Team Mafia 2018: White Flag — Day Six

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Also, we should probably lynch one of the players who has already posted today.

Agreed.

Vote: 'marble

F...first has scummy cadence too. Did we ever calculate whether ellipses are just a scumtell? Doesn't matter.

If we want people to take such micro scum tells, we have to be more rigorous. You can't just lump in a mid-word ellipsis with general ellipses.

Keychain now also agrees that northsidegal wouldn't pick scum and has provided this game as evidence, highlighting this post.

I like how by providing evidence you've managed to make your claim less compelling than it was previously.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

No sextuple posts, please, this is the civilised game.

Other rules include: no swearing, no policy lynches until D2, no talking about who you want to lynch and you can't repeat a question if it gets ignored the first time.

Pedit: heptuple*

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Don't like how fast the Marquis wagon got going, especially when not everyone has even checked in yet (as far as I am aware).

Making it harder for scum to just ease into the game seems like a good thing to me. What downside do you see to the Marquiswagon?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Tchill seems town so far. "Alarmed" post counts in favor and scumhunting seems genuine enough.

You don't think his catch-up-style entry to the game felt forced? I'm assuming he's used to a spammier meta than we are and catching up on a 4/5 page game seems weird to me. Achieving a natural game entry as scum is generally not trivial, especially given the Marquiswagon, and this seems like an affectation that would let him sidestep the essential difficulty.

Was planning to just vote LQ despite Marquis still being a decent place to hang out, but these two give me enough pause not to bother yet.
Still, LQ is an approved wagon for now, I'm just not confident enough in it to push it.
Sell me on these from LQscum. It should be easy, I've halfway sold myself in pedit.

Letting Marquis lurk out from underneath his wagon seems like bad strategy.

I think we should have dueling Marquis-'marble wagons. Sauce, Tchill, your votes aren't doing anything useful, so you want to help me with that? I promise it'll be worth it.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

It's not always about you, 'marble.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'd rather go straight to the part where we lynch scum though.

If we could guarantee it, sure, but absent that I'd rather we just meander our way to my preferred lynch.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

'Marble, why do you consider Marquis to be the towniest of the three lurkers {Dunnstral, wgeurts, Marquis} when his posts have a) been scummier and his lurking has been more in the style of a scumbag?

Vote: Marquis

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Marquis is actually just in danger of being straight up replaced.

That wouldn't be the first time that's happened to a lurkerscum I was wagonning. (It could reasonably be the last time but that's neither here nor there.)

Marquis

is scummy

and I'm certainly not going to let the fact that he's lurking work to his defense. Scum do it and they do it often. Because it works.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

You didn't really need to make 5 posts just to make like one interesting point, 'marble. Come on, if you're going to unvote lurkerscum, please be a good example in a different way. Also, I suggest you ask fferyllt about Marquis.

3) again it's literally been a day. i know i didn't post when i said i would (oh no someone didn't keep their word on ms.net) but like. come on. it's not 2005. lurking isn't a scumtell (if anything the scum meta is spamposting but i'll cut off because i'm not sure if that applies here yet). town has just as much motivation to not want to deal with things. case in point i pretty much played overwatch all last night because i really didn't feel like coming into d1 scumreads/votes on me and trying to defend myself.

I see the same mechanisms protecting you as I'm used to seeing, so I care very little about your generalities about the current meta. I do like how you point out that it should barely count as lurking in a few different ways only to undercut it by admitting you lurked intentionally. Is that supposed to excuse your earlier scummitude?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Like, he tries to claim "No doubt you would've voted me if others did" is scummy because it doesn't show doubt. But it's about a PREDICTION of BEHAVIOR, not alignment. Way to rely on the kinds of words people see as legitimate while pointing them at something they clearly don't apply to.

I think in the context of what Shea said and the general "talking past each other"ness of that whole conversation, it doesn't strike me as weird for Lickitung to have interpreted the prediction as being based on alignment, even if on a literal level it dealt with behaviour.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

On top of not referring to alignment, it's also not an example of excessive certainty in general.
Excessive certainty is when someone plays like they KNOW they have the answer.
Using the words 'no doubt' is a normal way to express confidence. The words themselves aren't the too sure tell.
But LQ saw a buzzword and jumped on it as something he could talk about.

It seemed like standard Shea-style "make an inference and pretend it's the rock solid truth" certainty to me.

I'm currently on LQ + Tchill + CES.
The triple ISO is very pretty. It works.
AD can be first alternate for now, though I haven't looked at his posts in a little while.

We're not really having the helpful conversations I was hoping to have, are we. Did you even follow up on my hint?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I still don't know where CES stands in his reads this game and don't know why he thought Marquis was scummy to begin with earlier before the lurking.

Yeah, things aren't really going quite as planned; I thought things would develop more helpfully. The main reasons I found Marquis scummy very early on were 1) his general awkward tone early on and 2) the whole "representative" affectation. I think Signs and Void from last Team Mafia is pretty important context here - his early posts here feel really similar. I think both of those things are more significant than his lurking although his lurking has also felt scum-motivated (but I'd be more hard-pressed to explain the nuts and bolts of that feeling).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

If it was the ffery thing (is that meant to refer to cabd?) -

Um, no, fferyllt and Cabd are very different people. Fferyllt was your team mate in Signs and Void, dude. It was only at that post that I realised how little continuity there is from last Team Mafia to this one; maybe if that had come sooner, this would've gone a bit better.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Northsidegal, have you compared Marquis' early posting here to his posts in Signs and Void?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Eddie, GE, why aren't you voting?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'm pretty sure all of Team Mafia has scum daytalk, bud.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

i hope you realize that my question towards you isn't a questioning of your marquis read – i'm trying to figure out if you're actually reading the game at all, because as far as i can tell you haven't expressed any other scumreads nor any clear townreads.

That's what I figured and why I'm not all that interested in doing it. Look at Marquis' iso in Signs and Void and we can talk.

I reason that 1) CES' vote is a result of Llamarable's previous posts. This is fact. 2) Despite not making comment on it, I don't see CES making this vote if Llamarble does not make post65. What he does vote Llamarble for is nothing worth pushing. CES voted Llamarble because he thought it was a good vote. I don't see the town motivation for anyone that reads past their initial gut feeling.

None of this is true.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

That's a very bleh vote count. Tchill doesn't feel much better than a random lynch to me.

Because I originally was voting GE, after a back and forth, I unvoted them. I'm also waiting for fresh blood/meat to get in here to sort some of those damn null spots I have in my reads. Marathon, CES.

Even in a marathon standing still is not very helpful. Pressuring people is pro-town, so why aren't you doing it? Why don't you make like your new avatar and go face?

My subconscious is really concerned about Postie.

What do you think of #446? Relevant context: none of those questions have received answers.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I assume you're asking about the second sentence since the VC should be self-evidently bad with the votes spread across 9 different people.

With Tchill, I see like 2 things that feel definitely scummy to me (the faux catch-up at the start, #212), some big picture "lack of scumhunting"-scumminess but then you also have his off-the-wall theory about Postie being coached (especially in the context of him disavowing team mafia-based theories) which is a nice town tell. It looks to me like a wagon driven by relatively crude heuristics.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Unvote, vote: Postie

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Anyone interested in a last-minute actually good wagon on GE for that gross case in #702?

Unvote, vote: Gamma Emerald

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES, it seems like you are responding to this to dissuade people from letting a replacement come in for people to get a read on him instead of just straight up wagoning and lynching him.

It would've been quite nice if this Day had turned out like that. But I also certainly don't have that kind of power!

I'm not going to respond to all your comments in detail (some of them were already answered later on for one) but yes, my early game was a bit lacking - I thought other people saw similar things in Marquis as I did so I didn't really feel the need to pressure him so much. Obviously, that turned out to be wrong and I probably squandered an opportunity there.

What do you think of Tchill avoiding this game and posting in others right now? How does that affect your read on him?

It affects my read about as much as the town meta Dunnstral brought up when it takes a minute to dig up a similarly active scum game - i.e. not much at all in the absence of any proposed pathway [Tchillscum]->[Tchill posts less than he normally does]. There's certainly no inherent motivation for him to lurk here - the timing means it's just locking him in as the lynch.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

On second thought, 702 isn't really a case.
He reads Tchill, sees some stuff he doesn't like but mostly eh, and is alright with voting him.

If it had been mostly eh, that would've been fine. But I think that's you overlaying your own viewpoint. I'd characterise maybe two of his comments as "eh" and the rest as accusatory on some level or another. You don't get to throw that many slushy snowballs unless you're looking to do so.

#702 for reference.

That is one of town's loss vectors and if we keep those shut we should win.

You know what's also a town loss vector? Bleh lynches.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

#824 is impressively long given that it has ~0 pro-town content in it.

@

CES

: Why did you vote Marble in your #68? If you answered that, can you quote/link? Also, can you respond or quote/link answer to my response to your #526?

I didn't want to place a sixth vote on Marquis at that time and if I wasn't going to place a serious vote, I figured I'd might as well needle 'marble.

As for #526, 1) awkwardness is scummy because townies can just say whatever they're thinking whereas scum have ulterior motive (e.g. don't draw too much attention) straight away. Not the strongest scum tell in general, but pretty solid when applied to early posts before scum have a chance to get their bearings. 2) Re: the representative thing, I think scum do occasionally force some sort of gimmick just to elicit the "why would scum do that?" response; on its own it wouldn't be that scummy but knowing that he did the same thing in the previous Team Mafia when given a Mafia role PM makes it a hell of a lot scummier.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I've been very busy today, sorry, so just making a quick pop-in to say the whole swap situation makes me feel better about the Tchilllynch - it's certainly a better one than lynching Lickitung (even if Lickitung does post too much).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I've been very busy today, sorry, so just making a quick pop-in to say the whole swap situation makes me feel better about the Tchilllynch - it's certainly a better one than lynching Lickitung (even if Lickitung does post too much).

Can you explain this? I have no idea how the swap could make you happier about the lynch

I do think the fact that Srceenplay was willing to leave his previous game makes a bit more sense if there's a scum role PM here. But I mainly mean Srceenplay coming in and immediately asking a leading question while showing relatively little interest into what the answer would be. I don't see much else but desire to survive in Scree's posting; e.g. what's the point of him explaining his 'marble town read in #1110? He certainly doesn't seem very interested in Lickitung despite voting for him.

"Instinctually doesn't feel like the kind of thing scum would even think to fake." Is good stuff too.

That is a pretty townish line. Partly it's probably just my perception that's changed but it's nice to see you return to form at the last.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

@Marble, I've got Screen in my sights for today. However, from the AtE and flailing going on, I'm willing to let the case write itself right now and give screen more time(and rope essentially) to hang themselves with it. If anything, I'm a patient man.

You can at least put him at L-1. That can't hurt.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Wrong post CES. What do you think of my #1153?

Oh yeah, I meant to link #1010, not #1110.

I think your analysis of Marquis is pretty on point; the Tchill part doesn't really sway me; with the Postiepart I like the holistic read that she's seemed more town on some level than her play has been (if Eddie is town at least, which to me is the crucial question there) although I've got slightly different views on the nature of it, I think (e.g. #446 is, I would argue, her scummiest post). I'd like to respond in more detail (to this and some other comments) but I just haven't had the time this week, sorry. E.g. I have to go right now.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

=========[}
{]=========

Unvote, vote: Srceenplay

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

This is scum to me. You ASK me to put Screen to L1, when he's at L2. Why do I need to add my vote, CES?

So I could hammer him, obviously. After spending 30 pages not voting, this is suddenly enough for you?

Ranmaru, look at one of LQ's posts like 1392 - doesn't that show a pro-town mindset? I don't even agree with it at all but it is an intricate thought that stems from a LQtown perspective. It's not hard to find scummy posts by Lickitung but it's not hard to find townie posts by him either. Let's not LQ distract us from a Marquislynch. It is time.

Vote: Marquis

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES, I want two more scum reads.

Eddie is the other big one. I don't particularly care about meta with Eddie; he just posts these long walls that have no absolutely no forward motion in them. Going 30 pages without voting on Day 1 is also something I can't recall seeing from Town (conversely, I know that that sort of thing happens to scum - they unvote at some point and then have a tough time finding a natural point to go "I'm confident enough to vote now"). The main thing that gives me pause is that I don't really trust Postie.

My second tier of scum reads is Postie and Gamma Emerald; I'll just comment on Postie for now since I need to get a good night's sleep. I'm not fond of Postie's early game, a lot of which feels like it's more at looking good than actually scumhunting - #446 is the clearest example of that to me; if you look at it superficially, it's "hey, in-depth questions! good!" but it's so overboard as to be counterproductive. When I read that post, I expected none of the questions in it to receive answers - as far as I can tell, that is in fact what happened and Postie also didn't follow up. I have a harder time judging her play since the Eddiepush started - I agree with the gist of it, obviously, but it seems like an easy thing for Postie to focus on regardless of alignment.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Why Postie over me?

Because my Postieread informed my view of EddieFenix.

If theres a wagon on one of your top scum reads why are you not on it? Reticence of the person making it shouldn't outweigh the fact that you're scum reading the person the case is on.

Because I want to see Marquis dead. If my only goal was to see scum lynched Today, I would probably just vote Eddie but I don't think it helps that much with the goal of lynching 2 scum.

Me and mathdino both agree that llamarble was killed to break up town cohesion, and that the post we should all be looking at is 875. To that end, he thinks that postie vs tsq is a pointless debate to have as that'll be resolved itself as the game goes on.

Wouldn't #1160 be the obvious post to look at if that was your point of view?

i think cogito ergo sum's reason for switching his read on the tchill slot is kind of strange – for someone who said that the wagon was little better than a random lynch, i don't think a sudden switch to thinking that it landed on scum happens the way that it seemed to for him.

I think that's pretty significantly overstating how positive I felt about the lynch. Screen's play helped me make peace with it happening but I wasn't surprised when he flipped town.

CES am I still feeling that you lack presence this game. Is this a usual thing for you? I know this is technically the second time we have played together, and I have only read the TM 2012 you gave me. You were town there and kept on pushing your scum team list. Can you explain why there is a difference here? If you could confidently push a scum team there, why haven't you done so with your three scum reads here?

Well yeah, I linked you to me at my best. This is me, mostly retired and annoyingly busy. I remember how disappointed I felt whilst playing TM12 when people trolled me into believing I had gotten wrong it; I don't think I'd feel as strongly here even if both Eddie and Marquis flipped town.

Shea: Postie is town and Gamma is town. Note my [##710] from Family Mafia. I cased Postie on the same things CES and others are casing her for. Seeming town, asking questions that seem to ignore good intentions.

! That makes me feel much better about Postie.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'll explain my GE scum read now. The main thing is that he seems much too concerned with whether his votes seem justified or not; as town you know you find people suspicious and you can vote for them, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. #703 is definitely the worst offender - the actual case thing seems to consist mostly of him throwing slushy snowballs at Tchill and although he apparently thinks it's good enough to justify his vote, there's no sign he wants to encourage anyone to read any part of it. And there's lines like "Given that and the fact Something_Smart is telling me not to trust you, I feel comfortable with this." in #256 which just sounds so awkward to me, as if there's some bar that must be met before he's allowed to vote Shea. The amount of time he's spent not voting matches up with this too. (The vote on Marquis earlier Today was a welcome exception but I'd like to believe that could be a sign of a GE-Marquis partnership.)

Eddie, what do you personally think about Ranmaru? (I'm not interested in Mastina's opinion.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

i mean, you asked eddie to put him at l-1 and then hammered him. i've seen people play that way in relation to people who they townread getting wagoned, but i still think it doesn't make much sense to do that to someone if you think they're going to flip town.

I think "expecting to flip town" vs. "expecting to flip scum" is a very unhelpful dichotomy. I initially thought the odds of hitting scum in Tchill was in the 25% area (6 such lynches = likely loss) and that then went up to, say, 35% (6 such lynches = okay odds of winning) which given the general situation seemed like the best I could hope for, so I ended the Day so we could move on.

CES

: What is your read on TSQ and Lycanfire? Now that you feel better about Postie, how does that affect your read on her and Eddie?

Shea to me mostly has seemed very Sheaey, which is surprisingly helpful because it means I feel very much at ease sheeping 'marble's read on him. Lycanfire I also tend to think is town; I can't be the only person who this sort of thing happens but Lycan's definitely not the first proponent of the "CES is just obvscum" school of thing and I don't remember that ever coming from scum. The vehemence showcased, however undesirable, is also something scum would have a hard time faking.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Vote: Eddie

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES's post here #368 shows he is trying to dissuade people from waiting for a replacement instead of straight up lynching him. Which he admits to in his #820. He explains his lack of presence with #526 and another excuse in his #1557. In his #665 and his #728 he is voting town. He voted Llama. None of his votes have been landing on scum, or at least it seems. I just think he's being reserved and isn't really trying that hard to lynch scum.

I have no idea why you've suddenly decided I'm scum because this paragraph is a whole lot of spin and very little substance. If you want an up-to-date look at my town game, check out The Third Fortnight (Marquis here is basically Tbone there).

NSG: Almost50 is thinking that team 9 got 2 or 3 scum pms, and that team 1 got 1 or 2 scum pms. He thinks it is likely that team 9 is scum in two games, and that our own team, team 15, is being eliminated from all games due to his method. He say precisely in this game, that he took a closer look at Eddie and Davsto and decided they are not scum. He thinks that the three scum in this game have come from teams with 1 scum pm each, and has cleared NSG, Davsto, Gamma, which I agree with. He came up with a pool of Lycanfire, CES, Dunn, Shea, and Marquis. I then looked at that pool and tried to see who was the most likely scum.

This is absolute nonsense and I want this kept this as far away from my game as possible. The only interaction there is between the different Team Mafia games is through the preferences of the individual members. There's some rare exceptions but A50 can only have gotten to this sort of conclusion by egregiously misapplying probability.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Davsto, Dunnstral, NSG. Come aboard the Lick it Quick wagon.

Alternatively, let's not let Eddie outlurk his wagon.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES: How confident are you in Eddie? Can you try harder with your reads on Shea and Lycanfire, your reasoning didn't sound convincing. What's your read on me?

By my reckoning he's got about 55% chance of being scum. That's pretty good.

I'm not sure discussing Shea or Lycanfire further is very fruitful in the absence of you identifying any concrete issues you have with my argument - I don't think I have much of an insight into their play besides what I mentioned (at most it would consist of recognising the patterns of Shea being his argumentative self) and I feel like elaborating on my argument would require me to write paragraphs about things that aren't specific to this game. We need to be moving forward (e.g. by lynching Eddie) rather than standing still.

You're my strongest town read!

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Yup. This is why Pre-Flip sucks eggs.

Well, you can help us move to the post-flip stage.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

By my reckoning he's got about 55% chance of being scum.

My I ask precisely where you got this from?

I have a specific process to come up with numbers like these - I make them up. Then, after making up a number for everyone, I add up all the numbers and see if they add up to #ofscum - they probably don't, so I start changing the numbers until they do, making sure to think long and hard about how embarrassed I would be if one of my town reads turned up scum whilst doing so in order to keep my confidence in check. The idea is that the triple constraints of math, embarrassment and not wanting to underestimate my confident scum reads will lead to some semblance of truth. It's a bit involved but I prefer it to making reads list in terms of taking stock because I could actually experience how the existence of null reads like Dunn and ActionDan make me somewhat less confident in Marquis and Eddie.

Spoiler: Answer to the inevitable question

Marquis: 60%
Eddie: 55%
GE: 30%
Postie: 25%
Dunn: 25%
ActionDan: 25%
northsidegal: 20%
LQ: 20%
Davsto: 15%
Lycan: 10%
TSQ: 10%
Ranmaru: 5%

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

How has this never come up in any of the games I've played with you before?

Has this came up before ever?

Can you point me to other times you've talked about this method.

First time I remember using it is actually TM2012 White Flag, which is also the only game I can remember having played with you. I definitely haven't discussed this explicitly before for the same reason it may have been better to avoid having done so here.

@Shea, what do the numbers actually stand for? That's what he hasn't answered and that is what I think is the most important thing in his whole numbers thing.

Chance of being scum, probably, given the context.

Actually

VOTE: Marquis

Why the vote change? I mean, I kind of like it but I don't see quite what prompted it.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I think "expecting to flip town" vs. "expecting to flip scum" is a very unhelpful dichotomy. I initially thought the odds of hitting scum in Tchill was in the 25% area (6 such lynches = likely loss) and that then went up to, say, 35% (6 such lynches = okay odds of winning) which given the general situation seemed like the best I could hope for, so I ended the Day so we could move on.

but looking at it again i don't really think this is a good explanation and reviewing his iso for his townread on tchill he doesn't really do much to stop the lynch there and to get people voting with him on his scumreads.

Do you think a 25% chance of flipping scum corresponds to a town read? I'll acknowledge that I didn't get to do as much as I would've liked to arrange a different lynch - I tried to encourage 'marble or someone else to take up the torch because I knew I would have almost no time to spare for basically the whole second week of the game; it probably would've been easier if I had had a town read on Tchill because that would've given me something nice and concrete to do.

You kept "not noticing", after a while it can't be explained away as that, plus I feel like you would be a bit more critical of it since it was a reasoning on you

Dunn just gave us a sweet Marquisvote so why are you here trying to sell us platitudes (i.e. something that is a) obvious and b) not true)?

P-edit: then why do you think Dunn changed to Marquis from Eddie, nsg?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

i don't understand where that percentage comes from at all so it kind of sounds made up to me. why did the percentage change at all for screenplay's replace in? like, you give the justification for your read as the percentages but you don't give any justification for the percentages themselves.

The percentages are just me trying to clarify my reads progression to you (and why it led me to make the decisions that I made). They just reflect how I felt at the time; I've already talked about how Screenplay's replace-in made me more suspicious of the slot; we can relitigate that if you really want but it seemed more important to explain the exact nature of the read change first.

not entirely sure, but i don't think he actually believed in the eddie wagon in the first place. could be to avoid pressure for a poor vote on the wagon, could be to muddy up associatives. either way i think it's scummy play. the eddie wagon certainly seemed as if it was happening anyways. is there something specific about the people that changes something about this read, to you?

The straightforward thing for Dunnscum to do with Night about to fall is just stay on the Eddiewagon. The fact that you can posit some vague motivations to the contrary doesn't change that, I don't think.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I feel like the kill was to get rid of dead weight since EddieFenix got lynched.

Why would the scum want to get rid of dead weight?

Vote: Marquis

This lynch should happen Today.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I think the only correct thing you've said so far is that Marquis is a supermarket.

You know, the more I think about it the more I think: "Does Marquis really think they can get away with lurking for 2 days straight as Scum?"

I'm sure there's an aspect of genuine inactivity to it but then it's exacerbated by him being scum. All he's done since his disastrous start is occasionally pop in, post something that's meant to sound vaguely pro-town and peaced out again.

CES

: Can I get two more scum picks for today? Have you re-evaluated your reads? Can you explain your read on Davsto?

My only solid secondary suspicion right now is GE (for, in the words of LQ, his votes; #2106 also looks like it's answering the question "why did Postie survive N1?" rather than "why did Postie die N2?"). I feel like I need to re-read; the Postiekill especially worries me since it suggests scum were happier taking out a slightly scummy player with unknown reads than a more town-looking player with known reads. Davsto has just generally sounded town to me; that's one player I should probably take a slightly closer look at.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

for kmd it started with the bad wagon on him early in the game (where only one of his townreads was on it)

There's already 2 dead townies on the early Marquiswagon now. I'm pretty sure you've said you think Marquis is town yourself, so why restrict yourself to talking about outdated kmdstuff?

Do you think math's busywork is useful, nsg?

(I also want to make the observation that it kind of feels like nsg is trying to scapegoat me for the two town lynches before the Marquislynch has a chance of going through. That's probably too convoluted to actually be true but certainly nsg's team's reasons for suspecting me don't seem to amount much more than just me connecting to the two lynches.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'm not sure if I want to fully ISO Gamma anymore because it's like 250 posts and I've read them all before so I just start skimming so I leave it until later

So I'm basically putting off playing the game at all because I know when I come back I "should" do the Emerald ISO but I can't get myself to do it so I go "oh well probably shouldn't bother posting then"

That's fine. Here's something easy and productive you can do instead - ISO Marquis keeping in mind that all he's done since his disastrous start is occasionally pop in, post something that's meant to sound vaguely pro-town and peaced out again. (I stole this wording from a previous post because I am also lazy.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES: Why didn't you explain your mindset to NSG about your vote on Eddie, instead of simply saying you feel she's trying to scapegoat you for the two mislynches? Are you re-reading yet?

I don't think engaging nsg's team's reads directly is particularly helpful, especially when they're expressed vaguely. I'd rather hear what nsg thinks herself.

I have started re-reading (and re-thinking), yes. It's annoying how Marquis hasn't been lynched despite how criminally obvious he is in the early going.

With the Postienightkill, I'm also currently thinking that one potential purpose of it would be to make nsg look more town and thereby more clout to steer the lynch away from Marquis. Obviously, that does explicitly require Marquisscum but there are definitely scum teams for which that would make sense as a tactic (e.g. Marquis-nsg-Dunnstral). I think it's probably still more likely that it points to a relatively confident scum team (e.g. GE-AD-TSQ, but let's not actually entertain the possibility of Marquis being town if we can avoid it). I should do some calculations as a sanity check but it shouldn't matter too much Today either way - Marquis is the way forward.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

explain what's "busywork" about it? of course i think having someone else to talk to about my reads with his helpful, and he's noticed some things that i haven't picked up on.

why ask this question?

When I say busywork, I mean the requests in #2266. I guess that may not have been entirely clear. I ask because you seemed to be taking the role of neutral messenger rather than someone who was involved in the discussion so I was trying to find out where you stood. When I'm town I rarely anyone ask a question without wondering a) whether the question is really worth taking up our attention and b) how best to ask it to get an appropriately detailed answer. I probably am more strict in that than most people but this still felt like a prime opportunity for that type of reflection.

i've given reasons in the past for why i think you're scum. i also get the feeling from the way you're framing things here that marquis is the scumteam's designated mislynch (this combined with dunnstral's later vote).

I acknowledge that you've mistakenly claimed I had a town read on Tchill before in order to paint my hammer in a scummy light; that was part of it.

Ran/TSQ/LQ: step off each other. LQ and TSQ you need to just avoid talking to each other

We should all strive to live in harmony and lynch Marquis together.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I mean, if it leads you to the right conclusion, I'm quite happy with that. And if you do the ISO and don't agree with it, then I'd like you to engage with my point of view.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Lickitung, don't let TSQ distract you from the glorious Marquislynch. Remember that TSQ was the first person to shoot down the Marquiswagon D1 as being just a lurkerlynch.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

don't play word games and pretend like saying that his wagon was no better than random doesn't at the very least imply that you're townreading him.

No better than random is the

literal definition

of a null read.

even if we only strictly consider what you said as saying "i wouldn't be willing to lynch there" (and i would presume you wouldn't take random lynches), then the point i'm making is that, to copy a bit of your own notation, your pathway from [not willing to lynch tchill] -> [willing to lynch screenplay] was weak.

I feel like you're just trying to find new ways to making it seem like I had a big read change; it's just not true. I detailed exactly the nature of my read change in #1596; do you think I should not have been willing to hammer Screenplay at a time when no better lynch was forthcoming?

i also think that since pretty much the end of day one all you've done is made a decision on who you want lynched and voted them – i don't see any genuine gamesolving or scumhunting from you.

Getting the right people lynched is how you win, so that does tend to be my focus, yes. I tried to engage with Eddie, I've been trying to understand where you're coming from (I'd still like a response to the busywork question), but at the end of the day that sort of stuff is only interesting as far it changes who I want to read. I'm here to win the game, not for brownie points.

especially given eddie flipping, someone you had at 55% scum second only to marquis, i would have expected town you to recalibrated or taken a new look at the game or at your reads. instead, all you've done is just say that the exact same person is obvious scum.

I know this is a concept floating for some reason but this is actually the completely opposite of how it works. Eddie (and Postie) flipping town simply makes it more likely that Marquis is scum - there's only 3 scum and quite a few people look townie to various degrees so it's only become more likely that Marquis is scum. If you're looking for someone and there's 2 man-sized bushes, it's 50-50 they're in the first one but if the first bush is empty, then it's very likely Marquis is hiding in the other one.

I'm also currently in a reread but that's admittedly going fairly slowly - figuring out scum #2 doesn't seem quite as important as getting scum #1 lynched.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

His Marquis obsession is a bit silly

It just seems silly because you're probably barely paying attention to Marquis. Do you even know he's got some weird vote on Ranmaru right now?

he seems to actively discredit any theory that doesn't include Marquis-scum.

Can you give examples of that?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I think from the start Marquis has been saying that he doesn't scumread me for pushing him. I don't see what's weird about him keeping that up and just focussing on looking town while e.g. a buddy takes care of pushing on me. Later in the day there's nothing preventing him from going "oh well, it's CES or me" and swinging onto my wagon.

his vote on postie literally boils down to "lycan didn't answer your questions" except he never said his reasoning. when i asked him to explain he ignored it. what scumhunting?

If I had had time to really go into my reasoning, obviously I would have. My Postievote, just like the GEvote that you quoted multiple times, was essentially me throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if something would stick (more realistically: if someone else would help make it stick) because I didn't like the Tchilllynch but I also knew I would have very limited time for the rest of the Day phase.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES

: I want a full reads list from you with reasoning.

I'm just phoneposting right now, so you'll have to wait until Sunday for that.

I'll try to answer your earlier question about LQ and nsg though:
LQ I feel is pretty solidly town - he makes posts that seem unlikely to come from scum every so often and generally feels earnest. I think the crucial thing with LQ is his sheer volume of posts; the strength of my town read on LQ lies mainly in the fact that he's been keeping up a pro-town voice over such a large sample size.
Nsg I find much harder. In terms of more big picture stuff, there are some solid reasons for why she's town - a preference for town, Postie's read (i.e. this being outside her previously existing scum range) and the Postie nightkill and only some weaker reasons for her being scum - her lurking D2 and her push on me now while protecting Marquis. But she's also done all sorts of things that really feel like scum to me - I haven't gotten the impression that she's really tried to discern my alignment at all; starting d3 with purely team-based posting; there's a bunch more small things but this is about as much as I can manage right now.

Pedit: don't have time to respond to nsg's new stuff either. But I would like you to respond to my last response to you, nsg.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Oh go away Ranmaru, it's not lazy to sheep 'marble when you have very little idea of how to read someone yourself; it takes effort to suborn my ego so I can do the rational thing. It's so easy to just say you don't understand it or it's not scumhunting or whatever and throw away relevant info. I don't want any credit, I just try to win.

Now definitely going to sleep. We can discuss this nonsense when I get home.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Still phoneposting, so this may be a bit rambly.

CES Scum motivation: Argue with a buddy to interact with him about a scum read [CES] has yet to speak about. Hammer two town he isn't passionate in to progress scum win condition. Discredit NSG rather then explain himself to her to taint her as scum (since there is some idea of her being scum from Reck and myself). Uses the excuse of sheeping Llama to avoid sorting Shea, his scum mate.

I implied my Marquisscumread in my second post; that was definitely going to come out. AD's question was just fortunate timing. Your hammering point just underlines my issue with how it feels like nsg is scapegoating for the town lynches - I feel like I probably rank 8 out of 8 or something in terms of being responsible for the Tchilllynch actually going through but I'm the one being associated with it as a direct result of nsg pushing an argument that involved her characterizing a by-the-books null read as a town read. And although it feels a bit gauche to blame people for their lynches, Eddie's ability to write walls without including any pro-town content was unlike any I've seen before. I did try to engage him, I encouraged him to vote someone on Day 1, tried to find out what he thought of you D2 but apparently he preferred giving up to addressing the suspicion on him. I don't even know where this charge on nsg comes from; I've definitely been engaging her (just in my last post I encouraged her to continue our main strand of conversation). Do you think my plan as scum with Shea is to go to LyLo with him and we'll be the obviously strongest players and I'll just go "well, 'marble said he was town, so"? I care about the 'marble town read because if I don't, no one will and we just lose a source of information. It's not the end-all, but see next.

CES Town motivation: Only town motivation I can find is him genuinely being busy. It would be understandable if he tried to reconsider his read on Shea later on, but he doesn't. His votes on town (Postie, Gamma) would make sense if he was also trying to consider his other reads (Shea, Lycan) yet he doesn't, so it doesn't line up to me.

I'm aware that I don't have a great feeling for who's scum beyond Marquis but at the same time that also doesn't really feel like a priority when Marquis hasn't been lynched. If Marquis did somehow flip town, then my conception of the game would be flipped upside down and I'd've just wasted my time; if he's scum, then getting him lynched Today is surely priority #1. Look, I can see you like contemplating scum teams (and that can be a fun exercise if you have the time to spare) but the end result seems to be that you flip your reads 7 times and end up pushing the scum counterwagon. You win the game by lynching scum one at a time and that's what I'm trying to do.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

His Marquis obsession is a bit silly

It just seems silly because you're probably barely paying attention to Marquis. Do you even know he's got some weird vote on Ranmaru right now?

I do. Now explain why it's a scummy vote other than just the vague comment that it's "weird". Town can be weird too.

Because Ranmaru is obvtown for one. I think it's a pattern you see often with inactive but relatively competent scum - they try to fill their few posts with attempts to look town, so Marquisscum would absolutely do the classic vote against the grain here (Marquistown could also do it, sure, but it's not exactly likely.)

he seems to actively discredit any theory that doesn't include Marquis-scum.

Can you give examples of that?

I think it's probably still more likely that it points to a relatively confident scum team (e.g. GE-AD-TSQ,

but let's not actually entertain the possibility of Marquis being town if we can avoid it

)

probably the clearest example, but there's a lot of times where your theories revolve strongly around Marquis!scum so it comes across that there's probably other theories in your mind which you've discounted because they don't fit with that.[/quote]
Your explanation here seems to say that you're just accusing me of tunnelling, so I still have no clue why you actually think I'm scummy. The example you quote was just me making a self-deprecating joke (if I'm wrong on Marquis too, my reads have been shit so that's not exactly a pleasant scenario to consider) but even if you read it straight I really have no clue as to how me suggesting a theory and then shooting it down would be scummy.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Ranmaru, since you like looking at scum teams so much, look at Marquis-Davsto then. It took Davsto 2 votes after voting me to give any sort of explanation and when he finally did, it was just a dressed up version of "CES is very suspicious of Marquis, maybe too suspicious". It's a ridiculously weak vote on a convenient target (if Davsto had given the reasons at the same time, you'd be left to wonder but I can definitely see Davstoscum deciding to vote me before having it fully worked out).

Pedit: I really need to write my posts faster.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

The iPad swallowed up the first draft of this post so no one gets to see me earnestly answer a rhetorical question (I am broken).

CES, what is your read on Dan?

I initially had a mostly null read with some vague town feelings but in hindsight I'm not sure why I had those feelings exactly (pretty sure it was Shea who made a good post on the topic (albeit a more exaggerated version of what I experienced)). AD is mostly just hard to read because he hasn't had enough presence to really judge him by his actions (which isn't surprising because he's a bit lurkish) and he's also definitely competent to have faked his posts so far. The one thing that did strike me was his post #147 which would've been useful to see reiterated on D2; AD did launch a proper defence of Eddie eventually but only at a point that the lynch had become inevitable.

For like one second. One real day. Work with me and figure out what else is happening around you when you're not blinded by the size of your hate boner for me.

Okay. What do you think of Davsto's nonsense push on me?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I am at work. Right now, Marquis why did your read on Quick change, and what is the reasoning for it now? What is your read of Shea? How do you feel about the Shea and Quick votes on you?

CES, talk to me about Quick. Also please give me two town games of yours and two scum games. Will respond to you as well when I get home.

I already talked to you about Lickitung.

Town games:
The Third Fortnight (T-bone there =~ Marquis here)
TM 2015 White Flag (Cheery Dog there is hopefully very much not Marquis here.)

The only scum game I can remember as being even remotely recent is The First Mafia; I don't know how far you'd have to go back to find another scum game but I doubt they'd be particularly relevant unless you want to follow the evolution of my playstyle.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Nsg, do you agree with Mathdino's points? Because I really don't think it's that interesting to random points from someone who's only half-read the game and isn't that invested - e.g. 'marble unquestionably had Shea as his top town read and it took me like 20 seconds to find an explicit example of 'marble calling him a supertown; Mathdino's summary of affairs is very misleading.

[quote=Ranmaru]Would you say Marquis is a competent player? I don't see how comparing a different player to Marquis is really going to sell me on your read on Marquis. Have you looked into Marquis's meta? Now I have looked at your games (especially your town games), I think it is different. Can you explain why that is? Have you thought about my #2352, what do you think about it? Also, why do you think Llama was killed? In reference to your Shea read, what does him being very 'Sheaeay' mean and why does it make you at ease with sheeping Llama? What do you think of Shea's interactions with LQ?[/quote]
Marquis and I have been around for ages, so he's definitely competent (albeit probably rusty) and I haven't seen much reason to meta him (besides the more concrete question of whether he would do the representative nonsense at the start of the game as scum); I think the Tbone comparison absolutely holds up - both my suspicion there and my suspicion are built on a particular scum profile and not on any behavioural things specific to either Tbone or Marquis - it's definitely one of the reasons I feel as confident on Marquis as I do, knowing that this specific approach already picked out a scum for me in a 2:14 game.

I'm just on a phone so I'm just focusing on the "Sheaey" question: I just meant that Shea is very much like the "out-of-game" Shea that I'm familiar with and that by extension 'marble, who knows Shea in real life, must be very familiar with. That seems like perfect conditions for 'marble to read Shea in.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Your explanation here seems to say that you're just accusing me of tunnelling, so I still have no clue why you actually think I'm scummy. The example you quote was just me making a self-deprecating joke (if I'm wrong on Marquis too, my reads have been shit so that's not exactly a pleasant scenario to consider) but even if you read it straight I really have no clue as to how me suggesting a theory and then shooting it down would be scummy.

It may be a "joke", but it still looks like you writing off a sane conclusion of what could have influenced the nightkill "because Marquis" and going with the weird one instead. Feels like scum!tunneling, it doesn't feel quite... right. You're not considering other possibilities at all, whereas town do generally have some changes in their read.

I literally state in #2334 that I think the "sane conclusion" is more likely. You're reading stuff into it that's just not there - I just gave an example of a scum team for which my thinking was applicable and then made a self-deprecating comment about how the chosen example didn't include Marquis (with a bonus fragrance of pushing Marquis); if I was purely Marquistunneling, I'd just have given an example scum team that included Marquis.

Also you're acting like it's the entirety of what I think wrong with your play and like this being slightly off disproves my entire scumread on you - it's not, your attitude is just scummy overall.

It's Day 3. Whether the reasons for your vote are "he's too suspicious of Marquis!" or "he's too suspicious of Marquis!+Dude's just scummy" with no supporting evidence seems like much of a muchness; it's just weaksauce.

Ranmaru, I've answered plenty of your questions, so I'd like you to return the favour and comment on this Davstovote. One important piece of context is that this is his fourth vote - 2 lame votes on LQ, one meta-based vote for Eddie and now this.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I don't really see it still but in CES's comments about his read on me he said that he'd have liked to see more about the townread I gave Eddie. I have to ask, did you not agree with it? originally it was because I'd never think Eddie would take a scum PM as long as his team had any town PMs, which is why I thought there was 99.9% chance eddie was town coming into the game. But considering your vote D2, I highly doubt I'd have changed your mind and you were cognizant of it, it seems. So why the need to reiterate it to you? would that have made you unvote Eddie?

I just think it didn't stand out to me initially; it's not like I was scum reading him at the time. There were definitely times in D2 where I wavered and was close to switching back to Marquis.

Something else I have been considering is that Llama was killed to put suspicion towards CES / Shea.

I suspect that's not really a helpful way of thinking about the 'marblekill. I imagine he would've been the default choice so if there's any info to be gleamed from it, it'd be in comparison to another choice of kill (e.g. the fact that they didn't kill Postie N1 may have been a deliberate attempt to let her get her hands dirty pushing the Eddiewagon).

Then Dan's #234 shows he believes Mulch picked scum over LQ or anyone else on his team.

We know Mulch did actually pick scum though. (Sheepsaysmeep also getting stuck with a scum role and not acquitting himself that well with is probably a slight point against LQ, but the role madness game is also basically the opposite of this game, so we should go with 'marble's maxim of set-up preference over alignment preference.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Okay that makes a bit more sense but you can't deny you worded that badly and confusingly.

I can and I will. I will not be denied subtle jokes.

It's Day 3. Whether the reasons for your vote are "he's too suspicious of Marquis!" or "he's too suspicious of Marquis!+Dude's just scummy" with no supporting evidence seems like much of a muchness; it's just weaksauce.

a) My read is more than you just being "too suspicious of Marquis", it's the way you're behaving that doesn't seem like a townie progression of reads (along with my gut reading you scumminly). I can keep giving things that come off as unnatural about your read, like how Marquis made a bunch of posts about a day ago and you haven't referenced or looked at a single thing beyond a single line in any of them - stuff like that is

not

how town act towards a scumread that is that strong.
b) You say that like you've given plenty of strong evidence for your Marquis vote. I've just skimmed through your ISO - all I can see is you saying he's lurking, has an "awkward tone", and a single-game meta. Get off your high horse here. My reasons for voting you are not exactly a huge amount weaker than those of your Marquis reasons. You've barely given anything on him this entire game day.

I replied to one of those posts and I've also just literally spent all my free time this weekend responding to things on my phone. I've also given reasons for why his lurking was scum-motivated; the awkward tone specifically related to his early posting (do you disagree that his early game was awkward?); the single game meta was in reference to the representative stuff he was pushing at the start. If that had been all I had said, there's already a significant difference there - I'm connecting my accusations to what's actually happened in the thread rather than push unfalsifiable generalities - that's exactly what my problem is with you. But Today I've also been discussing how I feel his pop-ins seem scum-motivated, talked about this type of competent scum who knows they're not very active and as a result really focuses on trying to look town to the exclusion of anything else, I think that pattern really fits what we've seen with Marquis.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that your scumread on me is just too convenient - I'm someone who's voting you who's maybe not the towniest or best at explaining reads, so you've taken that opportunity and jumped upon it, especially odd as pretty much every previous comment about me has seemed to have me on the town side of things - I'm very suspicious of that so suddenly changing over something as minor as this, and that it's related to a vote on you feels like it's not coincidence. You are becoming more and more scummy the more attention I pay to you.

My town read on you had already mostly evaporated by the time you voted for me. You did strike me as quite earnest in your approach to the game on Day 2, but in hindsight you were in catch-up mode for a long time, which I think is a bit easier for scum, and your big case against Eddie was meta-based (you can definitely earnestly believe as scum that Eddie wasn't playing to his pro-town meta). I don't know why you'd call your only D3 vote "minor". And of course it's not coincidence it's related to a vote on me - I'm the counterwagon to Marquis and I'm obviously highly aware of it (especially since I had to wait two days to even find out why you were voting me and then accused me of the pretty serious sounding offense of "actively discrediting any theories not involving Marquisscum").

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Now here is what I have found from your other games which I haven't seen as much here: You have been working with Regfan and Llama to find scum together, but not so sure if you have been doing as such here.

I feel like I spent a lot of time on D1 trying to talk with 'marble but mostly getting rebuffed. I guess it's true that I've been talking to you moreso than really cooperating with you - I'll look at some things tonight and see if I can remedy a little bit.

Marquis, you should talk to me about your progression on ranmaru. You had him as a town read earlier.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Well, that's a depressing Vote Count. My desire to lynch Dunnstral is approximately zero and I'm not really interested in following up a Postiekill with a nsglynch (there's absolutely things about her that bother me but it also really feels there's a good chance we're just creating an unnecessary mislynch).

Can we just go back to Marquis? He suggested working with me but he's gone almost 3 days without answering my question now. This is a good lynch and I'm not letting it go.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES why do you have 0 interest in lynching Dunnstral?

Is it just because he's voting Marquis?

I do think his progression on Marquis is more likely to come from town, yarr. It's not a confident read by any stretch but also there literally just hasn't been anything that's made me think Dunnstral is scum.

Again - may I highlight that you've replied to a single line in one post out of about 10. You haven't asked him about his Ranmaru read, you haven't engaged him at all. This does not feel like the attitude that town has to their biggest scumread.

I could say something here about how I prefer to focus on specific things rather than ask scattershot questions but this feels like a fairly arbitrary thing for you to say I should've done. When the votes are 4-4 between me and Marquis and I strongly believe Marquis is scum, why would it be a priority to engage with Marquis? It also feels weird for you to be saying this because you didn't make any attempt to engage with me when I became your strongest scum read.

We need to talk more about the Dan read. You said that Marquis fits the scum profile as you have seen in the game T-bone was scum, yet tell me about Dan, does he not fit the bill as well? Davsto's #2798 seems fair. I think I have a better assessment of Marquis then you right now. I have looked at his town and scum games and he gets lynched for the same thing.

I looked at ActionDan's iso with that question in mind and the answer really is no. AD often sounds like he's talking for himself, without any specific audience in mind, he sounds wonkish at times but I just don't get the feeling from his posts that he's making them with the purpose of looking town, which is the crux of the affair. If you look at Marquis' posts with the profile of competent but lurky scum that does their best to look town in mind, then his posts make more sense; it's not the same with AD. I also looked at some Marquis games that he got lynched in and he mostly just seemed to post fluff? Admittedly a knock against my "Marquis is competent" stance but he's not playing this game incompetently anyway. If there's specific town games of his where his play was similar to this, you can link them to me but otherwise I don't see any reason to change my mind.

P-edit: I did appreciate that and I've been meaning to respond to nsg's post but this is it for tonight, I'm afraid.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Is responding to her not a priority to you? I'm confused as to why you bring up observations on Action Dan and NSG but don't follow through. I want to see your reads list, you said you'd give that out on Sunday. If you are short on time, tell me your reads on NSG and Action Dan right now. How's your read on Shea developing?

It's not a priority in the current game state given that I don't want to lynch her right now. But my main issue seems to be that I'm writing posts at too slow a pace to keep up with all the things I want to be keeping up - there's always more context to look at and more things to consider. I'll see how far I'll get into a reads list this morning.

I want to point out that in the other game he was more hyper, more intent on the words 'victory' but hasn't really said that as much here.

The obvious context there is the glorious victory that was TM2012. TM2015, by contrast, was a painful loss. I think I still showcased some of that pro-town zest early Today when the Marquislynch looked plausible but I don't think it should be surprising that I've been less optimistic and more aware of the possibility of this game turning into an embarrassing failure.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Well, I managed to sort of write up 2 of my reads. Let's pretend that this is a good start.

Marquis: Marquis is scum. His play is performative and lacking in pro-town intent (e.g. he made a big show of wanting to cooperate with me but hasn't answered the question I asked 2 hours later). His entrance was awkward and he then lurked his way out of the resulting pressure (he admits as much in #381 which is also an example of him being performative with the 1)2)3) righteous indignation angle). Another example is him popping in at the end of D1 and being more focussed on working in the claim that he wouldn't pick scum naturally into his posting than on what was actually going on in the game (i.e. the Screenplaylynch). Yet another example is #1481 - just look at his explanations for his read on me and GE or that last paragraph, he's talking to an audience trying to look town. His vote on Ranmaru is the most textbook example of him trying to look town (i.e. the classic scum vote against the grain); I don't actually think this is the most compelling example but certainly the most easy to digest.

ActionDan: quite a bit less confident in this read as I don't strong vibes from most of his posting either way, so this ends up being more about a few specific ones. One point is his behaviour around the Eddiewagon - I don't get how as town you think it important enough to mention Eddie's alignment preference on page 6 when no-one's suspicious of him but don't find it important enough to reiterate this fact during Day 2, when the Eddielynch seemed the most likely outcome of that Day basically right from the start; he only gets round to defending him one real-life day before the end (I also have some niggling feelings about the structure of #1985 but I think the timing was sufficiently bad that ADscum wouldn't have to skimp on the content). My other issue with AD was in his recent response to Ranmaru's push - I really don't like his accusation in #2937 (reiterated in #2941) that Ranmaru led 2 mislynches; that doesn't match how I see the game at all and I think holding mislynches against townies is something scum really like to do.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

This is why me and chamber always say cases are scummy. It's just a cavalcade of nonsense and it's very obvious a lot of it is just ripped from its context or hasn't been given much thought. It just creates the impression that there has to be something there because of its size.

I'll give a detailed reply as soon I can, but the fact that she claims that the reasons for my scum read on Marquis haven't changed when my very last post summarizes exactly why I'm currently scum reading Marquis (and it's not like I hadn't talked about those things before).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Let's start back at the start of the game. CES votes llamarble and never explains why. He later calls for dueling marble-marquis wagons, and again never explains why. Llamarble calls him out on this, saying that he doesn't understand why he'd want that as town. This is CES' response:

It's not always about you, 'marble.

He later describes this vote as something he chose to do instead of putting down a serious vote on the marquis wagon.

The opening paragraph sets the tone for how much of this is going to go:

• Vague intimations of scummitude (I have no idea why it'd be scummy that I wanted dueling 'marble-Marquis wagons (it's easy: dueling wagons means people have to make choices but because the options are 'marble and Marquis, on the whole we're also basically guaranteed to make the right choice which is lynching Marquis (I acknowledge that this was slightly silly)))
  
• Outright inaccuracies (I explained my 'marblevote in #870)
  
• Leaving out relevant context (i.e. Marquis was on 5 votes this entire time).

He calls Marquis the scummiest of the three lurkers (Dunn, Marquis, Wgeurts), and again doesn't explain why.

I literally do give a reason why Marquis was the scummiest in that post ("when his posts have a) been scummier and his lurking has been more in the style of a scumbag?") - the first point is admittedly not convincing without context but I was talking specifically to 'marble who did seem to agree with me that Marquis' early posting was scummy; the second point could admittedly use more context (i.e. Marquis' lurking was in response to a wagon whereas Dunn's and Wgeurts' wasn't) but again I was talking to 'marble specifically, not a general audience.

He makes a lot of posts just calling marquis scummy around this time still without explaining why before finally talking about it in 526. What were his reasons? "Awkward tone" and meta from one scumgame in 2015 that he never really explains in any depth. As far as I can tell,

these are still the reasons he's scumreading Marquis

, along with lurking. It goes without saying, but these reasons are both very easily fakeable and are apparently good enough for CES for that single read to last the entire game.

I have talked about the meta point - it was specifically in relation to Marquis' "Please hold as I forward you to a representative"-nonsense; he used a similarly annoying affectation in the linked scum game (albeit for longer). I obviously just gave a summary of my Marquisread in #3095 that I encourage everyone to read but anyone who's been reading my Day 3 posts with any sort of attention should know your core claim here is just outright false.

He briefly votes postie, perhaps influenced by marble's questioning of postie in the previous post. He again only explains this much later, saying that postie was more looking good than actually scumhunting. In that same post he says that he obviously agrees with the gist of the eddie case, but that he still thinks it would be an easy thing for postie to focus on if she were scum. All of these opinions are contradictory to eachother.

His Gamma vote comes for Gamma's case in 702, but again he only barely explains this until much later, with a vague comment about Gamma's case being "accusatory" in 823. He goes into more detail in 1567, saying that Gamma was being awkward and looked concerned with how justified his votes were. This is another weak read, and he pretty much entirely drops this point and doesn't bring it up again – you know, after the consensus largely came to be that gamma is town.

I'm sure I've talked about this before but I was just superbusy during that time (I think my longest post during that week came in the interval of a magic show). I was definitely influenced by 'marble questioning of postie because I knew I didn't have the time to single-handedly shift the lynch away from Tchill and I was hoping 'marble would be able to help. Similar deal with the Gammavote; I was throwing it out there more out of hope than any real expectation of success.

W.r.t. to my Postievote specifically, there's no contradiction there. I can see multiple posts that seem in my eyes to focus on looking good over scumhunting (#446 seriously is a post that a) looks good to most players and b) accomplishes absolutely nothing) but those posts were (generally?) not the ones about Eddie. I make that clear in the post you link ("I have a harder time judging her play since the Eddiepush started").

W.r.t. to my Gammavote specifically, I acknowledge that it's a weak read, which is why I only gave it upon being prompted by ranmaru. There hasn't been any reason to talk about it since (I'll admit that I haven't gotten round to taking a closer look at GE's more recent play with all that's been happening; I was going to do that for the reads post that I never found the time for fully).

I've talked a lot about CES' read on tchill/screenplay, but let's really go over his progression there.
662 – Brings up two points that make tchill scummy, one point that makes him towny. Describes it as a "wagon driven by relatively crude heuristics."
820 – Pretty much doesn't take any stance on tchill, talks about how the lurking doesn't affect his read.
1025 – The swap makes him feel better about the wagon.
1179 – Argues that screen being willing to swap means it's more likely that the tchill slot is scum here.
1185 – When responding to ran, describes how the scumread on postie seems more convincing to him than the eddie part, which "doesn't really sway [him]".
1217 – Hammer.

CES says that he detailed the nature of his read change but he really didn't in any truly explanatory way. He's said how the odds of hitting scum in tchill went up for him, but the only reasons in his iso for this are the swap and screen's desire to survive.

I appreciate the amount of context you've included because it shows how much of a nothingburger this is. Screenplay went from basically null to slightly scummy as a result of essentially those two reasons. As you point out, I explained in #1179 why I thought the swap was scummy. It's not screen's desire to survive that I found scummy (town obviously does also want to) but the absence of much else, which I think is self-evidently scummy (certainly on D1 in White Flag this will be scum's only motive). Your comment on #1185 should say "the Tchill part" and it shouldn't be too surprising because it was Screenplay's actions that led me to think the slot was slightly scummy.

Day two, back on the marquis wagon. Later, when Tsq asks him why he's not on the eddie wagon when he's stated that he agrees with postie's case, he says that that doesn't help with the goal of lynching two scum. What?

That just refers to the fact that we need to lynch 2 scum to win the game (in context it provided a nice contrast - 2 vs 1). I was worried about the exact situation that I think we find ourselves in now: Eddie's town, Marquis is scum and my credibility has been undermined by me joining the Eddiewagon.

He later jumps on the Eddie wagon with no real indication as to why the switch.

That's because my vote for Eddie essentially came down to me letting go of the more strategic approach and just voting with the goal of getting what I thought was a good lynch. It was prompted by me explaining my reads to Ranmaru and at that point I just felt that I was being somewhat condescending by trying to game the system in order to secure my preferred lynch (i.e. intentionally not joining the Eddiewagon when it was my natural inclination to do so in order to keep my credibility intact for a Marquislynch).

Let's examine all of the reasons CES has voted people for, this game:
-Lurking
-Awkward wording
-Looking more good than actually solving the game (this vote never went anywhere, however)
-RVS? (Llamarble)

First of all, these reasons are, as a whole, surface level. It was llamarble who said that if CES doesn't lynch scum then he's probably scum himself – given that this is what CES has been pushing people on, I'm inclined to trust that. Next, all of his scumreads have been opportunistic – on players that looked lynchable (notable is that dunnstral is an exception to this, with a very weak reason from CES – this lends credence to my view of the scumteam). Marquis has always been a viable wagon. Tchill and eddie both actually went through. Gamma looked viable for a bit, and that's when CES voted / scumread him. His postie vote followed llamarble placing a bit of pressure there and again stopped afterwards. It's all agenda-driven.

A quick review of team mafia 2015 indicated that he didn't vote lurkers all the time. He seemed to have fairly well-developed reads that don't compare with his fairly robotic scumhunting this game.

This is mainly a reiteration of your italicized claim about the Marquisread but you've additionally managed to miss out my reasons for voting Eddie!

I know what 'marble said but I'm also pretty sure he didn't say "If I, 'marble, get Tchill mislynched and CES helps get Eddie mislynched, then CES has to be scum." That's a ridiculously overzealous reading of what 'marble said - I am not magic and we also lynched town D1 and D2 last White Flag (and I was unquestionably more culpable in that game than here). In your summary you've managed to hold both my acquiescence to the Tchilllynch and my attempts to prevent the Tchilllynch by voting Postie and GE against me as if they're even comparable to my more serious votes on Eddie and Marquis.

2. Undeveloped Townreads

Here's a list of every time i could fine where CES calls someone "town":

662 – He talks about a "nice town tell" from tchill but still evidently scumreads him (if his behavior is anything to go off of).

1179 – Says that i had a "townish line".

1397 – Describes how one of quick's posts shows a pro-town mindset, but ultimately comes to the non-conclusion of "It's not hard to find scummy posts by Lickitung but it's not hard to find townie posts by him either."

1596 – Calls lycan town for scumreading him, calls tsq "sheaey", so wants to sheep llamarble's read on him.

1801 – Says that Ran is his strongest townread.

2223 – Says that davsto generally sounds town, but that he needs to take a closer look. This goes away after davsto votes him.

2610 – Quick is solidly town.

I'm pretty sure that's it. He's barely mentioned a large amount of the playerlist, and for the reads that he has mentioned, his reasons are always self-admittedly weak.

He's keeping his options open.

It's absolutely true that I don't tend to focus on my town reads. Mafia is about lynches and out of Lycanfire, Ranmaru and LQ, maybe Lickitung was in some risk of being lynched at some point when I was less confident in my scum read, so it should be fairly natural that that also held here. Tchill was a null read of mine when I made #662 which I've made abundantly clear and I did talk about him precisely because

he was

at the risk of being lynched.

Look back at team mafia 2015 – a huge difference in how he approaches townreads. He's not playing the same at all, and i'm fairly confident it's because he's scum.

If you want to quote meta evidence, actually quote (or link) it because this doesn't pass the smell test and this whole case is long enough that people aren't exactly going to be incentivised to read my iso in another game too.

3. NKA

Let's examine llama and postie and their relation to cogito ergo sum.

First, llamarble's mentions of cogito ergo sum.
215 – Says to lynch CES in lylo no matter what. Can't imagine why CES called for dueling Marble/Marquis wagons if he was town.
343 – Calls CES null, and makes the point that strong players always appear town early on.
347 – Says again to lynch CES in lylo, mentions that he's been buddied by CES as scum before and to not let it happen this game.
408 – Calls CES the first alternate to his scumreads
516 – Put CES in his scumteam.
537 – Reiterates to lynch CES in lylo.
582 – Says that he could could "easily believe" a scumteam with CES in it.
664 – Same as before.
875 – Lays out a lynch order where CES is first on the chopping block if tchill flips town.
930 – This one is important – says to give CES some time,

but if town isn't winning before LyLo, CES is scum

. He also advocates lynching whoever is left in lylo that should've been nightkilled.
1146 Says that CES should be lower on Ran's readslist.
1160 – Places CES in the category of "don't let live to lylo".

As an aside, Llamarble's thoughts on marquis were that there were decent to very good reasons to townread him, and his lynch order had town leaving him alive until lylo. The llamarble kill day one is a point against marquis scum unless marquis is also scum with one of the people in marble's lynch order.

This is just a very elaborate of describing that I had a slightly lame start, 'marble scumread me for it a bit but dropped that nonsense by the end of D1 and went back to generic stuff. I don't think you're taking what 'marble's saying all that seriously because then you might be more inclined to actually give me Marquislynch. There's also the fact that 'marble would've been nightkilled by 90% of all scum teams anyway, so this is all a wash.

(As an illustration of how hard it is to respond to all of the nonsense in this post, there's also the separate point that nsg's comment on #875 creates a connection between tchill flipping town and me being scum that just isn't there in the original post.)

When it comes to postie, there's very little indication that postie would have gone after marquis and she had me as locktown. Her death clears the way for both of those pushes. This point less directly related to CES scum but still something i'd like to talk about later.

I also don't think there was any indication she would've opposed it either.

Now, a look at cogito ergo sum's use of NKA / his use of dead people's reads.

In 1557, CES says that 1160 would be where we should look given the marble kill, but the readslist in that post was heavily based around tchill being scum. One of the things marble was incredibly adamant on was that we not let CES get to lylo if town isn't winning by then. His readslist also wasn't lynch from the bottom up – he explicitly said that there was scum in the good but hard to read players.

This manages us to be inaccurate in 3 different ways. In #1557 (it's the third reply), I'm questioning you why you jumped to #875 as a point of reference when clearly 'marble's thoughts had evolved since then. #1160 is very clearly meant as a last reads list, before he dies, and there's no indication that it's predicated on tchill being scum (and it'd be weird for it be so, given that 'marble was generally to cover all eventualities). I also certainly never implied that it was lynch-from-the-bottom-up; I just linked it.

In 2690, he says that if he doesn't care about marble's reads then nobody will as a defense of his TSQ read. Not only is this not true in the first place, but it's kind of a misrepresentation of what marble had made clear – people who are alive at lylo when they shouldn't be need to be lynched. The fact that he doesn't mention this nuance or seem to take it into account doesn't do anything to defend his weak TSQ read, and only furthers the idea of a scumteam there.

Let's look at another TSQ interaction based on marble's reads. In 2742, CES says that he feels good about sheeping marble's townread on TSQ because they know each other in real life and thus marble should have a good idea of how to read him. This again is just selectively choosing parts of what marble said.

I don't count you quotemining 'marble for nonsense so I would say it is true that people generally don't care about 'marble's reads (I want people to care-care, not "I can use NKA to bolster my argument"-care). It's not LyLo now or even necessarily close to LyLo so I don't see how that part of 'marble's reads should have come up in my explanation for why I was town reading Shea.

2223 – Says that postie was killed because scum preferred to take out a scummier player with unknown reads, when postie had known reads outside of eddie.

Relatively unknown reads, yeah. I don't know what Postie would've done D3 and I think it was implicitly clear from your point on Marquis and Postie that you don't either.

2334 – Argues that the postie kill was to make me look better and to give me more sway to steer the lynch away from marquis. What? How does postie being dead, someone who had me as locktown, give me

more

town sway as opposed to less? If the scumteam actually cared about protecting marquis, they probably would've killed the person hard tunnelling him from day one – CES himself. The fact that he doesn't recognize this and this whole point are incredibly disingenuous.[/quote]
Saying that I "argue[d] that" is an overstatement; I theorized it but also said the previous possibility was more likely. I would say that Postie being dead gives you more town sway because it means you can explicitly invoke a dead townie's word to get people on your side (as you have done a few times); a living Postie is more helpful in keeping you alive but I think less helpful in terms of getting the town to do what you want. It's true that nightkilling me would've been a more direct way of protecting Marquis but I also really wasn't expecting to be nightkilled given Lycanfire's hateboner for me. Assuming Lycanfire's town, that's just a guaranteed mislynch for scum at some point.

I'm confident in saying that cogito ergo sum has voted only town this entire game.

If you assume I'm scum and my targets have been scum, then that is probably true, yes.

The cogito ergo sum wagon never moves anywhere despite nobody really townreading him. Here are the people who have voted CES:
Day 1 – {Lycan, Ran, NSG}
Day 2 – {Eddie, Lycan}
Day 3 – {Lycan, Davsto, NSG, Ran}

Comparatively, the people who have voted marquis (excluding rvs) are:
Day 1 – {Davsto, Dunn, CES, Llama, Quick, Gamma}
Day 2 – {Ran, Eddie, Gamma, CES, Quick, Dunn}
Day 3 – {CES, Quick, Dunn, Ran, Gamma, TSQ}

The cogito ergo sum wagon doesn't take off because scum don't want it to. The marquis wagon does, the same way the eddie wagon did. If cogito ergo sum were town, his wagon should have taken off at some point during this game, but it hasn't – not even after ran was canvassing pretty hard for it.

Maybe it's just because Marquis has been scummier than me? Both dead townies that are included in those sets ('marble and Eddie) were on Marquis. Also pretty sure LQ voted me at some point before this but I'm pretty sure it's a completely arbitrary point regardless.

I'm going to have lunch now and reply to sections 5 and 6. Thanks for wasting hours of my time, northsidegal, it's really appreciated.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

5. Defense of himself

Cogito ergo sum's defense of himself is notably lacking and inconsistent at times.

1662 – Ran brings up multiple valid points against CES, some of which i've talked about myself. His response is just to call the paragraph lots of spin with little substance and provide some self-meta of him as town.

That paragraph

was spin

. Ran wasn't saying stuff like "CES did X and I think that's scummy because Y"; he said stuff like "In his #665 and his #728 he is voting town" about my near-deadline Postie and GE votes when we didn't know either was town (Postie hadn't flipped yet) and without any consideration of context. I linked a recent town game of mine because I worried that I had previously linked him some games wherein I had done some sweet scumhunting and he was expecting too much, too fast from me. (I also don't like the phrase "self-meta of him" here; self-meta is a distinct thing wherein you analyze your own play; most people won't click through to the post and assume that's what I was doing when I merely linked a game of mine.)

2003 – His defense of the tchill lynch is to go back to his percentages without going in-depth as to why the percentages changed.

You're right that #2003 works badly as a defense of the tchilllynch. It does however work perfectly as a response to the bit of #1963. If you claim I had a town read on Tchill when I clearly didn't, obviously I'm going to refute that.

But let's take the bigger picture. This whole conversation started with your #1473 in which you state you had a problem with my "sudden switch to thinking that [the Tchillwagon] landed on scum" - since I never actually expected the Tchillwagon to land on scum, my response focused on the exact nature of my reads change and why that reads change led me to hammer. If you're claiming now all your problem all along was my exact reasons for the reads change, then I don't get a) why we had such a long back-and-forth where you kept misstating my position when apparently that wasn't important to you and b) why you didn't talk about either reason I gave.

2279 – Discredits my push on him by discrediting both of my teammates' opinions, then tries to reduce my scumread on him to just his being on the lynches.

You yourself called kmd's reads outdated, but again, that post is not me defending myself, it's engaging with you. You started with Day 3 with a whole bunch of stuff but it was all from your team mates and you were just completely in the background. So I tried to pull you in the foreground and have you actually talk about the team stuff you posted (something I still haven't managed you to do despite multiple attempts). And then in my parenthetical statement I correctly pointed out that your team's scum read (not your scum read, your team's) amounted purely to "he voted for a townie; I don't buy the vote" in different colours.

2534 – People (ran) apparently take this as some incredible reason to townread CES. I've responded to this already, but i'd like to reiterate some points.

CES says that he detailed the nature of his read change on tchill – my point is that his read change is justified with incredibly poor reasoning.

Again, if it was justified with such poor reasoning and that was your whole issue, then why did you never talk about the reasoning? I have no idea why you disagree the swap or Screenplay's hyperfocus on survival was scummy, let alone why you're now claiming it's incredibly poor reasoning.

I made the point that he wasn't gamesolving, and he responded that he was solving the game and wasn't interested in "brownie points". He's not solving the game. He's not really coming up with any possible partners for marquis, he's not giving any thoughts as to what happens if he's wrong, he's not really sorting anyone else or looking for townreads (as we've gone over).

I very expressly didn't say I was solving the game. I said I was trying to win the game; I agree I don't particularly care for gamesolving these days - a good example of that would be The Third Fortnight wherein I incidentally found the whole scum team on Day 1 but, since the win conditions were bit wonky and meant mentioning it would provide no benefit to me personally, I literally didn't say it during the game. My approach is simply to identify the play that I see as most likely to lead to a town win and then try to make that happen - right now that's a Marquislynch so that's where my focus has been.

I did actually write up a response to Marquis' rhetorical question about what would happen if he flipped town whilst I was in a "just respond to as much as I can" mood on the phone but then that got swallowed and I came to my senses a little bit. I just think it's fundamentally a distraction from what I want to focus on.

2571 – CES argues that scum marquis could just be saying that he townreads CES while a buddy of Marquis' pushes on CES, but he doesn't actually say who that buddy would be. In this same post he also talks about how he didn't like the tchill wagon, inconsistent with what he's been trying to tell me about his reasons for switching.

I was arguing against a too cramped conception of what Marquisscum would do; I certainly wasn't arguing that a buddy of Marquis was necessarily pushing me (hence the e.g. in #2571) and while I do think either you or Davsto could easily be that buddy, I think mentioning either of your names would've only detracted from the argument by needless specificity. I did say in that post that I didn't like the Tchilllynch, simply in the sense of "I'm not happy that this lynch is happening" (this is pre-Screenplay, obviously); I assume you're reading something else into it but I don't know what that would be.

2690 – Basically completely ignores the question of what happens if marquis ends up being town.

That'd be a valid complaint if Ranmaru had asked me. I was just talking about my approach to the game; I didn't talk about what happens if Marquis ends up being scum either; I was simply talking in more general terms and it would've been just completely weird if I had gone into details about either hypothetical in that post.

2742 – Again discredits reads from my teammates saying that math is uninvested in the game.

And again the purpose of that post was to get a response out of you. I did say math wasn't "that invested", which doesn't seem unfair and was relevant to the question of why you posted her comment uncritically, without e.g. fact-checking it.

And I don't need to respond to section 6 because it's just a summary of the previous stuff. Huzzah, I can go do work now!

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

North's case is based on and made based on the evidence of what you have actually done.

In the sense that movies are based on a true story, maybe. You can read my detailed response for yourself if you want but let me also give you what I consider to be probably the most egregrious example:

She writes:

In 1557, CES says that 1160 would be where we should look given the marble kill, but the readslist in that post was heavily based around tchill being scum. One of the things marble was incredibly adamant on was that we not let CES get to lylo if town isn't winning by then. His readslist also wasn't lynch from the bottom up – he explicitly said that there was scum in the good but hard to read players.

She's accusing me of cherry-picking a reads list by 'marble that has been made obsolete by the tchillflip, leaving out incriminating info on me and apparently also misrepresenting the nature of said reads list. That's scummy behaviour she's describing, no doubt about it. Now let's look at the relevant part of #1557:

Me and mathdino both agree that llamarble was killed to break up town cohesion, and that the post we should all be looking at is 875. To that end, he thinks that postie vs tsq is a pointless debate to have as that'll be resolved itself as the game goes on.

Wouldn't #1160 be the obvious post to look at if that was your point of view?

It's literally just me asking nsg why she is looking at #875 rather than #1160. Why did I pick #1160? Simply because it was 'marble's last posted (and therefore most up-to-date) reads list; the =======[] icon at the end also signifies fairly clearly that it's explicitly intended as a last reads list. I don't know why she picked #875 but even if you think it's the more relevant reads list to look at, I still have no clue as to what's supposed to be the scum intent about asking her. As to the point that #1160 was heavily based on Tchillscum, that's contradicted by its first line: "I think we're well set up to win even if the first day or two don't go how we hope."

This happens again and again throughout the case: nsg accuses me of something that does sound self-evidently scummy but then if you click on the link(s) and read the relevant post(s) or if you know the relevant context, the accusation just melts away. This is what happens when someone writes a big case, they don't pay attention to their points, they don't give it much thought, they just make a big impressive-looking list and make the target deal with it. I've had to spend a ridiculous amount of time I still didn't get round to pointing out everything that was misleading and provide the full context to every point (e.g. the example I gave in this post also features in my rebuttal but I didn't go into as much detail).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I recall some of this context and I don't see where you get that it's taking things out of context

I'm sure there's some context she hasn't taken things out of. But I've also now written a superlong post that includes many instances of her leaving out context. Give me some sign that you've at least looked at the two examples I pointed out (the two examples are my fully worked out one at the end (link) and the fact that she claimed I was only scum-reading Marquis based on awkwardness and lurking when e.g. I laid out my stance in detail just a few pages ago in #3095. That stuff is like foundational to my play in this game and she just claims it doesn't exist.

Apparently, you missed the point where I said Llama was a threat because of their ability to figure out the game eventually [regarding shea, but it applies elsewhere as well]. Given this is likely the case and given that she WAS SRing you and put into place precautions in case she dies and you make it far into the game without lynching Scum, I see more reason to believe what North is telling us than what you are. It's a perfectly legitimate POV to say that because of what Llama said about you that she was possibly fear killed because of that.

'Marble was not SRing you at the end of Day 1 and we haven't made far into the game. It's completely bogus to say that I should be lynched because Tchill and Eddie flipped town, even though I doubt I could've pretended either lynch (I'm not claiming to be blameless on Eddie but that doesn't really change the point). If you think I'm such an awesome scumhunter that I'll always hit scum within a few Days, then vote Marquis with me.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

North's case is based on and made based on the evidence of what you have actually done.

In the sense that movies are based on a true story, maybe. You can read my detailed response for yourself if you want but let me also give you what I consider to be probably the most egregrious example:

She writes:

In 1557, CES says that 1160 would be where we should look given the marble kill, but the readslist in that post was heavily based around tchill being scum. One of the things marble was incredibly adamant on was that we not let CES get to lylo if town isn't winning by then. His readslist also wasn't lynch from the bottom up – he explicitly said that there was scum in the good but hard to read players.

She's accusing me of cherry-picking a reads list by 'marble that has been made obsolete by the tchillflip, leaving out incriminating info on me and apparently also misrepresenting the nature of said reads list. That's scummy behaviour she's describing, no doubt about it. Now let's look at the relevant part of #1557:

Me and mathdino both agree that llamarble was killed to break up town cohesion, and that the post we should all be looking at is 875. To that end, he thinks that postie vs tsq is a pointless debate to have as that'll be resolved itself as the game goes on.

Wouldn't #1160 be the obvious post to look at if that was your point of view?

It's literally just me asking nsg why she is looking at #875 rather than #1160. Why did I pick #1160? Simply because it was 'marble's last posted (and therefore most up-to-date) reads list; the =======[] icon at the end also signifies fairly clearly that it's explicitly intended as a last reads list. I don't know why she picked #875 but even if you think it's the more relevant reads list to look at, I still have no clue as to what's supposed to be the scum intent about asking her. As to the point that #1160 was heavily based on Tchillscum, that's contradicted by its first line: "I think we're well set up to win even if the first day or two don't go how we hope."

This happens again and again throughout the case: nsg accuses me of something that does sound self-evidently scummy but then if you click on the link(s) and read the relevant post(s) or if you know the relevant context, the accusation just melts away. This is what happens when someone writes a big case, they don't pay attention to their points, they don't give it much thought, they just make a big impressive-looking list and make the target deal with it. I've had to spend a ridiculous amount of time I still didn't get round to pointing out everything that was misleading and provide the full context to every point (e.g. the example I gave in this post also features in my rebuttal but I didn't go into as much detail).

Apparently, you missed the point where I said Llama was a threat because of their ability to figure out the game

eventually

[regarding shea, but it applies elsewhere as well]. Given this is likely the case and given that she WAS SRing you and put into place precautions in case she dies and you make it far into the game without lynching Scum, I see more reason to believe what North is telling us than what you are. It's a perfectly legitimate POV to say that because of what Llama said about you that she was possibly fear killed because of that.

What are you even talking about, anyway? You're quoting an elaborately worked-out example of what's wrong with the case and instead of interacting anyway with that, you just bring up a different point that I already replied to in my original superlong case-reply post.

(I normally wouldn't do nested quotes like these but I think there's some merit to having this post on this page too. If people want to claim the case has merit, then they can explain this example.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

You're distracting from the main point. Why?

What's the main point?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Could someone unvote? I spent a ridiculous amount of time responding to that case and I refuse to be quickhammered without anyone even responding to even one iota of it.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

What's the main point?

What the validity of Llama's reads were/are.

I don't even get what you're trying to say. Although I did notice that I said that 'marble "wasn't SRing you at the end of Day 1" when I meant to say "wasn't SRing me at the end of Day 1". 'Marble has said some sensible things but it's a real stretch to get from what he said to lynching me right now.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Noth made a legit case that was well founded and hasn't moved their votes/SRs too many times.

If it's such a legit case, address either of the two examples I mention in #3182.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

This is even worse than last time. I'm here and I've written ridiculously elaborate responses but I can't even get anyone to acknowledge anything.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I could say something here about how I prefer to focus on specific things rather than ask scattershot questions but this feels like a fairly arbitrary thing for you to say I should've done. When the votes are 4-4 between me and Marquis and I strongly believe Marquis is scum, why would it be a priority to engage with Marquis?

It helps you provide more evidence for people to vote your scumread (rather than just repeating "hey lynch marquis please" over and over), and helps you get more idea of associatives if he did die.

I did ask him about you precisely because of potential associatives and I didn't even get a response (which is at least some information); this example is not exactly disproving my philosophy that asking less questions is better than asking loads. And I did try to provide a more compelling argument to vote Marquis - that's why I wrote what I did in #3095.

It also feels weird for you to be saying this because you didn't make any attempt to engage with me when I became your strongest scum read.

What the fuck have I been doing with you over my last few posts if it isn't "engaging with you". It's, like, literally what I'm doing. Right now. I didn't do it instantly, sure, but that's a different situation to my main scumread being a lurker who suddenly makes a bunch of posts.

Yes, clearly I'm aware of that, but I'm the one that initiated this conversation. Like, I already invited you to talk to me about Marquis in #2477 and you voted me on Tuesday but didn't speak a word to me until I engaged you Friday at midnight. Since then, I also don't you've barely tried to expand the scope of our conversation even though you've claimed to have multiple examples of me being scummy. In comparison, I asked Marquis a question within 2 hours and I've asked him another question since even though he still hasn't responded to the first question, so yes, it does feel weird to me that you're claiming I'm the one who's not interested in engaging with my main scum read.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I've read the first few quote-replies in the first post and it seems to me like a fair amount of his counterpoints aren't really strong and/or are based on technicalities that sort of miss the point (e.g. his saying that nsg was inaccurate as he did explain his vote - while technically true, this is missing out the context that said explanation was 9 irl days later, only brought up when he was specifically asked about by a catching-up Ranmaru, and long past when it was really relevant, so the counterpoint is really missing the point of why she considers it scummy).

Nsg never says why it would be scummy if I had never explained my page 3 'marble vote, so how could I be missing the point? It's true that I only explained it much later but we're also talking here about me voting 'marble on page 3 to needle him - I don't think it was

ever

particularly relevant. This is exactly why this is frustrating - all nsg writes is "CES votes llamarble and never explains why." without any sort of explanation of why that makes sense coming from CESscum and I'm forced at least 5 times as much to fully debunk it to everyone's satisfaction.

Additionally, I think it's very telling that CES seems to have put a lot more effort into defending himself than he has into his only real scumread throughout the whole game.

I'm just writing more because this whole stupid situation is forcing me too. I probably spent a comparable amount of time on writing #3095 as I did on #3169; that's what I'm interested in - concise, well-thought out arguments that people have the time to digest in full.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

2. Shows a survivalist instinct. #2431

[...]

Scum motivation: Action Dan can't fake any scum reads and can only push lynchbait. So he stays as invisible as possible and lets others push mislynches for him. His motivation for his mislynch angle on me is to deflect pressure from his own slot, as I made a big push for him. If that had not happened, he would be contempt with my slot. Otherwise, if he truly had a concern, he'd bring it up much sooner. #2746 Shows that he is only intent on talking about Dunn, Marquis, or CES. (Him and partly his team mates) If he truly had a concern with me he'd bring it up there. The only change is I'm a threat to his slot, therefore he tries his best to undermine my slot and fails.

Can you tell me how #2431 shows survival instinct, Ran? I just don't see what you're getting at. I do think your point on scum motivation definitely has merit. I'm pretty sure I remember that AD is indeed more focused on townhunting, but it is a matter of degrees and AD seemed to err on the scummy side of it.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Davsto, I'd also like you to comment on my two examples in #3182. I also would suggest that the example we just discussed shows you're putting the burden of proof in the wrong place.

The case isn't very good but CES' reaction to it borders on atrocious.

You try getting hit with a post that essentially says "either spend 6 hours writing up an incredibly tedious post that most people probably won't read or get mislynched" and see what your reaction is.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Have you been paying literally attention to LQ this game? Have you been paying literally any attention to ANYTHING in this game besides marquis?

Because I've had to do that like 5 times.

VOTE: ces

L-1.

If we lynch dunn/marquis/ces/NSG we win the game.

That's fair. It's been a long day.

But as before, there's no need for me to be at L-1. Make people talk to me and justify their vote.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Intent to hammer

If you hammer, it's a scum claim.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

These counterpoints: yes I guess those are fair but I'm still not a fan of you reacting "oh and this is why cases suck btw" because it's that knee-jerk value to you being cased and making that statement that makes it horrible. Why didn't this get stated, idk, when you accused me of being scum for basically making a TChill case? Was it because you wanted that mislynch to not get shot down?

I'm not going to talk about mafia theory unless it's immediately relevant to what I'm saying because talking about mafia theory is boring and distracts from what's important. I'm definitely going to talk about mafia theory when I'm super-busy.

This massive blowback tells me "you're on the right track, don't ass this up"

What the hell? Just a few hours ago you acknowledged my request was fair and you definitely haven't responded to the two examples in #3182 since.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'm sorry but Ranmaru just upends her townread on me after I go after CES and he's close to lynch? Your counterpoints may be fair but your overall response and the response of others is "oh no all of a sudden this is not allowed" and I'm reading that as affirmation of my reads.

I'm suddenly scum with Ranmaru even though he almost got me lynched earlier Today?

What's the benefit of quicklynching me, GE? It just lets multiple people get away with their votes on me much easier (and let some people get away with not giving any commentary on the current situation). I'm not even necessarily asking for a lot. Just the two examples that I picked out.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

On those two examples, I have the same thing to say: that makes sense, but while the case may not be all that good your reaction is horrible as Shea said. Also you say you don't discuss meta theory unless it "immediately relevant". Well it seems like it would have been relevant in the past, so why not then? Why only when it's

you

getting cased?

It may have been slightly insensitive to say it to Shea, but I'll say it to you: you try being forced to waste 6 hours of your time.

I just told that I was superbusy at the time. I also don't even think your case on Tchill was meaningfully influential. Like, I had to go into the theory aspects of cases to respond properly to nsg's case because even afterwards I got responses like Davsto's who was unsatisfied with my reply to nsg's "CES votes llamarble and never explains why." - if that was a post on its own, everyone would quite correctly find it unsatisfying but because it's in a case, in a large collection of similar posts, suddenly the burden shifts to me and I have to provide a satisfying explanation, even though nothing has even been specified as to what I should be explaining.

Cases are like subprime mortgage bonds. Each individual mortgage is obviously no good but package them together and suddenly the onus is on the other person to show it's a bad product and the only way to do is by talking about each individual mortgage. I'm not sure this metaphor will help anyone but at least I enjoyed writing it.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I probably pressed Submit too soon there. But yeah, it was just straight up necessary to talk about these things - I mean, you and LQ also instavoted me after the case.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'm paraphrasing some of Fenchurch's reads now because she's making me and I love her.

Marquis - Fenchurch thinks he's the most likely scum. She finds his switch from having Ranmaru as town and Gamma as scum to the other way around while almost everyone else remained null, to be really hard to believe and a sign he's just making up his reads. He hasn't answered when I questioned him about it despite me bringing it up multiple times (editor's note: I don't remember doing it multiple times but she's finally agreed to go to sleep and I'm also going to sleep soon so I'm not going to ask for clarification now) and she suspects Marquis just doesn't have a good explanation.

Ran - most likely to be town. This is partly just how invested he is in the game and partly that although he changes his reads relatively often, Fenchurch still finds them clear and easy to follow. Ran is the Frogger of this game.

Nsg - mixed feelings. In terms of why nsg might be town, there's her preference to not play scum and the amount of time it would have taken to write up the case on me. In terms of why she might be scum, Fenchurch thinks the lack of motivation in Day 2 and early Day 3 could be a sign that she's not playing the alignment she prefers; her case is reachy and is filled with weak balderdash and essentially rests on 'marble saying that I might be scum. Fenchurch also thinks nsg looked weird and unnatural in the first few pages and she makes sense as a scum buddy to Marquis.

Those are the three people Fenchurch feels she could say something germane and non-derivative about. I mostly agree with them (I think it's probably on Marquis that I disagree most with what she wrote but I'm obviously not going to fault her conclusion there).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I'm going to bed now.

Please don't let me be lynched without making people justify their votes. I don't want this to be another White Flag that haunts me.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

The point that Dan brings up for CES asking them why they have no interest in lynching Dunn is completely and 100% dropped. Neither of these players ends up bringing it up again up to current time.

I respond to it in #3053.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

CES, vote Shea with me. Tell me what you think of his vote on you.

Yeah, it's bad. I can get why my post would make him lash out but the way he connected that to the vote on me was weird.

I'm not particularly convinced by the difference in activity being scummy. Generically the connection [real life]->[reduced activity here] seems solid enough (I think on the whole people tend to be too suspicious of periods of inactivity from normally active players; that's part of the reason I didn't particularly want to post Fenchurch's reads). But this:

Isn't actually reading posts I link to him (since he had to ask NSG if I said anything about scum teams)

still seems solid, especially in connection with his previously stated willingness to sheep you. You've been all about the scum teams.

I'd still rather lynch Marquis but this seems worth a try:

Vote: Shea

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

My vote for LyLo lynch leader is whoever is willing to vote for Marquis.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I strongly encourage anyone reading this that's still alive in LyLo to just go rogue and vote for Marquis.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

he is saying marquis will live to day 5, but if he gets lynched and flips town, that will probably not happen

I've been listened to after my death exactly once and that's my favourite game of all time. I have absolutely no high hopes about how this game is going to and it's not like there are three people I can rely on to vote for Marquis in LyLo, so I can't say I'm interested in this LyLo leader business.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I've responded to the most important things in nsg's latest (spoilered) response.

As far as i can tell, the only point you bring up there that i didn't already mention (being awkward and lurking) is that marquis is "trying to look town". As for that point, i again don't see any true explanation – why is any of it performative as opposed to genuine? Like, you point to 1481 and say to just look at some paragraphs to see how he's trying to act town, but that's not an explanation, that's just asking the readers to figure out what your point supposedly is themselves.

I literally give an unambiguous example in the very sentence I claim he's being performative ("he made a big show of wanting to cooperate with me but hasn't answered the question I asked 2 hours later"); do I really need to spell out that genuine!Marquis would've responded to me? And yes, I do point to some specific examples (NOT "just look at some paragraphs", I point out specific paragraphs in #1481) that are more subjective. If a certain paragraph gives me an overwhelming vibe of Marquis performing for an audience rather than posting his thoughts naturally, how do you expect me to explain it further? More importantly, there's still a world of difference between saying that my Marquisread is based on relatively more subjective things (and therefore, I guess, I could more easily just be making it up) and saying that the reasons for my Marquisread simply haven't changed.

And this is not, you know, a throw-away line. You italicize it and it seems to be very much a basis of you rejecting my Marquis-read as coming from scum.

Okay? I don't see how saying it was just those two reasons takes away any of the scumminess i'm suggesting about your shift there.

Then what is scummy about my Tchillshift? Your timeline of events is literally "CES sees 2 things that are scummy about Screenplay and as a result thinks the Screenplay is scummier than it was previously" + a bunch of extraneous things. You haven't commented at all on those 2 things and or why they would be insufficient reason to sway me from null to "slightly scummy".

Maybe it's just because Marquis has been scummier than me? Both dead townies that are included in those sets ('marble and Eddie) were on Marquis. Also pretty sure LQ voted me at some point before this but I'm pretty sure it's a completely arbitrary point regardless.

This doesn't address points in the game where people were pushing for your lynch pretty hard and explicitly asking others to follow them on there. Don't you think it's easier (and puts less of a target on yourself) to agree with someone's case on someone else and follow that than to push a lurker?

It was Ranmaru who was pushing me hardest previously and given his constant read changes there wouldn't've exactly been a safe way for scum to get onto that wagon. I'm sure scum have happily piled on now.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I think the point I would make about nsg's case is her recurring focus on my form (e.g. I only explained my Postievote much later) often without giving reasons for why it's scummy (e.g. if I had had the time, why wouldn't I have explained my vote?) and her accompanying failure to grapple with my content - she hasn't engaged with my reasons for my reads change on Tchill, she left out my reasons for believing Eddiescum in her list of reasons why I had voted for anyone, she left out the main reason for my suspicion of Marquis.

Let me also respond to this:

That's because my vote for Eddie essentially came down to me letting go of the more strategic approach and just voting with the goal of getting what I thought was a good lynch. It was prompted by me explaining my reads to Ranmaru and at that point I just felt that I was being somewhat condescending by trying to game the system in order to secure my preferred lynch (i.e. intentionally not joining the Eddiewagon when it was my natural inclination to do so in order to keep my credibility intact for a Marquislynch).

i don't see how you could both be worried about eddie flipping town and you losing your credibility and hold the opinion that it was a good lynch and that you had eddie pretty confidently scum. Also, wouldn't it make more sense to be concerned about losing credibility from the

marquis

lynch? After all, marquis was the one you had been pushing for a while – eddie was postie's wagon, largely. How would it have made

you

lose credibility moreso than anyone else on the wagon?

During Day 2 I explicitly said I thought there was a ~55% chance of Eddiescumflip. That

is

a pretty good lynch but really doesn't rule out the Eddietown-Marquisscum scenario. And of course that's the scenario I'm worried about when no one else is pushing Marquis with any sort of fervour (and the argument against Eddie was also much more accessible); the Marquislynch is tied to my personal credibility and standing in a way that the Eddielynch just isn't. And I don't know why you're confused about me losing credibility when you're the main person who's thrown my confidence in my Eddieread back in my face. I know how mafia gets played; this stuff is more predictable than you might think; the rest of the town will always let you down if you let them.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

From my point of view I also think a reasonable high-level summary of (part of) nsg's case is that my play has been focused on getting what I see as the right lynches and not on unimportant stuff like town reads on people that are in no danger of getting lynched. Certain people might find that scummy but that's essentially just my playstyle. I also had fully intended to give a full reads list on Sunday when we got home from our Cardiff trip but that trip ended up being another 3 hours longer than I was expecting so I would've ended up talking about several things she's complained I haven't talked about if not for happenstance.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

So what you're saying is you're getting scumread for having different priorities?

It does feel like a large part of it, yeah.

It went point by point to make it seem like it was big and full of line by line retorts but it wasn't. It was mainly just repeating the same thing over and over and again and accusing NSG of being disingenuous when I really didn't think she was.

I also invite you to discuss the 2 examples I mentioned in #3182.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

It was mainly just repeating the same thing over and over and again and accusing NSG of being disingenuous when I really didn't think she was.

I think I repeat myself twice, both at relevant points. The vast majority of my reply posts is providing context and explaining where I was coming from. This is not in any way accurate.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Vote CES, you'll be happy you did. Lama said not to leave CES till LyLo, what more do you need than that?

It's Day 3, so this is a ridiculous argument right now. Last TM White Flag, we didn't lynch scum on the first 2 Days either and I did in fact make it to LyLo as town.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Probably town, unfortunately.