Mafiascum.net

In post 1141, GuiltyLion wrote:Wrt to Vanders, I wish I had something to start conversation with you today, but I'm not sure I do yet. In a vacuum I think I'm still leaning towards you being scum over Hopkirk, but I intend to do a lot of evaluating and playing today I'm not gonna rush to put a vote down. I think the biggest things I have to weigh on your alignment don't really have to do with your posts or thought processes specifically and are more gamestate related (does Bingle make an empty threat to hammer you, or does Bingle push a scum buddy Hopkirk all the way up to almost being eliminated)

Happy to talk about this stuff, I think this is probably helpful to talk about for whichever of you is town.
Firstly, I think the interactions bingle and hopkirk had are pretty big points in favor of hopkirk being town, so I'm not going to try to argue with you that what bingle did regarding me is more obviously not s/s than what he did with hopkirk, I think there's a decent chance that the correct answer to your question is actually that hopkirk is town and is actually more town from it.

I think bingle threatening to hammer me should be pretty clearing for me though.
Obviously in a world where I'm scum with bingle, his threat to hammer me is not actually a real one because if he does so he loses instantly.
But even if the threat isn't real, the risk is still real, since if anyone votes me at that point, it's an instant loss since bingle is essentially outing me as his scum partner by refusing to hammer me.
I actually did consider the idea that bingle was planning on not hammering me at that point if I did get another vote, with the intention of trying to make me an autolynch at the cost of his own life (which almost definitely would have worked), but I think this is ultimately pretty unlikely since I don't think he was obviously getting killed at that point in the day and that trade would not have been worth it.

In post 1145, GuiltyLion wrote:Thinking a bit more right now, I do think I have mostly good reasons to vote Vanders and not as good reasons to vote Hopkirk. I still think Bingle's play with Hopkirk is really unlikely to be theater and props to both of them if it was. I still think a lot of the small bits and pings in Vander's ISO that I've called out or focused on throughout the game together hint at a scum mindset. And I do think it's likely that Bingle's threats to hammer Vander and then self-vote instead were actions to protect Vander as they ensured that he wasn't eliminated on D1.

I don't have a lot of especially great reasons to townread Vander other than he vaguely sounds pretty town when he's playing (outside of the aforementioned pings/yellow flags), and that he did vote and get Bingle eliminated on D1. For most of D2 and D3 I also felt that his repeated claims that his bussing/voting Bingle should be town-clearing were more likely genuine than not. However, these reasons don't feel quite as strong to me when I weigh them against the fact that Vanders is clearly a very experienced mafia player (as I pointed out earlier he's claimed to play over 500+ games of mafia!) - which means none of these town tells are outside the range of a capable scum player who went into this game with a plan to distance from/bus their buddy, in a setup that incentivizes it, and milk as much towncred as possible from doing so.

It's also just hard for me to walk away from pride/vanity that I've had this read since D1 and haven't gotten to see Vanders flipped, frankly

The main reason I want to think/talk things through and get a sense of both of your mindsets right now is out of respect to Lukewarm's Hopkirk read and out of general care for F3 and needing to be open to re-evaluating. But gun to my head I vote Vanders here, so maybe Vanders if you're town we start with why Bingle/Hopkirk is S-S theater and not scum pushing town.

I'm going to iso bingle and hopkirk and try to answer that question as best I can.

The biggest thing in favor of that being theatre is that IIRC, there wasn't anything in any of their arguing that I thought was a super obviously not s/s interaction based on the content of what they were actually saying to each other. I could be wrong about this, I seem to remember someone saying (I think it was actually you) that they were obviously not s/s and I recall not particularly agreeing, but I also didn't have any read at all to think they were s/s and there wasn't any reason to think they were.
I still think that it's not obvious that the scum team was relying on bingle getting eliminated at some point in the game, especially with bingle having played last game, I think scum would have expected to eliminate in the 6p first, which instantly makes it impossible to for us to ensure a 3p scum death, especially if we aim into the big pool the next day and miss again.

In post 1146, GuiltyLion wrote:I can also relitigate a lot of my D2 case against Vanders, I think it holds up especially with Dunn/Marci confirmed town now. To restate the main points:

- Mid D1, Vanders voted Marci for being 'awkward', then spent most of his next few posts giving reasons to scumread/suspect Bingle. I thought the reasoning for his Marci vote was a lot weaker than the reasoning he had to scumread Bingle, so the fact that he was voting Marci and not Bingle stood out as odd. Especially since he also claimed a strong TR on Norway at the same time, which would make Bingle/N_M a 50/50 proposition at that point. And he cannot explain this with a defense of 'better to eliminate in 6p rather than 3p' because he specifically said he would rather vote his strongest read than vote based on the pool. I think a lot of the D2 discussion focussed too much on this last point rather than the fact that his Marci vote was not justified to the degree that his Bingle read was, in part because Vanders steered the discussion more on the pool argument instead of acknowledging that the Marci vote had weaker reasons than his Bingle read (without vote)

- Vanders at one point claimed to forget that Luke/Marci were both in the 6p. I think that's more likely to be scum pretending to have a thought process rather than a real one - no one else in this game ever 'forgot' who was in which pool.

- Vanders claimed that he didn't read the neighborhood chat when I pointed out he didn't respond to me in there. He then shifted the discussion to "there's no value to posting in there", which again steered the conversation away from the

actual

point which is that even if you don't believe in

posting

in the hood as town, you should still be

reading

it. I call this out in more detail in 749.

- Vanders vote and push back on me throughout D2 seemed more focussed on discrediting my perspective and the argument rather than genuinely thinking I was scum. He gave no reasons for why I was scum outside of ones centered around me not 'believing' my case because my case was bad - but someone as experienced as Vanders should know that townies genuinely push faulty tunnels all the time.

If either of you think it's going to be helpful, I'll respond to this stuff.

In post 450, SirCakez wrote:

Votecount 1.5

Lukewarm (3) - Hopkirk, GuiltyLion, NorwegianboyEE
Bingle (2) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp
Hopkirk (2) - Bingle, Dunnstral

Not voting (2) - marcistar, Lukewarm

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

In post 469, GuiltyLion wrote: VOTE: Vanderscamp

In post 470, NorwegianboyEE wrote: VOTE: Vanderscamp

In post 474, marcistar wrote:VOTE: vanderscamp

In post 477, Bingle wrote:I'll hammer Scamp if he hits E-1 on the premise we turbolim Hop then Norwee after.

In post 502, NorwegianboyEE wrote: VOTE: Bingle

In post 565, SirCakez wrote:

Votecount 1.6

Bingle (3) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp, NorwegianboyEE
Hopkirk (2) - Bingle, Dunnstral
Vanderscamp (2) - GuiltyLion, marcistar
NorwegianboyEE (1) - Lukewarm
Lukewarm (1) - Hopkirk

Not voting (0)

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

In post 589, Lukewarm wrote: VOTE: Hopkirk

In post 625, SirCakez wrote:

Votecount 1.7

Bingle (3) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp, NorwegianboyEE
Hopkirk (3) - Bingle, Dunnstral, Lukewarm
Vanderscamp (2) - GuiltyLion, marcistar
Lukewarm (1) - Hopkirk

Not voting (0)

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

In post 635, marcistar wrote: okay VOTE: bingle

In post 637, Not_Mafia wrote:UNVOTE: Bingle

In post 641, Bingle wrote: VOTE: Bingle.

... actually you know I'm starting to come around to Bingle/Hopkirk potentially being S-S given how quickly Bingle decided to self vote as soon as he got to E-1. In my mind, Hopkirk was in serious danger as I hadn't indicated whether I'd vote Hopkirk/Bingle, but marci had already said she was townreading Hopkirk so really the only thing that would have swung to Hopkirk was my vote and Bingle made sure I didn't have time to make it if that's the direction I would have gone

In post 1148, Hopkirk wrote:I'm going to reread on Friday/Saturday at some point

I hate that you didn't even acknowledge anything I've posted today, it shouldn't take you more than 10 min to at least skim what I had posted and give some sort of indication of what you were thinking even as an immediate gut take

also looking back Hopkirk could have always voted Bingle if the situation got more dicey, I haven't really considered the fact that his vote was elsewhere either

In post 1152, Vanderscamp wrote:If either of you think it's going to be helpful, I'll respond to this stuff.

actually I'm glad you didn't lol

would it be helpful for you for me to towncase myself in any way? I think I can make a fairly decent one given the level of effort I've put into this game as well as some of the posts I've made. Do you have reasons to think I'm scum that aren't the fact that I've been calling for your head for days?

I recognize that my interactions with Bingle aren't wholly clearing for my slot, but again I'd point to the fact that my play is quite disorganized and could have realistically been scum with NM or nEE had they been scum, and that if I were scum in the 6p I would have tried a lot harder to actually look good on Bingle going down. It's not like me putzing around late D1 served either of us, and if I'm to assume that you're town I think Bingle clearly tried a lot harder to make Hopkirk look not aligned than he did me. Though I'd also go back to how he was asking me about my townslip to contrive a whole fake process to try to sort me, I think if he was scum with me he would be more likely to just ride with nEE "GL is town" instead of acting skeptical.

Also, I haven't brought this up yet this game, but nEE and I have played several games together, as both town and as both scum. Now that this is a critical situation where me getting eliminated would lose the game, I would like to point to him as someone who has seen my scum game and my town game and didn't have any doubts that I am town here.

Why i didn't like your end of day yesterday GL:

In post 1120, GuiltyLion wrote:are you sure you're not scum marci? I really don't know who it is if it's not you

In post 1124, GuiltyLion wrote:I wish I was scum frankly lol this would be a great performance if I was, as opposed to the terrible towngame this is turning into

the saving grace would be if my pet Vander scumread was right all along I guess but I'm not even confident in it anymore?

vander can you just kill me if you're scum

In post 1126, GuiltyLion wrote:lol Luke if you get killed the F3 is gonna be a nightmare, please don't put that on us

In post 993, GuiltyLion wrote:

In post 991, Lukewarm wrote:Or was it because Bingle made the "I will hammer Vanders if we speed elim hopkirk tomorrow" post?

No, it was because of those three players voting Bingle.

You're kinda going off the deep end here man. You think Bingle's plan was to push Hopkirk really hard, then gamble that he could make an open-wolfy enough post to draw all the votes to himself instead, even though many of the players were suggesting never to eliminate in 3p on D1? Really?

Stop inventing narratives for why something is possible and just stick to what's likely. Bingle-Hopkirk is S-S in far far FAR fewer universes than ones where almost anyone else in the 6p field is scum.

I didn't get the progression of

- Vanders is your top scumread for a while followed by doubt for a while that's accompanied with 'but maybe it is just Vanders'
and
- Hopkirk is least likely scum
into 'I really don't know who it is if it isn't you' in 1120.

combined with a few other posts you made saying things like
- rethink hop if final 3
- the final 3 would be a nightmare
etc
the subtle shade you're throwing at me there rubs me the wrong way and feels like you're preparing more for a final 3 than Vanders (Luke remaining a townread i didn't intend to rethink)

2- the other part is that these end of day posts felt a little performative/over the top- going out of your way to say several times that you'd have no idea the next day, asking to be killed when the kill is always going to be me or Luke, the stuff about you having had a terrible towngame etc, all felt kind of weird and this links to the other thoughts in 1/3 where it feels like you're complaining a bit too much about how hard the final 3 will be for you

3-
1120- you have no idea
1124- 'Vanders if you're scum can you kill me' seems to be you saying Vanders scum is a lot more likely
1126- you have no idea again

this specifically is a really weird progression to have. it feels like you're overstating the confusion since you also seem to have a clear most likely scum at this stage and it gave me kind of an impression you were laying out for the endgame with those posts

to clarify, that's just specifically what i actively disliked about your end of day posting

i unvoted vanders yesterday because i couldn't get over the concerns that his Bingle vote didn't make sense from scum!Vanders.
i want to look back on your progression on me/Bingle and specifically where and when things happened.

In post 1145, GuiltyLion wrote:Thinking a bit more right now, I do think I have mostly good reasons to vote Vanders and not as good reasons to vote Hopkirk. I still think Bingle's play with Hopkirk is really unlikely to be theater and props to both of them if it was. I still think a lot of the small bits and pings in Vander's ISO that I've called out or focused on throughout the game together hint at a scum mindset. And I do think it's likely that Bingle's threats to hammer Vander and then self-vote instead were actions to protect Vander as they ensured that he wasn't eliminated on D1.

I don't have a lot of especially great reasons to townread Vander other than he vaguely sounds pretty town when he's playing (outside of the aforementioned pings/yellow flags), and that he did vote and get Bingle eliminated on D1. For most of D2 and D3 I also felt that his repeated claims that his bussing/voting Bingle should be town-clearing were more likely genuine than not. However, these reasons don't feel quite as strong to me when I weigh them against the fact that Vanders is clearly a very experienced mafia player (as I pointed out earlier he's claimed to play over 500+ games of mafia!) - which means none of these town tells are outside the range of a capable scum player who went into this game with a plan to distance from/bus their buddy, in a setup that incentivizes it, and milk as much towncred as possible from doing so.

It's also just hard for me to walk away from pride/vanity that I've had this read since D1 and haven't gotten to see Vanders flipped, frankly

The main reason I want to think/talk things through and get a sense of both of your mindsets right now is

out of respect to Lukewarm's Hopkirk read

and out of general care for F3 and needing to be open to re-evaluating. But gun to my head I vote Vanders here, so maybe Vanders if you're town we start with why Bingle/Hopkirk is S-S theater and not scum pushing town.

disliked

In post 1147, GuiltyLion wrote:now that I've posted all that, cue the nerves about a hypothetical scum!Hopkirk entering thread and turbovoting me and making me look like a complete idiot as I have to reckon with being wrong about Vander and immediately backtracking everything I posted lol

another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

In post 1157, Hopkirk wrote:I didn't get the progression of

- Vanders is your top scumread for a while followed by doubt for a while that's accompanied with 'but maybe it is just Vanders'
and
- Hopkirk is least likely scum
into 'I really don't know who it is if it isn't you' in 1120.

All of this is consistent with me not being sure about my Vanders read. Explicitly both you and Lukewarm pushed back constantly against my Vanders read throughout D2 and D3, and then Vanders himself has moments where he does feel town. If I were sure about Vanders, I would have said that. I'm not, so I don't know who it is.

In post 1157, Hopkirk wrote:combined with a few other posts you made saying things like
- rethink hop if final 3
- the final 3 would be a nightmare
etc
the subtle shade you're throwing at me there rubs me the wrong way and feels like you're preparing more for a final 3 than Vanders (Luke remaining a townread i didn't intend to rethink)

What subtle shade? Do you disagree that town should consider all options in F3? And do you disagree that this is currently a nightmare?

In post 1157, Hopkirk wrote:2- the other part is that these end of day posts felt a little performative/over the top- going out of your way to say several times that you'd have no idea the next day, asking to be killed when the kill is always going to be me or Luke, the stuff about you having had a terrible towngame etc, all felt kind of weird and this links to the other thoughts in 1/3 where it feels like you're complaining a bit too much about how hard the final 3 will be for you

Yes, I am complaining a lot, because this sucks. I'm not sure how to respond to accusations of being 'performative', I'm literally just vomiting my thoughts into thread. If I'm scum there's no need to post any of this, at all, what scum agenda is any of this serving? Trying to "look town"? Why is it that instead of me just town?

In post 1157, Hopkirk wrote:3-
1120- you have no idea
1124- 'Vanders if you're scum can you kill me' seems to be you saying Vanders scum is a lot more likely
1126- you have no idea again

this specifically is a really weird progression to have. it feels like you're overstating the confusion since you also seem to have a clear most likely scum at this stage and it gave me kind of an impression you were laying out for the endgame with those posts

This is a misrepresentation. 1124 in no way says "Vanders scum is a lot more likely", you're literally making that up. It's me just trying to be funny and ask to be killed because I did not want to be in this position, and scum!Vanders would be the only one who would ever even think about killing me there.

In post 1159, Hopkirk wrote:i unvoted vanders yesterday because i couldn't get over the concerns that his Bingle vote didn't make sense from scum!Vanders.

did you not have those concerns earlier when you decided to vote him? Why did those concerns arise again between vote and unvote?

In post 1159, Hopkirk wrote:another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

you can't imagine why I'd be worried about you being scum and making me look bad by suggesting I'm scum immediately after I just cased and suggested that the other townie in F3 (in this scenario) was scum?

to the above
1- I did push back and forth and back and forth yeah. My issue is that I can see why you'd have a strong incentive to bring us both to lylo/vote out the other players first so I can't point to you reconsidering Vanders as townie when it can be indicative of scum setting up for later/makes sense from either alignment. I definitely need to reread where you were reconsidering based on our reads though, one of the things i had flagged to look at.

2- I can see reasons for both of you to be town, but no, I don't think the game is unsolvable or especially terrible right now. Lylos are fun as town imo

3- The scum agenda for trying to look town is that town do look town, so scum want to look town. Saying it feels too overstated (and mostly, weird in light of your read on me there) is the bit that feels like it can easily come from scum. The benefit of trying to keep all options available in lylo doesn't need explaining.

4- Appealing to one person as scum gives the impression you think they're more likely scum. Remember this point isn't isolated, it's directly linked to the rest of what i was concerned about where it felt like your read on me was going artificially down at that point to prep an endgame/it didn't feel like your confusion made sense in context of your prior reads.

I did have those concerns, I was going back and forth on it for a while, quite visibly i do believe.

btw since everyone else is doing self meta i'm 100% clear because i hate playing scum so much that every scum pm i get makes me reconsider whether i want to stay on the site

i don't enjoy playing as scum and any every minute of playing as scum feels like a pointless unenjoyable waste of time outside of rare cases like team mafia where i had to actually put effort in to avoid disappointing Hectic and Flopz. this is fairly common knowledge. there's 0 chance i'd ever agree to a strategy that involved me being put in the position of having to carry the game to endgame as scum since i'd care a lot more about not causing myself the irritation of having to play a scumgame for multiple weeks than i would about winning a no stakes game. see the concurrent game where i was scum (vanders was town) and i did as little as possible until endgame (where i think the mental anguish and why i'd never willingly put myself in that situation comes through pretty nicely). in the scenario where Bingle/Hop were scum going for a toxic 1scumv1scum then i'd never have agreed to be the one who had to stay in the game for a month afterwards.

(the exception is short form games and in real life games, in both of which scum is actually fun to play. mafiascum specifically with long deadlines and replace out culture makes it horrible)

In post 1162, GuiltyLion wrote:

In post 1159, Hopkirk wrote:another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

you can't imagine why I'd be worried about you being scum and making me look bad by suggesting I'm scum immediately after I just cased and suggested that the other townie in F3 (in this scenario) was scum?

i don't understand no, can you explain why scum!hop would ever do?

rereading will probably come Friday evening

In post 1163, Hopkirk wrote:btw since everyone else is doing self meta i'm 100% clear because i hate playing scum so much that every scum pm i get makes me reconsider whether i want to stay on the site

i don't enjoy playing as scum and any every minute of playing as scum feels like a pointless unenjoyable waste of time outside of rare cases like team mafia where i had to actually put effort in to avoid disappointing Hectic and Flopz. this is fairly common knowledge. there's 0 chance i'd ever agree to a strategy that involved me being put in the position of having to carry the game to endgame as scum since i'd care a lot more about not causing myself the irritation of having to play a scumgame for multiple weeks than i would about winning a no stakes game. see the concurrent game where i was scum (vanders was town) and i did as little as possible until endgame (where i think the mental anguish and why i'd never willingly put myself in that situation comes through pretty nicely). in the scenario where Bingle/Hop were scum going for a toxic 1scumv1scum then i'd never have agreed to be the one who had to stay in the game for a month afterwards.

lol I do 100% agree with you on this - will respond to everything in more detail after I work for a bit

disagree that LYLOs are fun as town though, I feel complete responsibility for winning/losing and usually by this point if I'm included then either I'm a target to be eliminated or my reads are not good

In post 1163, Hopkirk wrote:3- The scum agenda for trying to look town is that town do look town, so scum want to look town. Saying it feels too overstated (and mostly, weird in light of your read on me there) is the bit that feels like it can easily come from scum. The benefit of trying to keep all options available in lylo doesn't need explaining.

4- Appealing to one person as scum gives the impression you think they're more likely scum. Remember this point isn't isolated, it's directly linked to the rest of what i was concerned about where it felt like your read on me was going artificially down at that point to prep an endgame/it didn't feel like your confusion made sense in context of your prior reads.

alright so in response to this, my read on you is/was going down because clearly the game has been going astray and I can't help myself from becoming more paranoid as we continued to be wrong on the Dunn/marci elims. what I didn't grok is why it came across to you as artificial, frankly as scum I think I would try harder to stick to one narrative like "it must be Vanders" and just push that and aim to win a 1v1. I find it's much harder to genuinely fake town uncertainty than it is to fake conviction. I hate being wrong as town and that makes me indecisive and prone to waffle, whereas people tend to scumread those behaviors and I usually try to avoid them more as scum.

even literally just today I'm struggling, when I read and think about whoever's posted most recently I flip flop back to thinking it must be the other one

In post 1164, Hopkirk wrote:

In post 1162, GuiltyLion wrote:

In post 1159, Hopkirk wrote:another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

you can't imagine why I'd be worried about you being scum and making me look bad by suggesting I'm scum immediately after I just cased and suggested that the other townie in F3 (in this scenario) was scum?

i don't understand no, can you explain why scum!hop would ever do?

I dunno, if you're scum here and I've been pushing and casing a town!Vanders all game, it seems like it'd be easy for you to come in and say you're leaning on it being me for whatever reasons you come up with, and Vanders would be more likely to side with you since I was already pushing him. The bit about voting me instantly was not something I would seriously expect you to do, I felt anxious being first to F3 and first to put thoughts down and wanted to lighten the mood or something, idk

But being voted in general here is not at all what I'd want, I hate being suspected and I hate feeling like I've blown this somehow by making myself a game winning elim for scum. You're right maybe it'd at least resolve having to choose correctly between you two, but I don't think I necessarily have bulletproof anti-associatives or things I can point to to outright win a 1v1 against either of you here and I'm not really thinking that's the best path towards winning this game, at least not currently. rest assured I will give it my best shot if I do get voted though

if you're town, I can empathize/understand with picking up a vibe that I'm maybe overdoing it on trying to convey myself town, but I'm really just doing that while being town, it's not something I'm more likely to do as scum. It's fine if you don't see it as town-indicative and I can imagine maybe it came across as manipulative but I don't know what else to do to try to increase my odds of winning by making myself harder to eliminate today, especially because I don't know which of you is scum and both of you have better associative reasons for not being Bingle's buddy than I do. The only thing I can offer is that I've been involved and trying to sort throughout to a degree that's really fuckin hard for me to fake as scum, and hope that my thought processes indicate genuine reasoning

In post 1150, Vanderscamp wrote: I think bingle threatening to hammer me should be pretty clearing for me though.
Obviously in a world where I'm scum with bingle, his threat to hammer me is not actually a real one because if he does so he loses instantly.
But even if the threat isn't real, the risk is still real, since if anyone votes me at that point, it's an instant loss since bingle is essentially outing me as his scum partner by refusing to hammer me.
I actually did consider the idea that bingle was planning on not hammering me at that point if I did get another vote, with the intention of trying to make me an autolynch at the cost of his own life (which almost definitely would have worked), but I think this is ultimately pretty unlikely since I don't think he was obviously getting killed at that point in the day and that trade would not have been worth it.

In post 1163, Hopkirk wrote: btw since everyone else is doing self meta i'm 100% clear because i hate playing scum so much that every scum pm i get makes me reconsider whether i want to stay on the site

i don't enjoy playing as scum and any every minute of playing as scum feels like a pointless unenjoyable waste of time outside of rare cases like team mafia where i had to actually put effort in to avoid disappointing Hectic and Flopz. this is fairly common knowledge. there's 0 chance i'd ever agree to a strategy that involved me being put in the position of having to carry the game to endgame as scum since i'd care a lot more about not causing myself the irritation of having to play a scumgame for multiple weeks than i would about winning a no stakes game. see the concurrent game where i was scum (vanders was town) and i did as little as possible until endgame (where i think the mental anguish and why i'd never willingly put myself in that situation comes through pretty nicely). in the scenario where Bingle/Hop were scum going for a toxic 1scumv1scum then i'd never have agreed to be the one who had to stay in the game for a month afterwards.

(the exception is short form games and in real life games, in both of which scum is actually fun to play. mafiascum specifically with long deadlines and replace out culture makes it horrible)

like from where I'm sitting, one of these two analyses is a complete fabricated lie, but I genuinely feel both are fairly strong and neither stands out to me as obvious bullshit. I can think of reasons to suspect either of these explanations, but end of the day one of them is 100% true, too.

and so when I put myself into the shoes of whichever of either of you is town, and think about the fact that I have to convince that person why one of these arguments is bull, it feels scary and difficult to me because I can't even convince myself yet which one is bull. the best argument I probably have for myself currently is that scum played this game well and set themselves up to look good for exactly this situation, and that my associative play with Bingle was a lot sloppier and premeditated or agenda-driven, but it'd be much simpler for me if I didn't have to that and could just look at each of you trying to help me sort out these self-town arguments

does that make sense?

I guess one other point I can try to make in my favor is the amount of meta work I've done at times this game. I never got around to really doing a deep dive on marci, and that was a mistake, but I don't think I would ever have made posts like 847 or 848 as scum, it'd require me to dig through past scum games of someone in hopes of finding some posts I could twist to use against them to push them in this game. Especially given that I didn't wind up pushing what I found in 848 that hard afterwards, for me to be scum it would mean I literally dug through Vanders scum-ISO in another game to try to find a post that looks similar to one here, then mention it and decide not to push Vanders and sheep along with Dunn/marci for two straight days after doing that.

And the 500-600 games comment I found came from a town ISO, so that shows I was reading all his games to try to get a better sense of his meta, not just his scum ones to push a premeditated fake scumread.

I dunno what's useful to do yet right now, given that both of you are suspecting me to some degree and I'm not sure which of you I'm convinced on. I think I'm talking myself back into Vanders again. Another point I'm thinking about is how he suddenly switched to townreading me on D2 when I was starting to get cold feet on him and when Hop had asked me about fake townslips.

Hop, can you try to engage with my case on Vanders again? Is there anything there that you especially don't agree with? I don't know if it will help anyone to continue hashing out the same points over and over again, but those are really my best points I have against him. I truly can't explain the Bingle hammer comment in a satisfying way, assuming they're scum together it would have had to have just been a great bluff. and it's a big part of why I'm trying to be open-minded and consider whether I've been snowed by the long con Bingle-Hop SvS because it's really the best point in favor of Vanders town and if they are the scum pair I'm just not sure what the escape plan would have been for Bingle if Vanders picked up another vote.

Sorry, posting so I don't get fined

Extremely busy atm

I'll be rereading later today and seeing if I have more to add, but am likely around for quick real time posting if anyone wants real time dialogue, I just don't have new coherent thoughts to bring to the table yet

Friday evening reread is going to have to turn into Saturday morning reread