This round could pretty much be summed up as the singles being messy, bordering on incompetent, and the couples continuing to outplay despite paranoia.
The longer version? Well picking up from my earlier updates, Moody essential decided that he was all in on the alliance with the pairs - despite knowing he'd likely be cut at five if things went well, and beforehand if Lily/Crouch were given the opportunity as they'd be well aware that he'd rather side with Diggle/Yaxley come F5.
Moody did speak with Regulus a bit and build just enough camaraderie to prevote Wood - who on top of giving Moody nothing but wild nonsensical contradictory options (based upon his ongoing presumption that Diggle has run the show for the last few rounds) never confirmed whether he had the Item. This also meant that the planned 3-2 split from the alliance would place more votes on Wood, and he'd go out if he didn't play the Item on himself. What Moody didn't see was that in the
more likely than not event that one of Wood/Regulus won Immunity, Moody himself would be the other target of that group's split vote. The secondary target, sure, but Wood's Item could well make that immaterial.
Having played ORGs with events in my early AM hours I fully get Moody sleeping through most of the the rounds, and understand what he took away from the efforts/results when he did wake up before the Pyrites vote. But not setting an alarm today was a huge mistake. Moody only needed to see that Regulus was Immune and then switch his vote, make one post switching his prevote, and suddenly this is a hot 3-2-2 against somebody (likely of Moody's own choosing) in the pairs. From that move and in that position Moody suddenly becomes a dark horse absolutely in the running to win - and he also had (well, usually had) the calm logic and insistent sensibleness to bring Wood and Regulus onto the same page.
And that's where we start to blame them, because both of them should have been discussing this scenario with Moody. I've criticised Wood before for holding back the information he has on the pairs, and the foundations for his assumptions about the current dynamics. I was hoping that would let up over the weekend but much like his virtual screaming match with Crouch (in essence: you screwed me worse than I screwed you and how dare you imply otherwise or try to calm me down and pretend we can move forward) he didn't really progress anywhere until the last moments of the round, after the results were already announced... but Moody was already asleep, having left the other outsiders listed first and second in his pre-vote. And Wood wasted all his time with Moody failing to get talked down from his own version of past events.
Regulus, to his credit, didn't buy in
totally to Lily/Crouch's attempts to butter him up (as a prospective swing in their favour should he find himself Immune enough to become the swing between the pairs at F5) for a Diggle/Yaxley blindside, but was eager enough to cash in that he struggled to ind common ground with Wood, who finally realised they could work with Moody to seize the plurality but didn't grasp that Moody wouldn't be online to sign off. Wood also finally (in the last 5 minutes or so before MC) gave up on getting Diggle out (not because he didn't want to, but because he now considered Diggle far too well connected to make that work
![:lol](https://i.imgur.com/X4ixXao.gif)
) which was also something Regulus couldn't understand, after rounds of Wood refusing to vote anything but Diggle, and so relying upon Lily/Crouch to follow through on their promises made more sense.
And here's the real tragedy: Wood
did stumble onto the key to their play here, and
could have still salvaged this even without Moody - in a tie between Crouch and Moody (assuming Wood received and cancelled out the 3 votes from the split), Diggle would have had a difficult decision on the revote (and from what we know, most likely would have flipped to vote out Crouch). But this required Wood/Regulus to vote the same way, for Crouch (Lily would have worked too, and been a simpler choice for Diggle, but Wood still wouldn't consider that). And between Wood's inability to articulate this to Regulus at the last minute with any reason to trust Wood on this, and Crouch liking a few of Regulus' posts about sticking to his word during MC (which were intended to signal Wood to confirm a Diggle vote, rather than for Crouch), Regulus ended up voting differently to Wood.
My not noticing that and carrying through with the revote between Diggle/Moody brushed over the worst of the incompetence, and stoked equal shares of bonus paranoia among the couples, and also tentative trust - being willing to potentially risk rocks for one another does make it more likely that they'll stick together now, though you could say the same about them splitting the votes here (especially when it was rather obvious Wood's Item was never going to be played on anyone else), relying on Moody's promise of a prevote upon Wood, and allowing for the stunts mentioned above, which the minority so aptly botched.
So now we're going into an Endgame intentionally designed to make a pair's success more tempting than viable, with two pairs who appear to be sticking together and who will only be broken apart by either Immunity or by their of volition, rather than any opposing force. At this point I don't think Wood or Regulus have any chance at winning a Wizengamot vote unless they miraculously wind up there together, which I have zero trust they'd be able to make happen even if I saw a path for it. So the real questions are when the two pairs will turn against each other, and whether a pair could potentially make it to the end together - right now that is looking shockingly possible, especially for Lily/Crouch who have the benefit of an Item usable at F5 (if they sail calmly through F6) and two Flick Charms to bolster the odds that one of them will gain Immunity even before the vote. Which if they survive, places them one F4 tiebreaking Challenge and a 2/3 shot at Final Immunity away from taking up both FMC seats.
Usually I'd be rooting for the underdogs, and certainly I have been over the last few days. But at this point, as much as I love them both and am in awe of their individual arcs (Wood has been just as wrong about just as much recently as Lucius has been in his 'fact'-sharing on the Wizengamot; Regulus once
again made a deal with the boot-to-be), it feels a lot easier, not to mention healthier, to get invested in the progress of the pairs now.
Edit: to add a wheeeelp because apparently Wood was aiming for a tie between Crouch/Diggle and also still thinks this ends in a Final Three and *facepalm* and yep, my point.