most of the Grimauld Place core in Tonks/Fleur/Wood, then Crouch/Yaxley as the partners of the other two (and also wonderful social players in their own rights who had already bonded nicely with the others). Tonks had been caught floating Crouch as a future target at the end of the previous round (I'm still flummoxed that she raised it in any of her PMs so early), and Diggle's experience at The Department of Mysteries had him on the outside too. Diggle, who still showed no sign of wanting to actively work with his PBvO partner, was Switched in for Wood because Tonks felt he was far more likely to stick with his Order friends than any of the Death Eaters, but overlooked the risk that Crouch would win Immunity and Diggle refuse to vote for Yaxley outright. (Fleur gets some blame for that too, having conspired with Tonks to make this happen. Though she was almost certainly safe even in that worst-case scenario, she still lost Tonks.)
In the end she was outflanked there already due to the Diggle/Yaxley ID Reveal and Lily helping Crouch put in the work to make Diggle comfortable not only with Yaxley, but also with Yaxley's best buddy Crouch. And even before Tonks overplayed her hand, I don't think anybody in the game would have spared her over Fleur whose social positioning has sometimes been transparent but never been messy or felt disingenuous. When Crouch became Immune and Diggle as good as admitted he wouldn't vote for Yaxley, Crouch became the ostensible swing vote instead for a moment, as it would have been possible for Crouch to join the Order women in voting for Diggle - so trust was solidified on both sides of that bond. Also strengthened was the Fleur/Diggle connection, in a rather heartwarming manner; rather than getting torn apart by having to vote separately they each fully understood why the other had to vote as they did, and both were clear about never intending to target one another directly.
In the other group, Diggle/Moody seemed likely to pick up Regulus and/or Killer to finally take a swing at Lucius though they were not so bold as to set anything like that up before the Switch was confirmed. I'm not certain it would have eventuated but it does seem likely, so Tonks' read that a Switch would help save Lucius was accurate (a fun thematic note; see below). Anyhow, once Wood replaced Diggle that was only possible if Regulus/Moody connected and Killer sided with them, in the hope of a rock draw at best. Lily and Lucius worked hard to prevent that and so were essentially going to get their way, so long as Oliver didn't do anything to blow that up
The question of what their way ought to have been was never revisited beyond the initial presumption, made a week ago, that HK/Tonks would be The Big Threats to take out at the Merge (if not sooner, in HK's case). And while it worked as a rallying point to keep everyone together through this vote, even after the alliance was rocked by What Came Next, I do think this was a mistake for everyone involved. Tonks was still far more loyal to Lucius and Lily both than she ever should have been. Meanwhile, Regulus was and continues to be far more actively looking for votes against Lucius than HK has ever been, will be far more difficult to build a majority around getting out later as an easily discounted free agent, and was actually playing the Challenges (finishing significantly higher than most in this first true test of skill - which I love for Gerard by the way
![:<3](http://i.imgur.com/L3NpwEv.gif)
- and only missing out on the win because Moody was insanely good) so is more likely to gain safety if/when they're ready to remove him... not to mention that if he had won the Podcast Quiz he'd have used his power to thrwart the couples alliances in every way possible. Regulus was kept out of the HK plan for vote split reasons and believed he'd be voted out, even when HK insisted toward that end that no
he was the target. And people will come to regret leaving him in, or at least not seriously considering that as an option. Especially when HK turned out not to have the Item.
Lucius, up until 10 minutes before Magical CouncilThis was also thoroughly overshadowed, but amidst all the overplaying of going after HK at all (while HK honestly put blind faith into the joy and logic of working with Lucius, while Regulus refused every overture) and shifting the vote split plans (because he kept reassessing how much to trust Moody/Regulus/Killer to vote as instructed, and each time he gave them more information everyone else had to reconsider the entire split) there was some solid work happening. He had HK completely convinced the vote was for Regulus (though to be fair HK had no idea the lengths to which Lucius has spun the narrative of him as a threat) and has actually built up a rapport with Moody despite the latter's reservations, thanks to consistent communication and the shared experience of actually trying to win Immunity in the Merge round. And it kind of saved him here. (Even after Tonk's fatal switch kind of saved him here; man this guy is hard to praise unreservedly!)
Moody/Regulus/Killer really should have been able to get on the same page here and if not enter MC ready to force rocks, certainly understand that they could rely on one another to unite once the chaos broke out and a power shift became viable. Killer shoulders the blame for this because he really neglected Moody, even beyond his generally missing half a week of PMs with everyone else. Once they started talking (literally this round) they realised they clicked well as actual level-headed people just looking to keep things simple for now, but neither felt comfortable enough broaching their reservations with Lucius or willingness to trust the other on that point - so both ended up agreeing to a vote of probably Regulus over the other as a slight preference, but either way in lockstep with what Lucius/Lily were feeding them. Moody was a bit peeved to be leaving a pre-vote for Regulus again but didn't see the numbers to do anything else, and was rightly concerned about waking up to the consequences of a stray, unsuccessful Lucius vote.
Farewell to Hedwig's KillerKiller's story in this is kind of tragic overall, because his demise once again comes down to the Lucius of it all. Back on Day 1 when Lucius began
alliance-b group-chat-building he pegged HK as The Threat for simply having the confidence to play a Big Character and threat the ORG as though everybody knew what they were doing. And so he was left out of all the groups, even when everyone (even Lucius!) in those groups had more trust in HK than others in the group, and wonderful conversations besides. But Lucius always presented HK as somebody who would play hard and look after his own interests only down the road, so who could never be trusted in the long-term. And once everyone was primed to see that, everything that happened with/to HK fed into that narrative and made it self-fulfilling: HK's in-character boasts of his (insignificant) prowess, his success in the Day 0 Challenge, his intelligence in analysing the twists, etc. His being a part of (and so already by presumption 'spearheading') a group (presumed to be a 'move') without Lucius made him even more dangerous, and it took Pyrites misreading signals from Lucius about which target to choose, and Rodolphus very much giving Pyrites the short shrift in their infrequent PMs, for HK to even make it out of Malfoy Manor.
And in all of this, despite putting together the signs that Lucius was quintuple-dealing positionally, the only hint of the building
narrative to reach HK was the accusation of him 'overplaying' when he tried to start discussion around the Switch Charm's potential, though he took it as an isolated incident and from then on made an effort to buck that part of the shtick and lean in the other direction. When four DoM players sent him Owl Post in the same round, each deciding independently to deprive him of an Item clue, it didn't registered as more than a coincidence. So he threw Challenges and pretended to be too busy to invest time in the Game (this was a few days before he actually became too busy to check in), stopped planning too far ahead, and over-explained to Crouch in particular that his exploration of options was by no means planning tangible moves. He distanced himself from Karkaroff's overplaying, then made up with Wood in the closing days of The Daily Prophet and then with Lucius at the Merge. But still the persisting narrative was a magnet that kept pulling in evidence which kept the others blind to the new reality of HK's true thread level, significantly decreased if it ever even existed. His desire to keep everything simple when Pyrites showed back up wasn't seen a show of trust in everyone else, or an effort to show laziness rather than overplaing, but as malicious intent that could one day be turned on them.
He barely made it through the last few votes of the Swap phase, none the wiser to this, and ironically made the proud claim of earning Immunity without trying - which again only made him more dangerous to the players around him, because they'd started the round so intent on his not winning safety that two of them got disqualified in an effort to beat him to it, even when he wasn't online for the day. And then after the Merge HK didn't have time to leave a pre-vote list, or to bond with the new players, or to participate in the Challenges... and while he'd come to recognise his absurdly inflated Big Target status, he saw it as one more reason to stick with the staus quo and go along with Lucius, even through to an endgame where both would probably need the other in play in order to have any chance at making the Final Five or so. For that trust not just in Lucius but in logic to rule the day, he got burned by a Lucius blowup once again, and once again was underprepared. It feels worse to watch this time though, because lessons should have been learned, and the numbers could have been there to turn this around had the 'outsiders' had their ears to the ground more, or had HK had the time to actually exert some of his mythical influence the round before, and perhaps preserved Kingsley, who had both the knowledge and trust to put together the right move here without being to wary to start shooting (like Moody was, when he had no history with HK).
But it's also a fun coda to note that this obsession with HK may well have also ruined things for Lucius and his allies. Nobody from the Daily Prophet ever paused to exchange notes about what Item clues Karkaroff/Killer possibly could have had, but the knowledge was there between them that no Item should have been attainable to them if it wasn't something the other, far tighter group, knew about. Yaxley recognised the desperation in Karkaroff's tone during those last hours, and believed him that he'd only just uncovered the link - but of course Crouch/Lilly/Wood/Lucius never stopped to ask for a second opinion or assessment of their logic, they simply presumed that of course HK would be an Item magnet who obviously betrayed Karkaroff by promising to play the Item on him but then reneging. Which of course led to all the overplaying and messiness around the vote split here and the eventual drama. HK knew Lucius couldn't survive another blowup, or more than a round or two without HK as a shield and rallying point... and in this I fear he was far more correct than he even knew.
And to TonksThe Tragedy of Tonks is more that every part of this demise was so thoroughly avoidable
![:(](http://images.proboards.com/new/sad.png)
From her failure to see when she was getting held at arm's length from the Order core, to her blind trust in Lucius at the swap and the frustrations that caused her other allies, plus her tendency to lean into the HK narrative outlined above rather than refuting it or at least separating herself from it, her picture of the social dynamics was not too far off the truth, but still
just enough awry that her Switch Charm backfired as spectacularly as her floating Crouch as a target prematurely. Even without being able to know Diggle/Yaxley were suddenly actually close, she and Diggle had a significant amount of tension at the Department and he had no reason or desire to keep Tonks safe out of any combination of pairs alliance members, even before you include Yaxley in that mix.
I know this is her first non-winning game with veterans as strong and as active as she is, with plenty of lessons to be learned. And she's certainly held her own far better and longer than I did in my first season outside of AS, and deserves credit for doing as well as she has. But despite ostensibly being in power from the beginning, or perhaps because of that, her slow decline in win equity over the last few weeks has been somewhat painful to watch. And that's even before I knew it would end as spectacularly as this, with a clearly self-inflicted wound.
Just as tragic is that she and HK finish just three points shy of a Mutual ID Reveal, which could have done both of them so much good. The didn't really interact so much after the Merge due to HK's time constraints and a sense from both of them that they didn't yet
need to cross-check notes and prepare for a scramble. But both were eager to play this alongside somebody like the other - Waka wanted a newcomer to enjoy the fresh perspective and hone their talent, while Jungo wanted a cool and reliable presence to lean on and learn from. So finding out the truth would have reinvigorated them both, motivating them to make things work and perhaps come to a realisation that they'd been on the outside for a while, ever since Lucius asked Lily to find the Order Item with Wood, and the eroding of trust in both of them by their respective Sides only furthered the positive feedback loops that they were both not to be trusted. If just one of them had done Owl Post after the Merge, or if Killer had left a second preference under his Moody vote for the Merge round, they'd have had one another to bounce off in plotting the best usage of the Switch Charm, and we'd still have one (if not both) of them in the Game. Instead they're wounded and disillusiouned, setting the tone for the Wizengamot... and that's going to be an interesting thread to follow in its own right.
The BlowupProbably deserves more words and time, as I'm still reeling/giggling over this bizarre sequence of events. But I don't have either of those right now. But seriously... what an episode
![:fan](https://i.imgur.com/074wyXd.gif)