Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Dunnstral]

and then out of here. Like a shot. No sticking around for interactions, just in and out, quick and clean.

Literally nobody responded to me or even acknowledged my posts

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Dunn, for at least the past 48 hours you have been dead silent except when I have brought you up. Now just what am I supposed to take away from that?

[Dunnstral]

Nothing

My timing last time was a coincidence, this time because I was addressed

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I can accept both of those, in theory, if I want to. I don't really want to, right now. I want to see what other people have to say first.

[SirCakez]

I was lying in bed thinking about this game and realized if Duchess is scum trying to get me shot then Imperium is actually fairly likely town and scum want me to shoot them to end the game...

[SirCakez]

Is there a particular reason why you think being wrong about Lotus should affect my read of you? What ties you two together?

I never said this
I meant reevaluation in general

[Imperium]

Mostly a quick drive by. I still have grading and uploading course info to finish, so I might not have a chance to get to this game today. Most likely will check in here and there to keep up and see if anything is addressed to me, but that's about it. Nacho and I talked a bit when he got home from work this morning, but 4am rambles are a bit incoherent and we'll be getting those thoughts together tomorrow and will post them when he gets home from work.

STT - Yeah Lotus's play style does seem to not be a rushing one, but you can never be too sure of things like that in mafia. There are several reasons this head doesn't vote much in mafia, and doing my part to help avoid quick wagons is one of them.

I thought that there was something else i wanted to drive by respond to, but I'm on no sleep and my brain is failing me. I'll pop in if I remember.

Morning, folks.

Seems like today's going to be a good day aside from the afternoon dumping Eris's boredom on Chicago. Hopefully it's just the "look how boring you are" kind and not the "let's spice things up a little" sort. The Goddess's idea of "a little spicy" is "a shot of mace garnished with CS powder", after all. /Definitely/ a case of More Fun Than I Really Want. Fingers crossed.

As such, I'm going to do a different sort of initial catch up post today, because I want to start off with good vibes.

This post helped my emotional state.
You are my rock and you are a wonderful person. If you are scum then you are a heartless sociopath and you will not be invited to the barbeque.

Don't get too excited, now. I haven't completely sorted you yet.

Also, I think that's the nicest thing anyone's said about my Mafia play, ever.

Beware of Greek goddesses bearing golden apples

Also that post is independent of what you think of us. We both very much appreciate and enjoy your presence in this game and believe you are town. It's always nice when it's a mutual town read in these situations, but it doesn't have to be for the statement to still be true.

OH yeah Cakez pedit reminded me;

Dunnstral - I didn't think you meant all scum would be avoiding conflict; it's just that your post along with unwnd's made me realize I needed to consider another possible approach that scum could be taking here. I think I was thinking a bit too narrow.

Still think there was something else.

[RLotus]

I think scum are trying to direct my shot to someone who will shoot the gf. I see three instances of this if my theory is correct, one of which is not well hidden whatsoever. And one instance has been doubled back on because I made it clear it won't work.

I'm being vague I know but I wonder if anyone will see what I see to maybe reaffirm me. My reads/shot isn't locked in whatsoever btw I am flip flopping a lot.

[SirCakez]

Why would scum be trying to get you to shoot someone will shoot town, as opposed to the GF?

[SirCakez]

Why wouldn't, rather

[RLotus]

Maybe there are no TvT dichotomies atm? Idk, it would make sense for them to do that as well.

[Duchess]

I won't be here at all for the rest of today after this, for all your information.

Imperium. I understand that you have meta reasons for believing Cakez would act this way as town, but I have looked at your joint ISO again and I cannot see any justification to approach your slot in such bad faith. Cakez even admits to engaging in bad faith when you called him out on it and claims it's because he thinks you are scum. I assume Cakez is familiar with your play and possibly has some idea of how to catch you as scum. Do you believe he would emotionally manipulate you the way he continually has if he were town chasing a scumread?

[SirCakez]

To be transparent - I don't think I have played with Imperium as scum before (or if I have I don't remember it)
I am not using meta at all here

[SirCakez]

Maybe there are no TvT dichotomies atm? Idk, it would make sense for them to do that as well.

Fair
It's just on my mind because of that epiphany I had in bed this morning

[unwnd]

What do you think of my theory that Cakez feels locked in? Maybe he doesn't see an out at this point, or like I said, feels vulnerable with Imperium left alone. Right now you're looking at what scum would want to do in this situation to their benefit, while I'm looking more at how scum might react to the situation, wittingly or not.

I imagine being locked in is something Cakez would intentionally want to do as scum in this situation. It's not a matter of pursuing a wrong read if you have a Red PM, it's all about how convincing it seems. Maybe even in the sense that you

seem

townie by having that read even if most of the game is just disagreeing with you. A fantastic position to be in, and to play contrarian. This is not Cakez' style though, and while yes this fits into meta, I think it's appropriate.

[SirCakez]

Unwnd will you be mad if I tell you I'm getting paranoid you're trying to pocket me here

[unwnd]

No, but I would wonder why you believe that

[Imperium]

I won't be here at all for the rest of today after this, for all your information.

Imperium. I understand that you have meta reasons for believing Cakez would act this way as town, but I have looked at your joint ISO again and I cannot see any justification to approach your slot in such bad faith. Cakez even admits to engaging in bad faith when you called him out on it and claims it's because he thinks you are scum. I assume Cakez is familiar with your play and possibly has some idea of how to catch you as scum. Do you believe he would emotionally manipulate you the way he continually has if he were town chasing a scumread?

I don't remember him admitting to approaching us in bad faith.

Cakes has seen imperium as scum once last year in the Flying Scumsmen, which I'm not sure he remembers much about. I ended up getting sick day two and replacing out then the game was abandoned. Anyway that's the only game that we've been in where this hydra has been scum. He's never seen me as scum besides that, but he has more experience with nacho. They've been partners a few times, and from Nacho's memory the only time cakez has ever town read Nacho was once when he was scum years ago. Cakez has seen me play as town several times recently - I became confirmed town due to a dethy masonry day two in one, he was scum in the other, and he modded the last game Imperium played. I do think that he might have some understanding of my town game especially seeing the reasons for people who know me to have town read me in recent games. He should recognize that I'm very likely to fencesit; I'm Princes Waffles from Waffleville, and me being waffly and fence sitting on a player is a regular feature of my game, and he should recognize that I push back at reasoning I find suspicious no matter the read I have on the player in question. But I don't think Cakez has any idea how to catch me as scum; he'd not be scumreading me here as I'm far outside my scum range especially when the flying scumsmen is the only scumgame I've drawn in over three years. (I took a long break.)

Cakez push on us and his play overall is one of the things nacho and I discussed this morning and is something we want to make sure we do feel good about. We have him as a decently strong town read, but whereas with MUSH we'd be pretty damn surprised if she flipped scum, we have entertained the possibility this is a scum push. He might push us as scum. In xeno, where he was scum, I had pretty decent reads - I waffled on cakez but suspected him, and named three of his partners as my main suspects in my end of day one post; they killed me that night. In a world where he is scum, he might want to lessen my influence or tilt me in hopes my reads end up sucking, but in that case he runs the danger of us getting shot and damaging his team. (My reads aren't always great, and I've definitely had my share of games where my reads were pretty terrible, but there's no way of really predicting that). I don't know if that makes sense, and that's just really pure conjecture; I don't know if he would be afraid of my reads; he might not think I usually have that good of reads.

The things we keep coming back to are the little things - the emotional flourishes, the acting as if he's the hero the game needs to take out the big bad imperium, the overall attitude to us and about us, the scumhunting outside of us, and the worries about having scum in his townreads. And I think about xeno, and while some of his push does remind me of his push against Battle Mage, the rest of his attitude towards the game really doesn't. But this is a read that we'll flesh out more tomorrow when we go over our reads and give our thoughts. In short, to answer the last question. I do think it's possible that this comes from town chasing down a scum read.

[Imperium]

*but I don't think it's very likely.

[unwnd]

Maybe there are no TvT dichotomies atm? Idk, it would make sense for them to do that as well.

You mean like the 1v1s are co-opted by scum and distancing attempts? I agree with some of that, especially if you look at my own reads. I feel like right now my focus is finding townies despite what it seems, because I find it is more beneficial to deter potential bad shots in a game like this, which goes into why I think PoE is so damn important

[Imperium]

*but I don't think it's very likely.

Nevermind this. I misread my own last sentence in the post above this and thought I implied that I thought it was a push scum cakez was meaning, and I confused myself, so i fixed it. But then I just reread that last sentence, and it says what I meant.

[Imperium]

Maybe there are no TvT dichotomies atm? Idk, it would make sense for them to do that as well.

You mean like the 1v1s are co-opted by scum and distancing attempts? I agree with some of that, especially if you look at my own reads. I feel like right now my focus is finding townies despite what it seems, because I find it is more beneficial to deter potential bad shots in a game like this, which goes into why I think PoE is so damn important

This is yeah something that Nacho and I were discussing this morning. There are 5 scum and 5 town in the pool outside of me and Lotus, so if we can figure out who our 5 townies we feel good about are then our poe pool becomes clearer.

[petapan]

It was never fleshed out, you're correct, but i find it not notable but odd that you didn't recognize that it was part of a conversation about players that had started at 710. Yes, he at that point said he was thinking lotus, and I restated my previously stated points - my little pings that I wanted to reread and flesh out, which I would have done regardless of who he said. We were in a conversation, one in which he had just stated not too long before that he wasn't going to be shooting right away. (Just double checked this; he said he wanted to give us a chance to get our thoughts out there the night before.) Anyway, there was no indication that he was shooting right then until after that point when he said he was shooting and gave his reads list. I get Dunnstral in the moment thinking it looked that way, but I guess I don't really understand how you don't recognize it for the conversation that it was.

For what it's worth, I didn't even think he was going to be shooting right that moment when he said he was informed they were shooting. I thought that we were still going to talk more. (I realize this part here is pretty meaningless from an outside pov who truly has the above thought, but.)

meh, like i said i am shotgunning this thread pretty much as quickly as possible without writing down anything and i'm probably gonna miss some details but the timing of it was conspicuous, i don't doubt that no one really believed they were going to hero shoot right that instant, but that's not really as important to as it was the reaction to them entertaining the shot at that moment

[Imperium]

I still don't like your response. I have a lot more faith in your ability to read the natural progression of a conversation and you acting like something is what is demonstrably is not is worrisome for your alignment.

Think you're displaying an agenda there you wouldn't if you were town.

[petapan]

so, on entry into the game, didn't like cakez, kind of got nervous because he seemed to be preemptively discrediting me in the way i'd expect scum to, reading along i felt like his tunnel on imperium was heading into irrational territory, the way i expect scum doing a shitpush to behave, but as i'm reading, i start to see him make posts i'm not sure he makes as scum, stuff that just feels very believable to me (599 and 857 stick out. i know neither of these are outside his capacity to fake as scum but i just don't think he

would

bother to make them and the way they are written looks genuine), and i start wondering if my initial assumption was wrong


and imperium, well, i liked what they were doing, posts made sense, in particuar the way they were trying to draw content out of norfolk and get him to talk rather than just calling for his head, the way they reacted to cakez tunneling them by assuming he was just misguided town, that's typically an approach town takes to being tunneled and not as common from scum

but, like, i had this paranoid flash and flipped everything and started tinfoiling a world where it's an imperium/norfolk team, the way they reacted to the early pressure on norflok, the thing where they kept trying to speak to him realtime, it suddenly reminded me of what i did with midwaybear in my recent scumgame, had an scumbuddy that was lacking in confidence but i didn't want to just throw him under the bus, i made a point of questioning him and interacting with him in real time to try to get him into the game and give him practice explaining himself as scum, while also making people think we weren't teamed. and that's kind of the vibe i started getting from them makin such a deliberate point of wanting a back and forth with him, like they wanted to dance but he had two left feet and couldn't answer him so they just sort of have to scumread him, and that sort orf meshes with them talking about how the people who were pushing him early might be scum, like they might be setting up to call them bussers when he flips

and it also occurred to me that, tactically, OMGUSing cakez is a terrible move in the world where imperium is scum and cakez is town because it gets them nowhere. like, if they're scum their goal here is to endgame and cakez is basically the only one likely to shoot them so they'd

have

to discourage a cakez shot, at least right now, and from that perspective, the whole read there starts looking very political and ingenuine, and they're one of maybe a couple people in this game i'd expect to be thinking that way about who they call to get shot

to be clear

i'm not advocating imperium get shot right now, i would shoot norfolk before them every time and only consider them after a norfolk red flip, but that's my little paranoid theory right now

my early assumption about norfolk was that he was just the lazy "consensus scum" pick but now i'm seeing a lot of people flot him as scum but not have him at the bottom of their readlists which is always a big warning sign, when a bunch of people are going "yeah he's scummy BUT how about so-and-so..." that tells you there are people who don't

really

want him shot which is a pretty strong sign just by gamestate that he's scum