Open 889 | Secrets of the Anuket Topaz | fin.

[Prism]

jjh, the triple ISO has swooped down like an angel. The conversations with Titus are like being stuck in an infinite townpoint loop in a pinball machine.

speaking of which, {jjh927, std, andres, imaginality} are in my poe, i could compromise on {T3, Prism} but i dont think we'll get there

Yeah one of T3 and Prism is definitely scum here

I forgot about this. Do you have any thoughts on it?

[Prism]

I don't really think T3 leaves over Fire. Fire was getting more heat at EoD than T3. T3 has been not scumread a lot throughout the game. I wasnt scumreading them, you werent scumreading them, I don't think Shirou was (iirc wasnt T3 SRing Shirou at one point?).

T3 hammered Andres after Firebringer. If T3 was partners with Fire, then T3 would have incentive to end the day at that time since Fire was getting heat. I am not really sure about their interactions at EoD. You'll have to show me those. I may be imagining things but I feel like Fire and JJH had weird interactions.

With all that said, JJH was off wagon. I find it more likely that the mafia is off wagon. Since if imaginality is town, which it is looking like they are, then it was a TvT wagon scenario and the mafia were probably hedging their bets between the two. I don't really know why T3 would implicate himself so heavily by voting right after Fire.

Shirou was scumreading T3 at the end of day and was the one who started the T3 wagon to begin with. You had some heat on the Fire slot, but most of it was from T3 and Shirou. Obviously Fire doesn't have to worry about those if he's scum with T3 and kills Shirou.

I'm definitely not voting tonight and will think more deeply on things in the morning, though it will be tough since I have class and then a meeting with a friend. I will absolutely not miss deadline at any rate.

[Prism]

I've read so much that I've truly lost my mind. That 1200 posts was a journey. I went from jjh scum to jjh town to back again.

[Prism]

prism brain tied up in little knot

[Prism]

I've worked myself into a knot and I can't untie it when I'm tired unfortunately.

As things are I'd still vote jjh, which hurts because I do see some reasons for every other slot too.

[Prism]

I'm bad at going to bed.

i thought people were like "scum would never bus in this game" what happened to that

didn't we literally say that scum bussing is a good strategy earlier

VOTE: Firebringer

I'm gonna go here for now

If T3 is scum these posts being 30 seconds apart is so funny

[Prism]

I've had fun today. I've really tried my best, and I'm annoyed that it still isn't enough and that every answer feels wrong, but it's fun to hit my limits.

This game is so far out past jjh's previous scumgames that it's crazy. I think it's slightly out of T3's, but not by much. I still think Dragons sandbags but he's sold me. I'm pretty sold on imaginality through the voting records.

Thank you for the great game, everyone.

[Prism]

My voting preference right now would be jjh -> imaginality -> T3 -> Dragons. I'll be back to talk after 1 or 2ish EST.

[Prism]

Oops I posted in your quote
Oh well

But yeah

scum T3 probably doesn't want to townread Ydrasse today.

Yeah, probably not. Maybe I'd wait to see what Prism does too.

T3 was actually the first mover on a Ydrasse townread. He did a big meta wall.

[Prism]

Interested to hear other's thoughts on jjh's response to the votecount on page 177.

I have a bit of a hard time imagining a townie at E-1 as jjh was, on an elo day, calmly continuing a conversation with Prism (4401, 4406, 4411) rather than, at the very least, commenting on it or reacting in some way?

I wasn't too fazed by that one, though the "it's out of my hands" later was strange to me. I also wondered if he knew it was E-1 before the VC and intentionally didn't point out the clears.

[Prism]

These two VCs haunted me all night.

VC 2.5

imaginality [4]:Titus, Save The Dragons, gob, Prism

camelCasedSnivy

[2]:

jjh927

,

Firebringer

Titus [1]: imaginality
Shirou [1]: Andresvmb

jjh927

[1]:

camelCasedSnivy

Not Voting [3]:Shirou, Ydrasse, T3

VC 2.8

Titus [7]: imaginality, Ydrasse, Prism, T3,

jjh927

,

Firebringer

,

camelCasedSnivy

imaginality [4]: Titus, Save The Dragons, gob, Shirou
gob [1]: Andresvmb

[Prism]

I mean help us out here. What silver bullet are we missing about your alignment? I had several in mind for me that I was ready to point to if the time came.

You suggested earlier that Fire was intentionally distracting you. I didn't see that, but maybe it's there. Are we not giving enough weight to the circumstances around your camel push and camel's initial push on you Day 2, or some other interactions between you and Firebringer?

[Prism]

You speculated earlier that the issue was that you weren't skeptical enough of me. While I did expect some initially, that wasn't the sticking point. It got worse as time went on because it seemed to me like you were intentionally subverting my expectations with the aim that I'd townread that in and of itself.

[Prism]

While I get that the game is still hard even with knowledge of your alignment, the fact remains that you are in the best position to weigh the 3 alternatives.

There are points in favor of each, but the application seems to me inconsistent. For example, you think that Dragons should be cleared because Dragons should have left over Fire. This same reasoning didn't extend to imaginality, though. The only way I can find to square it is that you thought a Dragons leave would lead you, and just you, to tunnel gob.

T3 has the bad habit of consistently bussing his partners, which removes a lot of the clearing force of his own play. However, Fire's vote remains. I don't put stock in Fire's direct statement "I want to eliminate T3", but it's interesting to me that Fire instantly pulled the quote from camel to assert that one of myself and T3 had to be scum: Fire surely knew that pushing me would have absolute hell to pay.

I'll revisit the anime discussions later, most of my impression on the distraction point just came from Ctrl+F searching "jjh".

[Prism]

My question here, especially about the unequal application, is: Why does Firebringer leave over imaginality except to troll the town?

I think Fire/T3 is a closer question for who leaves even though Fire staying is better. In contrast, I think having Fire leave over imaginality has no motivation except to troll us, even though that's not totally out of character.

[Prism]

Fair enough, and my preference has shifted back to accommodate the same. jjh->T3->imaginality->Dragons.

Still a tough question.

[Prism]

I feel surprisingly well-rested, but I do have a meeting with a friend for the next hour or two, so you'll get true zero from me for a bit.

I'd really like to hear from Ydrasse (MOM?????) and Dragons, but we'll see if Dragons even shows up again before deadline.

[Prism]

she is strong!!!!!

[Prism]

i guess i’ve gotten the sense that jjh was like as i said trying to find an answer that doesn’t exist in lieu of him as wolf but i’m compelled by the t3 points

Sorry, do you mind clarifying what T3 points you found compelling? I'm not even sure if it's the +town or +scum ones.

[Prism]

Gun to my head right now I'd go T3 but rough seas. Be back in 2 hours.

[Prism]

We're back. I wonder if we will get another Dragons post before day end.

[Prism]

For reference I'm mostly waiting on responses to the recent questions. If people are just sitting around waiting until I come back with a brilliant vote and final answer, bad news.

[Prism]

I still want T3 to walk me through his vote on Dragons and switch onto jjh.

[Prism]

Yeah I'm voting before I go to bed. The question is whether it's jjh or T3, though I'm half tempted to policy Dragons for yet again leaving me to do all of the work so that he can keep leaving other people to do all of the work in the future.

[Prism]

jjh this isn't even a trap, I'm down to have you/T3 vote him as blitz insurance and we hammer Dragons unless he posts.

[Prism]

"If I just blatantly and repeatedly miss deadlines and don't do anything as town in ELO, it'll be so sick when I get away with it as scum haha"

[Prism]

It was my claim, jjh just said I was right. As far as I can tell this game isn't in the same solar system as a single jjh scumgame on record when it comes to proactivity/dialoguing.

[Prism]

If you do think it might help us get some last minute content from StD though, I'm happy to be one of the three votes as additional blitz insurance.

I'm incredibly annoyed but I won't actually do it. Waiting on Dragons would be a great way to waste 12 hours. Last time we were in 3 way he literally missed the deadline entirely.

If he's scum he gets to celebrate another brilliant zero-effort scumwin off the backs of the decade of players he left completely hanging in the other 10 out of 13 games.

[Prism]

I would appreciate a reread on T3, I'm not really inclined to vote you right now so I'm curious as to what you think between jjh/T3.

[Prism]

...And the switch from Dragons to jjh?

[Prism]

@jjh

Spoiler: Chop chop

[Prism]

Alright, well, I'll do a jjh/T3/Fire/camel ISO one more time then just vote and pray I guess.

[Prism]

You're killing me T3.

[Prism]

I hate that I respect you and your potential enough to think this is plausibly intentional.

[Prism]

Do you really need to ask that question, man who has already brought attention to his interactions with Firebringer in day 3

Weird response since that wasn't why you put them in green.

[Prism]

Unfortunately you also disproportionately claim to have read overnight as scum and coming out with a long thoughtful wall is already in your toolset.

[Prism]

Nevermind, you're right and I mixed up that with your imaginality wagon-theory, my mistake.

But like, looking back, I ruled out Imag/Fire because "Why would Fire see a significant wagon on his first buddy and then support a counterwagon on his second buddy"
but like

yeah Fire might well do that

[Prism]

I'm about ~500 posts through the final reread but given that there's 1450 it'll be a minute.

[Prism]

Also to be clear I'm literally just voting. Maybe I ask a question while I'm doing it but yeah.

One of T3's biggest problems is that he literally can't resist bussing and putting his partners low as scum.

[Prism]

VOTE: T3

[Prism]

My preference now is T3->Dragons->imaginality->jjh. I'm blatantly lost but here we are.

[Prism]

I really love this slot making one post that is almost copy/pasted from a former scumgame then completely ghosting the game.

I am smeargle.

I have sketches. I used one to pick up ice beam from Ranger n1 which I've never found helpful and/or mostly forgot about and/or was fainted. I have one more sketch I think.

Popcorn to titus

I don't know what to do. It is probably just FL here but I'm scared. I just don't think it's Chandra and don't think it's wheme

[Prism]

I am actually so close to seriously voting Dragons. T3 likes to bus and these interactions are sketchy but my reason for thinking Dragons is town is literally "He had Firebringer as his top townread." The bar is 10 ft below the ground and the corpse is rotting in the casket.

[Prism]

Yeah naw I'm going here

VOTE: Dragons

Not even a spite vote. There are parts of T3's play I hate with a fiery vengeance and parts that I think are town. I'm paranoid of jjh for reasons of interactions but I think this game is way, way beyond anything he's played before and there's no real reason to do it out of the gate, even though I hate parts of today. I'm a bit worried it's imaginality, but 1. Fire's vote on imaginality is probably clearing because Fire gave no shits 2. Why the fuck does Fire ever leave in that scenario?

In contrast Fire defended Dragons repeatedly and only voted when jjh really, REALLY persisted on it. I think Dragons leaving looks awful for Firebringer which explains him staying.

[Prism]

That's my vote, I'm going to get food and calling it a day.

[Prism]

I have a pet scumread on firebringer cuz

I feel town firebringer is more relaxed and this firebringer feels a little stiffer and tryhardy.

But I'm not confident on this one

Town Dragons correctly reading Scum Firebringer, February 2023.

Dragons reading Scum Firebringer this game, November 2023.

i've played with fb a lot and i kind of think this is his town game.

i hate meta as a reason but if fb is doing less trolling and more solving im generally happy alignment wise

im just not there with other people yet.

[Prism]

One of the big reasons Dragons can't leave is that it clears your slot, mine, and jjh's. gob is also probably instacleared in that scenario. He has to stay or Fire gets forced into a 1v1 with Ydrasse.

[Prism]

I guess T3 too

[Prism]

I went for a walk. I have a lot to say that I can't on my phone, but this is my answer. I retract my 4622 but this is my answer nonetheless.

I've had a lot of fun, and I've done the best I can. I can see worlds for the other 3, but I don't think this one is it. I'm willing to go to the end of the line together with jjh. I have such high hopes for T3, and I'd be so proud of him if this is his scumgame. In general, this game has been within those high hopes and expectations, even though it's on the outer bounds, with one exception: his lash out at Ydrasse about his SAT. I think the voting record saves imaginality.

I have all the information I need to win as town, and it won't be Dragons's fault if I'm misvoting again. It isn't the first, and it won't be the last.

I'll be around to hammer as required.

[Prism]

Ydrasse just remember, no matter what happens I can grab a 6 pack of O'Doul's Premium Amber and we can spend tomorrow watching a Scooby Doo movie postflip.

[Prism]

Friendly reminder that this is a democracy and you are not required to vote with me and I am not pressuring you to, I'm just telling you it's all gonna be okay.

[Prism]

FWIW I also still don't think Firebringer points out the T3/Prism quote from camel if it's T3, but it's a big stretch.

[Prism]

Well, if you have any questions for me or if there's anything else I can do to help, let me know.

I've made my peace.

[Prism]

It's okay, we just blame me and ride off into the sunset if it's wrong. Thanks for joining, let's hope it's right and I'm not losing the exact same way I did Moderators.

[Prism]

That's E-1.

[Prism]

Please tell me you're town

[Prism]

I saw new post and had a fucking heart attack.

[Prism]

Oh holy shit

Alright, well, thanks pals. See you on the other side. I'm sorry again if I'm wrong. I've really tried my absolute best.

[Prism]

gob was previously cleared so if he didn't understand the blitz the first time and we spent all of today running in circles, lmfao

[Prism]

I'm proud of you regardless T3. Good reads on camel and Fire. Sorry I didn't join at the right times.

[Prism]

If gob is mafia who didn't blitz the first time that would be the most satanic shit I've ever seen in my life

[Prism]

Yeah I intentionally put jjh at E-1 last night to clear gob and he acknowledged the vote.

[Prism]

VOTE: jjh

This is E-1 and as scum you can blitz. Please either blitz or confirm you are not blitzing and I will unvote immediately.

Confirm you see 4464.

I see it.

Again if he slowrolled us we band together and mail gob

a pipe bomb

some pretty flowers

[Prism]

I literally spent probably ~15 hours of the last 24 reading this game or metaing players in some capacity. I will be so salty if he didn't realize he could blitz lmfao

[Prism]

I actually read something like 12 T3 games, 8 or 9 Dragons games, I think 5 jjh games, and did some specific keyword searches for imaginality so I will so SO SALTY if the game should have ended last night

[Prism]

It would be poetic if StD is scum and had the chance to hammer back then but missed it due to absence

I'm going to take this as you being town and not trolling us.

I'll be really happy for jjh if this is a scumgame but I think and hope he's town.

THE ONLY QUESTION IS DID GOB FUCKIN' SLOWROLL US AND NOT REALIZE HE COULD HAVE WON YESTERDAY

[Prism]

keyword searches

Wait, keyword searches to find scum??

I only ever use them when I'm althunting, I've found like 3 alts this way lol

Yeah I do a lot of phrasematching, but I don't put a ton of stock in the mere existence. I like to use it to find contextually similar situations. That's actually how I found the Dragons quote with searching variants of "not confident", for you I did a few different ones but the first that I remember is "put a finger on it", imaginality I had some theories around gamestate, pattern, and his initial assertion that I was trying to control the game.

[Prism]

Well played, I think you had some early meta stuff. I'm really annoyed but I'm willing to forgive since it looks like you didn't know better.

The issue with the slow roll is that I told you I would unvote immediately. I set it up specifically so that you could confirm exactly what was happening and blitz.

[Prism]

I am interested in why people thought me leaving over Fire would've made the game 100% scum victory.

I saw Prism and I think JJH say that

I don't think I ever got that far: I erroneously cleared you off of interactions and never got into leave speculation with your slot.

[Prism]

Well played, I think you had some early meta stuff. I'm really annoyed but I'm willing to forgive since it looks like you didn't know better.

The issue with the slow roll is that I told you I would unvote immediately. I set it up specifically so that you could confirm exactly what was happening and blitz.

Well I harbored a small fear that you were gonna flip on me or were testing me. So I had to play it safe.

In a vacuum, you TRing me actually pinned me in a way. Since it forced me to TR you, but I was susceptible to having that flipped on me.

I'm not trying to beat up on you here. I know you made a mistake and didn't mean to waste our time.

But when someone says to blitz or not, take the time to count the votes, then post. I explicitly said I was going to immediately unvote when you acknowledged 4464. The entire point was to give you the time to doublecheck the votes, post a blitz or an acknowledgment, and let us not go through this entire experience.

[Prism]

Either way, I had fun and congratulations on a good win. You rebounded well from the rough entry and carried it through.

I was mostly sold by the perpetual unvotes and the interactions with the flipped scum slots.

[Prism]

Did you read gob's scumgame by chance, jjh?

I think there are a few takeaways from it. I recommend Ctrl+F searching Animated Wiz and Merlyn, his partners.

First, gob tends to be very noncommittal when townleaning a partner. Second, looking at the partner ISOs and comparing it to gob's, he continuously failed to respond to the partner's questions and to interact with them at all. I think this is a stark contrast to this game, where he repeatedly returned to dialoguing with camel.

I also want to take a second to revisit this meta. This was a good mixup from what was your only scumgame onsite. I could see similar reasoning with wagonomics and knew not to townread that, but it wasn't enough.

[Prism]

at least that explains why of the remaining options all of them felt bad!

I'm grabbing a 6 pack of Premium Amber O'Doul's and watching a Scooby Doo movie tomorrow

[Prism]

And of course, sorry to Andres. You had the right read on gob, I strongarmed you through, and then I still wrongly cleared gob Day 4. As promised, two eggs for you and one for me. I'll give you a third as an extra apology.

[Prism]

Also my apologies to Dragons.

I was the one who falsely cleared gob so it's 100% on me. I hope you understand why you specifically got voted out of the 4 and that it wasn't a spite vote: I spent probably ~15 hours reading and metaing only town players and obviously none of them were making any sense to me.

[Prism]

I don't know how interested you are in knowing specifically what worked gob, but these posts were what got me on the early Day 4 reread (way, way back at the start of today):

Prism can you trust me fully and go Firebringer here?

If not I will relent and go Andres

I think people arent looking at Firebringer because he hasnt posted recently

The question is do you trust in my skills?

I wasn't joking with what I said yesterday.

I think if we are to vote between Andres and imaginality, we do imaginality first. Andres has scum potential in that pool (Andres/Firebringer), but I feel like it's Firebringer. One thing I noticed is that Firebringer jumped on Titus and then immediately camel jumped on him.

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I noticed this at the time btw, but I don't like using this kind of logic.

How is that a nothing read?

Firebringer/Ydrasse/Andres/JJH has wolf 100% of the time

Firebringer/Andres is most reasonable small pool

Firebringer has been scummier than Andres, looking at his votes. His actions speak louder than words.

This was a very good setup.

[Prism]

Again it dovetailed really nicely with the limited sample from your other scumgame, where the S/S interactions were a lot thinner. I knew you could tone/style match but I really underestimated the upper bound for interactions.

It's a great setup.

[Prism]

Fire how many wolf games have u won this year

He's a great big beautiful butterfly, the first open deepwrolf.

[Prism]

Also choosing to not hammer and then trying to get me and T3 to case each other is honestly messed up

It's easy for me to write off the 14/15 hours after the fact because they're a sunk cost, past is the past and it's spilled milk.

In contrast if you told me I was about to burn that much time in the future because someone didn't blitz, I would be so unfathomably angry.

[Prism]

Still, I know getting wrongly pushed by me isn't a fun time, so thanks for putting up with it and being gracious about it here.

[Prism]

first wolf win thats not a replacement into a free ELO

Congrats! I hope you had fun with it. Obviously you had a rough Day 1, but the explicit defense of gob sold Shirou and helped seal the slot as town for me.

While you were always at or near the bottom for me, this bit of AtE was successful and bought you the time you needed. I hated thinking it even at that moment, but reluctantly acquiesced: it worked.

[Prism]

Those night actions were hilarious.

I thought Fire's play around gob Day 1 was fine, he definitely was solid start to finish and most mistakes were minor. The only minor one was the Day 3 gob bus seemed to be aimed at entrenching wrong reads, but he had more than enough all around to make that error harmless.

[Prism]

The only medium error, rather.

[Prism]

I wasn't too surprised to see gob's "don't bother me!", wagonomics, my reads are better etc. be scum since it's something I've seen a million times before. It was definitely very well done, though after he dropped some of the initial "stupid play" aggression. The selling point from an individual standpoint was the consistent uncertainty/unvotes to stall wagons, along with some of the confident-anxiety dichotomies, because of the single meta sample.

I threw those in the trash on Day 4, but I bought the interactions instead, so clearly outplayed start to finish.

Even if we would have mislimmed Imaginality in D1, if we just braindeadly eliminated the people contributing the least we would have won this game.

I don't think this is true. We would have eliminated imaginality and Dragons for certain. I think Andres (only picked up Day 3) and Ydrasse would have been next, but gob/camel/T3 are clustered there too.

[Prism]

Dannflor made a similar point at the end-of-day in the dead thread:

from an all-knowing 3rd party perspective i think this game is solvable by "who is trying to figure out the game least"

Unfortunately, this is totally wrong even setting aside the mechanical clear, because gob was second on that list.

We needed a Dragons townread, and we definitely had enough to get there. The low-activity elim strategy just wasn't that simple and still required a lot more qualitative judgment.

[Prism]

at least that explains why of the remaining options all of them felt bad!

I'm grabbing a 6 pack of Premium Amber O'Doul's and watching a Scooby Doo movie tomorrow

As promised

Spoiler: Large image

I'm probably going to watch a second tonight if anyone has any Scooby Doo movie suggestions. I'm thinking

Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost

.

[Prism]

It would have been unfair to rank it earlier, but needless to say that while Ranking of Kings and Eminence of Shadow are fun, the Scooby Doo franchise is indisputably the GOAT.

It's responsible for at least 12 of the top 15 anime of all time, including spots 1 through 9.

[Prism]

thats a good scooby doo movie ngl

Obviously it's not a movie that could be done today with that special 90s/00s view of "cyberspace" and computers as a supernatural frontier, but that's what gives it its charm.

Some of the best parts in this movie are easy to miss: I never fully appreciated that Shaggy was just straight up eating dog food, which is a bit socially unacceptable but honestly I still do that sometimes for the meme so I feel him.

But right now Shaggy is putting whipped cream on a hotdog, and that crosses the line, that is beyond unhinged.

[Prism]

Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase

is also deeply philosophically enriching. The writers are shockingly well-versed in the philosophy of identity and the work of Derek Parfit: the opening premise of the movie is the ability to perfectly copy, store, and potentially destroy "original" physical objects, including real persons, in order to construct a subatomically identical copy elsewhere temporally or spatially. This is clearly derived from Parfit's Teletransportation paradox, and the story basically writes itself from there.

The ultimate endgoal of the movie is obviously not to provide a short fun audiovisual story, but to get children to think critically and challenge conventional conceptions of personal identity and the nature of the self. Scooby Doo is the best possible representation for the power of television and cartoons to serve as a global equalizer by mass-distributing high-quality accessible educational content.

A moment of silence for the visionaries over at Hanna-Barbera. May we all pick up their unfinished work and continue their legacy.

[Prism]

Technically the first but it's a shitpost. I read zero philosophy in undergrad, but it had the lowest unit requirement and I went to a diploma farm with 0 academic standards.

[Prism]

Normally I just say I majored in Natural Light but alcohol is bad for you, don't do it, Premium Amber O'Doul's Non-Alcholic Brew is where it's at when you come of age.

[Prism]

Washington University in St. Louis will be in your mailbox soon, don't worry.

(Half of that school is named after Budweiser's parent company)

[Prism]

I shit you not, I received a Collegeboard promotional email from them 2 weeks ago.

Welcome to having a stellar SAT score, you're going to get plenty of kindling. WashU embraces the rankings+prestige jockeying instead of pretending to be above it. Kind of shameless, kind of more authentic. I had probably 20 physical mailers from them by the end of my admissions cycle and that was a decade ago.

(Fantastic school+beautiful campus though, plus it actually gives merit-based aid unlike the absolute pinnacle schools)