Mini Theme 2161: Undertale C Open - Chara's Folly

[Chara]

I'm not sure I understand this reasoning at all. Why is not thinking +town rather than showing a lack of legitimate scumhunting process?

a fair question, kitty. can i call you kitty?

i find scum would be more likely to have some sort of justification in mind when giving a read, and when called on it would say something besides admitting they actually have nothing. that, and scum's tendency to think through their posts more deeply than town.
it does depend on the player, but perhaps i was too quick to remove her from the list of players i wanted to poke.

[Hectic]

but also i willl say is i feel bad about hectic b/c he invited me to play with him this game, so it feels bad to scumread him. he just doesn't feel like the last game i played at all

Don't feel bad about that! It's a game and I obviously don't take scumreads personally.

Regarding the "feels different to last game thing":
This is a huge problem I get and a big reason I secret alt all the time. I frequently change my playstyle between games, and differ the amount I joke/my tone/type of posts etc. Now, the issue with this is that some players notice I'm different from the previous town game they played with me in, and then put this difference down to a change in alignment, when this infact really isn't the case.

[Prism]

dw Chara, waiting until I get to my computer to go over your posts, but there is a post about it that sums it up already. It's based mostly on spectating SIN and thinking this game is a really natural extension

[Chara]

actually, the way Taylor initially says the catboi read is basically nothing, and then when pressed

does

give justification, doesn't look very good. i'm not sure how i missed that.

pedit: no rush, i'm here a while. thanks.

[Prism]

this is the redtea post, their proactivity in reads+how readily they went to bat for me-not for its own sake either, but to press someone else-lines up really well with the confidence boost that likely came with that game

they also have reason to be terrified/nervous of a catscum but they're showing no fear at all. Super town imo

[Hectic]

I'm not sure I understand this reasoning at all. Why is not thinking +town rather than showing a lack of legitimate scumhunting process?

a fair question, kitty. can i call you kitty?

i find scum would be more likely to have some sort of justification in mind when giving a read, and when called on it would say something besides admitting they actually have nothing. that, and scum's tendency to think through their posts more deeply than town.
it does depend on the player, but perhaps i was too quick to remove her from the list of players i wanted to poke.

I agree with this, and also like Taylor's standoffish nature and refusal to engage in the mech discussion early on. My qualms with her largely lie in the her reading me as scum because I missed the

Chara

clause thing from a few pages back. Like, I don't get that read at all.

[Prism]

terrified/nervous of a cattown as redtea scum*

[CantHateAPuppy]

but also i willl say is i feel bad about hectic b/c he invited me to play with him this game, so it feels bad to scumread him. he just doesn't feel like the last game i played at all

Don't feel bad about that! It's a game and I obviously don't take scumreads personally.

Regarding the "feels different to last game thing":
This is a huge problem I get and a big reason I secret alt all the time. I frequently change my playstyle between games, and differ the amount I joke/my tone/type of posts etc. Now, the issue with this is that some players notice I'm different from the previous town game they played with me in, and then put this difference down to a change in alignment, when this infact really isn't the case.

i kinda do the same thing to which is one reason i feel bad about using it as a reason :/ i dunno, i feel a little weird now that elements is gone (also there were some questions you asked him and i was waiting to see how he answered and you responded but rip). like my only scumread is gone and now i have to put in the work when im just not in the right mind

ill try to come back around tomorrow, i feel bad using ate but im not gonna be useful today

[Hectic]

Alright, no shame in taking a break for a day if you're not feeling it. We can talk tomorrow.

[Hectic]

[catboi]

Hey cat, I really appreciate you tackling all of my questions and giving really thorough answers. Most of them make sense to me, even though the Hectic progression/attitude around Pooky bother me a bit (I was actually biased in the credit thing; me feeling the same way about the gimmick+pushing him for content meant I didn't really think about the fact I never pushed him inthread. Something about this still seems off to me, though.)

You seem to have trended towards me being town. Is there anything you specifically want me to look at/talk to you about?

This game presents a unique challenge for us in a lot of ways. I suspect all of these 4 things are true: 1) Despite nearly identical backgrounds, we think of mafia in very different ways 2) We both expect slightly too much from the other as town 3) Deep down we both think we're the better player 4) We literally have no meta despite 1-3, unless you've already specced some of my games

Not sure there's anything immediate on my mind, unfortunately. Wish there was something that sprang to mind.

1) is likely pretty true. 2) is not necessarily true on my end - I just give anyone I respect a long time before I will comfortably read them as town. It's probably true that your expectations of me are too high, but I also would say I'm playing below what I can do. I've had to commute several times this week and that basically kills my ability to read a game properly and post. 3) Despite my play this game trending toward being individualistic with me trying to find a novel read or angle, I am actually not feeling terribly confident right now and realized I'm probably better off working off others 4) Nah, I haven't seriously spectated any of your games. Probably would prefer to judge just off what's going on in this one, anyway.

It's also curious to me that your mind doesn't immediately turn towards reviewing the stronger scum players when the previous top candidates get nixed in your eyes (Lavender/Hectic)

This was somewhat what I did when I turned my attention to Chara, because it stood out to me that they was getting a pass for their early game and had turned to not really saying much at all and engaging in safe play. When I went away from that again I got a bit lost and haven't fully reassessed.

Chara posting actual content makes me like them and being behind at least explains the active lurking. I am back to the drawing board, yet again.

is it enough just to post content? i can do this much as scum, too.

No, not just that it was content, obviously, but they made reads and evaluations, their analysis seemed

fine

and not overtly scummy, so I couldn't really continue to pressure them for active lurking. Is it possible to hang back as scum and then do the occasional big serious of catchup posts to look town? Absolutely. I can't say it's enshrined them as a town read but it lowered my suspicion for the moment and I'm basically in "wait and see" mode on them.

[Prism]

I'm not feeling terribly confident either FWIW. Asking myself "Is this

really

town for each of my gutreads has me very disappointed and feeling like I forgot how to play the game entirely.

[Hectic]

Do you two come from mafiauniverse?

[Prism]

I didn't/don't really share the scumread on Chara, but I definitely noticed the difference. I posted something like "Where did you go Chara?" only to look back and realize they had been posting quite a bit in recent days-they just weren't nearly as notable/analytical iirc

To Hectic: Nope. 10+ years of playing together only in brief spurts does things to people, though.

[Prism]

Actually I didn't really go very indepth on redtea, just very cursory. My previous post elaborated a bit but my read is almost entirely based off of me reading along with SIN. This game is very recent, featured strong townplay from cat that helped seal the game, and had redtea playing okay. Their biggest issue was probably a combination of lack of confidence in their scumreads and paranoia of their townreads.

catboi's "wait and see" approach this game stylistically is very similar to his approach in SIN. I think it's super natural for redtea to townread it (even though I don't), and the increased confidence/proactivity lines up really well with the takeaways from SIN. They also watched me flake without literally posting a single thing in that game as scum.

[catboi]

I'm not sure I understand this reasoning at all. Why is not thinking +town rather than showing a lack of legitimate scumhunting process?

a fair question, kitty. can i call you kitty?

i find scum would be more likely to have some sort of justification in mind when giving a read, and when called on it would say something besides admitting they actually have nothing. that, and scum's tendency to think through their posts more deeply than town.
it does depend on the player, but perhaps i was too quick to remove her from the list of players i wanted to poke.

Sure, nya~ (^人^)

I'm not sure scum would always have justification in mind when faking a read - when someone is really raw, then faking reasoning becomes incredibly difficult. When you do not have an idea of how to scumhunt as town, imitating that process is entirely a bridge too far. And so I see her tossing out occasional opinions, but when she is questioned on them I'm not sure her responses give the impression there is something behind what she says, that there's a backbone to her opinions. I would give credit if I felt there was some degree of earnest conviction to what she said but the fact she immediately walked things back when asked about them seems not great.

[catboi]

I'm not feeling terribly confident either FWIW. Asking myself "Is this

really

town for each of my gutreads has me very disappointed and feeling like I forgot how to play the game entirely.

Actually I didn't really go very indepth on redtea, just very cursory. My previous post elaborated a bit but my read is almost entirely based off of me reading along with SIN. This game is very recent, featured strong townplay from cat that helped seal the game, and had redtea playing okay. Their biggest issue was probably a combination of lack of confidence in their scumreads and paranoia of their townreads.

catboi's "wait and see" approach this game stylistically is very similar to his approach in SIN. I think it's super natural for redtea to townread it (even though I don't), and the increased confidence/proactivity lines up really well with the takeaways from SIN. They also watched me flake without literally posting a single thing in that game as scum.

I actually don't feel I played particularly great that game, I succumbed to a lot of the paranoid conspiracy theorizing that has been my downfall frequently recently and mostly got bailed out by mechanics. My main strength that game was being read as obvtown fairly quickly (which, granted, is not nothing, but I always want to do better), but it would have gone a lot smoother if I'd been more willing to listen to others on their reads.

[Chara]

Sure, nya~ (^人^)

I'm not sure scum would always have justification in mind when faking a read - when someone is really raw, then faking reasoning becomes incredibly difficult. When you do not have an idea of how to scumhunt as town, imitating that process is entirely a bridge too far. And so I see her tossing out occasional opinions, but when she is questioned on them I'm not sure her responses give the impression there is something behind what she says, that there's a backbone to her opinions. I would give credit if I felt there was some degree of earnest conviction to what she said but the fact she immediately walked things back when asked about them seems not great.

yes, upon looking at the proper context again i realized it wasn't a good reason for a townread. though that had more to do with how she decided to justify the read after saying there wasn't a lot that had prompted it.

her townread on Puppy while not remembering any of his posts is also rather meh.

[Chara]

catboi's "wait and see" approach this game stylistically is very similar to his approach in SIN. I think it's super natural for redtea to townread it (even though I don't), and the increased confidence/proactivity lines up really well with the takeaways from SIN.

got it. the background helps with dismissing a few of the problems i had, but i'll see what redtea says.

They also watched me flake without literally posting a single thing in that game as scum.

the power.

[Chara]

No, not just that it was content, obviously, but they made reads and evaluations, their analysis seemed fine and not overtly scummy, so I couldn't really continue to pressure them for active lurking. Is it possible to hang back as scum and then do the occasional big serious of catchup posts to look town? Absolutely. I can't say it's enshrined them as a town read but it lowered my suspicion for the moment and I'm basically in "wait and see" mode on them.

why does this reply sound like you were talking to someone else instead of me, Chara? :>

[Tanner]

i don't think i've ever hated a day one as much as i hate this one...

prism (i think...) asked me who else i'd fight other than lavender. one boring answer is taylor, because their weird reads, or rather i feel like i can't exactly follow their thought process.

one maybe less boring answer is hectic. i'm kind of... creeped out by his play around lavender? asks them for a readslist with feels about players, and once they make that one post doing what was asked of them, they go pretty high up in his reads because... they did a similar post in one towngame? and the one scumgame over a year ago their readslist was "less fluffy"?

also there's quite a bit of text i skimmed over so if anyone wants my take on anything specific, shoot.

[Tanner]

oh right, i could've maybe compromised on elements, but that's on hold until beeboy Does Stuff.

[Chara]

so i kind of scumread Puppy's posts here but //i// would feel bad to press it. ahaha. feel better Puppy.

but re: what he and Hectic were talking about with shifting in tone from game to game, this is why i'm so opposed to blanket application of single-game meta. there's going to be significant changes in a player's mood and approach from game to game without the cause being their alignment.

[catboi]

No, not just that it was content, obviously, but they made reads and evaluations, their analysis seemed fine and not overtly scummy, so I couldn't really continue to pressure them for active lurking. Is it possible to hang back as scum and then do the occasional big serious of catchup posts to look town? Absolutely. I can't say it's enshrined them as a town read but it lowered my suspicion for the moment and I'm basically in "wait and see" mode on them.

why does this reply sound like you were talking to someone else instead of me, Chara? :>

Lmao, I saw your reply in a p-edit, added it to the post to answer it, and thought it was Prism continuing to question me because I didn't look closely enough and didn't see an avatar to associate with the post ¯\(◉‿◉)/¯

[Chara]

also there's quite a bit of text i skimmed over so if anyone wants my take on anything specific, shoot.

do you also feel like giving a redtea take? i may as well crowdsource it if you're looking for something to gnaw on. other that that anything you find interesting i'd love to hear.

if reading the whole game is sucking for you, you could read my ISO instead! the game will probably still suck for you, but you'll be experiencing my presence.

pedit: ahahaha. i see how it happened.