Also having smooth sailing on D1 was cactus. Enough people here read "aggression" as being towny that nobody was really interesting in going after cactus. The closest thing I think was probably Elements voting cactus as the Weuler wagon was quickly forming at the end of D1. No reason was given, and since I didn't want my vote on Meg anymore, didn't want on the Weuler wagon, and was curious what Elements was doing I moved mine there as well. Once the opportunity to hammer Weuler came up, Elements dropped cactus with as little explanation as she'd given for the vote in the first place. It reads now like a distancing tactic - and I started inquiring about it with Elements D2. She said she'd wanted a cactus wagon but people weren't biting, indicating that it was indeed supposed to be a serious attempt. So the obvious followup question was to ask why the change of heart on D2, but some thought gave me the answer "Elements suspects that cactus is the other mason," so obviously I didn't want to pursue that line of questioning openly and so I let it go for the time.
Meanwhile, you come into D2 gunning for cactus. Suddenly there is pressure where there was none. People are also coming after you strong. Elements waffles between whether to be on or off your wagon. Perhaps she realizes you're a potential mason and that wagon won't go through when she finally goes from "on" to "off" and starts searching for another target- me or Idle. Still no reasoning given for most any of this- the only thing I recall her saying about it was when you pushed her for some reasons and she said she'd decided scum were on your wagon.
As the end of D2 draws nearer, suddenly people start expressing frustration with the way Elements has been jumping around with no explanation. Three of us in quick succession express suspicion of her for it, when she'd been getting nothing but apparent indifference to the zany shenanigans to this point. I note that I'm seriously considering her and cactus as a team. Elements is shook- there was nothing but bad wagons D1 but the rest of us left now are so at cross-purposes and indecisive that we haven't got a lot going but your attempt at her partner and she suddenly perceives the risk of herself alternately being the quick wagon at end of day. She shifts mode, suddenly realizing she needs a credibility boost, tries to give a terrible set of 'reads' and comes at me hard, with specious arguments about me that apply much better to herself. She shifts from the position that cactus is maybe the mason to the one that cactus absolutely has to be the mason, like she's panicked in the moment and not sure how to apply the idea that they'd obviously considered about having cactus fakeclaim. She ducks my question about whether it was better to take it to ELo, as it seems to me like trying to determine which person is the real mason in ELo is not so good unless there's a nice obvious breadcrumb trail for them to point to somewhere.
After you, for whatever reason, decide to vote with the person you've said you're sure is scum, she tries to solicit Pav for a hammer on me to take the game to ELo with much confusion about who's to blame. Pav walks the knife's edge but holds firm, and Elements realizes this wagon probably isn't happening. It's time to cut bait on cactus and try to gain back some credibility, and your comment has given her enough of an opportunity to not totally lose face in reversing stance on cactus to re-start that wagon. Maybe she doesn't even expect that I'll actually vote for cactus since I've been hesitating to this point due to the mason possibility and my inability to parse WTF cactus is even thinking, though it'd be silly for her to count on that. There certainly seemed to be some attempt to manipulate how I voted with the "inb4aurealvotesme" post, which I cavalierly decided to lampshade, and she decided to try to paint my lampshading of her manipulation as something suspicious with her questioning of it.
So that's how I saw all that go down, and once I was on that line of thought even more things fall into place. The comment about us being in column C that I argued a bit on principle at the beginning of D2. The way both cactus and Elements were just so damn hard for me to wrap my head around at all, which in hindsight seems like should've been telling me something but I was trying too hard to attribute it to their playstyle. The way I repeatedly throughout the game felt like I was on the same page as Elements for a little while and gained confidence only for Elements to suddenly go chasing off in another direction. There's even the classic scumtell, if you're one for that sort of thing, of commenting about Meg's fakeclaim at the start of D2. (I am not one for using scumtells.) So yeah, actually feeling really good about this one, which is unusual.
