Micro 1089: the coalition, again [game over]

[fireisredsir]

i guess if you're town the thing i would like to know is what you find so clearing about hellbooks bc although i like her posting a lot i don't really see anything that looks out of place as far as being a skitter partner

i know that if im scum then this is like me asking you for a road map for how to change your mind but like if you're town then that's also what i need to do in order to win help im doing it again elo sucks

[Infinity 324]

i value your thoughts, whether or not they're useful or correct (or scum in this case)

if you're scum here i'm really impressed by how your posts ooze earnestness

i hope you don't think that if you show more of an effort in thread i will just call you scum for it

pedit: 1 sec

[Infinity 324]

you know, the truth is i kinda don't. i do find 2857 very towny. i also find the follow up of "why isn't skitter answering me" very anti-aligned (though i could construe a thing where skitt ignores her to look anti-partnered? idk). i think if hellbooks is scum she would probably be doing more to push the gamestate in her preferred direction, i think if she's scum here she has a strange amount of sereneness to not fret that people will not worried why she is still alive or why she isn't posting more content. i guess i see that hellbooks could be scum, but i don't see many reasons in the thread to believe that it is the case.

[fireisredsir]

sorry for continuing to talk about myself but maybe it will explain my mindset

part of my issue is that im still not really sure which direction is right

and it's hard for me to then start writing out and casing like "ok here are all these scummy things about this person" because im pretty sure if i did that i would get convinced that person of scum, whichever one it was. i found that happening when i was revisiting my reasons for why bulge/brassherald was scum. but then this morning i was looking at why hellbooks makes sense as scum and i found myself getting convinced of that

so like that's the benefit to me of voting first and either having the game end or having the answer confirmed. because then i can actually show whoever is town all the reasons that do make sense and be able to show them confidently and know they're correct

i just spent like two weeks in a game doing this kind of elo back and forth trying to find the solve and i got it wrong a bunch of times but i did eventually get it right, and then wasn't confident enough to push it through. it did kinda hurt though to several times have that confident solve and case it and then find out it was wrong

[Infinity 324]

i get it <3

[Infinity 324]

To the person who said that bulge could be scum with anybody (i think fire) i would say sure but also its not as if his iso is an utter information wasteland in fact we have 1) 3-4 scum reads and an ordered list of townreads and 2) his lack of this hot new sorting strategy that has taken the site by storm that people are calling "thread control"

not to get all wuthering heights about it but the bulge's singular and glaring absence from all of this has somehow captivates my mind as if his ghostly absence was speaking louder than any other player in the game. That is all to say ive considered healing him without any attached explanation like maybe 15+ times

this is towny though right

idk i feel like whenever hellbooks posts content it's just towny. or maybe i'm just captivated by the performance

[fireisredsir]

you know, the truth is i kinda don't. i do find 2857 very towny. i also find the follow up of "why isn't skitter answering me" very anti-aligned (though i could construe a thing where skitt ignores her to look anti-partnered? idk). i think if hellbooks is scum she would probably be doing more to push the gamestate in her preferred direction, i think if she's scum here she has a strange amount of sereneness to not fret that people will not worried why she is still alive or why she isn't posting more content. i guess i see that hellbooks could be scum, but i don't see many reasons in the thread to believe that it is the case.

i also found 2857 very towny and a lot of my immediate reaction was like. why would she do this as scum. what is this accomplishing as a partner with skitter

and i think that really that's the thing that makes hellbooks hard to read is that so many of the things she does are because they're fun and because they make people laugh and because they make her laugh and they make the thread an enjoyable place to be. and that's her wincon regardless of alignment. so like the standard mindset of "well this post doesn't make sense as x alignment therefore she is y alignment" doesn't really work as well

as for the more specific points:

1) i don't really see the "skitter didn't read my post" as anti-aligned because there isn't really any pressure placed. it's said in a pretty joking playful way of like "oops you forgot to respond!" (3205, 3210) and she doesn't like push skitter any harder to actually get answers to her questions. i would actually say it feels more aligned than non-aligned. i think skitter would be more likely to feel pressure from a town player to respond to their questions even if there wasn't a lot of active pressure placed

2) she did generally push things in a pro-scum direction during coalition phase, where she kept her vote on skitter inexplicably but also was healing her and pushing for coalitions that had skitter and also not pushing for coalitions that had herself in. as town she's generally pretty against being on wagons and like, contributing to killing people, and she's does a lot more of that here (in what i would argue is a pro-scum way)

3) i think i agree that she is generally serene about things but also see point 1 in 277. i know from the time you entered she seemed like unassailable town but i don't think that there ever really was a point where i would expect her to fret about people worrying she's still alive. i think for the majority of the game it would have been a pretty big surprise if she got nightkilled, and until isis got un-townspewed i wouldn't have even thought it likely at all last night

[fireisredsir]

To the person who said that bulge could be scum with anybody (i think fire) i would say sure but also its not as if his iso is an utter information wasteland in fact we have 1) 3-4 scum reads and an ordered list of townreads and 2) his lack of this hot new sorting strategy that has taken the site by storm that people are calling "thread control"

not to get all wuthering heights about it but the bulge's singular and glaring absence from all of this has somehow captivates my mind as if his ghostly absence was speaking louder than any other player in the game. That is all to say ive considered healing him without any attached explanation like maybe 15+ times

this is towny though right

idk i feel like whenever hellbooks posts content it's just towny. or maybe i'm just captivated by the performance

yeah i think a lot of her content is towny. it is definitely performance a bit but it could be as either alignment

i think if you read the traitor game though there's some of this similar energy of coming at the game from strange contrarian angles and getting townread for it

[fireisredsir]

one point of doubt i keep running into is like the bits where she keeps trying to kind of banter with skitter (and skitter is not really having it) like with the hades and persephone stuff. it does feel kinda unpartnered and too on the nose of an interaction when i read it in isolation

but also it would look weird if there was like one specific slot that she didn't banter at all with and that slot ended up flipping scum so maybe it was just like trying to fulfill a quota of that type of interaction

[Infinity 324]

i guess me hiding game relevant questions within this block of text made skitter very easily say "ok i didnt get any of that so im just going to move on". but sheep was like "well i got it" which did a good job at reassuring me that i wasnt being obtuse to a counterproductive extent

i guess this was a big thing that felt genuine to me

yeah. i mean i can see the narrative where hellbooks is scum this game. and she haunts me a little bit. but ultimately "she could be scum" isn't good enough for me and most of the things i read point in the other direction

maybe i should read some more meta. idk in the traitor game she felt so different that i stopped reading cause idk if it's even relevant. i don't like reading meta

[fireisredsir]

she did generally push things in a pro-scum direction during coalition phase, where she kept her vote on skitter inexplicably but also was healing her and pushing for coalitions that had skitter and also not pushing for coalitions that had herself in.

oops i lied she wasn't actually healing like anybody

the post i was thinking of was 1442

and also 1802 where she doesn't express an issue with skitter being in the coal that ari proposed

and the one coal that she kinda said she was okay with was (her tris bulge sheep ari) which she acknowledged was never getting accepted. and that does feel like kinda what scum outside the coalition is supposed to do. have opinions that nobody will actually follow you on

i guess maybe my original point wasn't super accurate now that ive more thoroughly fact checked but it was what it felt like from memory. and i still think she at least definitely didn't play it in a way that pushed for town coalitions, and the absence of that helps scum

[Infinity 324]

i have probably spent the most time looking at the early part and the ending part of coalition forming phase

oh uh, what are you getting from this? i think i've reached the conclusion that skitt could kinda do anything if she was teamed with hellbooks (or my slot) cause we were never getting into the coal

maybe i should look at the early part more

[Infinity 324]

i guess maybe my original point wasn't super accurate now that ive more thoroughly fact checked but it was what it felt like from memory. and i still think she at least definitely didn't play it in a way that pushed for town coalitions, and the absence of that helps scum

right but is town!hellbooks ever actually going to do this

esp once it looked like skitt was a lock

[hellbooks]

i love being talked about

[fireisredsir]

the early part was mostly seeing how things developed when hellbooks was a lot more townread and skitter wasn't. and the general flow of things does make me feel like that points towards hellbooks

the later part was me mostly looking at how hellbooks responded to people suggesting that she be in the coal (mostly tris pushing for that, and then ari asking) and the response was kind of a reluctant "yeah i guess so" (2102 - 2117)

as well as seeing how skitter responded to ari's suggestion of putting bulge in and then insta yeeting him. i think there is probably something alignmenty that can be read out of that but i am not sure

[hellbooks]

yeah. i mean i can see the narrative where hellbooks is scum this game. and she haunts me a little bit.

my wuthering ass at the window

[fireisredsir]

i guess maybe my original point wasn't super accurate now that ive more thoroughly fact checked but it was what it felt like from memory. and i still think she at least definitely didn't play it in a way that pushed for town coalitions, and the absence of that helps scum

right but is town!hellbooks ever actually going to do this

esp once it looked like skitt was a lock

possibly yeah i don't see why not

i think in her two recent towngames she did push for her gamestate view to be heard more than she did here

[hellbooks]

the post i was thinking of was 1442

this one appears to be me spelling out datisi's name acrostically
dont rember doing that so maybe its a coincidence ooo

[fireisredsir]

oh lmao well done

[hellbooks]

although youcan definitely argue that i had other choices for the "s" slot

[fireisredsir]

ok that point rescinded idk

[fireisredsir]

idk. im town. whoever else is town should just like find me as town. that seems like the easiest path forward here to me

[Infinity 324]

i thought you wanted to vote first though?

[fireisredsir]

i thought you wanted to vote first though?

id rather vote first than get voted but id rather you vote each other than either of those options

ill probably get it wrong either way but i think the third option is highest win%, and getting voted is lowest win%

[fireisredsir]

it's like mechanically optimal to force scum to vote first. so if you think im scum then i should be the one to vote

but fmpov either of you voting each other is more optimal than me voting because then the cross is guaranteed to have scum

whereas if one of you votes me then you might be town and we lose