Mewbie 2094 -- GAME OVER

[syugar]

That's what it is, though: a superficiality that you're open to reconsidering your reads. Which is why I'm voting you now. You just don't care.

[Bellaphant]

No, ok, what you just said made sense. I'll relook at what you said about Luke tonight.

I'd be curious what you fine scummy about me before today though. By today I mean this day phase

My issue is if it isn't you, then I have Luke who has done those things GM did with me last game - say my thoughts, descalate in a towny way, even admitting that he'd not read a crucial 'not' in a post.

V catboi, who through play just 'seems' town, although I have a lot of gut/tonal issues..if anyone is 'snowing' me it's their slot. So I'd have to re read really carefully.

P-edit. I didn't get the impression it was a 'case', I promise I'm going to look again, it is very probable that I was too dismissive.

[Bellaphant]

Also, catjpeg is saying very similar things to me about Luke and catboi, she just happens to scum read me. So...

[syugar]

I'd be curious what you fine scummy about me before today though. By today I mean this day phase

Nothing, your iso is mostly fine, you're the type of player I have a bias towards townreading. On the flip side, the one condemning factor about your iso is that you don't have any revolutionary interactions with GM and as such are the best partner candidate fmpov. In terms of statements I find egregious, I thought Luke's iso was scummier overall.

The issue is that you are just putting in absolutely zero legwork today which makes no sense, considering you're apparently confused and came to me just by PoE, and you don't seem frightened of having nothing to go off of tomorrow while staring down your two locked townreads in an elo situation. That's totally unnatural. It's also in stark contrast to yesterday - the reason you'd go for a cat jpeg elimination in that gamestate is because you were playing around scenarios in a paranoid manner and trying to make an elim based off of possible teams. That's why I did, anyway. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your reasonings for wanting to vote jpeg yesterday. What I will say, though, is that fmpov, if I was SO confused about gm's partner to the extent that I wanted to elim cat jpeg instead, I would not be coasting today as you were, I'd be wrestling with thoughts and trying to figure out who that partner could possibly be. From that angle it's nearly impossible to empathize with how you're playing, it's just stagnant. (esp considering you have weird hangups with catboi)

I really just think you're voting me now because you believe catboi's just gonna vote Luke today and hand you the win. I don't really see town drive.

[syugar]

Also, catjpeg is saying very similar things to me about Luke and catboi, she just happens to scum read me. So...

Not really, just in terms of mental approach. Go look at her last post.

I'm probably getting NK'd if it's not Bella and idk who i would want voted out then.

We can infer that she has more doubts and is way more fluid than you are. She isn't even sure who her second candidate would be. She's looking. You're just parked.

[syugar]

I mean, like, today, you're like, oh easy, syugar is gm's partner. If that's the case why didn't you just vote gm yesterday. What. You had a solve.

[syugar]

I really just think you're voting me now because you believe catboi's just gonna vote Luke today and hand you the win. I don't really see town drive.

Ebwop; Vote luke tomorrow

[Bellaphant]

Ok, I can kind of see why you see that but that isn't what's happening in my head - I think my fussing about elo is proof.

I think you've also misunderstood where my scum read of you comes from - when to2 claimed his targets, I 100% thought you were town. I've said this consistently, which honestly would be dumb if I was scum. My read comes from entirely of the bouncing around you did straight after day phase: to me, it felt like you thought like was an easy elim, then saw me defend him, realise that you had to get a mis lim' between me and Luke and then bounce between the two of us, in what felt like a really erractic fashion. You also started to scum read Luke for some things that just weren't scumny, like commenting that maybe scum would've not nked to try to get confusion/a misnelim on jpeg. Like, you acted like that was crazy, and the same with the mass claim stats he did.

I'm reacting to your reaction. I think that before GM flipped, scum still had it easy-ish; t02 is saving our arse again and again. Do they think they can get another miselim on cat and then one more to win? Probably. But then we start today with one less scum and a conf town, and it would make sense for scum to be panicky and erractic. Which is also why your accusation of me just crusing also feels weird.

I think we see 'optimal" play very different, although I do appreciate that you say I'm a player that's easy to tr, but does that make a bit more sense?

[Bellaphant]

IM still rereading, just want to talk whole you are here

[syugar]

My read comes from entirely of the bouncing around you did straight after day phase: to me, it felt like you thought like was an easy elim, then saw me defend him, realise that you had to get a mis lim' between me and Luke and then bounce between the two of us, in what felt like a really erractic fashion. You also started to scum read Luke for some things that just weren't scumny, like commenting that maybe scum would've not nked to try to get confusion/a misnelim on jpeg. Like, you acted like that was crazy, and the same with the mass claim stats he did.

If you felt like my actions were opportunistic, I'm not sure how I can change that. I've been trying to leave a trail of a clear progression in the game and have explained every move I've made, often in bursts of posts that go into a lot of detail.

I don't understand what you mean by your read coming from me bouncing around - if you thought I first went on Luke because he was an easy elim, you've got to realize that I only changed my mind and voted for you after you were already scumreading and voting me. To say that it's because I was hopping around from Luke to you is post-hoc. So, what was the reason before that?

I'm not going to deny that I've been erratic today, but I don't understand why that speaks to my alignment. Am I not supposed to be erratic in a situation where my vote is close and I look pretty bad, the onus on me being to produce something good to be found?

I can explain my PoV on any of my posts about Luke if you quote them specifically and want to hash it out in more detail.

[syugar]

Like, me being erratic should probably be the opposite of a scumtell - I think that our winning chances aren't much more reliable than a coin flip if I get voted off here today. If you're town, the fact that you haven't even started to piece together who'd be scum between Cat/Luke is proof of that coin flip. Why is erratic scummy? You're finding it inherently scummy?

[Malakittens]

Votecount 4.02

bellaphant: (1) syugar
syugar: (2) Lukewarm bellaphant

Not Voting (2): cat.jpeg, catboi

With 5 alive it takes 3 to Eliminate.

Day 4 deadline is in (expired on 2022-06-03 01:30:00)

[syugar]

Going grocery shopping, probably 2 hours.

[syugar]

VOTE: Unvote

Here's what I'm going to do.

I believe I was a bit inarticulate about the read you just referenced on Luke. When I get home, I'll rehash it in more detail and we can talk through it.

[Bellaphant]

I'm good to hammer if noone has anything else

I wish I'd votes GM here btw.

You mentioned 'hang ups' about catboi: I made a stupid joke ages ago about pick up artists but I constantly feel... manipulated. My first game on this site there was an IC called Thor who was basically 'famous' and ngl, they spent the whole game trying to get me elimed and gas lighting me as scum. The manipulation felt really obvious but I struggled so so hard to articulate it. And catboi reminds me a bit of it. So I keep flipping my read on him in my head. But you just think he's town. I realise how silly I sound. But it's little words like catboi saying I 'suddenly' scum read someone, when it's not sudden - the word carries a lot of weight in that sentence and it's a lie. But it looks 'normal'.

Prior to your start to the day I thought catbois was bad. But talking with Luke I started to change my mind, and then your erratci stuff happened.

Maybe a bit like you I just want this done. You 'feel', on some level, like the easy solve. But if in wrong in fucked in elo. So yeah, no haste

[syugar]

I'm good to hammer if noone has anything else

I wish I'd votes GM here btw.

You mentioned 'hang ups' about catboi: I made a stupid joke ages ago about pick up artists but I constantly feel... manipulated. My first game on this site there was an IC called Thor who was basically 'famous' and ngl, they spent the whole game trying to get me elimed and gas lighting me as scum. The manipulation felt really obvious but I struggled so so hard to articulate it. And catboi reminds me a bit of it. So I keep flipping my read on him in my head. But you just think he's town. I realise how silly I sound. But it's little words like catboi saying I 'suddenly' scum read someone, when it's not sudden - the word carries a lot of weight in that sentence and it's a lie. But it looks 'normal'.

Prior to your start to the day I thought catbois was bad. But talking with Luke I started to change my mind, and then your erratci stuff happened.

Maybe a bit like you I just want this done. You 'feel', on some level, like the easy solve. But if in wrong in fucked in elo. So yeah, no haste

I can't town case it to someone who doesn't really know his game, but I have recently been reacquainted with him and it came back to me. I played a lot with him over several years from multiple perspectives, albeit in a slightly different form of this game. If you can quote which post you're talking about that pings you I can probably get you to come around to the fact that he's town. His approach to today is a hallmark of his towngame, though. These phases are pivotal, we don't have a lot of clear answers, rereading is hard and unfulfilling because we pull up ghosts due to everyone's iso being fairly towny, and as a result he is completely frozen and unsure. I'm so confident in my townread on him and that I can get him to see me (truly) as town that if there were two votes on me and two votes on you, and you hadn't voted yet, it'd be more optimal for you to selfvote in terms of percentage chance for town to win this game.

[syugar]

writing my luke case

[syugar]

I used some pretty mediocre examples, as I wrongly assumed that people had similar mechanical preferences to me and deflated my own case, but I can use better examples for the Luke read. Those examples can simply be reads from today. I hate writing walls but here we go.

Luke's approach to the game is what I'd call

cerebrally inconsistent

. When you try to piece together reads and statements he has made, it almost seems like they're coming from different players. I posit the first example, his justification for townreading catboi today:

it has to me or syugar from your pov. What sounds more likely?.

I don't know, that's the problem. I will need to reread the two of you sometime that it is not 4:30 am.

But I was thinking about how day 2 played out, and I am really struggling to see that come from partnered gm and catboi.

His literal first post of day 2 was advocating strongly for a mass claim, specifically in a way that would appeal to me (by referencing a conversation he knew I had with LLD), and then he proceeded to argue why he thought it was the best move.

And gm was then The Reason the massclaim didn't happen, both by arguing against it and then refusing to do it when we started.

This is such a specific dissonance that I don't see them together. To be clear it is not just because they disagreed, that was the fact that the entire idea came from catboi, so I don't think this would apply to anyone else (including me).

Like how would that scum team have gotten there? Did they not talk at all? This doesn't match what I've seen of catboi in scum chats - when I read his scum chat for fgo, I felt like there was a lot of collaboration and suggestions to his partners.

He argued for it too much if he didn't actually want it to happen, and GM argued against it too hard if they actually did want it to happen

Is it a scum team that thought the mass claim would help them? GM's play makes no sense
Was it a scum team that thought the mass claim would hurt them? Catbois play makes no sense

That would just leave a team that thought it wouldn't matter either way, but then I don't think catboi leads with it and keeps arguing for it when there is push back.

I just can't see it

This read is ridiculously nuanced. I also think it's bad, but that isn't really necessary so I'll come back to it later. This read is so nuanced, assumptive, and pedantic that I'll call it "Level 3". I want to rank these reads on levels. To paraphase this read in a short way, he said this:

"Because catboi is an excellent scum player who collaborates with his teammates a lot, it seems impossible to me that he and his partner could have different opinions on a massclaim, especially because catboi suggested it; he seemed intent on this massclaim going through, and gm seemed like the opposite. This is unlikely, as either massclaiming or not must have been seen by his team as optimal and thus if they were teammates they would share the same opinion on the massclaim."

Wow. That's a lot. He's taking into account meta, how he thinks the scumteam would talk to eachother, mechanical facts etc etc. to paint a picture that catboi must be town here. This makes sense; the isos are so competitive and towny today that we need a bit of extra special sauce to figure them out. Compare that to how he opened the day:

My gut reaction is to omgus catboi, but also because he seems to have that angle to push me ready to go, when for all we knew there was not going to be a kill.

If the read above was

Level 3

, this is

Level 0

. Keep in mind that the read above assumes that catboi is an extremely deft and competent scum player (which he is, he won awards yadda yadda).

The first part of this read that makes it Level 0 is that it doesn't make sense. He thinks that when the day opens like this, scum must have known that there would be a kill and thus had something prepared. What he doesn't take into account is that townies could reread over the night and form theories for two reasons:

1) If there's no kill, the game very likely ends instantly. I don't need to do anything else, so when I reread tonight I should be reading with the contingency that jpeg gets cleared and look for another suspect.
2) If there's no kill, there may have been an NK. I want to read and develop theories that I will bring to the table regardless if we lynch cat jpeg or not just so we are bouncing ideas off of as many people as possible.

Maybe you can buy 1 (I don't, given the deftness of his earlier read), but given that Lukewarm was apparently obsessed with there being an NK to set up a false lynch for jpeg, it is surprising that he did not consider that catboi was thinking along line 2 similar to how he was overnight.

Furthermore, let's buy that Lukewarm believes 1 and 2. If that's the case, catboi would have essentially slipped Remember the read from earlier where he talks about how great of a scum player catboi is? If this is his true opinion on catboi, it is very difficult to believe that he would buy catboi would be that careless as scum as to not consider how his opening would make him feel perceived.

What's the point of dissecting this?

It's a fake progression

(ostensibly). This reaction to catboi's opening and the later extremely nuanced reads are incompatible. Level 3 players who are deep into the meta reads to justify specious townreads will not make thoughtless reads that don't take into account any meta perception of the player's skill level an hour before that. What?

Here are more reads I consider Level 1 from today and why:

I am comparing that to Bella's entrance of disagreeing with catboi's read on me, then accepting my town read on catboi, and engaging with me in a way that was accepting of me thinking of the game as it having to be between syugar and/or Bella, which is a losing strategy to start the day with imo

This is his justification for townreading Bella. Let me rephrase it without the fluff:

"Bella came into the day with reads. She interacted with my read. Then she acknowledged that if I townread catboi, fmpov it has to be her or syugar (basic logic that isn't even a comment on anything in the game other than signaling that she read what I posted). This is a losing strategy (why is that losing if you townread it? citation needed.)"

I don't actually see anything out of range for anyone who's played for as long as Bella here. If this is towny for Bella, what is Bella's scum game like? Does she have no reads? Does she not read other people's posts and engage with them? How is someone who has so much reverence for one player's scum game think that another experienced player is so incompetent that these are towny actions from them?

I think this bleeds into some of the theoretical mechanical discussion (I think that there has been talk of things that just pretty much wouldn't happen), but since people don't agree with me on that, I'm willing to drop it because it isn't really necessary to my argument.

Other things I disliked:

Let's look at his read on me:

VOTE: syugar

I don't buy syugar's progression from 1178 to voting in 1182 to not even considering scum!Bella in 1199. And I did not like his responses when I followed up.

For the first part, he doesn't explain why he finds my progression unbelievable.

For the second part, this is misrepresentative.

He's referencing this post:

that being said, the only other thing i'll offer is that if you/luke/catjpeg vote for me today, just try to sponge my townread on catboi and elim luke tomorrow

Nothing about it implies that I wasn't considering Bella ~at all~. He arbitrarily loaded that into my thought process by misinterpreting the statement I was leaning towards Luke being scum, yeah, but what he's missing is that this post is addressed to Bella. Why was this addressed to Bella? She seemed unsure on catboi's alignment and was hard townreading Luke. In a world where she is town, this has to be made known, because catjpeg is going to be killed at night and I need her to get over her paranoia on catboi and erroneous scumread on Luke. Considering it's addressed to Bella, and the three players alive would be Bella, Luke, and catboi, her voting Luke just logically follows from her accepting my townread on catboi.

This is evident in my reply:

The post I was responding to was when you said was that in 3 man elo with Luke+catboi+Bella, kill Luke.

oh yeah, i agree with myself then

u tr catboi so i dont see how u find it unreasonable, altho in a perfect world id be able to elim both u and bella

I'm trying to reach common ground with him here. "You TR catboi so I don't see how you find it unreasonable (fmpov)". It doesn't really make sense for him to scumread the fact that I townread catboi this hard considering he townreads catboi himself. Like, what?

Again, his reasoning for FoSing me feels kind of arbitrary. Looks like he saw me as the vote and needed a way to get there. He chose weird things to get hung up over and refused to empathize with it from my PoV, which is strange given how he tried to step into catboi's shoes to produce that townread on him (again).

That part of the case is done, now I want to revisit this:

it has to me or syugar from your pov. What sounds more likely?.

I don't know, that's the problem. I will need to reread the two of you sometime that it is not 4:30 am.

But I was thinking about how day 2 played out, and I am really struggling to see that come from partnered gm and catboi.

His literal first post of day 2 was advocating strongly for a mass claim, specifically in a way that would appeal to me (by referencing a conversation he knew I had with LLD), and then he proceeded to argue why he thought it was the best move.

And gm was then The Reason the massclaim didn't happen, both by arguing against it and then refusing to do it when we started.

This is such a specific dissonance that I don't see them together. To be clear it is not just because they disagreed, that was the fact that the entire idea came from catboi, so I don't think this would apply to anyone else (including me).

Like how would that scum team have gotten there? Did they not talk at all? This doesn't match what I've seen of catboi in scum chats - when I read his scum chat for fgo, I felt like there was a lot of collaboration and suggestions to his partners.

He argued for it too much if he didn't actually want it to happen, and GM argued against it too hard if they actually did want it to happen

Is it a scum team that thought the mass claim would help them? GM's play makes no sense
Was it a scum team that thought the mass claim would hurt them? Catbois play makes no sense

That would just leave a team that thought it wouldn't matter either way, but then I don't think catboi leads with it and keeps arguing for it when there is push back.

I just can't see it

This reasoning is patently forced. Think to the last time you've ever played as scum. You had a QT, or maybe you had a discord server. Have you ever planned bringing up such a topic with your partners and made sure you were aligned on it, ever? Especially for something that's been argued as town-optimal such as a massclaim? When scum strategize with eachother (at least this has always been the case for me), they think broad strokes; "these narratives about players xyz need to be pushed eventually. We need to have tension on a point in order to seem like we aren't partners. etc, stuff like that".

On top of that, even if we were to say that they planned something around the massclaim, there's nothing suggesting they wouldn't plan the opposite as a means of distancing from eachother on a fundamental level.

On top of that, we don't even know how actively they would have communicated in this hypothetical scenario. GM posted light and was quite inactive. The massclaim suggestion was somewhat off-the-cuff based on a gamestate where we didn't have a lot of information due to stagnation.

Keep in mind this is a read that flipped Luke's perceptions of catboi, so you'd think it'd have to be something pretty strong. This read takes four or five assumptions that may prove true or untrue and essentially gambles the game on them. It feels like

justification created after the read was decided

. For strategic reasons. I don't think town!Luke would find this super soul read convincing enough to carry this anti partner read. It's like... out of his own book, TMI?

I am open to discussion about either of these points, as long as you're representing them properly.

[syugar]

Also, keep in mind, in post 1200, I literally say:

altho in a perfect world id be able to elim both u and bella

In his justification for FoSing me later, he says:

to not even considering scum!Bella

I was not considering scum Bella, even a little? Then why did I say that in a perfect world I'd be able to elim both of you? Why ask me questions if you aren't reading the responses and taking them into account?

Doesn't feel like a solve. Reasoning is misrepresentative and doesn't try to understand what I'm saying.

[syugar]

Now Bella, tell me if you think that reasoning is scummy or why you disagree at all. I will be on for 10 more hours.

[syugar]

It's ironic that Lukewarm just decided that Bella's strategy here would be losing as scum and used that as a justification to TR her, because it's exactly the strategy that would win her the game in the case that she's scum and he's town. From that perspective, with catboi having the leftover scumread on Luke, what do you think will happen? Have you even considered that? Lol

[Bellaphant]

Im gonna process ^. I'll respond once the kids are asleep I definitely dismissed what you said earlier too quickly but equally it didn't look anything like that

P-edit I can honestly say I haven't been scum in /years/. Not even in the recent in person meet Also, even I hadn't considered that.

Actually, is that true? Surely I look pretty shit there if you flip town?

[Bellaphant]

It's also the same thing here - if Luke flips town, elo is me you catboi. I'm not sure you get out of that, as scum?

I'm over thinking the wrong things probably.

[syugar]

Im gonna process ^. I'll respond once the kids are asleep I definitely dismissed what you said earlier too quickly but equally it didn't look anything like that

P-edit I can honestly say I haven't been scum in /years/. Not even in the recent in person meet Also, even I hadn't considered that.

Actually, is that true? Surely I look pretty shit there if you flip town?

I don't see any reason why you or luke would look worse than one another due to my flip, it'd be up to his interpretation of the game which is currently leaning in your favor

It's also the same thing here - if Luke flips town, elo is me you catboi. I'm not sure you get out of that, as scum?

I'm over thinking the wrong things probably.

If we're judging off of post quality from this game alone, I probably beat you there every day of the week, but that's because we've hit the point in the game where I'm polarized as town and this just isn't my scumgame, and I have stuff ready to send to catboi to show him that and kick him in the pants. Doesn't really matter if you're town, though

[syugar]

I'm pretty much in this situation because my read accuracy has been extremely bad, and even at the end of today it may continue to be bad leaving me with a batting record of 0/4, but after a certain point that really stops mattering