Prey Mafia - Game Over

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VOTE: Papa Zito

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Humbly requesting additional votes, thank you in advance!

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Out of curiosity, how often do town correctly identify mafia here?

Ever-so-slightly worse than random.

VOTE: Enter

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It is, isn't it!

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"open discussion" is a very nebulous thing; I don't see how making a statement is somehow in opposition to it.

Are you serious in calling Papa Zito my scumread?

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That sounds pleasant.

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BEF is town.

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why?

Every one of his posts last page/the tone of his reaction to Enter in general.

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Unvote

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I agree with Chara's 98.
VOTE: Varsoon

I don't think Enter's reactions to any of the votes have been particularly scummy. I think he's a bit above baseline town at this point. Like, this:

and i kinda hate like every one of enter's posts?

is kind of very relatable. But his indignance reads somewhat town.

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mcqueen's run-up to his vote is also a bit weird. And I don't see how he's calling Persivul town in 89.

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I might just be projecting the way I think about reads on mcqueen thinking about it more.

I'm not sure if skitter feels as town as she's supposed to yet? I thought I might have not been able to read her early but I townread her in my second post last game. I think I understand most of where her sentiments are coming from.

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Ya'll bailed on the Enter wagon way too fast.

Kids these days I swear.

Why are you using ya'll to refer to me alone

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I want to call BEF, Chara, Enter, and actually maybe mcqueen town.

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i’m not sure I understand the first sentence. it’s the way it’s worded. Can you rephrase, please?

Essentially I don't believe that a bare answer like the one persivul gave means anything and I think it's somewhat prima facie scummy to ascribe meaning to it. But there are people that will do that as town even if I think it's incorrect.

This is a very neutral read list, boring as bread. You think this is just some town spat then, maybe with a poke from scum? Do you have any fingers to point?

Why yes, in fact, I have a vote down!

You?

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Also in what way is that reads list "neutral"? In what way is calling 1/3 of the player list town "neutral"?

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also which game are you referring to?
also why are you townreading chara?

Diffusion of power.
I liked the questions it was asking/general method of interacting with the game. The read is not especially strong.

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VOTE: Robert2424

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When in doubt, sheep papa zito.

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alright skitter is town probably. I agree with like all of the sentiment in her posts in the past couple pages. I am curious what she sees in redtea.

I could go for a flashwagon on a50. None of his posts yet have really made me feel anything at all.

All of the speculation about how many scum are in the neighborhood is dumb.

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didn't you just say you were thinking there's a good chance the hood is all town? i know that's an obvious question, but.

Yes, but

there are two ways to approach this:
1. Lynch outside hood to see if it comes up red (if so, and we can draw conclusions that the other is red, then inside is green)
2. Lynch scummiest inside hood to see if it comes up green (if two people come up green in hood, it's p safe to say the rest are green, IMO)

Sure this is a brave stance to take, but hey, I like to take chances.

3. don't make assumptions for no reason?

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like chances, sure. But like, here.

Here are some people in this game: almost50, robert2424, skitter30.

This is all of the people in this game that have numbers in their names.

I'm willing to bet that there's one scum and exactly one scum in that group but there might be zero.

Therefore, I propose we lynch robert2424. If he flips green, it basically clears the other two.

This is literally exactly the same as your argument, modulo trying to outguess the mod.

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VOTE: a50

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@skitter30 because Almost50 has said just about nothing useful the entire game despite having a presence. Maybe he is third party?

I'm sorry friend but both of those conclusions are terrible. Especially so if it turns out there's a third party.

Why are you so interested in the possible existence of a third party?

This game is dying a slow death. The VC on this page is sad; people need to actually use votes to some effect.

The townset is still basically the same possibly with the inclusion of zito and exclusion of mcqueen. I can probably be convinced on chara but I still feel vaguely town there.

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I wanted to say that a50 does more of consequence as town by this point, but that's not actually true. I really probably should just not try to read him and instead just demand everyone vote him for better or for worse.

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Implosion's like, I could go for a wagon on A50...but only if someone else votes him first.

Indeed; it's not much of a wagon if I'm the only one that's willing to vote there.

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@skitter: Calling every post I make, every claim, every move & every vote scummy isn't healthy for me. I am starting to feel like you've applied to the "let's scum read A50" club. I've proved it to you once and once again that leaving me be on D1 is a good idea, and IF I'm still alive on D2 THEN you can come at me with all you've got. Your behaviour IN EVERY GAME WE PLAY TOGETHER is detrimental to my play style. I hope you get the subtle hint out of that.

this post feels scummy for a50

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VOTE: redtea

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I was hoping to comment this earlier but, the repeated mentioning of a third party was mostly an "open to possibilities" thing that I only took into serious consideration trying to get a read on a50. By that point I'd already brought it up a few times, so it does feel like I'm repeating myself.
Of course mentioning this doesn't change my standing.

This feels meh. It's a very easy line to take as scum, though it isn't really alignment-indicative in itself.

I feel like the way redtea has played the game since ~wednesday is just posting content when she needs to. The response to the pressure on her is underwhelming.

I think mcqueen is really not playing scum right now. That BEF vote feels like a really awkward tact as scum. Still don't think BEF is scum either.

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Vote Mcqueen

Policy.

What exactly is this policy?

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I'm willing to jump on Robert if needed but not really feeling elbirn. I'd also be willing to jump on Varsoon again. His posturing around the votelessness feels off-ish. Feels somewhat like scum saying "you're not allowed to suspect me now" so as to be allowed to coast through the early game for free. His reads list has a whole lot of "this is a person in the game and i have no strong/real opinions beyond this" to support that.

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I missed that post by implosion but that's such a dumb-fuck stance to have it baffles me
Yeah I guess every town player should always full claim the second any part of their role becomes obvious and if they resist people pushing for their claim they're clearly scum posturing
Fuck off with that noise

This is not the argument that I was making.

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@Implosion: Then what argument ARE you making?

I mean, read it again? Not wanting to claim the role is fine, but it's scummy to put the emphasis you've been putting on people asking you about it, in the way you have been.

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This game does feel like it's going really slowly though.

My townread on papa zito is receding. mcqueen is back to strong town. I feel a bit more meh on skitter but I think that's just because we haven't interacted much. Her content is like fine but doesn't give me strong town pings anymore.

BEF is still really, really town. Chara and Elbirn are town that I can be convinced I'm wrong on but I feel pretty good about both of them/don't remember seeing anything really convincing otherwise. Enter is also still really town.

A50 and Persivul are null because I don't know how to confidently read into what they do yet. Honestly Robert is probably null too. He just feels... idk. His posting is really meh but there's not a ton of scum motivation around much of it. Like his mcqueen vote and his defense of it is kind of a dumb thing to do as scum. Actually think he's town the more I look at his recent posting.

Leaves redtea and Varsoon as scumreads.

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Re: redtea's recent posting. She has a strong tendency to say things that aren't actually meaningful analysis or reads, just speculation. 519 speculating about partner tells, calling it too obvious, and then not really concluding with anything meaningful. The third party stuff that fits in with her being scum who is looking for things to say without real reads and reasoning behind them.

Her current vote is vanity on A50, and she hasn't discussed the other leading wagon (Robert) at all. She says things like calling Elbirn's read on me "a little surprising to throw out there", wondering about A50's role, vaguely speculating about the neighborhood. She loosely implies a possible scumread on me but doesn't

really

commit to it; she speculates about A50's role and here actually does take a stance eventually voting him, but for being possibly third party? And she talks about how she'd play if she were in the neighborhood, and speculates that there's probably scum in it, but never actually calls anyone scum or anyone's actions scummy.

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Re: Varsoon. I think Varsoon is frequently being defensive in a scummy way; defensiveness isn't a tell per se, but the way he's acting defensive is scummy.

First off, of course, there's the stuff around votelessness. His tone is essentially not purely defensive, but dismissive; it's dismissive of other peoples' ability to question him. I think that town who sees that people are asking questions that amount to rolefishing might point this out and maybe even call people scum for it, but he seems really irritated by it. I think town is probably content in knowing that they're just not going to answer the questions and wouldn't really care that they're being pestered because they know they're never going to answer any questions that don't need answering, but that scum who's setting up some fakeclaim has good reason to be annoyed at people trying to ask more questions about his role. His defensiveness in response to me similarly is very irritated. I think town could certainly misconstrue the argument I'm making in this way, but to immediately jump from it being a bad stance to "implosion gives me the worst vibes" when his previous read on me was "implosion exists?" is just not a town trajectory for the read. Saying that he thinks my response is scummy and then saying that I give him bad "vibes" is also really weird. It feels like he thinks my argument is bad and wants to call me scum for it, but doesn't think he can get away with calling me scum for the argument itself.

This might be rambly.

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Robert does seem lynchbaity, but i'm usually pretty good at finding the town in that, and i'm not seeing it here.

What do you think of the point I just brought up in 596?

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I like the words you're saying here, but can you give me a definitive stance on RedTea? Because reading it the first time I thought you were trying to say "RedTea is just like this, it's how she is, she has a tendency to say things that aren't actually meaningful blabla" which I took as some metaread or saying she's NAI or something or other, but then you keep going and seem to be pointing out obviously scummy things. My reading comprehension isn't helping me right now, what do you read RedTea as right now?

Note the post immediately before the post on her where I explicitly say she's scum.

As for Varsoon, I like that you think the things you're thinking, but he's also a defensive aggressive sort and he just.. does things like this. Earlier I said I always scumread Varsoon? He always plays scummy and I never know what to do with it. But him throwing a fit over people questioning him is what I would expect from Varsoon regardless of alignment. I think if he's scum here, it's not because of his defensiveness. There might be a case to be made that he went about revealing his role in a scummy way, idk if he's town varsoon going for transparency or scum varsoon going for brownie points, cuz he could have easily PM'd the mod about the vote counts instead of making a show out of it. It seemed done in a way to look like he's being a goodboi, but he basically, if town, let scum know that he's a PR. Why?

I'm probably overusing the word defensiveness. It's more the way he's specifically being defensive around his claim. I might be wrong. It's not even that he's making a show about it, idk. Reactivity isn't scummy in isolation, nor is being defensive. That's especially true if Varsoon has a meta of being reactive as town. But what's scummy isn't the brute fact that he's playing reactively, it's the way that they're being done and the things that he's choosing to react to and the way that he's reacting to them.

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1. redtea sees she is the leading wagon
2. redtea sees a counterwagon on Robert
3. redtea sees that deadline is very close
4. redtea sees several players off wagon claiming they will hammer at deadline
5. Therefore, redtea comes up with the perfect plan of starting a new wagon, and then promptly fails to push it, ensuring it will fail.
6. After noting that she thought the wagon wasn't actually new, she leaves her vote there anyway.

And these are the moves of a scum player seeking a townie mislynch/her own survival. Is that correct?

I don't think this argument holds water. I think starting a new wagon in that situation is poor play as scum; I also think it's poor play as town. I think that a lack of survivalism is a towntell in the context where someone is doing something that will actively draw ire where there was none to begin with, e.g., someone near the middle of peoples' reads suddenly and aggressively tunnels a consensus townread. But this is not that. redtea voting a vanity wagon makes plenty of sense as scum who is demotivated to really engage with the game after being wagoned.

Robert's mcqueen vote is a much better example of something that has much less scum motivation than town motivation; at the moment he voted mcqueen, the wagons were 3-3-2, redtea-elbirn-robert. He was in a position where, if he's scum, his primary motivation is probably to just lay low as much as possible and give as much chance as possible for his wagon to fizzle. redtea was the leading wagon when she voted Persivul, and she hadn't posted in 2.5 days... which fits in much better with the idea of her being scum who became apathetic after being wagoned.

I'll vote Robert tonight if it's clear I need to to avoid NL but I probably won't be on at deadline. I might be but it's unlikely.

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I guess chara already made that argument more succinctly but etc

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So people sure are clamoring to make sure there's a lynch huh

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i really don't want robert though :\

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What about the flip exactly makes Zito scummy, skitter?

My immediate inclination is to go Persivul if we're going in the hood.

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i've considered Zito scum too but since he was arguing for a town lynch over a different town lynch i don't find it especially AI.

Mostly this.

I want to see what direction Zito moves in now but given that redtea was town I don't find the way he pushed Robert really bad.

Persivul's push on Robert was kinda... there, but I didn't really feel much out of it. He basically just made one big post about him and then left it at that. He never really pushed the issue. Zito seemed like he actually cared who died yesterday, which is theoretically townish if it's genuine. He made a bunch of posts more or less complaining about people who thought redtea was a better choice. Persivul switching wagons isn't really meaningful.

I also still think BEF is overtly town.

FYI, I'm V/LA-ish this week; flying to the east coast in 7 hours. Should still be posting.

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I'm busy and jetlagged and don't really have the energy to commit to the game atm.

Tomorrow will also be very busy but I should be able to commit time on Thursday. I'm still following the game.

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i feel like all of this speculation about BEF's role is pointless? I kind of think skitter's take is the right one of "the way he's treating the claim isn't how scum would treat it".

I guess I consider him a bit less town than before for all of it on the whole. There is a degree to which it is flatly sketchy to claim that you can conftown yourself and then not do that. But I still would rather get persi/zito before him. It's weird to me that the votecount is in the state it's in because I feel like my townread for zito is the kind of thing that doesn't actually have very good reasons behind it; i find it odd the votes are between BEF/Pers instead of Zito/Pers.

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it feels like the holistic half of the list is townreading Fish and the logical half wants him lynched.

This was also a nice take.

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How good do you feel about your reads overall atm skitter?

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Still dislike his play yesterday.

It's sort of hard to get a read on his trajectory since he's been voteless. And I haven't really read much closely today. His reads list was pretty bad; putting BEF at the literal top if he conftowns and bottom if he doesn't is kind of one-dimensional. But it's the kind of thing that a "logic" player in chara's dichotomy earlier could sensibly do. And then he puts BEF as dead middle of his reads after the claim. I mean that's not scummy necessarily but it doesn't feel like a real thought process; it's just hard to audit because of the votelessness.

On whole he's still one of my scumreads. He'd probably be my vote if not for the shot last night.

I kind of just need to get a handle back on this game. There are a large number of players (zito, elbirn, chara) that I still significantly feel are town but that I don't feel good about feeling good about. I still think mcqueen is like, strong town just from yesterday.

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My problem with those two (elbirn especially) is that I don't really know what their scumranges are like. Like I feel like things like the way Elbirn is acting around BEF is townish but very reasonably within the realm of something competent scum can do and I don't know how good he actually is as scum. I feel vaguely better about Chara but I'm not sure I can put my finger strongly on why. Even though I remember seeing them have some scumgame where they went very deep.

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VOTE: Persivul

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at some point does the idea of scum avoiding town wagons loop around to scum aggressively pushing town wagons
mafia isn't real.

yes and yes respectively

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i think this town demonstrated its ability to get off its ass at deadline decently at eod yesterday.

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committing to stances is dumb.

The reason is the patented There Are Quite A Few People In This Game That Look Like Town. I feel some degree of town on everyone but varsoon, persivul, a50. Granted, that is few enough people that I might be right on everyone. But I just generally don't feel great about most of my reads except for like, mcqueen, BEF. I feel like I might even be wrong on skitter though it would surprise me.

You've had posts this game that have felt kind of like,, townish but the kind of thing that very good scum might explicitly go out of their way to do, which is why I feel like how good you are as scum is a factor. Most of this is tonal, things like the way you presented your initial reads list and even a bunch of small posts like e.g. 1030. It generally feels tonally town if it's some random player making those posts, and there's a consistent way that you feel like you're approaching the game, but that approach is something scum can fake.

Basically you're probably town and I'm paranoid.

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what are you townreading from him

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like, most of his posts on the whole feel still very unreadable to me. But his reaction to the wagon pressure is really weak. and i am really really skeptical that bef has motivation to do the shit he's been doing as scum

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Flew back yesterday. Will get to this game in the next few hours.

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i'm still skeptical of the existence of the bef wagon. But i guess the scum on it is either persi or zito so :hitoshrug:

Persi's claim isn't bad. It kind of fits the way he's been playing the game. I also have some doubt in that I remember him having a reputation as really good scum and his comments about playing this way as a town PR moreso than vt or scum might have merit. I feel like the wagon on him literally 100% evaporating is surprising though. Like before I found it weird no one was on zito and it's a little surprising to me that no one is pushing persi at all, especially with his claim to have been presumably blocked.

That said.

Unvote

VOTE: Zito

Definitely going here over BEF.

i don't know if there's time for this wagon, but i think it on the whole feels a better option than Zito.
i wanted to see if this was a "leftovers" read or an actual scumread. leftovers brought him to my attention and then his approach to the game is what had me wanting this vote over Zito.
also: a stated reason for Persivul scum and redtea scum was the same. underwhelming response to pressure. i feel like town who saw the redtea flip would reconsider that particular thought if it had been so recently proved to be false.
hedging, which implosion is doing a lot of, is also not a scumtell by itself. but it's very safe.

i'm not sure if i'm biased, because implosion's style reminds me of mine, and my style as scum is to fake paranoia in the particular way he is now.
so i would love feedback. but we also have little time.

I think you're on to a thing here with me being hedgey. but that thing is just reflecting a couple of rl things right now. I have scum games where I act this way and I have scum games where I commit to things hard, because I do both things as town at times and the main style of my scum play is to try to replicate my town play directly.

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After yesterday, new reads:

{a50, BEF (moves significantly down if persivul flips town or if he doesn't verify his role)}
{skitter, chara, mcqueen}
{elbirn}
{persivul, varsoon}

Why are we lynching in me/mcqueen? We went for zito because we were trying to PoE the neighborhood, and now we've been blessed with an extra mislynch and we're going to not do that??

If people aren't wanting to lynch persivul because of his PR claim then, eh? sure? but then why are we lynching mcqueen?? That's just throwing away the info we've gotten. If Persivul is town and we get multiple scum flips that are not typhon phantoms then we can effectively clear him.

That said, I really don't think it should be a valid reason to not lynch him especially given we have a ML to work with now. If he's town then we're losing a probably weak PR but I really don't think he is, barring a vig claiming to have shot redtea. I'm typically the person saying that it's dumb to strongly assume NK reasons but I really don't think redtea makes sense as a kill for any other reason and I find the ideas of BEF scum or scum who was lurking in the hood implausible.

VOTE: Persivul

Elbirn's vote on BEF makes a lot of sense he and persi are scum and mcqueen is town. I actually think the read I feel worst about out of skitter/chara/mcqueen is skitter.

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1. why is mcqueen town?

Primarily day one. It's possible I'm putting too much weight into it; I've just never seen an arc for what he's done that makes more sense as scum than town. I put a lot of stock in what I mentioned on his d1 BEF vote. I actually remembered him doing a lot more in like late d2 than he actually did so he can move down to Elbirn's tier I guess. Not sure where that memory comes from. I was mostly checked out d2.

2. why aren't you putting much weight in the fact that persivul is the only claimed investigative rn (ie i don't follow why you want to lynch him anyways. is it just because he's in the neighborhood?)

Why indeed.
It's unfortunate that this is one of the questions you want an answer to.
It's possible that Persivul's claim is real, but I don't have reason to put stock in it.

And yes, it's because I feel like him being scum is by far the best explanation for why redtea got shot. Him being town means I'm strongly wrong about either BEF or assumptions about the neighborhood, like I said.

3.not sure why you care that much about the neighborhood anyways (fi you're scum it's either with bef or there's no scum in the neighborhood)

What's your alternative explanation for redtea dying n1?

4. i don't get the redtea-vig thing or what it has to do with persivul. ie are you arguing that if persivul is town there's no scum in the neighborhood so they wouldn't have known about the lovers thing so the best explanation for the redtea death is a vig shot? (in a game where we're missing nks ...?)

Yes, exactly this.

What does it have to do with the missing NKs? I don't really think a vig is going to claim, but it's possible that the scum n1 kill was blocked and there's a 1-shot vig or smth.

5. why am i not strong town to you rn?

Why should you be? I have more paranoia over your play in this game than I did in the last one. Or at least, it feels less patently obvtown in the way that I remember it feeling.

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Implosion did you receive anything at the end of n1/start of day2?

I have no idea why you asked me question 2 above if you're asking me this, because you should have known the answer. I literally assumed you weren't the person who gave me the shot because you asked me that question. If you are and things are gonna be this way, let's just be nice and unambiguous.

I received, and used, a cop shot.

I was trying to soft an investigative role, but you've kind of ruined the ability to do that now.

I have an innocent result on a50, which I thought would be obvious to whoever gave me the cop shot by the fact that he was suddenly at the top of my reads list despite me constantly calling him null earlier.

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If I'd had a guilty on persivul I probably would have just claimed it.

and/or tunneled more strongly, maybe. I actually considered fakeclaiming even-night or novice cop or something like that but didn't think I had enough clout to do so safely and get away with un-claiming it if I'm not shot/without a real flavor justification. And a50 came up innocent so it wasn't as appealing of an idea anyway.

I've no objection to massclaim.

[implosion]

yeah it's fine.

What I tried to do was probably a bad idea anyway.

I want to look really closely at elbirn mostly right now as concerns chara's list. I think there's a good chance it's right but elbirn is the one I feel significantly worse about than the others right now.

[implosion]

randomly claiming as a cop with an innocent result on someone not under strong pressure isn't especially believable.

Softclaim has a chance to draw a nightkill.

[implosion]

this is very strange.

I'm a VT.

[implosion]

implosion's reason for voting Persivul is based entirely on scum being in the hood. he's voting Persivul because by his own admission he finds scum Fish unlikely.
however, Fish's position on his list goes down if Fish can't prove his role, which for me doesn't track with a strong belief that Fish is town.

he also says lynching mcqueen is a bad idea because it's just wasting Persivul's info, but if you don't think Percy is town anyway and want to lynch him, why do you care?

I think you're looking at the way I'm playing through the lens of how you'd play here; I tend to value info that I think is "hard" like the neighborhood thing. I don't think lynching mcqueen is awful but I'd rather persivul first. I don't think percy is town but i've been wrong before? I don't think that should be a weird thing to understand. If we lynch persi and he flips town then we know we have that result, and we can use it later. I would be a bit less gung-ho about this if we didn't have a ML left.

I need to think about what's going on with BEF though. I really don't know what to make of it. I want to say there's no reason for scum to do this but like. idk. I agree with a50's frustration on that front although i have no idea what he's talking about with like 3/4 of his posts in the past several pages

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i also have no clue why mcqueen is doing what he is right now regardless of his alignment

[implosion]

it's fine.

i do generally act agreeable as scum. but i also am as town. At least when people are reasonable >_>

[implosion]

I enjoyed the game except the part where I drew scum :p.

The remarkable thing here to me is still that four separate townies (BEF, mcqueen, Elbirn, A50) actively lied about their roles. There are cases where this can be a good idea, but the degree to which it creates confusion is usually not worth it. BEF got townread for other reasons (and also partially because the way he fakeclaimed would be weird as fuck as scum), but even it backfired in that there was a lot of latent paranoia even if he survived through LYLO. mcqueen's never really had a strong downside, but there's no real strong upside to not claiming loved either (I guess you can theoretically try to bait a scum quickhammer on you but scum are not usually quickhammering outside of XYLO). Elbirn's didn't have an explicit downside of not being claimed (since he had no useful results), but it gave Persivul more cover than he should have had because other people who were thinking about the setup in a different way didn't have access to an actual full massclaim's worth of information. And A50's obviously eventually led to enough paranoia for him to eat a lynch even though he was ostensibly in the townblock.

In that sense I think the real lesson should be don't lie about your role as town unless you have a really good reason to; and ideally, leave some kind of crumb so people can tell that it was planned all along, and not a case of scum trying to change their claim to suit how the game is going (precisely as Persivul did, imo wisely, on the last day, and no one batted an eye because the entire town had been doing it all game). I think the townblock had cohesion, but could never really absorb anyone else into that cohesion because of all of the lies. I understand why they were all done though, and to a degree they were only really a problem for the town because of their sheer quantity. Usually one person omitting a bit of their role won't sink a town.

[implosion]

I felt first and foremost that me claiming a weak investigative role both kills my utility and gives scum a tool. I can't really target ANYONE at that point because then scum can just shoot me and push an angle that I targeted so and so, therefore they're scum, and oh hey now theres two dead town.

I don't think this is something you need to be worried about since it's unlikely for there to be speculation about this if you're the only one that dies. Especially if you explicitly say you're not gonna target anyone. I think during massclaim, you should have just truthfully claimed your role, and said you weren't going to target anyone at this point (possibly excepting players you were basically sure were town) for fear of pushing LYLO forward a day. If you can't use your role usefully anyway, being leashed isn't actually negative utility to the town because the town isn't actually losing anything.

If your role was still useful it might have been risky to claim because of the possibility of e.g. scum blocking you when you target scum or whatever. But that still shouldn't be a good enough reason to not claim it in massclaim.

I guess I didnt put enough stake into trying to game the setup?

I think it's reasonable to think that your role can coexist with what Persivul claimed.

The problem is that idealistically, the point of a massclaim is to get the collective brainpower of the town to gamesolve. The problem isn't that your role and Persivul's specifically are likely or unlikely to exist together; the problem was that Persivul's claim in the absence of yours looked very likely to be true, and other people didn't have that information to work with and so were at least partially writing him off as town without thinking as deeply about it as they would have been.