Micro 1089: the coalition, again [game over]

[hellbooks]

why is this game so fun omg lol
stopp ittttt omgggg
i have to get work done omg stopppp

[hellbooks]

giggling and kicking my feet and throwing pillows at all of you

[hellbooks]

who up moving 2 energy from 1 of their pokemon to another of their pokemon

[hellbooks]

why is this game so fun omg lol
stopp ittttt omgggg
i have to get work done omg stopppp

i didnt mean stop for real

[hellbooks]

yea why
did i forget to explain one

[hellbooks]

As sure as ive ever been about anything in my life

[hellbooks]

this post was written off the cuff and i kind of just took ideas immediately as they came to me

Spoiler: spoilers for house of leaves

house of leaves is a book that is well known for having an unconventional and purposely obtuse and corrupted text formatting and footnote situation for literary reasons. the spoiler text is a direct parody of when they find out that the house is bigger on the inside than the outside, and i use a lot of silly bbcode things to make the post look more incomprehensible

the new york mets tiktok thing was a completely irrelevant attempt to pocket shea who was mourning the mets performance at the time
someone says "starling marte would just wrestle that thing and get it out of there", there were people who expressed a need for someone to step up and take decisive action, i just thought i'd tie those two things together

i thought it would also be funny to say like "oh shea mentioned that he's off doing magic the gathering and being sad about the mets so i'll make sure i factor that in when thinking about him at this time"

then it looks like i had a bunch of trying to make sense of the big shea tris situation and idk how much i succeeded with that but it all ended up being settled and done with

then i was like "oh i have a bunch of things i could ask skitter right now" and had the idea to make a GTKAS parody. i gave skitter the uncut gems avatar to reference an earlier joke i made about her using my avatar (which was related to me suggesting shea use vp baltar's avatar) (wow did that happen THIS game that feels like years ago)

skitterature is a reference to library dimension (my first post)
max scherzer is a pitcher for the mets i think
dethy is a setup ive been proselytizing througouhgt the game
day to be v/la saturday or sunday was a good joke from me i forgot about that

Spoiler: spoiler for house of leaves and how its like the coalition

part of house of leaves is the mythology of there being an unseen "monster" force in the house, the reality of which is called into question, which is like how theres scum in the coalition. and the house is like a shifting structure that takes the shape of people's collective psyche which is also like the nature of the coalition. so i just kind of Ctrl+F'd some fitting passages where they talked about the monster and replaced house with coalition

i guess me hiding game relevant questions within this block of text made skitter very easily say "ok i didnt get any of that so im just going to move on". but sheep was like "well i got it" which did a good job at reassuring me that i wasnt being obtuse to a counterproductive extent

footnote 1: this was just a silly little joke manifesto where i was like coalition building is a more radical and liberating form of mafia playing where we dont succumb to the ideology of "the only people we can really trust are people we've killed". lets bet on this shit is an uncut gems reference, my avatar at the time

footnote 2: i guess at the time i was like "hmm its weird that shea was willing to not be suspicious at all of tris for the purposes of forming a coalition but is now like "yeah actually everything that tris was putting out is not actually enough to be town". the uncut gems "house always wins" is a joke about how in the ending of a casino gambling session the casino is always going to come out on top i guess. and i made the text for the house blue which is another famous thing that house of leaves does

footnote 3: wuthering heights is one of my favorite books. ive been having a bit of a schtick where i bring it up a lot in games. one of the main theme is "characters strongly not forgetting about the things they did to each other in the past" which i described as "interactions soup". and yeah thrushcross grange and wuthering heights are two Locations that people are always trying to get or limit access to in the book which is so coalition-like

footnote 4: this is a deadend footnote which was just a fun fact

footnote 5: i was in a lot of physical pain while making this post and also having difficulty accessing medication. i made a joke about me being max sherzer in real life and thats why the mets were sucking

footnote 6: calling back to footnote 1 where i was like oh yea like people expect you to play the game of mafia in a certain gamesolving way that creates value for them which im going to make seem unreasonable by comparing it to capitalism or something. in order to justify my comparitvely lower value given that expectation

making this posts made me realize that my tastes in media are so annoying
or i guess the media things that i choose to bring up in mafia games

[hellbooks]

ooo

[hellbooks]

i wasnt ready way to make me trip and fall down

[hellbooks]

Lot of my favorite songs are like that

[hellbooks]

ari - ok so i have an inno on sheep and sheep you have a guilty on shea so that must mean that shea's scum right

sheep - well i got a guilty on skitter too so i guess im the one that always gets guilties idk im busy reading main thread

shea - can you guys be quiet im trying to watch the game ! ! ! ugh max scherzer you freakin piece of crap

isis - whoaoaoa im dead. nobody reminded me to play my goodra deck. im glad it took me this long to get nightkilled so i could avoid being in this dethy game

tris - i have an inno on skitter and ari but im confident that we can solve this through day play

skitter - oh brother... how did i get roped into this...

datisi - can you guys be quiet im trying to play my game ! ! ! ugh this freaking dung beetle piece of crap

[hellbooks]

i love being talked about

[hellbooks]

yeah. i mean i can see the narrative where hellbooks is scum this game. and she haunts me a little bit.

my wuthering ass at the window

[hellbooks]

the post i was thinking of was 1442

this one appears to be me spelling out datisi's name acrostically
dont rember doing that so maybe its a coincidence ooo

[hellbooks]

although youcan definitely argue that i had other choices for the "s" slot

[hellbooks]

inspiration as in you went back and read them so you could download how to pocket me

extending upon this idea: i was thinking about how people come in from the dead thread after you misvote in ELO and are like "omg scum was so obvious" but like you were dead. the scum didnt have to worry about you so they were free to make a bunch of posts that would have been scummy to speifically you. the scum are only worried about snowing the people who are alive. and maybe theres enough of a difference between the alive people and the dead people to create a significant advantage for those dead people. in the last game i was thinking, coming in and saying how scum was so obvious after i misvoted is really feels just so unnecessarily belittling to me. like i already know i fucked up and youre just coming in and kicking me in the ribs while im on the floor

all of this is to say: if i vote infinity then this is part of why

i can try to talk about myself less tho, i do agree that doing so is generally like not super useful (and something that scums in this position really prefer doing) it's just hard for me not to respond to things sometimes

i can feel myself trying to like twist my words around to squeeze out any drops of towniness that must be in there somewhere and avoid sounding like scum but really it probably just ends up making my posts sound tortured and constructed

it was a reaction to my own previous post where i was absolutely doing that and pondering over "how would i say this if i was scum" and then trying to not do that

tbh probably the highest win% play is for me to just lean into it and play like how i would if i were scum because i definitely have a higher rate of getting voted as town than i do as scum, and im generally a lot better at elos as scum

but i think deep down i really want to believe that if i am just honest and true enough to myself that someone will see it and recognize it and know that im town

unfortunately even deeper down i think i know that's probably not true

i think the game of mafia is sort of a reflection of reality in that way and maybe thats why i keep playing it

and youre literally not allowed to get mad at me if im wrong because these were my posts, they were made for me

[hellbooks]

I'm gonna spend a day or so away from this game (if I can) and if I come back and feel the same way I'll probably be ready to vote

im gonna spend a day or so trying to solve this game (if i can) and if i come to a conclusion ill probably be ready to vote

infinity: gonna try and take a break from this game
fire: gonna try and make some posts that youre going to feel like you have to respond to
(facetious post)

[hellbooks]

i keep hitting this wall where i want to agree with the points that infinity is making about hellbooks being towny and im like "damn maybe they're right" but then the alternative is that they are scum and its like ok there is no secret third option for me to vote here (as much as i would like to) so why would scum infinity be trying to convince me that hellbooks is town

the answer to this is surely that scum infinity is trying to seal the deal on convincing me that you are scum
im not sure what not taking this into account means from a "what perspective is fire operating from" angle

[hellbooks]

i think my explanation is going to be like you and infinity were having like a conversation with each other while i was farting around andpretending to do my job and since infinity was talking to you it would only reasonably follow that youre the person thyre trying to convince

[hellbooks]

when infinity was like "ok do you reaaaally like explaining jokes though" i was like ltierally where the hell is thisgoing

[hellbooks]

there are a bunch of things you've posted this day phase that would make me feel bad for voting you. and i don't think that's what town!you actually wants so unless you're coming off way different than you intend i don't think you'd actually be posting those things as town

i think town fire's intention here with those posts was as stated, just to be earnest (and then expressing some earnest regret about doing so)
i guess even if someone isnt like "i am going to appeal to your emotion" ones emotions can still be appealed to

[hellbooks]

i guess its very player dependent on how its reacted to
like i keep coming back to the feeling that i posted very similar things from a very similar mindset in an earlier game as town and did not garner a single drop of pity from anyone other than maybe tris
although i guess that was in a D1 situation and also i probably said a lot of things like "i openly absolve all of you for wanting to mislim me"

[hellbooks]

who is scum hellbooks

uh uh uh

v/la for 9 days, 20 hou

[hellbooks]

fire saying "i almost had success by only considering what was happening in real time in ELO and not in anything else" when he knows that if i were to do that myself it would come out so in his favor

[hellbooks]

i would like to restate that im coming off a game where i misvoted in ELO and as much as i didnt really show it that ended up sucking a lot. i guess only for the rest of the day though
so its not that much of a mental punishment

im going to fumble it when it comes down to voting fire
sorry im trying to fit a parody of the song "the wire" by haim and failing
ive done my due dilligence as a good little scumhunter by performing consideration on both sides but if asked at any point in this ELO i would have answered that id vote fire for a big majority of it

[hellbooks]

its simply a little hard to admit that because it alludes to the relative futility of all of the discussion had during this day phase for me although i guess its way easier to swallow since im having fun still

[hellbooks]

sorry they were all accusing me of lurking at work so i had to go annoyedly manufacture a bunch of insincere wall posts in various google docs, id link them to prove it but datisi would modkill me on the spot 500 times

[hellbooks]

the year is 2033 hellbooks has long since retired and faded away, the newest generation of scummers asks datisi why do you have a rule that says "for fucks sake stop talking about wuthering heights nobody is allowed to talk about wuthering heights anymore" datisi looks far in the distance, memories flickering behind its eyes "guess i forgot to take that one out"

[hellbooks]

sorry bit busy tonight but feel free to find a spot on my calendar to book an hour appointment to get snowed by me!

[hellbooks]

idk if this is actually relevant to the situation at hand but when people were like "oh helbooks only started posting content when she started getting pressured" i was like ok what are they pressuring me for then? Funnier jokes? Maybe no one said that actually and im just boxing with a hallucination enemy

[hellbooks]

we should all just come together and lim hallucination enemy i freaking hate that guy

[hellbooks]

You are not going to get house of leaves 2 or lesbians 2 thats for damn sure

[hellbooks]

Me? Rehash old ideas? Never

[hellbooks]

fire pick a number btwn 1 and 20

[hellbooks]

that is how many posts i amgoing to make tomorrow.

[hellbooks]

good morning

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

the most important thing for me right now is that earlier this game i communicated to infinity that i would be willing to be the first with the gun if they were fine with it
then a couple days ago i think infinity asked me something like "where would you vote right now" which kind of scared me a lot so i didnt want to be 100 percent clear abouy the fact that i would have voted fire but i think i ended up communicating that anyway
if infinity is scum i think the move then would kind of be to ask me to vote then and there but instead they were like "hm actually i think its hellbooks" which seems like excessive slowrolling behavior from scum

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

anyway this seems like such an important infinity is town thing that it surprises me a little that it didnt seem to factor into the conversaation already

the best explanation i have for why they didnt continue to nudge fire and i into a crossing situation so they can win about it, and instead sort of did a big pivot onto thinking im scum, is because they fear that my "yeah i'll vote when you tell me to" statement is another scum gotcha situation ive accidentaly constructed a la vp baltar doctor fakeclaim and as soon as they're like "ok vote fire then" i'll belike "hmm.... how opportunistic of you to capitalize on my own promises like that.... vewy suspicious..."
but i think thats just unlikely
now that im saying it out loud maybe its not that unlikely

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

but idk i think its way more likely that the timing of fire becoming more confident about me being scum is aligning with this pivot from infinity because they want infinity to vote me and now that infinity has kind of expressed that inclination any sort of active supicion about inifintiy themselves has kind of evaporated
but idk maybe thats because fire is kind of done assembling thoughts about infinity and doesnt need to express any additional paranoia because all of the posts from 5 or whatever pages ago still stand as their beliefs and so dont need to be updated
whereas i guess their paranoia about me continues to evolve

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i came up with a joke, its possible that i already made it but
well its not really a joke more just a statement that is insincere
which was something like "someone is trying to trick me into reentering the forgotten temple of skitter's iso for the purposes of defending myself, so that i can fall into some dormant mate-in-137 trap she set up to convince me of the wrong opinion from beyond the grave"

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok actually no im happy enough with that to upgrade that into an official "Joke" status

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i had made up my mind that im not going to use my one allowed post today to do a vote so once i send this you're going to have like 12 hours of free time to cross my hot buns without me being able to cross back
which is fine right
and is it also funny
and if its not funny then its definitely still fine and not actually throwing right

i guess there isnt any way i can verify this to you but my personal explanation for why i havent been posting is because one of the biggest motivators for me to post has been the stress of the prospect of coming in here and having to make some deciding vote and wanting to fully prepare and organize myself for that so that no one comes in during post game like "i cant believe we left the game decider to that bozo" and now that its looking less likely that i'll have to do that my body has kind of stopped producing the requisite adrenaline for me to cook up more silly words
but here i am nevertheless persisting

ok for example i find myself completely unable to click on a page number thats below, say, 191
and my whole "skitter temple" statement is just a way to communicate how little i want to go and reread right now
so i guess i'll just let whatever epic 인연 i have with skitter remain as a blemish on my record
sorry. datisi is going to modkill me for using cryptography or something for that

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i dont know the last time ive been in a situation where its like i have to remain alive or we lose the game, probably its gotta be dozens of months
i kind of dont know how to reconcile that with my principled stances on "please kill me i want you to kill me"

so ive kind of had all of these thoughts that are like "oh come on its literally so unlikely i would carry out these sequences of actions as scum" that ive just been keeping to myself because "please dont kill me i dont want you to kill me" would just feel so false and wrong coming out of my mouth and id kind of worry that everyone would think that. its like im just imagining the crowd going "oh now you dont want to get limmed? now that what, this silly little game hinges upon it? one little game is more important than your principles? how sad"

well now youre going to want to hear them
fire's gonna be like "uh huh. well then let's hear them. i want me to hear them"
ok i didnt actually have that many of those thoughts. just like vaguely gesturing at all of the people who are nightkilled and limmed and being like "ok then what the fuck was i doing with all that"
i guess fire is going to come up with some scenario in which scum hellbooks was like "ok yeah my best bet is to take these two people into the F3 and not literally anyone else"
probably a big part of it will be what they said earlier that i have some vague memory of which was something like "maybe scum is just taking the mislims that are in front of them" which surely seems to fit in with a scum books profile of limming sheep and tris i guess

idk i think looking at the broad strokes of the way this game has developed it seems to point to "scum fire's only plausible path to victory after having been assailed from almost all sides" and fire's method of acknowledging this has been to shrug helplessly and be like "yeah i guess it does look that way but..... im town"
which in all fairness is kind of exactly what im doing about the skitter and me being connected by a thread emoji

i guess another thing they said was that they believe they would have a better chance of winning with infinity isis than with infinity me and thats why they cant have killed isis as scum, which i cant really scientifically disprove so, we'll let that stand your honor

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

omg look at me making two big posts in a row ok lets get some small ones back in there too

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i definitely had the thought to come in here today and say something completely inane in three words or less and then be like "alright ive been prohibited from saying anymore" and i guess even now im resisting the impulse to delete all this and do that still
but then i guess id have to come back and say something on saturday so might as well get it all out now

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok so now that im thinking about it infinity backign off on fire and letting him continue to self-evolve his paranoia on me might be a scum move backed with the confidence of having me say "yeah ive been thinking its fire for like 80 per cent of this game"
its not nearly as implausible as i said it was ummmm like 8 posts ago
nevertheless she is goign to persist in thinking its probably fire

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

as soon as fire said 1 i was thinking that i was going to try and make a 20-in-1 post but ive completely run out of things to talk about and im only at, what is this, 12? but now fires like "ok hellbooks being siilent is literally so scummy" so i kind of have to come up with 8 more posts before i go and start all of the tasks i have today and oh god its literally already noon god help me

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

do you think infinity not using datisi's dried-blood color for scum roles (see here:

~ 2 x

mafia goon

) is like a manufactured anti-scum slip
i was thinking this because i thought about faithfully using datisi's colors for the library role PMs but was like no im just gonna pick from the default color picker because what if someone is like "hm... how did YOU know thats the scum color"
its a joke but admittedly a part of me is going like "unless..."

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i still think there is a very small chance i feel confident hellbooks is scum this game can someone else vote

i guess thequestion is, is scum infinity either
1) scared of me to the extent that saying "can hellbooks vote" might cause me to flip onto them instead
2) confident of me and fire to the extent that either one of us is more likely to cross the other than to vote infinity

idk and the thing about being stuck in limbo until deadline feels like excessively noncommittal
like id expect from a general sense for town to feel more like they have to take some kind of initiative
but playstyle etc

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok sorry but i gotta be done
i have like a thing that i have to do at 9 AM every day and i havent done it yet which is already such a disaster

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

1

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

2

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

7

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

3

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

vc

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

[hellbooks]

seems inauspicious that youve been spoiled for my walrus score 20 minutes into it

I was prepared for that happening but I was shocked and awed by the sudden explosion of soft percussion late into the song and i guess neither you or schadd were
Which is fine

[hellbooks]

schadd accusing me of submitting this song to fulfill a creative power fantasy of submitting a song without drums is so insulting to the drums that were good in the song

[hellbooks]

Except for that hes not wrong

[hellbooks]

i think theres a part of me that knows how fire has said 3+ times that hes like trying to get scum to vote first
so if i voted first i would feel like i was playing into some kind of campaign where im doing the thing we want scum to do so i worry it makes me seem like im scum from a propaganda point of view like when fire said "i appreciate you bustin all of the chops" when iirc thats a phrase we've rhetorically chosen to represent a scum action

Ill still be happy to do it i suppose
Maybe when i get home tonight
Mybe tomorrow
Maybe in 4 days...

[hellbooks]

how's everyone doing today

rough monday

[hellbooks]

the tragic truth is that fire has definitely been at least 41% towny so im getting price is righted out of the game

[hellbooks]

sorry if i failed to communicate that the monday is rough in not the "genuine emotional distress" sense but more in the "garfield" sense

[hellbooks]

i'll brace for it thx for the warning

[hellbooks]

vote: fire is red sir

letting the propaganda wash over me and clear my skin

[hellbooks]

i hope datisi considers that a valid vote

[hellbooks]

STRONG preference for using vote tags.... alright then... VOTE: fire is red sir

[hellbooks]

i think we've found out the secret to my alignment which is "are the posts funnier if im town or scum"
for example this post is funnier if im town

[hellbooks]

there are probably several hundred posts in my iso that are funnier if im scum so can we get the deadline extended for about a month so i can get started on correcting the record

[hellbooks]

so im rereading a little bit (yes i know i said i wasnt going to do that) and can someone PLEASE explain what wim means i'm literally begging any of you

[hellbooks]

hmmmm
heres some options for you

1) you seemed to like the big silly wall i made on d1 but maybe you turned a bit sour on that because the consensus is that scum me would also make that for silly
2) ask to be let into the scum pt upon which it would be evident that im not in it, but thats not really up to me
3) surely somewhere in wuthering heights is something that somehow miraculously and awesomely townspews me
4) idk maybe like the last few pages of isis's iso or something, i remember feeling a little bit like i was kind of in my Town Teamwork jam whenever i was talking to isis on days 2 and 3. i guess this is the only serious answer i have for you. except for that the other 3 are also varying degrees of serious. and if you actually follow this suggestion youre gonna look at it and be like "hmm. actually hellbooks did literally nothing here"

then to be fairhanded here are some options for things you could read that would be most likely to convince you that im scum

1) literally anything said by fireisredsir in ELO
2) skitter's iso seems like a good bet
3) you could reread where i made the scum strategy guide and easily see how my attitude this game is a fit
4) my most recent post where i alluded to rereading the game and then didnt follow up on that at all

[hellbooks]

patient high school tutor voice: ok so we have two people who said they'd kill hellbooks. meanwhile hellbooks would kill isis. and hellbooks is still alive, while isis is not. so what does that mean?

you should reread this post and fire's lack of direct response to it (i will not be placing this into either category)

[hellbooks]

while we're at the appreciation stage i also want to express appreciation to fireisredsir for explaining wim to me

[hellbooks]

i had the thought to let the lesbian wall bbcode be one of lifes great mysteries but given that you explained wim to me i owe it to you to say that there are tools online where you can paste a post into a box and select a color gradient starting and ending color and it just does it automatically for you

[hellbooks]

let's keep "cool stories" to the library dimension

[hellbooks]

when the game ends the folks in the dead pt had better be ready with orange slices and a big barrel of gatorade for when the three of us exhaustedly walk off the field arm-in-arm. then after wards we can all climb into my minivan and go to the nearest pizza place

[hellbooks]

the best thing about the minivan is it fits ALL of the people in the game. it doesn't just fit 5. seriously. who invented coalitions that that only fit 5. this site really has become too cliquey
also hi

[hellbooks]

i think the reason skitt didn't take your avatar is because of your 인연

ending this game as i started it: getting people to use all of the random words and terms ive inserted into my posts

[hellbooks]

hi

[hellbooks]

if postgame pages count i have an idea for a 5 person activity that might go a ways towards producing pages

[hellbooks]

GG