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"Oho, so, a defender of the people, are you?" Wild Sage chuckled good-humoredly at Optimist. This doe certainly did live up to her nickname! "No wonder I feel so safe, despite the dangers lurking around me - under the protection of so capable a protector, how could I not?

"Mmm, all joking aside," he continued, now addressing the group as a whole, "I suppose we do need to start deciding who we're going to vote out this round. I need to think about how to place my vote, hmm..." he trailed off, looking speculatively at the kin around him.

[[guess whooo doesn't pay attention to post frequency? time for research, noot noot.]]

Optimist shrugged. "I hesitate to suggest someone before they have a chance to speak up," she frowned. "I think there's still time left in the day!" Still, she frowned a bit. "We could start with people who've been very quiet before?" Maybe mentioning their names would get them to speak up. She certainly hoped they didn't react like As the Sun Burns did, anyway. Ignoring people who talked to them was...well, weird. "Otherwise I'd...probably stick with As the Sun Burns?" She shrugged. "Sorry," she told him.

She tilted her head at Sage and giggled. "Well, I don't think I could do anything like that in real life! But if it's pretend...we're going to get through this!"

Optimist nodded at Arctic Waste. "I suppose that makes more sense...I don't believe it myself but I could see how you'd come to that conclusion!" She'd back off him, for now.

Optimist tilted her head at Swamp Trees. "I think that's entirely possible!" she said. "But on the other hand, it's a lot easier to tell when people who talk often are acting weird. It's not that quiet people are all suspicious - just that we're more likely to catch the predators who talk a lot, I think. They're going to end up saying something silly! So I think if we can't decide on someone suspicious it might be better to go for someone who's not contributing a lot, or who refuses to participate by talking to us all."

She paused. "After all, look what they're missing out on!"

Doubleback was writing essays all day long had nothing to add to the conversation. She agreed mostly that Trouble's death provided little information - save that perhaps the wolves were not as organized as everyone thought they might be.

When Sun Sinks Down cast a vote for her, Doubleback could only hold back a smile. "If we were to pick people quiet today, then true one might pick me. However, by the same standard one might pick Fire Made Flesh, Look-See, Bitter End, Sleepless, Nightingale, Neither Nor, Story or Blooming Sunrise." She paused for a breath before tilting her head. "But since you clearly think I am so very suspicious, let me attempt to answer your concerns. I advocated speaking up for yourself when accused and explaining reasoning when voting. I pushed Trouble to respond because I wanted to see if she had a reason that would lessen our suspicions or if she would, like others, brush it off. I invite answering questions, but no questions have been asked of me, and I have had none to ask till now."

"If we cannot come to a conclusion on suspicions, then I also agree we should vote off someone who has not participated much at all." And while it was true she had been quiet today, Doubleback did not really consider herself unproductive in comparison to some of their peers. But if that was the best option...that remained to be seen.

(( As always, please quote me if you want Doubleback to answer any question! It would really, really help. ))

votes, in order, etc

Sleepless cringed when Doubleback rattled off the list that included her name. This is all Bitter End's fault, she thought, hatefully, even as she meekly said, "Sorry, I've just been thinking," - a reflexive act that she then hoped no one heard.

Oh, this game was not for her, she loathed to make a sound amongst so many (especially after having made too many sounds augh)...how many of the others on that list were in different timezones as fretful she? And how many were truly wolves... She cast a suspicious glare at Bitter End.

...But she was a bit further down her own list of names (though, what was she doing to that poor doe?).

"While we are at an early stage of voting, I would like to reopen a case," Sleepless took a hesitant step forward, "thinking over those the predators have slain, it may be that, indeed, us prey are merely floundering in the dark with our conjectures, and so the predators may pick us off at leisure for reasons only tangential to the game. I return to that which gave some reason to vote for As the Sun Burns, yesterday. He nominated Watch the Skies for sharing the same name: Watch. Yesterday, his arbitrary reason was deemed suspicious, and he defended it so by pointing out most reasons when we had so little to go on were arbitrary."

So this, too, may be arbitrary, but it strikes me that his Swamp-given name is As the Sun Burns, while Watch the Skies has Watch within her Swamp-given name. As the Sun Burns had less claim over the name 'Watch' than Watch the Skies had, and could have chosen to be hailed by his Swamp-given name for the duration of this game. He had said..." she paused for a moment, trying to remember his exact wording, "...'you can't have two characters with the same name.' You didn't, necessarily, so for As the Sun Burns to set up such a scenario, his possessiveness over a nickname he had less claim to than the one he was attempting to eject could simply be, at best, a strong attachment for whatever personal reasons, or, at worst, sheer pettiness."

(She said, with the complete and unconscious privilege of one the Motherfather had blessed with a single-worded name.)

"These are all possible of Kin to propose arbitrary reasons. But Watch the Skies was rid by predators that very night - and so the possibility that As the Sun Burns is a predator, who sent out a signal that this was one he wished to be rid of, and had that signal heeded, is certainly present."

Increasingly conscious of how long she'd been speaking, she began to wilt and finished it off as quickly as she could, "Of course, the predators may have been deliberately throwing suspicion upon one innocent, but I find it hard to countenance that they would go to the effort on the very first day - and it may have just been a coincidence, but with what we have to go on for the moment, as tenuous as the connection may be, the vote I cast today is for As the Sun Burns. Sorry."

Sage hummed thoughtfully, and nodded along as he listened to the arguments presented. For one so self-absorbed, he could be a surprisingly attentive listener.

"I find your reasoning fairly sound," he said to Sleepless with a nod (and goodness, did he feel bad about ragging on her - the awkwardness was real, he would definitely apologize later, sexual advances or not), "though I think As The Sun Burns may have been joking about the whole name thing, so I won't be voting with you. If he wasn't joking, whether signalling a team of wolves or not, that's as good a reason as any to take him out of play. But my suspicions lie elsewhere," he continued, and turned his gaze with dramatic slowness towards Sun Sinks Down.

"Doubleback has definitely been contributing to the game's discussions, albeit at her own pace; your persistence in trying to eliminate a helpful ally is alarming, to say the least. I'm not sure a wolf would be so single-minded in pursuing the same target day after day - but sowing dissent among the group, with truth or slander, is certainly a strategy the wolves would be likely to use. So - my vote is for you."

[[Gonna be out today, hopefully I'll be back in time to make another post before the round is over~!]]

Given the way the game was going, she wasn't particularly surprised that someone had put her on the list for speaking up. It was one of the reasons people had given for not doing so in the first place. Still it was a disappointment.

She sighed. "If sowing dissent can be done regardless of truth or misdirection, then we're all guilty of it if we name anyone at all. She gets my vote because she was suddenly quiet after being so talkative yesterday. We were all just talking about using that as reasons to vote for the next kin, weren't we?" Her ears flicked forward inquisitively and her tail twitched. "So that's a vote against me for following the group's lead. Interesting." Not that she could make him take it back. Not that it would change his vote, but it was interesting.