TM 2021 Large Normal 2: Wikipedia Integer Facts (Over)

[mastina]

For the record, my reads being literally 50/50 dead-on (nailing Ceph and herc; hard-missing on ABR and Xtoxm) is, objectively, not bad, but I still consider it to be a bit of a poor showing because hard-defending two scum is a worse offense than correctly identifying two scum.

Redemption time?

I was about to case the fuck out of mastina

That would not have worked, as when I am town I am nearly impossible to eliminate and that game was VERY much my towngame.

(Also, hercule is town this game pretty sure.)

also shoutout mastina, you may have thought xtoxm vs. abr was town vs. town but your scumreads on me and Cephrir made you an absolute threat and contributed to my decision to scumcase and push you right before the game was ruined

Eh, see above. Being dead on the money in regards to the two suspected scum is all noble and good and all, but if it's at the cost of being dead-wrong on the other two scum: not worth.

After all, think of what would happen with the obvious: who would buy that I was right on you/Ceph when either ABR or Xtoxm flipped scum? My credibility would've been shot, so all the accuracy in the world on you/Ceph does me no good if nobody will listen, quite justifiably so, due to me being as wrong as can be on ABR and Xtoxm.

Being right on you and Ceph is enough to keep last game from being a complete failure (and me being able to be obvtown there for that matter), but I DO consider hard-defending TWO scum to be a failure. (Hard-defending one scum and pushing two scum is acceptable for D1, with future days refining the reads to hopefully correctly identify having been pocketed by the one scum. Hard-defending two scum is not acceptable on D1, not even if the other two scum are who I'm scumreading hardest.)

VOTE: xtoxm

(For the record, with hercule being town here, yes, I am indeed theorycrafting searching for a new scumteam to see who's still town and who's still scum. Still working on it.)

is it wrong that i just wanna vibe this game since my team already lost black flag

I mean, technically, yes, but honestly I get that the same given my team also lost in that game. But, I justify continuing to effort on the grounds of, 1: I am a replacement who's glad to even be a part of TM 2021 at all, 2: I wanna play the game anyway, 3: I want the bragging rights, 4: I want the redemption, 5: I wanna look good to what amounts to a huge amount of the collective mafiascum community, 6: I feel obligated to try, and 7: losing one scumgame doesn't mean the team is out of the running anyway since unless a team goes 4-0, a 3-1 is still winnable.

Hi guys

Albert B Rampage

- He did some highly questionable stuff in a game i played in recently. Don't really want to go through that again

Town.

VOTE: innocentvillager

VOTE: hercule

Town?

can people start posting stuff i don't like

ABR and Xtoxm are town.






































(But actually, I'm not scumreading anyone who's posted as of the beginning of page 3. So I get where you're coming from.)

can mastina pls solve the game already? that way we can quick-elim her scumreads and anyone she inexplicably hard townreads

The problem is, I'm townreading all of you, Hopkirk, and Oka, and you three are pretty much the only three to have posted aside from hercule who I also townread, since page one. (The only other poster, Ythan, is neither town nor scum to me yet, still trying to get a lock there.)

wheres DGB i'm rly excited to play with them this game they were cracking me up. i was legit so flustered trying to figure out if they were being serious or not with their reads on me

Hot shitposty take: the scumteam is Xtoxm, DGB, LLD, and then one of {Titus, Dann, tw, jjh, Dunn} due to none of them posting so soon yet all confirmations being in.

[mastina]

Bottom of page four reads:

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka

Almost50
AGar (null--he did check in but didn't continue to post)
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
Ythan

Titus
Cephrir
Dannflor
Lady Lambdadelta
the worst

jjh927
Dunnstral
DrippingGoofball
Xtoxm

Town Null Scum Candidates Scum?

[mastina]

can we get a hammer by page 10?

Sorry, but if y'all wagoned Xtoxm up to L-1, then you can have a blind page 11ish lolhammer:
VOTE: Xtoxm

let’s do the time warp again
VOTE: ythan

(Gutwise tho I legit think Dann could be scum here. I should do a cross-check/reference, but Ythan does seem pretty similar to last game to me, and this doesn't seem like a good rvs and certainly not a serious scumread vote.)

we had a vibe going Dann

Wanna try and speedwagon a player of a ridiculously high caliber, Dann, with every intent to eliminate him, just for a vibe-ruin?

I'd be down for it.
(Dann legit feels vibe-wise off here.)

[mastina]

Greeting

I take it back, jjh is town.

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka

jjh927
Ythan

Almost50
AGar (null--he did check in but didn't continue to post)
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)

Titus
Cephrir
Lady Lambdadelta
the worst

Dunnstral
DrippingGoofball
Dannflor
Xtoxm

Locktown townread null backup-scum scum?

[mastina]

I'm gonna take my time doing things for a bit though

Doubling down on my townread here so that when I inevitably get paranoid on you I can point to this post, , and say "mastina you dummy you had it right originally".

[mastina]

i rolled town this time and i'm so relieved

Yaknow what?

I actually believe it.

I'm more ambivalent on DGB (she could be town, could be scum, hard to tell for sure), but I legit buy that you're town here, so.

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka

jjh927
Cephrir
Ythan

Almost50
AGar (null--he did check in but didn't continue to post)
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
DrippingGoofball (ambivalent--can see her as town or scum, not sure which)

Titus
Lady Lambdadelta
the worst

Dunnstral
Dannflor
Xtoxm

Locktown, townreads, various shade of nullread, candidates-for-fourth-scum, scum?

[mastina]

VLA until Sunday

I feel so shit for saying this, but:

I'm so sorry you rolled scum this game Titus.

there's more content in the above post than your entire iso in the first game

By the way shame about that wall post you made right before the last game got cancelled

Gotta speed-run eating so no revised readslist at bottom of this page, will get one when back circa 5-20 minutes, but: Dunn looks town here again now that he's posting.

[mastina]

dunn

dunn

Dunn
Dunn
DUNNNNNNNNNN.



hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka

Dunnstral
jjh927
Cephrir
Ythan

Almost50
AGar (null--he did check in but didn't continue to post)
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
DrippingGoofball (ambivalent--can see her as town or scum, not sure which)

Lady Lambdadelta
the worst

Titus
Dannflor
Xtoxm

Locktown townreads various shades of null poe-contains-scum scum.

[mastina]

I exhaled a little air out of my nose

Fuuuuuck.

I've been having trouble literally ALL day with keeping my breathing autonomous/automatic/thoughtless.
That is to say: I've had to, deliberately, knowingly, intentionally, been breathing, because without putting the thought into it, the active thought of needing to breathe, I'm not. It's fully manual for today, by and large.

Except, I had gotten it automatic for a brief period--had.

Until this post.

rvs read list inc <3

I'm sorry that I can't vibe with you Dann due to you being scum this game.

[mastina]

how do you have so many more people south of null than north of null

Because too few people had posted at that point and not posting = scum, duh.

[mastina]

I didn't start posting until page 9

How am I scum on page 4 and 5?

You answered your own question.

But once you did start posting, it was town.

Also, though AGar could, situationally, be a possible scumbuddy, I'm inclined to think he's town here, so:

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka

Dunnstral
jjh927
Cephrir
Ythan
AGar

Almost50
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
DrippingGoofball (ambivalent--can see her as town or scum, not sure which)

Lady Lambdadelta
the worst

Titus
Dannflor
Xtoxm

Locktown townread nullread poe-scumread scum.

[mastina]

I'm town now that I'm posting... why was I scum before? Notably Titus was in scumlean without having posted yet, which is a different position

I assign different values to different players not posting early-on, off of my anecdotal experience with those players' posting habits.

You not posting early was a warning sign--but then once you did start posting, it was at "posting up a storm" levels of posting, enough to completely reverse the initial read.

[mastina]

rvs read list inc <3

oh I guess I wasn't joking

Spoiler: serious rvs analysis time

coming into the game I was trying to keep an eye out for people who were quick to try and recreate the "vibes" of last game but either felt like they were forcing it or just felt distinctly different from last game in how they went about it. Very start of this game has ythan, hopkirk, okapoka, hercule, and IV talking the most. There's no actual content here but it's the type of memey early back and forth that creates (dare I say) good vibes between people and that scum wouldn't hate to establish a foothold in (like hercule had so pointedly done at the very beginning of last game).

off the bat I do agree that hercule feels different this game. He's less shy about directly interacting with people so far and I vaguely liked that he was the one that took the initiative on the meme xtoxm wagon. I don't think his change in approach or tone are things that he wouldn't necessarily be able to do as scum, and I think watching to see if he's able to keep this same type of energy up over a longer period of time will be most indicative for him, but for now I'm comfortable putting him slightly above everyone else.

ythan was who I originally landed on as feeling somewhat suspicious out of the starting meme/vibe/hangout group. just a purely gut reaction but he felt more on the outside looking in and #83 in particular just felt like kind of a forced way to match his energy to the thread. Reading back now though, I don't really see his posting so much as trying to cement himself within the vibes (whatever the hell that actually means) as just poking around rather nonchalantly. He doesn't post that much and doesn't seem particularly desperate to be "in the vibes" which is my new term for people trying to get themselves in the early meme town block I guess?

I actually do lean town on Hopkirk. I won't go into details but I was having a terrible day at work so I think it's at least a little town indicative that Hopkirk and Hectic were sensitive to me feeling a little more dour than usual today? At least, I feel like it should be town indicative. I'm not really giving the same points to Mastina given she came in after Hopkirk and her approach feels a little less curious/thoughtful than Hopkirk's wtr to my slot. although I don't scum read her.

innocent villager I ended up switching my vote to after just one too many posts that I felt were... a little forced? Like to me, the "hahaha I'm scum no I'm not let's be silly guys" stuff was fun for the first few pages but IV seemed intent on continuing it for just a bit longer. It just felt like it crossed the line of someone trying too hard to continue the vibing shit posts while also making it 100% explicit that "I'm just shit posting guys." I dunno, just slightly more self aware than everyone else who was casually shit posting.

It also felt like an intentional choice? Is that a right read IV? It stood out to me and I'm wondering if you were trying to accomplish something specific with the "guys I'm scum" shit posts or if you just didn't want to let go of the fun

Also I'm not sure I vibe with your jump on Cephrir as I think interpreting "don't post your reads list every page" as "Cephrir must hate mastina's reads" feels like just looking for something to attack

I don't have any real thoughts on anyone else yet. OkaPoka feels the same as last game but I don't think that actually means anything for their slot. I thought the worst's pop in was kind of weird on a gut level? but I assume that's just because duck hasn't read the game yet.

This is a thoughtful post and I agree with the contents

While I do agree it is fairly thoughtful and the contents are objectively decent-to-good, it is very much: not a townpost.

In fact I'm

pretty

sure this is a Dann-scum post. In like...the 90% percentile range--it's not a lockscum beyond all shadow of doubt lockscum post from Dann, but I'm PRETTY sure it's Dann as scum here.

[mastina]

can you expound on that with anything specific?

Can, yes.
Should, not sure--I'll at least say I get very strong deja vu vibes here, but not in a good way.

[mastina]

More people should vote Hercule.

People should absolutely not be voting hercule and any town that do should be utterly ashamed of themselves for buying into LLD's bullshit 'case' against hercule.

hercule being different from the last iteration of the game isn't why I am townreading him--it's the breadth and depth to his play which I AM townreading. Last game, which was apparently hercule's scumgame at its absolute best, hercule was still, over the course of multiple numerous posts, incredibly forced, incredibly faked, and oozed, radiated, scummness to me in a way that even with it being his best scumgame didn't stop him from being a top scumread of mine.

hercule's play this game is on an entirely different wavelength from last game. It's beyond just his opener, which I'd argue is town-indicative but even if I were to not argue it being town would be nai-at-worst due to being prewritten. (Just because it's prewritten doesn't mean it isn't modified upon receiving an alignment, and imo if he were scum, his initial post would be different than the result we got.)

hercule this game gives off an entirely different vibe altogether, not something isolated to his opening pre-written post; the entirety of his content is not forced, not artificial, is fluent, flows naturally, and is highly organic. The things he was doing and how he was interacting with others just comes across as being something entirely on a different wavelength than his content from last game.

hercule playing different this game than last game where he was scum would be expected if he were scum, sure--but there's limits to how much a player can change in such an amount of time. If you were having a strong scum performance, but suddenly were outed as scum, and then got scum again, it takes a depth of scumplay skill I frankly don't believe hercule has to modify SO extensively and completely and fundamentally your scumplay style so that it has zero resemblance to that prior scumgame.

If anything, I would expect hercule if scum here to come across as MORE forced, MORE fake, than last time, due to the desired need to try and change/shift his style into a different one to avoid being caught. But instead, this hercule has zero fakeness in it.

[mastina]

fwiw i think lld and mastina are my top townleans

Big mistake; LLD is almost definitely scum here.

If Alisae and/or chennisden were here (I'm not quite sure who's where in that; Alisae and chennisden are listed as players in Quick Attack but Quick Attack's representative is Titus and Titus isn't listed in the TM list for Quick Attack), e would know where I am coming from in my reads here. And even as Titus, Titus may have memories of what I'm referring to. (Tho that said, if Titus is scum like I fear, she may not corroborate anyway.)

Almost50 can talk to Gamma Emerald to see where I am coming from here, if Gamma remembers.
DGB might know where I'm coming from if it remembers tho I'm not sure it will.
jjh should be able to back me up here, too.

You can ask your teammate Iconeum, IV, where I am coming from and Iconeum with intimate familiarity should know where I'm coming from.
And while PB may not be playing and Xtoxm may have a chance of being rerolled-scum, PB would be able to get where I'm coming from.

the worst should know where I am coming from here (tho given the significant chance he's scum I wouldn't expect him to back me up here).

Heck, while I'll always be surprised if Cephrir supports me and he wasn't there D1 even he might know where I am coming from here. (To a lesser extent, Dunnstral too.)

This is not LLD's towngame.
Nor is it Dannflor's towngame.

When I said I was getting deja vu--I meant it.

[mastina]

he criticizes llds push on hercs 2nd post, saying repeated attacks have been made but no explanation of why it is scum indicative
why scum, as opposed to exhilarated town? does she expect the hercule is disingenuous in his belief that his team has players that are strong in town roles?

Small part of what I'm getting at here with LLD being scum, yes. This is exactly the sort of attack that LLD would make when scum:

Something that may seem reasonable, something that she puts conviction behind, something she puts full confidence behind being a strong, reasonable, push, that on the surface seems okay enough...but when you look at the push it becomes apparent what the flaws in the push are and then the question of why she seems to think otherwise becomes an important one.

[mastina]

hercule could have written a less detailed catalogue and then subscribed to other tendencies of his typical scum playstyle. so if he is scum, he need either present a factually incorrect outline, or holds sufficient belief that he can fool town by taking up a new way of playing as scum, whilst being aware that the amount of wifom involved makes it a comparatively frail gain. he considers both of these scenarios as low probability, with the more likely scenario being that he is speaking without chains, as a result of being town, and that there is no agenda behind what he's done.

This is part of the reason I am townreading hercule, yes, although my way of explaining it is probably different.

he also thinks scum herc would know such a play is unlikely to repay him well

can auro expand on this specifically
I don't really follow why that would be the case

I also don't think town-Dann makes this post.

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta.
I'm willing to vote any of LLD, Dannflor, the worst, and Titus right now, tho I am quite aware of the unfortunate uphill battle in trying to convince the town that I am right here. (I think that overall my efforts will probably be better served in towncasing the town players than scumcasing the scum players but I will be trying to do both, I'm just quite aware that due to literally all four of my main scumreads being "power" players, people are almost never going to back me in terms of eliminating them, in spite of how I feel fairly confident I'm dead on the money here. I legit think that group has 2-4 scum in it, probably closer to 3-4.)

[mastina]

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
OkaPoka
Dunnstral

jjh927
Cephrir
Ythan
AGar
Almost50

Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
DrippingGoofball


Xtoxm



the worst
Titus
Lady Lambdadelta
Dannflor

Townbloc/locktown, stronger townreads, weaker townreads, Xtoxm-I'm-townreading-but-given-last-game-is-healthily-lower-than-townreads, and just: scum.

[mastina]

Mastina agrees with me on a spooky mind-meld level in 266 and 273. can you talk more about the reads are coming from mastina?

You mean on Dannflor, right?

Basically, it boils down to a very, very, strong sense of deja vu: I was reading Dann's posts last game and while they looked scummy initially (convincing me he could not be scum), he was by far one of the towniest players in the last game.

This game, Dann's entrance didn't look scummy initially, and quite the opposite...Dann's entrance into the game looked like he was trying to appear power-town to slip early on into town players' townblocs. The nature and tone of Dannflor this game is entirely different from last game where Dann was town. If Dann was town there and yet is entirely different here, the question would be why?

And that is compounded by my experience with Dannflor's scumgames--his posting in this game oozes, radiates, the scumness from the times I've seen him as scum.

I get that Dannflor is a reasonably strong scum player. (He may have disagreed with me calling him Don Corelone level a scum player, but he's still not night-and-day utterly incompetent at scum to the point of being a huge burden to his teammates; he is still capable of putting on strong scum performances.)
But his entrance into this game looks like the entrance of a strong scum player, not the entrance of a town player of his caliber.

And all of the content he has given since then has looked, objectively reasonable, but containing certain perspective flaws that I simply don't believe would be happening if Dannflor was town here.

[mastina]

Spoiler: serious rvs analysis time

coming into the game I was trying to keep an eye out for people who were quick to try and recreate the "vibes" of last game but either felt like they were forcing it or just felt distinctly different from last game in how they went about it. Very start of this game has ythan, hopkirk, okapoka, hercule, and IV talking the most. There's no actual content here but it's the type of memey early back and forth that creates (dare I say) good vibes between people and that scum wouldn't hate to establish a foothold in (like hercule had so pointedly done at the very beginning of last game).

off the bat I do agree that hercule feels different this game. He's less shy about directly interacting with people so far and I vaguely liked that he was the one that took the initiative on the meme xtoxm wagon. I don't think his change in approach or tone are things that he wouldn't necessarily be able to do as scum, and I think watching to see if he's able to keep this same type of energy up over a longer period of time will be most indicative for him, but for now I'm comfortable putting him slightly above everyone else.

ythan was who I originally landed on as feeling somewhat suspicious out of the starting meme/vibe/hangout group. just a purely gut reaction but he felt more on the outside looking in and #83 in particular just felt like kind of a forced way to match his energy to the thread. Reading back now though, I don't really see his posting so much as trying to cement himself within the vibes (whatever the hell that actually means) as just poking around rather nonchalantly. He doesn't post that much and doesn't seem particularly desperate to be "in the vibes" which is my new term for people trying to get themselves in the early meme town block I guess?

I actually do lean town on Hopkirk. I won't go into details but I was having a terrible day at work so I think it's at least a little town indicative that Hopkirk and Hectic were sensitive to me feeling a little more dour than usual today? At least, I feel like it should be town indicative. I'm not really giving the same points to Mastina given she came in after Hopkirk and her approach feels a little less curious/thoughtful than Hopkirk's wtr to my slot. although I don't scum read her.

innocent villager I ended up switching my vote to after just one too many posts that I felt were... a little forced? Like to me, the "hahaha I'm scum no I'm not let's be silly guys" stuff was fun for the first few pages but IV seemed intent on continuing it for just a bit longer. It just felt like it crossed the line of someone trying too hard to continue the vibing shit posts while also making it 100% explicit that "I'm just shit posting guys." I dunno, just slightly more self aware than everyone else who was casually shit posting.

It also felt like an intentional choice? Is that a right read IV? It stood out to me and I'm wondering if you were trying to accomplish something specific with the "guys I'm scum" shit posts or if you just didn't want to let go of the fun

Also I'm not sure I vibe with your jump on Cephrir as I think interpreting "don't post your reads list every page" as "Cephrir must hate mastina's reads" feels like just looking for something to attack

I don't have any real thoughts on anyone else yet. OkaPoka feels the same as last game but I don't think that actually means anything for their slot. I thought the worst's pop in was kind of weird on a gut level? but I assume that's just because duck hasn't read the game yet.

i kind of like the first point but it kind of reads as a bit too 'this is my good reasons for doing what i was doing, i'm doing good things'

Basically, yes. It looks good, it looks town, but is it actually town?

I don't think so; it is the type of post I would expect Dannflor to make as scum to look town. It just feels fundamentally wrong to be from a town-Dann, due to the fairly forced nature of it.

I also would like to say:
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that, "scum MUST have infiltrated the early shitposting bloc", or variants on it. The idea that scum must be in there is fundamentally a flawed one, as it relies on scum not only being on at a specific time, but being able to perfectly blend in with the vibe of the town and keep this up over an extended period of time.

Think like pichu-Ydrasse (Hopkirk isn't Hectic your teammate? If I am remembering correctly that is; if so, Hectic should know what I'm talking about here) in interactions--the content posted might be fluff, but the extended, over time, nature of the exchange, over numerous pages, is something that scum would struggle to consistently fake. This was basically a good section of Hectic's townread on Ydrasse, and it is equally as applicable here for the people posting during that time and why they are all town. (Outliers which could be faked even tho I townread them: AGar, Ythan. But the core, hercule, you Hopkirk, innocentvillager, and OkaPoka? I don't think scum could have faked that.)

[mastina]

I don't really think people (generally speaking) know intimately the differences between their scum and town play as most people just try to replicate their town game as scum. I don't think hercule believing he could make a drastic shift is necessarily town indicative.

The first sentence conflicts with the second in an expanded nuanced thought when you think about it.
It is true that people, generally speaking, don't know intimately the differences between their scum and townplay.

And yet, last game was hercule as scum and this game hercule is entirely different--while it may be true that hercule believing he could make a shift isn't town-indicative, the very notable difference between this game and last game IS.

I'm probably not explaining this properly tho.

[mastina]

(429 is another instance of a post which looks good and looks reasonable and which shows an evolution in thought process that looks like it comes from town but which I don't think actually does come from town. But I'm not sure I can explain it.)

LLD can be town. I think her case is a little flawed on Hercule, but the thought process tracks given she wasn't in the last game.

The problem with that: in a game with a lot of raw talent skilled at both townplay and scumplay where every scum player (or close to every scum player) is at the top-level of scumplay (or close to), you're not going to catch scum by any "oh, lol, that's scum obviously and clearly and unambiguously". (Even tho I'm in the 90% certainty that LLD and Dann are scum, it is not for things that are obvious/clear/unambiguous; it is for subtle things backed by anecdotal experience.)

In a game with the highest-caliber of players being scum, you're going to catch scum when their viewpoints contain 'little flaws', so to speak, and LLD's case against hercule is exactly that: it is flawed, in a way that, yes, is scum-indicative. The thought process doesn't fully track especially given this is TEAM Mafia. LLD has teammates who could fill her in on what they know of last game, and then there's also the ban announcements for last game for extra context there, and that's beyond the fact that last iteration of the game is a talking point in this game, meaning that checking out last game has some actual value to it.

[mastina]

VOTE: the worst

Stop voting Hercule? Why

Because hercule is transparently town this game in a way that's nearly impossible to fake even WITHOUT taking last game into account--and GIVEN last game, IS truly impossible to fake.

@mastina how can you possibly call anyone locktown this early? what does that mean to you? give me a little insight into how you approach scumhunting in a game like this

I can call players locktown through a combination of meta/anecdotal evidence, resonance with aspects of their posting (especially if they're vibing), having reasons to believe their play cannot be from scum, and mostly...strong gut vibes, combined with a bit of tonereading and general tells.

I have three metrics which I read people by: general tells (things that, generically, I feel are more likely to be true for an alignment and how that alignment approaches the game in general, but which are increased or decreased in accuracy by playstyle of the players I am using them on), specific tells (things that're specific to the player in question), and what amounts to trust; a trust in the competency of other individuals that I am, overall, townreading, who raise good points/reads that make me feel "they might be right". (This is a double-edged sword; it increases my ability to work with town and can hone my inaccurate reads and guide them to accuracy, but it also can steer me away from accurate reads that the collective groupthink I place trust in got wrong.)

Behind the scenes, I am always running the math in my head towards the chances of players being town/scum--a lot of my doubts never make it into the thread because if I feel like expressing the doubt does no good, I won't express it. I'll only express thoughts that I feel are productive and which further the information/process/etc. of the town.

This tends to manifest as a type of hyper-aggression with strong aggro, with the goal of getting nightkilled by the scum early from radiating townness and my reads, if remotely close to accurate, representing a threat to the scum in part due to if I have an accurate scumread, I almost never let go of it (see also, you/Ceph last game).

On D1, I am fully aware that a perfect solve is impossible to achieve, so I tend to settle for "good enough for D1" solves. Because there are more town than there are scum, it is more important to correctly identify town than it is to correctly identify scum on D1. If you have a townbloc that is entirely town on D1, then you increase the chances of a scum elimination exponentially every single day you are alive and that townbloc is entirely made of town. (Thus, why having two scum as lockscum, but two scum as absolute townreads, is something I consider an objective failure. On D1, having a purity in townreads being town is more important than having 100% accurate scumreads.)

So because I know I can't get a perfect solve on D1, I try to get the best solve possible: a fully town townbloc, with enough scum in the poe for scum to be threatened.

can you give some more detail on why you think it's a dann-scum post? I do value meta but only when it's explained in a way that's digestible for me.

Basically, Dannflor's post there doesn't match his approach from last game where he was town but does match my experience with him when he has been scum.

Dannflor when he is town doesn't try to appear town--he just IS town, and he shows it, radiates it, with genuine, nuanced, detailed thought processes that are easy to follow and are, largely, agreeable, and his cases have serious merit to them. (If I was to be swayed on Xtoxm being scum last game, it'd have been from him--you may have noted that even when I defended Xtoxm from Dannflor's case there, I actually

couldn't

address EVERY point of it. There was at least one point within which I had no answer to, because his case had merit.)

Dannflor's posting this game DOES look like it's trying to appear to be town. Instead of naturally radiating town, it feels like his townness is forced, with him forcing thoughts that, while they are detailed with some nuances to them and are easy enough to follow, are not as sincere in depth with a lack of truly great thought/analysis put into them. His posts look good, but don't resonate as actually being good.

[mastina]

you can't just completely emulate your town game, you have to still make organic reads

This is EXACTLY the reason why I am scumreading LLD, Dannflor, and the worst, basically, in a nutshell, while also townreading most of the other players in the game.

Most of the other players in the game have organic thoughts, reads, and posting overall, especially you/IV/Oka/Hopkirk. Their shown process looks highly fluid, natural, and entirely unforced, with it being something they generated naturally and effortlessly.

LLD, Dannflor, the worst, and similar, are all insanely good scum players--they are incredibly skilled at emulating their towngame, and also at maximizing the subtle differences in a way that benefits them by knowing how to make content that appears town even without it being town.

The difference between their towngames and their scumgames isn't going to be night and day--the difference between their towngames and their scumgames is going to be in the range of 1-5%. 95-99% identical to their towngame, with only the slightest of subtle differences between the two. The 1-5% is how you catch them when they are scum and it is in the small things.

The exact narratives they are pushing. How they are pushing. Who they are pushing. When they are pushing. Small differences in the type of content being posted, largely boiling down to fluidity of thought process, with how natural/organic they are; there is an inherent level of artificial stiltedness in their scumgames compared to their towngames because they cannot perfectly appear town.

And I feel like LLD and Dannflor in particular have shown that level of subtle, but present, inorganic nature of their reads.

[mastina]

why are the worst and winter flakes so afk

wostie--possibly due to being scum, tho I'll admit that of my four scumreads, he's probably the one most likely to be wrong. (That, or second-most-likely; Titus is up there, too, in that I only have one post of overwhelming gut vibes for Titus scum whereas worstie I have more than that in subtle things.)

Winter Flakes--doesn't seem that afk to me, seems comparable to last game.

[mastina]

brain no understand
was this referring to her scumread on LLD or in general her reads list

I legit don't understand how it isn't understandable--
IV said that he was townreading LLD most of all (except for me, tied with her).
I said that was a big mistake, that LLD is scum.
I named players who should be in a position to more or less be able to see where I am coming from in terms of LLD being scum.

your vote should be on ducky until he starts quacking

Sure,
VOTE: the worst
But as I said: as the scumread I am least-confident in, I reserve the right to vote for one of my more confident scumreads in the form of LLD or Dann.

[mastina]

so ducky are you caught up? what are your takes on this game

i read page one and the last page and that dannflor post mastina quoted is sending off fireworks in my brain

See this for examples of why worstie is the least-likely to be scum in my scumreads and why I prefer,
VOTE: Dannflor
instead.

[mastina]

Look, you want to kill me? Burden of Proficiency me. Give me one day to decide who dies, and if they flip town, kill me.

This sounds awfully familiar to me.

I seem to recall it being almost verbatim from a certain scumgame of yours.

[mastina]

and partly wanted to go full transparency on what I was thinking so people town read me because I was having a bad day and irritated about mastina scum reading me

So correct me if I am wrong.

But I got the impression.

That the worst was asking you why you made post 302--that's the only post of yours I had quoted at that time, and worstie said that he read a post of yours that I had quoted around that time.

So, worstie was asking you why you made post 302 from my impression, but if so:

Spoiler: my scumread on you at the time

Hot shitposty take: the scumteam is Xtoxm, DGB, LLD, and then one of {Titus, Dann, tw, jjh, Dunn} due to none of them posting so soon yet all confirmations being in.

can we get a hammer by page 10?

Sorry, but if y'all wagoned Xtoxm up to L-1, then you can have a blind page 11ish lolhammer:
VOTE: Xtoxm

let’s do the time warp again
VOTE: ythan

(Gutwise tho I legit think Dann could be scum here. I should do a cross-check/reference, but Ythan does seem pretty similar to last game to me, and this doesn't seem like a good rvs and certainly not a serious scumread vote.)

we had a vibe going Dann

Wanna try and speedwagon a player of a ridiculously high caliber, Dann, with every intent to eliminate him, just for a vibe-ruin?

I'd be down for it.
(Dann legit feels vibe-wise off here.)

Titus
Dannflor
Xtoxm
scum.

I wasn't even voting you, and I wasn't hard-pushing you at the time; why was me, of all people, scumreading you but not pushing you strongly, enough of an irritant?

[mastina]

with regards to bop
has a BoP ever been legitimately carried out? genuinely curious lol

Maybe in like the 2009-2011 era in like .01% of games.

But in general?

Yeah, it doesn't happen.

In this game in particular tho: it'd be almost impossible to give everyone who is a competent scumhunter a 'chance' to catch scum.
The list of players who I'd say could maybe, maybe, MAYBE not be included as "competent scumhunters who deserve the chance/'chance' to catch scum" is incredibly small:
MAYBE innocentvillager (tho IV's town here anyway, thus, not on the table); AGar; directly-Xtoxm (tho indirectly, Auro is in the list of competent scumhunters deserving the chance to catch scum and Xtoxm is Auro's proxy); Winter Flakes/Uncrowned; hercule; Cephrir; Ythan.

5-7 players, of 18, who can't use the "give me a chance to catch scum, and if I haven't, THEN and only then you can poe me".

That means of the 11-13 other players...literally all of them can use LLD's defense. "Don't eliminate me on D1. Give me a chance to catch scum. And if I don't within X days, then you can burden of proficiency me."
Titus can use that excuse; I could use that excuse; Auro through Xtoxm could use that excuse; Dannflor can use that excuse; the worst can use that excuse; OkaPoka and co can use that excuse; DGB can use that excuse; jjh can use that excuse; Almost50 can use that excuse; Dunnstral can use that excuse; LLD can and IS using that excuse.

At some point, you gotta accept that on D1, in order to actually eliminate scum, you're going to need to take a risk of depriving the town of a good scumhunter if the scumread is wrong. Because in those 11-13 players who are good scumhunters that deserve the chance to catch scum if they're town, there's going to be 1-4 scum (and I posit all four are, indeed, inside that group most likely).

There's 11-13 players who, if eliminated on D1 as town, deprive the town of a good scumhunter, but if those 11-13 players contain all four of the scum within them, it is still optimal to take that risk of eliminating a good scumhunter, so that the D1 elimination has a chance of landing on a player who is actually scum.

If we play safe and let every good scumhunter have a chance at catching scum on D1, then the D1 elimination will 100% guaranteed be on town.

I'd rather take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the reward of potentially eliminating scum, than not take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the 'reward' of a guarantee of eliminating town.

[mastina]

with regards to bop
has a BoP ever been legitimately carried out? genuinely curious lol

Maybe in like the 2009-2011 era in like .01% of games.

But in general?

Yeah, it doesn't happen.

In this game in particular tho: it'd be almost impossible to give everyone who is a competent scumhunter a 'chance' to catch scum.
The list of players who I'd say could maybe, maybe, MAYBE not be included as "competent scumhunters who deserve the chance/'chance' to catch scum" is incredibly small:
MAYBE innocentvillager (tho IV's town here anyway, thus, not on the table); AGar; directly-Xtoxm (tho indirectly, Auro is in the list of competent scumhunters deserving the chance to catch scum and Xtoxm is Auro's proxy); Winter Flakes/Uncrowned; hercule; Cephrir; Ythan.

5-7 players, of 18, who can't use the "give me a chance to catch scum, and if I haven't, THEN and only then you can poe me".

That means of the 11-13 other players...literally all of them can use LLD's defense. "Don't eliminate me on D1. Give me a chance to catch scum. And if I don't within X days, then you can burden of proficiency me."
Titus can use that excuse; I could use that excuse; Auro through Xtoxm could use that excuse; Dannflor can use that excuse; the worst can use that excuse; OkaPoka and co can use that excuse; DGB can use that excuse; jjh can use that excuse; Almost50 can use that excuse; Dunnstral can use that excuse; LLD can and IS using that excuse.

At some point, you gotta accept that on D1, in order to actually eliminate scum, you're going to need to take a risk of depriving the town of a good scumhunter if the scumread is wrong. Because in those 11-13 players who are good scumhunters that deserve the chance to catch scum if they're town, there's going to be 1-4 scum (and I posit all four are, indeed, inside that group most likely).

There's 11-13 players who, if eliminated on D1 as town, deprive the town of a good scumhunter, but if those 11-13 players contain all four of the scum within them, it is still optimal to take that risk of eliminating a good scumhunter, so that the D1 elimination has a chance of landing on a player who is actually scum.

If we play safe and let every good scumhunter have a chance at catching scum on D1, then the D1 elimination will 100% guaranteed be on town.

I'd rather take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the reward of potentially eliminating scum, than not take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the 'reward' of a guarantee of eliminating town.

Basically, let me summarize the possible outcomes for today:

1. We eliminate a player who doesn't have a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip scum.
   This is optimal, but improbable. I'm townreading all of the 5-7 players who fit this criteria. Even if I'm wrong in a townread on one of them, I would expect that grouping to have 0-2 scum, most likely 0-1. Failure is by far the most likely option, leading to...
   
2. We eliminate a player who doesn't have a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip town.
   D1 is mostly wasted, and the town is at a disadvantage due to all scum being alive. This is by far the most likely option if we refuse to take a risk.
   
3. We eliminate a player with a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip scum.
   This is a huge net win for us, and is by far the most likely outcome of us scumhunting effectively. The only reason to not aim for this option is because of fear of...
   
4. We eliminate a player with a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip town.
   This is, indeed, an ultimate feelsbadman moment. HOWEVER...While even if there's 4 scum in the 11-13 players who qualify for this, meaning, statistically speaking, a ~25% chance of hitting scum and ~75% chance of this outcome, that assumes blind elimination within the group. If we scumhunt, we can up this to be in the realm of 50-100% of hitting scum, ensuring that this doesn't happen.

Option one won't happen.
If we refuse to aim for option 3 out of fear of it leading to option 4, we will guarantee option 2 happens.

And I'd rather take the risk of option 4, if the reward is option 3, due to my belief that option 1 won't happen.

[mastina]

I don't think she's really willing to explain her read beyond he looks town so he must be scum

My read isn't that you look town therefore you must be scum.

My read is that you're trying to look town, without actually being town, and that is a scum indicator.

And YOU YOURSELF said that, in fact? You were indeed trying to look town without actually being town:

and partly wanted to go full transparency on what I was thinking

so people town read me

Admitting you were doing it doesn't make it not be a scumtell. You were making posts with the intention of getting people to townread you--something which could come from town, but which I don't think did come from town due to the other stuff, notably the contrast between you this game and last game yet similarity between you and your scumgames, with a side of the thoughts you giving feeling off.

[mastina]

Like his pop-in / catchup where he quoted a bunch of stuff and responded to people really did nothing for me in differentiating this game from last

Why is it that I the person who out of this playerlist is probably in general bottom 4 in tonereading can tell instantly that hercule's tone is entirely different in his catchup quote wall?

I was

reading

last game's quote walls from hercule--they were, tonally, entirely different from here.

I should not be the one seeing this night and day difference and defending it because tone is not my specialty, and yet even me, mastina, the borderline-tonedeaf person, can see the stark contrast in tone between hercule this game and last game.

Why the fuck aren't people who're toneread scumhunters defending hercule right now?

[mastina]

But I'm not sure I can explain it.

How about

p

e

r

f

o

r

m

a

t

i

v

e

.

?

Sure, why not?

Dannflor's posts come across as performative--putting on a performance, an act, a show, to look good, rather than genuine sincere solving efforts.

[mastina]

sorry fmpov it is difficult to take your reads seriously when you say things like this. it seems likely to me that you are probably overconfident in your reads and way off on the percentages, especially when multiple people have expressed empirical concerns with your reads

The percentages on LLD and Dannflor are accurate.

Both of them are incredibly good scum players that know how to look town incredibly effectively when they are scum; both of them are incredibly good scumhunters who're good at being obvtown when town and charismatic and highly accurate; these two are not mutually exclusive, because as scum they are incredibly good at looking obvtown while being the deepwolf who when scum are charismatic and while their accuracy often is lower, that will be hard to see on D1.

So I get why there's a desire to have them live longer.

But I have made it clear that while they are insanely good as both alignments and the two alignments are 95-99% identical, I feel I actually, legitimately, genuinely, can and have seen the 1-5% subtle differences which mark this as their scumgame, and yes I am 90% confident in being right in this assessment, with the 10% being that I am wrong and that they're town with my markers having been off.

Also, argument to popularity is still a fallacy. People have expressed concern with my reads, sure, but how valid are those concerns? And to some extent, who're the people expressing those concerns for my reads? The players I am scumreading are among the ones who have raised the concerns.

[mastina]

MOD:

Vote Count 1.3

the worst

(2): jjh927, mastina

VOTE: Dannflor

Fixed.

i dont think lld being town is a hot take, emotively she seems town enough this game

LLD is literally one of the top five players onsite for being the queen/ruler of emotively seeming town.

Like, uhhhh.

LLD seeming emotively town is VERY much not a towntell for her. Fuck, if she's not lying her ass off, she'd be happy to tell you this herself. I'm talking OF ALL TIME, top five. Not top five active onsite

right now

. Of scummers active onsite, she's probably top one. As in THE top player in emotively appearing town when scum. This is literally a playstyle she was a

pioneer

of. Maybe not the first to use it, and maybe amongst scummers of her generation not the most famous user of it, but by far one of the most consistently prominent users of this strategy.

I can maybe arrange an exercise for you--an equal number of games where LLD was town and scum, with you having an iso of her, to help show this point to you, because without cheating and without advanced knowledge, if you can't pin with any reliability the difference between her towngame and scumgame when both are emotively appearing town, then I think my point will have been made.

I don't care if you think meta is trash; townreading LLD for something that is

literally the worst possible thing to townread her for

is not a good idea, to say the least. You can literally townread LLD for literally anything other than her emotiveness and have that be a better reason to townread her. Because emotiveness is something that LLD pioneered doing as scum. Heck, I think she did it as scum before she did it as town, and found it so effective, that she learned to mimic/adapt it into her townplay, tho I could be mistaken on that.

[mastina]

mastina, why in tarnations am I reading AtE from you regarding who we eliminate? I'm not talking about the hercule defense but the options one through four nonsense.

I have an iso.

It is less than 40 posts long, and is only barely in the top 50% percentile of the playerlist. (I believe I'm at like 8th highest or so of 18. A spot I may drop down in to like 9th-12th, or may maintain, hard to tell, depends on others as my activity is fairly consistent.)

I'm not going to even attempt a summary given the fairly short nature of the iso.

[mastina]

Fair warning: I'm not in the best state to be catching up, but because I took yesterday off, I have to. (Pro tip for people who suffer from mafia burnout: taking a one-day break from the site is an amazing way to prevent it. It does have a consequence in a game like this, leading to me being very behind, buthey, I do good in a catchup-induced environment anyway. )

you are now my biggest concern (I think you're the Scum team leader).

The fact you're not talking to your teammates is apparent enough from this line alone.

The first step is that I am constantly altering my meta. If I can remember playing a specific way in a specific situaiton, I'm probably not playing that way. So this use of "I've seen that line before as scum!" is likely either false, or worse it's true and I'm cycling back to one of my old styles.

I am also a pioneer of what I called "cyclic style" of play, where instead of evolving truly linearly over time, I noted that the evolution of my play was largely cyclical, a circle, where I may be different than I was 1-2 years ago but show a strong similarity to how I was 5 years ago, so to speak.

I, also, will never play the same way twice if I can remember it.

From this I did develop a similar theory.

Which is more or less that while no play will be literally identical game to game for players who change/evolve, when you've played enough scumgames to the point where you can't remember them, that there will be small things that repeat. These small repeats won't be there for every scumgame, but will appear in one or two scumgames.

If I were in a better headspace I could explain this better but this'll have to do for now since it's not a case I'm writing here.

(This also applies to LLD's DID--there may be four of her, but each will play similarly when playing, so to speak. One may not play similarly to the other three but will play similarly to themselves. Which means that over enough time, a meta can be developed. The time involved means that each person will have shifted and changed, but not literally every single thing will be different.)

Because I don't personally buy that he's towntold either

While there are players that "they haven't towntold therefore they're scum" is valid for, and there are games where "they haven't towntold when everyone else has therefore they're scum" is valid...neither is the case here.
Not only because in this game, we're not going to win by not eliminating everyone who has towntold because too many players can towntell as scum, but also because hercule can and has towntold.

Dude. Titus is making sense and posting reasonable posts that contain correct logic and sound deductive reasoning. Fuck, you're scum aren't you

I mean. Yes, Titus is scum, but it's rather telling that rather than pushing Titus who is scum you're pushing hercule who isn't.

special shoutout mastina for walking me through her meta read on dann

I can do similar for other reads, too, notably my read on you and LLD in particular; I'll hopefully find a good point to do so in my catchup but if not will try to do after catching up.

what are the perspective flaws/slips? i don't think you've mentioned those and those are at the top of my list for actually-alignment-indactive

Actually I have been mentioning them. 302 is a big one, but there's also:

he also thinks scum herc would know such a play is unlikely to repay him well

can auro expand on this specifically
I don't really follow why that would be the case

I also don't think town-Dann makes this post.

I don't really think people (generally speaking) know intimately the differences between their scum and town play as most people just try to replicate their town game as scum. I don't think hercule believing he could make a drastic shift is necessarily town indicative.

The first sentence conflicts with the second in an expanded nuanced thought when you think about it.
It is true that people, generally speaking, don't know intimately the differences between their scum and townplay.

And yet, last game was hercule as scum and this game hercule is entirely different--while it may be true that hercule believing he could make a shift isn't town-indicative, the very notable difference between this game and last game IS.

Like his pop-in / catchup where he quoted a bunch of stuff and responded to people really did nothing for me in differentiating this game from last

Why is it that I the person who out of this playerlist is probably in general bottom 4 in tonereading can tell instantly that hercule's tone is entirely different in his catchup quote wall?

I was

reading

last game's quote walls from hercule--they were, tonally, entirely different from here.

I should not be the one seeing this night and day difference and defending it because tone is not my specialty, and yet even me, mastina, the borderline-tonedeaf person, can see the stark contrast in tone between hercule this game and last game.

Why the fuck aren't people who're toneread scumhunters defending hercule right now?

All of these I probably didn't do a good job of explaining why they contain flaws in perspective from Dannflor that I think indicate he's scum, but they're examples of posts that show that there is flaws in Dann's perspective that I feel are scum-indicative from him.

[mastina]

idk how to feel about mastina not mentioning me by name (i think exclusively not mentioning me) when she was talking about people who she thinks are better/worse at scum

I don't have a gauge on your scumgame, but I do know that you're quite good as town. I'm pretty sure I listed you in the 11-13 players who deserve the chance to be given time to catch scum.

Hopkirk, can we hypnotize you to vote for LLD? We really could use your help right now.

No hypnotism needed from me.

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta

If LLD is scum, Hercule almost certainly is.

LLD is town because LLD would never push hercule here as scum

Dude. Titus is making sense and posting reasonable posts that contain correct logic and sound deductive reasoning.

This makes so much sense! I would never do this!

(For the record--yes, I think that the interaction is indicative of Titus and LLD being scumbuddies, and hercule pointing this out IS town even if you think the point is wrong. It's a hard thought for scum to come up with, especially for hercule in particular off of what I've seen of his scumgame.)

[mastina]

I think I have a method of reading her later, or at least it worked once.

If I am posting, especially with conviction (tho the conviction is optional; I did have one game recently where I lacked conviction and I fucking hated it), I am town. If I am actively producing content, explaining reads, trying to get support, bridge the town, work with them, and get them on the same page, I am town. If I am posting readslists showing the evolution in my thought process, I am town (even if these readslists later get posted less and less often due to there being less to shift in them).

If I am largely not posting and when I do the content is light and there's very little in the way of definitive reads with all of them being unexplained, then I'm probably scum.

Also, the more A50 posts the more I think he's town, and since that read is inconvenient for scum as they would very much like him to be one of their miselims, I plan to sit on it for a bit.

Ditto this. And to some extent, I think it applies to you, too--the more I see from you this game, the more I think you're town. And as that is a stance inconvenient for scum because eliminating you due to paranoia of you last game is something scum would want, I plan on sticking to it.

i might be less inclined to trust her hard townreads but she did have 2/3 confident scumreads that were actually scum?

On that note, people should also remember who the names were that I had accurate scumreads on: Cephrir and hercule.

Both were scum last game and I nailed them there; both are townreads of mine this game, in hercule's case being the strongest of strong townreads. (hercule is literally my strongest townread this game.)

So the people voting hercule are essentially saying, "mastina, who correctly identified hercule as scum last game, is not attuned to hercule's play enough; he's still scum this game and mastina just doesn't see it".

When, no, hercule has a literal night and day difference to how he has reacted, in similar situations.

I'm mixed on Hercule

There should be no doubt to players of last game that hercule is town here.

People are holding hercule to some sort of golden standard that shouldn't be there: "hercule isn't obviously powertown here and given how he fooled us all last game he must be scum this game", or some flawed logic along those lines. Of thinking hercule hasn't shown himself to be clearly town and that his content this game doesn't strongly look town.

But there are very strong differences from hercule last game and hercule this game, and hercule isn't a powertown player. You don't need to look at him as some perfect scum player with total control over style who needs to produce content that cannot come from any scum player in order for him to be town; you can look at what he is doing, both overall and in specific situations, and get a good read on him.

[mastina]

does anyone reading this find this behavior to be towny from LLD? Open question to the table

While LLD will insist she does this behavior as town, no, I do not think it's from her as town, and I want to get into explaining this with past experience to help show the difference.

ceph's recent posts are +town and Hercule's recent posts are +scum

Oh Hopkirk, you want another example of a thought that doesn't track with Dannflor-town? It's this. While I'm not sure on Cephrir-town being unreasonable (hey I think Ceph's posts there are town so it's possible Dann would as town, too), gutwise I feel like Dann-town wouldn't be townreading Cephrir's posts there.

But the real important one is the hercule stance--hercule's posts in that area are some of the towniest in the game, especially when you contrast how hercule reacted last game to pressure compared to how hercule reacted this game under pressure.

Do y'all remember how last game, when I scumread hercule, he freaked out, blew up, had an explosion of overreacting to my position that he was scum?

I sure do!

Do you think hercule's reaction to LLD's pressure was freaking out, blowing up, having an explosion of overreacting to her position that he's scum?

I sure don't! Quite the opposite, the difference between how hercule-scum treated my scumread on him and how hercule this game is treating LLD's scumread on him is literally night and day polar opposites: he's calm, collected, reasonable, genuinely reaching out, and coming to nuanced conclusions; he also was conferring with his teammates and asking for their feedback.

Do you want me to actually quote hercule last game where he was scum blowing up in response to the scumread on him, compared to here?
Or will you stop being lazy fucks, remember this yourself, and realize hercule is town?

[mastina]

Yaknow what let's actually put that work in.

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

And there has been plenty of times where scum has been 'caught' but town loses momentum and interest and they slip by even though they were 'caught'.

Sure, but come a future day, say by D3-5 in that range.

Y'all are gonna look back at the mislynches on the slots like ABR and Xtoxm, scrutinize their wagons looking for the scum on them, and be wondering... "why the fuck did we eliminate them, again?". You're gonna look back, realize in hindsight they're not nearly as scummy as they looked while alive, and wonder how the fuck they ended up being eliminated.

And if you're smart, you'll realize it's because in a bout of stupidity, y'all ended up jumping on thinking you've 'caught' scum for things that aren't actually scum.

But you'll probably pull another dumb, instead of realizing the above, thinking that clearly, the mislynches were the machinations of deepscum that powerwolfed and paranoia-vote the powertown players that you were yourself among, forgetting that they were in the same mindset you were in at the time.

How's

that

for a prediction?

I don't understand where a single one of your thought processes come from, genuinely. It feels like you are on a different planet than the rest of the game and I'm not sure if it's because you haven't caught up yet you're trying to be present or if you just are informed of things that I'm not and therefore have to approach the game from a different angle

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

on another other note, hello mastina welcome to the game. I'm not the biggest fan of your style of introduction to the game since you are putting yourself in a position to out stale reads, but I guess if they continue to evolve it's fine. I'm just a bit pinged that you might be pushing Jackson's narrative rather than reading for yourself (specifically you both listed me as scum which is a bit eyebrow raise - for example, you put me as scum for my first post and then didn't seem to move it, rather just reinforce it), especially since you went so far as to say you couldn't see the PT (I'm assuming you have access to the discord?). Like, to me, it makes more sense to read the game holistically. On the flip side, if you're being genuine I don't mind seeing some progression and it doesn't seem like you are even close to caught up. You can have space to enter the game as far as I'm concerned

(Speaking of which, he didn't exactly react well to Jackson's suspicion either)
These two both sounds reasonable enough, but what about these?

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I wish, but all I really got is that hercule's posts look like scum through and through. I don't really have objective reasoning for why. Everything from hercule just feels forced and fake, and looks like scum that doesn't know how to be town in a playerlist filled to the brim with greats. I just don't see anything town in hercule at all, and the few stances I've seen from hercule feel slimy.

what the fuck is this? this might possibly be the most made-up garbage read I've seen the entire game, and that's saying something considering Ythan accused me of lying about some real mundane shit. "scum that doesn't know how to be town in a playerlist filled with greats" ??????? i don't even know a single person at the table. imagine trying to metaread me and not even knowing basic facts about me

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I wish, but all I really got is that hercule's posts look like scum through and through. I don't really have objective reasoning for why. Everything from hercule just feels forced and fake, and looks like scum that doesn't know how to be town in a playerlist filled to the brim with greats. I just don't see anything town in hercule at all, and the few stances I've seen from hercule feel slimy.

what the fuck is this? this might possibly be the most made-up garbage read I've seen the entire game, and that's saying something considering Ythan accused me of lying about some real mundane shit. "scum that doesn't know how to be town in a playerlist filled with greats" ??????? i don't even know a single person at the table. imagine trying to metaread me and not even knowing basic facts about me

I'm so triggered by this. Slimy? bitch where

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

i feel real similar about mastina's slot. i want her to be town because

i like her reads

lol what? did you even read her reads, like actually read them. or did you just see a wallpost and like the effort

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I don't get why an ABR wagon sprang up.

Because people wanna replace one wagon on town that's being scumread for understandable but ultimately wrong reasons, for a different wagon on town that's being scumread for understandable but ultimately wrong reasons.

you talk with a lot of confidence for someone who has read less than half of the game and has noticeably bad reads

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

@mastina you are so far into the weeds trying to guess what ABR is thinking for a slot that patently refuses to express their thoughts

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

honestly I'm vibing with Agar, I can't really align my brain with mastina at all and I would want to give her a pass and say she's not caught up, but at this point everyone has told her that and she is willfully ignoring it. Sometimes you just gotta vote scummy people and not make excuses for them. I feel the same way about ABR, I feel the same way about Xtoxm, I think they both reacted poorly to their wagons. I'll vote any of those three. I'll vote Ythan as well. That's where I'm at. If this day continues I will just keep sorting, I am not really in a hurry to end it but it seems to have intensified, so that's the four people I would vote in atm.

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I would want to give her a pass and say she's not caught up, but at this point everyone has told her that and she is willfully ignoring it.

1: Engaging with present is more important than not engaging and reading the past.
2: People have said that I lack the context, but whenever the context is brought up, I've investigated the context to analyze it.
3: Upon investigating the context, I've pointed out the flaws in their reasoning and given my thoughts on it.
4: People continue to say that I lack context, that my position is wrong. I continue to investigate any additional context they show, and continue to point out why I feel their stance is mistaken.

Just because I haven't read everything doesn't mean I am incapable of engaging on things--and I feel I raise valid points with my investigation that are being written off as "lol, lacks context", when...I HAVE investigated the context in them.

It's not just that you are lacking context, it's like your brain is functioning on a different wavelength to mine and what appears to be everyone else's

it's jumped out at me multiple times and often that's a scum sign of someone who is making connections that either don't exist or that I can't make because they're not readily available from a plain reading of the thread

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I would give more credit to oka's "mastina is being mastina" but frankly I'm tired of every scumlean I have being discredited by meta. I really can't be fucked on trying to metaread strangers in an 18 person day one. If you're scummy you're scummy.

hercule as scum had a level of hostility and vitriol towards me upon seeing my scumread on his slot.

In what posts does hercule show that level of hostility and vitriol towards LLD's scumread of his slot this game?

...What's that, he doesn't? In fact he does the opposite with him approaching her calmly and rationally, trying to reason with her?

Gee I wonder why there's such a strong difference.

Maybe because hercule isn't scum this game?

[mastina]

this type of appeal to the crowd shit is not towny, hercule

That sort of appeal to the crowd shit may not be townie, fair enough, but it is also not scummy.

I feel like you could be literally doing anything else in this game besides trying to appear the good-faith half of the LLD vs. hercule 1v1 and instead you're trying to do something that I think you should *know* is unproductive
Like you trying to engage LLD here doesn't feel like you actually want to solve her, it feels like you want to show yourself off as towny

This is a bad take, maybe bad faith, logic from Dannflor tho: the engagement with LLD absolutely looks like it WAS in good faith. The contrast between how hercule handled my 'tunnel' on him last game and how he's handling LLD's 'tunnel' on him this game is night and day. Last game was an overreaction; this game is actually genuine, sincere effort.

hercule has been doing plenty beyond just engaging LLD and when he engaged LLD he did so in what was transparently good faith.

While everyone, regardless of their alignment, will respond to pressure on them with some level of defensiveness, there is a marked difference between scum becoming defensive towards the pressure and town addressing the pressure. (Playstyle-wise, some town players do become more defensive under pressure than most, but in general, town players tend to address the pressure while still doing other things, whereas scum players overreact to the pressure. You can see the contrast between the two in hercule's different reactions. Last game, hercule-scum overreacted to the pressure. This game, hercule, due to being town, addressed the pressure but was still doing other things.)

[mastina]

okay but the way you phrased that whole post sounds like you're trying to set up a dichotomy of "I'm the good-faith player here just trying to understand you LLD and you are the bad-faith player"

Bluntly?

That's exactly the case.

LLD's push on hercule

is

in bad faith.
hercule's stances are very much in good faith.

It doesn't matter if you think that hercule's posts are trying to set up that stance--that stance is objectively true so hercule having it is just stating the truth.

the statement "it's clear you have no reason for fosing me" is just untrue

Is it tho?

There really ISN'T a real case on hercule's early posting.

the whole post seems more like a cookie cutter post you'd make to discredit someone who's attacking you than it does a post that has anything to do with the actual gamestate we have right now.

Is it though? Because hercule tried the discredit-someone-attacking-him last game, and the way he did so when he was scum was entirely different than how he approached LLD.

The posts he made towards LLD DID look to me like they were reflecting the gamestate and bluntly?

There's nothing to discredit from LLD because LLD doesn't have a real case on hercule.

Last game, hercule very much did try to discredit me when I was attacking him. I just did a quote wall showing it.
This game, hercule was not discrediting LLD when LLD attacked him, because the things he said were not discreditatory in nature.

[mastina]

i feel like i'm being gaslit here: i am trying to find mafia and i'm being accused of not doing anything towny, what else do you expect town to do?

This is in fact accurate by the way.

I don't think Hecule's reaction to being pushed has been great, but I don't see what you do

hercule's reaction to being pushed could indeed be better, but all things considered, it could be much worse.

And all things considered includes considering last game to give some context to how hercule reacted as scum to being pushed.

hercule's reaction to being pushed this game by LLD is literally night and day different to how he reacted to being pushed last game by me.

Last game, his reaction to my push came from him being scum.
This game, his reaction is night and day different from last game.

So do you folks really believe that the night and day difference in how he reacted to LLD's push this game and my push last game is worthless?

Because it's not, especially for a player like hercule who hasn't had the time to establish a breadth and depth to his scumplay to show that level of flexibility.

[mastina]

But the fact that you're fixed on this, on why LLD pushed you originally feels unproductive and like you should know it would be unproductive.

Is it tho?

Because part of my scumread on LLD comes from the original push--very much not unproductive.

Like, you haven't commented on much else in this game

hercule at that point in the game had 78 posts--448 was very much commenting on things, 451 if it was like yours meant as a readslist is inherently giving thoughts, 454 might not be scumhunting but it is engaging, 523 is a stated townread of Xtoxm, 524 is a valid thought, 525 explains his reads, 527/528 give elaboration, 735 was engaging on the subject further, 736 is a similar reachout from hercule that hercule did to LLD in that it can be an actual genuine question (if the answer is 'no', then nothing comes of it; if the answer isn't no, then the answer could inform hercule of their alignment, so yes this question counts as scumhunting), 740 is asking more from Almost50, 741 is another stance, you get a readslist in 743 which in the pedit gives a more nuanced thought, 746 is good analysis, 747 is an actual detailed thought, elaborated upon in 767 for explaining it; 757 gives an elaboration on his stances; that, before the LLD engagement.

That's plenty of commentary. Is it as much as it could be given 78 posts at that point? Why no, no it's not, but hercule was spending a significant amount of time shitposting and has a reasonable amount of fluff. But is that plenty of content for 78 posts? 17 posts plus the LLD engagement that counts as scumhunting as well which brings the total up to ~28? ~36% of hercule's posts contain content at that point in time. That's not a bad ratio; that's actually an amazingly GOOD ratio.

and as a townie I would expect you to while maybe devoting some attention to LLD, have more thoughts outside of that.

hercule's posts have done exactly this.

I'm suspect of you now not because of anything LLD said originally, but because I think your reaction to pressure here is bad.

And I am hard-townreading hercule because his reaction to pressure this game is night and day different to his reaction to pressure last game where he was scum.

Like why does it matter that you don't think LLD has good reasoning to be pushing you?

A better question would be why WOULDN'T it matter? I can think of literally dozens of reasons why LLD not having good reasoning would matter; I can think of no reason for why LLD not having good reasoning wouldn't matter.

[mastina]

I don't think the actual position he's taking here is AI at all

I agree with this, but with a caveat: the position he's taking here is probably not AI.

The way he's handled it absolutely IS; it is a polar opposite of how he handled it when he was scum.

[mastina]

does that make a difference? look how hercule came to vote me, and how when i refused to interact with him in the way he wanted he then decided his vote was really real only THEN.

So? hercule had you in his "not done anything townie" pile. DGB asked him to vote you; he obliged. He then, after voting, continued to try and sort you; he concluded scum.

There is nothing scum in that progression because if you say townies don't vote a nullread they've seen nothing town from when asked to by another player, and later sort the player they're voting as genuinely scum, you're a fucking liar; that behavior is incredibly common especially from players of your generation. Having a "nullread" that you're willing to vote and continue to sort after voting is not scum behavior.

If anything, it's a townie behavior, but even if you disagree, it's definitely null-at-worst. Which is definitely not scum.

Because I too believe his frustration here is completely real. He is GENUINELY upset and frustrated. That's not fake. But his frustration and upset here don't mean shit because the frustration is easily explained by him being upset at how I got to my read, likely because it was right.

This is a reasonable argument in isolation but falls apart when given the context of last game, which I have shown.

hercule, last game, was frustrated and upset at me--I was right on him, and he exploded.

hercule, this game, is frustrated and upset--but the frustration is nothing like the frustration he showed when I was right on him.

If hercule were scum this game, I would expect him to show similar behavior to last game, maybe even worse. (If he were scum twice in a row, and scumread by a player twice in a row for seemingly no reason, I'd expect his blowup to be WORSE the second time, due to the sheer implausibility of getting scum twice, being widely townread twice, only to have one player scumread him and be strong about it.)

Instead, hercule's reaction to the pressure this game is night and day different--the frustration and upsetness is present the same, but what he did is entirely different.

Do you want to address the point that Hercule is flailing about not for being misread but for being caught for the wrong reasons? Because that's become the most convincing point to me right now.

You may hate my posts, but I feel like I've done a VERY damn good job of explaining how hercule this game isn't "caught for the wrong reasons"--when I called hercule's posts slimey last game, his ballistic reaction is what "caught for the wrong reasons" would look like.

His reaction this game is night and day different.

And literally every player who was in last game who doesn't realize the difference was apparently not paying attention that game. Because the contrast between the two is very much evident to me. Did y'all not see the overreaction last game for context for this game? You were players in that game at that point so you SHOULD have read it, and knowing he was scum and having seen it there, know about how different his reaction is here.

[mastina]

you gave off this impression that you understand the game of mafia on a deep level, and yet it blows your mind that someone uninformed of other's alignments could have contradictory thoughts and constantly be evaluating their reads on other players

if anything, scum trips over their feet trying to keep a consistent thought process, which is what makes them come across as stilted and forced.

This is indeed accurate.

i mean your behavior ain't exactly "let's try to solve the game" either, you're playing "let's get hercule elimmed"

So's this.

Do you honestly believe that this player as town asks their team about me, gets the answer "could be scum" and then while ALREADY VOTING ME both
1) attempts to interact with someone who is cross voting them about why they think they are scum
and 2) when told "fuck off you're scum" performatively throws their hands in the air goes woe is me and then reconfirms their vote as SUPER SERIOUS GUYS.

Yes.

That's an incredibly town thought process--it literally couldn't be more town of a progression. It's literally impossible to have a more town progression in thought.

Like I said, it feels like they are looking for permission to OMGUS

Did hercule ask for permission to OMGUS me last game?

Because I literally just checked last game when he voted me and it sure didn't seem that way.

hercule, last game, as scum, had no need to ask for permission to OMGUS.

I don't see why he'd need permission to OMGUS this game when he didn't need it last game.

That, aside from me hard-disagreeing with it looking like permission to OMGUS in the first place.

I see a player having seen nothing town from LLD, being asked to vote the player they've seen nothing town from, agreeing, then trying to sort the player they've seen nothing town from with a genuine reachout asking about them after getting feedback from their teammates. And then, after the reactions, concluding probably scum, but continuing to reach out to others for feedback, asking them to give alternative takes.

The handling of it may not be as town as it could be, the handling of it could've been better, but that can be explained by hercule being emotional (frustrated/upset), other people not helping this, hercule's relative lack of experience, and just general town imperfections. (Town players will never present arguments in the absolute most theoretically perfectly-town way possible; they will always have flaws in what they say.)

dannflor you said you wanted to see thoughts about the game outside LLD from me and yet you say Nothing when i ask what you want to know about

Also this is a valid point from hercule that I feel highlights why where he is coming from is town.

Speaking from experience, it can be hard to come up with thoughts on everyone all at once...but it is incredibly easy to, when asked, speak about thoughts on a player you're prompted to give thoughts on. If nobody gives you the prompt, or asks you the very unhelpful "do it for everyone", you can't actually do it, but if someone asks you the directed "okay, tell me about X", you can then talk about X.

It's very common for reactive-playstyle players. (I am myself a reactive-playstyle player.)

Again, if you're townie, you are meant to be doing townie things. But instead here you are complaining that people voting for you won't give you a layup so you can APPEAR townie.

A player being defensive and, when applied pressure, continuing to be defensive and using that defensiveness as an excuse for why they are not generating content is, indeed, a huge scumtell--
If that were what hercule was doing, I'd be right there with you in justifiably scumreading him for it. It's literally one of my favorite scumtells of all time; I use it in almost every game.

Except that's not what hercule is doing. Asking for someone to give him direction to talk about is proof enough of that. If someone tells hercule to talk about X, and then he doesn't talk about X when under pressure? Valid scumtell. If someone tells hercule to talk about X, and then he talks about X? Not a valid scumtell; if someone tells hercule to talk about everyone, and he doesn't talk about everyone, not a valid scumtell.

[mastina]

My philosophy now is around just finding the easiest scum I can find on day 1

And what if the game has zero easy scum to find? What then?

I literally made posts detailing this problem.

ugh why is it so much harder to get reads this game than last game?

Well bluntly: because the people who rolled scum this game are better scum players.

You can't really say {Cephrir, hercule, Xtoxm, ABR} is a scumteam composed of the highest caliber scum players, now, can you? Most of the town caught Xtoxm and/or ABR, and while I failed on that front, I caught hercule and Cephrir when most of the town hadn't yet.

In this game if I am in any way remotely close to correct on {Dannflor, LLD, the worst, Titus}, if so much as 2 of those are correct as scum, instantly, the caliber of the scumteam this game is IMMEDIATELY an automatically-higher level than last game. In fact, "higher level" is a disservice.

Last game's scumteam in terms of strength in tiers would be solidly C-tier: not as bad as can be, but fairly bad.

In this game if so much as two of my scumreads are correct, that it automatically a MINIMUM of A-tier. The more I'm correct on, the closer it approaches to S-tier scumteam in caliber.

It is going to be harder to get reads in a game with an A-S-tier scumteam than in a game with a C-tier scumteam. Both because the scum are harder to identify, and because the scum are better at shading town players and making them appear scum. And to some extent, this effect is recursive. If town have a harder time finding scum and have an easier time suspecting town, the town look less town due to this. So it's a self-building cycle of difficulty: scum are harder to detect due to being better->scum are better at shading town->town struggle to identify scum and are more suspicious of town thanks to scum->town look less town due to scum being harder to detect and scum shading town->town continue to struggle to identify scum; etc.

You can instantly fix this by adjusting your perspective to account for this.

The moment you accept that the scum in this game have more top-tier players in them, the easier it is to identify the town in the weaker players and the easier it is to sort the top-tier players for who among them is well-performing scum.

[mastina]

so Hercules opening to me is more often than not a slight +town. it feels sincere in the sense that there's a high chance he gets called out on it down the road and elimmed if he ends up playing similarly to the scum meta he laid out. Along with this, I do find it reasonable to assume hes being truthful that he's not the type of player comfortable with outing his meta and then being forced to change it drastically for an entire game.

if you want to ignore the opening and consider is NAI that's fine. But later on when we get to his engagement with LLD, I do see someone who is attempting a good faith engagement with a slot that seems tunnelled on them. Like he almost seems in disbelief that he's being approached in this way and that people are going along with the wagon.

he doesnt seem desperate to defend himself, but instead more just annoyed at the fact he's being engaged in a manner where he can't "get a word in" so to speak.

couple that with him having a lot of instances of what I'd classify as "stream of consciousness" posting and I'd say im relatively confident he's town this game

So much this.

I think it was pretty clear the motivation of hercule was to try and dismantle his wagon, but he was doing it while voting me, at me. He has me as scum, so why is he trying to convince me he's town? what is the point of that operation?

Instantly solved by the "he didn't" in answer--because he made it clear at the time he wasn't sure you were scum. Town players who're not convinced the player they are voting is scum can and will reach out to the player in question the way hercule did.

hercule at the time he voted LLD explicitly did not have LLD as scum. He has said that anyone who hasn't done something townie is a good vote, he was asked to vote LLD who was in that category, but he did not scumread LLD. He, after voting, reached out to LLD. The result of that rejected reachout was a, perhaps a bit emotional, doubling down on scumreading LLD.

But saying "hercule scumread LLD, reached out to her, then from the rejected reachout invented a justification for the scumread" is, simply put: not an accurate reflection of how things went.

now i dont want to come off as complaining~ there are many benefits to a game being played like this which is why im voting with LLD

(I'm trying real hard to not cave into peer pressure and reduce the strength of townread on Oka. But he's making it rather hard.)

[mastina]

If it looks Town, why are you shading it on D1?

Because there is a difference between looking town and being town.

If something looks town but isn't actually town, what does that make it?

Scum.

In this game, literally every scum player is going to make posts which

look

town--literally every. single. one. of them. Every single scum is going to make posts that look town. But the scum making those posts aren't going to magically become town due to making a post which looks town, are they? They're not town so a post they make which looks town yet isn't actually town, is exactly that: a post which looks town, yet actually isn't town.

And that's what I mean.

Dannflor's post looks town--LOOKS.
Dannflor's post isn't actually town.

This is not news, Almost50--I use this terminology literally every game. You've literally seen me use "looks town, but isn't actually town" before. Why the sudden confusion over terminology I've used in games for literal years?

I am saying posts which look town are posts that were designed to LOOK town, without actually BEING town, that they are scum fabrications meant to look good without actually being town in mindset. Or to use the buzzword of the game: that the posts are "performative".
A performative post is a post meant to look good, without actually being good.
A performative post is a post meant to look town, without actually being town.

I've got a convenient buzzword to refer to the concept this game, a performative post, but I've used "looks town without actually being town" for literally YEARS.

I need to go compare his posting tone from this game to last to see if I just think his post style in general reads as townie to me to see if im just biasing myself into a townlean

I can tell you as the person who identified his tone as scum last game:
It isn't scum this game.

[mastina]

How hard is it to blend in with .. #shitposting?

Incredibly hard--hercule last game tried and failed. I caught hercule last game in part due to hercule attempting to blend in with shitposting. Except he failed; I caught him when he tried it.

hercule this game was not sticking out like a sore thumb. So either he literally learned how to blend into shitposting literally overnight, or he's not scum trying to blend in.

And what happened to you theory of "1 Scum is hyper active, 1 mildly active and 1 a lurker" in mini setups? (If I'm confused I am sorry, but I think it was you who proposed that theory in a game we played together where I was Scum and you were Town)

I am not going to say I've never advocated that theory; it's fully possible I have. I will say I've zero memory of advocating that theory, which means there's a fairly high chance you've got me confused with someone else, but even if it WAS me...meta has shifted and for the last 2-3 years or so, my theory has been, predominantly: "in the vast majority of games, scum are almost or entirely among the lurkers".

A better question you could ask me is why I am not advocating that in this game, to which I can say that while it's true in most games, in this game I am townreading all of the lurkers unless you count the worst or Titus as lurkers. And scumreading players that're among the more active players (unless you count tw/Titus as among the inactives in which case it's split 50/50). But also townreading most of the active players.

There's literally 4 active players (2 if you count tw/Titus as inactive) that I'm not townreading; the rest of the active town players, I am: I'm townreading you, DGB, Cephrir, IV, AGar (ehhh not sure if he qualifies as active tho), Hopkirk, Winter Flakes, hercule, OkaPoka (albeit strained), and Dunnstral (tho his activity is in flux).

I think he seems tonally scummy here.

And I think that hercule looks tonally town here in this game.
And given that I correctly identified hercule as tonally scum last game, I put more faith in my ability to have an accurate toneread on him than I do yours.

[mastina]

please try to think beyond the surface a50
viewtopic.php?p=9909153#p9909153

Oh this seems like a good time to link to LLD scumgames.
Does this opener look familiar to you?
xofelf, for context, was a town player who, pre-LLD-opener, was fairly townread, but who is also fairly easy to eliminate. A player who is easy to be pushed as being scum. LLD singlehandedly managed to turn the townreads on the slot relatively easy to eliminate into scumreads.

And it gets better. I encourage looking at this iso, but if you don't wanna see for yourself the similarity between LLD's xofelf push and LLD's hercule push, here's a highlight:

I'M ALWAYS A MUST KILL BEFORE LYLO IN GAMES LIKE THESE. BUT AT LEAST LET ME PLAY.

YOU CAN'T DO THIS BURDEN OF PROFICIENCY SHIT BUT NEVER EVEN HAND ME A CHANCE TO PROVE MY ALIGNMENT BY LYNCHING SCUM.

But it gets even better:

seriously there is zero downside to leashing me. I asked this earlier, but if you're gonna BoP me, give me a shot to prove my fucking alignment.

This line sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Here's another game, with the bonus of showing what LLD will do when the players she pushes inevitably flip town:

and I get that burden of competence is a thing, but this game has been incredibly frustrating for me because I can't apply pressure how I want to and I'm a bit restricted. So at this point I'm just trying to get people to understand why I'm town so we can make something happen.

Here's another older one.

[mastina]

her recent meta (last year or so)

Actually, it's approaching 3 years of that.

(the towniest post Dannflor's made the entire game)

For the record--this is literally the first post Dannflor has made all game that has made me think Dannflor could be town. It's the first post of his which doesn't have the "performative" vibe to it--or to use the wording I've used for literally five+ years at this point which anybody playing with me should've seen before (not gonna name names

*coughAlmost50cough*

), this is the first Dannflor post which could be genuinely town, rather than a post looking town without actually being town.

It's not enough to, on its own, reverse the read on Dannflor, because it COULD still be made by Dann-scum, possibly, potentially, buuuuuuuuuuuuut: it gives a TON of reasonable doubt.

Before this post, Dannflor sat at 90% scum.

Now, Dannflor sits at...well, depends on what you view percentages at. If 50% is dead-null with 49% or less being town and 51% more being scum, he's hovering around the 51.5% mark or so.
If 0% is dead null, he's hovering at about 5% scum.

Not sure how to contextualize this, but basically: I feel like this post

could

come from Dannflor as scum, that one post like this is not entirely out of Dannflor's scum range, and if it is just this one post to make me feel this way and none of his other posts, he could be scum...

... Buuuuuuuuuuuuut, if this is just the first post from Dannflor which feels genuinely town. If this is the first of multiple posts from Dann that don't just 'look' town but

feel

town. One post which feels entirely town could be scum (albeit less likely), but multiple cannot.

So Dannflor moves up to null, pending further posts from him, pending further content. (Which I conveniently have ~10 pages' worth of. If I see so much as a single other post that feels town rather than just looking town? He'll move to town.)

[mastina]

I think mastina has a broader scum/town range of playstyles

Oh theoretically, fuck yes. Theoretically, nothing is outside of my scumrange. Theoretically, you remember what LLD described her scumplay as? I do the same thing. I never repeat plays; I always make each scumgame of mine unique; I always fulfill a different role; I am always changing it; I have pulled such stunts before that literally anything I do, could be done as scumastina. Theoretically. Relying on peak-mastina performance, or rather peak-scumastina performance. Theoretically, I've done just about literally every possible thing scum can do so I can do it again. (Heck, even my holy "I never lie about my role as scum"? There is ONE game, a mini, don't remember if it was theme or Normal, where I fakeclaimed. I can name the mod of the game, too, and that lie about my role is proof that not lying about my role isn't a trust tell. I

can

lie about my role, I just always think that doing so would be a tactical error.)

Theoretically, there is an infinite range to my scumplay styles, where anything I do is theoretically within my capacity as scumastina.

Buuuuuuuuut, pragmatically: in the last three years, I've had

one

game where I wasn't a lackluster scum player, and even in that one game which wasn't lackluster, I (1) mostly talked mechanics (easy to do), (2) had possible-3ps to help 'fake' scumhunt making it a pseudo-multiball that's not a real scumgame, (3) had an AGar-to-Cephriresque easy launchpoint of Dunnstral being ridiculously and abnormally scummy, and (4) even given all of these, was still pretty painfully obviously scum.

So, yes. Theoretically, this game could be the return of scumastina to her prime, where I'm at the top of my scumgame pulling a performance of peak scumastina caliber where I'm one of the best scum players on site. Hey, it's team mafia, if ever there was a time to be at top scum form, it'd be during this event! So there's motive to do so, so it's always possible.

I genuinely don't think it's actually probable for me to pull off tho. I'm not even sure that, even with it being team mafia, I'd be able to perform well as scum. So I'm not even sure it's plausible, yet alone probable. It's definitely possible for me to return to that level, but given my general approach to mafia games these days I'm genuinely not sure I could in actuality pull it off. Would need to actually be scum to let you know.

also i kinda just want to see more of this herc lld thing and honestly, im a bit lazy and LLD is a great opportunity to let someone take the reigns and for me to get out the way. do you guys really want to see me post storm this game. or do you want to see me ascend above all mortals.

If Dannflor does indeed move out of scum, then fuckit, peer pressure aside Oka's presence here does indeed feel like it'd be a fine replacement.

I get that Oka may not be able to win TM.
I get that Oka may not want to have an identical game to last one.
I get that Oka may want to just vibe and chill.

But the more Oka strays from being a presence in the game, the more he starts to look like scum.

(With Dann maybe out of scum, does feel like I need a new readslist, but I wanna read more posts to see if there is a definitively-town post from Dann tho.)

[mastina]

also mastina, why is oka locktown? he has a solid scum game and i dont feel that what he's put down so far is anything he's not capable of doing as scum.

If Oka is town I'm gonna fucking hate myself for forgetting why I had him as locktown, but I am asking myself the same question; why

did

I have him as locktown? The fact that I'm struggling to answer that, when Oka's posting is far more lackluster this game and lacks the fire of last game, is enough when combined with peer pressure to move him allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down to maybe-scum.

mastina enjoys typing, and i feel you should have enough experience with her to know this!

For the record, RE: Titus.
I normally give Titus a free pass on D1; I normally give Titus the benefit of the doubt on D1; I normally give her time, even in the events I am scumreading her; I normally am happy to work with her even if I am scumreading her, assuming she is cooperative and not arguing in bad faith and/or shading me and/or portraying my posts in a negative light.

This game, however, has the issue of be not being able to give that--I give Titus a pass on D1 by using what amounts to a variant of jjh's style, of "catching the easiest scum" on D1. With Titus not being the easiest scum in most games, that gives me the luxury of giving her space. But as I've already said, the jjh mold of "catch the easiest scum" doesn't work if there's no easy scum to catch, if every scum is a skilled scum player, which I suspect to be the case this game.

With no easy scum to catch, I cannot afford to be as lenient with Titus. And I scumread her. And on top of that, her first engagement with me wasn't a reachout; her first engagement with me looked like it was bad faith or shade or negative light. With her first interaction with me being in bad light, and me scumreading her, and with no easy scum to catch, all of that is why I'm not giving Titus the free pass I otherwise would, because, yes, I do think there's a fairly high chance that Titus is scum here.

[mastina]

I do think there's a fairly high chance that Titus is scum here.

(For those keeping track, that's 90% scum on LLD, ~80% scum on Titus, and a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge drop to ~60% scum on the worst, with Oka being unsure but overall probably weaker scumread than even worstie but of a comparable strength, e.g. ~55%.)

[mastina]

Noise noise noise noise noise. Happy with where my vote is parked.

It's moments like this where I remember what Ythan's alignment was last time he was posting this sort of thing and sigh in resignation that he's probably still town this time around in spite of all the reasons to think otherwise.

an open question from auro, @whoever is townreading dunn: what do you tr about him?

Basically, Dunnstral is at his normal activity levels: posts almost every single day, ~2-5 times each time he posts, and when he posts he gives good thoughts. While he has a scumread on your slot that I disagree with and think is wrong, I follow with his thought process for why he would think that you're scum, and because I can see where he is coming from even though I disagree with the read, I think he's town.

His content is town, his posts are reasonable even if I disagree with them; it's standard Dunnstral fare to me.

yeah mastina correctly pushed LLD D1 in one game played together

I've played in about 10 LLD games before, not just one. Games I've read with LLD in them nearly doubles that. Probably like, ~8 games played, ~8 games where I was reading, for ~16ish LLD games.

It was however the strong deja vu which was a selling point for LLD being scum here. There are things LLD has a tendency to do as scum that show up less or not at all when she is scum, and while the difference between her towngame and scumgame is like 1-5%, I feel like I DO have a decent grasp on the signs OF that 1-5% here.

[mastina]

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager

DrippingGoofball
Xtoxm*
Almost50
Dunnstral
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
jjh927

Cephrir
Ythan
AGar



OkaPoka



the worst

Titus

Lady Lambdadelta


(Dannflor absent intentionally--need to see more Dann posts)

Locktown, strongly townreading, weakly townreading, read in flux, weakly scumreading, fairly strongly scumreading, VERY strongly scumreading.

Approximately.

*Xtoxm would be in locktown if not for healthy paranoia from last game. I was wrong then and I am very aware I could be wrong here, even though I feel Xtoxm this game is much townier even on his own merits and that given Auro his towniness is through the roof.

[mastina]

What is the

case

on LLD?

Here ya go.

Read the entirety of that link and you get the gist of the LLD case.

[mastina]

Mastina, you're a literally anchor on any game you play

Sure am, but I'm surprised you used a term that from our generation was used as one of the highest of compliments to a town player to describe me.

(For those who don't have the mafiascum history: the term 'anchor' was a synonym for 'rock', as in, someone who would weigh down the town in reality, of keeping people grounded, of being the voice of reason keeping people in reality, to keep them from going too far wildly off-base, from drifting off into the ocean of moonlogic/paranoia and stabilizing the town. As scum it was common to kill the town glue, the town rocks, the town's anchors, so that they'd eat themselves up in paranoia with nobody to reign them in.)

[mastina]

MASTINA HE HAS 3 COACHES AND 3 SCUM BUDDIES WHO ALL KNOW ABOUT LAST GAME TOO. THAT META IS ABUSEABLE.

I've heard this argument before.

"FL is a master scum player, he can coach his scumteam to subvert their meta, therefore, towntells on players are all invalid because they could've been coached by FL to mimic their townplay, so meta is invalid and therefore the reasons to townread the player are also invalid".

Suffice to say: it doesn't hold. It is, explicitly, an appeal to paranoia.

Literally every player this game, if they were scum, has the collective pool of resources of 16 total players who could, collectively, subvert typical scumplay and recreate their townplay as scum.

Your argument here is essentially, "hercule, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, is scum who managed to play in a way which looks town".

But using that same logic:
Why can't innocentvillager, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't I, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from myself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Hopkirk, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Xtoxm, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Dannflor, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Winter Flakes, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't DGB, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from itself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Cephrir, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?
Why can't Almost50, with the collective pool of 15 players aside from himself, be scum who managed to play in a way which looks town?

The simple fact of the matter is: sure, yes, that's

possible

.
It is explicitly improbable. It is explicitly an argument appealing to improbability, to throw out all past towntells, to throw out all past games, to throw out every reason you've ever had to townread a player in the game, off of the chance that they MIGHT be scum who managed to convincingly subvert their play to manage to look town when they aren't.

Meta can be abused to

some

extent, yes. You can manage to play in a different style than your previous scumgame even if your scumgame is literally back to back. But you cannot have a complete and total reversal of it on literally every level--and that's what it'd take for hercule to be scum in this game.

It's possible with the collective pool of scum players to shift play to cover past tells that would expose you, in theory.
But it requires, 1: the collective pool of 15 to put that effort in (hey, newsflash: in team mafia, the players who help their teammates' scumgames are the exception to the general rule of teammates not helping out at all; most teams don't really fully use their TEAM aspect), when they are incredibly unlikely to focus on it to such an extent, 2: for them to have, in practice, succeeded in covering up literally every previous weakness to completely and totally cover every aspect, and 3: after having come up with that, for hercule to perfectly execute on this hypothetical plan.

Let's occam's razor this shit.

Which is simpler?

hercule is town, whose difference from last game is due to hercule being town this game...

...Or that hercule is scum, whose collective group of 16 brainstormed how to make hercule not look like scum this game, who after having put this brainstorming in actually succeeded in covering every weakness even ones that weren't discussed publicly (e.g. covering things I never explained), and that hercule as scum then after this planning managed to actually perfectly execute on this plan to cover every past meta-tell that lead to him being scumread?

I think it's painfully obviously the former, that hercule is just town whose differences between this game and last game are due to being town.

[mastina]

mastina makes good points to be honest, but also mastina always makes convincing points when she isn't talking about you

I do indeed always make good points!

I'll be the first to admit that making a good point doesn't mean that the point is

accurate

; I can and do make good points that, while good points, end up being wrong. That's why I always enjoy engaging with others--since I always raise good points, other people can give me a better gauge for "this is a good point, but I think in spite of being a good point, it is wrong" vs "this is a good point, and I think it is right".

[mastina]

I don’t get why Hercule couldn’t have been coached on reacting to pressure differently

Oh, he could have--
But what are the chances that this coaching is SO thorough, SO accurate, that it covers EVERY base, including points that people didn't express before, and that even with these pointers from the coach, hercule executed on the coaching perfectly?

Speaking from experience as a person who has coached scumbuddies: I have coached scumbuddies who tried to execute on my coaching, but couldn't do so perfectly. They didn't follow my advice perfectly, they developed flaws, and even with my coaching I couldn't pinpoint every reason for them to be scumread so even if they had followed it perfectly (which they couldn't do), they might still have been scumread due to me having missed something they'd be scumread for.

There's a difference between a player not playing literally identical between two games (this is something any scum player can do), and a player playing in such a stark contrast that it goes beyond the realm of "different game, different standard" (this is something almost no player can do; it takes a Don Corelone level player to have so much of a

chance

of pulling it off, and even Don Corelone players when attempting to do so can and often do fail to actually execute on it).

[mastina]

now i don't know if i buy the coaching argument because from what koba has told me, hercule has an established scum meta on epicmafia and he is pretty good at it bleh, spf and super are both more known for town play i think as well so the only possible person who would actually be coaching him would probs be joqiza and koba did not inform me on joqiza /shrug

Okay so like.
If you don't think he could be coached to be this different from his towngame/scumgame.

...Why are you voting him?

There is a marked difference, a severe, total, basically almost complete, as I put it, "night and day", difference between hercule's play last game and hercule's play this game.
hercule was scum last game.
You are saying you don't buy that he'd be coached into being a severe, total, basically almost complete, as I put it, "night and day", difference between last game and this game.

Yet there is such a difference.
And you believe he wasn't coached into it.

So I repeat.

WHY are you voting hercule, when you don't believe he was coached to be different, when there IS such strong marked notable differences between last game and this game?

[mastina]

Lol I gotcha but at least it makes her easy to read? if she just says she likes the post I can’t divine alignment from that as easily

Transparency + Clarity + Depth > Succinctness, yes.

While it's difficult for me, I

can

be concise. I deliberately choose not to. I'm naturally wordy, but that wordiness is an asset (thus my deliberate choice to gravitate towards it), not a hindrance (which if it were one, I could then put the deliberate effort into suppressing it).

But I digress.

in all seriousness, mastina i feel like you are trying to make me move to LLD, you know im on the fence now is this really how ur going to try and herd me over, by making me return to monke

I have no such pull. If you're scum, then you're scum. If you're town, then your continued vote on hercule is either laziness, denial of reality, or both lazy and denying reality.

You've done just as good a job as I have for giving the proof for why hercule's town this game; you're still voting him. So the options are literally among those three: laziness, denying reality, or scum. (The three are in no way mutually exclusive and can in fact exist in any combination of the 2-3.)

[mastina]

if ur going to scumread me that's okay but making this about presence really feels like you want me to clash LLD and end up voting her

I'm not asking you "why aren't you voting LLD?". There are plenty of players who I am townreading who have said they townread LLD. I've been rather loud about disagreeing with them on that townread and I wish they were voting LLD, but them not voting LLD is not something which makes them suspect.

I am however asking you "why are you voting hercule?". The number of players who are voting hercule who I townread is rather notably smaller, for good reason. There are still players who I townread who're voting hercule for poor reasoning, and I have talked to them and addressed their reasoning, pointing out the flaws in it, and continue to ask them that question.

My read on you is entirely separate of this, however--you, notably, have a much weaker presence this game.
You are also, notably, while in a good position to have a good read on hercule...still voting him in spite of lacking it.
But it is mostly that vibe-wise, aura-wise, you just don't radiate town the same way you did last game. You don't feel town and I can't really describe why you would be town. I can however see why you would be scum. But you're notably not a scumread; you're an in-flux read because I did have that strong townread on you and a lot of the read on you is peer pressure from others scumreading you and me not being able to remember why I was townreading you.

In short: you're not doing anything town right now, and there's things you're doing that could very well be scum.
Not voting LLD isn't among them.
Continuing to vote hercule might be among them, but even lacking that, the things which could be scum are still there.

[mastina]

the way i'd describe a political play is the willing to compromise on your reads to get an ultimate agenda done
eg: pressuring someone into voting with you, being willing to set aside a scumread to try and convince someone to vote with you, doing stuff that isn't totally pure to get what you really want
faking reads falls into this too ig

In my 12 years onsite, this is something I have never done, and the players who have this style (RC, FL) are exactly my role models on "what NEVER to do as town".

No offense meant to them--it works for

them

well enough.

But it is very much something that is the antithesis of my values as a mafia player--so I would never do it as town. And for that matter, never do it as scum.

[mastina]

whats the next thing you want me to do now mastina

Be town.

[mastina]

my vote on hercule on a dissipating wagon isn't going to lead to his death, if you are going to call it out obviously you want it somewhere else

As a matter of fact, yes, I do--I want it placed in a place that will give me a better read on not only the person you vote, but also you. That'd give me a better ability to sort you off of why you're voting them and sort them if your reason for voting them is an actual reason.

I mean obviously, you can't go wrong voting LLD, but any vote from you which isn't hercule is a vote which can help me sort you and which, if it is a real vote for real reasons, can help me sort who you vote.

I very much wouldn't call that in any way a, as you put it, "political" stance--it's just a stupidly self-evident thing. If you're not doing something which helps me read you, I'm not going to get a read on you. (And the best thing which helps me get a read: scumhunting.) And if you don't give a read on another player, it's not going to help me read that player. And the two build off of each other, too.

[mastina]

i feel pressure on hercule is how i think i can get a crack one way or the other. and even though his reactions sure have been townie, i don't think its enough to make a firm decision. this is not something ive been keeping secret lol

I actually think this is a bit backwards--hercule has been under plenty of pressure and looks town from it.

Upping the pressure or keeping it the same isn't going to change that; it's going to keep it the same. Looks townie, but according to you, not good enough.

Removing the pressure is actually what I feel would help the most there--by removing the pressure, you get to see what hercule does with no pressure. And that's something which is different from the current status quo, so gives you a better ability to read him when under no pressure.

Basically:
We've seen what he's done under pressure--continuing with him under pressure is unlikely to keep producing new information.
We haven't seen what he's done without the pressure--seeing what he does without the pressure is likely to produce new info.

[mastina]

The hercule wagon is dissipating anyway because LLD is visibly wavering. I wouldn't spend too much energy being worked up about that.

is correct @ceph so trying to get my vote off of hercule now rather than before LLD decides on a new target is... also interesting

Also, where are you two getting the idea LLD is "visibly wavering" in her hercule read?

I've been reading every LLD post and I saw nothing of the sort.

[mastina]

1) This is an unprecedented situation, where literally 16/18 people were in last game which happened back to back so literally EVERYONE is going to use that as a baseline and EVERYONE knows that other people are going to be referencing their play last game

So? That still doesn't mean, of a hypothetical 16 players, you're going to get even close to 16 brainstorming how to be different from last game if rolling scum twice.

You'd be lucky if it was 4; a realistic projection would be 1-2.

You might not understand that, but while Team Mafia is meant to be a team game where there's four people involved per slot in every game, in practice, only about 50% of teams have cross-game players, and of those 50% of the teams, only about half of them have it be more than one player, and of those teams, only about 25% of them are going to do so for a scum game.

Team Mafia, as an event, has ALWAYS had a "not my game, not my problem" apathy to it, for literal years, ESPECIALLY for the slots who roll scum.

Why do you think that an incredibly common towntell is, "X gave thoughts from teammate Y, they're more likely town"? Did you think that came out of nowhere? No, that tell exists because of a longstanding team mafia meta, a meta not specific to any team but specific to the event itself. Teammates don't care about their teammates' scumgames. Any time a teammate does intervene, it is the exception to the general rule of apathy for games not your own.

So hercule-scum wouldn't have 16 players invested.
He'd be lucky to have 2.

Because even scumbuddies upon seeing hercule was scum aren't innately inherently going to pull a strategic meeting to plan. Who in this game has the mindset for that? I do, LLD maybe does, Almost50 definitely does, Titus certainly would, the worst would, Cephrir/jjh are possible but not assured. If the scumteam doesn't have those players helping him, it comes down to hercule on his lonesome. Him and him alone, to cover his bases.

Specifically, I want to be convinced that hercule has transformed like, in multiple multiple ways (or covered "EVERY Base"), that others haven't expressed. The more you say it as if he's done a 180 in MULTIPLE ways, the more I feel that I'm probably just missing something. would you mind tl;dr'ing me/quoting me on it?

Not today, today's another low-site-presence day, but in the mean time: try an exercise: do an iso of hercule from last game.
If you're not going to bother isoing all of hercule last game, you can read the first like 20ish posts and then read the last 60ish or so. Doing that will give you a frame of reference for what I saw from him that game.

Then iso him this game.

Look at the differences yourself.

I'll do the work myself to show it when I have more time, but while you're waiting for me you can do it yourself.

[mastina]

do u think that can't come from scum? i don't.

Could it come from scum? Sure. But while the wall is slightly disjointed and the reasons on the players aren't necessarily unfakeable. There is nuance to the thought process and the way he developed the reads and what the reads are lead me to think town.

So I don't think it was scum.

mastina, who i believe is very likely to be town, has a super strong townread on you, and if she can convince me/make me see her POV, i would gain an invaluable townread and can push against your wagon

Have you heard of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty"?

In a game where there's more town than scum, more players are going to be innocent than guilty, so the default assumption is innocent, until evidence amounts to show they are guilty.

The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the defense of the accused.

Which is to say--I can and will show why I feel hercule is strongly town, but I shouldn't need to in order for hercule to be town if you look at the "case" against him and realize there isn't much of one. (I may have watched too much Matlock and Perry Mason tho so phrases like 'standard of reasonable doubt' stand out to me.)

(Basically, I'll show why he's town, but I shouldn't need to, because the standard should be to try and show why he's scum, not the other way around.)

[mastina]

i don't have scum!mastina meta though, this is purely based on seeing her posting style, i feel like it'd be very very difficult to keep up what's she's doing here as scum

Oh it is indeed difficult to keep up for scumastina. Not impossible, but difficult. But if you want scum meta on me to establish the chances of me keeping this up as scum, you need only ask.

I've been able to track down every scumgame of mine ever onsite, tho I've lost the link to the post where I did so, and it being every scumgame means it doesn't give a good highlight (there's like...80ish or so scumgames, aint nobody gonna read through those), but it's ridiculously easy for me to find all of my scumgames in the last 4ish years or so. (Older than 4 years is probably to the point of being not truly relevant.)

actually tbh i don't know why im trying to offer points for town!mastina, some paranoia on that slot is probably good anyway as a sanity check down the line

But-but...my N1 nightkill! I won't get nightkilled N1 if too many town are paranoid of me. D:

[mastina]

Guys, LLD isn't scum either. I see no reason beyond her personality to think she is.

Sadly, this is Titus's scumgame so this is a stance I cannot follow.

@Titus: Your defense of LLD won't work, simply because you are -supposedly- her Scum partner.

She really is.

I feel like I have a borderline-soulread on Titus here. That might not be the right word, but I feel like I have a deep understanding of Titus's play and methods and that this just isn't her towngame and I probably can explain this, albeit with difficulty.

I realize I haven't explained why she's scum--but I know she's not town here, and given no 3ps, that means scum.

[mastina]

mastina's trajectory on titus is:
--titus is scum for posting she's vla
--this one interaction could be s/s with LLD (who, notably, has not flipped yet)
--"80% confidence"
really, that's it, i just checked to make sure i wasn't crazy

Yes that would be due to me not having explained my scumread on Titus.
Titus isn't scum for posting she's V/LA; Titus isn't scum for the interaction with LLD (tho that contributes); Titus is indeed scum with 80+% confidence, but why she's scum is something I haven't explained yet.

I just could tell instantly.

[mastina]

my point is that if he's scum there are literally ~14 town players who are trying to read him who were literally in last game.

Yes--and he is notably different in extremely obvious ways across multiple fronts. Across basically every front, in fact. There may be pressure to play differently from last game, but is there enough skill from hercule to, under such pressure, have a complete and total transformation as scum likely with minimal to no help? That hercule can cover bases that he didn't know?

Another way of thinking about it, IV:
Just because you think you know your scum meta, do you think as scum you're capable of completely hiding every aspect of your scumgame if you roll scum back to back with a high playerlist overlap? Do you think that you'd cover it all?

Or do you think that, you'd THINK you'd cover it all, but some scumtells you missed would remain?

Just because hercule knows he needs to be different, doesn't mean he knows HOW he needs to be different, is what I'm getting at. He knows he needs to play differently from last game if he's scum--but how does he know exactly HOW to be different? How would he know how to identify all his scumtells and not show them, and then actually not show them? (Just because you know of a scumtell of yours doesn't mean you're guaranteed to be able to fix it. And just because you think you know what your scumtells are as scum, doesn't mean you actually know what those scumtells are. You can both miss scumtells and even knowing scumtells be unable to fix them.)

So I posit that hercule's extreme differences here go beyond the ability of a scum player to knowingly change their play from game to game--the changes are too extreme and thorough. hercule might know some of his scumtells, but he won't know all of them, and he can't correct every scumtell of his that he knows. And yet this game there's none of the scumtells there were last game. I literally caught hercule for things that I never described last game; those things, without me explaining them, are absent from this game.

[mastina]

i mean the fact that people find success through townbucketing and poe rather than scumhunting means...

POE is a form of evidence, so it is still on the accuser: "everyone else is town for these reasons, therefore by poe, these four players are scum".

So: people finding success through townblocking and poe rather than scumhunting means that the burden of evidence is still on the accuser, because it is up to the town to explain why they have the poe they do.

[mastina]

don't worry oka I'm just voting you as a placeholder until I vote the super obv scum slots that no one but the great dannflor has been able to see yet

I realize this is probably not meant to be taken seriously--but it was genuinely this which is the first thing Dann's posted since the big turnaround-post of his that I've thought was town beyond Dannflor's scumrange.

You'd think it'd be the first half of the post. But no, it was specifically

this

half that made me think, genuinely, "Dann's town".

I don't know why tho, just gut.

[mastina]

some of the votes on both the LLD and the hercule wagon over the course of the day have been... really bad

I mean literally almost every hercule vote has been bad but I won't pretend that the Ythan/Oka votes on LLD were good; they weren't. So you won't have trouble convincing me certain slots could be scum, but other slots are a much harder sell.

[mastina]

what is LLD town flip gonna tell you?

Honestly, LLD is the only player that I currently would classify as active with a high chance of flipping scum. (Oka's posting isn't truly 'active' and while he has a decent chance of flipping scum he's not a high chance of flipping scum.)

If LLD flipped town, it'd tell me that the scum is entirely in the less-active slots, mostly letting the LLD-herc fight happen. The slots I'd call qualifying for this would be {Titus, the worst, OkaPoka, Ythan, AGar}, loosely speaking.

But given that's largely my pool for scum regardless of LLD's alignment, honestly not much changes on her flip regardless of her alignment. I still think that Titus is scum, and while some in the pool may be more likely town/scum off of an LLD flip of a certain alignment, I still think this pool contains scum.

[mastina]

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
DrippingGoofball*

Dannflor**
DrippingGoofball*
Xtoxm***
Almost50
Cephrir
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
Dunnstral
jjh927


Ythan
AGar

OkaPoka


the worst

Titus

Lady Lambdadelta

Loosely speaking. Townbloc strong townreads, weaker-initial-townreads-who-could-be-scum, ditto-but-actually-lean-scum, lean-scum, strong scumread, strongest scumread.

*DGB is a strong townread regardless of LLD's alignment, but if LLD is scum DGB at this point is beyond the realm of bussing so would indeed become locktown on an LLD-scumflip. But even IF LLD flipped town (I don't think she will), DGB would continue to be a strong townread, one of my strongest.

**Dannflor's here right now, but if I continue to see him make posts I don't think he can make as scum, expect him to move up into the townbloc.

***Xtoxm's the same caveat as before; he'd be in my townbloc if not for reasonable paranoia given my misread last game.

[mastina]

Yaknow what let's actually make things a bit simpler on the readslist.

hercule
Hopkirk
innocentvillager

Dannflor
DrippingGoofball
Xtoxm

Almost50
Cephrir
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
Dunnstral
jjh927


Ythan
AGar

OkaPoka


the worst

Titus

Lady Lambdadelta

Loosely speaking. Townbloc, townbloc-lite(almost in townbloc but held back), strong townreads, weaker-initial-townreads-who-could-be-scum, ditto-but-actually-lean-scum, lean-scum, strong scumread, strongest scumread.

[mastina]

why is DGB on your list twice @mastina did you move them up a tier

Sort-of. DGB has been, for quite some time, a strong townread of mine but not in my townbloc in spite of our read resonance on LLD being scum. If LLD isn't scum, that is an accurate placement for her: strong townread of mine, but not quite townbloc thanks to not being up-to-date on DGB's scumplay, essentially.

If LLD is scum, however, then that placement is too low. The read resonance proving to be accurate would move her to firmly in the townbloc due to her accuracy on top of the reasons for the strong townread.

In short: If LLD is scum, DGB's play goes beyond the realm of bussing imo; she's already a strong townread and that strong of a push on her scumbuddy isn't something I think happens with her scum so she is 100% town beyond any reasonable doubt and the core of core townbloc members.

If LLD isn't scum, DGB's not AS town, but remains one of my strongest townreads because the strong push with the high read resonance and overall approach is still something I don't think comes from scum. It's just that it being on town lessens its certainty, basically.

[mastina]

sorry but opening up with mastina sux and trying to fight mastina while townreading them is an overcomplication as scum.

Out of all the possible reasons for townreading LLD this has to top the charts in how bad it is.

LLD's default treatment of me is exactly this--she says I suck because it helps her, and she calls me town because doing otherwise is inconvenient for her. That's basically it, no further depth to it. You can add layers to it if you want, but at the end of the day, the two's reasoning boils down to exactly that. Saying I suck helps her; saying I'm town is more convenient than trying to scumcase me.

It is in fact any other combination which would be more town from her. Saying I suck and I'm scum; saying I don't suck but am scum; saying I don't suck and am not scum; literally any of those would be a legit surprise to me. (The order of most scum to least scum is insulting me+townread > insulting me+scumread > no insult+scumread > no insult+townread, loosely; I've no real reason to hold back on this since regardless of her alignment me saying this won't affect LLD's actions. She'd probably be insulted if I insinuated that me disclosing this would influence her, because I know it won't.)

I should add the caveat that insulting me and townreading me is not actually scum-indicative. It's the most-scum combination of the four possibilities, but I consider it to be the closest to NAI as is possible since when I say insulting me helps her, it does so regardless of her alignment.

[mastina]

and your townread on me is based one me not buddying anyone? couldn't you classify my interactions with mastina as buddying? she hard trs me and i hard tr her back

Also this.

[mastina]

Fair warning: I am spiraling into a pit of very strong, very bad, depression. I'm very much not in the mood to play, I just have no choice but to.

as I’ve said before I am totally open to LLD/dann/mastina/hercule all being town and will entertain any theories on how scum are positioning themselves around this

IF LLD were town (I am still fairly sure she isn't),

what is LLD town flip gonna tell you?

Honestly, LLD is the only player that I currently would classify as active with a high chance of flipping scum. (Oka's posting isn't truly 'active' and while he has a decent chance of flipping scum he's not a high chance of flipping scum.)

If LLD flipped town, it'd tell me that the scum is entirely in the less-active slots, mostly letting the LLD-herc fight happen. The slots I'd call qualifying for this would be {Titus, the worst, OkaPoka, Ythan, AGar}, loosely speaking.

But given that's largely my pool for scum regardless of LLD's alignment, honestly not much changes on her flip regardless of her alignment. I still think that Titus is scum, and while some in the pool may be more likely town/scum off of an LLD flip of a certain alignment, I still think this pool contains scum.

This is still true.
{Titus, the worst, OkaPoka} in particular stick out, with {Ythan, AGar} on the sides.

LLD is still treating mastina as town when she as every single right to policy scumread her i think is a massive signal that LLD is town.

Oh?
Subject: Mini 2006: Scummer in this game UPick GAME OVER

I honestly think Wisdom and Mastina are town, but also I don't wanna read Mastina's anything so I dunno. She feels.... different here than in other games where she was scum.

Subject: Mini 2006: Scummer in this game UPick GAME OVER

I'm gonna take a break for 24 hours from this thread and see if I want to keep going or not

Okay. Scratch the not alignment indicative thing I said earlier. This IS indicative. This is a scum "replace"-out. This never comes from town. Never.

I've done this exact thing as town multiple times, I'm pretty sure. Are you saying this is a Maria specific thing, or a people in general thing? Do I need to start enforcing the Mastin Mirror Reads Rule?

What was LLD's alignment that game? Take a guess.

why isn't LLD stepping in ever?

Because the more LLD steps in, the more people realize her pushes don't come from town and the more information she spews to the town.

like why you doing this LLD if your scum?

Basically: LLD is smart; she will recognize when her efforts are backfiring. As scum who realizes your efforts are backfiring, what do you do? Double-down on the efforts that thusfar have backfired, or switch things up and come up with a new plan, a new angle, to focus your efforts with the hope of that not backfiring?

mastina it should be a red flag that LLD is trying to convince you, mastina, to swap on hercule.

Yes, it is a red flag--of her being scum.

anyways dgb is superficially similar in style to last game but i think the agenda of its posts is a whole lot different and it makes sense to be the scum slot if we have lld/herc/mastina as all town.

DGB is literally the worst possible yeet regardless of LLD's alignment--if LLD is scum, then DGB is conftown. Even if LLD is town, then DGB's push is self-evidently a push from town.

[mastina]

[titus] is not readable right now imo

Actually, she is--this is Titus as scum.

I feel like it's easy to town read DGB's confidence in the face of LLD, but I dunno.

I'm not townreading DGB for its confidence. I'm townreading DGB for the entire package: who it is pushing, why it is pushing them, the way it is pushing them, what it is doing, what it is not doing, what it is focusing on, the nature of its content, and yes, I believe it when it says it has more confidence this game. I realize it's not identical to last game, but the ways it's different are GOOD different rather than bad different. So I fully disagree about it not thinking about the game. I can clearly see and follow the thought process.

Hopkirk I don't have as much of a reason to scum read as I do a lack of reason to town read.

Hopkirk's presence this game has been similar to last game in a way that I feel is strongly indicative to being town.

The scumteam is comically transparent.

This response sucks lol

Sucks for the scumteam sure; it's literally one of the most town posts from DGB yet--I don't agree with all of its scumreads (tho I see where it's coming from on them and there's the obvious read resonance on LLD), but if you look at who its established scumreads are and the posts from said scumreads of its around that point in time? Believing them to be "comically transparent" as it put it is an entirely apt, sharp description that is on-point. Basically, if you put yourself in its shoes scumreading who it scumreads, it becomes painfully obvious that, yes, you would believe the scum would be that transparent.

The worst

/Winter Flakes/

Titus

: This group feels unreadable for me; I want to say there's probably scum in this group

I'll give you a hint.

I would like to better understand why lld is currently being wagoned and where else we should be wagoning

LLD is being wagoned because enough people realized this was her scumgame to wagon her.

So you think everyone on wagon right now is town?

I'm not sold on Ythan being town (in fact if LLD is town Ythan has incredible scum equity), but otherwise? Yes. DGB, hercule, Hopkirk, and Xtoxm are all top townreads of mine. Quite literally.

i also tentatively buy the idea that scum!LLD is just better than this.

So's town-LLD tho. An underperformance is an underperformance regardless of alignment; it does not make the underperforming player automatically the alignment it is assumed they are less skilled at (when they're still skilled at that alignment).

LLD isn't a reverse-Creaturesque style (I believe the apt descriptor is Katsukii-style), where she's hyper-competent/present as scum and basically a lurksack as town.

She's hyper-aggressive regardless of alignment.

maybe i just tend to townread Oka's style and that fact that he's even close to hitting a similar energy as last game when I don't think he would really be trying as scum when his team has already lost is +town

Oka's energy isn't even remotely similar to last game--that's specifically one of the reasons he's in my suspect pool.

[mastina]

Chennisden has some thoughts that I'll be paraphrasing over here. He agrees with me on IV scum and LLD town, so at least that's something.

He has weak TRs on Ceph, dann and mastina. Basically, he feels they are town but nothing beyond their scumrange. Jjh is town. He doesn't like dgb 406/407. I have DGB near locktown. I don't see scum!DGB flailing this hard over a town!LLD elim.

I need to read Dunn to see if IV is bussing or not. @DGB, Can you run your thoughts supposing Oka is pocketed? Chenn says that's easy to do. Chenn has them as town.

dgb scumreads me so i wouldnt be pocketed @titus

I am asking them to reevaluate. I am aware they scumread you as of the post I am quoting. New information may change a read.

I really do need to explain why this is Titus's scumgame here at some point but it baffles me that people are giving a free pass to posts like this.

I know what Titus would be doing if she were town; this isn't it. Not like this at least.

[mastina]

I wasn't saying "no one believes Titus is LLD's scumpartner," but rather "there is no compelling case for Titus being LLD's scumpartner"

Oh that's fair, they're not scum for associatives but rather scum individually and I fully am aware that I need to write the cases on both of them.

[mastina]

in fact the wagon sprung up really fast

Did it?

Vote Count 1.3

hercule

(5): Lady Lambdadelta, innocentvillager, Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst

Xtoxm

(2): hercule, Dunnstral

innocentvillager

(2): DrippingGoofball, Almost50

Almost50

(2): Hopkirk, Dannflor

Dannflor

(2): Cephrir, mastina

the worst

(1): jjh927

DrippingGoofball

(1): Xtoxm

Not Voting

(3): Titus, Winter Flakes, AGar

Here's vc 1.3. Here's every vote following that:

VOTE: hercule

hercule up to 6 votes.

VOTE: Hercule

hercule up to 7 votes.

VOTE: The Worst

VOTE: hercule

hercule up to 8 votes.

UNVOTE:

(Albeit immediately back down to 7 tho.)

VOTE: A50

VOTE: A50

VOTE: LLD

This was the first vote for the current LLD wagon, the second LLD vote in the entire game.

VOTE: Lady LambdaDelta

Second vote on the wagon.

VOTE: LLD

Third vote on the wagon.

VOTE: LLD

Fourth vote. If you think that wagon speed is 'fast', do you want me to point out the proximity of votes on the hercule, Dunnstral, and Hopkirk wagons? Because all of those got to 3-4 votes just as fast if not faster than this. Beyond that...

Skipping ahead a little,

VOTE: lld

This was the fifth vote on LLD, much much later.

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta

I was the sixth, even later on.

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta

This was vote seven, even later on.

UNVOTE:

But on that same page, hercule unvoted, so LLD went down to six again.

VOTE: LLD

This BRIEFLY brought the vote back up to 7, and,

VOTE: Lady LambdaDelta

This BRIEFLY brought it up to 8, but...

UNVOTE:

Oka unvotes, back down to 7, and...

VOTE: dgb the chicken Is making a lot of sense lately and I’m starting to tr lld

IV hops off from being on LLD to joining LLD's counterwagon, bringing the total down to six, where it has remained.

This happened in such a short span of time the mod never got a votecount which showed LLD as going to L-2.

The wagon on LLD formed over a large span of time, and its growth is far from explosive.

And the L-2 on her wagon lasted less than an hour. Less than half an hour, in fact. It lasted a grand total of five minutes, actually. And L-3 lasted a grand total of two hours. Two hours, over two pages--that was it. Two hours, two pages, above 6 votes; an entirety of the game at six votes.

The LLD wagon was most definitely not a fast wagon.

[mastina]

it got to like 8 votes without there even being a case.

This is a fine case of a technical truth that is, technically, true, but is a vast misrepresentation of the LLD wagon. I've just shown how the votes evolved there--it was very much not a "run LLD up to L-2" thing; she's been, consistently, at 5-6 the entire time her wagon has existed. She basically never was at L-2. Oka never voted her with the intention of keeping her there and the vote was removed five minutes later as proof of this.

[mastina]

i dont enjoy doing this but people see big blocks of text and become hypnotized without critically analyzing them for actual value

Yeah the thing is tho: people are critically analyzing them for their actual value, and then pointing out the flaws in them and the things they agree with, by and large. (I admittedly could do better on the latter; I'm mostly not doing enough to show where I agree, with too much explaining what I disagree with.)

[mastina]

does LLD still think mastina is scum or is this a playstyle shading type thing?

Hot take: LLD mentioned in the scum thread toying around with the idea of pushing mastina as scum and tw mistakenly believed that was something she had done so posted this unaware LLD never had pushed me.

[mastina]

-the wagon feels hardstuck and that makes me think its a situation like last game where scum are just refusing to bus

I mean it got to E-2
and I know I'm one of those refusing to vote LLD but I'm town so it's harder for me to buy this reasoning

With me having shown and demonstrated why this, tho technically true, is a massive misrepresentation of the wagon: do you still stand by this defense?

[mastina]

LLD, I don't really think it's xtoxm this game.

LLD needs to push through a wagon on a town player that is reasonably strongly considered town, but is a weak enough player who is just low-hanging-fruit enough to be a push that can actually work.

This is a staple of her scumgame. That's why she was pushing hercule and that's why she's now pushing Xtoxm; both players fit that mold. Of townread players that're weak enough to be mislynch bait that she can push through.

[mastina]

so titus whatcha going to do about the current "tvt" gamestate then?

Hint: this is actually a significant part of why I am scumreading Titus here.

[mastina]

Chums

mastina
Xtoxm
Okapoka
Dannflor
hercule
DrippingGoofball
Winter flakes
InnocentVillager
Hopkirk
Almost50

Umms

Titus
LLD
Cephrir
Ythan

Scums

the worst
AGar
Dunnstral

Literally the only chum I disagree with in that list is OkaPoka; I otherwise think it is 100% town. (Heck, Oka could be town, it's just he's much better in the 'Umms' category imo.)

I'd swap him with Ceph, honestly, since I do think Ceph belongs in town.

I legit feel a good poe would be {Titus, LLD, OkaPoka, Ythan, the worst, maybe-AGar}. (I don't really think Dunnstral is scum.)

Those 5.5 I do think contain 3-4 scum. The exact combo of scum, I'm not sure on, but I can say that I still think Titus is scum here and that LLD is scum here and the remaining 3.5 are more in flux.

[mastina]

why is she scum? a lot of your posts are basically lld is scum so therefore lld is scum. what would a town!lld do vs a scum!lld?

I don't have the energy to scumcase LLD right now but it basically comes down to who she is pushing as well as the why. A town-LLD here would be pushing...I don't want to say "the hardest scum to eliminate", but kinda close to this. If the scumteam had any power-scum player, LLD would identify and push them, basically. That's not a good representation of it, like I said, I'm not exactly in the headspace to properly lay it out and explain it, but a town-LLD doesn't take the jjh approach of focusing on the easiest scum.

A scum-LLD takes a similar approach to the above, but instead of pushing a player who, if they are scum, is the hardest scum to eliminate, she pushes a player who is difficult, but not impossible, to eliminate, a player townread but who has enough exploitable flaws in their play to form a reasonably plausible scumread on them that has decent push behind it. hercule was such a player, and Xtoxm is also such a player. Players that, if they were to be scum (but aren't), wouldn't be easy per se but comparatively speaking are easier than other options.

[mastina]

Her posts have a lot of words but say nothing. It's particularly true of her increasing FoS of me. She recycles her claim that I'm scum but there's no rationale or reasoning behind that or much of her other reads. When people want help in reading me, she tries to sell them that an unreadable Titus is a scum!Titus. That's besides the fact that there is enough to get a weak read on me. The fact I have been unreadable is largely due to lack of content and life. Mastina has used my slow start to keep me in a low bin and not engage with any content of my postings.

Just gonna make a blanket statement and say that the only part of Titus's post here which is true is that I've not given my rationale/reasoning behind why she's scum--a fact that I have acknowledged on multiple occasions and fully admitted that, no, I have not, even though, yes, I know I need to.

That one thing Titus said in 1898? That was true!

The rest of it (me saying nothing, me not explaining my reads, me saying unreadable Titus = scum-Titus) tho? Not accurate even remotely.

[mastina]

Mastina, help me bus worst.

The problem is that worstie's the scumread of mine most likely to be wrong.

Doubly so IF LLD were town; the worst's chances of being town go UP with LLD town, rather than down.

i think anyone reading the thread could foresee that an xtoxm wagon was never going anywhere today

You say this, but you could say the same of hercule before LLD voted him--I think anyone reading the thread could foresee that a hercule wagon was never going anywhere today at the time of 325.

Nobody had voted hercule prior to that point; nobody was suspicious of hercule prior to that point; he was either not given a read or in the townreads of everyone. Nobody had him south of null prior to LLD's push on him. Nobody would've thought a wagon on hercule was viable at that time.

And yet, he got to L-2 at the peak of his wagon. So it clearly was.

And there's enough lingering suspicion on Xtoxm for similar to happen here.

[mastina]

well my theory is dgb didn't think it could get a lld flip today (herc looked inevitable) so when it committed to the character it doesn't know how to make an exit from it you know

You have this backwards: scum have the ability to make the exit (see also LLD bailing from hercule); town are less inclined to do so.

[mastina]

mastina's scum with TW. The moment I ask her to lim a scumread, she backs off the scumread.

There is one condition in which I would vote the worst:
The LLD wagon having fallen apart and the worst wagon being comparable in size to what the LLD wagon is right now.

Because the worst could be scum, and there's a decent chance he is especially if LLD is scum.

But he is also the scumread with the highest chance overall of flipping town; I've made this known for a VERY long time, it's in literally dozens of my posts. Pretending this is a new stance from me (not wanting to flip my weakest scumread and instead wanting to flip my strongest scumread) is doing you no favors, Titus.

You're literally pretending like you haven't played with me in spite of being the player who has played with me probably the most of anyone in this playerlist.

[mastina]

mastina's scum with TW. The moment I ask her to lim a scumread, she backs off the scumread.

There is one condition in which I would vote the worst:
The LLD wagon having fallen apart and the worst wagon being comparable in size to what the LLD wagon is right now.

Okay so the second condition has come true, tw stands at six votes, but the first hasn't; LLD still has five votes and I'm not going to join the wagon on my weakest, could-very-well-be-wrong scumread while there's still the much better (even if not in size) wagon on the is-definitely-not-wrong scumread.

If DGB and/or Xtoxm leave the LLD wagon, I'll vote the worst. But as long as they're both voting LLD, I'm sticking with them.

[mastina]

(I will also say that the way Titus has handled my slot is not her town meta btw. I can explain that, but I'm not sure where to start in describing the difference between Titus as town reaching out and Titus as scum. This is the latter, not the former, and pretty blatantly so, but I do realize it's something that requires background and history to help establish.)

[mastina]

show me why lld is scum other than she has an incredible scumrange and could be doing all of this because at least on mastina's end, i feel like a lot of her arguments are: well lld scum could do x,y,z

My argument isn't that LLD could do this as scum--it's that town-LLD wouldn't be doing what she's done and that scum-LLD would.

is LLD a purely poe thing

LLD is a combination of PoE, Burden of Proficiency on her (which she herself said to use!), ~wagonomics~, and this being her scumgame.

They are arguing "if we're all town, that would make LLD scum more likely, right?" when in truth, in a game this size, the odds that 3 townies can be wrong or misled by other factors is much higher than being presented.

There's a problem with that:

Look, you want to kill me? Burden of Proficiency me. Give me one day to decide who dies, and if they flip town, kill me.

Honestly I',m okay with being burden of proficiencied this game

I mean ltierally let me generate some reads, make a call on who is scum and if my scumreads keep flipping town, oopsies, fucking kill me.

You yourself said to burden of proficiency you.

So if your biggest pushes, on hercule and now Xtoxm, are on town, then by your own statement of being burden of proficiency'd...we're burden of proficiencying you.

So why are you trying to shift the argument into being "LLD's chances of being scum go up with three townies flipping just due to there being less townies", when you yourself said to BoP you on the townies you push flipping town?

[mastina]

I need you to explain why the bad pushes are bad pushes from LLD.

Basically, while LLD's towngame and scumgame are 95% identical and every game is different so no two LLD games as either alignment are going to be literally the same, LLD as town pushes slightly different targets.

I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption.

Of course it's not unreasonable--do you think LLD as scum, skilled player she is, wouldn't have stances that are passably reasonable?

LLD as scum is going to make stances that are passably reasonable, but those stances are going to have inherent flaws to them and those flaws are ones which you can use to identify her as scum.

feeble xtomx vote

This is kinda valid

actually yeah
this is the best argument against LLD so far
the vote is terrible even if I can kinda twist my head and understand it

How many excuses will you make for LLD before you realize she's not town?

[mastina]

^so why do you think dgb is town?

Earnest belief in a wrong read.

If Titus were town by the way, this would be her read on me.

Titus is intimately familiar with how I play the game; she knows this is not my scumgame and that this is my towngame through and through. She would know not only a loose idea of why I'm pushing LLD (even if she disagreed with the push), but ALSO know why I'm pushing

her

. She would have reached out to me, say something akin to the effect of "mastina I know where you're coming from but you're wrong" to me, and then tried to work with me, ask for me to trust her, ask for me to work with her, try to sway me.

Instead?
Titus opens the game shading me. No attempt to see where I was coming from, and instead a rather unflattering and blatantly inaccurate portrayal of my posts at the time. She blatantly opens with, instead of an attempt to understand me (or even her instantly knowing where I am coming from), a strong shade of me that she should know was not reflective of reality.

And then she says nothing about me again. She ignores my posting until literally 28 posts of hers later. She didn't address me, she didn't talk to me at all, over 28 posts, with her first post being shading of me and her next post being the polar opposite of a reachout, the polar opposite of trying to work with me. She didn't try to convince me she's town; she put up false bravado.

This is something I can prove with meta, too, it just takes a lot of time to gather the links to show this dynamic. It is a Titus-specific scumtell and specifically a Titus-mastina oriented one.

That's not the entirety of my Titus case, by the way. There's two additional points, both of which also I can prove pretty effectively with time, but I lack the energy to do so right now. The first is energy-levels. Titus this game has no energy, no passion, no life to her posting. It's flat, dull, mechanical, precise. You can contrast this to last game fairly easily, but given time I could prove that this tone is scum-Titus because I've countless games with both town Titus and scum Titus and can tell tonally that this is a scum-Titus who is largely uninvested in the game due to being scum.

The other point is that Titus is being a scum mediator. What's a "scum mediator"? Again, that's something which takes game links to help show. But basically, the short version is, Titus as town is a town mediator, who reaches out to players and tries to get them to work with her. This ties into points one and two as well, but basically Titus will, even on D1, even when struggling to keep up with the game, be providing good insight with actual stances backed by reasons and take rather strong opinions and reach out to others to work with them.

Whereas Titus as scum does the scum equivalent. She paraphrases the thoughts of others, to present them in a more presentable form. She says that players are town or scum, but she makes no true effort in trying to get the town to listen to her because she doesn't feel a need to.

Again--I realize I am not backing these claims up with proof, without the meta, and I want to write the proper case where I show these things over time.

But when I said I'm pretty damn sure Titus is scum this game.

I had some pretty damn strong reasons for it; I mean it when I say I have a borderline-soulread on her.

[mastina]

Can you stop answering for my scumreads? It's very frustrating.

For the record, the people defending LLD have been doing plenty of this, too--for instance, they said LLD was backing off of hercule before LLD actually committed to doing exactly that, and wrote a bunch about what LLD was supposedly doing before she actually did it.

I realize the people who leaped to LLD's defense and thought she was doing those things before she did them have at least some town with a chance for being all town. (Dann did it and he's town for instance.)

But I just felt like pointing out this is not at all an uncommon trend in this game.

[mastina]

can you explain the ceph townread more i don't see it and i'm seeing kind of the opposite

Aside from "Ceph doesn't feel the same way he did last game where he was scum"?

Depends.

Is "gut!" a valid explanation to you?

If so, then yes, I can indeed explain; gut!

If no, then explicitly no, I cannot explain, because it is purely gut.

(I will also say that the way Titus has handled my slot is not her town meta btw. I can explain that, but I'm not sure where to start in describing the difference between Titus as town reaching out and Titus as scum. This is the latter, not the former, and pretty blatantly so, but I do realize it's something that requires background and history to help establish.)

this would be useful.

Like I said, it'll require me to get a bunch of games and get a bunch of quotes to help really establish. But 2117 does a basic job of describing the basics. I realize it is not describing any of the interactions, I need to put in the work to show and describe it, but it's better than nothing.

[mastina]

-The paranoia Oka had about Mastina politically shifting her read on him to get him to vote LLD was very nuanced.

It may be nuanced but I'm not convinced it is nuanced in a way that is innately town. After all, anyone who uses the FL buzzwords is disproportionately likely to subscribe to the FL playstyle--including the false generation of this sort of 'nuanced' read.

-DGB linked a scumgame where LLD was being ragey scum. She feels less fake here, he can see her faltering on confidence of her read on hercule but isn't quite wanting to give it up (following up)

While LLD is less ragey this game, that is not a towntell. LLD is no more a chronic rager as scum than as town and she has plenty of rage-lite/free games as both alignments. Her faltering of confidence on hercule is something which I feel is more likely to come from her as scum with the way she handled it rather than as town. This one I in part am deliberately holding off from describing due to LLD not having posted the amount necessary for me to describe why I think this, but after LLD has posted more if you remind me about it, I will come back to this and explain exactly why I think that a town-LLD doesn't back down here or IF she does, the way she does so is entirely different from how she has done so here.

Basically it comes down to LLD doing something which looks town (oh right I forgot, in this game I need to use the buzzword and say LLD is doing something performative), rather than actually reacting the way she would as town. There's two ways I would expect her to be acting here if she were town, but LLD did neither, at least not yet.

[mastina]

VOTE: agar
your engagement with me in general doesn't have the slightest sense of actual engagement. It's just posturing

I have a slightly different take that's along the same lines; AGar's hostility this game feels over the top. I realize AGar was hostile last game in a manner similar to this game, but the more and more hostility I see from AGar this game, the more and more it feels like a deliberate caricature on his part; the more and more it's beginning to feel like he's deliberately playing to mimic, or at least channel, the hostility he held last game in a way that he knows will generate cheap, easy, early, towncred.

I don't know AGar at all; he probably will blow up at me for this post with a dressing down of me with a level of hostility matched by his posting thusfar. But I'm increasingly thinking the initial vibe I got of him being similar to last game was either just a personality thing or was him deliberately channeling the energy there and once he started to channel that energy, he didn't know how to stop.

[mastina]

this isn't a PoE world.

Isn't it tho? (I just spent 15 minutes looking for a quote where I remembered you saying something about solving the game through POE but I couldn't find it so might be mistaken, which would weaken my point from instead of being 'you yourself said it', to more of a generic philosophical debate. If you yourself had said it, no debate needed, I'd be right that this is a POE world with you yourself having said so, but with me unable to track it down and thus maybe mistaken, I'll settle for a generic philosophical debate.)

POE is literally the strongest tool available to the town, and multiple, widely townread, players share a VERY similar poe. Some are wider than others and most aren't identical, but a lot have more or less similar lists.

So I'd argue we very much

are

in a poe world.

[mastina]

Yo Mastina
Read this game regarding Titus

Are you...trying to prove my point in regards to Titus???

Because that game is immediately obviously Titus-town. It's her towngame immediately and transparently so, and I can point to the town factors that make her town which are utterly absent from this game.

[mastina]

Please do then

Town

For a start, an immediate vote and sorting which were absent from here.

But beyond that:

Not liking bob perfume and vax but that list contains at most 1 scum due to voting theory.

Not liking bob perfume and vax but that list contains at most 1 scum due to

voting theory.

go on

Perfume and Vax are not likely scum together because two scum piling on me is highly unlikely as I don't think I pose that much of a threat. Seems awkward. Vax and Bob are unlikely scum together because they both used the same tactic to create two different wagons. This type of approach draws attention to them both and makes it twice as likely to get caught. Bob and perfume are unlikely scum together because Bob's vote undermines Perfume's "serious" push by creating an alternative. Basically, they aren't acting in concert. [/end professor]

Not liking bob perfume and vax but that list contains at most 1 scum due to

voting theory.

go on

I get the sense just ignoring Titus will be best for the game regardless of their alignment

Why? Do you think my reads are bad? Why the heavy handed discredit?

Do you think my reads are bad?

I think they're indistinguishable from throwing darts at a board at the moment because you've offered up reasoning that doesn't seem relevant AND you're publicly explaining them all which combines for a nasty distraction in my opinion

Wait, you're problem is that I am explaining my reads so I should be discredited? But I'm probably town and you have no interest in working with me because of my explanations? #confused

Mistyx is likely town. I like Bob more, even if he's annoying me.

UNVOTE: Got what I wanted.

What was it that you wanted, exactly? ( ｰ̀εｰ́ )

Red, chara, jj, mistyx are fine
Titus claimed negative utility and I haven't figured out if I trust that yet
catboi rvs is now serious

Why are you suspicious of my claim? Why is catboi now a serious push? Why are Red and jj town?

VOTE: The Twins

Not that I disagree with this, but why? Does the red flip change your gamestate evaluation at all?

Why weren't the twins the cfd attempt?

Hahaha true that wagon did stall. But so did a Chara one and I have them as basically locktown, to play devils advocate

Chara has always been pretty obvtown. Chara was the CFD attempt that bypassed the twins.

Y'all can T v T. Meanwhile Perfume has been dodging this thread since we got out of RVS.

(Btw this is more in line with Titus being a town mediator--it's lower-effort than her normal town mediator, but there is a notable marked difference between her mediating that game and this game.)


I could go on and point out more of the town posting from Titus that game, but basically--I could instantly tell that Titus was town that game from posts like the above. It immediately was her as I know her. Lower-effort than previous eras of Titus, but still very obviously her as town.

This game she isn't that at all.

I majorly scumread mastina, who is shading me to ensure her wagon goes through on LLD.

In the mastina-Titus duo, I was not the one whose literal first content post in the game, whose second post in the game, was shading the other.

That honor is yours.

Scum are largely in the passive players like the worst and A50. mastina's fighting like hell to get vocal players eliminated because her partners aren't vocal.

This is a statement that is half-true. Scum

are

largely in the 'passive' players; Titus, the worst's slot, Ythan, and AGar all fit into that category pretty unambiguously. (Oka can potentially fit in there too depending on your view of his actions.) Heck LLD's drop in activity means she's borderline in the group as well.

But the scum are fighting to eliminate, by and large, players who're vocal because they don't have many options in the nonvocal players.

hmmm. It's not as much as I thought when I was writing it out but it still feels like you have a lot of empty confidence on multiple theories that sort of falls apart if any of them are kind of false

If something does go wrong, I'll reasses. Right now, I have my theory of the game I stand by.

A town Titus does not say this, by the way.

[mastina]

She's arguing at a player who isn't there and saying, and I quote
That I said to BoP me... and she is doing that by killing me before anything flips. Mastina is not so stupid she doesn't know that's fucking ass backwards.

I made a perfectly valid point that you're now attempting to side-step. Here's a series of events:

Look, you want to kill me? Burden of Proficiency me. Give me one day to decide who dies, and if they flip town, kill me.

Honestly I',m okay with being burden of proficiencied this game

I mean ltierally let me generate some reads, make a call on who is scum and if my scumreads keep flipping town, oopsies, fucking kill me.

You say to burden of proficiency you.

VOTE: Hercule

You strongly push hercule.

I do not think all of DGB/Xtom/Hercule can be town. I'm not sure if there's more than 1 scum in it but I think they can't all be town this game.

You say that {DGB, Xtoxm, hercule} cannot be all town.

VOTE: Xtoxm

You vote Xtoxm.

question from auro:
were {dgb, xtoxm, hercule} to be all revealed as town, would this say anything about lld's alignment?

Xtoxm askes if DGB, Xtoxm, and hercule, the group you said could not be all town, was revealed as all town, what it'd say about your alignment.

No. They think those slots are hard town. So the argument is bad from its onset. They are arguing "if we're all town, that would make LLD scum more likely, right?"

when in truth, in a game this size, the odds that 3 townies can be wrong or misled by other factors is much higher than being presented.

Now note that they are possibly not all townies, too, but this logical conclusion they are trying to sell you is a one way conclusion and false from its very premise.

The only odds that increase for me to be scum if those 3 are all town is the fact that there are 3 less townies in the pool on literal odds drawing. Not more, not less.

And then you attempt to shift the argument to being, "if those three flip scum, it increases the odds I'm scum only because there's less town players alive".

Ignoring the previous, that you had asked to be burden of proficiency'd, and that you said Xtoxm/DGB/hercule cannot all be town. So if Xtoxm/DGB/hercule were all revealed to be town after you said they weren't, and after you said to burden of proficiency you...it would significantly increase the odds that you're scum.

Basically, you're trying to rewrite history here.

[mastina]

@Mastina
Do you really think this is a scum bluff? I just find it too hard to believe it is

Absolutely, yes. That language is incredibly common from LLD. Is it inherently scum, no, LLD can do it as town, too. But I happen to think that in this case it came from scum.

y not?

Basically it boils down to Titus's approach to the game. Titus will stand by her theories, but her theories are subject to the evidence; they can and will shift if she is given strong reason to reassess. Them only shifting if "something goes wrong" implies a level of confirmation bias that Titus as town wouldn't have, basically.

Btw I wanna post a slightly ~spicy~ take, but it's not truly spicy so much as it is a slight update:

[mastina]

hercule/Luca Blight
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
Dannflor
DrippingGoofball
Xtoxm

jjh927
Almost50
Cephrir
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
Dunnstral


the worst/Bell

Ythan

OkaPoka

AGar

Titus
Lady Lambdadelta

Townbloc, strong townreads, scum poe candidate that I don't think is scum, scum poe candidate that if any of my scumreads is wrong replaces them, assuming-fourth-scum but not by much, scumread, strong scumreads.

For the reads south of null, the groupings are approximately:
{Titus, LLD} {AGar} {Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst}

The Titus/LLD group has basically no doubts that they're scum.
The AGar scumread is forming more and more the more and more he posts.

When it comes to the other three:
OkaPoka I am thinking is the final scum for a D1 scumteam callout of Titus, LLD, AGar, OkaPoka, for maybe a stupid reason but a reason nonetheless: we haven't heard from MathBlade at all aside from a singular, probably pregame, mention of my readslists being how to townread me. This, in spite of MB having started to be involved last game and him having ample opportunity to have followed along this game and given feedback. OkaPoka has apparently never consulted MathBlade on Titus in spite of Titus being MathBlade's sibling. Yes, I am fully aware that being siblings doesn't mean he can soulread Titus; he can be wrong on her. But he should still have good insights onto her and have formed, right or wrong, a stance on her, yet we've got radio silence from him.

This also extends to various aspects, such as Oka's push on me. Did OkaPoka not consult his team when he had the 'thought' that I was being political? Surely MathBlade would've had something to say about that theory even if he wasn't following along. Overall, OkaPoka hasn't seemed town to me and the cementing factor as fourth scumread is the lack of his teammate's feedback.

Ythan is out of the four because Oka is in, but if I am wrong on my scumreads of any of the four, he goes in. I realize that he's not as town as he was last game. He doesn't resonate town, and his vote on LLD is probably nai regardless of LLD's alignment. So he very easily could be scum, I just have four players I think are scum more than him.

the worst's slot easily could be scum. worstie was underwhelming (tho him replacing out could mean he was aware of this and decided to replace out due to this, something that I think he'd do regardless of his alignment but actually slightly more likely if he's town), and Bell so far isn't astonishing me, either. The slot even has potential partner-tells with LLD.

The reason I don't think the slot is scum tho is a combination of a much much stronger anti-associative with Titus (if Titus flips scum like I believe she will, her push on the worst is almost definitely not a bus), along with minor gut on Bell, in that while he's underwhelming, I still think him town. He's still in the poe, but he's the least likely in the poe to be scum imo.

[mastina]

MOD: for the rest of this month, I will be heavily V/LA every Friday/Saturday until the end of the month. For this week specifically, I will be V/LA until Saturday.

I've got lifeguard training to go to. (Special coronavirus recert for those whose certs unavoidably expired during quarantine due to lack of ability to do recert classes.) I've been trying to make headway in the pre-course homework that's due on the first day of class, but I not only started it too late (a week later than I had planned), but also am progressing far slower than I intended (I made the reasonable, but wrong, decision to prioritize sleep over homework) and far slower than I anticipated (when I am tired, I do the homework much slower so it takes longer to complete which was why I thought prioritizing sleep would help, except...I'm still absurdly tired, just with less work done).

I'm aware of the bad timing, but it's somewhat unavoidable; this IS a hugely important rl thing for me and IS my priority. If I had my way I wouldn't be posting content tonight, but given deadline's proximity and that I'm nearing prod range I feel obligated to since I very much have zero desire to be replaced.

you didn't even get my team's full reads of last game until start of this game.

In my defense: I was a replacement at the very end of last game--and at the very end of last game, you WERE sharing your team's input fairly often. That being my experience, can you really blame me for thinking its absence here contrasts with last game?

[mastina]

lolsolve rn is something like {Titus, dunnstral, Cephrir, AGar} don't @ me

I mean replace Dunn and Ceph with Oka and LLD and you get my D1 lolsolve.

haven't looked into this too heavily but i also think that agar has been similar this game from the portions i remember

I thought so, too--I thought that the AGar of this game was similar to the AGar of last game. But just like plenty of others have thought similar of Ythan, "I thought Ythan was similar to last game where he was town but the more and more I see the less and less I think Ythan is town", and similar, I have those thoughts of AGar:

Yes, he did appear similar to me. But his posts feel like they are exaggerated in a way they were not last game. He feels different from last game in spite of the superficial similarities. His rage is there just the same with abrasiveness all the same, except this game it feels even stronger, even exaggerated. He feels more forced this game than last, and his takes feel weaker than they were last game.

[mastina]

MOD: for the rest of this month, I will be heavily V/LA every Friday/Saturday until the end of the month. For this week specifically, I will be V/LA until Saturday.

I've got lifeguard training to go to. (Special coronavirus recert for those whose certs unavoidably expired during quarantine due to lack of ability to do recert classes.) I've been trying to make headway in the pre-course homework that's due on the first day of class, but I not only started it too late (a week later than I had planned), but also am progressing far slower than I intended (I made the reasonable, but wrong, decision to prioritize sleep over homework) and far slower than I anticipated (when I am tired, I do the homework much slower so it takes longer to complete which was why I thought prioritizing sleep would help, except...I'm still absurdly tired, just with less work done).

I'm aware of the bad timing, but it's somewhat unavoidable; this IS a hugely important rl thing for me and IS my priority. If I had my way I wouldn't be posting content tonight, but given deadline's proximity and that I'm nearing prod range I feel obligated to since I very much have zero desire to be replaced.

(Btw pagetopping this. I'm still trying to keep up with the game, but if you expect lucidity, you're not going to get it. I almost typed "AGar feels superficially different from last game in spite of the superficial similarities" before I realized that was a tiredposting mistake and fixed the sentence; expect similar tiredposting slipups in phrasing for the rest of tonight and for me to be utterly unable to voice anything resembling true reasons. Beyond the normal levels for me. Like I said: I am really, really tired; sleeping isn't working in keeping me lucid. I just have no choice because of prod timers and deadline but to try in spite of my tiredness.)

[mastina]

Vote Count 1.19

Ythan

(8):

OkaPoka

, Luca Blight, Dannflor, Cephrir,

Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar

, innocentvillager

Lady Lambdadelta

(5): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, jjh927

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, Bell

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

Not Voting

(1): Almost50

My problem with the Ythan wagon: who're his scumbuddies?

If you believe that the DGB/Xtoxm/mastina core is all town, who's left to be Ythan's scumbuddies?
jjh? I townread him pretty strongly.
Dunnstral? Plausible except I townread him.
Bell? Plausible I suppose.
Winter Flakes? Plausible but I townread him.
Hopkirk? Absolutely not, he's locktown.
Almost50? Almost certainly not, as he's strongly town.

For the Ythan wagon to be pure or mostly pure tho, you have to believe 2-3 of those names above are scum.

Sure, 1 of them is possible, albeit I'd argue not very probable, with 'plausible' being the best for some.
But 2? Far less likely.
3? Almost certainly not.

So the Ythan wagon reeks of having at least one, if not multiple, scum on it.

It should say something that

literally all four of my scumreads

are on the wagon.
Three of them having joined back to back to back with the wagon basically forming overnight.

If y'all don't realize the issue with that, you're basically blind and/or delusional.

While Ythan could be scum (I get it, I really do, I'm right there with you with seeing the scum aspects of his play), the fact that I scumread literally half of the people on the wagon makes me doubt he'll actually flip scum. And if he does, he was heavily bussed.

[mastina]

I'd actually be very happy to vote Titus too if someone suddenly has a compelling town case for Ythan

-Who're Ythan's scumbuddies?
-The Ythan wagon is a literal example of an overnight wagon. While it had votes before, it exploded in size literally overnight.
-The Ythan wagon is a counterwagon to the LLD wagon; the fact that all four of my scumreads voted on it, three of them back to back, makes the wagon composition highly suspect.
-The Ythan wagon reeks of being an end of day compromise, where nobody townreads him. But because literally nobody townreads him, that means he isn't being defended by scumbuddies.
-Because he isn't being defended by scumbuddies, the choices are: either apathetic scum (admittedly, possible given the players off his wagon and not on LLD), bussing-scum (admittedly, possible given the number of scumreads on the wagon), or not-scum.

Is this a particularly compelling towncase for Ythan given we're near end of day and flash-wagons form on players regardless of those players' alignments, scum in the last 1-2 years are usually apathetic and rarely strongly defend their scumbuddies anymore, and that Ythan's play is something I find impossible to defend so scum may also find impossible to defend? Probably not, but it should at least give you some pause to think it over.

[mastina]

don't see why the reaction to ythan's AtE spew is to wagon titus, if anything its time to bag and tag ythan. he's not really doing anything but AtE, like complaining about day length and then voting me, criticizing iv's quixotic attempt to reach out for him, i mean like cmon

For the record the fact that both AGar (scumread #3) and OkaPoka (scumread #4) are leaping to the defense of Titus (scumread #2) does bolster my confidence in my D1 solve.

(For a refresher, that's LLD-Titus-AGar-OkaPoka.)

If so much as half of those reads are right, I feel like I've earned my redemption from last game.

[mastina]

Who has *very different* vibes from last game?

Titus from the onset. Seriously, read her posts last game where she was town and see if her posts this game have the same energy to them, the same tone to them. (Hint: they don't, on every level.)

OkaPoka overall.

AGar, the more and more I see.

the worst, altho I legit feel his replace-out may be a factor in this (that is, that worstie's rl stuff was what made him be different this game ultimately leading to his decision to replace out).

Cephrir, but in this case in a good way given he was scum last game.
hercule (now Luca), but ditto, given he was scum last game.
Xtoxm, also ditto, given he was scum last game.

I do admit that Ythan is also on that list tho. I just don't think he's scum given the nature of the wagon on him; it reeks of being scumdriven.

Your vote on him, IV's vote on him, and Cephrir's vote on him look town. The rest? Not so much. (Luca's is nullish tho I townread the slot.)

[mastina]

Ythan reaching 8 votes (E-2) then collapsing is a bad sign IMHO. If he was Town I think Scum would have been more inclined to at least get him to claim before they moved on.

This only works if you believe the people who voted IV but hopped off were scum tho:

Vote Count 1.19

Ythan

(8): OkaPoka, Luca Blight, Dannflor, Cephrir, Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar, innocentvillager

Vote Count 1.20

Ythan

(5): OkaPoka, Luca Blight, Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar

Do you believe that Dannflor, Cephrir, and/or innocentvillager are scum? Because those are the three who hopped off.

I do not believe that.

Ergo, if scum did indeed hop onto the Ythan wagon (which I strongly believe they did), they...are currently

still

on the Ythan wagon.

"Coincidentally", all four of my scumreads remain on that wagon.

I wonder why?

[mastina]

"Coincidentally", all four of my scumreads remain on that wagon.

(Yes, I am aware both that the statistical chance of catching all four scum on D1 is just about as equal as the statistical chance in today's apathetic-scum meta of all four scum being on one counterwagon. Which is to say, statistically speaking, generally, not probable and even not plausible. However,
1: In this specific game, given the dominant wagons on LLD and now Titus, I believe that scum have enough pull where they don't want to lose a member on D1 and would resort to drastic measures such as mutually defending each other and mutually voting together in the hopes of one of them not going down, and,
2: Even if not all four are scum, I guarantee you that 2-3 of them

are

. So while I personally think all four are scum right now, it's fully possible there's 1 town in them, maybe maybe MAYBE even two. But there's still 2-4 scum in those four, so I feel like my point still holds. Scum don't want a D1 scum elimination here and are actively working to avoid one from happening.)

[mastina]

"Coincidentally", all four of my scumreads remain on that wagon.

(Yes, I am aware both that the statistical chance of catching all four scum on D1 is just about as equal as the statistical chance in today's apathetic-scum meta of all four scum being on one counterwagon. Which is to say, statistically speaking, generally, not probable and even not plausible. However,
1: In this specific game, given the dominant wagons on LLD and now Titus, I believe that scum have enough pull where they don't want to lose a member on D1 and would resort to drastic measures such as mutually defending each other and mutually voting together in the hopes of one of them not going down, and,
2: Even if not all four are scum, I guarantee you that 2-3 of them

are

. So while I personally think all four are scum right now, it's fully possible there's 1 town in them, maybe maybe MAYBE even two. But there's still 2-4 scum in those four, so I feel like my point still holds. Scum don't want a D1 scum elimination here and are actively working to avoid one from happening.)

Oh I forgot 3: If Titus is scum, being a VCA master herself, she would actively work to subvert VCA, and thus, WOULD pull stunts like "all scum voting on a wagon" to fool people who do VCA.

[mastina]

mastina, who the fuck is going to defend a scumbuddy in ythan
We just came out of a game where scum double bussed xtoxm and the best they could do to defend xtoxm was to tmi him as town and eat the pressure onto another. No hard defense, a throwaway tmi
In fact the only reason why xtoxm lived was 3 people tming him town, two townies and 1 scum
You cant honestly think that ythan would be hard defended by scum as scum, esp after just witnessing last game

I mean that's basically my point.

There are exactly two possible worlds:
Ythan is scum, and no scumbuddy is going to defend him (optional, but presumed: with a high chance of at least one if not multiple scum bussing),
OR,
Ythan is town, with no scumbuddies to defend him because he's not actually scum (optional, but presumed: in which case scum are happy to have him be the elimination, and may be among his voters).

In both worlds, there is a high chance of scum being on his wagon. Since there's a high chance of scum being on his wagon regardless of whether he is town or scum, pointing out who the scum are on his wagon is nothing but beneficial, since scum should be there regardless of his alignment.

I think that's one too many, so I may have a townbeard in my SRs

For the record--this is once more not a Titus-town mindset. If Titus were town here with too many scumreads, it would trigger a reevaluation from her of the gamestate and her assumptions, not to mention her reads.

The fact that she knows how shitty my scumgame is and knows my town meta fairly intimately yet is insisting I am scum without reassessing that at all is one example of this, but it's very widespread.

I am telling you.

On every level--this is not Titus as town; this is Titus's scumgame.

I'm actually becoming more sure Titus is scum than LLD is scum (when I am pretty damn sure LLD is scum).

There was a world where Titus could be town...but the more and more from Titus I see, the more and more I realize that world just doesn't exist. (Basically, to explain this: certain normally-scum-indicators for Titus can, situationally, in specific circumstances, actually not be scum-indicators for her, and be either null or even situationally town for her in spite of generally being Titus scumtells. That's why Titus started as 80% scum rather than 100% scum; the remaining 20% was the possibility of Titus being in those situational circumstances. But the more and more Titus scumtells, with multiple different Titus-specific scumtells piling up over time, the less and less likely it is that this is her in those situational circumstances, and with the multitude of Titus scumtells, the chances of her being scum go up to nearly 100%. If I had to estimate, it'd be in the 99% percentile. I'm

that

sure this isn't Titus as town.)

[mastina]

I think that's one too many, so I may have a townbeard in my SRs

For the record--this is once more not a Titus-town mindset. If Titus were town here with too many scumreads, it would trigger a reevaluation from her of the gamestate and her assumptions, not to mention her reads.

The fact that she knows how shitty my scumgame is and knows my town meta fairly intimately yet is insisting I am scum without reassessing that at all is one example of this, but it's very widespread.

I am telling you.

On every level--this is not Titus as town; this is Titus's scumgame.

I'm actually becoming more sure Titus is scum than LLD is scum (when I am pretty damn sure LLD is scum).

There was a world where Titus could be town...but the more and more from Titus I see, the more and more I realize that world just doesn't exist. (Basically, to explain this: certain normally-scum-indicators for Titus can, situationally, in specific circumstances, actually not be scum-indicators for her, and be either null or even situationally town for her in spite of generally being Titus scumtells. That's why Titus started as 80% scum rather than 100% scum; the remaining 20% was the possibility of Titus being in those situational circumstances. But the more and more Titus scumtells, with multiple different Titus-specific scumtells piling up over time, the less and less likely it is that this is her in those situational circumstances, and with the multitude of Titus scumtells, the chances of her being scum go up to nearly 100%. If I had to estimate, it'd be in the 99% percentile. I'm

that

sure this isn't Titus as town.)

(Pagetopping this.)

[mastina]

- A wagon hitting E-2 and then falling apart *for no apparent reason* and another wagon springing up is alarming.

Funny, I don't recall you raising this concern about the hercule wagon (which did hit L-2 at some point albeit not listed in an official VC) or the LLD wagon (ditto).

[mastina]

yeah she sure is out here using every tool at her disposal by doing nothing

Doing nothing is working for LLD tho, due to what amounts to wifom + sorta-BoP + "too scummy to be scum":
"LLD is a good scum player, LLD is doing nothing, LLD as scum surely wouldn't do nothing thanks to being a good scum player, therefore, LLD is town".

Ignoring the fact that LLD is a good scum player who is flexible and smart enough to read the gamestate and know when to do nothing.

If doing something gets you scumread and earns you votes and/or places BoP on you, yet doing nothing gets you slaps on the wrist with people who scumread it having to pull out hair to convince others and makes people hesitate and makes people defend you and makes people BoP you as being town and makes the wagon on you stall.

If doing something puts you in danger yet doing nothing can keep you out of it.

Then doing nothing is legitimately genuinely the smart play.

And LLD is doing nothing here, because it is the best way to keep her wagon from gaining momentum.

When scum are in the spotlight due to doing things, it places scrutiny on them; when scum stay out of the spotlight by playing more passively, it reduces the scrutiny because simply put: there's less material to work with.

[mastina]

she's not powertowning true she's also not powerwolfing she's just powernothing

Which alignment benefits from doing nothing?

Town doing nothing leaves no lasting legacy.
Scum doing nothing leaves less damning associatives.

Which of those two do you think benefits more from power-nothingness?

Y'all are saying LLD is a good scum player, y'all have recognized that LLD is intelligent as scum, y'all have recognized that LLD is flexible in her play especially as scum. So why is the thought of "LLD made the strategic call to do nothing as scum because she believes that gives her scumteam the best odds of victory" such a hard concept for you to grasp?

[mastina]

but like every 24 hours we get a flash and then its like the simpsons bush gif

Notably.
The LLD wagon has remained a constant throughout the day through all of those.
The hercule wagon was a wagon that formed around the same time as the LLD wagon. While technically the LLD wagon was a counterwagon to the hercule wagon, the two wagons were dueling for quite a long time. It wasn't as if the sudden formation of the LLD wagon caused the hercule wagon to instantly collapse; it took days upon days for the hercule wagon to dissipate, so the hercule wagon I am counting as basically an LLD counterwagon.

There was a DGB counterwagon to LLD that formed.
There was a small Hopkirk counterwagon to LLD that formed.
There was a the worst counterwagon to LLD that formed.
There is the Ythan counterwagon to LLD that formed.
I'd call the Titus wagon to technically be a counterwagon to Ythan rather than a counterwagon to LLD, but technically the LLD wagon still being around at the time means that technically the Titus wagon counts as a counterwagon to LLD.

Am I forgetting any other wagons that have cropped up?

The LLD wagon has been consistent, and yet the entire game, there has been counterwagons to it to try and desperately prevent a D1 LLD fade.
While all of these wagons have town in them and many of them aren't driven by scum, there's been a fairly clear pattern in voting where scum were at minimum happy to let the counterwagons happen and in many cases supported them.

Ask yourself--how many of these counterwagons had strong pushback?
The hercule wagon? Maybe, especially from me, but that wagon lasted for a huge amount of time.
The DGB wagon? Who aside from me was pushing back against it?
The Hopkirk miniwagon? Nobody pushed against it that I can recall, altho I will admit that even I didn't mostly due to it being comparatively small.
the worst's wagon? I think that wagon had zero pushback to it.
Ythan's wagon? I'm the closest one to have given pushback to it and even I couldn't in good faith push back strongly against it.

The one and only counterwagon with any real pushback has been the Titus counterwagon.
Maybe because Titus is actually scum and scum don't want to save LLD by condemning Titus.

The fact that every non-Titus/LLD wagon has had basically almost no pushback should be a red fucking flag.
Whereas the LLD and Titus wagons have in common strong pushback against them.

[mastina]

I don't agree that Ythan looks townie, but I'm at a point where is the majority of [Dunn, Dann, Ceph, Agar] are voting somewhere, I'm just going to vote there.

You know what these names have in common?

Aside from the obligatory rule-of-

three

four of one of them (AGar) being scum, they're all...

(All of them are among the players hard-defending LLD, refusing to wagon her, and to a lesser extent, dissuading others from voting Titus. They're players who, by and large, are largely influencing the game particularly Dann/Ceph and yet their stances are ones that will guarantee a town elimination on D1 due to their adamant refusal to accept the simple truth of reality that, yes, LLD is in fact scum here and so too is Titus.)

[mastina]

haha im gonna feel guilty if we miss now i'm so not used to succeeding

You're literally advocating hard for a wagon on one of the towniest slots in the game (DGB) rather than accepting that the obvious scum who aren't even trying to hide that they're obvious scum because people like you are letting them get away with it, are in fact obvious scum not bothering to even try and hide it because they've no need to.

At least {Bell, Ythan} have a theoretical chance of flipping scum. I currently don't think they will, but I can't really defend them because I see the scum in them and acknowledge the very real chance that if my scumreads aren't perfect, there's a high chance for them to be scum.

But DGB is never flipping scum here and it is in fact one of the greatest threats to the scum; eliminating it D1 is literally taking the scum's almost-assured N1 nightkill away from them and doing their work for them, freeing them up to do their N2 nightkill on N1 because they don't need to eliminate DGB anymore.

I basically guarantee you; let DGB live, and unless the scum fear a protective role on it, they're gonna kill DGB.

[mastina]

i guess will just pray you guys are right and my analysis this game has just been way off and reset tomorrow if this hits scum

And when it turns out your analysis was dead on the money, what then? Do you do what should've been done on D1 and eliminate LLD/Titus?

Because you should.

I have fairly good reasons for thinking AGar is scum and I

do

think that, if my read on the gamestate is right, then towning it up be damned, OkaPoka is the fourth scum in spite of how he looks town. (OkaPoka looks like deepwolf scum this game. He is very obviously power"town"ing, but the stances he keeps insisting on furthering are very much pro-scum which means he is probably the scum's highest-effort, deepest of deep deepscums and not actually town. The scum who looks the most town, but still scum thanks to advocating for pro-scum stances essentially the whole game. Scum who dabbles in town stances, but doesn't commit to them, sticking to stances that help scum overall, just faked to look like an organic trajectory where he naturally evolves his thoughts from the protown ones into the proscum ones. In other words. Powerwolfing.)

[mastina]

i guess will just pray you guys are right and my analysis this game has just been way off and reset tomorrow if this hits scum

And when it turns out your analysis was dead on the money, what then? Do you do what should've been done on D1 and eliminate LLD/Titus?

Because you should.

I have fairly good reasons for thinking AGar is scum and I

do

think that, if my read on the gamestate is right, then towning it up be damned, OkaPoka is the fourth scum in spite of how he looks town. (OkaPoka looks like deepwolf scum this game. He is very obviously power"town"ing, but the stances he keeps insisting on furthering are very much pro-scum which means he is probably the scum's highest-effort, deepest of deep deepscums and not actually town. The scum who looks the most town, but still scum thanks to advocating for pro-scum stances essentially the whole game. Scum who dabbles in town stances, but doesn't commit to them, sticking to stances that help scum overall, just faked to look like an organic trajectory where he naturally evolves his thoughts from the protown ones into the proscum ones. In other words. Powerwolfing.)

Oh I lost my train of thought here, sorry.

This post was meant to say, "AGar I have good reasons for thinking is scum and if my read on the gamestate is right, him looking town be damned, OkaPoka is probably also scum, but I fully admit that my scumreads on these two are nowhere near the strength of my scumreads on LLD and Titus", in that when whatever mislynch we end up mislynching due to a refusal to eliminate LLD/Titus flips, you SHOULD go back to LLD/Titus and power-yeet them. Because while I could be wrong on Oka/AGar (even tho I think I can pretty clearly show why they fit as scum), I'm not wrong on LLD/Titus.

[mastina]

i will maybe look at this tmr and actually think about it more

On that note.
I realize it is doing preflip associatives on D1.

But I wanna ask for you to humor me, IV.

If Titus AND LLD were both scum, ignoring individual scumtell indicators, which players do you think would be the players who most strongly have passionately dissuaded us from wagoning those two?

It's not a long list: {OkaPoka, Dannflor, Cephrir} as incredibly vocal + {Agar, Dunnstral} as less vocal. Do you disagree with those five being the strongest opposition to an LLD wagon in particular, with a side of the Titus wagon? (Dannflor and Cephrir less so for Titus, but Oka/AGar moreso given that both Oka and AGar had an INCREDIBLY strong, immediate, negative reaction to the Titus wagon.)

Humoring me, and assuming that Titus and LLD both did indeed flip scum--would you be more on the same page as me in seeing why I think Oka and AGar are incredibly likely to be scum defending their scumbuddies?

Because if we get to later in the game. And players like DGB, Ythan, Bell, Luca Blight, etc., are revealed as town, and LLD and Titus are revealed as scum. Look back at the players who were so strongly steering the game towards eliminating those now-flipped-town and away from the now-flipped scum.

Oka and AGar will top the charts.

That aside from tells on them.

[mastina]

hercule/Luca Blight
Hopkirk
innocentvillager
Dannflor
DrippingGoofball
Xtoxm
jjh927

Almost50
Cephrir
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
Dunnstral


the worst/Bell
Ythan




OkaPoka

AGar

Lady Lambdadelta

Titus

Current readslist.
Townbloc, strong townreads, meh-reads (could easily be scum, but currently I think otherwise), likely-powerwolfing-deepscum, scumread, strong scumread, confscum.

[mastina]

Also, possible hot take:
Is it possible that the reason both LLD and Titus this game are underwhelming is due to burnout of recent scumgames from both of them?

I haven't read either of their recent scumgames to check their performance out there but food for thought.

[mastina]

(but honestly, i don't even know if your scumreads are that correlated)

They both are, and are not.

All four have reasons, independent of one another, to be scum; the scumread on Titus is in particular the strongest but there's also good reasons for LLD and AGar; the weakest of these is by far OkaPoka who is mostly little things.

But all four have reasons, correlated, intricately connected to one another, to be scum. The AGar-Titus-Oka trifecta in particular share a solid link, and the Titus-LLD-AGar voting bloc is also a definitive thing. They have been dead-set on protecting one another fairly strongly.

[mastina]

-i want Titus wagoned, I've expressed some reasoning but it's too nebulous and not concrete enough, and I don't want to case her (im lazy, this is no one else's fault)

Yup, I am equally guilty of this. I am well aware I have not given my case for why Titus is scum. It is my fault that I've yet to have done this. When I have the free time on D2, I'll try to get it done but I accept full fault for not having done the scum case on Titus today.

[mastina]

this is the exact scenario that i hate and scum take advantage of

A question tho:
Who do you think is taking advantage of the scenario/situation?

Because yes, the people doing so would be scum, but topping the charts for me would be LLD, Oka, and Titus for this.

[mastina]

what is your read of agar's terrible approach to me, considering this?

haven't looked into this too heavily but i also think that agar has been similar this game from the portions i remember

I thought so, too--I thought that the AGar of this game was similar to the AGar of last game. But just like plenty of others have thought similar of Ythan, "I thought Ythan was similar to last game where he was town but the more and more I see the less and less I think Ythan is town", and similar, I have those thoughts of AGar:

Yes, he did appear similar to me. But his posts feel like they are exaggerated in a way they were not last game. He feels different from last game in spite of the superficial similarities. His rage is there just the same with abrasiveness all the same, except this game it feels even stronger, even exaggerated. He feels more forced this game than last, and his takes feel weaker than they were last game.

VOTE: agar
your engagement with me in general doesn't have the slightest sense of actual engagement. It's just posturing

I have a slightly different take that's along the same lines; AGar's hostility this game feels over the top. I realize AGar was hostile last game in a manner similar to this game, but the more and more hostility I see from AGar this game, the more and more it feels like a deliberate caricature on his part; the more and more it's beginning to feel like he's deliberately playing to mimic, or at least channel, the hostility he held last game in a way that he knows will generate cheap, easy, early, towncred.

I don't know AGar at all; he probably will blow up at me for this post with a dressing down of me with a level of hostility matched by his posting thusfar. But I'm increasingly thinking the initial vibe I got of him being similar to last game was either just a personality thing or was him deliberately channeling the energy there and once he started to channel that energy, he didn't know how to stop.

So yes, I think he's scum.

[mastina]

Titus my main problem with you is you have these seemingly strong reads like LLD!town and the_worst!scum

but I haven't really seen you try to push these reads in any reasonably forceful way. I get not wanting to add noise to the thread but your actions don't seem to line up with what you're saying. Like, you've wound up on the same wagon as Bell, purportedly your strongest scum read. And as someone who self proclaims to pay a lot of attention to VCA, that feels off coming from you.

Like I would wall post about these qualms because I think it's a trackable pattern throughout your ISO of making these claims that I would think town!you should feel very strongly about in this current game state, but your actions are half hearted. Like you say you tried to get people on your side, but you never spent much time trying to get a wagon going on the_worst. Like you voted there, but a lot of the actual content you put out, like aligning VCA with DGB's reads, feels like busy work rather than anything that's actually trying to progress your view of the game.

And it seems you've kinda 'given up' now because everyone seems fixated on LLD regardless what you or anyone says, which is somewhat fair, but I haven't really seen you make a concerted effort to get the fixation off of her, even though you say you want to.

anyway I'm not gonna wall post because I figure it's better to directly engage you now that you're in thread

The funny thing is, this is basically half of my case on Titus, just from Dann's wording rather than my own.

[mastina]

That almost definitely needs to be workshopped into a different acronym.

Crazy fire drill--keeps the same letters and far less problematic imo.

[mastina]

UNVOTE: LLD
Mastina convinced me to unvote. All the names she shaded in her last post are town.

Ah yes, the unvote is totally because of me, and not because it came after implosion listed you as on the wagon so that you can point to that as "proof" that you were on the LLD wagon while reaping the benefits of not actually voting LLD. (Which is to say: making it harder to actually eliminate LLD, but paying lip service for future days where it will look like you were willing to even though it's self-evident that you're not.)

[mastina]

Wait I'm in PST too are you guys my neighbors

You already know I basically am.

(You're probably one of the few who actually has a clue where Snohomish/Monroe actually are. Most people would be considered geographically-gifted if they knew about Everett being a city and for that matter know that Olympia, not Seattle, is our capitol.)

[mastina]

Let's see what happens in the next 6-7 hours.

Inevitably, town mislynches because I'm not going to be around and I'm already on LLD and can't stop them from pushing through a shitty counterwagon to LLD.

And by the way: I am more sure than ever before now that LLD is scum. She's like...literally 1-2% below Titus, when Titus is legit at 99-100% scum.

[mastina]

lol I'm increasingly unsure Luca is town but that'll have to wait until tomorrow

Do an iso of Luca and that should remedy your fears.

The content from Luca is all solid, reasonable, and good. Luca's a fine example of quality > quantity. Luca Blight's posts are basically all really damn good, and when you see the growth and evolution and thought process on display in the iso, his townness shines through.

[mastina]

MOD: STILL BADLY V/LA DUE to SNOW KNOCKING OUT the INTERNET.
VOTE: Titus
I'm current up to N1 and saw the night's flips, but I am still badly restricted here.

[mastina]

THANK FUCKING GOD I'VE GOT THE INTERNET BACK NOW I CAN HAVE MY LIFE BACK AND BE ABLE TO PLAY MAFIA.

Here will probably be my mafia game priority, but, uhhhh...keep in mind that it's not just mafiascum that I was cut off from, I was cut off from ALL aspects of the internet. And my life on mafiascum, while a significant part of my life, is not the entirety of it. So I may not begin catching up immediately, but here's probably the first spot I will.

[mastina]

and Titus was right

It's easy to be right about "this is TvT" when you're scum.

I'd say that it's far, far more likely to find scum in the players who said DGB v LLD was TvT, than it is to find scum in the players who took a decisive stance.

[mastina]

Oh I forgot to mention; I'm multitasking right now, so I'll be extra slow.

and Titus was right

It's easy to be right about "this is TvT" when you're scum.

I'd say that it's far, far more likely to find scum in the players who said DGB v LLD was TvT, than it is to find scum in the players who took a decisive stance.

To wit:

I did not say it was TvT; I am town.
Hopkirk did not say it was TvT; he is town.
Xtoxm did not say it was TvT; he is town.
hercule/Luca Blight did not say it was TvT; that slot is town.
Cephrir did not say it was TvT (albeit unlike Hopkirk/Xtoxm/hercule/Luca/me, he was of the DGB-scum opinion); he is town.

Ythan I believe did not say it was TvT; he is unique in this list in being a scum candidate, buuuuuuuuuuuuuut, he's not scum with Titus+Oka, at the very least, so I am guessing he is town and if so, the trend continues.

Titus said it was TvT. She's scum.
AGar basically said it was TvT. He's probably scum.
OkaPoka basically said it was TvT; he's probably scum.
Winter Flakes did say it was TvT, but while I townread him, he's not locktown so could be scum.
Almost50 did say it was TvT, but while I townread him, he's not locktown so could be scum.

IV's a bit of an oddity; he preferred Titus yesterday, did take stances, but didn't think a scum flip was likely.
jjh is a bit of an oddity; he didn't think either DGB or LLD were the easiest scum to catch, but that's not calling it TvT per se.
(Dannflor is another oddity and exception to the general rule; he said it was TvT but we know he's town.)

Bell's hard to tell; he voted DGB and said that he wasn't going to vote LLD but it's hard to tell if he thought DGB was scum or not. Regardless, he has a decent chance of being scum.

Suffice to say: there is a trend overall.

Most of the players who called LLD v DGB townVtown, are in fact high candidates for being scum;
Most of the players who had a firm stance on LLD v DGB are very obviously town.

So any theory which goes "oh the people who were right on LLD v DGB being tVt are town" has it rats-ass backwards; having LLD v DGB as TvT is basically TMI on their part.

[mastina]

Anyway great job everyone that sucked ass can wait for mastinas apology tour

I realize that leading a D1 mislynch on a strong player is a severe blow to my credibility--but don't think that's going to cause me to back down from my other reads.

I actually feel like the LLD elimination on D1 was the best possible elimination there that we could get. Titus was better because Titus is legit not even bothering to hide that this is her scumgame, but I'm not sure we could've gotten her. DGB was thinking Titus was town, for instance, and I wasn't sure I could get Xtoxm's backing. I wasn't sure we had the numbers for Titus even though I was more sure of Titus being scum than LLD.

And an LLD elimination was higher-information than any other option.

It's for similar reasons that I can't really fault the vig for the shitty-ass shot on DGB. It was painfully obvious that DGB was town here--but objectively as one of the strongest D1 wagons alongside LLD and the end of day wagon to her, getting those who thought it wasn't TvT to be proven wrong is, ultimately, not terrible even if it's a bloody waste that caused one of our better PRs to die in spite of how DGB was an obvious protect even when wrong. (I am bitter about that shot, but I at least understand it and can acknowledge the benefits of the objective knowledge it garners.)

It was wrong, and we lost a player who is good at town from it. Two, thanks to the vig on DGB, three, thanks to no protective on either DGB/Dannflor succeeding. But

Spoiler: I made my stance on that very clear:

For the record, RE: Titus.
I normally give Titus a free pass on D1; I normally give Titus the benefit of the doubt on D1; I normally give her time, even in the events I am scumreading her; I normally am happy to work with her even if I am scumreading her, assuming she is cooperative and not arguing in bad faith and/or shading me and/or portraying my posts in a negative light.

This game, however, has the issue of be not being able to give that--I give Titus a pass on D1 by using what amounts to a variant of jjh's style, of "catching the easiest scum" on D1. With Titus not being the easiest scum in most games, that gives me the luxury of giving her space. But as I've already said, the jjh mold of "catch the easiest scum" doesn't work if there's no easy scum to catch, if every scum is a skilled scum player, which I suspect to be the case this game.

With no easy scum to catch, I cannot afford to be as lenient with Titus. And I scumread her. And on top of that, her first engagement with me wasn't a reachout; her first engagement with me looked like it was bad faith or shade or negative light. With her first interaction with me being in bad light, and me scumreading her, and with no easy scum to catch, all of that is why I'm not giving Titus the free pass I otherwise would, because, yes, I do think there's a fairly high chance that Titus is scum here.

My philosophy now is around just finding the easiest scum I can find on day 1

And what if the game has zero easy scum to find? What then?

I literally made posts detailing this problem.

ugh why is it so much harder to get reads this game than last game?

Well bluntly: because the people who rolled scum this game are better scum players.

You can't really say {Cephrir, hercule, Xtoxm, ABR} is a scumteam composed of the highest caliber scum players, now, can you? Most of the town caught Xtoxm and/or ABR, and while I failed on that front, I caught hercule and Cephrir when most of the town hadn't yet.

In this game if I am in any way remotely close to correct on {Dannflor, LLD, the worst, Titus}, if so much as 2 of those are correct as scum, instantly, the caliber of the scumteam this game is IMMEDIATELY an automatically-higher level than last game. In fact, "higher level" is a disservice.

Last game's scumteam in terms of strength in tiers would be solidly C-tier: not as bad as can be, but fairly bad.

In this game if so much as two of my scumreads are correct, that it automatically a MINIMUM of A-tier. The more I'm correct on, the closer it approaches to S-tier scumteam in caliber.

It is going to be harder to get reads in a game with an A-S-tier scumteam than in a game with a C-tier scumteam. Both because the scum are harder to identify, and because the scum are better at shading town players and making them appear scum. And to some extent, this effect is recursive. If town have a harder time finding scum and have an easier time suspecting town, the town look less town due to this. So it's a self-building cycle of difficulty: scum are harder to detect due to being better->scum are better at shading town->town struggle to identify scum and are more suspicious of town thanks to scum->town look less town due to scum being harder to detect and scum shading town->town continue to struggle to identify scum; etc.

You can instantly fix this by adjusting your perspective to account for this.

The moment you accept that the scum in this game have more top-tier players in them, the easier it is to identify the town in the weaker players and the easier it is to sort the top-tier players for who among them is well-performing scum.

with regards to bop
has a BoP ever been legitimately carried out? genuinely curious lol

Maybe in like the 2009-2011 era in like .01% of games.

But in general?

Yeah, it doesn't happen.

In this game in particular tho: it'd be almost impossible to give everyone who is a competent scumhunter a 'chance' to catch scum.
The list of players who I'd say could maybe, maybe, MAYBE not be included as "competent scumhunters who deserve the chance/'chance' to catch scum" is incredibly small:
MAYBE innocentvillager (tho IV's town here anyway, thus, not on the table); AGar; directly-Xtoxm (tho indirectly, Auro is in the list of competent scumhunters deserving the chance to catch scum and Xtoxm is Auro's proxy); Winter Flakes/Uncrowned; hercule; Cephrir; Ythan.

5-7 players, of 18, who can't use the "give me a chance to catch scum, and if I haven't, THEN and only then you can poe me".

That means of the 11-13 other players...literally all of them can use LLD's defense. "Don't eliminate me on D1. Give me a chance to catch scum. And if I don't within X days, then you can burden of proficiency me."
Titus can use that excuse; I could use that excuse; Auro through Xtoxm could use that excuse; Dannflor can use that excuse; the worst can use that excuse; OkaPoka and co can use that excuse; DGB can use that excuse; jjh can use that excuse; Almost50 can use that excuse; Dunnstral can use that excuse; LLD can and IS using that excuse.

At some point, you gotta accept that on D1, in order to actually eliminate scum, you're going to need to take a risk of depriving the town of a good scumhunter if the scumread is wrong. Because in those 11-13 players who are good scumhunters that deserve the chance to catch scum if they're town, there's going to be 1-4 scum (and I posit all four are, indeed, inside that group most likely).

There's 11-13 players who, if eliminated on D1 as town, deprive the town of a good scumhunter, but if those 11-13 players contain all four of the scum within them, it is still optimal to take that risk of eliminating a good scumhunter, so that the D1 elimination has a chance of landing on a player who is actually scum.

If we play safe and let every good scumhunter have a chance at catching scum on D1, then the D1 elimination will 100% guaranteed be on town.

I'd rather take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the reward of potentially eliminating scum, than not take a risk of eliminating a good scumhunter for the 'reward' of a guarantee of eliminating town.

Basically, let me summarize the possible outcomes for today:

1. We eliminate a player who doesn't have a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip scum.
   This is optimal, but improbable. I'm townreading all of the 5-7 players who fit this criteria. Even if I'm wrong in a townread on one of them, I would expect that grouping to have 0-2 scum, most likely 0-1. Failure is by far the most likely option, leading to...
   
2. We eliminate a player who doesn't have a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip town.
   D1 is mostly wasted, and the town is at a disadvantage due to all scum being alive. This is by far the most likely option if we refuse to take a risk.
   
3. We eliminate a player with a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip scum.
   This is a huge net win for us, and is by far the most likely outcome of us scumhunting effectively. The only reason to not aim for this option is because of fear of...
   
4. We eliminate a player with a longstanding reputation as an incredibly strong, often fairly solvey, town player. They flip town.
   This is, indeed, an ultimate feelsbadman moment. HOWEVER...While even if there's 4 scum in the 11-13 players who qualify for this, meaning, statistically speaking, a ~25% chance of hitting scum and ~75% chance of this outcome, that assumes blind elimination within the group. If we scumhunt, we can up this to be in the realm of 50-100% of hitting scum, ensuring that this doesn't happen.

Option one won't happen.
If we refuse to aim for option 3 out of fear of it leading to option 4, we will guarantee option 2 happens.

And I'd rather take the risk of option 4, if the reward is option 3, due to my belief that option 1 won't happen.

No matter who I pushed on D1, if they were town we were going to be losing an asset. LLD was town so we lost an asset. I made it no secret that this was possible; on D1s, I've got like a 75-25 town-scum pushing record on the read I push that day. And when it's the 75, especially on a strong town player, there is going to be an uphill battle to convince people that the rest of my reads are not shot.

And that comes down to what the information gained

does

tell us.

The information gained from D1/N1 tells me, by and large:
-Scum didn't care who got pushed in {Ythan, LLD, DGB, hercule} because all of them were town
-Players who took firm stances in the above and pushed hard are likely to be town, due to being the uninformed majority who didn't know they were wrong
-Players who didn't take firm stances in the above are more likely to be scum because they had no need to take a firm stance due to no scum being threatened
-The failure of the Titus wagon to gain momentum D1 is proof that it is not the same as the others, and the immediate defense there from AGar/Oka is scum-indicative

So yes.
I am sticking to my Titus vote.

[mastina]

Vote Count 1.6

hercule

(7): Lady Lambdadelta, Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst, Dannflor, Dunnstral, Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(5): DrippingGoofball, hercule, Hopkirk, innocentvillager, Xtoxm

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

Dannflor

(1): mastina

Almost50

(1): Almost50

Not Voting

(2): Titus, AGar

For instance, let's look here.
LLD was town.
hercule was the major wagon here.

If hercule were scum, who are the scum pushing LLD?

It wasn't DGB.

Do you think {hercule, Hopkirk, IV, Xtoxm} as a group has 2-4 scum in it? For hercule to be scum and scum to push a counterwagon to him, this must be the case. (Because by the time Ythan joined the LLD wagon, the hercule wagon had collapsed.)

Vote Count 1.9

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Hopkirk, innocentvillager, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan

hercule

(3): Lady Lambdadelta, the worst, Dunnstral

Hopkirk

(3): Almost50, Cephrir, Dannflor

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

innocentvillager

(1): Titus

Not Voting

(3): AGar, OkaPoka, hercule

LLD was the dominant wagon; LLD was town. With LLD as town and LLD as the dominant wagon, scum could be anywhere right here.

Vote Count 1.13

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, hercule, Hopkirk

DrippingGoofball

(5): OkaPoka, Dunnstral, Dannflor, Cephrir, the worst

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Dunnstral

(1): innocentvillager

innocentvillager

(1): Titus

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

The first DGB counterwagon to LLD forms, but both were town. As a result, scum could be anywhere; it doesn't matter where they are at this point in time.

Vote Count 1.14

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, Luca Blight, Hopkirk

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Dannflor

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, the worst

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Dunnstral

(1): innocentvillager

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

The worst counterwagon to LLD forms. Bell's alignment is unknown here, but the LLD wagon doesn't take off here--if Bell is scum, why did the wagon on LLD not grow in spite of scum now being threatened? The LLD wagon has the exact same six players on it. This implies that Bell might be town, and that scum can be anywhere they want to be.

Vote Count 1.16

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, Dannflor, innocentvillager

Lady Lambdadelta

(4): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan

DrippingGoofball

(3): Dunnstral, the worst, OkaPoka

Hopkirk

(1): AGar

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

Not Voting

(2): Luca Blight, Almost50

In fact, the response to the worst's wagon is the LLD wagon

shrinking

rather than growing. Another sign that Bell may not be scum.

Vote Count 1.18

Lady Lambdadelta

(5): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, jjh927

Bell

(2): Winter Flakes, Titus

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, Bell

Titus

(2): innocentvillager, Dannflor

Ythan

(2): OkaPoka, Cephrir

Hopkirk

(1): AGar

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

mastina

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

Not Voting

(2): Luca Blight, Almost50

Vote Count 1.19

Ythan

(8): OkaPoka, Luca Blight, Dannflor, Cephrir, Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar, innocentvillager

Lady Lambdadelta

(5): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, jjh927

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, Bell

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

Not Voting

(1): Almost50

The Ythan wagon forms basically overnight.
Again, ask: if Ythan was scum, placed to L-2...where are his scumbuddies? Why aren't they trying to mount a counterwagon? We know that LLD was town and DGB was town and both were viable wagons. The wagons on both could've easily gone through if scum pushed them there and scum had no reason to not do so if Ythan was scum...

...But scum had no reason to do so if Ythan is town. If Ythan is town, again supported by this votecount, then scum could continue to be wherever they wanted to be.

Vote Count 1.20

Ythan

(5): OkaPoka, Luca Blight, Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar

Titus

(4): Dannflor, jjh927, innocentvillager, Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(3): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, Bell

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

OkaPoka

(1): Ythan

Not Voting

(1): Almost50

And here there was a Titus wagon, but notably: this was its peak. It never got larger, even though there was now no dominant wagon: the Ythan wagon was falling apart, the DGB wagon fell apart, the LLD wagon was down to the holy trifecta as literally the only three votes there.

Vote Count 1.22

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Hopkirk, Ythan, jjh927

DrippingGoofball

(6): Dunnstral, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Dannflor, Lady Lambdadelta, innocentvillager

Ythan

(4): Luca Blight, Titus, AGar, Bell

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

OkaPoka

(1): Almost50

But then the DGB and LLD wagons emerged again with the Titus wagon gone.

People talked about Titus as an option at deadline--but none of them followed through. Nobody tried a #yolowagon on Titus; nobody tried a CFD wagon on Titus; nobody tried an alternative wagon to LLD or DGB, unless you count the pitiful Ythan wagon.

For the people who had firm stances, this was understandable--I was terrified that if I took my vote off of LLD, it would condemn DGB to the D1 elimination. People with conviction not trying a #yolowagon is understandable: Me, Xtoxm, DGB, Hopkirk, Ythan, Cephrir, and LLD not trying? Makes sense.
Dannflor and IV DID try.

But overall, there wasn't much pushback from the players who had both as town.

[mastina]

DGB being dead town is really taking the wind out of my "you're all fools" line of posting i had planned today

Yes, well, ditto LLD, so we're even. LLD was town, DGB was town, we were both wrong--so now you gotta ask what those two being town means for those who had strong opinions on the alignment of them, versus those who didn't have a strong alignment of them, versus those who considered both to be town.

(Hint: one of these is a position that town is almost always going to be almost exclusively in; one of these is a position that is highly likely to be scum TMI; one of these three could be either town or scum. Given the options are "convinced it's SvT", "not sure on xVx", and "convinced it's TvT", take a guess as to which is which.)

[mastina]

i personally still like iv a bit although i will admit his eod was kinda ?????????
but dgb/lld both being town makes it feel like a wash now idk

Realtalk; why are people townreading Oka?

He's far more guilty of the things he's shading IV on imo.

[mastina]

I was targeted by a babysitter.

Oh?

And how, pray tell, are you aware of this?

[*]Dannflor, representing Whatever Farm Animal of War -

Town 3-shot Announcing Neapolitan

- Killed Night One

Because announcing is the only role that can allow for you to know you were targeted by the role and I am somewhat doubtful of there being an announcing babysitter, who decided to forgo their protective action in favor of attempting for the kill one.

Because literally nobody would protect Titus N1 over Dannflor, so a Babysitter could only target Titus to try get a kill there.

Depending on who claims that role come massclaim, it will make a huge difference in how I perceive it.
Nobody claims it? Titus is scum lying her ass off. A player who is at no risk of being the N1 nightkill claims it? Either scum fakeclaim or town with a huge massive overbloated ego who massively misread their importance compared to Dannflor and DGB. A player who was at high risk of being the N1 nightkill? A misplay imo but at least the one scenario where the claim is unambiguously town.

Granted, probably not too relevant--I am alive now, but I probably still get nightkilled here before massclaim anyway. I'm not a viable mislynch, I DO present a credible setup spec threat, and while my credibility may be shot, I don't need to convince the town to eliminate the scum: I just need to apply pressure to the scum while being obvtown to present the credible threat that if I live to lylo, the scum cannot eliminate me and I will vote scum and in lylo where they can't eliminate me, me voting scum spells their death. (Basically, I probably die before lylo, but as close to before lylo as scum can get away with. They're not killing me N2 due to my credibility being shot right now, but the longer I live the more positive rep I rebuild and the more pressure to them I will apply, so I'll still be dead before massclaim anyway, probably.)

[mastina]

Is it possible for babysitter to be a scum-aligned role?

As a killing role (especially in a game with a vig; the nasty implications of a vig vigging a scum babysitter would never pass a Normal review), it is not. The role must be town, if it is real. I will judge for myself if it is real based off of who claims it come the time they claim it (which, presumably, will be massclaim).

[mastina]

Is it possible for babysitter to be a scum-aligned role?

As a killing role (especially in a game with a vig; the nasty implications of a vig vigging a scum babysitter would never pass a Normal review), it is not. The role must be town, if it is real. I will judge for myself if it is real based off of who claims it come the time they claim it (which, presumably, will be massclaim).

Notably: announcing neapolitan can generate 3 innocents while being a huge town role. Potentially 4 conftown.
Vig is inherently conftown. 5 conftown.
A babysitter, if real, is potentially 6 conftown in the game.

That's not impossible, especially in an 18-player Large, since it's only 1/3rd of the playerlist as conftown, and there's great counterplay options. (Notable possibilities: lack of protectives, scum blocking role.)

However, it does stretch credibility to me. 1/3rd of the town as conftown is something that Isis couldn't possibly have missed. Do you think Isis allows it to go through, when on top of the 6 conftown you also have DGB as a possibly-seen-as-town extra? 7 hard-or-impossible-to-eliminate town players, out of 18, with Isis as a reviewer?

It's not impossible, because to some extent, that's a best-case scenario for the town and the NRG doesn't tend to balance for the extremes; a more marginal expectation is that while the Neapolitan is town enough to not be eliminated, it doesn't get 3 innos, reducing the conftown, and the tracker having been a scum role last game can be scum this game too, reducing the conftown even further.

So babysitter as town in this game isn't impossible.

But I have good reasons to be skeptical of Titus's claims to have been targeted by one.

[mastina]

Titus' didn't want the lld wagon. The wagons collapsed on dgb and lld and they went lld; both were town. This isn't a bad progression compared to someone who was tunneling on lld or dgb earlier?

This is rats-ass backwards; the players who were tunneling on LLD or DGB are in fact all pretty much locktown from it--instead, it is the players who insisted it was TvT that are by far the most likely to be scum, and Titus is chiefly prominent of them.

[mastina]

Titus didn't want the LLD wagon or the DGB wagon but didn't do anything else

Exactly; this is the difference between a town mediator and a scum mediator.
A scum mediator who says the wagons are both town has no incentive to actually make a serious effort to dismantle them; a town mediator who says the wagons are both town has strong incentive to try and find an alternative and push for the dismantling of them.

[mastina]

with our deadline?

Titus was doing nothing far before deadline hit, and LLD v DGB was hardly something specific to the last 24 hours of the day.

People sitting on the sidelines with a lack of conviction or convinced both were town had plenty of time prior to the deadline to try and shift the course of things. Most of them opted not to.

[mastina]

VOTE: mastina
Case me or die. I want to have this out. I may not respond right away but I want you solved. No more vague meta statements. If I am wrong on you, I should be able to see you having genuine logic here, even if wrong.

Titus is scum this game because Titus has seen my townplay for the last 3 years and almost never failed to identify it as being such--the last time Titus failed to identify my play as town was Restless Spirits, and she was largely peer pressured into that (sided with the people wagoning me) with a combination of wrong setup spec on her part. (Incidentally, that was also the last game where I misread Titus as scum when she wasn't, tho in hindsight, reading her play there in a dual iso, I can see her as town.) It was a read she wasn't sure on and she was hesitant to commit to it. She has a fairly strong record of reading me right.

Spoiler: Here's some examples

Townreading mastina's push on me to do VCA. Not sure how fruitful it is here, but mastina pushing an obvtown slot to be better is pretty obvtown.

I will vote mastina only if needed to progress the game. I think she's town here, but I am open to reassessing.

(This was pre-mason-reveal, post-mason-reveal obviously is different.)
Subject: Mini 2127 - Fairly Special [Game Over]

Mastina, can you join me on BP? I think you're wrong on Adorable but right on EP and BP. I also wouldn't locktown the hydra yet, but let's work together.

Subject: Alisae V Pine: Trees Apparently Make Good Treestumps

Legit do not ask me to vote mastina again this game. I am not doing that. Period. Handle it yourselves. I am only voting mastina if I get annoyed with HER not getting to scum.

Titus has a very very strong record of working with me when she is town...even when I have erroneously scumread her. I can point to a lot of examples where Titus reaches out to me regardless of my read, so if I'm spending this much time on it, why not go further?

Spoiler: examples of Titus reaching out to me

I'm tempted to claim to help clear up my beeboy/Panzer theory but I'd only feel comfortable if I got help solving them/we did something about it. Scum may already know my role

Mastina, Chemist please comment

Based on the KPN, I would recommend sorting this out. We're lynching Panzer and I am leashed to vig beeboy.

I cannot fathom how town!mastina doesn't work with me here given how much she respects me and knows of my early game weakness.

(this one isn't an example so much as explaining the mastina-Titus dynamic in a nutshell and demonstrating what she expects of me and vice-versa)

Mastina, what is the established evidence you are referring to? I want you you correct me and talk to me, not talk at me. It does nothing to help me sort you or analyze my reads to have you talk to me as if I am beneath you. The change in your tone towards me is also striking. When Starbuck asked about your meta, you were all glowing about my abilities. Ever since then, you've been taking potshots at me and insinuating I could be scum because of our differing reads.

(This however IS a reachout from town-Titus to me with a wrong read on her.)

Subject: Krazy's Anime Upick (Game Over)

Give me 2 nights. If the power of Dark Cookies cannot resolve it, then we react.

That requires trust in you that I utterly lack.

Well, what's your other option? Lynch him and die?

Subject: Krazy's Anime Upick (Game Over)

(Generally speaking for a scumteam of four, the most you want is six. You can potentially have UP TO eight, but you don't really WANT to have more than six. Basically, scumteam of 4, 4 scumreads = perfect, 8 scumreads = maximum, 9+ = you're doing it wrong, 6 = most you want to have, 5 = perfectly fine, 7 = not optimal, but acceptable spot. So I have one more than I want, but one less than the maximum acceptable to have.)

I'll just pretend your SR of me is the extra one to shield me from scumkills.

(So're these.)

When Titus is town, she can not only fairly reliably pinpoint that I am town (and this is my towngame through and through), she will try to reach out to me and work with me even when I have a wrong read on her. Now contrast that to Titus this game:

mastina, why in tarnations am I reading AtE from you regarding who we eliminate? I'm not talking about the hercule defense but the options one through four nonsense.

This is literally

Titus's first content post in the entire game

, and it is a post shading me: she was calling my content AtE (it wasn't), and downplaying my contributions.

Her literal first post in the game isn't to reach out to me; it is to shade me, it is to downplay my influence, it is to try and weaken my position in the game.

Hi mastina.

It's easy to quote posts and say it's not my town game. You want me wagoned? Vote me. Try yet another wagon on town.

This is her next post towards me--this is the polar opposite of a reachout. This isn't trying to work with me; it is, again, actively shading me.

I'm not sure mastina's town. Her posts have a lot of words but say nothing. It's particularly true of her increasing FoS of me. She recycles her claim that I'm scum but there's no rationale or reasoning behind that or much of her other reads.

When people want help in reading me, she tries to sell them that an unreadable Titus is a scum!Titus. That's besides the fact that there is enough to get a weak read on me. The fact I have been unreadable is largely due to lack of content and life.

Mastina has used my slow start to keep me in a low bin and not engage with any content of my postings.

So, no. I do not follow Dann's theory.

Here she continues to misrep me--she portrays my posts as saying nothing (in spite of having earlier said not to sheep that line of thinking--why did she join in on the same train of thought she earlier objected to?), as well as misrepresenting my stance on her. I never said that Titus was unreadable and that unreadable Titus is scum Titus; I specifically said she WAS readable...and that the read on her was scum as a result.

She tries to justify her play as having been a slow start, ignoring that I have been scumreading her for far far more than just her low content. (Speaking of which, I'll get to that in a moment!)

VOTE: the worst
Mastina, help me bus worst.

This is the closest she ever gets to a reachout to me, but...

mastina's scum with TW. The moment I ask her to lim a scumread, she backs off the scumread. Her walls are IioA, especially 1905. Her "content" gives nothing verifiable. She just states someone is scum and then states their actions are scummy. She's trying to create a t v t atmosphere and people like dgb are eating it up. Mastina and the worst are scums.

She immediately backs out on it when I had fairly compelling reasons to not join and doubles down on the shading of my posts as "IIoA". She knows the fucking way I play and the way I explain things. She is well aware that the things I have posted this game are far, far, FAR from lacking analysis.

Titus as town radiates an aura of energy. Compare her iso from last game. Notice some things from it?

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

VOTE: Agar
If you think Dann's scummy, why aren't you voting him?

Titus immediately generates content here, and she was town.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Oh, I should also warn you all that I will try to make a good impression early on then lurk it out to eternity
@Titus, the worst & Dunn: We all know you guys voting me is inevitable, so let's get it over with.

*refuses the power of the inevitable*
*looks at ABR*
*doubles down on that*

She manages to come across as lighthearted here rather than drop-dead serious. She was being playful in the last iteration of the game, friendly, but still providing content.

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

town: hercule, Dannflor, AGar
conflicted: the worst/Daddisi hydra
scum: VOTE: unwnd

How is Agar town? Daddisi hydra? This is a normal and team mafia.

Another good example of immediate analysis. She takes a firm stance, which while technically empty, you can trace the origin of it from the quote.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

No, my reaction to Titus was perfectly appropriate. I didn't realize Titus was on the playerlist during signups. I do not feel Titus takes a single thing I say in good faith and she proved that. I simply called that how I see it. That's called history. But jump to that defense there!

Just what post of yours did I "not take in good faith" and what does it mean to take that post in "good faith"?

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

ABR, do you get the feeling scum Agar just wants us to turn on each other?

These are good examples of her reaching out.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

couldnt you say wagons in general are usually not purely town

Town

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

ABR, do you get the feeling scum Agar just wants us to turn on each other?

Yes

Then why move?

More examples of reaching out and scumhunting.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

I'll be reading up tomorrow but I have a solid TR on ABR based on his wagon placement here. If I wasn't voting Agar, I would be voting the worst.

And already she was generating good reasons.

This continues and continues. Titus just radiated an energy of townness. She was lighthearted, she was casual, she was effortless, she was friendly, she was a town mediator, working with others and trying to establish a town core.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

@unwnd, Can you link your case? I didn't see a case, which may be due to life. I'm inclined to disagree because I like his reads though.

Here's more later.
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Maybe it's my own impatience but I've mulling over my vote on AGar and came to my own conclusion he isn't going to respond. The game has changed and so too is the way I read most players. Back in the day I'd come through their words to spot contradictions but I find scum nowadays don't really give a shit about making convincing arguments, no, it's more about the presentation. Something that makes townies go 'well, by effort and substantiation he must be town!' because people have gotten so traumatized by a red PM these days and believe scum just won't effort as much as town that it's almost bordering ridiculous. I am against this mindset because it assumes that people enjoy losing, which I'm pretty sure if you're playing any game the objective is to win.

This vote is something almost all of my team agree on. I don't really bode well with (post) (post) (post) analysis and instead giving a general description of what I see.

As for what I see? I sorta let it slide but there was a moment where Hopkirk responded to me saying 'i kinda like to work list up and then down first, getting townreads'. This is fine in practice, yet he remained quite passive-aggressive. I also think that line alone is disingenuous but is playing a part of his style right now, which all seems quite excessive to me. I think Hopkirk in that instance only responded that way because it sounded good, not that he really believed it. If his MO was to look for townies and form townblocks, then what is his explanation of splintered ridicule throughout the ISO. The shift in dynamic doesn't bode with his own words. Go look at the way he silver tongues Hercule then ridicules others. This is not paraphrasing but this man really said 'don't like it when there's consequence for your actions, huh?' It's all based on

proving a point

which is both petty and scummy.

It'd be really easy and really lazy to say 'he is being LAMISTy' but seriously that's boring and using umbrella terms like that caution back to the days where people would do things like Why me = Fry me. Mafia Jargon doesn't make someone scum guys, and I actually think scum are more prone to be lazy about their reads because it's pretty difficult to try and convince people.

@titus this is it i am speeding this up hopefully i dont interfere with your methods

@okapoka, I have no plan right now. I'm too unfocused right now and I am having trouble seeing people's agendas. You can always try to assist me. I'll tell you if not helping.

Here's another.

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Scum would bus AGar Day 1. Those wagons will be a gold mine.

You're speaking to my heart this game but my brain is paranoid.

This is a fine example of a town-Titus post.

But let's get to the really good part:
Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

@mastina, Welcome. Didn't see you sub in there. Can you talk about your Hercule scumread? I also didn't read his Agar defense but it seems like a lot of detail to be a fake read, particularly on a partner.

This was Titus, as town, making her first post towards me.
Notice the immediate difference?
She asks me to talk about my read, and engages me on it immediately.

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Mastina's scumreads have all started to attack and scumread her.

Why is it that Titus made this good observation last game yet ignores that similar happened this game, with her being one of the ones doing the attacking?

(I'm not quoting the Titus synergy with me--Titus and I synergizing is a huge towntell for us both where us doing so makes us basically honorary masons, but a lack of synergy between Titus and I is sadly not scum-indicative for either of us, so it is not something I could mention in my case in good faith. It'd help show that Titus's approach is fundamentally different this game, but it's not going to do much else.)

Now contrast Titus with this game.
Titus immediately opens up by declaring herself V/LA. She then proceeds to not post until the next day.
I immediately thought this scum because when Titus declared herself V/LA last game, she still found time to post that day.
When she declared V/LA a second time, she again posted on that same day, more than once in fact.

Think it was just that one game?
Try here, with an immediate post after. Twice in fact, following through.

Think it was just twice? Well this is game three, with a post that same day.

How about game four, where there was posting before the V/LA announcement and posting after it, still on the same day?
And how when she was V/LA, she still posted a plethora of times giving content while busy?

Good content, too, content giving actual stances, reads, reasons, and whatnot.

Titus in general has a similar approach to me when V/LA as town: she will continue to try and produce content even while V/LA, whereas when scum she will be less inclined to post content during her V/LA.

Her first post in this game was declaring V/LA. She did nothing else--no RVS vote? Why didn't Titus drop an RVS vote in her opening V/LA? Why didn't she read anything until her shade of me, which was her only post during her alotted V/LA time? She did nothing during that time.

She has been super-serious. There hasn't been the lighthearted good fun Titus from when she's town; it's been all business, no play.

She's flat and lifeless this game, not to mention more hostile, because simply put: Titus does not enjoy playing scum nearly as much as she enjoys playing town (another thing she has in common with me), and it shows:
Instead of being a town mediator making actual serious real attempts to bridge the town she makes token efforts that she doesn't follow through on.
She does the bare minimum to look town and take reasonable stances, without being the driving force.

I realize that this case is disorganized and not as well-referenced as it should be. I still have to catch up yaknow, and I am still multitasking. But Titus is just scum this game and has been from her very first post.

[mastina]

I really don't think this is within Mastina's scumrange any more
The range of play you can expect from Mastina is directly linked to her real life headspace

I mean to be fair: during my internet outage this game, I didn't post content aside from voting Titus. In that regard, this could've been my scumgame because my real life headspace wasn't the best and I didn't do anything, whereas I try to do something when not in a good headspace when town.

Heck, on my return, I said I would be trying to be back yesterday, but didn't post content yesterday in that post at all, and didn't come back later until today to make the content. So that's another possible scum sign.

That having been said, the fact that it's 4:30 am right now and I've yet to eat supper should be a sign of how much I am here right now. (And I will continue to catch up until exhaustion makes me unable to. I'm not tired yet, but eventually we'll reach the point of diminishing returns.) Since I started at 12:30 am, that's 4 hours of being here. Multitasking (by which I mean watching the LCK), but still here and nowhere else, pretty sure.

And while I will be juggling other online obligations with mafiascum and will be V/LA on this Friday/Saturday for the same reason I was last week, by and large even when I reach the point of exhaustion and am unable to post meaningful content tonight, it'll continue into tomorrow and Thursday. Not gonna lie; I am not always placing mafiascum as my top priority and headspace-wise, yes, this game isn't something I'm always in the mood for; pretty sure I could've posted during some times but chose not to. But overall, my presence here will speak for itself over time.

Effort != alignment, but the total thread presence, what's done when, and with what mindset, can be.

But I digress. I'd rather show I'm town with things like my Titus case rather than by self-meta.

And yes I realize it's a quote wall but it is mostly substantiating claims I've been making the whole game:

I normally am happy to work with her even if I am scumreading her, assuming she is cooperative and not arguing in bad faith and/or shading me and/or portraying my posts in a negative light.

And on top of that, her first engagement with me wasn't a reachout; her first engagement with me looked like it was bad faith or shade or negative light.

I have substantiated this in the Titus case by showing examples of how Titus reaches out to me and works with me normally, contrasting to her immediate shade of me this game.

Chennisden has some thoughts that I'll be paraphrasing over here. He agrees with me on IV scum and LLD town, so at least that's something.

He has weak TRs on Ceph, dann and mastina. Basically, he feels they are town but nothing beyond their scumrange. Jjh is town. He doesn't like dgb 406/407. I have DGB near locktown. I don't see scum!DGB flailing this hard over a town!LLD elim.

I need to read Dunn to see if IV is bussing or not. @DGB, Can you run your thoughts supposing Oka is pocketed? Chenn says that's easy to do. Chenn has them as town.

dgb scumreads me so i wouldnt be pocketed @titus

I am asking them to reevaluate. I am aware they scumread you as of the post I am quoting. New information may change a read.

I really do need to explain why this is Titus's scumgame here at some point but it baffles me that people are giving a free pass to posts like this. I know what Titus would be doing if she were town; this isn't it. Not like this at least.

These are examples of Titus being a scum mediator, which in the Titus case I contrast by showing examples of Titus as a town mediator, to help establish the difference between the two. Here, Titus was being weak, distant, and not actively engaging, whereas I've shown how she is not that when town.

so titus whatcha going to do about the current "tvt" gamestate then?

Hint: this is actually a significant part of why I am scumreading Titus here.

Titus did nothing to meaningfully break up the gamestate. People have said "but Titus voted the worst" / "but Titus voted Ythan" as 'proof' that she did try. Except I've shown how Titus, when town, does more than that. (Tho I suppose I could add more quotes where I show what Titus as town does to break up TvT fights to show why her Ythan/worst pushes aren't that.)

(I will also say that the way Titus has handled my slot is not her town meta btw. I can explain that, but I'm not sure where to start in describing the difference between Titus as town reaching out and Titus as scum. This is the latter, not the former, and pretty blatantly so, but I do realize it's something that requires background and history to help establish.)

I have shown over multiple games how Titus treats my slot and explained the Titus-mastina dynamic by showing it in past games and even quoting Titus's perspective on the mastina-Titus dynamic.

^so why do you think dgb is town?

Earnest belief in a wrong read.

If Titus were town by the way, this would be her read on me.

Titus is intimately familiar with how I play the game; she knows this is not my scumgame and that this is my towngame through and through. She would know not only a loose idea of why I'm pushing LLD (even if she disagreed with the push), but ALSO know why I'm pushing

her

. She would have reached out to me, say something akin to the effect of "mastina I know where you're coming from but you're wrong" to me, and then tried to work with me, ask for me to trust her, ask for me to work with her, try to sway me.

Instead?
Titus opens the game shading me. No attempt to see where I was coming from, and instead a rather unflattering and blatantly inaccurate portrayal of my posts at the time. She blatantly opens with, instead of an attempt to understand me (or even her instantly knowing where I am coming from), a strong shade of me that she should know was not reflective of reality.

And then she says nothing about me again. She ignores my posting until literally 28 posts of hers later. She didn't address me, she didn't talk to me at all, over 28 posts, with her first post being shading of me and her next post being the polar opposite of a reachout, the polar opposite of trying to work with me. She didn't try to convince me she's town; she put up false bravado.

This is something I can prove with meta, too, it just takes a lot of time to gather the links to show this dynamic. It is a Titus-specific scumtell and specifically a Titus-mastina oriented one.

That's not the entirety of my Titus case, by the way. There's two additional points, both of which also I can prove pretty effectively with time, but I lack the energy to do so right now. The first is energy-levels. Titus this game has no energy, no passion, no life to her posting. It's flat, dull, mechanical, precise. You can contrast this to last game fairly easily, but given time I could prove that this tone is scum-Titus because I've countless games with both town Titus and scum Titus and can tell tonally that this is a scum-Titus who is largely uninvested in the game due to being scum.

The other point is that Titus is being a scum mediator. What's a "scum mediator"? Again, that's something which takes game links to help show. But basically, the short version is, Titus as town is a town mediator, who reaches out to players and tries to get them to work with her. This ties into points one and two as well, but basically Titus will, even on D1, even when struggling to keep up with the game, be providing good insight with actual stances backed by reasons and take rather strong opinions and reach out to others to work with them.

Whereas Titus as scum does the scum equivalent. She paraphrases the thoughts of others, to present them in a more presentable form. She says that players are town or scum, but she makes no true effort in trying to get the town to listen to her because she doesn't feel a need to.

Again--I realize I am not backing these claims up with proof, without the meta, and I want to write the proper case where I show these things over time.

But when I said I'm pretty damn sure Titus is scum this game.

I had some pretty damn strong reasons for it; I mean it when I say I have a borderline-soulread on her.

And I have substantiated this claim by showing games where Titus called me exactly this--earnest belief in a wrong read. She has said this to me multiple times across multiple games that I quoted in 3931; why not this game?

Please do then

Town

For a start, an immediate vote and sorting which were absent from here.

hmmm. It's not as much as I thought when I was writing it out but it still feels like you have a lot of empty confidence on multiple theories that sort of falls apart if any of them are kind of false

If something does go wrong, I'll reasses. Right now, I have my theory of the game I stand by.

A town Titus does not say this, by the way.

y not?

Basically it boils down to Titus's approach to the game. Titus will stand by her theories, but her theories are subject to the evidence; they can and will shift if she is given strong reason to reassess. Them only shifting if "something goes wrong" implies a level of confirmation bias that Titus as town wouldn't have, basically.

And I've also shown this fairly well I feel.

Who has *very different* vibes from last game?

Titus from the onset. Seriously, read her posts last game where she was town and see if her posts this game have the same energy to them, the same tone to them. (Hint: they don't, on every level.)

I have substantiated this by showing the different vibes from Titus this game compared to last.

I think that's one too many, so I may have a townbeard in my SRs

For the record--this is once more not a Titus-town mindset. If Titus were town here with too many scumreads, it would trigger a reevaluation from her of the gamestate and her assumptions, not to mention her reads. The fact that she knows how shitty my scumgame is and knows my town meta fairly intimately yet is insisting I am scum without reassessing that at all is one example of this, but it's very widespread.

I am telling you. On every level--this is not Titus as town; this is Titus's scumgame. I'm actually becoming more sure Titus is scum than LLD is scum (when I am pretty damn sure LLD is scum).

There was a world where Titus could be town...but the more and more from Titus I see, the more and more I realize that world just doesn't exist. (Basically, to explain this: certain normally-scum-indicators for Titus can, situationally, in specific circumstances, actually not be scum-indicators for her, and be either null or even situationally town for her in spite of generally being Titus scumtells. That's why Titus started as 80% scum rather than 100% scum; the remaining 20% was the possibility of Titus being in those situational circumstances. But the more and more Titus scumtells, with multiple different Titus-specific scumtells piling up over time, the less and less likely it is that this is her in those situational circumstances, and with the multitude of Titus scumtells, the chances of her being scum go up to nearly 100%. If I had to estimate, it'd be in the 99% percentile. I'm

that

sure this isn't Titus as town.)

I have shown this as well.

Titus my main problem with you is you have these seemingly strong reads like LLD!town and the_worst!scum

but I haven't really seen you try to push these reads in any reasonably forceful way. I get not wanting to add noise to the thread but your actions don't seem to line up with what you're saying. Like, you've wound up on the same wagon as Bell, purportedly your strongest scum read. And as someone who self proclaims to pay a lot of attention to VCA, that feels off coming from you.

Like I would wall post about these qualms because I think it's a trackable pattern throughout your ISO of making these claims that I would think town!you should feel very strongly about in this current game state, but your actions are half hearted. Like you say you tried to get people on your side, but you never spent much time trying to get a wagon going on the_worst. Like you voted there, but a lot of the actual content you put out, like aligning VCA with DGB's reads, feels like busy work rather than anything that's actually trying to progress your view of the game.

And it seems you've kinda 'given up' now because everyone seems fixated on LLD regardless what you or anyone says, which is somewhat fair, but I haven't really seen you make a concerted effort to get the fixation off of her, even though you say you want to.

anyway I'm not gonna wall post because I figure it's better to directly engage you now that you're in thread

The funny thing is, this is basically half of my case on Titus, just from Dann's wording rather than my own.

And I have been able to substantiate Dannflor's own Titus case by showing what HE was talking about.

[mastina]

The last game had no repeat modifiers. For what that's worth.

In general? Normals almost never do. The most likely repeat modifier is identically-numbered X-shot, e.g. 2-3 2-shot roles. (Maybe Compulsive gets repeats but even that's rare, too.)

Announcing is almost always one of a kind; Complex is almost always one of a kind; Loyal/Disloyal is almost always a maximum of 2 (double-Loyal with no Disloyal, double-Disloyal with no Loyal, or one of each); you never see two even-nights or two odd-nights together (tho obviously even/odd is a common pairing and you CAN see even/odd with nonconsecutive); Indecisive, Loud, Lazy, Macho, the same Night-specific (there was one Normal which was borderline themed with repeats, but by and large you're not gonna see two N2-roles tho you can and will see N1-role, N2-role, N3-role), novice, personal, roaming, simple, weak. All have in common.

You almost never see a repeat.

Can you? Why, sure. You can and do see Normals with repeat modifiers, heck, even repeat exact roles e.g. Town Trackerx2.

But it's rare, the exception to the general rule of no repeat.

Which, again: makes me skeptical of the Announcing Babysitter-visit claim from Titus.

It's not impossible; it's just...highly unusual and statistically questionable to say the least. (It's not probable. Is it plausible? Not sure if it's in plausible territory or possible-but-implausible territory, hard to tell on D2 with what I've got.)

[mastina]

Vig to consider holstering

Um no, fuck that.

Let's ask mastina!

Eh depends on the vig role. Full, ungated, and with good reason to believe they can get more than one shot off? Sure, they can vig again so long as they do so N2 and N3, OR, town stops a kill, OR, if the babysitter is real they get a kill.

Basically, we're at 15 players now, on odds. If the vig gets two more kills with no town killstops and no town babysitter death, we stay on odds. Or if the vig gets one more kill with a town killstop, or if the vig gets one more kill with a town babysitter death, the game stays on odds.

But if the vig is gated, there is merit to holstering due to us being on odds now.

It's really highly dependent and only the vig should have the right to make that call, honestly.

[mastina]

if i get miseliminated or vigged we will have fucking WORDS

Pretty much, yeah.

Hopkirk
innocentvillager
Xtoxm
Cephrir
^This is the townbloc: the names that are very very strongly town, to the point of never being eliminated. Cephrir's maybe a bit iffy there I realize, he's a good scum player, but I don't think his conviction on DGB comes from scum here.

hercule/Luca Blight
jjh927
^This is the townlock: the names that were very very strongly town on D1, but on D2 I'm not sure are townbloc material. I still maintain that they are poor eliminations.

Dunnstral
Almost50
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
^This is the upper-mess ("the mess" being a term I'm borrowing from Spawn in the OPL): players I was townreading on D1, but not enough to lock them as town, who're still possible as scum.

the worst/Bell
Ythan
^This is the lower-mess: players who I scumread on D1, but had reasonable doubts about where they showed they could be town, with them having reasons to not be scum.


OkaPoka
AGar
^These are the strong scumreads, scumreads I feel I have damn good foundation for.

Titus
^And this is the person who I just went to [url=viewtopic.php?p=12603253#p12603253]make a case on.

If the town EVER eliminates the players in the townbloc, they, frankly: deserve to lose. Those players just aren't scum and will never flip scum here and are the most town in the game right now so if the town eliminates them, they've nobody to blame but themselves for the inevitable scum win due to the town wasting an elimination on a town player. I'd apply this to the vig, too: the vig shooting any of the names in this group is literal gamethrowing.

Mostly ditto for the townlocks, albeit with less certainty. Let's differentiate it by saying the vig shooting there wouldn't be gamethrowing, just...suboptimal, akin to their shitty-ass DGB shot; a shot that seems reasonable at the time for the information it generates but which has a 0% chance at hitting scum.

[mastina]

Does hercule scum make sense here to those of you who like to read game states

Absolutely not.

[mastina]

This was basically what I just did too, but looking back do you not think Titus pushing for the Ythan wagon in light of TRing both LLD and DGB is town indicative?

Absolutely not.

Ythan, representing Half a Good Team Plus Two - null

vote: ythan

The sudden chainsaw wagon on me is also very indicative of scum defending a partner. Mastina A50 TWslot plus one on my wagon plus Ythan

Is there any chance of a cfd back to Ythan?

@Creature, If LLD is town, can you take another look at Ythan?

fake vc

Lady Lambdadelta

(8): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Hopkirk, Ythan, jjh927, innocentvillager, Luca Blight

DrippingGoofball

(7): Dunnstral, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Lady Lambdadelta, Bell, Dannflor, Winter Flakes

Ythan

(2): AGar, Almost50

Not Voting

(1): Titus
With 18 alive, it takes 10 votes to eliminate. Deadline is set for 11:00 AM PST on February 12, in (expired on 2021-02-12 15:00:00).

My initial instinict is this is T v T and scum don't care which is eliminated as judged by A50 sitting on the sidelines. A no lim would work beautifully here as town focuses on T v T again tomorrow. So it really wouldn't matter who I choose here.

It could be scum refusing to bus. LLD's front is just atrocious with mastina and Ythan on it. After Ythan though, it's a pure wagon. DGB's wagon is pure mostly. In the T v S setup, I would have to doubt LLD and Winter. In fact if LLD flips scum, my eyes go straight to Winter. mastina makes a point of breaking up LLD myself Agar and OkaPoka. I townread all of them, so voting LLD goes really against my self interest. Then there's the fact DGB is right and someone has to compromise. LLD hasn't claimed. Then again DGB hasn't either now. I was hoping that as I slept the decision would be made for me and all I would have to do is hammer.

I have just quoted every instance of Titus's Ythan "push" on D1.

No explanation for Ythan's move to scum, with the vote being naked. A mention of him in the scum candidates. Asking for a cfd, but with no direction.

The closest to town analysis from Titus is her asking LLD-Creature for review on Ythan, but LLD was the one being wagoned.
She gives basic explanation of TvT, but where's her reachouts to the players who can make a difference?

Why not talk to IV or Luca Blight, who're by Titus's words, 'pure'? Why not try to get Luca and/or IV to vote Ythan? Why not talk to them?
On DGB's wagon, why not talk to Cephrir/Dunnstral and try to get them to see the error of their ways?

In the Oka/AGar bloc, why not try to work with them when Titus acknowledged it?

I understand not working with Bell, but what about Dannflor? Why not try to convince him to go back to Ythan, a spot he previously was at? Dannflor had voted Ythan, so if Titus really wanted a wagon there, why not talk to him? Similarly for Winter Flakes.

Titus didn't actually push Ythan. She put the illusion of pushing him, but where in your iso do you see her push him?

She didn't.

I can however point out where Titus, as town, tries to push in games she DOES feel it is TvT and show that.

[mastina]

@Mastina when was the last time you rolled scum from a completed game?

It hasn't changed since the last time you were in a game and I was asked this. Let me verbatim quote it again to give you the refresher.

Mastina effort usually means one thing imo. Lesson learnt from a certain game.
- Norwee

I am morally obligated to point out that, for the first time in two years, I did have a scumgame where I efforted.

And since it ended before I signed up for this one, it is one that FL could on scouting have seen.

But yes, in general, efforting does mean I'm more likely to be town. It's just sadly not a 100% lock-towntell now.

Mastina I believe to be town but *technically* she could be scum in the event Creature is town and she had a really good D1 -- like I don't think she is scum but I have never seen mastina scum, either, so perhaps she didn't exit her scumrange but it'd have to be quite big.

I can help (well, "help") you there:
At my absolute peak scum performance levels, D1 is not out of scumastina's scum range altogether, albeit requiring a perfect storm of me being at highest-level functioning capabilities across multiple areas rather than in one or two more specific areas. ~2015-2017-era scumastina was genuinely one of the best scum players onsite with a huge, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge flexibility to her scumgame and notably gifted at situational awareness to adapt her scumplay to perfectly fit the needs of the particular game as to maximize her team's chances at winning.

However.

Over the last two years, my scumgame has been utterly atrocious. I've been a total lurksack whose contributions were notably lackluster with the difference between my scumplay and townplay being night and day, with my scumplay being minimal, using every excuse to avoid content, and coasting by with my towngame being more energetic.

However

however, I DID just have a scumgame where I approached near-peak-scumastina-levels. I was still, very visibly, not in my towngame, and there were multiple scum traits of mine present, but I exuded a "town aura" as scum, something which is

very

hard to pull off, yet I have shown the capacity to do as given by that game. Radiating townness as scum is something within my scumrange, which is why I invented the flowchart for how to read me.

The flowchart is, notably, a little dated; it's missing some of my most recent town/scumtells and in the case of being reasonable and rational, this is something that has become almost nai. (I am more reasonable and rational as both alignments and as town can be very convincing with logical deductions and outlining the process behind my conclusions, so just on a skim, you'd think nai, but as scum my arguments still tend to be even more "precise" than their town counterparts, extra-targeted, extra-concise in comparison, extra on-point, whereas my town cases tend to always have weaknesses in them if you look beyond the surface. Which is to say, my scum cases tend to be more "perfect" than my town cases are, in spite of me being logical in both.)

And a key aspect of it is that I'll never show every town trait in a towngame and never show every scum trait in a scumgame and may show some scum traits in a towngame and definitely will show some town traits in a scumgame, but that overall it is incredibly hard, over a sustained period of time, borderlining on nigh-impossible levels, for me to maintain a presence of almost all towntells as scum, whereas they flow more naturally as town.

Basically, while I will suffer burnout as both alignments, it's easier to suffer burnout as scum because being scum at the highest level of effort is more draining than being town at the highest level of effort (even though both are, notably, draining; I am incapable of maintaining the highest level of effort as town indefinitely, which is why I frequently have a mixture of low/high-energy posting days, with low ones being rest time and high ones being active time). The cracks in scumastina form over time with continued observation; the solidification of town-mastina becomes more readily apparent given time.

So that is to say,
tl;dr?
D1's not impossible from scumastina, but is incredibly improbable to be her.

Plus, while for the last two years, I have been ridiculously obviously scum due to my inability to effort as scum with me being transparently obviously scum in literally all of my scumgames during that period, my most recent scumgame notably lacked that trait. And while I loathe being scum and find hard-efforting to be too tedious and not worth it, the fact that my last scumgame was doing so is proof that I could be this game.

is Mastina capable of going sicko mode on BM D1 like that as scum?

Theoretically? Yes, it's possible. I'm pretty sure I've done it before in some past scumgame of mine. I think rather notably I was hyper-aggressive in that game where I was a hydra with Katsuki and eliminated the BROseidon/AngryPidgeon hydra during the day who had perfect reads yet they got mislynched. So it's something that is something I theoretically have the capability to do.

In reality? Probably not, mafia games are hella draining especially going hyper-aggressive. As-is, it's hard to maintain as town (a lot of my townplay actually resolves around trying to get myself nightkilled early, just so that I can chill in the dead thread, because it's less stressful, less effort, once I am dead and every day I'm alive is a drain), but as scum instead of those thoughts being genuine I'd instead have to

fake

them. Which is harder than pouring genuine heart and soul into things.

@mastina: Can you link that recent scum game where you efforted once more?

Sure, it's this one here.

@mastina: Can you link that recent scum game where you efforted once more?

Sure, it's this one here.

For the record: it might help you to iso MathBlade that game (and also read the dead thread since he did a good job of explaining that, while that was a

good

scum game of mine, why it was still a scumgame due to aspects of my towngame being absent.

Basically, it was a fairly good scumgame, but there were still gaps in it.

Also, I realize it's not as obvious while doing an iso, that it's something hard to detect even in the postgame, but anecdotally if you were in the game at the time and were able to observe it in real time you'd instantly see:
In that game, there was a larger space between my content compared to this game in quite a lot of spaces. I often didn't post if I didn't have a need to. And if I did post, I often posted, overall, less, except during specific times of engagement where I was able to exude my town aura. Which is to say: I could not, from the getgo, from the onset, continuously and throughout the entirety of the game, maintain the town aura, maintain the energy of my town self. And the few times I did manage to do so, I usually had good justification. (There is a notable pickup in my play when I was able to use mechanics, as mechanics is something I am really damn good at regardless of my alignment and which helps mimic town-mastina even as scumastina; Dunnstral was genuinely such a lurksack to an extent that I've never seen from him before that if not for knowing I was scum I'd have been convinced he was scum, so it was easy to pressure him as such.)

Like I said--something like that is a bit hard to see in the aftermath of the game, but if you were there at the time, you'd be like, "oh yeah, I totally see that", where I lacked the energy to maintain it full time and most of the time I did have the energy, I was given ammunition which made it easy to have done so.

This game, however, my energy has been pretty damn consistent, even during the times where I've felt less useful. I've not had a 100% absolutely identical energy level every single rl day in this game, but the energy still was high, shifted forms from one to another and still was high, and even when I had less to offer, was higher overall. I've had moments of lower energy from rl stuff, rl distractions, etc., but I feel that overall, I've been triumphing over that energy lull from those rl things and managed to still try to give a ton even when at a lowpoint in mental/physical/emotional wellbeing. (For instance, I've been sick since Thanksgiving. I said as much in this gamethread, you may recall. I said, "hey, fair warning, am sick, so may not be able to do as much as normal". I'm still sick, with that same sickness, because it never went away, it's still here a full month later, but in spite of that, I've still been doing a lot.)

So while it is, of course, theoretically possible for me to be scum.
It'd have been an even bigger improvement on my scumgame. If this were a scumgame of mine, it'd literally be the best scumgame I've ever pulled off.

I will say however that there's another big thing that does give me towncred tho; I literally wrote the book on not bussing. You can see it evident in that micro; in the game, were I town, I'd have been scumreading Gypyx from D1 because his content that game was something easy to scumread and hard to townread, but instead I forced a townread because I wanted to use my influence to influence the town into thinking Gypyx was town.

In this game I reassessed Bell on D2, added evidence to the pile for Bell being scum, continued to campaign for Bell's death even after the IC urged us to spare Bell, called Bell-DEB as scum-scum, called DEB scum the entire game, and ultimately was hugely involved in the deaths of both scum.

This doesn't clear me--I pushed DEB but never voted him until D4; pushing Bell over DEB means little when both are scum; I initially had Bell as town and townier than two flipped town even at the beginning of D2; I was late on the initial Bell wagon; regardless of who's scum in Solstice/Ircher/PBE/Spiffeh I've defended all four of them rather heavily so fit as being a scumbuddy for any of them; I can and have bussed before, so me bussing in spite of writing the article on not bussing doesn't inherently clear me, because while I have a strong aversion to bussing in general, I can bus if I feel there is an actual strong reason to which would give us more reward than the risk involved (and you can pretty easily make the case that I thought the bus was worth it, there's enough to weave half a dozen or so narratives where I justify it).

But while it doesn't clear me, I do feel like it at least gives me fairly good ground to stand on in terms of towncred.

[Is Mastina willing to call three different town players confirmed 100% lockscum as mafia and then give lengthy cases for each of them? like does she have the scumrange to do so, I mean. it's impressive if so. i could not for the life of me find a good and recent mastina!scum game example.]

Oh I've done it before, but it's a rarity. I

think

the only time I've done that as scum was Anything Goes, but that was, explicitly, with the influence of Katsukii. (As a hydra, I tend to be influenced by the style of my hydra partner, picking up some of their quirks and traits. In that case, I picked up on some of Katsukii's aggression, tho that game was still mostly Katsukii rather than me; about 7-8/10 of the hydra's posts were Katsukii rather than me. (Notably: while not every post that's proper spelling/capitalization/grammar is me, if the post isn't proper spelling/capitalization/grammar it is for sure Katsukii.)

The closest beyond that would probably be Inorganic Chemistry. I had a (rather deliberate--I orchestrated it to deliberately make people think it was a TvT fight so that people would write me off as town) heated engagement with the Titus/Metal Sonic hydra, but I don't remember if I had that same energy pursuing other town players.

I THINK that's the only examples tho, that otherwise it hasn't happened at all. So, it's within my theoretical capacities as scum; in reality, it's far less so.

[Lul. This is the first and probably only occurrence i can think of where a player finds SvS to be the most likely option. And mastina goes back on it later when I think she could have gotten away with still pushing that without getting DEB killed. If I'm right, i think this progression makes mastina town.]

Devil's advocate: TMI is a thing and scumastina revels in using the truth as her weapon. My driving philosophy as scum is literally that the truth is your ally and that you can weaponize it to be genuine and sincere as scum and use that sincerity to tonally feel town to others and garner townreads.

But, yes, it'd have been a double-bus from me when I'm less inclined to do that normally, and yes, I did back out at a time where as scum I could have kept going on it. (For the record: there is a general towntell of someone correctly calling someone scum, but then out of paranoia, second-guessing themselves and hopping off. It's not a solid towntell, especially not due to players like me knowing about it and being able to theoretically abuse it as scum, but I do think that behavior usually does come from town even if the town often thinks it's from scum.)

[This is the first parallel I noticed -- prior to this post, I would say you have not been the same as this game. You've bounced your vote around 4 times, i wouldnt say you've really gone all out with your reasoning (as you can see here where you explain you aren't) whereas with BM you felt very dialed in and solid. Even before BM you had like, an extremely rigid and confident readslist where you confirm towned people, strong towned people, and so on. Just a result of this setup's draft phase being unique? Maybe, but still, vibes are different and obviously they continue on as you scumread BM/Creature.]

Right, that would be the point where I had mechanics to work off of--while I am a mechanical player regardless of my alignment, mechanics talk helps scumastina more than it does me as town because mechtalk allows for me to be more sincere/genuine and fake scumhunt better.

Also, fun fact. The linked post you gave is 100% true; regardless of my alignment, I

am

lazy, I

will

leave things out when I feel them unnecessary, I

do

like to hold back for reactions; I

do

like narratives, all as town just as much as when scum. But while I may have made a post like that game's 199 before as town, I legit think that most of the times I've made a post like that, I was scum.

Also, I never once made a readslist that scumgame. I can make readslists as scum, but it's been a trait absent from my scumgames for two years. It's fully possible this game is the first scumgame of mine in two years to have it, because it's possible for my scumgame to have gotten even better. But, yeah, the definitive readslist for the last two years

has

been a towntell, yes.

[Looking thru it looks like you put an overwhelming amount of effort into .. casing why a townie is town, so far.]

Oh yeah I do that as both alignments, but I do it slightly more often as scum probably. As town I'll do it mostly when the player I am very strongly defending is at risk of being eliminated. I still do so as scum during those times (and Nic was in fact doing just that), but I do it more often and more consistently and on more players with me typically focusing less on offense overall. scumastina has a bad tendency to be overall too defensive. Whereas town-mastina will use the poe to launch an offense, and use defense mostly to defend the offense.

I feel like mastina scum would just concede, I don't think she has a high stake in the game to play it out. DGB is trolly though so she would.

Oh I very much would not. I realize people aren't too familiar with my scumgame due to me having gone basically two years without rolling scum and even when that ridiculously long townstreak (like 23ish games in a row) was broken it was for incredibly lackluster games.

But I never concede, I never give up.

Not even when given the absolute most bullshit of bullshit scumgames where the setup is tremendously horrifically townsided, replacing in to find myself at the end of the night solo-scum, with a scum role designed to be eliminated during the day specifically meant to be eliminated as the last original groupscum.

I am, notably, the opposite; I am someone who would in fact fight to the bitter end, and I have done so on multiple occasions, quite notably so.

Also notable from me:
I feel obligated to point out that I can play multiple ways as scum. It's difficult to pull off as scum, but it's not impossible for scumastina to do most styles. (Tho hyper-aggro is, arguably, impossible for scumastina to maintain.)

I can be hesitant in my reads but it's usually after they are conclusively proven wrong--i.e. provably-conftown claiming when I suspected them, and/or a slot flipping during the day/night.

Hesitance in my reads prior to that is a rarity because I fucking hate it and actively try to not be hesitant in them. Even right now I am trying to not hesitate on things like my Dunn-town callout (hey I can actually keep this verbatim as Dunn is a town callout of mine here! ), because my overwhelming urge to not be hesitant is stronger than my doubts in my confidence on that slot. I'd rather be sure and wrong than doubt and be right.


Is this a sufficient answer for you, Bell?

[mastina]

Calling another player a monkey is not acceptable.

...Not even Almost50 whose avatar for basically his entire time onsite has been one???

Sadface.

[mastina]

like what is mastina thinking rn after how that played out

Dissatisfied, disappointed in myself, disappointed in the vig but not angry at them because I understand why they shot DGB even if it was a shitty-ass shot on the most obvtown player in the game, wondering if in hindsight could I have pushed Titus D1 or if I was justified in my fears that if I hopped off, DGB would've been the D1 mislynch because of breaking the DGB-Xtoxm-mastina trinity and both DGB/Xtoxm townreading Titus, embarrassed at an "oops", irate that this'll give ammo for the "flip mastina's reads" viewpoint even if my reads are otherwise mostly accurate, trying to prove to the TM 2021 crowd that one blunder does not a laughing stock make me, hoping that I can at least match if not surpass my 50/50 of last iteration of this game, praying that this game ends up similar to TitusVFL in allowing me to make a comeback with a resurgence after flubbing D1 (there it was BM, here it was LLD), worried that I'll be a lolvig that loses the town the game because while I will never be mislynched, hey, the vig did shoot DGB so my expectations of them aren't tremendously high.

I think that sums it up, just about.

[mastina]

VOTE: mastina
Case me or die. I want to have this out. I may not respond right away but I want you solved. No more vague meta statements. If I am wrong on you, I should be able to see you having genuine logic here, even if wrong.

This feels like Titus knows a case on her in incoming and she's trying to preemptively discredit it.

Right conclusion, wrong buildup:
Titus was indeed trying to discredit me there, but she's definitely going to be caught off-guard by me having written the case because she's WELL aware that I almost never do--I prioritize catching up over writing a case, and writing a case takes time and energy I almost never have, and I get distracted, and I get side-tracked, so I forget, and it takes a specific mindset to be in, so overall:
I almost never actually make a case, and Titus was probably assuming that, per my usual habits, I would once again fail to. And she would use this failure to make a case to discredit me, in spite of the fact that while I always say I want to write a case, I almost never do.

This is probably the first case I've written on a player in like...a year, maybe two years. So her planned discredit would've worked in like...98% of mastina games; she just got unlucky that for some reason, I actually

did

make the case.

I'm sure me making the case is actually gonna be the biggest shock to anyone who's intimately familiar with me; hell, even I'm after the fact kinda in shock of "holy shit I actually wrote a case".

[mastina]

It's a tactic I've seen scum do often - they vote someone who they know will vote them, and preemptively try to undermine what they're about to say.

For the record: in spite of Titus saying she didn't like that people were doing exactly what you're describing, of discrediting me as bad-town, I would like to reiterate that her very first content post was doing exactly that, discrediting me as bad-town. So yes, she has been discrediting me since before I ever wrote so much as a word as to why Titus would be scum.

[mastina]

Based on the D1 wagons I think it's unlikely both Titus and Ythan are scum, and right now I'm leaning towards Titus being the more likely of the two as her play seems more calculated than Ythan's.

Good take that I happen to agree with, by the way.

I said as much on D1.

I am fully aware why Ythan looks like scum. Frankly, vig the guy; with his play, he deserves to die. But I don't think he's scum, especially not with Titus. So for the guaranteed-to-succeed town elimination of a...well, elimination during the day via votes, he is by far not my preference; there's literally 4-5 people I'd want to vote before him and literally the only way I would ever vote him is if the alternative elimination was a townread of mine.

[mastina]

Does anyone still strongly TR him? I purely TR him based on tone early on, but that's it.

I do, Hopkirk was basically the fourth wheel in the holy DGB/Xtoxm/mastina trinity in a way that was very strongly town, and I can explain this better when not dead tired. (It's 7 am and the LCK finished and I lack a stream to listen to so fatigue is setting in fast.)

I'll see if I can explain this later when caught up, just know that I'll not be able to do it now.

[mastina]

im not really sure why people strongly TR'd Hopkirk at all, maybe someone can enlighten me there

Hopkirk doesn't post much compared to the rest of the game, but I just feel he's town when he does post.

I think that this is literally the first thing Titus has said all game that I can see as possibly town from her, because as it so happens, yes, it is pretty much this.

(Note that my vote's still there because I fully believe Titus as scum can and will say this, too, because saying it is a scum mediator move, it's just that it's the first thing Titus has said that I have shared her stance on.)

[mastina]

post lld flip i still like everyone from the core of lld pushers tbh(/d) (Mastina/Xtoxm/DGB/Herc despite rep leaving)
so most likely gamestate is that scum were happy to let us park there and either doing not much or pushing alternatives too. probably some scum towards the end of LLD given the early push are town independently

dunn claiming town was useful

Ceph is probably better than i was viewing yesterday on an LLD townflip

Agar prob still scum

And this folks is an example of why Hopkirk is in my townbloc.

I similarly stand by a townbloc of townblocs of Hopkirk, IV (not listed in Hopkirk's town but good reasons to be there), Xtoxm, and Cephrir.

Luca's posting on D2 makes me want to re-add the slot there as well and it's good to know I'm not alone in continuing my townread there, soooooo:

Hopkirk
innocentvillager
Xtoxm
hercule/Luca Blight
Cephrir
^This is the townbloc: the names that are very very strongly town, to the point of never being eliminated. Cephrir's maybe a bit iffy there I realize, he's a good scum player, but I don't think his conviction on DGB comes from scum here.

jjh927
Dunnstral
^This is the townlock: the names that were very very strongly town on D1, but on D2 I'm not sure are townbloc material. I still maintain that they are poor eliminations.

Almost50
Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned)
^This is the upper-mess ("the mess" being a term I'm borrowing from Spawn in the OPL): players I was townreading on D1, but not enough to lock them as town, who're still possible as scum.

the worst/Bell
Ythan
^This is the lower-mess: players who I scumread on D1, but had reasonable doubts about where they showed they could be town, with them having reasons to not be scum.


OkaPoka
AGar
^These are the strong scumreads, scumreads I feel I have damn good foundation for.

Titus
^this is the person who I just went to make a case on.

[mastina]

somebody towncase a50 for me ty

I don't suppose "Jingle thought that this was somewhere in the 80% range, Almost50 as town" cuts it as a case, huh.

how are the lld voters really claiming their wagon on lld was pure when they couldnt explain why she was scum, just why she wasnt town

Because in a player of LLD's caliber, explaining why she wasn't town WAS explaining why she was scum; the two were one and the same.

Also, the names on LLD were mostly pure.

DGB is proven town.
I am town.
In the holy trinity, that only leaves Xtoxm--who is also town.
Hopkirk was the fourth wheel of the wagon--and he is also town.
hercule was a core part of the wagon (altho Luca Blight, less so)--and his slot is town.
If you count IV as core on LLD, he's obvtown, too.

The core of the LLD wagon is indeed made up of pure town.

Now I understand suspicion on the outliers. Ythan, jjh. Not so pure there, even if I don't think they're scum.

The simple fact is: of the LLD voters on the final wagon, the only possible scum are {Ythan, jjh, Titus, OkaPoka}.

As it so happens, I agree with your implication of the wagon not being all ten as town players.

It's just that two of them joined at the very end, at the spot we're talking about scum being in.

[mastina]

3 in (

Titus

/

Agar

/

Bell

/Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned),

Oka

, JJH, Ythan, A50) + deepwolf?

I'd count Oka as the deepwolf, actually, but yes, pretty much.

I am increasingly seeing the merits in Bell being scum here; his presence is very underwhelming overall.

On D1, he had the excuse of being a lateish replacement; I'm less forgiving of that now.

[mastina]

VOTE: agar
if i can get one person to sheep me then i'll be happy

I'm sheeping you in spirit. <3

[mastina]

This makes me want to rethink Bell too.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck did I really just spend...

Literally four to five hours casing Titus.

Only to want to instead do this and give her a chance?

VOTE: Bell

I'm not sure whether I'll hate myself more if Titus is scum and I'm doing this now, or if Titus is town and I'm only now doing this.

[mastina]

Okay I think I am going to bed at the bottom of 144, to do 145 onward tomorrow.
I will fight hard against eliminations on: {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, Xtoxm, hercule/Luca Blight, Cephrir, Dunnstral, probably-jjh}
I disapprove of eliminations on: {jjh}
I will explicitly wagon: {AGar, OkaPoka, Bell}

Wagonwise I am now unsure on: {Titus, Almost50, Winter Flakes, Ythan}

Winter Flakes is the towniest of the unsure on, Ythan I literally just deleted from the disapprove-of-eliminations pile as I had him there but am second-guessing myself there asking "What if Ythan is this game's Xtoxm?" with his toxicity being a mask for being scum the same way Xtoxm was last game, but I otherwise don't think he's scum.

This is explicitly not a readslist, but I actually think it is more helpful than one right now.

[mastina]

OkaPoka - Oka feels kind of like me this game, in that if he is scum, he has been faking all the highs and lows of the deadline scramble, being present when it's urgent, and actively pushing the town to be productive at times when it felt pretty natural to do so. His confidence and excitement on pushing DGB especially when the major wagons we've revealed have all been town feels like an unnecessary amount of weight to be putting behind an elimination, although I'll admit that this could be agenda-motivated because without him DGB probably doesn't become a wagon so maybe NAI. I feel like Oka is more of a town player from his style and I don't believe he can deepwolf this convincingly as scum (if I'm wrong, please link me a game and let me know), nor is he as incentivized to anymore with his team already losing Black Flag. If he's scum I'm kind of fine letting him keep being himself and just get more readable over time. But I'm also open to reconsidering here that he's for some reason decided to effort and play the deepwolf here.

It may be a stupid reason, but.

Last game, Oka felt frustrated, emotional, aggravated, in a way that I've felt is absent from this game.

And yes--that is actually a major part of the scumread I have there.

Last game, OkaPoka radiated the energy that he felt like he was pulling out his hair trying.
This game, OkaPoka radiates energy of...nothing.

[mastina]

OkaPoka - Oka feels kind of like me this game, in that if he is scum, he has been faking all the highs and lows of the deadline scramble, being present when it's urgent, and actively pushing the town to be productive at times when it felt pretty natural to do so. His confidence and excitement on pushing DGB especially when the major wagons we've revealed have all been town feels like an unnecessary amount of weight to be putting behind an elimination, although I'll admit that this could be agenda-motivated because without him DGB probably doesn't become a wagon so maybe NAI. I feel like Oka is more of a town player from his style and I don't believe he can deepwolf this convincingly as scum (if I'm wrong, please link me a game and let me know), nor is he as incentivized to anymore with his team already losing Black Flag. If he's scum I'm kind of fine letting him keep being himself and just get more readable over time. But I'm also open to reconsidering here that he's for some reason decided to effort and play the deepwolf here.

It may be a stupid reason, but.

Last game, Oka felt frustrated, emotional, aggravated, in a way that I've felt is absent from this game.

And yes--that is actually a major part of the scumread I have there.

Last game, OkaPoka radiated the energy that he felt like he was pulling out his hair trying.
This game, OkaPoka radiates energy of...nothing.

Wait I think I can actually give this better wording.
Last game, Oka felt incredulous towards players like me. He felt baffled by what amounts to what he saw as "the stupidity".
This game, he really hasn't been.

Oka last game radiated the energy of basically tryharding and being frustrated by shortcomings in this effort.
This game, Oka's posting a lot, but when the efforts come up short, he...more or less goes "oh well" and doesn't do anything about it other than try something else.
There's just...not the same emotional depth to his play, if that makes sense.

[mastina]

meh he voted ythan to compromise or something
also he didnt open with a ythan vote he waited and used ioa
idk dude it doesnt make sense
i scumread both, my reaction is ????????????????????????????????????????????

I think I can explain it further.
Oka is in some senses an inverse to hercule. hercule last game got incredulous to my scumread on him, with an overblown reaction; in contrast, this game he was fairly calm.

Oka last game got incredulous towards me, just in general, me, but also for the gamestate and everything. In contrast, this game he is fairly calm, in spite of a similar gamestate of sorts.

Like, in the post I am quoting: do you see any emotion from Oka? Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

again multitasking which is why this took so long

Hopkirk is close to a townread but he is not at the level of unwnd or hercule for me. i get the feeling he's just a good player which makes me paranoid of his scumrange. honestly my eyes glaze over his posting (potentially not ideal) but the vibe I get is that it looks like he's being helpful and engaging everyone in an effort to understand what's going on. if he's establishing himself to push an agenda i have a feeling we'll see it later but im very okay having this slot around for now.

JacksonVirgo - mostly a tonal read. i don't love 526 or 533 but the posts i thought were +town are: 534, 597, 598, 599, 647, 648. it's hard to explain it beyond just being openly frustrated and utterly not giving a shit about his thread perception which i have found in practice (in my anecdotal experience) to be a towntell for him.

A50 - this is like exactly the same as A50 in this one towngame we played and not at all how he played in this scumgame we did (granted he replaced in, which is different). there are moments like 112, 116, 619, 622 that ring eerily similar. "but it's just A50's playstyle!" you might say. okay sure maybe, that's why he's one of my weaker townleans i guess. also 737 is a really weird thing to post as scum but i obliged him since someone on my team thinks he can read him ok.

Xtoxm - unprompted and unpostury/interesting notes from Auro are good, i liked 642 for example. don't see an agenda from this slot, not postury, takes are pretty reasonable. other people townreading them too despite lack of content quantity which feels good. weaker townlean probably

TW - ill likely be revisiting this a lot bc im paranoid. here's the reasoning i gave earlier

rn it's leantown i think with the engagement and with the hinting on Datisi scumreading me so early (inside thing where town!Datisi has tunneled early town!me for two games in a row, i like that Datisi gave the read and the worst mentioned it unprompted). his entrance felt forced but on reread it's not bad. could be some confbiasing going on there so im conflicted, idk, im gonna just like worsty be a slow burn read for me.

and i think with your recent interaction with me im townreading you even more. i think your disengagement from this game is fine in the context of being busy and maybe even +town in a vacuum. also i think it's easy for scum!you to try and pocket me and you've done everything but engage with me and pocket me.

I'm ok adding IV to my townblock

i dont think that's how townblocks work

iv is voting you

Haven't got there yet, but I'm ok with putting him in my never eliminate pile.

literally three posts down
like
not talking to you until you catchup because my sanity is gone

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

you know what instead of interacting with mastina
raise your hand if you agree with mastina's interpretation of time and events, if you raise your hand I'll interact with you instead

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

someone translate mastina's posts for me i cant look at them

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

or agar for you: if I voted mastina right now it would be because I can't find a good scum flip and want to go for policy, but i have a couple reads i want to flip so yeah

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

points 3 and 4 mastina, points 3 and 4

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

like mastina think critically about why people haven't flipped to agree with you even though you are posting mega walls with logical steps
you are missing massive amounts of context that everyone else has, stop arguing with me until you've read up

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

fuck it too many people have tmi'd xtoxm as town and literally not one of them can explain why he is town
mastina is the closest but her best argument boils down to xtoxm wouldn't play so shit as scum
UNVOTE:

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

If im a noise generator, you are a fucking banshee

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Legitimately push a fucking scum case on me jesus

Compare to things like this from last game.

Oka in particular engaging me on Xtoxm was a point of emotion from him that couldn't come from scum because he was town.

Oka in this game has...nothing which he had there.

There's none of that emotion, none of that frustration, none of that.

[mastina]

hmm
checks out tbh

Also, I do want to ask:
Last game, Oka had pretty good solves and even when he had doubt thrown on the solves he had alternatives almost immediately. He had strong stances that he backed with reason and was actively trying to lead the town while dealing with the frustrations of the town doing bad town things.

This game, Oka has...well he has stances but he's pretty passive about it and he's not putting forward many and when he does it's not with much reason. He's more timid, he's more reserved, he's not charging forward.

Why the strong contrast?

[mastina]

a50 pushing a me + ythan scumteam is ridiculously considering what happened yesterday to the point where again i still have nothing to say

Like: last game, A50 pushing an Oka-Ythan scumteam, just as ridiculous that game as this game, would've caused Oka to have a bit of a blowup.

Here, he says it himself: he has nothing to say.

The calmness, the lack of emotion, is itself disconcerning. Oka lacks passion here. He's not exactly lifeless; he's active, he's posting, he's giving stuff, etc. He's just not...showing emotion.

[mastina]

I'm feeling a bit lost rn
There's no-one I'm happy voting for rn

You could...

...Sheep me on my vote of Bell.

[mastina]

Mastina's only contributions have been a wrong push on LLD and a wrong push on me. I'm being charitable there.

Today I learned Titus believes that scumreads are the only thing which counts as contributions according to Titus and that making repeated full readslists including hard defense of players like DGB doesn't count as contributions to her.

Because that's apparently what's required for Titus to genuinely believe this given my posting is far, far, FAR from just "Titus is scum, LLD is scum".

[mastina]

Also look how pure that Ythan wagon is

Vote Count 1.19

Ythan

(8):

OkaPoka

, Luca Blight, Dannflor, Cephrir, Lady Lambdadelta,

Titus

,

AGar

, innocentvillager

Lady Lambdadelta

(5): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, jjh927

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, Bell

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

Not Voting

(1): Almost50

You mean the wagon which has 2-3 of my scumreads on it?

Yes, Luca is town; yes, IV is town; yes, Cephrir is town; yes, Dannflor and LLD are flipped town.

But the wagon's far from pure.

[mastina]

Why isn't Oka voting anyone

Because he's scum.

Why aren't you obvtowning?

[mastina]

tell me what am i shading iv about exactly

The play around end of day regarding LLD/DGB.

this is a weird take i think? wasn't titus a wagon that had like 5 or 6 votes on it at one point?

She never got above four.

In fact, the response to the worst's wagon is the LLD wagon shrinking rather than growing. Another sign that Bell may not be scum.

can you explain why this is a sign bell might not be scum? i don't think i'm following the logic

Bell is the worst's slot.

worstie was wagoned up to 6-7 votes. (Oka switched off.)
There wasn't a counterwagon. To the contrary, the lead wagon shrunk.
Which means either Bell is scum and scum didn't put any effort into saving him or Bell is town.

Tho I now am thinking the former over the latter off of Bell's lackluster play and worstie's lackluster play before that and Dannflor wanting to look more at Bell and for that matter: nobody having announced that they were investigated by Dannflor.

Scum killed Dannflor; Dannflor would never holster; Dannflor wasn't going to be blocked by a town role (jk would've saved him so obviously wasn't jk'd, rb would never target him), Dannflor wasn't going to be blocked by a scum role (scum aren't going to rb and nk the same target, scum can't jk Dann while killing him), and yet nobody has come forward to say that a Neapolitan, AKA, Dannflor, targeted them.

Since nobody has come forward to say they were Dann's N1 target, it leads me to believe that scum was his N1 target, and Bell was someone he was quite likely to be targeting with his role.

[mastina]

unless your reason for hard TRing those people is primarily because of the fact that they took stances on the two slots?

Partially, yes.

Fact: yesterday was TvT between LLD and DGB.
Fact: there were players who hard-pushed one of the two as scum while hard-defending the other as town.

Ask yourself: when it is a TvT fight, what do scum get from hard-defending one while hard-pushing the other? They don't get anything; regardless, they come out as discredited because while they were half-right, they were so strongly half-wrong that they lose a lot of their power/authority on future days when it is revealed as TvT.

Also, scum didn't care who died in the two. Why would scum want LLD so strongly dead rather than DGB so strongly dead? Why would scum want DGB so strongly dead rather than LLD so strongly dead? Both are incredibly strong town players who have similar clout to them, so one's death D1 is just as good as the other. To scum, due to it being TvT, it makes no difference which of them dies, the town loses a strong scumhunter regardless. So scum have no incentive, no motive, to fake a scumread on one and generate a sincere defense of the other. They gain nothing from it.

Scum have no reason to defend one town in the TvT and attack the other given who the players in question were.
Town, being uninformed, however, had no way of knowing it was TvT. If a town player genuinely believed it was SvT, they would defend the T and attack the perceived S.

So the players who strongly took a TvS stance in DGB vs LLD are disproportionately likely to be town.

The players who didn't take a stance, or took the stance that it was TvT, on the other hand, can both contain scum.