Newbie 2051: Iceland! - End!

[quiet]

If it comes down to Prism v Floo, I'm highly requesting Quiet/Spartan to not place votes until I do; it will basically have the same outcome but protect against a Spartan+Prism/Floo+Quiet team

Wait can I vote on floo though? Cause as things stand, that's my highest frequency vote.

But frankly, I have so little interest in voting and instalosing. Not exactly sure the best way to handle voting; I'm just not going to do it for a long while.

[quiet]

well, polarization time. If no quickhammer, we live in a floo v. prism world.

I won't be voting until this is resolved, but I don't absolutely hate it. A world where Prism + floo are town seems unlikely? I think? Floo, if you are town, you better start spewing ASAP.

There's practically no world where an unvote happens in time, correct?

[quiet]

Doing this while you are at work feels impressively committed. I think I prefer waiting just a little longer, frankly; I still havn't seen what I wanted to from Spartian, or from floo either for that matter.

Floo, if you are town, those last couple of posts did absolutely not give me that vibe.

My preference is an unvote, Prism, at least until after I hear from spartian. A request, not a command; your vote may be the better play, and I don't want to do this close to the deadline. Just where I'm at.

[quiet]

This is not saying I don't want a floo vote or I'm not suspicious there, more that I would like another day. Idk, spartian + flow trap is on the table for me, even if not high frequency.

G2H my solution in floo + spartian today, but I'm doing the thing where I SR inactivity again, which is a read I'm trying to purge from my system.

[quiet]

*would like another day of IRL time, not another day of in game time. As in, I'd like to give spartian another 24 hours to post, and floo a chance to answer one, some, really any of the questions raised.

[quiet]

For context, floo, I'm at like, 80% voting you. 15% is I find spartian/flow trap low frequency but viable, 5% is my paranoia talking.

Thanks for the unvote, prism. If there is no further development in like, 12-24 hours, then I'll vote floo with you, frankly.

[quiet]

I checked against every other slot. Nothing changed. floo's little content today has been disingenuous in the case of the second post and outright wrong and nonsensical in the case of the first. This is disingenuous at best and predatory at worst. The fact that he is dropping shady one liners and dipping speaks volumes.

This can and should be punished. If Spartan is scum he needs to justify that read or 180 it and bus and justify it in 3 way. If flow trap is scum he needs to prove they're not sitting around waiting for 24 hours to deadline to be opportunistic like they did yesterday. I do not want 2 town players going "AHHHHH IDK THIS IS SO HARD XD" 24 hours to deadline.

This is valid reasoning, especially the first paragraph. I legitimately cringed at floo's entrance today.

[quiet]

I also don't think flow trap's voting scheme is the worst, I want him to take a clear stance as opposed to hammersitting

as long as Spartan and quiet both understand that a floo trap scum voting one way does not mean vote the opposite.

My general take is I'm not going to vote in nearly any circumstance until I'm ready for the day to end, like, immediately, and I am highly confident that my vote is on scum and only scum. That is my voting strategy.

I have been lightly TRing flow trap's input today, his voting scheme being part of that light lean.

[quiet]

makes sense. I'll be in a holding pattern till spartan + floo chime in

[quiet]

Prism please unvote. I'm writing up some explanations

Also, if you are town here, by FAR the best thing you can do is just start posting stream of conciousness stuff. Respond to some directions, stick around in the thread for a little if your time allows. Tell me a time when you will be on, and I'll make it happen.

These posts where you carefully write up detailed explanations don't particularly read to me as towny, unfortunately, as it's been raised repeatedly and not yet countered that careful, detailed posts can be scum making sure they aren't slipping.

As I've said before, for me, thinking you are town practically requires flow or spartan or most likely both to be scum. I want to hear your thoughts on this. Even just flash impressions prior to any kind of research or detailed explanations would make me feel considerably better.

[quiet]

*respond to some questions, not directions.

[quiet]

@Flow ah, I see. Fair enough.

@Floo, the way I sort other players is mostly through interactions. I feel like I've gotten the least amount of interactions from you. Your case on yourself is kinda NAI to me. I will continue to ask, and I promise not to jump on your first impressions and hold you to them, you can focus on getting your reads correct over the next little bit, but what I need to sort you is just...your impressions. your thoughts on the state of the game. Just tell me what you are feeling right this second. You can change your mind on reflection, but I'm lowkey begging for something from you in regards to the game, because otherwise I don't know how I can find you town today.

[quiet]

In post 1814, floo wrote:
I will not flail when I have nothing more to say that will convince you
That is a good point
Ahhhh why do Floo and Prism both sound town

I actually somewhat disagree. There is 100% some stuff they could do to convince me. I've been asking for it since the start of the day; a conversational, not carefully crafted, ASAP flash reads on the game, and especially on {spartan, flow trap}. I'm still asking for it.

[quiet]

is there a floo town, prism town world though? I think we see a hammer in that case, frankly.

so floo should really be talking to me, too. Unless floo thinks I'm scum, and Prism is town? Or it's Prism+me?

[quiet]

I held back many of my thoughts D1 and planned to state them when it would make an impact. A lot of the time I felt like offering a little of my direction into some interactions, but ultimately decided not to in order to wait. I was more concerned about getting the style of my posts right in quoting post numbers and better grammar, which meant that I thought about them a lot before I posted them. Often after re-reading them I thought "what's the point?" and just never posted them. For example, I only stated my comments about the safebet E-1 drama on D2 and Sal's wrong conceptions of the game (e.g. town never hides/lies) at the end of D1. There were times, however, when I was more confident in a read or I felt like something had to be said, as when I speculated about Enchant's motive for claiming Mafia or pointed out early towny posts from flow trap. Questions like asking flow trap about why safebet was townread or the instant wagon was helpful were necessary for a better read. Often, minor thoughts with no impact will never be stated or just forgotten. If I have not replied to a question, my refusal to speak implies the answer (usually no). The game here seems to be more active than is usual on the site, and I found that reading the thread and stating basic opinions took more time than I had expected. I was too carefully controlling my mouth, yes, but because of my adjusting to the forum format and my wrong expectations. I'm stating my explanations myself, and for all I know a spectator non-floo me could be seeing floo as making an excuse, but I hope you will see at least why this is not unequivocally scummy.

Like @floo, can you understand why I'm struggling so hard to find you as town? I feel like a part of your responsibility as town is to make that fact obvious to the rest of the game. You can have all the work and effort in the world, but because you are carefully controlling your mouth, it's hard for me to determine what is town!Floo and what could be scum!Floo. If in any way possible, turn off those filters for a bit. I'm not saying that how you play is unequivocally scummy, just that in a tense 5 person elo, this cageyness just as so much utility in not spewing your partner as scum that it's really challenging for me to overlook that, especially given how strongly I TR prism.

[quiet]

Quiet-why were you aiming for voting in 12-24 hours as opposed to something longer?

I wasn’t aiming to vote in 12-24 hours, I was wanting you to wait for 12-24 so we could get Spartian in the house. And floo, too. If floo still hadn’t really said much at that point, I would have been willing to vote with you.

Sorry if that was unclear.

[quiet]

@Quiet: Also wondering: Why have you chosen to not publicly walk through the meta you did?

Would you like me too? Frankly, I find copying and pasting between threads challenging, I think meta reads are generally good ancillary evidence, but not case building in of themselves. I’ve reviewed some games from you and I reviewed what was available from Salsa in the context of a floo read; I took a quick look at floo, but was planning to do so much more before I voted tmmrw, just wanted to see if they would engage in a more causal chat with me first. I also did the Flow Trap alternate form metaread of the game they linked (and was very proud to determine who they were despite our chaos god not telling me their alt’s name. It was very exciting.)

I think I may have briefly glanced at Spartian, but they were also in my list of people to metaread today. But generally, my meta-reads are exactly that; I go read a few games, usually just from the iso perspective, I check their Maf pt if they’ve got it, I check when the flips were, but that’s about it. It’s more sentiment analysis and just general oh man, they post like this usually, or oh man, they post way different here.

If I recall correctly, this is Spartian first game in a while? Or was that floo. This is someone’s first game in a bit.

[quiet]

it’s confirmed at least one scum in either Prism or Floo at this point, given that everyone has posted since the vote was placed. I also agree Prism/floo doesn’t make a ton of sense here, they could win in a lot of different ways that don’t involve this line.

[quiet]

@spartian, hope things go better for you. I’ll see if I can give a summery of the things I’m most interested in hearing from you about

[quiet]

Nah the vote is on right now. Prism is currently voting floo.

[quiet]

Am out atm but it's from you posting simultaneously, can't blitz, post was more for quiet. 0 chance Spartan shows up EoD to potentially flip you Day 2

just to clarify, becuase I think this is a mechanical lock at this point, no reads required,
spartian + flow is impossible because they hammer and win. They were both online, there was and still is a vote on floo, game would be over.

So that means from my pov, the only remaining possible teams are:
Flow trap+floo
spartian+floo

some combo with prism (which I find occurring at very, very low frequency)
(combos would have to be either prism+spartan or prism+flow trap)

[quiet]

other teams of concern from other's povs:
quiet + floo, quiet + prism. No other combo works, we hammer and win.

[quiet]

Overall I get a better townie feeling from him than I did from most players this whole game this is not to say that i am sure he is town it is more of a read but from assessing his posts that is how i see it. Flow trap like most have mentioned is a Chaos God and was very hectic with his style, although I feel on this final day specifically, the attitude behind his posts comes across more genuine than it did on previous days, not to say that's necessarily townie indicative but that I feel he is putting more effort or at least plans to, I have yet to read through his big posts but plan on putting time into re-reads his slot over the weekend and will share my thoughts then.

@spartian, this post def. helped me understand your perspective on floo a lot better. I think we agree on the sentiment analysis side; floo's posts (contentwise), with the exception of their posts today (which oh god, take a look at when you wake up, are very much NOT the floo i've come to know and love and possibly want to eliminate from this town) come across as considered, genuine, game solving, and high effort.

I really, really liked floo day1. I was against eliminating floo yesterday, for basically the same reason you have pulled out in that review of their play; their posts throughout the game give almost every appearance of being from someone who wanted to solve the game, and I was really hoping I'd see something today to help support that feeling. But basically, as it stands, finding an innocent floo means finding a guilty prism. And here's where the case on floo starts to sour a bit.

My suspicion of floo mostly comes from what they are not posting, and not responding to. It comes from a place of me really struggling to TR someone who won't engage and casually throw out reads, or some kind of flash impression take. I've invited floo on at least 4 or 5 different occasions to pop in with a quick, low effort post, giving flash impressions on any number of topics. I've never even had them addressed. If Floo finds me scummy, and doesn't want to bother talking to scum, then I guess I could understand that, but they havn't put forward anything along those lines. Maybe it just isn't their playstyle. But then just tell me that. I feel like I'm begging for a sign that they are towny, and in their most recent post, they say that they edit themselves into silence a lot, and just don't post when they feel like the answer is obvious. How am I supposed to read someone when they don't really give me anything but themselves at their most curated? That is my struggle right now with the slot.

My suspicion mostly comes from asking myself if scum could carefully create the kinds of posts Floo has been making. The answer, so far, is yes. I am putting this in contrast with my read on Prism's interactions with the moderator, the palpable anxiety, the intensity they are trying to reign in to prove a point, the town cohession stuff, and while yes, I could see all of this being a massive brain act of Prism the GOD SCUM...it would be so goddamn angleshooty to make like, 3 memes about the moderator and their towngame that I just can't credit it happening with all that much frequency.

The only suspicions I have from their actual posts I will try to track down when I'm off mobile to quote. But from memory, they are:
1. The fact that their case on Salsa included citing a metadive of a game, where in my opinion, after reviewing the game, they misrepresented Salsa's play that game to make it seem like it was different than it was in this game.
2. Today's two early posts, which both came in and shaded Prism immediately. Prism called it out before I could, but I was online when they were posted, and they pinged me like crazy. They are atypical of floo's normal posting pattern, and just straight shade.
3. Their lack of interactivity on a large number of slots. I can read your progression; I can read flow trap's progression, even though it's all chaos and madness and is like making out with a shoggoth sometimes. Same with prism. I hope you can see mine. I can't do that with floo.

So TLDR; while I don't disagree with a single thing you posted, spartian, I want you to look at the slot holistically, beyond just the gamesolving, +town nature of the posts they have made, in the context of all the posts they have not made. I know reading someone based on what is missing is kinda bad, and I've tried to give examples of the few times I feel like their content hasn't supported a TR on the slot, though I'm not discounting any of the towny moments you brought up. My biggest fear with townFloo would be that this is, in fact, just their posting style and it's NAI, and I'm just over here LHFing again for the millionth time.

and unfortunately, at this stage, you will also have to convince me that Prism is scum here. because that's the only way from my POV that floo+you are both town.

[quiet]

@flow trap the only remaining mechanically possible teams are:
Flow trap+floo
spartian+floo
quiet+floo

prism+spartan
prism+flow trap
prism+quiet

floo+prism but honestly why so many better ways to win, I discount this entirely.

All other teams hammer floo and win.

[quiet]

1. The fact that their case on Salsa included citing a metadive of a game, where in my opinion, after reviewing the game, they misrepresented Salsa's play that game to make it seem like it was different than it was in this game.

Also, I re-reviewed the metatake, and feel like I might have been somewhat unfair in my reaction. In the game that floo metadived on Salsa, salsa did post with less frequency, and didn’t show as intense of an emotional range; that being said, there are still a lot of similarities, and I don’t know if I agree with the conclusion. I could still see it as someone searching for a frame, but it pings me less intensely than it did on my first read. I’ll back off on this point a little in the interest of being as fair as possible.

My case is more PoE than anything else at this stage.

[quiet]

I'm here. Been busy lately, but I've seen all the flips and finished reading D2. Will read D3 (hopefully) but here are my thoughts on the flips:

Interesting that the Mafia team here prefers to kill widely townread players instead of aggressive posters. That suggests that the scum have the confidence, determination, and perceived skill to attack and defend well in LYLO or other high-stakes situations. Perhaps because they are the aggressive players themselves.

This. This is shady.

Also their next post.

[quiet]

SCUMPOOL Order of confidence is Prism least -> Fred -> fairy most
fairyprincess69: Salsabil Faria didn't want to discuss possible scumreads on her and was overdefensive. Avoided reading Enchant, while voting Fredrick for a long time (end of D1 into all of D2 pre-sub) without making a legitimate push. As I've noted before her reads looked surface-level, the best example of this is automatically taking contributing a lot as an assumed townlean/read. fairy is playing better, and he can discuss where Sal wouldn't. I didn't notice any fairy proper posts that look exceptionally towny. Fairy proper also looked like Prism's second vote, in that his reads are similar to Prism's, and any apparent difference does not translate into a vote Prism doesn't want. Whereas quiet offers some uniqueness and just conversation that I don't see in fairy. In conclusion, Sal proper is scumlean, fairy is null, overall scumlean.

This was floos’s EOD day2 read. Does scumFloo murder salsaFairy after a) they don’t want to vote floo and b) floo publicly SRs them?

[quiet]

*the above post is not shady, the post after 1867 is shady. To clarify.

[quiet]

Silfra Fissure

Silfra Fissure? Salsa Fairy???? I sense a conspiracy here.

Thanks for responding, floo.

[quiet]

that was an early submit, I was going to actually respond to some of your response. Give me a sec

[quiet]

Assuming Prism is scum (which I will do since if Prism is town, this game is already lost), I don't see quiet being a partner. Relying on flow trap to provide you the final 5p ELO vote, really? They'd rather keep fairy alive to vote me. Thus I see a >2/3 chance (in other words, more likely than a random choice) that either Spartan or flow is Prism's scumpartner, who is waiting in the background for quiet's 2nd vote on me, then they will have hammer me.

It was my impression that fairy wanted flow trap yesterday. If Prism is scum, flow trap is probably the highest frequency partner; given my suspicion with you yesterday, and how much I trust Prism, I think an elim on Fairy and a push v. you really only makes sense from that perspective. I don't think Spartian fights back to protect your slot quite so hard in that scenario, not today; maybe they make a show of considering changing their mind on you after prism goes hard questioning them today or something. Though obviously biased, I don't think prism + I play like this as partners/it feels like there are better paths to victory for us (that probably involve keeping Fairy alive to push flow trap today).

I'm still really struggling to find the Prism scumread, though, and have been getting a number of flow trap pings today. This makes prism + flow trap hard for me to stomach, but the highest frequency. Prism+spartain could work, but I feel like the better line there is keep fairy alive and hunt flow trap vs. try to hunt you, unless Prism or spartian were deeply concerned about fairy, and thought having less vocal/orginized town voices at ELO would be better than an easier push. I know prism + quiet doesn't work.

Spartan the more likely partner for him and Prism avoiding each other more. Spartan's reads on me feel more pockety, as in unnatural. They would only stated after the Sal push started; I don't see how me writing essays gets Spartan being silent on the floo read to "oh he's my strongest townread." flow trap, he could be an actor, but his progression from the early D1 townread on me to an eventual preference over Prism (even though both sound town), is more natural. Plus Spartan is more likely to get away with a bus. One reason to think Spartan is the town is that he has been more apt at materializing and hard-arguing a push, but he doesn't seem too confident in his push in not voting Fred until later D2 and suspecting quiet for some time.

You credit the spartian/prism as more viable. I find it really, really interesting that you find Spartan's reads "pockety and unnatral". This is something that was raised as a concern, that the read was a little lightweight. Prism was pushing really hard in thread for spartian to justify their TR on you (as prismTown, to try and see if spartian was trying to save their scumbuddy, which seems a tough awkward, or to try and resort; as prismScum, to shade by association, I guess? To try and push them off the read?).

[quiet]

Did I unvote in a fever dream? Are you unused to me actually voting the mafia instead of being the scum MVP as town?

also at this point you are just teasing me, i'm going to have so many emotions if the mod interactions are a play.

like I know it's totally in bounds, but god.

[quiet]

@floo, i'm doing my absolute best to engage in good faith, and consider your positions, and I really appreciate your direct responses, as that's the only way I'll be able to sort you successfully. The next thing I'd like you to comment on is why you entered day3 the way you did, and a brief expansion of divorced from the prism partner equity, what made you gut think flow trap vs. spartan.

[quiet]

I'm still really struggling to find the Prism scumread, though, and have been getting a number of flow trap pings today. This makes prism + flow trap hard for me to stomach, but the highest frequency.

To clarify, I have gotten a number of flow trap town pings. I've really liked how they've approached today, and I think right now, my ultimate conclusion on the flow trap slot is that our chaos god is an ever so slightly benevolent one, but it's chaos so my level of certainty here is trash.

[quiet]

actually, @floo, given that from your perspective it is absolutely guaranteed that prism is scum...why aren't you voting the slot?

am I wrong that any combination where both you and prism are town = game is over? Which basically means voting Prism here doesn't change anything?

Are you really going to search for an elim on another slot? If so, which one? I can't see that being +EV

[quiet]

My concern here is that you've apparently done a lot of meta research, found very good reasons to townread me with it, and instead it's in this wall about why I'm town for mostly tonal reasons to do with my intensity, anxiety, friendship/rivalry with ffery, etc. You're not wrong but this isn't even trying to really convince anyone that I'm town, these are super subjective. With the meta case there are extremely concrete reasons for why I'm town that are objective, which you've apparently reviewed but chosen not to present except as secondary to the more emotional appeal.

You've given good reads for the most part and been spot on at times but there are real problems with your positioning around floo and how you've approached the day, and it's not okay that I handwaive it just because you've presented good analytical ability with no obvious ulterior motive, when the ulterior motive for you would just be to never get voted rather than trying too hard to frame someone else.

I appreciate the response about the 12-24 hours but it's unclear how legitimate it is and if speeding it up in wake of no response would be a good idea anyway, while speeding the game up is absolutely good for you as scum if you're bussing.

Prism, stop poking at me.
I'm convinced that you are town. Reading up on your meta was a part of convincing me, but that mostly insofar as verifying that what you were saying about your meta was truthful, and coming from a town place, as well as trying to determine if you had super obvious differences in your scumgames. The crux of my read on you has to do with the fact that I'm sitting here, just, refusing to beleive that you as a player, given my mostly TONAL metareads on you and your standards for what play should look like, as well as your strong opinions on playing the town cohesion game and refusing to take lead as town, then watching your instincts take over as you push an idea you get passionate about, then watching you try to reign yourself back in, all while @ing the mod....I don't think you take this line as scum. It would be an incredibly convincing line as scum, and fuck it if it is a tonal/emotional read, I think it's a good one. I'm not going to go so far as to say that it would go against your honor to do something like this, but I think the line you've taken happens a lot more as town than as scum. My biggest question mark is why you aren't dead in a flooScum world. This kind of stuff isn't the kind of stuff you cite and try to convince others of. Maybe you are correct, and I should have been trying to provide more substantiative, evidence based reads on everyone, as that would be more positive for town, but I guess I took the egocentric perspective of trying not to fuck up the choice myself and solve the game as best as possible while also doing my best to engage. I believe it's important to provide context to help people sort you as town or as scum, it's what I've been asking of floo recently, and I really hope i've done that enough for myself.

Also, as scum, why in the universe are you poking at me right now? Just let me townread you into my own oblivion. You've been poking me most of the game. Doing it a couple times to sell it makes sense, doing it over and over again? Nah. Not scummy imo. My metareads, as I previously mentioned, are mostly to re-enforce what is claimed and seen in the game, not something I usually take notes on. It's the kind of curiosity thing I do when I'm on my phone before going to bed; just clicking over to someone's profile, and reading through a game or two, filtering down, trying to see if something jumps out at me. If it's me + floo, then I need to worry about tommorow; I know for a fact it isn't me + floo, and couldn't care less about my positioning towards that slot at the moment; I'm trying not to lose today, right now, when the day ends.

As for the whole 12 hour rush vote thing as a scumslip that I backed off of?

Prism, one wrong vote from me and the game is over. I'm never voting in 12 hours there, ever, for any reason. I wanted you to stop voting for 12-24 hours to give Spartian and floo time to chime in. Obviously my concern didn't really matter too much, as they've now been voted for much of that time, but from my perspective, hearing from them first was +EV.

If floo literally didn't post in that time, I'd concider jumping on board. Floo posted. I have until the end of the day to lose the game with my vote. I'll wait until I have as much info as possible.

yes yes something something retroactive logic, but prism, if I'm as halfway decent as you seem to believe, why would I slip like that? Why wouldn't I just ride it out, wait for the time to tick over a bit? I don't think the cost of making you even more suspicious would be worth the accelerated day, and the attention it would bring to me, assuming I'm trying to bus here. Also, wouldn't my positioning on floo be way different?

I know in my head, I should be happy that my world has now shrunk to sorting you vs. floo, given how much I TR you. I don't feel any better. This is my first game that I've been alive for ELO in. I do not like it one bit.

[quiet]

like tldr: I meta for myself, I don't try to sell other people on my metareads (or really try to sell people on my reads at all. Maybe I should start doing that.)

[quiet]

I mean, given the concrete reads I've given this game and the concrete flips, what do you think?

I can go through the history behind me/ffery if someone wants but that's not really the concern here imo.

Frankly, I think your concrete reads are the thing YOU could most easily fake as scum, and the ffery interactions would be considerably harder. That's just my take, and why I've been focusing there. I'm sure there's enough mechanical info for me to dig into at this point to find places where you could have made different plays as scum that would have been more +EV that help mechanically support that read (mostly around yesterday's NK and flips), but I've been trying to focus on sorting between the three other slots. You've already gone into the history a bit, and that's factored into my current read.

[quiet]

You've also asked me about several things this day that I both like, JUST talked about and was already trying to dialogue with you about, which I get that it's a lot to keep track of but make me question your sincerity in how much you actually value my opinion as opposed to just going through the motions of *~teamwork~*

I don't know how to respond to this. I don't exactly see how the first quote you pulled fits into that framework of me not valuing your opinion/bringing things up that you were trting to dialog with? I was responding to you, mostly to try to clarify my own takes. I promise I have been reading and paying attention.

Actually, I'm really lost on this whole post. I asked the question about flow trap/spartian on 1785, you responded on 1799, I asked...
when was I ignoring your points? Is me trying to clarify

i'm just lost on this one. I trust your slot, so asking you questions about the state of the game is me trying to sort {spartian, floo, flow trap}.

[quiet]

I don't get your how positioning on floo differs as mafia here in your last sentence. You angled like you were willing to go on me with them yesterday and found my point compelling but at some point that was just no longer true

this is very fair. It was no longer true when I decided that I wanted to give floo another day to show up as town (they have not, from my perspective), and because following spartian might help me sort them. If Fred flips scum there, game changes considerably.

[quiet]

Can you be more specific here? It looks like you understood Spartan's position quite well.

Do you want me to clarify my read on Flow Trap?

And you lost me with the "you understood Spartan's position quite well" bit, not sure what that's in reference to.

sorry

[quiet]

I'm essentially a forced NK and do not get to do this tomorrow and have instead just been AFK going "I guess it's Spartan" even though Spartan's hard defense Day 2 and openly begging me not to vote floo is really questionable as scum over something more in between.

I'll stop spamposting, but yeah, this is a fair point and not really something I've been thinking about. Despite my TR on you, even right this second, I've got the voice screaming in my head that there's a chance i'm just incredibly deep in the pocket. I've strictly been focused on surviving today. I'm not thinking about upcoming 3 person elo.

Maybe I need to stop engaging with floo, and start focusing on providing reads on flow trap and spartian. I'll take a break, then go try to do that.

[quiet]

sorry for getting annoyed, I wasn't really thinking.

[quiet]

I'm back for a sec! and no worries, your poke at me makes a lot more sense with the context you've given, ty for clarifying. I didn't/don't mind notes on my progression, as I actually agree that it's not great necessarily, and that I havn't really been practicing what I preach in terms of consistently trying to be transparent and open with my reads so others can sort me, and doubly so today, where I've been almost completely focused on making sure that the game doesn't end today vs. trying to make sure the game can be won tmmrw. I was feeling much worse when I was under the impression that you thought I wasn't communicating in good faith, especially given how hard I've been trying to do so with Spartian and floo.

I think what I've realized from this is that most of my communication/work/effort/attention has been going into reading carefully and responding to floo and spartian. I've been working as hard as I can to be open and to communicate in good faith with those slots, as they are my strongest suspicions (well, floo is strongest, and spartan is the slot I most need to sort in relation to floo today), and since you sit so firmly in the "town" bucket for me, I probably was not affording your posts the same curtesy, though I have been reading them. We can move on from this for now, just ping me if there's anything you wanted to chat about.

I'll move point by point through your questions on my reads, and try to provide a little more clarity about how I see the game rn, what my general strategy towards today has been, and any other progression notes I can give.

[quiet]

I don't think there is anything specifically about floo that made me feel like they got more town, and resulted in me not wanting to vote them yesterday vs. Fred.

"floo->spartian/fred->flow->fairy->prism" was my reads before/at the start of the wagons yesterday. The biggest reason for me starting to dislike floo, as previously discussed, was that despite liking floo early in the game, their caution with their posts, my growing strong TR on fairy, and seeing the use of my language + suspicion + not liking their metacase on salsa sort of all piled up into a feeling that the slot could be scum, not to mention your own SR, which did directly factor in to my own. The things from the quote you pulled.

However, I don't think I was ever as far into SR teratory as you were on day2. You didn't end up convincing Fairy; and for me, while the stuff I brought up in the quote you pulled was a compelling enough reason to forever remove them from my very town bucket, I wasn't totally sold that we would hit there.

What got me off the slot was spartan's practically begging to not flip there, to give floo another day to show up. Frankly, I think that in a town!Floo world, town!Floo is capable of showing up today and townspewing, in showing up and sorting themselves. For all that I disliked and was pinged by the salsa case, especially in light of the replace, if you recall, I was really, really struggling to find scum yesterday. I TRed pretty much everyone for ages this game, because everyone this game has made some strong +town plays, except for Enchant (sorry friend RIP) and Fred.

And as I said at the start of the day, I didn't want to vote Fred (at least early in the day), because Fred felt like LHF. I wanted to explore other slots. Floo was that slot, and maybe in retrospect I should have stuck to it, voted along with you. But I wasn't sure about it. I didn't feel confident about the read.

Then spartan comes in super hot, pushes hard on Fred, calls me all kinds of scummy for not being willing to vote fred (are you trying to protect your scumpartner?), and begs to give Floo another day. And here's the thing: I couldn't sort Fred, no way. It's just null to me. I would love to know if people have a lurker sort, cause I sure as hell do not.

So my choices were: Elim Floo, which is the only slot I have anything close to a SR on, but which I am not confident in, and which I think I have a chance of being able to sort tmmrw, especially in the context of flips,

or elim Fred, which is a slot I have zero read on, a slot that will likely give me nothing the next day, and a slot that gives me a relatively significant amount of info (or so I hoped) on Spartan, which is a slot I am ALSO struggling to sort, and associatives with floo. If you had died, I'm pushing floo 100% of the time, unless floo shows the hell up, which they really havn't today from my perspective.

The extra thing about spartan is I don't think they beg to save their scumpartner exactly like they did. I don't know. I'm still trying to sort out that exact read.

To the best of my memory, that's the reason I made the choices I did yesterday. I think I mentioned some of this; I know I was engaging a high amount with spartan towards the end of that day.

[quiet]

Mmmmmm, why did the Spartan TR affect this so much?

Pre the spartan hard request to "please don't vote floo today, I want them in the game tmmrw"

which, by the way
@spartan, did you get what you wanted out of floo today? What did you want them in the game for?

I had floo+spartan as high in partner equity. This made me doubt it, and generally made me feel like something was wrong with my floo read, and therefore my read of the game.

[quiet]

I'm probably going to be a tiny bit more brief on my flow trap read, as I'm fading pretty fast at this point.
I'm going to discard all solves with Prism, as I lose the game today at this point if Prism is scum. Sorry, people.

floo+flow trap
floo+spartan

so basically, it's flow trap v. spartan tmmrw fmpov.

the most positive thing about spartan: my incredulity that scum hard defends scum they way spartan did yesterday, how goddamn guilty I feel whenever I sus them, and I don't think anyone doubts that at least day1, day2 they put in a ton of +town effort.
the most negative thing about spartan: if floo flips red, defense of floo has clear scum utility. And life reasons suck, so I don't want to lean into this, this feels really bad, but like, kinda has to be said? There is a lot of utility in not being present much today. I know, I'm a shit person for having that as a reason, but there is utility in avoiding the thread when there's so little room to misplay as scum. It's the same argument as the Fred elim.

most positive thing about flow trap: This is another one of my stupid meta tone reads, but here it goes.
Flow trap consistently goes beyond what would be necessary to fake. One partner table? Sure, okay, could see that being faked. Two of them? Each with some actually quite insightful attached reads on players? I don't think flow trap is making up their progression or retroactively adding in meaning with their wall posts, and they are still posting them. I do feel like flow trap is gamesolving. I think that on average, while flow trap is totally capable of being chaotic as either alignment, it's hard to do this kind of gleeful chaos as consistant and calmly as they have for this long as scum.

most negative things about flow trap: flow trap + floo both poked at salsaFairy. flow trap makes the better partner imo. chaos can be good cover, but again, it's playstyle, doesn't feel like an affectation.

There was nothing about spartan's long post today I didn't like. I tried to engage with them in good faith. I've tried to do the same with floo and flow trap, too.

When it comes down to it, right now I feel like I lean flow trap town because of how they have showed up today, while floo and spartan have not as much. And maybe this is an unfair read, and I need to re-calibrate, but that's kind of where it's coming from.

sorry spartan, please be easy on me. And seriously, I hope things are working out for you irl, and I'm in no way married to this read, I'm trying to sort it out as best I can.

[quiet]

the thing I want to start considering:
what are the paths to win the game for various teams, and how could they have accomplished it better with different mechanical actions.

like that's a more objective, logical approach to this game, maybe more in line with what prism is looking for.

I think I'm just not at the point where I feel...good about my reads from a mechanical/who pressured whom when and for what reason type perspective, and certainly not confident enough to try and convince others of them.

like I know I've said this, but i'm new at this. This game is 100% going to change how I play mafia a little; I need to determine more objective metrics, and try to sell people on my reads; I need to take more responsibility for winning the game, not just...not throwing it. I have a grand total of 1 completed game, where I got murdered night 2? 3? It's been a jarring experience being seen as threatening; people have accused me of playing or being scummy as a player, but not...like...paranoia inducing.

[quiet]

Assume goal is to win today, not tmmrw.
given {floo, flow, prism, fairy, quiet, spartan}
floo+flow have to kill fairy I think, in almost any case, because living prism + fairy will push and sus one or both.
killing prism would also make sense, but they are in hot water either way.

floo+spartan kill prism with decently high frequency; someone might need to case me why killing fairy is better in this circumstance, other than doctor WIFOM and maybe tryin to frame flow trap; but frankly, I think Prism is always going after floo today, and I'm not sure how bad killing Prism frames floo vs. possibly being able to convince a flow chart vote to win. Maybe it does, and I need to think less about those NKs. All this is in the direction of trying to determine if there is a better path to victory for either team; I think I could see a prism NK as a better path to victory for floo+spartan.

With floo + Prism alive alive, floo scumteam MUST target prism for a miselim if they want to win today. It kinda seems like it will always be a 1v1 situation. Floo did come in hot and do exactly that.

But with Prism dead, that opens up a lot more options for the scumteam to try and push a miselim. Fairy needs to die to keep flow trap safe more than to keep spartan safe. But something something frame something something.

tldr: independelty think flow chart is townier than spartan rn, team logic seems to find a floo+flow chart team more scummy than floo+spartan.

possible endgames given fairy death are:
{quiet, flow, spartan}, {prism, flow, spartan}, {quiet, prism, spartan}, {quiet, prism, flow}

the three prism permutations only make sense if the last scum thinks they can pull off a miselim with a living prism. Prism will be conftown if the game doesn't end because, uh, prism has a million paths to victory today that don't involve bussing floo like this for the long game.

so in a prism alive world, spartan is trying to get a vote on me, or flow is trying to get a vote on me; or flow/spartan thinks they can get prism onsides more frequently than they can get me onsides.

in a prism dead world, which is way more likely
{quiet, flow, spartan}

great, sounds like hell, I hate it.

[quiet]

Like literally half of my paranoia on quiet is "Why does he seem to know I'm town?"

Like geez, I don't know, probably because my heart doesn't go on my sleeve but bleeds out all over the goddamn floor

I appreciate the last few posts; not sure really how to respond to much of them, other than...I think you're right? But now I'm all selfconcious about not responding, so just wanted to say I read them. I think you nailed it on the "doesn't feel strongest about the mechsolve/objective solve" stuff, cause I really don't. It's something I'll carry with me into future games as something to work on, trying to objectively show my work, and to rely less on tonal reads, and try to develop more objective sorting strats.

But on this bit, yeah, that's exactly why I'm TRing you. I don't know it know it, I'm fighting off paranoia too, but uh....

sometimes you just have to go with your read. This is one of those times. I've given my reasons for my read on you repeatedly. Ironically, I think it's my most compelling case; I keep asking people to chime in on it, and very few other people have.

I mean, it's kinda redundant now, but I was REALLY hoping that people would chime in with regards to your slot early today when I was venting my own paranoia about you, or comment on my "so does everyone purport to TR Prism?" post. Neither got traction, I was hoping to have everyone else lock in their reads on you as a way to help sort.

[quiet]

To your reads on flow trap vs. spartan, I think we are generally on the same page. I'll save comments on them for now, but they match nicely with where I'm at.

@prism sorry, last question, and I REALLY hope this isn't something you've direcyly addressed, given that I did just read your posts. From my 1928, I suggest that while:

based on play, at the moment, I lean Spartan as scum and Flow Trap as town

based on team logic, the team of floo+flow trap makes more sense with the fairy kill.

I'm sort of back and forth, up and down in regards to the kind of naked defense provided by spartan with regards to floo. There's real scum motivation to do that (save a partner), but the WAY it was done feels (sigh) too scummy to be a scum.

[quiet]

there wasn't a question there. The question was do you buy my team logic thing at all?

[quiet]

Yeah my question was specifically in regards to the night kill, not the team equity with the "why not be lukewarm" bit, which I agree you've also covered.

I just wanted someone to sanity check that a spartan+floo team NK on Fairy isn't just...strictly worse than killing you.

[quiet]

I need to go re-read fairy's posts, I didn't realize they were so back and forth with spartan.

[quiet]

I wonder if we can make this even more direct.
As things stand right this moment, in a {spartan, flow, quiet} endgame, I vote spartan. Right now, this is a light take. I've given my reasons in a post relatively recently; I will either pre-commit/at least show a stronger preference and post more formal cases on both before the end of the night.

given that prism = loss here, i'd like both @spartan and @flow to discount that world, and answer the following:
informally, if you had to right now vote in the final 3, in a {spartan, flow, quiet} endgame,
who do you vote for?
what makes you feel best and worse about each of the two slots that aren't you in that world?

I feel like that's a reasonable and clear ask.

[quiet]

*sorry, before I vote today, not before the end of the night. I'm willing to commit to putting that work in.

[quiet]

inb4 they both say me

[quiet]

quick note; I may be somewhat low access today, as my boss called me at midnight to sort out an issue, and it's now 8am, and I'm still not done.

2x overtime is nice though, must say.

[quiet]

@spartian what did you think about the second half of that post, which goes into why I ultimately fall on the prism town, floo scum side?

Are you relatively sold on a flooScum world at this point? Or are you still deciding between the two?

Assume that floo flips scum, and Prism gets shot tonight as conftown. Final 3 are {quiet, spartian, flow}. From the above, you would be voting flow, as you think a flow trap/floo world is more likely than a quiet/floo world?

Sorry for the direct questions, I'm just trying to lock down where your reads are at.

[quiet]

I want to be clear; I am not trying to set you two against each other in any way. If you say you would vote me, that's fine.

I won't ever be voting outside of prism/floo today, and am pretty much locked on floo at this point, given that floo really hasn't showed a lot of...desperate effort that I would expect out of a town about to lose the game, and given that I already was scumleaning them before the day started, and especially given that I TR the hell out of Prism.

So basically, unless you find a prism+quiet team as high frequency (in which case tell me, because I think I can give some good cases for why that is not the case here), if Prism is scum, I've already lost the game. This means we kinda have to start discussing tmmrw, and ideally I'd like to do that with more voices around.

[quiet]

Yeah, I'll be doing plenty of re-evaluation tmmrw, assuming the game gets there and I'm alive for it (which is seeming incredibly likely).

I feel you on the getting this far thing, it's new for me as well. I 100% commit to engaging in good faith with both you and flow trap as I try to sort you two-while I've expressed some suspicion towards your slot today, your positioning towards floo is really strange if you are scum together; I just tend to think a floo+flow trap team kills prism, so the kill on Fairy instead scares me a bit, and something something I think chaos can sometimes be towny something something.

@Flow Trap, if you are around, I'd like you to engage with the same question.

Are you sold on prism town?
In a world where it's {quiet, spartan, flow trap}, how are you feeling?

[quiet]

Yep, and I'll note that I'm not going to be voting until like, 12 hours or so before the deadline, or whatever time that people commit to being online and around, as I'd like to take advantage of the next few days to discuss and try to sort you and flow while Prism is around. So if floo wants to pop in at any time, I'm always happy to hear it, and will do my best to continue engaging in good faith with that slot as well, though that is decently hard for me at this point.

[quiet]

Tmmrw read from flow trap:

I'm definitely leaning Spartan who is a SR over you who is a NR

Tmmrw read from spartian:

between you and flow, I have felt uneasy with flow trap all game since d1, although i think that might have been more playing style but their reluctance to provide their reads however simple early on did stand out to me, but i can understand why town flow trap might do that. I definitly felt better about your slot from yourself and safebet d1 as appose to flow trap and d2 i dont think flow trap really did too much to make me feel much better about the slot, my concern about your slot was more of you are a strong town looking mafia who is pulling the strings. as far as scum partnership goes, i think it looks much more likely of a floo/flow trap partnership than a floo/quiet one. so to answer your question i think i would be leaning towards flow trap but thats not to say thats a guarentee, i would still want to do more evaluation on your slots.

Is there absolutely anything in the world I can do to make this decision easier tmmrw? Because I am very much not looking forward to it. It's starting to look like I might be in the hot seat.

was really hoping one of you would sus me more and turn it into a 1v1 in that direction.

Prism, would you and I giving strong polarized opinions just result in wifom?

[quiet]

hot seat as in i'm the one having to decide which is lying scum and which is my best town friend forever. It appears to be trending towards me winning/losing the game which, uh, no thanks, make someone else do it.

polarized thing is a possible info play, which works if you and I are both not considered worth pushing. I think it ends up being too wifom-y to be worthwhile, but I wanted to hint at it and see if you wanted to run that.

[quiet]

Given that we're both leaning the same way right now I'm not sure what you're suggesting with the polarized opinions to begin with outside of us just arbitrarily taking stances and hiding real thoughts which I am not a fan of, entire point of keeping the day going atm is to be able to dialogue over just speedrunning to Day 4.

this was the thing, and I'm a) not sure how effective it would have been, and b) am not sure I'm capable of doing it well. Theoretically, getting me shot vs you still getting shot could have provided info. Now that it's explicitly called out, it's scrapped

a you + me alive endgame sounds just...let's not do that, pretty please

[quiet]

Aw, I'm hot. very kind.

what could we do exactly with Prism + Floo? Don't exactly understand that post.

[quiet]

quiet, why you would suggest me to bawl in order to generate towncred? Keeping a level head is always going to be more important than crying, even if the latter generates a bit of towncred.

Catching up, was planning to respond more holistically, but this jumped out and if there's any chance you are around still, floo, I'd like to engage, so I'm posting this asap.

I don't understand what you mean by this exactly. I don't think I suggested you bawl. I wanted you to show up and scumhunt, put in effort, try to prove how you are town by showing your work. I wanted to engage with you today, to be able to bounce questions off of you, to try to understand your progression, to have real time interactiosn that would set my concerns about you just waiting and carefully curating posts to make sure you didn't scumslip or show a partner.

I'm not asking for an emotional response. The entire reason I voteswapped off of you yesterday, a thing that VERY MUCH makes me look scummy going into what I'm already stressed about as going to be just a hellish 3 person elo, assuming I don't manage to just be categorically wrong on my Prism read, along with aparently the rest of the thread, who are ALL at this point uniformly SRing you (which of course a prismScumbuddy would, but man, you've got everyone fooled if you are town here)....

the entire reason I voteswapped off you was to try and use today to engage with you, and sort you.


and you havn't really showed up for that.


and I've been begging you to do so this entire day, as Prism just stated.





so please, I'll bawl and beg so you don't have to. Please, show up at any time tmmrw and help me hunt. Help me figure out who scumGodPrism's partner is, help me see how Prism has so bamboozled me and the rest of the town into running this game into the ground, help me understand why scumPrism positions themselves the way they did in pushing you yesterday so loudly. Work with me a bit in real time, so that I have a chance to see how your reads develop, a chance to gage your reactions.



Floo, if you are town here, you are going to HAVE to help me see it, because right now, I don't. I'm going to throw the game if you are town. That's why I've been asking you stuff all day.




I'm going to read the rest of what you said now, and try to respond more thoughtfully. I'm going to do my absolute best to answer you in good faith, and try not to let my strong Prism TR confbias me against you. This is my commitment. I'm asking you to make some of the same effort, please.

[quiet]

just saw the time of the post, realized it was two hours ago, and that i'm probably not going to get a response tonight.

I'm still messed up with sleep cause of my very exciting all night work call, and I'm finding myself somewhere between decently and really frustrated. Probably better for me to step away and just sleep then post in that state.

prism, if there's something in your set of posts pre-floo you want me to chime in on, lmk and I'll do so in the am/i'll re-read and try to engage tmmrw.

[quiet]

floo's last sentence implies he thinks Spartan still townreads him, which suggests he's not really reading Spartan's posts anymore.
I don't if that's NAI being that checked out completely or if floo isn't reading his partner's posts specifically. Maybe he knows and just does it for the WIFOM AtE.

This is just...such a dysfunctional team atm if it is floo/Spartan. I have no idea what they expected or wanted to happen today but I get the feeling this is not

This. So much this.

Like, so so very much this that it has me slamming my head into a wall because it’s like

Idk I feel like a Spartan/floo team could have targeted Flow Trap for a miselim today after killing you.
That seems like the best play. The game was set up for that. Get one of fairy, you, or me to vote them. It’s plausible.

Or they could have pushed me. That’s true of both teams. I think there’s enough evidence of you and others being suspicious of me that it would have felt more natural.

Why did they choose to go at you? Did you just take that choice away by not dropping floo? Did floo not expect that?

This + Spartan’s positioning yesterday happening more from an uninformed POV than from a distancing POV makes me feel real a bit concerned about Flow Trap. Though again, my individual read/vibe check likes Flow Trap more.

[quiet]

That seems like the best play. The game was set up for that. Get one of fairy, you, or me to vote them. It’s plausible.

Well, prism would be dead in this cause so this wouldn’t be plausible, but fairy wanted flow trap more than anyone else, and you wanted floo, and if they can only kill one, I just don’t see why floo/Spartian don’t just kill you yesterday.

The fairy kill incentive happens so much more when flow trap is scum.

[quiet]

(Or when you are scum, but I just can’t do it I can’t not when you are the one raising the strangeness of floo’s scum play and team dynamic. Like, it’s a halfway good argument for why you might be scum here, and you are giving it to try and sort floo partners for tmmrw. I read that as towny, and just bad play as scum here as you just want me to click my vote button and lose the game without changing my mind)

[quiet]

@flow trap frankly the game is almost certainly over if Prism is town here, as unless you were lyin, I don't think you find a vote on Prism, and I know that I almost certainly do not find one. I don't hate spartan not answering the question.

But @spartan, understanding your progression at this point is pretty essential. Kinda in addition to what Prism just asked, I would also love to know like, besides the unease that our chaos god inspires, if there are some specific thing you can point to in my play or in flow traps play that make you feel strongly one way or the other that we can talk over a bit now.

Like if we don't just flat out lose the game today, it's going to be you, me, and flow trap tmmrw, and frankly, I prefer the world where we have Prism in the house to give comments vs. waiting till tmmrw to sort this out. Because if Prism is scum here, we pretty much already lost.

[quiet]

@flow trap frankly the game is almost certainly over if Prism is town here, as unless you were lyin, I don't think you find a vote on Prism, and I know that I almost certainly do not find one. I don't hate spartan not answering the question.

But @spartan, understanding your progression at this point is pretty essential. Kinda in addition to what Prism just asked, I would also love to know like, besides the unease that our chaos god inspires, if there are some specific thing you can point to in my play or in flow traps play that make you feel strongly one way or the other that we can talk over a bit now.

Like if we don't just flat out lose the game today, it's going to be you, me, and flow trap tmmrw, and frankly, I prefer the world where we have Prism in the house to give comments vs. waiting till tmmrw to sort this out. Because if Prism is scum here, we pretty much already lost.

[quiet]

Floo, who do you think it is between Spartan, Quiet & I

lol i love this question

[quiet]

Having strict worries about you and quiet being lamist and controlling the town with how well you both presented yourself was not my exclusive scum read it was more of if you are scum why would you be scum while i also looked at if you was town what shows that you would be town and i pushed certain slots like for example my push on quiet as i was concerned about their lack of reads and if they was just a spectator who seemed very townie but didnt actually bring a lot to the table. Clearly seeing from their D3 play that simply was not the case they have provided many reads and lots of game analysis that has dramatically changed my view of them and with you also in the same way, i like how flow trap has been d3 in comparison to their d1 and d2 performance, but with the game looking like from my pov of a flowtrap/floo scum team then it appears to me that they are trying to up their game for a final d3/4 push to close out of d4. flow trap please tell me why you are town and i am scum?

This is super dense, but I think I'm following. Just to make sure I'm following:
Your fear of LAMIST kept you from TRing Prism + me (especially me, as my tryhard reads didn't really come out till today)

Was there a particular moment where I stopped looking lamist to you today? Like, I'd like to think I've been townspewing as much as I am capable of being, but if you could point me towards a specific moment that changed your mind on my slot, I think that would help me understand your progression.

Also, Flow Trap! You've returned to your lowkey chaos god ways of giving one sentence reads and takes. Does Spartan's progression make sense/seem genuine to you here?

[quiet]

What reasoning would i have for the nk on these two occasions?

Doctor WIFOM, too, I guess; or maybe trying to get lucky on a Prism push v. me?? Frankly, Fairy NK is currently the only thing I don't like about floo!Scum

[quiet]

I think for me ive got a solid enough reason on you to trust you over flow trap but will be doing a read through of you again before the deadline just to skim over stuff and affirm that i am happy with my read, i will be doing more of a proper read through of flow traps content assessing their interactions with others and seeing what that presents i am aiming to have that done before the deadline, which i believe we still have another couple day if im correct?

We have another day or so, yep. This sounds great, and very helpful to me.

I'll be doing much the same.

[quiet]

Hello hello, the slowdown in the thread is interesting.

One day left! I'd also like to see the final bit of the flow trap wall, but once you are done with it, I would like to chat about the game in general. If possible.

[quiet]

Looks like im a little late to the party, didn't exactly expect to make it all the way to d3 aha, unlike flow trap i didn't write up any notes before hand (although i am starting to doubt by the time stamps of these posts how much was pre start of d3?) as i guess i feel even if i make it to the next day my opinion will change after i see the nk flip and the usefulness of the information will have expired.

In post 1609, Prism wrote:
To be clear, my instinct is you/floo or floo/Spartan.


I'm curious why you are so sure its not quiet? You seem to not even entertain the option, from my perspective its 2 scum out of flow trap you and quiet as I get much more of a townie read from floo than i do from any of the 3 of you, but im still entertaining the idea that it could be a floo/flow trap team etc just from my perspective I'm less sure about it.

This is Spartian's first post of today.


Do you think that Spartian is still defending floo here + trying to play for a win?



idk, it's giving me uninformed vibes

[quiet]

oh, I just saw "you should go review the start of today" in 2027 so I did that without reading further in.

Responding to 2027, where you cover some of this... yeah, timeline could work. Came in hoping not to have to bus floo and play for the win, but ready to go vs. flow trap or possibly even me. Let me read what you wrote more closely, review the early posts, and then follow up with my thoughts

[quiet]

@spartian

Another example of being more specific that I'm really curious about is the "solid enough reason" to trust quiet is that you're alluding to in 2015

I am also curious about this, want to quote it to highlight it. I ask a very similar thing earlier, but I don't want it to get lost.

[quiet]

yeah i'm going to go read it more and think.

Spartan is prepping to go after me in that post it seems, and keeping you alive for that would be the play there.

Do you think it was sufficiently obvious that you would fight for my slot if I got pushed? From my perspective, you've been like one bad bout of paranoia away from wanting me dead a couple times this game, and I think scum might be willing to make that play. I don't know though, seems thin for scum to bet the game on that

[quiet]

in regards to 2030, I think that floo is confscum to me, and seems to have given up.

flow trap can be bussing there, though; I'm very back and forth on the two slots. It's hard for me to differentiate busy irl and scummy progression at the moment in regards to spartian; I would like to have gotten more out of today, and I'm hopeful that flow trap can chat with me a bit tmmrw ahead of the deadline.

I'm fine with that claim order, and I think we should get everyone to pre-commit to it.

[quiet]

but yeah i'm not sure how helpful the claim order will be exactly, other than it's another chance to see how convincingly scum can lie

[quiet]

well, we know doctor should be on Prism with 100% frequency when they exist. RB might catch them, maybe we get lucky and flip RB tonight confirming doctor existence; if RB not flipped, then chance that doc is RBed, chance that doc doesnt exist. Best outcome for town is floo RB flip, then prism can't really die. Not going to worry about it too much till tmmrw and we see flips; I trend towards thinking doc doesn't exist but what do I know.

[quiet]

My point was more just that it's not really +town, especially in comparison to floo/flow trap. Pushing flow trap is an idea but I went right for the throat, forced the 1v1 the moment I was sure, and flow trap definitely kicked it up a notch well before Spartan really got his grip on the day.

This is true. But I've seen days get away from town before.

I do think flow trap has done a really good job in presenting their point; and I had a light tr on flow trap early because of the manor of their chaos. I maybe need to move back to that.

The thing that I feel like will help determine flow trap's alignment at this stage is their conclusions, their review of day3, and generally, how they engages once they feels like they're totally caught up. Their day has been really strong, I'm just waiting on them to take it home a little.

I was thinking about what I wanted from Spartian, and I realized I still don't feel like I really got it from Flow Trap yet either:

I want both of them to give a detailed breakdown about why they are or aren't considering me tomorrow. They've both said I'm townier, but like, when did that happen, how did it happen, and what's the progression that got there?

[quiet]

eh, we can chat about the strongarming thing after the game, but I don't necessarily think that you did take over this game; you were hard on floo yesterday, you made the tough call today, which confs you as town or loses the game on the spot/I lose by not letting up on my TR of you. At this stage, I'm going to abuse the hell out of my locktown to try and get as much info out of today as possible.

When strongarm becomes uncomfortable to me it's when people refuse to engage in dialog, refuse to change any opinions or reads, and start saying things like "god X is just confscum here, anyone hwo doesn't agree is obvscum, hurry up and elim already", that kinda thing.

I'll 100% be keeping your spartian read in mind.

[quiet]

You have found a better LYLO strategy than waiting for me to push fairy. Good job at realizing I was not confident enough in my fairy read to hand the game automatically to you and was still willing to hear evidence about reading the fairy slot - it's a shame you're not employing the same careful technique in the high-stakes LYLO.

ouch, that one stung.

Floo, do you really feel like I have not been fair towards your slot, or that I have not been employing careful techniques in trying to re-evaluate my read on you? What gives you that feeling?

[quiet]

shit, the one time floo is on and I go have an early week crisis. it's like a midweek crisis, just it happens on a monday instead of on a wednesday when these things are supposed to occur; which is also like a midlife crisis, with all the same existential dread, but none of the buying of cars.

Lots of activity. Maybe something to pull out of this! sorry for missing today.

[quiet]

Interesting that both people who scumread me (Prism, quiet) and me think the most likely scum other from Prism/floo is Spartan. Does this make Spartan more likely to be scum if multiple town FoS him and his Mafia partner is correspondingly taking steps to bus him?

I'm sorry, is this a Elim Spartian Tonight proposal? Is that what I'm hearing here?

[quiet]

I told myself I wouldn't read this till tmmrw morning, but apparently some stuff happened, and now I have to know exactly what.

[quiet]

These posts by Prism which are like "remember I'm town!" give off the air of self-confident, even arrogant town. This post is willfully ignorant of the fact that scum can easily get all their flipped townreads correct. I recently realized that I don't remember so many of these kinds of posts on D1. He transitioned from a helpful diplomat and voice of experience on D1 to parading himself as the town savior who was getting stressed and annoyed. @quiet, do you agree? I see it as a pretended attitude change, which created an unfriendly environment (even without Prism pushing me).

I don't think I explicitly agree with this. Prism has been doing stressed out prism things pretty much all game, escalating as the game got more tense.
I also know that prism is perfectly capable of playing cool as a cucumber if necessary; mind you, the scumgames I reviewed from them most recently are from like 2018+with a considerably stronger field than me, so stuff could conceivably have changed. Prism, as any alignment, cares really deeply about this game, but I didn't see any examples of pages of anxiety posting in the scum games I reviewed, and convincing me of prism!Scum means convincing me that all that shit about the moderator was BS; maybe it was, but I'm still struggling to see it.

The NK for sure benefits Prism here; that's likely your best argument, as is your terrible positioning in regards to Spartian if you are trying to win as scum with him as your partner (but maybe this is counterbussing or some other wild stuff, and good lord if you are scum here tmmrw is going to be hell on me).

and this response is so unbelievably bad, I should not try and think at 3am. Sorry. I committted to deal with you in good faith, and I'm not showing up for that,

[quiet]

It's my fault for failed time management. My reading strategy would be to see every flip + the EoD votes. First I had to comment on the what I read about the flip, then I was responding to old posts while reading some of the newest posts. You're probably thinking "come on!" and I'd think the same in your position.

What is prism partner equity?

flow trap is a guttowny player to me. The type of guttown read that I'm more confident about than a guttown read for high effort players, which I've talked about before. It's my gut though, I can't tell everything from it. I could go deep into introspection if I wanted, but it's not worth the time for just a gutread anyway.

I wanted to know your position on {flow trap, spartian}, unrelated to your belief about who would make a better partner for Prism, so therefore not including partner equity in your assessment of the other two. You gave me that, so ty!

I feel the same guttowny way on the slot, frankly.

[quiet]

Spoiler:

To elaborate on 2073, Prism D2 feels like he wants players to townread him, then he will get the scum and solve the game. He should realize that the better way to be townread is to first get the scum. It does not matter if the push is controversial or not, or he himself becomes controversial. Once he gets a red flip, he will be unanimously townread.

1895 @quiet What do you mean Prism is reining himself back in? On D3 he is more stridently insistent that he is town and hell-bent on the 99.9999...% sure read (oops, esotericzoomer!) than even D2. One or two "I'm restraining myself" posts are meaningless and glib. He will still have a dictator mentality. Here's a question to ask Prism, have any of your former confident scumreads been wrong?

1896 if you do not try to convince other players because you have been wrong too much in the past, you will become only the lapdog of whoever you townread. You will have had firsthand experience of this after this game regardless of the winner. You have room to be wrong in Mafia, and there are no real-life consequences if you mess up. Learning how to argue your reads will only improve your read accuracy: don't run away.

Hey Prism, if I wanted one answer. I want to know why you kept insisting on me to claim, what was your thought process?

1908: 1872 was obviously low effort. I only needed low effort to make a point about your logic. The fact that you're "IDK" when you're scumreading me tells something about how legitimate your scumread is, when you cannot find a plausible scumpartner for me. In fact, you are trying not to offend any one of the two quiet/flow trap who you need to vote you, and instead you shift the blame to Spartan who conveniently won't vote me anyway unless to quickhammer.

According to you I am counting on three-way LYLO. If that was so and I was scum, I would be keeping silent almost entirely, trying to out the Doctor, and focusing exclusively on you. Instead, I am doubly confirming you as town and not outing the Doctor. Plus, If I flipped red, I would have already confirmed flow and quiet as town from prior interactions on D1 & D2, and I would be again confirming both as town from D3.

mmm this is a post I can work with. Ty floo.


I'm too tired to be smart about this rn, but two worlds:




floo is scum, is making a wifom-y play that is mostly targeting me probably looking to tmmrw vs trying a last ditch effort to win tonight which I am not smart enough to understand the utility of

I got absolutely rolled by Prism and every single goddamn thing has been theater (I have to acknowledge this is a possibility, but I struggle so damn hard to credit it)


Prism, the thing that has made me by far most uncomfortable today is that I cannot fathom for the damn life of me why today plays out the way it did when floo is scum, but I can understand it from you; scum you is targeting floo here, killing Fairy to keep a smart voice away to keep them from catching on/fucking up the vibe today,

I've read some of your scumgames. you don't post quite like this. you don't act exactly like this. you're quite good at it, but this isn't how you post. but maybe you are just incredibly better than me.

I just can't seem to get away from the feeling that you are going so exceptionally far if you are scum here.
and i'm not sure anyone else can get away from TRing you too. I hate this part.


but in either of my two shitty paranoid worlds, you are both pushing spartian. and part of me wants to just shirk responsibility for this by voting them out today; but that's a bunch of bs, and not a real solution, and ultimately

yep I just feel like i'm going to lose the game tmmrw, because I don't know enough to sort spartian, I can't understand why floo plays like this, and I cant let go of my stupid confbias read on Prism.

my worst post yet. yep. i'm going to sleep, and am going to try to just be better in every way in the morning. If you want to watch my confidence and reads and intelegence slowly fall apart over the course of 20 minutes, read the above text; otherwise, skip it.

[quiet]

mmm I feel fine about your mechanics at this point. Forgive my anxiety posting.

I've seen you pull players into 1v1s as town when you are convinced of it. Your progression does make sense to me, as does you pushing at me consistently throughout the game. Problem is, like you said, it's not a part of my game I feel all that good about, and frankly I think you are better at faking the quality of your reads for basically one day than I would be at sussing it out. Still, your main target yesterday was floo, and a Prism driven miselim yesterday would have been rather bad for scumPrism.

A floo wifom attack spartian play is somewhat viable in my head, and you may be correct that I am inappropriately ascribing GTO play to scum.

[quiet]

Mafia is hard, I'm never going to be 100%, and that's okay. I'm also trying to not let this game take over my life. I expressly don't think "everything is theater" is all that likely; it's so excessive as a scum tactic, with the exception of how notably I've stated it's the reason I TR you. Someone can yell at me postgame and get me to try and play better if my soulread here is wrong, and maybe point out the mechanics I missed; because fmpov, Prism acted protown day1, got more intense and after tinfoiling my slot a bit, didn't like floo's progression and "careful posting", pushed hard after clearing fairy, wasn't able to get the elim, and followed up with more certainty this morning after going down the NK rabbit hole for a bit. Mixed into that progression are well articulated reads on the field, and a lot of work. I could probably go back and track every single perspective change, but again, I've read some scumgames. The biggest difference between those and this is volume (and to some degree, tone); but those games had MUCH stronger fields than me, with other very strong voices capable of pushing harder than I'm willing to at this point. Still, it is a marked difference.

We have a limited amount of time remaining, and all the meta or progression in the world likely won't change my perspective; Prism, your positioning has been consistent throughout, and I struggle to understand why scum!Prism pokes at me quite as much as you did (even when I explicitly called you out on it), I would have expected scum!Prism to at some point lighten up and townbloc with me. Which ended up happening anyway, but without the lightening up bit.

[quiet]

Spartian being missing up until now is also decently rough.

[quiet]

Yep, I've been re-reading both the thread as is and Flow Trap's progression in it. I agree that our chaos god does have some purposiveness behind what they do, consistently.

Purposiveness is such a pretty word. "a cognitive theory of learning postulating that behavioral acts have a goal or purpose that selects and guides the behavioral sequence until the goal or purpose is attained."

As in, it's not all chaos for the sake of chaos. There are clear points of motivation. The PPR read stuff is a good example of this; others include creating 2 parter charts with reads for each, and more recently, the townpings that have been piling up:

Quiet, Spartan, & I are going to claim next round right?

maybe scum thinks they can go hard and pick up some value, maybe scum wants to do some theater, but frankly this reads to me like someone trying to get the town play correct.

@flow trap I'd still like a breakdown of how I got that sweet, sweet TR from you independent of your thoughts on the rest of the field.

[quiet]

There are probably more subtle progression things that I should make a list of.

townSpartian is really leaving me in a tough place rn though if that is indeed the case.

From memory:
Day1: everyone is pretty much fine and rather towny except the chaos god who is a chaos god
Day2: floo push on fairy ----, spatian okay start of day, weird and very visable end of day, kinda null overall, flow trap 2 electric boogaloo more chaos more opaque some weird floo positioning too but more subtle than spartian's loud hail mary
Day3: flow chart shows tf up +++++, spartian does not , floo AtEs with a bit of mechanical arguments at the end that mostly result in me feeling like shit about my ability to play this game but have yet to shift my mind much. I still owe floo a fair shake, I just so don't see it.

[quiet]

mind you, I've always read chaos god as towny by virtue of thinking that scum are trying to act as EV+ as possible, which chaos goding def is not, though there is some utility in it.

@flow trap, what exactly is your scum philosophy? posting style?

[quiet]

(@SPARTAN PLEASE be around tomorrow if you are town/talk more with us, esp. near deadline, really curious where you think I'm going wrong/if you have any reactions to the floo arguments.)

this too

[quiet]

I considered voting then, frankly, but i'm comfortable waiting a few more hours. Prism, if you are concerned about an early hammer/self-hammer, you can unvote, I and/or flow can vote, we can do it like that.

[quiet]

yep, i'm waiting for spartian, not floo at this point. I wasn't able to change my mind of the floo spot. sorry floo.

[quiet]

I've got a commitment at 8pm EST, so will likely vote before then.

[quiet]

please take me home, please.

@floo I'm lost at how you see the game right now then.

From your perspective, floo, who is scum?

[quiet]

how in the universe is it 1/4???????

floo from your perspective, is Prism not scum here?

[quiet]

oh i'm being stupid, you are talking about chance of them being RB. sorry.

[quiet]

Sorry, floo, I meant i wanted your opinions on the two slots, not them two as partners. They cannot be partners.

Do you think Prism is town?

[quiet]

hey prism, I'm going to vote Floo now. Unvote if you want to prevent a quickhammer/selfhammer; I can't garentee I'll be on tonight one way or the other. Ill try to be.

If you played me, ggs.

VOTE: floo

sorry everyone if I couldn't unpocket myself.

[quiet]

hey hey!

thanks for an amazing game everyone. Sorry I was somewhat checked out towards the end; I think I really should have been able to find a Spartian vote today.

by far the most fun I've had playing mafia so far, and I've got a lot to learn from this game. Sorry to town for not being able to let go of my read on Prism.

[quiet]

bussing Spartian like that was a really, really good play. GGs to both of you.

[quiet]

I think I end up losing in 3 person ElO even if I do find a vote for Spartian though. idk.

[quiet]

flow trap the benevolent chaos god <3

[quiet]

yeah, I even raised that as a possibility; that the two options are floo is confused, EV- scum, or Prism is basically playing the game around me, that I'm the target for the miselim vote. I couldn't let go of my read though, despite how bad the floo/spartian team felt, and how much I started to like flow trap at the end. Close isn't quite enough to be there.

[quiet]

frankly, I don't think I'm good enough at this stage to

well, I'll read the PT and see. It should be informative. Give me a year, maybe I'll get to a point of general competency.

My first impression takeaway from this game is to trust the mechanics more, when possible, and if the scum perspective doesn't make a ton of sense, it probably isn't correct.

thanks for modding ffery, by the way! I promise not to blame you for Prism's dirty, dirty, evil angleshooting (that wasn't actually angleshooting, you were great Prism, would get pocketed by you again in a heartbeat, 10/10).

I'll leave some thoughts for everyone when I get some time off.

[quiet]

I've seen a total of two things that make me feel marginally better:

1. trying to sort floo and flow trap together was going to be challenging, period.
2. Prism, you psychopath, you planned the obsessive/possibly even mod thinking play over the course of months of games?

[quiet]

it was goon/goon, no doc.

Sorry floo, I couldn't find you. I really, really, reallllyyyy need to figure out how to better sort lurkey slots.

[quiet]

Enchant, did you follow the game? Do you feel like your elimination day1 made things easier or harder for town?

From my perspective as town, your positioning basically made me write off anything that happened that day as NAI, and it made sorting considerably harder on me. I’d really like to encourage you not to do that in the future, and wonder what your mechanical reason for taking that like was; from my perspective, I’d much rather see you miselimed later/even that day when you are fighting against it with everything you have and forcing Mafia to step up and vote you/push at you/drive a miselim than do what you did and have town implode and give no information.

While you might have get you got a mechanical advantage, I really feel like I had a pretty large disadvantage as a result of how that day happened. It killed all conversation on other slots, gave everyone airtight reasons to vote you, etc etc.

Do you feel differently? I don’t mean to pile on or anything, I actually enjoyed playing with you, it’s just the only mechanical benefit I can see is setting yourself up for future games, which doesn’t super feel like playing to your win condition. I guess I want to understand better.