Truth voters: I have Faith that this will work out. Ranald will approve. The risks will be worth it. We can afford to pay the costs, whatever they might be.
Faith voters: The only Truth we know is that nothing is certain. Ranald's reaction cannot be known until tested. The risks are too great. We may not be able or be willing to pay the costs, whatever they might be.
This vote is all kinds of flipped upside-down. I thought Faith was supposed to be about giving blind trust, and Truth about being careful and cautious. Instead, even though Truth is the quote-unquote "certain" choice and Faith the mystery box, the discussion for either of them feels like it's opposite day. Leave it to Mathile and her
Ulgu filled mind to get the two concepts completely twisted up in each other.
The worst thing about being on the "losing" side of a sudden surge is that my mind keeps finding various bad or wrong reasons why people are voting, except that the vast majority of said reasons don't actually exist and the few that do are in fact perfectly valid reasons to vote that I just happen to disagree with.
Leaving me to sulk in the corner like a petulant child, completely sure that someone has to be cheating or doing things wrong, people can't just want something other than him.
Honestly, the longer I participate in quests the more I dislike super close votes. I like it when votes change due to someone making a good argument, and I like most contests where multiple options are in the running for the top slot. But when things get close to the wire and it becomes an extremely close vote, the pressure just ratchets up way too high. So often it makes me feel like if I made
just that one extra bit of effort, I might make the decisive post that makes the difference between winning and loosing. And then when I've put in that high-effort post, and the vote is
still extremely close hours later, I feel like I'm once again
just one more post away from somehow making the difference. That cool thing I want is simultaneously just-in-reach, but also might get yanked out of my hands any moment. And in between all that pressure, the
fun of a quest vote is the part that gets squeezed out.
For this vote, the 'sudden surge' here feels extremely significant. But it's only about 5-10 new voters in a vote that has over 500 of them. It is objectively about a 1-2% increase in votes. But it can feel like falling off the edge of a cliff. (And when it happens again in a few hours, it's like falling off a cliff
again.)
