Mini 1932: Dedede Fusion Collab (FIN)

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Hello.

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I'd specifically request that hydras sign all posts as members of other hydras.
VOTE: BigYoshiFan

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I never thought anyone would so eloquently sum up my feelings on life in general.

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Nacho, what's your read on tammy+ceph at this point?

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I'm actually inclined to already start towntunneling tammy and even ceph and know it's too early and I told myself I wouldn't but I am. Although I guess it isn't really tunneling if I'm just interpreting like two posts as moderately town but I can feel the bias creeping in. The tone in tammy's first post feels like a carbon copy of every other first post she's ever made and I know you said she can fake things like that but. I was half-expecting you to also have a townread on them already.

I don't really like your (nacho's) interactions toward morph. You seem oddly non-carefree/hedgey given your agreement that if ffery is town you'll figure it out when she makes it obvious.

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alisae is also a decent early town candidate.

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my interactions with morph so far have been as far from hedgy as humanly possible.

Okay. My initial response is that I'm being fed a huge pile of horseshit, but we have plenty of time for me to realize the error of my ways.

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Who is pushing a read more aggressively than I am at this moment?

unfortunately you did not say "as far from hedgy as anyone else in this game". You said you were as far from hedgy as possible. But that's beside the point.

If you're town here I think I expect you to commit either less or more? You mention some flavor of "you could be town and i'm sure if you are you'll make it obvious later" in 67, 96, ***. It makes sense with you-scum who wants to push an early scumread on morph-town to control the early dynamics of the game but not have it look awkward when you're forced to eventually townread morph because you know you won't be able to get away with scumreading ffery.

*** -> you're actually doing this less than I thought that you were and so it's probably not really especially meaningful.

I don't really buy morph scum right now either way though. Don't see much either way from them. I don't think the intentionally scummy opening thing is really good or bad, i buy that they were planning it before getting their role PM.

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Because I don't see as much reason for you-town to put in this much effort if you're frequently acknowledging that it might all be overthrown by ffery becoming obvious town.

Which is why it's not as interesting given that you aren't actually mentioning that very often unless prompted.

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I'm actually inclined to already start towntunneling tammy

and even ceph and know it's too early and I told myself I wouldn't but I am. Although I guess it isn't really tunneling if I'm just interpreting like two posts as moderately town but I can feel the bias creeping in.

The tone in tammy's first post feels like a carbon copy of every other first post she's ever made and I know you said she can fake things like that but. I was half-expecting you to also have a townread on them already.

Few things
A. Why are you hunting Oil Tycoons about something that is kinda really useless to talk about right now?
B. I only care about the bolded. So why is everything else there?

Not sure what you mean about useless to talk about right now? I think nacho's posting so far (and at the time that you asked this) is quite sufficient to sort him off of. Although I've swung pretty hard in the other direction now. His play is more and more reminiscent of girls pt 1. That said my memory of his scumgame isn't as fresh so recency bias etc. But the way in which he's holding dialogue/approaching people is basically the same in a probably-meaningful way.

I could probably give you a deep psychological analysis as to why the unbolded exists but I guess it's just my general style? I try to be very transparent about how my thoughts are developing in most cases.

As for ceph the initial (extremely weak) reason was liking the timing of him calling out specific posts which was sort of going against the grain of how people were talking and yes, this is even worse than my reason for wanting to townread tammy. 176 is quite spot on if the slot is town. I'm not really going to separate thoughts on the hydra constituents except where relevant/obvious who's who since I doubt I'll be able to keep non-signed posts straight (which is fine). I don't have a strong read on them but still lean town ever so slightly. Tammy's opening towards Nacho WRT Nacho saying Tammy would snap-townread him is very interesting. There's some chance that Tammy might just open with a townread of Nacho if she's scum and he's town and that's what he said he'd expect but I don't know their dynamic well enough to actually make that conclusion.

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I agree with whoever said things along those lines that this isn't the town-zach I'm familiar with. The difference to my memory can be summed up as him being much more active/feather-ruffling in the other game which might be alignment-indicative but seems somewhat unlikely to be given him saying he enjoys scum because that's not a thing I expect to be lied about, but it could also be tangential to enjoyment of the game. It was a good question from morph though. Fortunately dunn was also in that game and also town and IIRC i read both of them fairly easily right up until I mishammered zach in lylo... but I'm not especially worried about sorting that slot. I am curious about more meta-opinions based on zach's opening from people familiar with his scumgame.

Bins is town. Alisae is still town and I'm curious what kraska sees in 276 though I am also ever so curious for Alisae to elaborate upon it.

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Tone + her entire paragraph on wisdom feels like it has a genuine thought process behind it.

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What about the tone do you like, and what about the thought process sounds genuine and coming from town?

The tone wasn't just that post. Her tone in general just doesn't look concerned with appearances and it doesn't look especially faked.

The entire paragraph on Wisdom is just a train of logic that is more likely to come from town than from scum. The series of thoughts are just thoughts that I think are more likely to have been had from someone who is town and in the mindset of being town and evaluating other peoples' play genuinely, particularly the way she compared his play to her towngame.

The rest of your points on me seem to boil down to "this feels off/forced" at which point sure but you're wrong. Calling posts safe is fair i guess? But i mean they're my reads and I can't pick and choose what they are.

I think he told me that a game I modded was his most recent scum game.

I've had a couple since then. One was an entirely uninteresting 7-player 5-page easy win. The other was fatboy mafia, which is undoubtedly the best/only really valid example of my scum meta right now. Speaking of which.

Alisae, why do you specifically think Nos wouldn't fake a post restriction as scum? You vigged Pine in fatboy after he faked one, and yes, he is pine, but do you specifically think Nos's personality is such that they wouldn't? Or do you just think that it looks genuine? Can you elaborate on your thought process behind why you're writing it off as real? I don't really have a read on Nos yet.

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wrt to the implosion scumread, looking at his ISO I don't get the sense that he's trying to engage and sort people, it looks more like he's dishing out light townreads on people who are probably actually town, and coming up with reasons to townread them. He immediately nailed me as scum in a marathon game we had together and I feel like I don't see any of that killer instinct yet in this game. The initial Oil Tycoons engagement was awkward, and then this Z&D scumread here:

I agree with whoever said things along those lines that this isn't the town-zach I'm familiar with. The difference to my memory can be summed up as him being much more active/feather-ruffling in the other game which might be alignment-indicative but seems somewhat unlikely to be given him saying he enjoys scum because that's not a thing I expect to be lied about, but it could also be tangential to enjoyment of the game. It was a good question from morph though. Fortunately dunn was also in that game and also town and IIRC i read both of them fairly easily right up until I mishammered zach in lylo... but I'm not especially worried about sorting that slot. I am curious about more meta-opinions based on zach's opening from people familiar with his scumgame.

feels a lot more like scum crowdsurfing for opinions than town trying to form a read. The bit about mishammering Zach in a past game yet not being worried about sorting him pings me as an unnatural thing for town to say. I also don't like how he says "whoever said things along those lines that this isn't town-zach" - he should have explicitly looked up who said this if he thinks it's an indicative point. It feels like effort is missing here.

I have been known to meta people entirely off marathon games (actually technically i was scum but i do think wheme was obvious town in fatboy >.>) but this is a misuse thereof. Marathon/irc/face to face are all very different beasts from forum mafia in ways that are meaningful here; I don't think I'm particularly aggressive in general in forum mafia except in cases where I get an early scumread that I feel solid on, which is maybe ~half the time or less. I can think of a few specific examples but I'm generally more consistent at finding town than scum. Marathon games force a degree of aggression by having short deadlines and less time for sorting.

I disagree that I haven't been engaging/sorting. I engaged Nacho and sorted him from scum to town. I haven't engaged much directly since then because it's the week and I've been distracted by shiny objects shooting past me. I would like to more.

Why do you think it's unnatural for me to mention the mishammering zach thing? For extra context I didn't actually scumread zach in lylo in that game, I just had a misplaced townread on the last scum largely based on his claim.

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I'm tempted to call {alisae, bins, oil tycoons, morph} town, with possible additional inclusions of {guiltylion, kraska}. morph feels like what I know of town ffery in general but the single thing that makes me feel strongly on that slot is the way ffery is talking about kraska. It could be a very skillful pocketing if she's scum but I don't think it is. I think I like GL's point towards me and I'm not entirely sure if he'd come up with it as scum or decide to push it. Given that I caught him quickly in that marathon game I don't think he'd gun immediately towards me as scum. kraska is completely unsubstantiated gut and I haven't really bought any of the points on her but I haven't read them in depth. I've mostly been trying to follow along at work so I'm not really rereading everything but her play reminds me of her town play to a degree.

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I don't buy he's the type of player that would attempt to fake a post restriction. I really just don't think so. Not to mention it looks genuine as well.
I doubt Nos would go out of his way to do this as scum.

Cool. Just wanted to clarify this.

You are quite litterally saying the same thing over and over again.

Yes, because it's an argument and you asked me to clarify it so I paraphrased it, attempting to be clearer about the specifics?

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I'm tempted to call {alisae, bins, oil tycoons, morph} town, with possible additional inclusions of {guiltylion, kraska}. morph feels like what I know of town ffery in general but the single thing that makes me feel strongly on that slot is the way ffery is talking about kraska. It could be a very skillful pocketing if she's scum but I don't think it is. I think I like GL's point towards me and I'm not entirely sure if he'd come up with it as scum or decide to push it. Given that I caught him quickly in that marathon game I don't think he'd gun immediately towards me as scum. kraska is completely unsubstantiated gut and I haven't really bought any of the points on her but I haven't read them in depth. I've mostly been trying to follow along at work so I'm not really rereading everything but her play reminds me of her town play to a degree.

Where did when warthogs fly go?

that is a good question.

They probably in the first list but I don't feel great about putting them there yet so maybe they go in the second one. They're on one of them. But I want a bigger corpus of stuff before calling them sorted.

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This leaves a pool of interest of BYF, ZackDunn, Wisdom, Nos, drealmerz

No one here feels like they've said enough meaningfully to be sortable yet except zack/dunn (wisdom/nos's theoretically could be but i haven't gotten strong vibes from either yet). zack/dunn feel like they should be sortable but I don't get especially strong vibes from them either. Looking more at them their rhetoric towards kraska is somewhat townish. I'm not sure if they go for that kind of defense either if kraska is town or scum.

This game is probably going to turn into toomanytownreads quickly.

Also is your vote still RVS?

yep.

Unvote

VOTE: Nosferatu

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I missed his post. I do still put stock into it.

I haven't before iirc? I haven't really had a chance to engage directly with you yet though.

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@tammy laziness/being pulled away for other things.
If you're around today and I'm not distracted by something (which frankly I probably will be) then we can do things then. I'm not entirely motivated right now though. Especially since I don't have any scumreads. But i guess you don't either so we can be unmotivated together. I'll probably be more active come the weekend. This has been a somewhat above-averagely tiring week at work thus far.

I'd like to engage with you Alisae but it feels like you're just shrugging off everything I'm saying in favor of gut.

Implosion is taking these stances that are just looking like reading the table to me.
Nothing that's really different or new or anything.

I feel like this is just flatly false.
You and Bins have both been read in both directions, and I stand by strong townreads on both of you, both of which are getting stronger.
GuiltyLion hasn't really been sorted by anyone that I recall and I've given reasoning for townreading him.
I was technically the second person to call out oil tycoons early. You were the first and weren't actually calling them out or really actually pressuring them.
I don't have any material scumreads yet but like, -shrug-. I can probably point to towngames of mine where I just don't wind up having any significant scumreads. Like I said, I'm much more consistent at hunting through weak PoE early on. My early scumreads are usually pretty accurate but I don't always get them. I'm often kind of shit at scumhunting on day one.

You accuse me of saying the same thing over and over and then just repeat the same argument for me being scum ("playing safe") over and over :/

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If I'm here then sure. Or if not then well, it's a forum.

Do you have a significant amount of confidence atm in Nosferatu-scum? Has your read on Nos changed since your vote?

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I was in hunterxhunter! I have no memory of it. I remember I was town and who I was and that town vaguely stomped a bunch but I don't think I was ever super engaged there iirc. And I remember various bits of the setup but that's not really relevant.

I think someone asked if I think nos might be faking the restriction and to be explicit, my take is it's possible but not really worth considering and that the PR is null. That's an interesting take on things. I like that kind of read in general but I don't think I agree with applying it here. I imagine if Nos is scum with a post restriction and is actually mad about it then they'll probably rant about it in the pt but I don't think that would make the act of posting less frustrating if they do find it frustrating.

I don't really read Nos's grumpiness strongly as fake or genuine but assuming the PR isn't faked then I doubt there's any real reason to fake the grumpiness so I'd assume it's genuine, but I don't think being able to hash it out with scumbuddies would make the role especially less frustrating because I don't picture the 'brainstorming for rhymes' thing as especially likely (though it could happen in theory) and I imagine the frustration from it would come from actually trying to write posts.

What do you think of GuiltyLion if anything?

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alisae's sporadic attitude and very very consistent tone is not something that i know whether or not he can fake as scum but i think it would be pretty difficult to do as convincingly as I see in this game. Like every one of his actions says town to me. The way he tunneled me, the timing of the unvote, his rhetoric toward Nos especially the way he's treating the post restriction but really all of it. Alisae-scum would surprise me a lot.

My problem with reading nos is that my recent experience with nos was a game where i was scum and nos was town but i had like, a genuinely-formed scumread on nos that i just kind of tunneled all game because it was convenient and i could justify it. And so i'm comparing nos's play to a game where nos was town, i was scum, and i think if i had been town i would have thought nos was scum.

The kraska wagon was composed of wisdom, GL and nos. Nos was demoted to only-person-on-the-wagon sometime in the last like 24 hours whenever GL unvoted. Is the reasoning for Nos's continued kraska push that they have no reason to stay there with the wagon dissolving? Or is there something else?

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i don't think i've actually seen alisae's scumgame except irl in a game that wasn't mafia though so i don't actually really know what he's capable of faking. But i think the way he's playing is too consistent with the way town attitudes flit about compared to how well i think scum can fake it.

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I will gladly lynch morph if thats a thing

Do you still have morph as "idk" or do you have specific reasoning?

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There are a couple of recent things from morph that concern me.
One is this:

Unvote:

Now I'm feeling a little squinty-eyed about Implosion being on this wagon with us, since he played a game with Town Nos.

One, I had just recently talked about how I'm not sure about how to read Nos. Which she might have missed but seems like a strange thing to ignore when saying this.
Two, this feels really indirect and unclear for what I know of ffery. It sounds like vague suspicion thrown to see if anything will stick, rather than an attempt to either state a read or push the game forward.
Three, I just don't see the reasoning for why this should make her suspicious towards me - I played a game with town Nos and pushed him, therefore I might be scum pushing him here? First off I haven't even pushed Nos here; my vote is basically dangling there right now as a "nowhere really better to go" vote. I've played with nos-town so I should know his meta, and his meta looks like this game so I shouldn't be voting him? That doesn't really make sense either. It just doesn't really make sense as a conclusion from seeing that. Like, having played a game with someone doesn't equate to being confident in understanding their meta, especially since I was scum in that game and so wasn't actually trying to sort nos. I'm not sure if town-ffery looks at the nos wagon and nos's meta dive, and my involvement in the wagon, and conclude that tossing suspicion my way is appropriate. I'm doubly unsure that that suspicion would manifest as sort of half-pressuringly almost-but-not-really fossing me.

This is like, slightly a meta read but mostly it isn't. I'm going to sleep on it and likely join the wagon tomorrow since i think i might just be misinterpreting that post because it really doesn't make sense to me. Also still trying to figure out their reaction to the votes which my gut says might be scummy.

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Implosion, you are one of the last people in this player list I expected to get involved in this chucklefuckery.

Overall I'm incredulous at some of the absurdities people have pulled out of my posts to call scummy. Wisdom didn't surprise me because I've seen him go on for hours at a time calling each new post scummy without so much as a moments reflection, a la Perpetual Mylo day 1. The only oddity to me about him is why he's done it to so FEW posts this time.

This game day has been a visit to a different planet. You can't all be scum.

The stuff that's bothering me most right now:

- Implosion's whatever the fuck that is above this post
- Bins' trajectory, which is custom made for OMG I WAS JUST TOO PARANOID OF FFERY"S SCARY SCUM GAME when we flip.
- GuiltyLion's amazing attempt to dismantle my reasons for assuming Drealz hype about his catch up post, when the point of my calling Drealz out was that he'd left me with the impression that the catch up post was incoming at any moment, not a day away.

Really, the only person on my wagon (in vote or in spirit) I have any conviction must be town in alisae. If I'm wrong about that, this really is some other planet.

If you guys are town (and some of you HAVE to be, sadly), pull up your damn socks.

Cool.

If you are town can you like actually respond to it instead of completely ignoring it because yelling "wtf" at me isn't actually assuaging anything and i am really conflicted about you right now. I still think the way you acted towards kraska is unlikely from scum and there have been other vague townvibes here and there but i still can't make sense of your post toward me. And your post toward me is like, the first thing in this game that has set off any alarm bells whatsoever since zachdunn's early play. And your response amounts to "fuck you" which is not encouraging.

since ffery is assuming you have a correct understanding of how to read Nosferatu after playing a game with them is a fallacy
but you using it to shade her
is like
what?

Yeah, this is probably a bad point. I might be falling into BoP.

do you honestly think scum!ffery will just need to throw out words do see if it will stick?
do you really think that low of her scumgame (I'm imagining she has a strong scumgame here)

I don't think that's a bad scum tactic. I think it's perfectly good, especially in a game that's been going as sort of slowly as this has in the sense that momentum has been slow to build in any direction. It's useful for scum because they can essentially go whichever direction they want from it. It is also something that town will do because something makes them unsure of something. It's the way that she does it that looks off to me. Given that we had been directly dialoguing at least some earlier in the day my expectation from town would be to raise specific concerns and gauge my reaction, rather than the general concern of "he's on the wagon even though he's seen Nos's towngame."

What you're saying here amounts to "morph's post is too scummy to be scum" as far as i can tell. And I do see her post as "throwing out words to see if they will stick" in the sense that like I said i literally have difficulty parsing it to figure out exactly what she meant.

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and fwiw, 897 gives me town vibes tonally.

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I am quickly losing motivation. I kind of just want a flip, even though there's no one right now that I really feel strongly about flipping.

I think I might be getting some scumvibes from drealmerz. Wisdom has a good point in 1246, in that I think wisdom is one of the less telling flips we could see of the people being voted (which doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad vote, but it does mean that dreal's point doesn't really make sense to me and he explicitly ignored wisdom's question). His alisae push is weird - I sort of find a tunnelvision scumread on alisae hard to swallow in the first place (I could see a more nuanced scumread coming from town easily). And it feels like a distraction game of "look, i have a strong opinion."

I don't want to lynch GL today. I could vote wisdom potentially. Pretty sure I don't want to lynch morph today at the very least, especially if nacho's confident that this is town ffery. I am curious to understand Tammy's nacho read better but this feels like the way I remember him interacting as town. She has more experience with him but this fits my memory of town nacho's modus operandi pretty well.

I'll probably join any wagon that spawns on any of {drealmerz, wisdom, nos, chiaotzu} if a significant wagon shows up. Drealmerz is the only one of those that I specifically think is scum, but I really just want it to be day two. None of the others' posts have made a strong impression yet. Chiaotzu's reads list is interesting though, and there's probably something to be gleaned from it, and gut says it might be town but it's the kind of gut read that I don't think I can actually put any stock in or substantiate. I'd swing towards VA-11 or GL if someone made a compelling argument.

I somewhat skimmed the 15 pages that cropped up overnight so if there's anything specific important that I missed then etc.

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Talk me through drealmerz?

Most of the game he's been part of the lurker patch that i've been punting strong opinions of to the future.
His alisae read development is weird to me. I don't understand hard-scumreading alisae here. There are just so many individual points in his ISO that I feel separately make him strongly town and I can understand not agreeing with me on all of them but I really don't understand literally having nothing that Alisae has posted that gives him even a moment of pause, especially given him saying he has a history of incorrectly scumreading Alisae, doubly especially in a game in which so many people have declared alisae obvtown, which is exactly what he's saying.

It seems like a read that he can sort of hold and keep as long as he wants arbitrarily but has no obligation to ever actually commit to a push on bc it'll never get traction, and so he never really has to commit to strongly voting any real wagon that crops up and he'll always be able to fall back in future days on "come on everyone, can we please lynch alisae already"

I just don't understand the read cropping up in the first place, and it's a convenient read for scum.

why do you want it to be day two for dreal but not for the rest in this bracket?

What?

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This is a good point, actually. What else in his admittedly short ISO gives you pause, if anything?

i don't remember much of it. There was also the thing wisdom brought up that I mentioned which is minor. I might ISO him at some point. I don't remember thinking much either way of his early game (before his catchup post phase)

I'll probably join any wagon that spawns on any of {drealmerz, wisdom, nos, chiaotzu} if a significant wagon shows up. Drealmerz is the only one of those that I specifically think is scum, but I really just want it to be day two

why do you want it to be day two for dreal but not for the rest in this bracket?

I meant that I'm willing to just lynch in a null pool right now if it'll get to d2 since I have a decent townread base to work from for d2 (though not quite what it ideally would be but that's okay) and am not super motivated.

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You specifically said you want dreal to be a tomorrow thing

No, i didn't. You're misinterpreting me.
I'd prefer to lynch dreal right now, but am happy to lynch a nullread as well.

Unvote

VOTE: drealmerz

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dreal's reaction to this wagon is really, really bad. He digs in that his scumreads are pushing his wagon and makes no attempt whatsoever to talk to people on the wagon that he isn't scumreading. He ignores my and Nos's votes to focus on Wisdom's point, which is much easier to muddle (even that he isn't doing a great job of, but IMO it's not the strong reason to think drealmerz is scum in the first place).

I think he is scum who sees his best option right now as pushing momentum further against Wisdom. Or rather, who thinks he can deflect attention away from him rather than address the points on him. I see no reason for town dreal to actively ignore points being made against him, especially from me when I've indicated a number of alternatives including Wisdom. I think he just doesn't think he'll be convincing enough to me, and I think he would have more conviction that he'd be able to be convincing as town.

Fighting the urge to speculate on scumbuddies because I think it's generally fruitless but. I think his rhetorical strategy makes a lot more sense as scum-motivated and I don't know why town-drealmerz doesn't offer any defensive rhetoric at all.

I might be willing to come around on nos-town at least weakly. His breaking the stronger form of his PR looks genuine to me and I'm not sure if he does that as scum but who really knows anything. i think it gets some town points but i may completely change my mind on this at a whim. Either way parts of his recent rhetoric feel at least somewhat gut-town.

[implosion]

Spoiler: morph

I reread parts of the Swag mini normal which was the most recent game I've played with Implosion. He seems significantly different this game. Bigger posts here, and yet with somehow less assertiveness, humor, and interactiveness.

No shit. That game is from 2 years ago, during a significantly different time in my life. It'd be astonishing if the way I interacted with the game or my general vernacular were the same. I don't see how any of those things changing over the span of two years is supposed to be alignment-indicative. Look at any of my recent town meta (of which there is plenty) and you'll see similar differences.

These are also not especially alignment-indicative meta differences. I'm not being very assertive in this game because I'm not very confident in my reads. You can find examples of me as town being much more assertive than here (shaziro mafia is a great example) or probably less (a newbie game that I IC'd a little under a year ago is a good example here). Actually girls pt 1 is also probably a good example of a d1 that's playing out similar to this one, where I was never really confident of any scumreads until near the end of the day but had an ever-growing pool of townreads. I also have one good recent scumgame. I'm happy to provide links if you want to dive. But assertiveness is a function of confidence, humor and interactiveness on a game-by-game basis are probably largely a function of my mood. Bigger posts are a function of the fact that I'm trying not to post at work.

Going back to your point-by-point which I missed in the deluge...

As I said in my post to Alisae whether I'm right about it or not, I felt that there are some fairly discernible differences in his town play vs his scum play in those 4 games. I'm happy for someone who knows him better to set me straight, if I'm wrong.. And if I'm wrong, then your difficulties reading him will be pretty vindicated, actually.

What are your difficulties in reading him?

The suspicion is entirely wrapped up around getting a strong impression of his alignment from READING some games. You PLAYED a game. Experiential meta is so much better than reading cold games, so it seemed odd that you came away from playing a game with him, but find him hard to read.

I mean, there's nothing specific that I find difficult. I "read him wrong" as scum. In that I was scum in a game where he was town and would have genuinely had a scumread on him if i had been town. I don't know why it would have been a misread specifically. Experiential meta is useful when you glean things from it. I didn't glean anything other than "i am capable of misreading nosferatu."

What does slightly a meta read but mostly it isn't mean? I thought this paragraph is nonsensical when I read it the first time, and I still don't know what you mean by it.

Actually similar to my opinion of drealmerz's recent reaction. It isn't really deeply rooted in meta but it's informed by what I know of your personality.

Although I don't particularly think that you're scum right now. But I'm having a hard time trusting myself on that.

What do you think of my other points on dreal, other than the wisdom thing?

implosion's points are quite shallow. There is reason for town drealm to be like this, and it is that hes drealm

Which points are you referring to? I've made 3 main points against drealm. Frankly, by far the shallowest is the one that you cited as your reason for voting, which I explicitly said wasn't a great reason.

You haven't addressed either of the other points. In particular I strongly disagree that my point about the Alisae tunnel is shallow. I think there's meaning there, and I'd be impressed if you can justify calling it a shallow point.

[implosion]

Don't know what to think about implosion ignoring morph's question about experience with me

Which ones?
I think there were a few things that I missed in the one night that generated 15 pages or possibly since then and i sort of don't feel like sifting through for them though i did find one today.

or my concerns about nacho.

I mean we can talk but your concerns are difficult for me to really understand right now. Or at least they're difficult for me to evaluate. They're well-expressed in that from what I understand it's the way he's interacting with the game feeling off, but the way he's interacting with the game at a high level is the main reason I think he's town. If can manage to put it more concretely then that would help me more because the reason I feel he's town is also fairly abstract based on his MO here feeling similar to his MO in girls pt 2. Your paranoia of him been in the back of my mind a fair amount though. I've been pretty disengaged with the game or I probably would have mentioned something.

[implosion]

my push on implosion is because he too opportunistically hopped onto drealm

in what way shape or form is pushing and then voting someone with no votes and who is under very little pressure opportunistic

that its shallow

"I see no town reason for drealz to act like this"

you are taking a single point i made and presenting it as though it's my entire case
after i literally told you you were doing this
you're acting as though 1305/1316 don't exist
i don't know if this is scum motivated but are you reading this game?

[implosion]

Okay! Well, maybe you can understand my concerns about your "meta read but not really" comment, at least by comparing your own feelings about being meta'd based on an old game. That was one of the few games we've played together, and was the most recent one by far. And somehow my meta from a game that long ago isn't relevant.

This is fair.

This is a level of abstraction that I find difficult in my own play. My headspace is too different as scum and town, and my self-awareness of my town game is extremely tenuous when I'm scum. The converse is also true, usually. It's been a very long and often fruitless process figuring out what I'd do as the opposite alignment in hypotheticals.

A lot of my scum play is based on pushing reads that I think I would have if I were town, because I find it easiest to look like town as scum when I'm pushing things that I can genuinely argue for. I mean, I might theoretically be wrong about how I would have read nos if I had been town in that game but -shrug-. Self-awareness in experienced mafia players is a very interesting topic that I could probably write a lot about if I were in the mood to pen an essay. I think it's definitely hard to be self-aware of how you'd act as the opposite alignment but reads are one thing that I think it's relatively easy to get a good estimate on.

Once again, somehow your read based on what you knew of my personality over a year ago was a valid approach to reading me, but you're saying my approach to reading you is invalid.

Again, yeah, this is fair. I'm no longer particularly scumreading you.

[implosion]

alisae i'm ignoring you until you flip on me again

[implosion]

I think this point isn't terrible but he hasn't latched on to other wagons that had greater traction. Was he just in the field picking daisies when Nos' wagon took off? Or mine? He didn't vote me at a time when I had 3 votes and at least two additional players talking about voting me. I'm usually not as easy a mislynch as it may have looked like in that moment, but why should he think I'm not?

The difference in terms of pursuing what was a null-to-him wagon right now is that the null wagon is an alternative to his lynch. As town, I can understand flipping out a little about what I'd think was a terrible push. That kind of thing pushes me off balance and makes me question how the lack of balance is affecting the validity of my reads. A lot of people just scumread the person pushing them and push back.

This is sort of interesting.

He did recently pivot from not really saying much on nos (all he said was he thought the PR was fake, but didn't elaborate on it as being alignment-indicative) to implying a weak scumread. That could be him looking for an out as scum or just him trying to reason off of his wagon as town. But that would make i think 3/4 of his wagon (everyone but me) a member of his scumread pool, which is possible to read out of but kind of poor.

I can understand reacting by indicting the wagon though. He had 2 prior scumreads on it in alisae + wisdom, and then went to calling nos scum as well. I guess that can just be reactive town play but it makes sense as scum too I think.

The more core point that I made was in 1305 and 1316, the way he's been treating his Alisae read. It's related to this:

Rather than push actual scumreads that he apparently didn't think he could get lynched, he went after the next tier up. I'm wondering if he's always that pragmatic on day 1, or later in the game for that matter.

It could be his meta to act this way in theory but in the absence of it being strongly his meta to ignore stronger scumreads I think the Alisae rhetoric makes too much sense as a scum strategy to draw pressure/have an outlet to call someone out/look like he's producing original reads. Like, to sort of rehash those points again, I don't think dreal would have this strong of an alisae scumread as town and I don't think he'd treat it this way if he did. I think he'd try to enunciate it better given that if he's town, from his perspective, we're sort of fucked if we keep consensus-townreading alisae (at least i don't remember anyone else calling him scum recently).

[implosion]

Nah, that's more a product of the way he plays/his character

I mean, maybe. But I think I've seen indicators in favor of dreal being scum that wouldn't have happened if he was town, irrespective of his personality. Like I can understand you and others saying that but I haven't heard anything convincing in favor of him being town, none of his posts give particular townvibes (at least off the top of my head), and I think his potential motivations make more sense as scum than town.

Do you have a material read on him right now?

[implosion]

bins and kraska last page both continue to be town. I also like GL's recent posting. The way he's talking about chaiotzu seems like a fairly unlikely tact for scum.

@Tammy's 1583, I can agree with that point but I don't think it really outweighs the reasons that I have to townread Nacho right now. I feel like the way he's been interacting with the game has been more direct than that example in general, though I might be missing more examples like that one that you've picked up on.

I can probably look and find examples at some point.

[implosion]

At work but Tammy I literally tried to engage with you about nacho twice in the past couple days, read my recent posts

[implosion]

I'm not gonna join a GL wagon unless there's no other option at deadline. Still think he's towntold pretty significantly, don't really remember buying any arguments made against him.

I still want to discuss your Nacho read directly with you, Tammy, but probably on d2 after this has cooled off, assuming you don't replace out. Still not interested in voting OT today.

drealm's vote isn't like, the epitome of scummy (it's certainly opportunistic but that's not scummy in and of itself in this situation) but it sure as hell isn't making me townread him. He seems to have dropped all desire to push wisdom with the whims of the wind, namely coincident with both wisdom stopping pressure on him and a wagon conveniently materializing on another one of his scumreads. It just seems like he's applying pressure very broadly against whichever of his scumreads happens to be the most convenient to pressure at the time, without really commenting on things that the others are doing. He mentions some things he found suspicious about GL, then confidently votes Wisdom later that day, adding on the next morning that he's still meaning to do a deeper dive against GL. He never does this. Instead, he doesn't mention anything about wisdom after Tuesday morning, never gets around to digging into GL, and just votes GL as the wagon appears. Granted this is consistent with him (like many others) saying he largely just wants a flip (here), but the way that he's applying pressure just feels really inconsistent and unfocused like he's not trying to consistently rattle any feathers. Like the fact that he hasn't really pushed hard on wisdom despite an apparent high confidence scumread towards him, and particularly stopped really pressuring wisdom as wisdom's pressure went elsewhere.

FYI, I'm largely distracted for the next ~week and a half because of TI (dota tournament). I'll be V/LA for it for a few days in a week.

[implosion]

Hi i'm here.

Alisae are you actually willing to talk to me about your read on me or are you going to ignore everything I say? Because it's really fucking annoying having you refuse to engage with me meaningfully when i'm basically sure that you're town and I've refuted your points but you just keep blindly restating them.

[implosion]

i'll vote nos if i need to to get a lynch but i pretty strongly prefer dreal

do you have a specific aversion to a dreal lynch or do you just strongly scumread nos?

[implosion]

Hi Alisae!

In case you missed it,

Alisae are you actually willing to talk to me about your read on me or are you going to ignore everything I say? Because it's really fucking annoying having you refuse to engage with me meaningfully when i'm basically sure that you're town and I've refuted your points but you just keep blindly restating them.

[implosion]

@morph sorry, questions slipped my mind. I haven't played with dreal before. My only familiarity with him comes from sitechat.

What did you mean by "general vernacular" in this reply?

A general semblance of the way that I talk. You mentioned that my posts were larger, less assertive, less humor-filled and less interactive. Pretty much all of those are what I was referring to - the way I talk or argue.

I'm neutral on implosion. I didn't like his lack of interest in my oil tycoons concern,

I have tried to engage with you on this like four times now :\

[implosion]

Of the four current wagons my preference is dreal > nos > ot > gl. I was gonna say gl > ot but ot being so absent at deadline is somewhat sketchy (this can be potentially reversed if they appear and try to help resolve a lynch). And I feel like my reasons for townreading GL right now are actually really solid. His read progressions on me and chiaotzu look really natural to me. I really don't see any good reason for scum to argue along the lines of "no townie should ever be townreading chaiotzu right now, x player is, therefore x player is scum." Like, that line of reasoning actively puts yourself way out there if you are scum and subjects yourself to a lot of scrutiny and puts yourself in the limelight in a way that doesn't really make sense to do as scum. It's something that could be him trying to fit into his town-persona as scum but seems unlikely as that as well, because a scum player trying to emulate what they would think of their play as town would probably not have such a high degree of emulated confidence in a how a player would be read that they would be willing to say that no one could possibly townread them. It could be scum explicitly making things up but I think that's somewhat rarer/harder to fake genuinely and it looks really genuine. I hope all that makes sense because I'm not sure if it will.

I should be here and checking the thread possibly infrequently (i.e. on the order of hourly) until deadline. If there's wagon momentum towards dreal I'll stay or towards Nos or ot I'll join it, otherwise I'll join GL around an hour or two before deadline if I need to.

[implosion]

I'm vla until Monday, may or may not have time to post.

[implosion]

Hello.

I've returned from seattle and will do

actual things

tomorrow.

[implosion]

Alright I am back and here and not especially motivated atm. I've skimmed everything since daystart. Realeo is obvtown modulo him doing this kind of thing consistently but he's open with his thought process in a way that I doubt is faked. Tammy's above post is bleedingly obvtown. I'm not sure what I think of the current wagons and I don't have great reads on Wisdom or Va11.

Are people writing of dreal as "dreal is always scummy, therefore we should just ignore him?" Or do people have actual reasons to think he's town? Because it feels like the first which is frustrating but I might be missing something. But it seems like he still hasn't done anything especially townish and I still feel like him being scummy goes beyond the kind of thing that I think would happen in every game from someone who is generally perceived as scummy.

Lmk if I missed anything particularly interesting since I was watching video games/hanging out with people I'd never met all weekend and so I was skimming a bit less carefully than usual which is already admittedly not especially careful.

[implosion]

I mostly think that I don't trust myself to read them \:

There've been a couple things that rang bells here and there that I've mentioned but none especially strongly and a lot of things they've done have felt town, and the way they've fostered communication in general and the way they've approached communicating with me in particular feels fairly town. I feel like they've been trying to get me to be more into this game at points to some but not a ton of avail, but in a way that I'm not sure they do as scum. But they might. I don't remember buying any strongly made points against them.

Which way are you leaning on them atm/what recent things have influenced your read on them?

[implosion]

Dreal.

And I have a null cloud and tiers of townread that I can elaborate if desired

[implosion]

Please look at valhalla's delayed reaction to Cabd's push and tell us what you think.

What about it? It's difficult to piece together exactly which part you're looking at because both heads reacted individually from what I can tell.

2417-2419 are the immediate reaction and they don't make me think much of anything, just looks like one of zach/dunn's personalities being itself. The delayed part I assume being 2461 is also reasonable enough. It's an alright reaction, I don't think backlashing and voting you is especially telling either way and I don't really get much out of the tone either way either. Why do you think the fact that it's delayed is important? Do you specifically think whichever head that was that responded in a delayed fashion spent that time trying to think of a response, or putting off responding to it, rather than just being away from the game?

[implosion]

wisdom/va11 dueling wagons is alright. They're both more or less in my null pool right now. I don't have energy to sort them more right now, am also a bit sick. Not sure what to think of morph's points on va11 right now. Not really able to process this game deeply in general at the moment.

My earlier question re: dreal remains open to everyone.
VOTE: dreal

[implosion]

I think the townreads that I'm comfortable with right now are realeo, ceph, GL, and bins. I'm not really interested in thinking about those people today at least.

kraska and morph are townreads that I could imagine myself being swayed on because the reasons for them have gotten old and new ones haven't been cropping up as readily as they have been for the people in my top tier. I don't feel especially good about either of them as town at this point but I have reasons from a while ago for kraska that I've forgotten, and morph is honestly probably not substantiatable beyond a gutread because I'm not really sure what ffery can fake as scum but my gut does say she's town still, but not especially strongly in recent pages.

Dreal is my Premier Scumread. And I still have not seen a damn thing from anyone even trying to argue against that. And I

still

would like to hear why anyone thinks anything other than dreal scum, if anyone does, beyond just "he's scummy every game."

That leaves a pool to sort of {Wis, Va11, Chiao}. And theoretically 2 scum in there in a perfect world, but I still don't have an especially high degree of confidence in my reads right now, even the strong townreads aren't as strong as I'd theoretically like them to be because I have been doing a shit job of engaging with the game.

Granted part of that is because it seems like no one is online during the hours that I am half the time.

Va11 and Wisdom are both slots that I have trouble gleaning alignment-indicative content from. morph's points on va11 make sense but I don't find them especially persuasive. It seems like a fair amount of assuming that a zach-dunn hydra will interact with each other in a comparable way to, say, a ffery-cabd hydra. I don't really buy them voting morph as scum testing the waters, I feel like he just joins the wisdom wagon just as easily as scum, and if I were scum I don't think morph is the first person I'd test the water towards? It kind of makes sense if va11+morph are scum as distancing or va11+wisdom are scum and va11 doesn't want to bus. And I don't really find the reaction especially interesting. I agree va11's take on the game or at least zach's apparently (I haven't been really trying to keep hydra heads straight in general) has been to lmao at things or generally just be on the fringe and occasionally interject with quips of content and I'm not sure if that's scummy or playstyle. I think there were some things that I thought were town from them but iirc I wasn't putting much stock in those things at the time.

Wisdom is hard to read for similar reasons actually - he interacts with the thread in a very idiosyncratic way that makes it difficult to get at the motivations for what he's doing, and the main way I scumhunt is to think about motivations. He's mostly just said brute reads and while that's sort of nice and good in the sense that he's giving reads and committing to them (cough, drealm, cough) even if they're swaying, I'm not sure how to read him off of mostly brute reads and a lack of really meaningful reactions.

Chi i'll think about later after he's done more today.

[implosion]

Idk if implosion was detached from the game as I was. has his standard been similar to this?

I was decently engaged at points in d1 but d2 started while I was at TI, and I got sick at TI and have been various levels of sick since then which has limited my attention span.

I think zach's wallpost (2909) looks fairly town. It looks like town who got pressure on them and decided they needed to actually do things, in particular the way that he talks about morph feels like town who is a combination of trying to sort the person scumreading them, and irritated at the misplaced read, which reminds me of the last time I was wagoned as town which granted was very long ago. The commentary on morph in general looks fairly genuine and I think zach-scum here doesn't give as in-depth or genuine-looking of reasoning about the morph read/the way that he decries it as meta looks like annoyed town.

Wisdom's recent posting is still hard to get anything out of. Almost aggressively so. It's the actual kind of tunneling where you're so engrossed in the tunnel that you ignore anything outside of it, which is annoying to read. I feel like a meta of just tunneling every game is probably one of the easiest things to fake as scum just because you don't need any degree of nuance to fake it, and correspondingly I don't know what of Wisdom's recent posting at least serves as actual useful tells. His kraska read development is interesting but it's also very one-dimensional upon his explanation so it's also hard to read anything into it.

[implosion]

ffery, what is your current stance on dreal? Is he part of the mush, and if so do you have things from him you think are towntells or do you just not buy that he's done anything scummy?

[implosion]

@2936: hrrrm. Those are actually pretty decent points. It's sort of difficult to divorce a read of dreal from meta. I think from my experience of myself I personally probably acquiesce to requests in general unless they're unreasonable as either alignment but I can understand doing it more readily as scum. The issue is whether this applies to dreal specifically, because my mental image of dreal's personality coming into this game is along the lines of him being a person with very strong opinions who is unafraid to voice them regardless of whether or not they're popular.

The rereading thing is probably a minor towntell but only minor. But it is noteworthy that he's showing nuance in his reads, and the fact that he's willing to make that post toward someone he had just written off as town is relatively unlikely to come from scum.

[implosion]

Yeah I'm pretty lost here.

I would like to hear reasoning from people who have relatively strong opinions on wisdom, because I am skeptical that any strong reasons to read him either way exist right now.

@Chiaotzu, do you have any strong feelings towards Realeo's posting in a vacuum ignoring OT's?

[implosion]

Realeo still bothers me and his hammer doesn't exactly improve things...
I'm not sure what you're asking me here though. Want to explain?

I'm asking what your opinion on Realeo's posting is, ignoring your prior scumread on OT.

It's also really worrying me that literally all the dead townies were scumreading implosion.

This is potentially very spurious, but to elaborate first: why precisely do you find this worrying?

The interaction with him in 2935 - 2940 about Drealz yesterday seemed particularly off, somehow. I didn't think there was anything amazing in my reasons for not hard-scumreading Drealz but they seemed to strike him as novel.

I mean. I had been spending like 4 days trying to get people to talk to me about dreal because I literally couldn't see any reason to think he's town beyond "he's scummy every game." Honestly I was tunneling in the sense that I just couldn't see anything he was doing in a light other than scummy and i was getting tired of just hammering in that everything he was doing was scummy, and I wasn't expecting particularly persuasive points in favor of dreal town, which made me look at his iso again with less tunnelvision.

And there's the fact that he's expressed a paranoia read on us, but seems to be taking my analysis on board.

What problem is there with this? I generally explicitly separate logic from alignment in the sense that I had a realization at some point that how well-reasoned or good the points someone is making has almost nothing to do with their alignment. I can agree with your points even if I think you're scum. Which is becoming more and more likely because my own PoE is running out of wiggle room.

[implosion]

@Impliosion

Do you have

second

scumread? You have dreamlz fetish.

I'm not as sure on dreal anymore.

I'm interested in pursuing chiao partially contingent on his response to the above.
I'm interested in pursuing morph contingent on how their PoE winds up playing out today. I'm slightly surprised if ffery is town that she hasn't found anything of mine especially townish, although I don't specifically remember how well she can read me. The way that she's been edging towards pushing me feels possibly off. I need to mull it over.

[implosion]

Which is becoming more and more likely because my own PoE is running out of wiggle room.

Is it just me or I never see your PoE on action? Do you keep it for yourself or is it my fever speaking?

The last time I detailed it was here. Since then, apart from wisdom, dreal and va11 have gone up and chiao and morph have gone down. Hoping to get a chance to level with vedith at some point. My strong townreads from that post all stand.

Another thing that pushes my read of you toward scum is that the game keeps falling into apathy. I feel like town-you would try to fight that - not just fight your apathy but try to pull the town out of apathy.

Fair enough I guess to a degree? I was starting to get into a groove yesterday and then the day ended out of nowhere. And I'm more often than not hopelessly lost on d1. I feel like I've spent half of this game trying to talk to specifically you though, which is why I find it noteworthy that you're specifically putting so much emphasis on not having seen things from me to townread. I would find it more believable right now if you were flatly scumreading me I think.

[implosion]

Chia might be scum. I forget why he's not.

Does this specifically mean that you had explicit reasons and have forgotten them?

Do you have any particular feelings on his posting so far today?

[implosion]

Alright. I'm uninterested in further attempting to sort morph for today at least. If they're alive tomorrow then I'll put in a modicum of thought but I doubt this is a fakeclaim, if for no other reason than 3123.

Did Zach's level of feather-ruffling reach the levels you were expecting if he's town?

It's not really this, I just liked the reaction to their wagon. Upon further thought I don't think feather ruffling is necessarily a tell for them; it's sort of surprising to see a lack thereof and I think that's true whether they're town or scum. From what I know of them I'd expect a zach/dunn hydra to be pretty provocative regardless of alignment just based on personality, and a lack thereof is probably just indicative of disengagement.

Re: the nightkills if drealz is scum. Concrete NKA is hard to nail down; it's easier imo to speculate on things that are reasons, rather than things that aren't reasons. In other words I don't think Alisae dying is an especially large tell WRT drealz. It's possible scum had other reasons for throwing the kill that way, the simplest of which is just that alisae waswas an unlikely mislynch, which actually makes more sense if drealz is scum since he was the principal one pushing the slot. Scum killing a person that they're pushing isn't an especially unlikely thing to happen in general I think. That said it does sort of screw with my old theory of drealz-is-keeping-alisae-alive-to-deathtunnel. But etc, no longer sure on drealz.

[implosion]

It's also really worrying me that literally all the dead townies were scumreading implosion.

"really" worrying? I mean scum have only directly killed 1 of the 3 dead townies so far. Do you think scum pushed Nos or Wisdom in part because they were scumreading implosion? If so, then who specifically do you think may have been doing that and why?

I'm not saying implosion(or other scum) pushed any lynches. But when 3 confirmed townies are scumreading the same person, it is worth reconsidering that slot.

So since you basically answered my question here, to elaborate.

What both GL and I were referring to is that what was originally said here is ambiguous and sort of sketchily implying that a bunch of townies were killed because they scumread me, which this is the less scummy possible response to. But I still don't like that line from post 3021. It's somewhat backhanded, throwing suspicion without really committing to it. Especially since there are some votes on me, though I don't remember relative ordering of that chi post and those votes, but if it came after those votes then it really reads as just scum waffling over whether they want to join a wagon on me, specifically because I haven't been in his scumpile all game (since he's made multiple explicit readslists) so he feels the need to look like he's reconsidering so that the jump looks natural.

That paragraph might be gibberish so if it is i can rephrase it

[implosion]

VOTE: Chiaotzu

[implosion]

I don't see any reason why they would oppose it. I don't remember anyone else scumreading alisae so if you are scum, then he was basically universally townread. Although I'm not really considering each possible scumbuddy that you could have and their possible motivations for NKing because I think that level of deep thought into NKA is futile.

[implosion]

-shrug-. It doesn't really make me feel anything either way WRT your alignment. I can see your motivation for doing it but I don't think it's especially compelling or implicating.

[implosion]

morph asked about it twice.

[implosion]

in case you haven't been able to tell by my posting so far i am a fairly verbose person

[implosion]

It's somewhat backhanded, throwing suspicion without really committing to it.

Isn't this Bins as well?

In a sense yes. But Bins's stances look like they've actually been evolving in response to new information, rather than just changing with what's convenient. For instance her vote right now is more or less a vanity vote on you. That's not especially beneficial for scum, although it could conceivably be scum waiting to put down a higher-impact vote but I have other reasons to townread bins (I remember having strong reasons d1 + her tone has generally seemed natural since then) and I haven't had strong towntells from chiao (iirc there was something at one point but it was fairly weak). Chiao's suspicion towards me is a combination of opportunistic and noncommittal. Just checked and his original post was before the votes on me, so it's not as strong as I thought it might be. It still looks like testing the waters though, especially since his previous reads list had me in his upper half with two of townies who are now dead already dead at that point. But more than that is just the phrasing which just looks like scum trying to see if they can get away with pursuing a wagon on me.

[implosion]

i am pseudo-here. Was in a dota game.

I haven't heard anything about townblocs being bad. My only real problem per se with realeo's is drealmz. Everyone else there is pretty probably town. I am at the point where I'm willing to look into strong townreads if prodded though. But I think chiaotzu is probably the best lynch for today.

[implosion]

Right now I'm at 3/4 in {chiao, va11, vedith, dreal} being the most likely scenario, with chiao as the most likely in that group by a fair amount. The other three I feel have good reasons to be town. I guess I'd put dreal as 2nd right now but I don't really feel good about anyone but chiao and I feel like I might feel good about him partially because I just want to feel good about something :\

Obviously I'm wrong about more than one of my reasonings for townreading people but hey that's pretty par for the course.

[implosion]

3/4

[implosion]

My most likely scenario is that there are three inside the brackets and 0 outside.

If I'm wrong about that, it means I'm wrong about one of my strong townreads, which is entirely possible to a higher degree than the average game.

[implosion]

y not realeo

I thought ot was town and realeo's attitude just doesn't strike me as scum. It feels like he's been engaging with the game in a way that's almost too haphazard to be scum - he's committing to things frequently and doing things like the vote-unvote-revote on you that I just don't see as likely to come from scum.

[implosion]

didn't really have the focus today to remember to do things here and suddenly it's past midnight :s

first priorities are re-explaining bins-town and chiaotzu-scum better. Partially to other people and partially to myself to make sure that they are actually good reasons.

[implosion]

I think I've figured out part of why I find chiao scummy broadly. Va11's case sort of gets at some of it. He tends to phrase things in ways that serve him if he's scum by giving him wiggle room to go in multiple directions. In 2831 he votes va11 with the main logic of him being a null read and his own townreads voting that way, which he later justifies when asked about it IIRC. Which is sort of fine, but using that as his only excuse for the vote is extremely convenient as scum, for a couple reasons. One, he absolves himself of all liability if it's a townflip. Two, if his townreads already voting that way are all town, it's especially convenient because it gives him an excuse to jump on as the first scum on the wagon, and potentially leaves room to flip on one of those townreads if the wagon flips town. This latter reason is only relevant if Vedith is town, however (assuming morph and ceph are).

The way he seems to have tested the waters on me is another example of this. He justifies it when I ask about it here:

The way you're trying to discredit me for questioning my read on you is completely bs dude.
How did I change to what's convenient? I haven't even voted for you (or anyone else, for that matter) yet.
Better yet, I have no intention of voting you at all. I want Realeo/dreal/Bins in that order.
If you're going to keep pulling shit like this, things might change though.

This sort of misses the entire point that it's not the brute fact of him questioning his read on me, it's both the phrasing and the timing of that questioning that are scummy. The fact that he calls it "worrying" without really explicitly calling it scummy reads as scum who's not sure if they want to commit to a scumread on me and possibly make me scrutinize him more in return. Essentially it reads as explicitly trying to avoid ruffling feathers. Timing wise actually never mind this because this point was actually wrong, but the other point stands.

The point is that saying it's worrying but not scummy is really noncommittal. It looks like scum testing the waters to see if they can get any traction with the point before pressing it further. And it didn't gain a ton of traction, and was called out by both GL and me. And so it would make sense that you wouldn't be pressing me on it any further. The fact that chiao never wound up pushing me further as a result of it doesn't make it look any less like testing the waters. It just makes it look more like chiao was throwing something out to see if it would stick, saw that it didn't because multiple people questioned it, and is now dropping it and focusing on other people because it didn't stick.

Another good example is here:

I can't ignore my scumread on OT and I won't. Realeo has been asking me (and others probably) questions but I don't get the feeling like he's doing much with the answers. He's not doing anything to improve my read but he's not doing anything to make it worse either(aside from hammering town). I sometimes have a hard time understanding him because his English can be pretty confusing for a non-native speaker like myself.

in response to me asking about how he reads Realeo's posting ignoring his prior scumread. Apart from the part about English (which is entirely fair), this is sort of the least feather-ruffling answer you can possibly give to this question. It's an answer that lets Chiao keep his scumread on the Realeo slot without really drawing any ire from Realeo (this makes sense if Chiao is scum and Realeo is town, which I still think he is). I feel like if Chiao is town, then this question to him is a golden opportunity for him to sell me on his Realeo scumread, given that he says things here that it seems like he finds explicitly scummy (asking vapid questions and the bad hammer). But he phrases it in a way that makes it seem like he doesn't actually put any stock in those things - saying he hasn't made the read better or worse, except for this one thing that made it worse, just feels like downplaying the thing that made it worse (which he had previously called "terrible" in a one-off remark) and I don't see why town-chiao downplays that when he would want to convince people of his scumread. As scum, if Realeo is town, it makes a lot of sense.

The vaguely threatening way he responded to me pressuring him also fits in with this:

If you're going to keep pulling shit like this, things might change though.

If he finds the way that I'm pressuring him scummy, why not just be explicit about it?
Again, it's mostly in the phrasing. The way this is phrased just feels like he's trying to get me off his back rather than really sort me. He doesn't want to call me scummy explicitly because it would make me dig in my heels. I just don't see a reason for town to vaguely threaten me like this. It just looks like a straight rhetorical tactic, and I think town would be more explicit and would more readily call me scum for the pressure on him.

[implosion]

I'm a little annoyed with Implosion.

This is fair. But hey look I actually have some focus today.

Literally just looking at my prior reasoning for townreading kraska I thought I had a lot more than I did. I think I've been conflating my past reasons for townreading other people (morph and va11) based on their rhetoric towards kraska with townreading kraska. I don't really remember what I had on her. As for bins:

204 is the first post that made me think town. Like I mentioned, her tone and her thought process both looked like they were unlikely to be faked. And I still think that's actually a fairly strong townread for a single post. Those two things generally continued; throughout the game, a lot of her reasoning to me looks like reasoning that I think is more likely to come from town than to be faked by scum, and her tone looks consistent throughout. 452 and 457 on the same page are some examples of tone - I like her response to the pressure there, and crafted is a reasonable thing to get from the WWF and OT hydras I think if you don't have experience with them, and I think scum-Bins can just use that to push those slots if she wants to (particularly if OT was in fact town) but asking for context rather than just pushing them as crafted indicates town who realizes that their reasons might not be great. I also like her response to pressure from Alisae here, where she was accused of not having much to say and refutes those posts (and looks somewhat annoyed while doing so which is what I would expect from town) and then immediately tries to launch into a dialogue with va11.

Generally throughout the game a lot of her posts have looked off-the-cuff in a way that looks un-manufactured. I like the way she claimed, I think scum-bins would have given something more concrete in order to try to get pressure off them more effectively even if it wouldn't be optimal for the role that they were fakeclaiming. Like I can probably list more individual examples of posts arbitrarily if desired. But the biggest thing is that she has a general trend of giving explanations that I think she's more likely to come up with as town than to go through the process of faking as scum, every time she's been put under pressure she's reacted well to it and her tone has looked genuine throughout her iso.

[implosion]

Vedith's play so far seems to be marked by a large slew of questions that mostly haven't really led anywhere. This is fair to a degree when replacing into a 100+ page game.

Vedith, if you're here today, talk to me - do you have any real reads yet? Why did your opinion flip on Bins (or why did you vote/unvote in the first place)? Was it just a placeholder vote?

[implosion]

implosion do you have a thought/response to Ceph and I finding your Chiao case pretty unconvincing

Idk. I guess it's basically in the phrasing/timing/tonality, like I said. Testing the waters isn't necessarily a scumtell all of the time, in some cases town will do similar things, but the way Chiaotzu has done it looks to me like scum who is trying to see what suspicion they can throw that will stick or who is trying to see which mislynches will be the easiest to push in the future.

It's not like I'm extremely confident in it myself. If I was I'd spend more time trying to convince you, but like I've said my general confidence level in this game is quite low.

[implosion]

GL/drealz stuff is pretty uninteresting. Doesn't sway me on GL. It's an interesting angle to take from drealz. Problem is it's all sort of generic going-against-the-grain which isn't really readable on its own. I don't really buy GL's argument in 3575. Essentially, I can see scum-drealz do it for the reason you gave being a bit sketchy, but I can also see scum-drealz doing it because it's drealz's nature to be stubborn. I can see scum-drealz continuing to push ceph even because of self-awareness that it's just the kind of action that he'd take as town. I can certainly see him do it as town as well. But I think it's more personality-driven. I don't see it as a strong tell.

Drealz: you said you thought that post was well-put. Does that mean you think it's correct? Do you think that you as scum here would not have kept latched on to ceph for as long as you have?

[implosion]

I think some of what you're picking up on is an artifact of non-English grammar seeping into sentence construction. The sentences are grammatical but the phrases have fill-words, especially around the verbs.

This is also entirely possible. But he's basically my strongest scumread by PoE anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am sort of more okay with a GR lynch the longer he refuses to contribute at all, though. Somewhat looks like scum who accidentally waded into the deep end. Could be lost town too but the longer this goes the greater the chance that he's just given up on this game which I only really imagine coming from scum, I think. Town here should be fighting the wagon at the very least. This isn't meaningful if he does start contributing though.

[implosion]

Right now I basically have chiao/drealz who are my preferred lynches and GR/va11 in a tier after that, though GR may be moving down. Although I think I'm starting to see more things from drealz that I can get a foothold on so we'll see.

[implosion]

dreal's response to my question is pretty good overall. His musing about what he'd do if scum being based on scumbuddies/various different factors looks somewhat genuine though probably not outside of the scumrange that he's describing.

RC's one point on dreal is sort of interesting. When dreal had previously listed 4 people that he'd vaguely narrowed scum down to a list of 4 that didn't include the GR slot (unless i'm misinterpreting/misremembering).
I'm not really gonna try to read into RC's brief tenure because what he said is easy for him to fake as scum and can also easily be his towngame.
I still don't see anything from any of my stronger townreads that makes me particularly want to reconsider them right now.

dreal's most recent post is pretty interesting as well. I believe what he's saying is equivalent to saying that [kraska, realeo, chiaotzu] is either scum-scum-town or town-town-scum. Which is sort of bold but hey what is dreal if not bold. dreal, do you have any associatives between kraska/chiao or just between realeo and each of those two? Because it seems like the relation between kraska/chiao is just implied from the other two's.

[implosion]

Implosion is there a reason you aren't trying to make us realize how wrong we are on your alignment?

My impression was that you were unsure/unsettled about me, and that it was largely PoE, not that you flat scumread me. Which is why I've been trying to get a foothold on a scumread that I feel confident in strongly pushing. You mentioned not being able to see the game through my lens but that isn't something that I can exactly respond to with a reiteration of all of the points i've ever made with slightly different words. I feel like you've had a similar lens to me of being lost in too many townvibes, and having to figure out which ones need to be cut out of the picture, and that we're just cutting out or rearranging different people in different ways for different reasons. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

It's annoying to me that you haven't figured out i'm town yet but it's not, like, a significant problem since you're probably dying tonight. Which is sort of pragmatism at its finest but :hitoshrug:. If I'm going to put effort into convincing anyone at this moment it'd be ceph but he has seemed loath to be as transparent as you. I'd rather continue focusing on scumhunting right now so that I can find someone that I'm confident of and can convince you/others of, or at the very least to make me more confident of my PoE. unless there are more specific points about my play that make you think I'm scum than being unable to see the game the way I am, which I'd be happy to discuss and refute.

I think I'm ready to vote GR once morph is ready for the day to end. I like drealz's recent posting and so I'm inclined towards being happier with this lynch as the amount of town sentiment i get from other people is steadily increasing, especially since Vedith appears to have not siteflaked? What was the deal with that?

[implosion]

This is the thing that bothered me. I feel like you've reentered the game a few times and haven't made any effort to either help me see the game from your perspective or explain what you think is wrong with mine.

I mean, I pretty much have? Apart from your read on me our reads are close to identical - at least, we have the same exact split of upper and lower halves, and that split is the part that I have a fair degree of confidence in. The only thing to explain really is your read on me being wrong, and again, you haven't really given me anything concrete in the past (at least that I've seen and haven't responded to) apart from me not having been a part of your PoE - and I don't have any problem with your PoE except for my not being in it.

I'm basically working off exactly what you are except that I know I'm town. And we've come to very similar conclusions, except that you don't know that I'm town. There might be other things wrong with your perspective, but if there are, I'm not aware of them, but I'm not confident enough to say that there aren't, hence focusing on continuing to sort more deeply.

You were starting to scumread me again because I was making noise about where you are among my reads and you said that basically you thought I was laying the groundwork for an actual scumread. Which was an odd thing to say when I was already voting you.

This is a pretty significant mischaracterization, and I'm not sure where you're getting it from. I've accused other people of similar things but I don't think I've accused you of that unless I'm misremembering - my last reason for scumreading you, which I made a couple of times, was just that I thought you'd be reading me as town at that point as town. Basically straight burden of proficiency, which yes is kind of shitty but. I really do feel like you should have the information to townread me right now. Yes I've been disengaged, and I haven't really put effort into getting others to engage more as much as I might like to have. I have done some, towards you in particular. But the source of that disengagement is my inability to get a solid foothold on this game, because I just am not confident in any scumreads.

Point out where you're getting that from, in case I'm just forgetting something that I didn't find in skimming my iso.

Instead, I thought you did the pragmatic thing after that which happens to have a lot of scum utility. Ignore the PR who's basically offered to eat the next night kill, continue working on your scumreads in something of a vacuum and wait for us and our scumread of you to leave the game.

I mean, sort of.

I'm happy in principal to try to work with you more. But like, your reads are very close to mine, sans your read of me. So it's not like I have anything else that I am especially convinced of that I would like to convince you of, or that I'm deeply interested in your reasoning on.

I could conceivably give an in-depth analysis of why my play in this game is my towngame but like, that seems pointless because I'm at least moderately self-aware of my meta, and I'm not really sure what you want from me here.

[implosion]

@3862, the sentence that you're referring to was sort of me thinking aloud. And I can still find the way that you were edging toward pushing me scummy even if you've already voted me at that point, irrespective of whether or not that pressure had eventually turned into a vote. The more important point at the forefront of why I had been scumreading you was burden of proficiency which is why I echoed that point in my next post. And like I had mentioned you still didn't have an explicit scumread on me. But of course this is most likely all irrelevant now.

I agree psyche's posting is subpar. It mostly looks rhetorical. He's ignoring the fact that the rest of us have been sitting here brooding in our thoughts for a week or two already and that there is benefit to just cutting the day off so that we can get a flip before useful discourse slowly grinds to a halt, or more relevant to this game before motivation continues being exhausted. There is also benefit to waiting, of course, but both exist.

And honestly at this point I just want a flip. I still prefer chiaotzu a bit I think but not by an especially wide margin. ffery, if there's nothing else you want out of the day then I'm going to vote psyche, I'm happy to wait for him to give thoughts if you want but I am pretty low on patience myself. And I can tell since I'm just feeling dread about this game pretty much. I can also give more to you (either thoughts on sorting players or more discourse about my alignment) if you want. But the more I think about this game and come back and look at the thread and then think hm i'd rather do something else i'll get to this later, the more I just want this day to end.

[implosion]

VOTE: Psyche

I don't know if Implosion has played with me often enough or recently enough to remember that this is a distinct feature of my town game.

I poke at things. I riff off things. I float along asking stream of consciousness questions. Sometimes, something in all that "fluff" snags, and I have a read. Sometimes it's a scumread.

If Psyche flips town, I think the chance that you are scum increases significantly.

I probably never should have tried to use anything meta flavored to read you at all frankly. It's just a natural inclination to look for patterns at work.

[implosion]

Well one of my strong townreads is wrong for sure.

For now my reads still go chiao > va11 > others. I don't envy ceph. Although if he gets today right I sort of do envy him since he's probably dead tonight <,<. I do need to rethink everything since at least one thing I've been semi-assuming for PoE is wrong.

[implosion]

I'm a VT.

I can buy any of these claims as town or scum. Which is not especially helpful. I can see va11's argument that chiao claimed quickly because he wanted to roleconfirm himself for towncred as a scum tracker. Although I'm not sure if va11 makes that argument as a bus. I could imagine him having the killing variant potentially and it just doesn't work if it's lylo, or something like that, just based on the nature of the setup. It's also possible the killing isn't actually part of it and some other shenanigans are going on. Realeo's claim I can also easily see as town or scum. Bins's presumably isn't scum as what she claimed but could be as some other reflexive role. I'm trying to look at this without bias from thinking chiao is scum and i think his claim is slightly townish? but not massively. I still think chiao is probably scum.

So all in all claims are not especially helpful. I guess it's sensible to not really put too much stock in claims this game just because the setup is intentionally "interesting roles" so there could easily be some additional hidden factor in play and balance is a tricky thing to reason about especially with no flipped scum. That said I somewhat doubt there's multiple scum in that pool just because the 1-shot roles all somewhat complement each other and I doubt the entire dynamic has that much scum. And I sort of doubt any of them are completely fakeclaiming since all of their claims would be somewhat impressive to pull out of nowhere. I guess that makes the most likely scumteam chiao/va11/GL, with bins/realeo possibly subbing in for chiao if my scumread on him is wrong. We'll see if GL claims yet another PR.

[implosion]

These past couple pages make me doubt that GL/Vall is scum theater. I guess "intent to vote" isn't actually that strong of a stance, but I'm not sure if I see GL making it as scum with Vall. I actually could see scum vall doing that to scum GL, but GL seems like a more temperate player and I don't think he'd do this for the sake of flashiness, and I also don't think he'd see it as the best way to win here. If that's accurate then it would mean two of the PRs are scum (really doubt all three are).

If chiao+realeo are scum, that would mean they picked targets so as to coordinate their claims. Realeo targeting Bins is a bit weird in theory as town, though I could see Realeo-town trying to outwifom scum especially since we're in somewhat dire straits. Obviously it also makes sense for him to claim it as scum.

Like chiao mentioned, realeo + bins implies scum-realeo targeted scum-bins, but this would actually be expected if realeo is claiming his real role. A scum protective watcher would want to target a scumbuddy to both ferret out PRs and potentially save them from a vig.

chiao+bins doesn't really have anything interesting about it off the top of my head at least.

I ultimately still come out thinking chiao is scum. Realeo+bins would actually make a lot of sense given night actions (since realeo wouldn't have been expecting to be tracked) but I just don't buy it based on reads. The fact that chiao claimed before ceph just makes me think he was fakeclaiming and got caught out in it. I agree with ceph that it's silly to say that a setup can't have two trackers, but ceph + chiao's roles being together in this setup as town doesn't make sense from a setup design perspective. This setup is all about making interesting experimental-ish roles, and I feel like both of their roles scratch the same itch not just because they both have tracking and killing potential but because they're both heavily gated. I think in a setup like this, that kind of speculation is more useful than just speculating about two copies of the same thing in a normal game for instance. I think this setup makes a ton of sense if chiao is fakeclaiming a slightly modified version of his scum role, which was put in partially to complement ceph's town role. I don't think there's any possible way ceph can be scum since no town roles claimed to kill the night that morph saved him.

[implosion]

And it's also still possible that gl/vall is scum theater. Idk, I still feel like solving this game is tricky. The double-pr scum scenarios all make sense in theory though. I'd imagine vall is probably the scum in the vts in that case.

[implosion]

did you know that "i doubt x" and "x is still possible" are contradictory? because i sure didn't

[implosion]

townread on val,
probably townreading realeo

everyone else is scum ???

Why val over me and over GL?

[implosion]

Yeah, if Chia is scum I imagine he's fakeclaiming something similar to his role.

I agree that realeo's claim sort of inherently makes me twitch. It's always possible he was never planning to claim that he targeted bins, and only did because chiao called him out. I think it makes sense from town-realeo as well if he was specifically taking a risk since scum are pretty far ahead. That said, I mostly see that as more reason to think chiao is scum who wanted to garner towncred from his claim by claiming before realeo to roleconfirm himself, since if chiao were town and saw realeo targeting bins, and if he had a strong enough scumread on realeo to try to vig him, he easily could have held the result and waited to see if he could catch realeo out.

[implosion]

Ceph :\
Why do you find me scummy? Common consensus is a terrible reason right now since there are so many scum. I'm available to dialogue.

I actually think it's pretty likely that chiao is last-ditch effort bussing vall and that they're both fine votes. I don't think chiao has any motivation to vote vall here if he's town, particularly when ceph had made post 4169. I really can't imagine chiao-town seeing that post and still deciding to vote Va11. I think the likeliest scenario is chiao thought he couldn't dodge the lynch today and is trying to distance before dying. I think chiao-town doesn't make that vote at all, and chiao-scum with va11-town would either vote for a scumbuddy to distance, or vote for a townie who ceph indicated desire to lynch (i.e. me).

[implosion]

VOTE: Chiao

[implosion]

it looks an awful lot like your normal face

[implosion]

woo

[implosion]

I hereby officially accuse you of collusion with your sitechat brethren Bins and implosion to ensure a mafia victory.

[implosion]

It's a bit annoying that our power was largely in two track shots and one watch shot that were all secretly 100% useless.

Chiaos role wasn't made useless by the ninja at all. He'd kill any scum he hit I think though not sure how the interaction with ninja works, he might see no visit but still not kill which would indicate a ninja or scum doctor.

I do think the setup was probably a bit scumsided.

[implosion]

If there's anyone who is interested in playing another game by me in a month or so,

Or come play [other mafia game]

gross