Mafiascum.net

In post 12, Prism wrote:Next, let's break down the sequence itself.

Splitting this into 3 different posts was a conscious choice. You don't want to tell someone what your thought process is; it is much more convincing to

take them along for the ride

. Most people tend to stop at sentence-to-sentence or make only reactionary pivot turns.

Unprompted

turns utilizing multiple posts and real time gaps have great power. Splitting up posts, waiting a few minutes, then going further or in a different direction gives the appearance that you've finished a thought, but have been chewing on it more. Here, I chose to use the illusion that I'm just now catching up to further this as being spurred by quotes, but honestly? It tends to work better without them.

Let's dive into the first post where I immediately react to Spartan.

In post 735, Prism wrote:

In post 599, Spartan117 wrote:

In post 598, Prism wrote:Don't have time to really read today, prefer the Spartan vote to Enchant one. I'm probably not going to get more out of Frederick, safebet was top scumread but will wait on replacement. Might swap vote tomorrow, might keep it.

Can you explain your read of me compared to Enchant, why am I the better vote? Why do you think I am scum?

Why was Safebet your top scumread? Personally I he is a townread of mine I'm going to have to re-evaluate once he is replaced.

Hey, I'm really sorry I couldn't get to this yesterday.

Enchant and you are both kind of dart throw gut reads. Enchant was pretty comfortable at the start and his thought processes have mostly been fine in my book, the questioning floo in 150 is one example. esoteric was right that he was a bit fillery but in context I think he's just conversing, not really going out of his way. The worst thing he's done to me is put flow trap at E-2....which was fine.

With you I didn't like the explanation for the "I feel like there's at least 1 scum in these two" comment about Salsabil/flow trap. Your explanation seems to just suggest Salsabil town and flow trap scum-and flow trap wasn't even in your top reads and you were voting outside.

Declaring something as likely TvS is one of the few things I ask about immediately as a hard rule. It's not a superb tell, but it's great to force people to justify it immediately regardless. As scum it forces you to justify it rather than chain miselims/let the 1v1 continue without interdiction. As town I need to get you to drill down and pick which one is scum, or realize neither have to be, instead of leaning on one of the easiest bad assumptions to make in the game. You were my third vote choice so you'd be more of a compromise than my first choice, if that's what you're worried about.

For safebet, I know he's been replaced and will get to that in a bit, but I didn't like the clashing motivations he had early on and the read wall he gave. (Post links are my explanations). I never got explanations from him on any of these and now I never will.

First sentence in red is standard tonal distancing, friendly/ingratiating to give the nonpartner appearance.

Second paragraph, in blue, tackles the Enchant half of the preference statement. It's intentionally very weak to give the appearance of waffling. I had mostly caught up and known about Enchant but not completely at this point, I don't for sure know that he's getting voted out yet: So I want it to draw Enchant-Prism flags in the event I flip. Enchant ~probably~ flipping town soon means I can afford to be a bit lax in my justification for not voting him over Spartan without much concern. If you don't see why it's weak, it's really lacking in depth, very vague and extremely noncommittal. I'm ascribing vague attitudes like "comfortable at the start", which means nothing. "Thought processes have mostly been fine" is again noncommittal and with no depth despite the backlink. The defense around filler/the worst thing comments aren't

terrible

but like I said, this entire section is intentionally very super weak.

Next up it's time to go to bat against Spartan to complete justifying the preference order. This one is a delicate balance. I need to make this strong in case he flips, but I don't want to bus him. I need to give both of us room here: I want room to townread him, he wants to be able to answer with depth that makes us both look good without pushing me in turn. So I turn it into a fake teaching moment. His TvS statement

was

scum bread and butter, but I can play it off. The more nuanced part comes down to my lecture: I'm trying to give the appearance that me asking him about it was good for him, good for the town members in question, and me trying to encourage good play. This is just +town points for me while not putting any pressure on Spartan's alignment at all.

The final line, "You were my third vote choice so you'd be more of a compromise than my first choice, if that's what you're worried about", is again all tonal distancing. I have no reason to reassure a scum partner I'm not bussing him inthread over the PT: the endgoal here is to look like I am reassuring a town I'm on their side.

Finally, in white we have the beginnings of a dialogue on our reads. This gives me the important launch point I need: Shifting from Spartan as a potential waffle vote to someone I'm actively trying to team up with and mislead into misvoting.