Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Not_Mafia]

Who's Duchess?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ah. NM can be scum then.

[RLotus]

Dunn can be mafia with anyone really. He isn't putting any effort into solving. His only conviction is on Norfolk and imo this is the absolute worst time to resolve that slot, making him shoot in e-lo. Looks a bit better if norfolk is mafia I suppose. Dunn is quite null to me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm scanning through your Day 1 posting, Lotus. Talk to me about Wheme. NOTE: I don't want you to reread, I want your detailed thoughts there at this exact moment without reflecting on the past.

[RLotus]

I'm scanning through your Day 1 posting, Lotus. Talk to me about Wheme. NOTE: I don't want you to reread, I want your detailed thoughts there at this exact moment without reflecting on the past.

I did meta on him and he does seem to act the way he is acting when he is town. If Duchess is town, I think WhemeStar is town because he has called SirCakez, NM, and unwnd scum, which pretty much lines up with my reasoning. He does however fit the mold of scum trying to bus Duchess because I made it pretty obvious that I wanted to shoot Duchess before I got the gun.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also, important point to note I think: if you honestly think you will hit red and NOT hit the godfather, you need to make an ultimatum post ("This is where I am shooting, I will not change my mind, any last words?" sorta deal) and give us 24 hours.

Let's say you hit a goon. The scumteam can knock a threat out of the game without giving them a chance to voice final thoughts. Give us a pseudo-twilight to give last words, just in case.

[RLotus]

Frankly, I think the world with Duchess being scum makes more sense, because I would expect some of the scum to be calling them town in order to get credit, rather than trying to bury them, if Duchess is town. Another interpretation is that the scum are provoking me to shoot town Duchess, which is a bit of the feeling I got with SirCakez initially.

[RLotus]

I'm shooting Duchess and not changing my mind. I'll shoot after Nacho is able to give his full thoughts.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, I'm going to finalize my thoughts then.

Rushing here, but from your Day 1 interactions, I think Duchess comes out looking worse than I would have thought going in (as said before, I had a weak townread on them for the reply to my push on them). The interactions you have with them are very slow burning and very low momentum. There's no heat to them, really, it's just a calm back and forth. I tend to find that same side (TvT/SvS) 1v1s have a lot of heat to them (scum theater to make it convincing, town because both sides are paranoid as hell). On opposing sides (SvT) you get two kinds -- heated interactions when scum has momentum control and is on the offensive, and cooler interactions when town has momentum control and scum is on the defensive. Scum wants to be able to disengage if an interaction starts to get too risky, and they want to avoid being looked at too closely. Take a look at the posts starting when you swap your reads on Duchess, and the Duchess-defensive, Lotus-control dynamic is readily apparent. Duchess keeps trying to break free, but doesn't get a chance until you get shot. At this point, Duchess's play looks weirder: Duchess is /constantly/ on the defensive, and barely makes any pushes. Contrast Day 1, Duchess is about evenly balanced between pushes and defensive play.

My gut and my prior reads all say Duchess town, but the interactions say Duchess scum, and interaction-based reads with a known alignment are always far better for me. Sorry, Duchess.

As for other slots, you were too in-the-background with everyone else to make serious judgement calls on how they look when I know your alignment. You just don't have enough there. I didn't bother looking at Norfolk or Rock, since on Day 1 those slots were nonexistent. Interesting to note that while you threw at least one message aimed at everyone else who wasn't a lurker, you didn't give Dunn /anything/ that I saw on Day 1. I'm rushing, so it might be there and I just missed it, but I was looking and couldn't find it. I think that might have been a window into Dunn's alignment if I had that message to work with, but I don't. I only hope it doesn't come back to haunt us.

More thoughts soon.

[petapan]

So quite frankly wouldn’t you want us shot first?

no, i'm not goin to push for you to get shot first. it's a tinfoil. not a hard scumread. jesus christ

But you treat us as competent and incompetent at the same time. I know, because I’m a life long waffler, that waffling on scum just makes people suspect you’re their partner. I’ve been investigated for waffling on someone who flipped red. So if I had this agenda as you theorize why would I do it in the way that makes me look as shitty and suspicious as possible? This is not to say that I don’t accidentally waffle, people have caught me off guard as scum, but this would have been a premeditated plan, and you’re suggesting I did it in the worst way possible on purpose. Either I’m competent or incompetent.

yes, i get it, town are more likely to be indecisive, it's easier to take a hard stance as scum, but sometimes people don't want to push on stuff, sometimes you fear the pushback, and in a setup like this, hard stances matter, accountability matters, and i think an ideal scum strategy in this is doing the best you can to

look

officious and protown without stepping on anyone's toes and that was kind of the sense i got of what was going on, at least reading through day 1

You u mention our goal is to endgame, but we haven’t played a way that would actually get us there as scum. If we’re scum we gave the gun to Netflix knowing we’d very likely get shot if nothing else due to paranoia that we gave them the gun. (This is not saying we wouldn’t give them the gun, nachohas said we would have). But giving them the gun means that we were willing to go down first and would have had a plan that didn’t endanger our partners, which crap Norfolk would have been shot next probably due to my theory.

i don't think for a second you were ever actually in danger of getting shot by notscience, however paranoid he might be if you're scum you know he probably isn't shooting someone he likes day 1 and that's always how it's gonna go.

I was also a bit squicked by you asking me what concrete things I’ve done. You’ve played with me recently, you saw me waffling and changing reads then going back to them in smoke. And maybe I haven’t been super concrete, and I wouldn’t expect you to expect me to, nacho has. It just felt like you were trying to look like you were scumhunting me but superficially, and it’s what I don’t like about your mush push and interaction. You keep pushing on what she’s done, and it feels wrong and not like the way I saw you read people in front or smoke. (The only pause I have here is that you interacted with ffery by telling her in order to get lld off of her she has to find scum or get confirmed town, and that hit wrong when I read it so I’m just wondering if you’re use in a weird space and reading things and interacting unlike I’d expect you to.)

Just if you’re town can you show me that town peta magic. 5 of you are town and 5 of you are scum, and I have people I’m more ready to read town than you, and if you’re town then one of those is wrong.

i don't know what you're expecting of me honsetly, i'm not fucking magic, i'm just trying to play like always but this is an unusual setup, i can't vote pressure people so i have to ldo things a little different, maybe i'm being a fucking idiot but when i'm town i usually end up looking at every possible angle, which is what i'm doing here rather than lazily assuming it's an all lurker scumteam

[Duchess]

RLotus. Why do you think I would have pushed so hard for your shot on Day 1 if I didn't think you would have been killed? You've made it quite obvious for most of the game that you will shoot me, and don't take this the wrong way, but you strike me as a stubborn person. I will admit I was nervous about how to approach you this game day compared to the first when I expected you to shoot me almost immediately, which would have put a potentially game-losing shot into my hands in a time when I didn't quite have my full bearings. At this point, my shot is far from set in stone but I at least feel better about my understanding of the gamestate. But I urge you to reconsider before putting us in a sudden death situation.

[Duchess]

Imperium, this is what I was referencing.

i feel like you're interaction with me in total bad faith cakez.

How is this any different from the way I grilled gamma on his diamond sentinel read, while thinking diamond sentinel was likely to be scum, but that I thought gamma's read on him was pushing him disingenuously?

How is it?

I think you are scum so yeah this is not good faith
I don't remember what you're referring to, something in Smoke right?

[petapan]

Peta, thank you for revealing yourself for me. I'm fucking pumped for the opportunity to bury you tomorrow because we're at the point where us 1v1'ing is probably the best play. I haven't had a proper dance with someone of your skill level since I've returned and I've been fucking ITCHING for it.

Peta, thank you for revealing yourself for me. I'm fucking pumped for the opportunity to bury you tomorrow because we're at the point where us 1v1'ing is probably the best play. I haven't had a proper dance with someone of your skill level since I've returned and I've been fucking ITCHING for it.

Just don't roll over and die tomorrow. Bring the thunder.

I also appreciated the dirty dirty attack on Mush yesterday because it's a move that only 1% of scum players on site are willing to launch (and I think I'm one of them), but I'm surprised you broke cover with her this early - I probably would have waited, but I have a ton of respect for people who are willing to be manipulative to that extent because it is THOSE people that teach others the importance of emotions, and it is those people that make the game worth playing for me. Just don't disappoint me here - I want to see the best a player of your caliber can bring in a situation as grimy as this.

yes, i replaced into a scum slot and decided to get into a 1v1 with a widelytownread player, IN POPCORN MAFIA, because i'm a fucking idiot who loves throwing games

like what is the winning outcome for me here as scum, lmao? i get you shot? then you just shoot me in retaliation every single time and i gain

absolutely nothing

. no, really, please explain to me what my motivation and goal here as scum is supposed to be

but sure, go pro wrestling heel on me if you want to, knock yourself out

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gun to my head, scum is in (scummiest top):

petapan
SirCakez
Duchess
Not_Mafia

plus one nullread:

Dunnstral
Norfolk
STT
Wheme

Imperium is extremely town, unwnd is extremely town, and this list is hot fucking garbage. I'm angry that I don't have more firm townreads than this by now. I need someone to really bang out good towncases on some slots that I can dig into.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If I end up not eating a goon's venge shot, I'm going to want to beat the hell out of Dunnstral to sort that slot. It's a null for everyone /despite/ a lot of content, which gives me the exact kind of <alarm bells> that petapan mentioned having with Norfolk. Something's hinky there and it needs to get sorted or go down.

If I do end up eating a goon's venge shot, beware anyone trying to carry on my legacy. I play a WIFOM heavy game, which I can sometimes use to my advantage if I know I'm going down for sure, but can often be abused by scum (and they /do/ try, see Newbie 2025) if they aim the shot. Town can try this quite often too, but use your own judgement and read my posts in context if you see someone bring up things I said that were insightful in the past. It's possible it no longer holds, or that I had a secondary motive, or that I was just plain wrong. I'm not a genius.

[petapan]

look there's a reason i went on this tangent to begin with. it's because i was composing this while i was catching up:



this is, to the best i could manage, a record of who people were calling scum on day 1. i threw this together becausein a game with no votes, data matters, accountability matters, and i want a RECORD of who was calling for who to be shot

that imperium line? not an accident. when i was filling it out i couldn't any sense for WHO they actually scumread, which is part of what disturbed me. seriously. go back and read day 1 and try to tell me who their scumreads were. instead we got posts like this:

That means I don’t have any of the people I could see picking me low enough on it.

Tammy are you still around? Do you think this is a dumb rabbit hole to dig into?

I don't know. It's something I've been trying to figure out myself. I thought that if you were given the gun purposefully, they might have been planning to kill us the first chance they got based on potential overlap.

I didn't give you the gun.

Cakez is I don't know. He's either town who decided I was scum early in RVS, I was just looking back at that, and he's confirm biasing everything I write and missing every point I make and moving goal posts because he's just that confirm biased. People do do that, and some posts do feel somewhat townish, but man I don't know.

Dunnstral doesn't feel like scum to me, but I don't know if I'm writing him off too easily. We were in the anon dance game together, and he replaced into a scum slot and the way he pushed things were just really wrong, so I've been looking for pushes that feel weird and I don't see it. Right now he feels more like he did in xeno and tenet. Not a strong read, but.

Norfolk I'm not sure about. I don't think that the opening posts deserved the push they got, I didn't like yesterday's posts that much and I thought he might have been appeasing Cakez by calling him misguided town, but today's posts felt a little better. I'm going to continue to fence sit here. I know that's really weird for me to do, but that's where I am.

So, yeah I don't know. Numbers wise, there should be scum in there right? But I don't know where to place it right now with any certainty.

of course, now they've settled on a team that includes me and the 4 least productive players in the game, which is pretty ludicrous, but i admit, it's

something

this is also why i asked people for who their shot choices would be when i replaced in - i was going to try to track how people's stances changed and if they were possibly shifting them to encourage rlotus to shoot someone he already suspected but they had previously not mentioned much - i wanted to see if anyone's reads were shifting in an agenda-y way

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Trying to think of any other last words right now, since there's no telling when Nacho shows up. Uh. Above subject to change after posting, do not presume my last thoughts would not change based on future events? Shit like that? If anyone can think of anything I might be missing as a just-in-case-I-spontaneously-contract-a-case-of-death, hit me.

[RLotus]

Ehhh I am having second thoughts scratch that about not changing my mind sorry

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If you end up just deciding on Duchess all over again I swear I'm gonna be /so/ mad. Not because Duchess isn't a good shot, but because I'm vaguely hoping you have some galaxy-brained thought that blows the game open for me since no one else is giving me what I crave and I barely trust most of them anyway.

I'm going to take a couple hours and, presuming you haven't changed your mind again, I'm going to dig into a few other things I think I should have time for without overstressing my day.

[SirCakez]

Lotus before you shoot I think it might be a good idea if you say who so people can voice any last thoughts

Because I think Netflix shooting you has shown itself to be a mistake for the game long term and we might have avoided that if they had something and not just YOLOed it out

Surprise I'm going to shoot Duchess

I'm quite happy with that
I can't get off how Duchess immediately began attacking me it just didn't seem like a town thought progression at all

It's clear to me that the scumteam went into bus Duchess mode because of the wave of momentum Duchess scum reads were getting.

And, the fact that everyone was heavy handed on Norfolk and saying virtually nothing about NM is a sign that he is mafia too.

I kept getting stuck on SirCakez being mafia given how suddenly he started scumreading Duchess, it looked like they were trying to distance from each other. But I guess WhemeStar and Norfolk make more sense, because WhemeStar, Duchess, and NM all expressed scumreads on Cakez. Cakez is the proverbial line in the sand, I suppose.

I feel kind of bad being served a 5 piece on a platter by Nacho. Part of me wants to give him the gun, but that seems reckless.

I think the wave of Duchess SRs happened because they spent all Day 1 1v1ing Lotus and then Lotus flipped town

[RLotus]

If you end up just deciding on Duchess all over again I swear I'm gonna be /so/ mad.

Lol I tend to be wishy washy so I might

[SirCakez]

RLotus. Why do you think I would have pushed so hard for your shot on Day 1 if I didn't think you would have been killed? You've made it quite obvious for most of the game that you will shoot me, and don't take this the wrong way, but you strike me as a stubborn person. I will admit I was nervous about how to approach you this game day compared to the first when I expected you to shoot me almost immediately, which would have put a potentially game-losing shot into my hands in a time when I didn't quite have my full bearings. At this point, my shot is far from set in stone but I at least feel better about my understanding of the gamestate. But I urge you to reconsider before putting us in a sudden death situation.

This reads like scum inducing fear to avoid getting shot

[Norfolk Boy1]

If Duchess flips red (and i'm convinced they will), this confirms Imperium as town for me.

The next part of the solve from there is Cakez and STT.

I'm not feeling Not Mafia as scum. I'm sticking with the bored VT theory.

Peta/Imperium reads as a town and town discussion to me. Peta does make a good point about the Imperium's scum calling and I think it's well meaning scumhunting, but Imperium is town for me.

I'm still leaning town on Mush because I admire their approach and they are looking to make solves, although I am nervous of a last minute bus on Duchess (post 1283

So from here by process of elimination, my gamestate is:

Town:

Norfolk
Lotus
Not Mafia
Imperium
Peta
Mush

Unsorted:

Dunnstral
Wheme
Unwnd

Scum:

STT
Cakez
Duchess

[SirCakez]

Nah I think Duchess red makes Imperium red more likely
This Peta push seems like trying to stir up the gamestate to get away from the common shot suggestions

[RLotus]

I'm quite happy with that
I can't get off how Duchess immediately began attacking me it just didn't seem like a town thought progression at all

They had precedence to do that thought, they tried to call you scummy day 1. Your attack on them is where I see a lack of progression.