Open 710: MKUltra - Foreign Spies Win!

[Sky_Paladin]

Pretty sure Cirno dies ninth ^_~

VOTE: RedFlavor[/quote]

[Sky_Paladin]

godd

why

VOTE: RedFlavor

[Sky_Paladin]

Technical Difficulties

N_M vote/wagon is good, Beefster/Mumble seem town. Sky is weird and that might be due to toning against meta.

Heya! Could you please elaborate on these? I'm mainly interested in why you see Beefster/Mumble as town.

What is toning against meta? I picked Red because in our last game he was lurkscum and that bothered me a lot.

[Sky_Paladin]

Technical

That said,
@Sky: I experienced Red as lurkscum too in another game. But if you voted Red for that reason, what did you hope to achieve?

'Something different'. Already there's been more activity from the slot. I don't think it's alignment indicative on it's own, but the fact that there are more posts there than before means that later in the game, we can look back and there is some content there.

The fact that his activity was to countervote me made me feel that he resented being poked. Or it could just be rvs. I don't know. I guess I'll see where it develops.

Like this post from red here saying about not wanting to put NM at L-1 and then voting for GiF because GiF 'voted with NM'. Seems overly cautious and wanting to justify the vote early on. Could be meaningful later down the track if we get a scum!NM flip.

Red could 180 very quickly if he lurks it out because I remember him being obvtown like this in my/Sky's game.

He was 'obvtown' to MathDino only iirc ^_~ And then he flipped scum.

Icon

Being self-conscious = scummy?

I kind of thing so, actually. I feel that scum are probably more inclined to be cautious and self-analytical than town, because they have to make sure there's no scum-intent seeping through their words. Whereas town don't have that and are probably more reckless. It's easier just to coast on by and not rock the boat, right? Whereas town are more likely to say the aggressive/reckless/stupid things that scum then want to jump on and push for the mislynch.

[Sky_Paladin]

@Not_Mafia

Can you please explain your vote on Hawk just now?

[Sky_Paladin]

I will be V/LA for the next 72 or so hours.

[Sky_Paladin]

I return!

So catch-ups:
First up, even though I've been V/LA, I only went 2 days and 22 hours without a post. Not Mafia has gone 79 hours and, as the saying goes, 'has been active elsewhere on the site'.

@mod

please prod.

@Hawk

Sky doesn't GiF voting first then NM following up onto me make GiF look better if Red was scumleaning NM?

I was asking Not Mafia because it seemed like he was deliberately following GiF's vote after it had been highlighted as a reason why people were voting GiF/him. It seemed like a strange thing to do and I wanted an explanation (that until now has not been forthcoming).

TD's 77 concerns me as a little bit strawman saying effectively "Don't blame me, this is my hydra's fault" as a way to handwave dismiss points against him. However there is a bit of meat to it so I don't realllllly think it's a handwave. I specifically don't like this though -

@Everyone scumreading my opening: What do you think town-Math does in that situation? More specifically...
1. Do you think town-Math even tries to lie low? (if no, this implies I'm lying about the nature of this hydra)
2. Assuming town-Math DOES lie low, how does town-Math do it differently in the opening?

because WIFOM, and I don't expect that from town!Math.

Actually this whole post reeks of this exact quote

You're correct that I'm preemptively defending against people who expect too much of me. (cut) don't expect me to dance around and obvtown for you guys, or defend myself in real-time, because while most of you know me more than Impede, this slot isn't the Mathdino Show.

I'm going to disagree that "this isn't the mathdino show" business though; if you're playing a hydra I expect you to bring the best and worst of both players, and you don't get to blame your other head for not being town enough.

@TD

I think I can read Red much better now having had a few conversations with him about town strategy (I told him I'm not the one to ask for scumtips lol).

Gonna teacher hydra with him at some point.

Still seems town so far tbh.

Also you should respond to the question in 75.

This seems highly condescending. Why does Red need teaching from you? He slipped completely under you radar as scum and you are setting him up to do it again if he is scum this game.

I can't see a question in 75 and the link goes to the start. I had a quick look through your ISO and couldn't see a question directed at me. Could you please restate?

Sesq's 102 pings me a lot as a "Don't blame me, its random". Come on. Even though it's RVS everybody has a reason for their vote. I already explained my RVS was because I wanted activity from Red. What's your excuse?

I'm pretty much prepared to sheep Icon's 111 and I already have misgivings about Not Mafia taking refuge in audacity and lurking out the ensuing storm.

Kop (on Not Mafia)

Lynching him this day phase may appease those comments if he flips scum, but if he flips town, where does that leaves us on moving forward?

If he flips town it removes a non-contributing player so we don't have to deal with him in LYLO? We don't have a vig to take out the trash this game so I'd rather do it on day 1 so we can get interaction reads over a slot nobody is supposed to care about. It seems a lot of people have an opinion some way or the other, so I think a flip there increasingly has merit.

TD

Paranoid of Sky. His only meaningful interactions iirc have been with us and he hasn’t made a real effort anywhere else. Need more content.

I was V/LA for three days. Not an excuse, I'm just curious how this can be a real thing from you (note my vote was on Red and I'd asked Not Mafia to explain themselves) so that seems kind of fake effort there.

I am concerned by the TD slot. I'm also not super impressed with Red at this stage but I think some pressure on Not Mafia, who is apparently lurking out of danger, is the way to go.

VOTE: Not_Mafia

There hasn't been a vote tally for awhile, but I believe that is

L-2

.

[Sky_Paladin]

a) its not really rvs
b) literally what the fuck are you talking about i didnt say anything was random, i wasnt shifting blame, what are you getting at

You're 99 and 102 where you apologise to Tatl and Tael for your RVS strikes me as scummy, that's what I'm getting at.

[Sky_Paladin]

Spoilers for chats with TD nobody else cares about

Spoiler:

TD
143

To be fair, I’m REALLY busy and totally forgot about your V/LA when I posted that. MB. Idk why you are kidgloving me on that though. Why didn’t you go for the throat and accuse me of being manipulative? That’s what I would’ve done. Idk your meta so I can’t say if you’re normally a BOTD-giver, but I both appreciate it and am mystified by it.

I try to be more of an investigating player than an accusatory one. As the saying goes, when I assume, I make an ass out of u and me, right? I usually find the best way to town/scum sort players is to fight them but that takes a lot of time, so I want to pick those fights carefully as I don't have unlimited time or energy. I'm not emotionally prepared for another head to head with Dino yet X_X

That said I didn't think I was kid-gloving you; I thought I gave a pretty clear explanation of why your slot is troubling me in 137. I only have one vote and I think it's best used against Not Mafia at the moment since the slot is deliberately avoiding engaging with players (and this is the exact behavior that lead to him winning as scum in another game about 24 hours ago). I find it a lot harder to find alignment information from players who passively lurk; so on day 1 I want to burn those to the ground since it's harder late game to figure them out. You're posting a lot so it's easier to go back to this day 1 late game and see interactions between you and other flipped players. ~~~

@Beefster

Your reaction to the vote from TD seems strange.

I was wrong about TD and heavily misread - They're probably town.

This needs qualification. A player voting you should not be an intuitive "Oh that player is town", it should be "You are wrong!!!" because you know you are town...right?

I want to see your justification for this town read, particularly as you have given out some justification for your other reads in that post.

Your vote on Hawk surprises me. If you seriously thought there was a Hawk/Red scumteam, wouldn't you vote for RedFlavor? There's a couple of votes there already. And then uh your list of reads has Hawk in the middle so I'm ???

Your activity in the last few posts looks like a knee-jerk reaction to unexpected pressure. I'd like to see some deeper thoughts about why you ranked certain players where you did/why you're voting where you did/even if it's just you don't like the avatar.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Beefster

[Sky_Paladin]

I have issues with GiF's playstyle as it's hard to derive intent from quite minimalistic posts. However he is actually engaging players in most of these posts - eg 57 when he votes Hawk 'for reaching', 121 when he questions Kop/TD about reaching, expressing an opinion on NM, and a few other things. So I feel this is more likely to come from town and I'm not really interested in lynching there.

I'm evaluating Beefster's response.

[Sky_Paladin]

Prod dodge. I wanted to look through Beefster's responses but I've been too busy to do anything.

I did have misgivings about the timing of Tat/Hawk pushing Not Mafia because it looked too early for a consolidate imo.
But then I thought that this is probably a slot I want to see lynched day 1 anyway so...I kind of want to vote there. We don't have to actually wait until the last hours of the phase to mass consolidate somewhere.

My second reason for hesitating is that I think I have massive confirmation bias. This looks exactly like scum!NM that I saw in our previous game and I tried for his lynch and didn't get it.
Am I translating my feelings from that game into this one? Undoubtedly to some extent. The right option was to lynch NM day 1 but no chance originated.

I actually think this game that the right option is still to lynch NM day 1, and now there is a chance. So I am going to push for that chance.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Not Mafia

[Sky_Paladin]

Do you have any thoughts on other players? Namely, you are currently voting RedFlavor so for you to pick out this one thing seems odd.

~
Sort of a prod dogge, I'm expecting to do a better catch up in the next 12 hours or so.

[Sky_Paladin]

Gif, while we're in twilight, thoughts on Kop?

As an aside I have been too busy to really focus on this game; I'm probably going to drop out if I can't commit properly by the next phase.

[Sky_Paladin]

Skitter

I think this is a pretty weird post. Like you pop in during twilight to ask GIF about Kop (ie as opposed to talking about something topical like Red wagon or the rc/mikan/gif thing).

Kop had been sticking out for me as scummy early on because his entrance felt bad. But I had only been skimming the game (and if I can't improve my content early this phase I will replace out) and when I scrolled past his comments about Beefster (while voting RF) I thought, oho, scumhunting-101: players who scum read player x but vote player y? Got 'em boys! But GiF had been pushing town towards a lynch of RF and I was actually undecided about RF.

I had earlier townread RF from when I voted him and he did stuff, but then he lurked out like he did as scum in another game, so this slot had become null-scum to me. At the time I was voting NM for being totes scum but late day 1 he became more active, and, the red haze from the other game had died away a bit. I started to question my read there. I also hadn't had a chance to re-evaluate Beefster like I wanted to.

So I thought - do I trust GiF here? It does seem like he has coralled town away from a Hawk or Beefster lynch onto a RF lynch. I don't think scum!GiF would stick his neck out like that if either of those players were his team mates. It looked like a legitimate push from town to remove a fairly inactive player, although I can't specifically recall why RF was being scum read other than this. So I thought I didn't want to get in the way of this RF push (because I was now null on RF) but I would like to get GiF's thoughts on Kop. After all, Kop was also inactive. What made RF special over Kop?

Turns out the answer was 'nothing'. After that I felt completely disempowered. I was ambivalent on the RF lynch, and then while I was deciding whether or not to push elsewhere, there was a hammer. So I just gave up and called it a night.

The net result is that I think GiF is probably town and Beefster is probably scum. News to nobody.

Some of Icon's posts pinged me so I'm going to look there next.

[Sky_Paladin]

Other thoughts:
I enjoy Mikan's entrance to the game, it's fairly active and her opinion is clear. It's miles-away more towny than TD IMO. My only concern is that she was part of the back and forth with Tatl and Tael that resulted in them putting doc in every post which proooooobably gave away that they were the doc. I'm town-sorting this slot for now.

Actually that's the whole player base so I'll just do a full reads list.

Town
GiF - for towning it up late day 1 even if it was for a mislynch
Mikan - as above

To Sort
Hawk/Skitter

Scum
Icon/Beefster

Some of Icon's posts that ping me -

152 - posts complaining about hydra's. Contrast with my own post 137 -
"if you're playing a hydra I expect you to bring the best and worst of both players, and you don't get to blame your other head for not being town enough."
With
"Make up your mind, and then say what you want. It doesn't help town to hear 2 colliding opinions coming from 1 slot."

Bolded for emphasis. This doesn't seem like a towny-thing to say. Two different opinions is exactly what I'd expect - and hope for - from a hydra. The more unique thoughts out there, the better off town is.

179 is a bit weird. Icon has gone a good chunk of the game at this point asking for a lynch on NM solely because NM claimed scum (...which is fair) and earlier criticises Kop for not voting NM (158), and made it clear in 155 that their vote on NM was

I'm voting him because he claimed mafia, and has made no attempt at, well, anything.

This post asking for Beefster to explain their vote on Not Mafia therefore surprised me, because Icon is aware that by that point the only real reasons to vote NM were because of inactivity and claiming scum. What else could Beefster add? It seemed opportunistic. Icon later switches to Beefster which I concede does look natural.

Later when the game is stalled, Icon questions Tatl and Tael for their NM vote 242. They also poke Skitter for the same thing a little later.

Late day 1 Icon posts some thoughts on Hawk/Beefster, and finally settles on Beefster. This looks natural and I wouldn't call it except...it's multiball, and scum can legitimately scum-hunt the other team.

@Icon

I guess I'm questioning your progression of reads here, Icon. It looks like you wanted NM dead and then once you switched away, anybody else voting for NM got your question mark, and you didn't really mention them late day 1.

What is your current opinion on Hawk/NM?

[Sky_Paladin]

Whoops I missed Sesq/NM
Sesq - to sort/null.
NM - probably town.

Players in my 'to sort' list I'm expecting to work out one way or the other during this day phase.

[Sky_Paladin]

Skitter (responding to 518)

It felt low-hanging-fruit-y on a guy that was like awkwardly newb town and people were just saying he's scummy but never really explained *why* they thought that. Like it felt compromise-y and like people didn't care enough about who got lynched so they just went along with you, which makes me think it was at least partially scum-driven.

My issue with this is what motivation would scum!GiF have to sway the lynch to RedFlavor? The only thing I can really see is if he thought his scum buddy was in danger - at the time, iirc the wagons were Beefster, Hawk, and Not Mafia, roughly in that order. GiF could realistically have chosen any of those three wagons with little resistance to push the wagon to IMO without pushing as hard as he did, and he also could have sat on his hands and done nothing. As highlighted by Icon a little while ago, 'I really don't see why a scum would soft doc with another scum team active.' It doesn't make sense. You're currently voting Beefster so may I presume you are on board with this now?

So this is like weird given that in your initial post you popped in during *twilight* and said as much. Why would you be asking GIF about Kop to try to figure out if you should push RF that day if you knew that the hammer happened already?

Because I responded from my feelings and not from my memory, which as I stated in that same post, I hadn't really been able to focus on the game. My feeling was

there was something weird about Kop

and that was the motive behind what I'd written. I totally expected him to be around in day 2 and I was wondering if I should push there in this day phase. But now he's dead. Yes I accept that what I wrote is not the correct order of events. I only remembered the key points that were important to me (Kop was weird - I asked GiF about it and got shut down - there was a hammer so give up and call it a night) and filled in the blanks retroactively without even looking.

You are suggesting that I came in to the thread, said "Hey guys look at Kop" and then killed him overnight to bring attention to myself because ???.
I also doubt a scum team went "Hey look, let's implicate Sky and push for a mislynch in day 2 zomg" because of the lack of push there today.
I agree the Kop kill was weird, and my post is only weird because Kop also died. Otherwise it's nothing special. If we had Kop here today I'd probably be pushing that slot.

Does the fact that one of your biggest townreads is voting the other bother you?

I don't see where this is happening? GiF/Mikan were my strong townreads at the start of the day - you are in my sort pile, along with Mumble/Spring who I totally forgot was in the game, and Sesq.

Generally my townreads cross-voting is not an issue, because there's usually an associated wall of rage from both posters where I can deduce alignment and either join in or reflect back on the flip later.

Unless it's LYLO, then I'm screwed.

~~

@Skitter

You have kind of pushed both GiF and Beefster this phase; and while you are voting for Beefster, do you have a clear position?

Sesq is next!

[Sky_Paladin]

Sesq

Sky_Paladin is someone, their posts of a certain type, this someone is a cloudposter.

Sure, that's true. 90% of the time I can only play by reading at work, and then I get home and reply to the things that stood out to me that were interesting to me. I personally prefer this style over people who quote somebody else's entire post and then add their own one-liner at the end ^_~

Responding to 492

Turns out there's only one thing I want to focus on.

the rest of your case is just shitty buzzwords

I'm interested in why you chose to jump in on this post specifically to shit on it. Icon is a big boy/girl and can (and has) respond themselves.

I accept your opinion on hydra's is divergent from mine, but then you dismissed the rest because 'buzzwords' and said that I'm useless except for my vote.

I was also asking Icon to explain his position on NM and his voting/pursuit of other votes on NM. Do you think this is not interesting? Why?

[Sky_Paladin]

There has been no accompanying wall of rage and if today we mislynch tomorrow it's 3-2-2 barring no cross-kill. So, does GIF voting mikan bother you?

They are not cross-voting. GiF's post also makes it clear it's a placeholder vote.

I can see what you are saying often is grounded in reality but, in the same light as my Kop post, I feel like you are trying to twist this away from what is actually happening.

Re: Position on Beefster
Sky

@Skitter You have kind of pushed both GiF and Beefster this phase; and while you are voting for Beefster, do you have a clear position?

Skitter (see above:)

No, because I don't like the Red wagon, neither yesterday nor how GIF is fine with its lackadaisical composition despite Red flipping town.

I can't abide by you voting for Beefster yet criticising the wagon and not really pushing any other angle (other than my Kop post I guess). This doesn't look like the town Skitter I know.

It does look like scum trying to rake up anything that sticks, though.

VOTE: Skitter30

[Sky_Paladin]

I'm sheeping. Bleh.

Who are you sheeping and why?

[Sky_Paladin]

I'm exhausted and I'll respond to Skitter in the morning.

in the mean time

I'm sheeping the guy who voted skitter right before me (I forget who) because skitter had the worst reason to be on my wagon.

That was me
I voted Skitter because the hypocricy of: Saying everybody on your wagon was bad but also that you were bad so why not vote Beefster teehee she voted GiF no wait I meant Beefster all along but hey we should all lynch Gif

ugh

Look.

If you had just said "Not me over me" I would have bought it. Because I am pretty gullible and earnestly want to believe that everybody is telling the truth.

But you can't just say "I am sheeping xyz" without even knowing the reason why player xyz voted. I mean come on. You are not even trying. I feel like we wasted a lot of time and now I want to know your flip so we can draw associations from it.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Beefster

[Sky_Paladin]

But you can't just say "I am sheeping xyz" without even knowing the reason why player xyz voted. I

WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHO THAT PLAYER WAS

HOw can you sheep

you didn't even remember the player name!

[Sky_Paladin]

@Skitter re 553

a -

a) Why you have a problem with me voting Beef even though I'm criticizing the wagon. One of the major reasons I'm scumreading him - and therefore voting him - is because of how he interacted with it. Specifically because he let GIF talk him into voting pretty easily, like without really evaluating it for himself, but then blamed him for it today. Like yesterday he was happy to go along with whatever was being pushed (this is one of those complacency votes I was talking about before) but today he tried to duck responsibility for being on a townflip by blaming GIF.

Why can't you 'abide' my Beef vote exactly? Like I don't really get why you're treating 'voting Beef' and 'criticizing the wagon and not really pushing any other angle' as being like contradictory or mutually exclusive notions.

I have an issue because you're saying players x/y/z are bad for voting player w, but you are also voting w. You are also hedging your bets by simultaneously wanting to back a GiF lynch, but I don't see you really trying to engineer this despite most of your posts being about why GiF is scum (until you voted Beef), and even after voting Beef, you're still making posts about why we should lynch GiF instead.

b) why you don't like my criticism of the wagon in general? Like I strongly believe that there's very likely scum on that wagon given that it was a townflip in multiball and someone on it already flipped green. Is this a premise you disagree with?

I don't have a problem with you criticising the wagon. I have a problem with you criticising the wagon

and then getting on it

.

To my knowledge, the wagon you had an issue with was the RF wagon, as stated in your 541:

No, because I don't like the Red wagon, neither yesterday nor how GIF is fine with its lackadaisical composition despite Red flipping town.

OK fine. So the argument of where did the Red wagon come from is a valid direction and it is fair to look at those votes. I have no issue with that.

Your conclusion was that

Beefster is scum because of that wagon

and the votes that were for RF comprised of one-or-more scum teams.

Not a problem! I can see where you are coming from.

In your 544 you highlight:

It's a town wagon in multiball. Kop flipped green. Are you really trying to discredit the notion that amongst {Gif/NM/Sesq/Beef/Hawk/Mikan} there's likely to be scum?

But the only players you looked at from that wagon are

Beefster and GiF

. It only makes sense for GiF to bail Beefster out if they are buddies together.

Do you think that's what happened? I personally think that's not plausible, in the same vein that I don't think it makes sense for a player to kill Kop after coming in to ask about him, and any player who sits down for more than a few seconds to think about it would come to the same conclusion. So my thought is, I don't think Skitter is really pushing this seriously because if she was thinking about it, she would come to the same conclusion I did, and, therefore look at the other players on the wagon since she believes those votes were bad. That's any of NM, Sesq, Hawk or Mikan (to be fair, Hawk was away, and NM is 'difficult', but Mikan/Sesq are present and could be engaged) and this of course assumes that scum were even on the wagon.

You didn't consider this but it seems obvious to me. And then I wonder, if you're not pushing it seriously...what are you really doing, then?

c) how you think this differs from my towngame?

I feel that town Skitter is direct and confrontational and engages with more players. That said we've only actually had one game together so my sample size of one may be inaccurate~

I feel that you are restricting your perspective to only the players who have chosen to interact with you or are the main topics of today (Beef/GiF). These players already had a lot of players posting about/with/to/for them. You haven't expanded your horizons past what everybody else is interested in. But there are four scum players in this game. You seem to only be looking for two. That's an alarm bell.

[Sky_Paladin]

I have a very reaching tinfoil theory of Sky/Mikan blueteam.
How far should I speculate this?

As much as you like, because content > no content, and if there is scum!Mikan I want to know about it.

1. Sky's claiming that RC was obvdoc seemed like being cheeky scum
2. Mikan vs RC was Mikan just being snarky and then now she's back to doing nothing.
3. They both have reasons to kill RC, even though he barely did nothing D1.

but
GiF
475

You have no idea
how much I tried to fix this
by softing doc myself

2 - Is legit. I was happy with her entry and she has improved the TD slot significantly. But then she just vanished. Would like more content/existence please.
3 - What reasons?

[Sky_Paladin]

Pigeon

If that really happened that may be a tell.
In that post SkyPaladin voted for Not_Mafia and Not_Mafia gave a naked vote for RedFlavour in the very next post.

Yes, this is a thing. Not_Mafia from my experience is a fairly passive-aggressive player and doesn't do anything unless forced (prod dodges so far have simply been revoting the same player) or to push through a lynch.
Unfortunately he appears to do this as town as well so I'm struggling to find a way to really sort him. At the moment I have him as town because of his early response this phase to the RF flip being a vote on Beefster being affirmative rather than reactive action.
But I admit it is a flimsy read.

I also have issues with Sesq 554 as it purely shits on effort for no reason except to push for the Skitter wagon to end. But at least he is expressing a position and opinion, even if I hate it.

Sesq

^_~

fite me

[Sky_Paladin]

@Spring

reads on all players of the game please.

Do you have reads Spring? Please share.

[Sky_Paladin]

VOTE: Mikan

Sucks because I had Mikan as probably town. *shrug*

[Sky_Paladin]

UNVOTE:

[Sky_Paladin]

Sky_Paladin
Sesq
Mikan Tsumiki
Iconeum
skitter30
GuyInFreezer
Springlullaby

With 7 players, it's 4 to lynch yes? I didn't realise my vote was L-1 until I sat down to update my reads and saw there were less players than I imagined.

I agree Mikan is almost certainly scum with that give-up message so consider my vote there in spirit. But I would like to use this day phase to evaluate players that haven't really seen much pressure so far, such as Icon, Spring and Sesq.

I also want to revisit the day 1/day 2 wagon's in light of Aninen's flip (iirc Aninen was Hawk's replacement) when I have a little more time.

[Sky_Paladin]

I can't believe nobody has done this yet.

Day 1

RedFlavor (7)

-

Kop

, GuyInFreezer,

Not_Mafia

, Sesq,

Beefster

,

Hawk

, Mikan Tsumiki

Not_Mafia

(2) -

Tatl and Tael

, Sky_Paladin

Beefster (2)

- Iconeum, skitter30
Iconeum (1) - Mumble
Mikan Tsumiki (1) -

RedFlavor

Day 2

Beefster (6) - Not_Mafia

, Mikan Tsumiki, Sky_Paladin, Iconeum,

Aneninen

, Sesq
Sesq (2) - springlullaby,

Beefster

Mikan Tsumiki (1) - GuyInFreezer

Not Voting: skitter30

~~~

This was the vote tally right near the end of day 2, when there were two wagons -

Beefster (3) - Not_Mafia,

skitter30, Mikan Tsumiki
skitter30 (3) - Iconeum, Sky_Paladin,

Beefster

Mikan Tsumiki (2) - GuyInFreezer, Sesq

Not Voting:

Hawk

, springlullaby

The players that switched to Beefster were myself, Icon, and Sesq. Skitter switched off. I don't think this is really interesting.

I am interested in late day 1, because that's when we had Hawk up for lynch.

Hawk (4)

-

Not_Mafia, Beefster

, Sesq, Mikan Tsumiki

Not_Mafia (2)

-

Tatl and Tael

, Sky_Paladin
Iconeum (2) - Mumble,

RedFlavor

Beefster (1) - Iconeum
RedFlavor (1) -

Kop

Mikan Tsumiki (1) -

Hawk

Not Voting: skitter30, GuyInFreezer

~~~

So I am interested especially in people who found a reason to vote not!Hawk, because those players might be the other Fire scum, and I agree that our strat should be finish off the red team so there's one less night kill a time.

The outlier there is that Mikan and Hawk are counter-voting. Was this a scum bus?

It was at this point that GiF suddenly pushed for a RedFlavor wagon. For all of day 2 I didn't think this was interesting because the way I remembered it was that Beefster was up for lynch. But actually looking at the vote count, I was mistaken. Skitter had also been voting Hawk and empty-unvoted right before this vote count had gone out; she switched to Beefster.

Icon in particular put some weight into deciding between the RedFlavor and Hawk wagons:
Hawk:367 summed up as:

There's a few more posts that follow where he goes cookoo against players who are voting him, actually I read them as frustrated town and not as caught scum.
I'd say revisit Hawk D2/3 if he's still alive.

RedFlavor:368 summed up as:

I'd vote Red over Hawk 100% of the time here.

Considering we have a green!flip on Red and a red flip on Hawk, I'm concerned.

Icon then attacks Beefster's Hawk vote, highlights Mikan/Beefster/Red as his picks, and narrows his lynch options down to Red/Beefster. Both slots who have flipped green.

~~

After this, Sesq consolidates to Mikan. Not_Mafia follows, and then Sesq switches again, Hawk countervotes, Mikan countervotes, and Tatl and Tael hammers.

~~

Out of this, the only votes I'm really concerned over are Icon's votes and his preference for lynching not!Hawk, and the Mikan/Hawk countervote early on.
I'm conflicted about GiF starting a wagon. Earlier I said there was no way that scum!GiF would stick his neck out for scum!Beefster because why would scum do it. But now we actually have a scum flip and given the timing I'm now wondering if that is what happened.

So I think my candidates for fire mafia are Mikan, GiF or Icon. I probably want to lynch amongst these three unless somebody comes up with something better elsewhere.

GiF is kind of my original town read so that's my least preferred lynch. I am interested in seeing him expand on his theory that Mikan and I are a team, and I'm kind of curious to see if Mikan will flip red what happens then.

I think I'm most interested in other players looking at Icon's posts re: Hawk/Red/Beefster as highlighted in this posts while I grab some zzz's.

[Sky_Paladin]

Literally nobody responded to my 685 so I guess I'll TL;DR it.

Both Icon and GiF pushed away from a Hawk lynch mid-day 1. Icon specifically said he would rather a RedFlavor or Beefster (both have flipped green) lynch over Hawk.

At that time, Mikan/Alisae and Hawk were counter-voting. I find these three players the most likely Fire mafia candidates and really am only interested in lynching in here to reduce the night deaths.

GiF is my long time town read from way back, and I had some issues with Icon earlier on. Mikan was strong town for me but that has waned due to lack of content day 2/sudden appearance of activity when they are under threat.

Alisae's vote looks like a straight not-me-over-me which I can't argue with. But this is concerning -

springlullaby (2) - Sesq,

GuyInFreezer

Can somebody please clarify why Spring is scum (and if possible, fire mafia?). They are at L-1.

While I'm waiting, I'll back the third horse.

VOTE: Iconeum

[Sky_Paladin]

What do you guys think about the convo Hawk/GIF had starting around 272? Could it be between partners?

I think it's plausible.

Skitter, please see my 685 re: Icon and let me know if you think it's a scum slot or not regardless of who is voting for it.

[Sky_Paladin]

Skitter

I kinda said this already, but in case it wasn't obvious, I don't think it's a scum slot. Or more accurately,

I don't think he's done anything actively scummy

, and in comparison to multiple other players (you, alisae, gif, and spring), he seems townie, and he's probably like my fifth or sixth choice of a lynch today, out of six players. I think a lot of the things people are using to call him scummy might just be signs that he's new.

Emphasis mine. That's an interesting choice of words. May I presume he has done something actively towny to make you town read him? Please indicate where/how.

Skitter (on votes against Hawk on day 1)

I had looked at the vcs prior to your post and I didn't find anything particularly conclusive imo.

Which I think is very valid and a good place to look for Hawk partners.

These appear to directly contradict each other. Could you please clarify for me?

I feel like your post is kinda designed to push a narrative tbh,

That's because it is. I am trying to correlate what has happened in the game so far and project it to an end - and then make alignment guesses based on where I feel that path is going. For example, right now I feel that there's a strong chance you and Icon are the ice mafia team; but I'm really gunning to finish off the fire mafia first to push us ahead. I have been mistrusting of Icon for some weird posts earlier in the game as highlighted in this post and so I have a suspicion over the slot.

When you switched your vote off of Hawk and on to Beefster, you didn't join in the push on Red Flavor, as I would expect from a Hawk-scumbuddy, and actively called the Beefster/GiF wagons terrible even though you wanted to push both of them - as we exhaustedly went over yesterday. To me that means you probably aren't Fire Mafia with Hawk, because you didn't really make the RedFlavor lynch happen and you didn't push for others to get off the Hawk wagon. Contrast with Icon explicitly saying he was only interested in lynching Red or Beefster (I can't recall you saying anything like this).

I'm 'not interested' in your unvote of Hawk because I don't think you are Fire mafia; and if you are mafia with any of Mikan/GiF/Icon that excludes that player from being Fire. Icon could easily be either Fire or Ice mafia, and so that's why I'm favouring the vote there. I AM interested in you hating on both the GiF/Beefster wagons, but less so now that Beefster has flipped green - you could legitimately be town hating two wagons, or you could be scum buddying. WIFOM.

Basically I don't see you plausibly being Fire mafia because of your unvote so I'm not interested in pushing there.

I don't really feel like you're actually interested in my unvote or the alisae cross vote given that you don't follow up with either of these anywhere.

The Mikan/Hawk vote is interesting, but not as interesting as Mikan pushing for Spring. I would have expected her to go for GiF/Icon, especially after her wall on Icon. I am interested in seeing who cares about Icon, though.

[Sky_Paladin]

GiF - thoughts on Skitter/my posts on this page?

I kind of feel bad that we wrote all that and you just picked some random thing to comment on.

[Sky_Paladin]

@Spring

So I was looking at GiF's post just now because I was trying to figure out why if he was empty content posting and I noticed in your ISO that you had Mikan listed as your strong townread back in 647, 659 and actually pretty much every post since then.

What are you actually doing in 760/762?

Why are you voting Sesq and not (say) Icon or GiF?

[Sky_Paladin]

springlullaby (3) - Sesq, GuyInFreezer, Alisae L-1

Alisae (1) - Iconeum
Iconeum (1) - Sky_Paladin
Sesq (1) - springlullaby

Not Voting: skitter30

Skiiiiiiitter who are you going to vote for.

I feel like you want to vote GiF because you've wanted to since forever, but you're not voting because...?

[Sky_Paladin]

I don't think Alisae is obv-town, she is in my 'could be Fire mafia' list.

I don't really see a valid scenario of Skitter-Spring as buddies together, because I would have expected in that scenario, Skitter would have been more interested in when I pushed Icon for the lynch (or GiF, who is also in my list of picks for Fire mafia).

While I could see Skitter/Icon as Ice mafia team, neither of them are viable lynches at this point. I was hoping GiF would give me some insight into why Spring could be fire Mafia but he declined so maybe one of the others on that wagon (hint Alisae) could explain their vote for me. At this stage I'm not interested in hammering there.

Alisae, do you actually see scum!Skitter or are you just raging at Skitter's vote?

[Sky_Paladin]

Sigh.

TBH I was concerned that if I voted Alisae, Spring would just not-me-over-me and hammer, and I was kind of hoping that Sesq's replacement would come in and have a fresh perspective.

But I agree Alisae's playstyle this phase has decayed to bashing others and she is in my red pool.

Voting alongside my scum reads X_____X

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Alisae

[Sky_Paladin]

Frankly I am baffled there hasn't been a hammer yet. Both Alisae and Spring are at L-1 and there's about 70 hours left in the phase.

Surely if Spring was red, blue would have hammered them by now, even more so if Alisae is blue as GiF suggests. I'm voting Alisae alongside what I believe to be the two blue scum (Skitter/Icon) who have no reason to not hammer Spring, unless they believe in red!Alisae so they don't need to contend with her cross-hitting in the upcoming night.

But of the players voting Spring -
Sesq is replacing out.
Alisae is forced to vote not-me-over-me (over her preferred lynch of Icon I believe)
GiF is GiF.

Any of the players voting Alisae (myself included) could trivially hammer Spring and nobody would care. Spring at least should have counter-hammered to save herself IMO.

So why hasn't any of these things happened?

@GiF - if Spring is red, why haven't blue hammered?
@Spring - Are you so confident in town!Alisae that you won't hammer to save yourself?
@Icon/Skitter - if Alisae is red, why haven't blue cross-hammered?

[Sky_Paladin]

That's what Fire mafia would've done, and now I'm confirmed not Fire mafia.

If Alisae is actually Fire mafia, then everybody is confirmed not Fire mafia But being 'not Fire mafia' still allows for 'is blue mafia'.

So is the blue team Skitter/Icon? That was my thought for most of this phase and while I still feel that's very likely, Sesq's slot actually has me concerned.

It hasn't really seen any activity or pressure and actively avoided discussing his reads/thoughts. It's main action was shitting on me for pushing Skitter, and counter voting Spring. Sesq actually handed out a couple of town reads on me that had me bothered at the time. I could see Sesq-Skitter or Sesq-Spring. I also could see Skitter-Icon for the points I raised earlier. Spring sitting on Sesq for most of the phase on a player who was replacing out and not pushing the lynch, to me, strikes me as more weird than her actual hammer. To me it was strange that GiF hadn't unvoted because he must have known that Alisae/Sesq could not unvote; and Spring would invariably be forced to hammer.

You know, and call it a scum-hammer.

I don't really see scum!GiF unless it's GiF-Skitter, but that's mainly because Skitter often criticised GiF and wanted to lynch him, but never really pushed for it.

[Sky_Paladin]

OK so it's probably not Sesq/Spring. That doesn't rule Spring out from other combinations though.

It's LYLO please don't throw down a casual vote. I'm off to do a re-read and VCA.

[Sky_Paladin]

We begin our tale by opening up two pages and putting Icon/Spring/Mumble in one sort by iso column and GiF/Skitter in another iso column, thereby giving me access to their posting history. Why not all in one you ask? Because there's an arbitrary limit of three per page.

Mumble/Spring and Icon

GiF and Skitter

Since I know I'm town, and there are only four of you left, that means the possible scum teams of:
Icon and Spring
Icon and GiF
Icon and Skitter
Spring and GiF
Spring and Skitter
GiF and Skitter

For the sake of comparison (a psuedo control)
Sky and Icon
Sky and GiF
Sky and Spring
Sky and Skitter

So I'm looking for evidence of collusion/avoidance between slot pairs and seeing if I think that's alignment indicative. Vote count analysis is a little weaker than usual because of multi-ball, scum players can legitimately be scum hunting, and helping to lynch red scum doesn't actually mean a player is town. That said, I'm still interested in seeing who lynched green/red and why.

Day 1 - redflavor mislynch.

LYNCH:

RedFlavor

(7) -

Kop

, GuyInFreezer,

Not_Mafia, Sesq, Beefster,

Hawk, Mikan Tsumiki

Not_Mafia (2) - Tatl and Tae

l, Sky_Paladin

Beefster (2)

- Iconeum, skitter30
Iconeum (1) - Mumble

Mikan Tsumiki (1)

-

RedFlavor

Day 2 - Beefster mislynch.

LYNCH:

Beefster (6) - Not_Mafia

,

Mikan Tsumiki

, Sky_Paladin, Iconeum,

Aneninen

,

Sesq

Sesq (2)

- springlullaby,

Beefster

Mikan Tsumiki (1)

- GuyInFreezer

Not Voting: skitter30

Day 3 - Mikan/Alisae lynch.

Alisae (LYNCH) (4)

- Iconeum, skitter30, Sky_Paladin, springlullaby
springlullaby (L-1) (3) -

Sesq

, GuyInFreezer,

Alisae

~~

Number of times these sets voted together at hammer:
Icon and Spring - 1
Icon and GiF - 0

Icon and Skitter - 2

Spring and GiF - 0
Spring and Skitter - 1
GiF and Skitter - 0

Sky and Icon - 2

Sky and GiF - 0
Sky and Spring - 1
Sky and Skitter - 1

Notable results: GiF has never voted at hammer alongside any of the surviving players. This suggests that if GiF is scum, he has probably avoided interactions with his scum buddy.

Icon has voted at hammer alongside two surviving players (myself and Skitter). In both cases this was on town wagons. The final hammer on Alisae is not interesting because we know Icon is not red mafia.

This means if Icon is scum, he has probably not avoided interactions with his scum buddy, and it's likely to be Skitter or myself.

Looking at day 3 - My natural thought is that if Spring is town, scum will want to have been spread over the wagons, which implicates GiF.

OTOH if Spring is scum, I feel strongly that means GiF is town, because he had plenty of reasons to vote Mikan over Spring (and his refusal to do so is something I want to look at closer later on).

Note that both my 'avoided/not avoided' interactions are prefaced with 'probably'; this is not meaningful data on its own and is merely me attempting to find a pattern. I'm looking for common scummy trends rather than a single 'gotcha' moment.

Interesting that we don't have flips on any of the players who voted Alisae. I personally expected GiF or myself to be the night kill because GiF had for a long time pushed the narrative of blue scum being Sky/Mikan, and with Mikan flipping red (and red being dead) that doesn't hold water any more. So, what better way to setup a GiF mislynch then by killing me and showing a green flip? Skitter has wanted GiF lynched for most of the game - wouldn't that be enough?
If somebody wanted to push a mislynch on me, the easiest way would be to kill a player who I'd been focusing on. Is that why Kop was killed? Is that why Sesq was killed? But red killed Kop and blue killed Sesq. If both mafia teams hated me so much, why not just kill me? Or am I just obviously mislynchable?

Well night kill analysis is often just wifom and confirmation bias so I'll leave it at that for now and see if anything else I find might bear fruit alongside it.

Spoilered data that had no obvious value.

Spoiler:

Number of times these sets counter-voted (at least one voting for the other) at hammer:
Icon and Spring - 1
Icon and GiF - 0
Icon and Skitter - 0
Spring and GiF - 1
Spring and Skitter - 0
GiF and Skitter - 0
Sky and Icon - 0
Sky and GiF - 0
Sky and Spring - 0
Sky and Skitter - 0

No obvious value, so I'm eliminating this as evidence.

Next up, looking at the reasons players voted or did not vote RedFlavor or Beefster. This will take awhile.

[Sky_Paladin]

Well, no. I

think

it's Icon and Skitter, because that's what I've been saying since about a quarter way through day 2 (I raised cases on both of you), but after the last day phase, I considered Spring/Sesq as well.

I don't really see any credible scum teams with GiF on them - I can accept players may be suspicious of GiF/Sky though. I've been leaning town on GiF for a good chunk of the game and I thought he'd be dead and I'd have to deal with Icon/Skitter scum.

That's probably what's going to happen anyway, so...

From my position you and Icon have largely been in lock-step for a good chunk of the game and that is the most appealing pick for a scum team but I want to make sure I'm not just confirmation biasing it.

I am concerned that you've both 'independently' come to pick me as your preferred lynch because neither of you have really considered the night kill or implications of the lynch - despite you calling Spring's hammer scummy - and Icon's insistence that he's obv-town because he helped lynch red. That doesn't follow. I also categorically disagree that he's newb-town because the quality of his posts are higher than what I would consider to be new.

It seems like neither of you are really looking for logical scum pairs - you're just looking for a (any) lynch. That bothers me a lot.

[Sky_Paladin]

I have been unexpectedly and continue to be super busy and will finish my vca stuff in around 30-40 hours

[Sky_Paladin]

OK I live. Doing the thing~

[Sky_Paladin]

SO the first part of VCA is seeing why people voted where they did at phase end; why they helped lynch a towny, or creative reasons for not being on the lynch.

Day 1 had GiF on the redflavor lynch, and the rest of us off of it.

Skitter - Votes Beefster in 361 after a large number of posts, and had previously been on the Hawk wagon. Looking at the chronology:

Spoiler:

RVS vote on Mumble (Becomes Spring)
First real vote on Technical Difficulties 68 after quoting and spoilering chunks with Hawk/TD.
The vote is partially motivated by a defense of Icon as given here:

This post kinda boils down to:

obvnewbtown on Iconeum

+ policy on NM + fence-sitty on {me, red, rc, beef}. Like you gave yourself a PL and room to backtrack on like four people.

However, TD flipped scum so this regardless of intent this can be a legit scumhunting post/vote. My concern is that one of those points was explicitly 'obvnewbtown' on Icon, because that's what Skitter has continued to cite as why Icon is town, because, I don't see obvnewbtown apart from the join date. But 'obvnew' doesn't necessarily equate to 'obvnewtown'. Skitter actually picked up 'obvnewtown' from TD's post 48 so I question if this is a read Skitter actually has on her own, or something she's inherited without questioning/evaluating. Relevant because town players would want to qualify their town/scum reads. Moving on -

Other than this there is nothing really important to the lynch/current game state until 181 where Skitter voices opposition to Hawk's policy vote on NM, and his list of reads - which is valid given Hawk flips scum.

Skitter's 195 responds to Mumble/Spring re the Beefster wagon. She specifically picks TD as scum, but not with Beef; which implies she reads both as scum slots and is supporting this by currently voting Beef. Her wagon analysis is interesting -

->RF's, Iconeum's, and Sky's reasoning all echo some of the problems I've had with Beef's posting after TD started his wagon. Red called out Beeff's bizarre reasoning on Hawk/Red and I like his vote but I'm having a lot of trouble articulating why. Like it doesn't feel agenda-y, but more like he found something scummy and voted it. That doesn't really capture why I like it but I don't know how to explain it better right now.

I like sky's more than iconeum's because it just articulates like all the things that I found *wrong* with that readslist. Like it feels like he looked at it from several different angles and found it lacking in several ways. His post feels multi-dimensional and like he's trying to understand beef's motivation.

Like I feel like I'm largely townreading the back end of the wagon more than the front end, which is weird.

Looks like I was once a townread of Skitters :/ alas, times change. It looks like that comes in 252 - Skitter quoted a block of my text regarding GiF:

I have issues with GiF's playstyle as it's hard to derive intent from quite minimalistic posts. However he is actually engaging players in most of these posts - eg 57 when he votes Hawk 'for reaching', 121 when he questions Kop/TD about reaching, expressing an opinion on NM, and a few other things. So I feel this is more likely to come from town and I'm not really interested in lynching there.

And flags it as defensive of GiF:

This feels weirdly defensive of GIF tbh? Especially since you start off by saying that it's hard for you to 'derive intent from quite minimalistic posts'. Like his posts are hard for you to parse but you're going to use them to towncase him.

Also like it's weird timing? There isn't much pressure there and it's not like he was in imminent danger of being lynched, so the bolded feels kinda off.

Moving on to 281 Skitter puts a list of reads but restricts it just to the players who have votes.
Beef wagon is 'not feeling scum' (but not exactly a town-read either)
Not Mafia: "a great pl and he's playing exactly the same way as scum!nm did in open 711, but yeah this is a bad idea" which bothers me in hindsight. Encouraging the lynch as a great policy lynch but also saying it's a bad idea. ?
town on redflavor/Icon with no qualification
Null on GiF
Hawk - doesn't actually give a read on Hawk, but she says she doesn't see Hawk/Red as a thing
Scum on TD but not voting there because nobody else is
And settles for the popular at the time, Hawk vote. I can abide by this because it was my justification for voting Mikan over Icon in the previous day phase; Icon was my preferred lynch but nobody was interested, so I consolidated to Mikan.

Hawk challenges Skitter and she empty unvotes in 304 saying she will respond to Hawk but can't right now. Responds to Hawk in 361 and votes Beefster and quotes a Beefster/Kop quote. This personally feels like a weak reason to me, especially with her last read of Beefster in 281 as:

-> Beef - not super feeling scum!beef right now.

I would have thought Skitter would consolidate onto one of her other scum reads, which at the time consisted of TD, but she declined voting there previously because there wasn't enough votes on the TD wagon.
At the time she switched to Beefster, Beefster was on one vote - the other voter was Icon. Is this significant enough to warrant a vote there over TD?
Is it significant at all though? Both Beefster and the counter wagon, Hawk, have flipped and scum!Skitter wouldn't care about either wagon.
The only scum intent I can derive from it is if Skitter wanted to avoid being on the Hawk wagon (which at the time looked like the likely lynch); shortly after Skitter posted, GiF kickstarted the RF mislynch and she didn't post again until after the phase ended.

So that's a long way to say: Skitter's excuse for not being on the Hawk wagon was because she was scumreading Beefster more, but that's not consistent with her reads, and the drop of Hawk as a scum read seems weirdly timed.
This looks to me like somebody wanting to avoid being on the popular wagon for the day. I don't really feel that Skitter was town-reading Hawk (and she did not say that, she just said she was 'not interested').

Day 2;
Beefster mislynch. Skitter was not voting.
Chronology:

Spoiler:

Starts with a vote on GiF in 458 because blaming GiF for the RF mislynch.
Also now has a scum read on Beefster and Mikan but unqualified; also has now only got one town read - Icon.
Not a change; her previous town reads also included RF who has flipped green by now.
Highlights that I mentioned Kop in 459 and then Kop died (fire mafia kill) and says it's weird; I'll revisit this later because GiF also mentioned it and it's worth considering if this is something blue team would actually do. Maybe wifom but this was something pushed by Skitter later in the day as a basis to scum read me (the fact that I asked about Kop after hammer) and since I'm confirmed not red, might have prompted a re-evaluation which I have not seen. But the day is still young yet.

Argues with GiF/Mikan/Sky in 518 and votes Beef for the exact reason she was voting GiF, which strikes me as a bit hypocritical. I already went over this with Skitter and it essentially boils down to what was quoted in 541

@Skitter You have kind of pushed both GiF and Beefster this phase; and while you are voting for Beefster, do you have a clear position?

Later Skitter will unvote Beefster.
This is essentially my main issue with Skitter - she was scum reading GiF for A, but when Beefster also scum read GiF for A, she found Beefster scummy for it. We argued back and forth to no real satisfying conclusion over day 2.
Yes, I am aware Skitter argues that it's different because Beefster let GiF 'talk him into voting RF' so it's not fair to hold Gif accountable, and I also think that's not a real thing.
Also, pretty much since the start of day 2, Skitter has wanted a GiF lynch, but she's not really interested in voting there - possibly because there's nobody else on board with the wagon, and the basis for that scum read was that GiF provoked the RF lynch.
Skitter also had a good opportunity to lynch GiF in day 3 - both Icon, Sky and I think even Spring had considered GiF as red mafia; and Mikan surely would have hammered if she'd had the chance. But Skitter did not push for this.

I respond basically rehashing the above in 587 but then Skitter VLA's through phase end and then it's day 3.

TR;DR
The progenitor of Skitter's scumread on GiF was because she held GiF responsible for the RF mislynch. I actually hold him responsible for this too because Hawk was the obvious lynch candidate for the day, which is why I thought GiF could be red mafia during day 3 - but because it was Alisae, then it's a wash. There's literally no reason I can think of for blue mafia to risk themselves to save Hawk. So this is, in my view, probably a town clear for GiF.

Skitter was scumreading Beefster, because Beefster had voted GiF, blaming GiF for the mislynch of RF. Skitter held that Beefster can't hold GiF responsible for Beefster's part in the mislynch of RF. Even so, Skitter still didn't change her position on GiF, and even day 3 chose Alisae over GiF for the lynch. Skitter is also holding me for being protective of GiF in this current phase but from my view she's basically doing the same thing.

It's hypocritical. Is it scum though? The problem is that Skitter, Sky and Icon have all been posting a crap tonne and Spring and GiF have not. It's much easier to find false positives in giant walls of text.

Day 3 Skitter helped lynch Mikan who flipped scum; so we can't find scum intent behind it easily.

I'll leave it at that for now and get some sleep. Next up, Icon.

@Skitter: I'm aware you have posted some things. The main one I want to address is: I was under the impression you were scum reading me. Having reviewed your game to this extent I can see I had imagined it because of our frequent disagreements during day 2. I feel that you and Icon have very similar reads and I feel that both of you are attacking me and largely ignoring Spring/GiF. But when I reflected on this, I see that I also have largely been ignoring Spring/GiF. When I reflected on it more, I realised that 'feeling' that you were attacking me is not the same as 'actually' attacking me. I can see from your position that it may look incredibly contrived and convenient that I would scumread both you and Icon. And maybe I just imagined it. I know that I am a reactionary player. So I will review the situation again when I've finished this VCA.

I've also seen that your read on Icon seems to have been created out of thin air and that concerns me - you did briefly null read him at the start of day 2 however.

And now I sleep

[Sky_Paladin]

IMDb about twelve hours from my next post chunk which will be vca of icon.
After that I will look at Spring/Gif.

Tbh though I’m confident gif is town and I won’t vote there.
So for me it’s two of Spring/icon/skitter
I found evidence that admitted fabricated at least some of her reads in my previous bloc and I don’t specifically know if that was addressed and I will look into that carefully before committing either way.

[Sky_Paladin]

Admitted = skitter but then autocorrect.

[Sky_Paladin]

OK hey I got some time to play. Here we go. Let's look at Icon. First of all, happy scumday, Icon! Have a read on your ISO to lighten up your day

On day 1, Icon was on the Beefster wagon with Skitter and wasn't part of the RF mislynch.

Spoiler:

He started out hard on Not Mafia which turned out not to matter because NM was town. All of Icon's first posts, up til 132, were drilling Not Mafia for claiming mafia.
To be honest, this is not a bad thing to have done, and I applaud any effort to get activity out of a chronic lurker slot. Both Skitter and myself also made some effort to get activity from NM at some point, even if it was just to vote him for doing nothing. As I recall, GiF was against this lynch because no PL in multi-ball.

After this, moves into questioning Tatl and Tael in 150 over their interactions with Skitter. Let's look at the post Icon doesn't like.

There are three block quotes; one from GiF, one from Skitter, and one from Not Mafia. Icon only mentions the Skitter and Not Mafia quotes, and says that he doesn't like Skitter's quotes that TT had quoted. Revisits in 154 to clarify further that Icon had issues with Skitter responding to one of TD's posts instead of another one, and then restates reasoning for voting NM.

I guess my concern here is that Icon found reasons to confront other players involving Skitter, but didn't directly engage with Skitter themselves.

Icon then moves on to Kop in 158 over Kop's unwillingness to lynch Not Mafia, but then questions Beefster for his vote on Not Mafia in 179. To be fair to Icon, Beefster was all over the shop in day 1/2 and even I lost my patience with what I thought to be flailing scum. Oh well.
He advances a vote and applies pressure.

Shortly after, Skitter votes Not Mafia - Icon calls her out in 265 because 24 hours ago she didn't want to push NM and the deadline was currently paused.

Starts analysing the (at the time) main wagons of Hawk and RedFlavor and eventually decides on RF is probably scum over Hawk; but irrelevant because both red are dead. Settles for Beefster because Beefster says some pretty strange things.

Overall I feel that Icon's reason for voting Beefster is difficult to find see scum MO in; he directly pressured Beefster and showed a real effort to analyse the other wagons of the day. I think that Icon's position on the Beefster wagon day 1 is valid and feels stronger than Skitter's.

Day 2, Icon helped lynched Beefster. Given the strength of his argument on day 1, this is probably the intuitive place for him to end up; but let's read further anyway.

Spoiler:

Starts the day essentially with a vote on Beefster with 'I can dig that.
The empty unvote a mere 70 posts later in 531 is therefore counter-intuitive; Icon actually drops his scum read on Beefster while disagreeing with Beefster's push on GiF. The unvote reason was because 'effort' but effort is not alignment indicative. So this unvote does bother me as I would have thought Icon would gravitate to his next intuitive read of scum!Hawk.

533 has Icon question Skitter over her vote on Beefster for pushing GiF. Relevant because this is why I voted Skitter and we continue to have massive walls back and forth about it. Checking the chronological order, Icon actually raised this as a point a few posts before I did. So this is interesting because I don't recall giant walls between Skitter and Icon. Skitter responded to Icon in 538 and mainly this -

So, I think that wagon composition matters *a lot*, and being on the same wagon as someone I significantly scumread feels wrong. Voting with Beef bothers me more than I like my GIF vote, which kinda implies to me that I scumread Beef more and I ought to voting there.

Scrolling through, Icon never responded to this, and instead jumped on to the Beefster wagon in 559 to put him at L-1, because at this point Beefster had basically desintegrated and had lost all credibility.
Context matters -
I'd made a case against Skitter, and voted Skitter (Icon had been voting Skitter).
Beefster sheeped my vote on Skitter, but when I questioned him, he couldn't remember who he was sheeping or why he agreed with me.
I voted Beefster for being unable to quantify his vote.
Icon voted right after, but didn't clarify his read on Skitter at this point.

In 592, is now actively poking others (specifically Sesq) to apply the hammer.
I know Beef has fallen apart by now, but this doesn't seem at all in line with Icon's earlier position in the day, and Icon hasn't even mentioned Hawk that I can see.

So while the end of day 2 lines up with the end of day 1, the start/middle bits of Icon's day 2 don't at all seem to connect and there's a couple of missing tells.

Note in particular Hawk/Aninenen vanished from Icon's reads, and then Hawk/Aninenen died that night phase to blue mafia. Failing to re-evaluate Skitter after pushing there also bothers me.
Who else died to blue mafia? Tatl and Tael, a player who Icon questioned over their interactions with Skitter, who was then flat out ignored by Icon once Tatl and Tael had moved on.
Hey, who is the player that Icon wants to lynch this day phase? Sky_Paladin, the player who has given Skitter the most trouble.
The cynic in me suggests this is probably not a coincidence.

Day 3 Skitter/Icon/Sky helped lynch Alisae who was scum so it's not really possible to pick up AI there, but I am interested in the development of Icon's reads.

Spoiler:

Reads appear early day 3 in 640 as null on Skitter, town on GiF and Sesq, Sky/Mikan scum, Spring null.

Several reads stick out as weird to me having done this ISO.
Null on skitter - willing to vote this player in the previous phase and had not followed up on Skitter's response. Really? Null?
Town on Sesq - Other than asking Sesq to hammer Beefster (who flipped town), these players had no interaction that I could see. I'm not really sure what Sesq did to earn this town read. Relevant because Sesq was another blue mafia kill in the previous night phase. Less relevant because Sesq had replaced out and Firebringer was an unknown.
Scum on Sky - Other than my vote on Icon day 2 (which I later updated to Skitter) I'm not sure what I'd done to be in Icon's sights.

Starts the main part of the day by interrogating Spring, especially on her reads, which looks valid IMO, in particular, Spring's town read on Mikan. In particular 670 looks super strong:

spring, changing mind is not scummy by itself. However, there is no reasoning behind the change whatsoever. Read the posts in between the 180. There is no reason for switching like that. 1 minute it's scum, next it's town? That's not a change of mind, that's convenience and I do read it as scummy.

Ends up voting Alisae because sheeping Tatl and Tael's read on Mikan from day 1 and then wall of crap from Alisae and that's basically where the phase ends.

A good push on Spring who is still basically afk imo and the vote on Alisae is plausible; the reads need an explanation though, particularly the null on Skitter.

I think Icon's play looks town on day 1 and 3, and scum on day 2. The night kills seem to straight up implicate Icon as blue mafia although I can't place the Sesq one.

Between Skitter/Icon, I think Icon has the stronger town play though I would like explanations of how he is now town reading Skitter and scum reading me. This doesn't appear to have developed naturally.

I really do feel like this could be the scum pair still but mainly because of Icon's kid-glove treatment of Skitter, and pressure against players who looked the wrong way at Skitter. I'll have to look back at Skitter again to see if this is one way or not. But that's going to wait. Next up - Spring.

[Sky_Paladin]

OK, Spring.

Spoiler:

Day 1, Mumble/Spring was voting for Icon. Relevant because scum often vote each other early in the game, and that vote was early - 106.

Cites reason for not voting Beefster early on as wagon forming too fast to be scum 191, Beefster does flip town in day 2.

Quantifies reads in 193 somewhat vaugely, has issues with Icon and Red, is fine with Skitter/Sky. Immediately hops out when Mikan appears. Not present for phase end; no mention of wagons. Not really useful for VCA.

Spring!

Intro post with demands that Sesq posts reads on all players in 564 and then votes for emphasis. Town read on Alisae. Irrelevant because red is dead.

599 worries me. This post came immediately after a vote tally showing Beefster at L-1, I feel like a town player genuinely in concern that Beefster is a mislynch would be more vocal about getting their preferred lynch secured, at this stage Spring's only real scum read is Sesq, who's flipped town. I don't really see Spring trying to make anything happen here - she has picked a fairly afk player to focus on and asked for reads. There's a lot more players to interact with than this. I actually highlight this in 590 when I asked Spring to give her reads on more players than just Sesq; she responded with "I'm still catching up" and for me to give my reads. Hmm.

603 townreads Alisae again. Irrelevant because red is dead.

647 list of reads and 'not very happy about the Beefster lynch'. It's a day phase too late to be unhappy about this so this post is kind of meh.
Scum reads on Skitter/Sesq/GiF because can't remember 'if GiF or Sesq' did something the day before.
This seems really weak - I voted Beefster for not knowing why he had voted and this post would have been vote worthy.

659 - First real substance vote from this slot.
The main thing is the VCA and highlighting that Skitter made one good post. Second thing of substance is the updated reads list:

Scum:
Sesq
Sky
Icon

Null:
GIF
Skitter

Town:
Mikan

Revotes Sesq and at least makes some effort to explain their vote.

Not sure how Icon went from null to scum; or how GiF is townier from the VCA than I am.

Aaaaand that's basically it for the slot.

Hmm.

Well, there is really not a lot to go on for this slot. It needs a fire lit under it's ass and is a textbook example of why we shouldn't let afk players last til LYLO.

Is it scum tho? The main content has been a push for Sesq (flips green after nightkill) and townread on Mikan (flips red). If Spring is blue, why that nightkill on Sesq? It's literally Spring's only push, and she hasn't existed this phase in any capacity to clarify her current position except on GiF, who was pushing her during day 3. Sigh wifom I know.

Spring hasn't really interacted with any players/hasn't had other players interact with her other than GiF. Both Skitter and Icon questioned Spring when she dropped her town read of Alisae during day 3, however.

I can't really see any obvious pairs with Spring but she does feel really disconnected and not engaged with the game or the players. That does look like a scum play style and when I compare her content to both my OG scum reads, she comes off significantly weaker, despite apparently being a long time player (and conversely, Icon appears extra strong despite supposedly being new).

Spring doesn't look town to me. I could lynch this slot. We are 7 days into the phase and there's been no analysis or real thought from them - I at least have a pretty solid idea on where everybody else sits, but this slot is a mystery.

Next up, GiF, but first sleep.

[Sky_Paladin]

sigh you leave one bracket open

mod please fix <3

[Sky_Paladin]

@Skitter

I promise to respond to Icon's posts and your posts this phase before putting a vote down anywhere. I accept I say a lot of things from feelings and what I thought I remembered and often times over many games and places those things get jumbled up. Then when I sit down with some time to spare I can look back and see that the way I remembered it is not always how it happened.

[Sky_Paladin]

@Skitter

I wold be a whole lot less likely to believe in scum!Skitter and scum!Icon if your response to an ISO about Icon wasn't focused solely on my interpretation on his read about you.

What about the rest of the stuff where Icon could be scum independently?

[Sky_Paladin]

of you?

ie with Spring
Or even GiF

hell even me.

Just something that shows me your investment is outside of yourself.

[Sky_Paladin]

you know hwat don't worry about the last post.
I know youre gonna say 'your making stuff up again' sure fine whateer. Its 2:30 am I can't do it now.

Just read the post on Icon
Tell me if you think he is scum/not scum and why.

[Sky_Paladin]

A quick one for Skitter since I've only had 5 hours sleep

There's a giant cake over Icon's posts. That's why I said happy scumday. Is it not his scumday?



Yes I see GiF's Spring vote. GiF while I appreciate the town read I would appreciate it a hell of a lot more if you actually put any value into my posts - I haven't seen you ever give any sign you agree/disagree with anything I've written, at least not where it matters. I feel you should have some interest in the fact Icon/Sky/Skitter have spent what feels like a month in RL fighting and that comprises over 50% of the player base.

[Sky_Paladin]

I guess I'll wait a few hours and see if that's game over though :/

[Sky_Paladin]

https://imgur.com/a/r8wV0

[Sky_Paladin]

I don't know, Spring hasn't even countervoted. Checking her 'last visited' date just shows a -.

Icon has been around since GiF's vote and so has Skitter, but they didn't post a series of posts like scum normally do when they're trying to coordinate both being on to drop the hammer.

So this probably means I'm wrong about Icon/Skitter being a team.

[Sky_Paladin]

So the only thing we really need to worry about is if GiF/Skitter is a team. This is only really plausible from the context of Skitter seemingly always wanting to lynch GiF but never really wanting to push for it.

GiF is like my only strong townread though.

[Sky_Paladin]

I promised Skitter I'd reply to her posts (and Iso GiF) before voting, but I think by POE with Town!Gif and only one scum between (Skitter/Icon) that means Spring is scum.

Intent to hammer in a few hours or Icon can just go ahead and hammer if they get here before I finish ISO'ing GiF.

[Sky_Paladin]

The Legend of GiF: Or, how a player can spam out nearly 200 posts over 37 pages.

VCA - On day 1, GiF was the champion of the RF mislynch. I've actually gone over this already in 685 when I first added GiF to my team-red pool when we were deciding between Icon/Alisae/GiF for red, so I will slightly rehash that post with updates for players we now know.

Spoiler:

The absence of the hammer at this point strongly leads to scum!Spring, and any other scenario doesn't matter because game over is imminent.

So I'm going to go ahead and pencil in Spring as scum and then see where that puts us.

Let's go ahead and rule out the implausible scum teams.

Skitter/Icon - Plausible as Icon has not yet checked in since Skitter's vote (and will be 'impossible' if he checks in and no hammer).

Skitter/GiF - plausible as these are the only players who have voted so far.

Skitter/Sky - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Skitter/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.

Icon/GiF - plausible: Icon has not yet checked in since Skitter's vote (and will be 'impossible' if he checks in and no hammer).

Icon/Sky - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Icon/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring and Icon hammering does not rule out Icon/Spring.

Sky/GiF - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Sky/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.
Spring/GiF - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.

From this, the only teams that are

possible

with scum!GiF are Skitter/GiF and Icon/Gif. If it's Icon/GiF then it's game over anyway because I'm intending to hammer and Icon can hammer whenever he checks in, so I'm not going to consider that scenario: I'm only going to see if it could be Skitter/GiF. And if I don't think that's plausible, then I'll go ahead with the hammer after responding to Skitter.

Day 1 mislynch: I'm colouring Spring/Mumble as red in VCA because Spring is scum or game over, and vca makes no sense in a game over scenario.

LYNCH: RedFlavor (7) - Kop

, GuyInFreezer,

Not_Mafia, Sesq, Beefster

,

Hawk, Mikan Tsumiki

Not_Mafia (2) - Tatl and Tael,

Sky_Paladin

Beefster (2)

- Iconeum, skitter30
Iconeum (1) -

Mumble

Mikan Tsumiki (1)

-

RedFlavor

While GiF's push for Red Flavor undoubtedly is what caused the mislynch, it's only significant if GiF was doing it to save a scumbuddy. At the time GiF started moving the only active wagons were Not Mafia, Beefster, and Hawk. While Hawk flipped scum, red is dead, so it's not AI. Why RF though? Not Mafia looked like a much easier mislynch, if we want to push that GiF is scum. Well let's find out...

Initial vote on Hawk in 57 for reaching (Hawk had voted RF who had voted Dino for making excuses about being a hydra).

122 GiF obv-towns NM for claiming daytalk with scumbuddies, which doesn't exist in this game.

Updates vote after an empty unvote to RF in 157 as a response to RF's vote on Beefster (for reaching).

Small argument with Skitter over not policy lynching summed up in 273 as: we can get rekt in 2 mislynches if scum never cross-hit.

Doubles down on town!NM 285. So at this point GiF is not going to get behind a NM wagon, although he is ambivalent on Hawk. Preference for a RedFlavor lynch is valid so far, up until 311 when Hawk gets shitty for Mikan misquoting him or something and claims scum. Then But we're still lynching RF and admits he is trolling Hawk. Which is a real shame because it turns out Hawk is scum, so this was a Real Thing. And does explain Hawk's meltdown and replace out. Oh well.

And then votes RF shortly after and rides the wagon all the way to the end.

So in summary, I don't find anything weird about GiF pushing the RF wagon and the only GiF/Skitter action I see is them arguing - briefly - about why policy lynching Not Mafia is a bad idea.

Day 2 ended with the Beefster mislynch.

Spoiler:

A reminder I'm colouring Spring as red for these since if she's town it's game over and I'm wasting my time.

LYNCH: Beefster (6) - Not_Mafia,

Mikan Tsumiki,

Sky_Paladin, Iconeum,

Aneninen

,

Sesq

Sesq (2) -

springlullaby

,

Beefster

Mikan Tsumiki (1)

- GuyInFreezer

Not Voting: skitter30

GiF was voting Mikan who flips scum so it's hard to find meaningful reasons for this being a bad vote, unless GiF gave a bad reason for not being on the Beefster wagon.

Scrolling along -
GiF and beefster actually had a lot of posts back and forth, culminating in 501 because Beefster had continued to hold GiF accountable for the RF mislynch.
At this point GiF block-quoted a big chunk of Beefster's quotes and shot him full of holes. If GiF wanted to vote Beefster, this is the time to do it.

It's not real clear why GiF decides to vote Mikan in 505 other than 'to please the dead' aka Tatl and Tael.

More disagreements with Skitter in 524 because Skitter is also pushing GiF for the mislynch of RF but doesn't care as much about it as he did when Beefster was doing it. This merits a closer look.

OK, a quick read reveals why - Skitter didn't vote RF, so she has some traction for pushing against GiF. But Beefster did help lynch RF, so blaming GiF comes with a big serve of 'you hypocrit~'. So this different attitude from GiF to Beefster/Skitter seems legit.

578 GiF floats Sky/Mikan as blue team and clarifies in 579; but Mikan flipped red so *potatoes~* and the phase ends with Beefster getting lynched.

Difficult.
GiF argued extensively with Beefster and could easily have been on Beefster's wagon, but chose to be on Mikan's all alone, with nothing more than pleasing the dead. GiF thought Mikan was blue mafia, though.

Day 3 had the lynch of Alisae and the end of the red team.

Spoiler:

A reminder I am colouring Spring as scum for this VCA since if they're not, then it's game over anyway.

Alisae (LYNCH) (4)

- Iconeum, skitter30, Sky_Paladin,

springlullaby

springlullaby (L-1)

(3) -

Sesq,

GuyInFreezer,

Alisae

GiF had plenty of opportunities and motivation to hammer Alisae any time that he wanted while his supposed buddy of Spring was sitting at L-1.
Conversely, all of Icon/Skitter/Sky could have switched to Spring at any time to hammer. Could scum have resisted the urge for that LAMIST action?

Reading on...
During day 2 twilight, GiF said if he died for us to quicklynch Mikan, and backed it up with a vote at the start of day 3 in 617 quoting the red mafia kill as Mikan's cheeky scum kill (we know it's a fire mafia hit because the ice mafia hit Aninen/Hawk). Which now that I think about it is at odds with GiF claiming Mikan as blue mafia for day 2.

Puts Spring as potential redscum in 700 and votes there in 703, reasoning that her description of the Kop kill is too descriptive. Irrelevant because red is dead, possibly relevant if GiF-Spring is the pair.

Says that he doesn't think Alisae is fire scum in 786 in response to Icon questioning why GiF won't hammer Alisae. So why push for that lynch...?

Responds in 804 saying Skitter/Sesq not redscum, and responds to Skitter saying why he thinks Skitter isn't redscum is because "You're the one who reminded me about redscum" (re: why we are trying to kill off the red team).

Then Spring counterhammers, and that's the end of day 3.

Main issue here is insistence that Alisae is blue scum as the basis for voting not!Alisae (Spring), and vote for Mikan doesn't seem quantified in any other way I can see.
GiF wasn't really pushing other players to vote for Spring like he was for Red Flavor. If Spring is scum, why not hammer Alisae? Sure it could be a bus on day 3, but being 'confirmed town' for hammering his buddy Spring, but it would just make him eat the nightkill from the other scum team to prevent 'confirmed town' making it to LYLO.

~~

Overall I am still leaning town on GiF however the re-read has shaken my town read a little bit. I think day 1 GiF looked super town, I have no issues at all with him pushing the RF lynch, and day 2 he still looks pretty good - he didn't avoid the Beefster wagon so much as attack Beefster personally. Day 3 says blue will not hammer, Spring hammers, calls it a scum hammer *shrug*.

If it's Spring/GiF, day 3 was a bus, but GiF stuck to it for a veeeeerry long time and forced his buddy to cross-hammer to save themselves. GiF had plenty of time and motivation to find a reason to vote Mikan, and had been wanting to do so since late day 2. Does scum!GiF have the patience to wait it out for somebody else to hammer Spring? Spring didn't appear to really push for anybody other than the unengaged-Sesq, and then Sesq flipped green, and really Spring only talked directly with GiF during day 3.

Icon had given his preferred lynches as Sky/Spring
Skitter had put her preferred lynches as GiF/Spring (with a preference on Spring)
Sky had put his preferred lynches as Spring and undecided between Skitter/Icon.
GiF had put his reads down on Spring/Skitter.
Spring's only read was GiF.

GiF put the first vote down. By this time everybody had expressed a willingness to lynch Spring. So maybe GiF felt forced to vote Spring because not enough people wanted to lynch Skitter, and Spring's made no effort to defend themselves or case anybody else. Because they've been gone for three days.

As I posted at the start of this:

Skitter/Icon - Plausible as Icon has not yet checked in since Skitter's vote (and will be 'impossible' if he checks in and no hammer).

Skitter/GiF - plausible as these are the only players who have voted so far.

Skitter/Sky - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Skitter/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.

Icon/GiF - plausible: Icon has not yet checked in since Skitter's vote (and will be 'impossible' if he checks in and no hammer).

Icon/Sky - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Icon/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring and Icon hammering does not rule out Icon/Spring.

Sky/GiF - impossible: Sky has not hammered.

Sky/Spring - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.
Spring/GiF - plausible: anybody could be scum with Spring.

Possible teams worth considering are:
Skitter/GiF - split wagons on day 3 with token pokes back and forth day 2.
Skitter/Spring - refusal to hammer buddy on day 3, bus today.
Icon/Spring - refusal to hammer buddy on day 3, no response to GiF's vote on buddy.

Sky/Spring - refusal to hammer buddy on day 3, responses aplenty. Also I know I'm not scum ^_~

Spring/GiF - bus day 3, super bus day 4.

Worst case scenario if it is GiF-Spring, we are down a scum, and scum has to hit one of Sky/Skitter/Icon, making LYLO much easier.

Is it GiF-Skitter though.

Man at the start of this post I was so sure it was going to be GiF = auto town but now I'm so nervous I don't know.

I'll just hit post and grab a coffee. I'm obviously overthinking it at this point. I just assumed Spring is scum for a big chunk of this post and now the more I think about it if its Skitter-GiF then if I hammer it's GG. So now all I can see is Skitter-GiF.

Look I think Spring is scum. Both Icon and Skitter have posted a lot of content and their positions - even if I disagree with them - are clear. I'm sure one of Icon or Skitter is town because Icon/Skitter haven't been spamming to line up a hammer.

Sigh I'll take 5 minutes then have a look at what Skitter posted earlier.

[Sky_Paladin]

Responding to Skitter - there's a few main posts, so I'll take them one at a time.

Spoilered for everybody who is not Skitter because there's no scum hunting or anything relevant to anybody else probably

Spoiler:

But if you clicked anyway, have a cookie!!

Regardless;

856 main points from Skitter:
1 - If there's blue on the RF mislynch day 1, the only unflipped player is GiF, so by POE, that's GiF. Also that the Beefster mislynch, and the RF mislynch, both had all the red scum on it, and that if there's blue on the Beefster mislynch, it's Icon or Sky (and Skitter doesn't see Icon!Scum).
IMO this is kind of IIoA; yes if there are blue on the RF wagon, it has to be GiF, and if there was blue on the Beef wagon, it has to be Sky or Icon. But this is kind of a weak inductive reasoning because we first have to establish there was blue on either of those wagons.
Related to this, Skitter asks why I'm townleaning GiF - it's because there was no reason for GiF to push for the mislynch of RF unless his scum buddy was at risk. At the time, I thought that might have been Hawk who had flipped red and is the only reason I added Hawk to my red-pool on day 3. I mainly went into this in 685 when I highlighted the unvotes on Hawk - GiF and yourself had both voted Hawk at some point, but Icon explicitly compared Hawk to RF and then went so far as to say 'RF over Hawk'. So when Hawk flipped red, I saw Icon as the main suspect behind Hawk getting free day 1, because while GiF had provided the opportunity, every other player independently chose to follow him.

I was soft-town on GiF early in the game as suggested in 236 because he was engaging players and not just shitposting, and at that time I had no reason to re-evaluate outside of him voting Spring other than Alisae.

2 - Sesq-instead-of-Sky/GiF-nightkill discussion
At the time I voted for Alisae over Icon, I felt strongly the scumteam was Skitter/Icon. I felt that GiF or myself would be the obvious night kill choices because Spring/Sesq were basically non-existent (Sesq replacing out) and scum would want to shut down an active poster. GiF had been pushing the blue team as Mikan/Sky, but Mikan had just died and flipped red, while GiF had been pushing Spring as red. If I'd been killed off, it would set up day 4 with GiF having been caught on the wrong wagon (not trying to kill red) and scum!Skitter with an easy in to lynch GiF, "Hey look, you were wrong about Mikan/Sky, guess you're blue scum".
That's the extent I thought about it because I mainly was thinking welp guess it's Skitter/Icon, and if it's not me, it'll be GiF, and I already believed you two are scum so wouldn't be caught blindsided.

Also bolded almost sounds like you know I'm town - to mislynch town!GIF you'd need one townie on it, and it sounds like you think that's me. (and that by default scum is ico/spring if you're town, I'm town, and GIF is getting mislynched).

This might be a language thing. To me, a mislynch is anytime we lynch a non-scum player. If I'd died, to mislynch town!GiF, you'd need Sesq-slot (who had flipped town), plus scum!Skitter, and whichever one of Spring/Icon was scum at the time.

I feel like you're being kinda defensive of GIF? Or maybe that you're tying yourself to GIF?

The main thing that I like about GiF is even though he does post a lot of really small minimalistic posts, they are very rarely empty content posts and are always seeming to update the game state or push the game forwards in some way.
Like day 1 - the whole RF push. I can't see scum doing that unless it's to save a buddy and as has been overdone many times, he was not doing that.
Day 2 - standing out on the Spring wagon. If it was me I would have just hammered Alisae.
And although this is after that post - Day 3 - put down the first vote on Spring. It's super brave (and rare) for scum to put the first vote down IMO.

Moving on to 858

Icon/Skitter in lockstep:
I am going to take this comment back actually. I made it off the feeling from day 2 where I had cased and voted both you and Icon at some point, before switching to the melting-down-Beefster. But I accept that this was just my own feeling and that I didn't really quantify this.

A - E

A - I had read 851 where you asked Icon why I was your preferred lynch and inferred that I was also your preferred lynch. You did not explicitly state that I was your preferred lynch. So I was wrong on this point.
B - (re Sesq-desque) I guess it's irrelevant now if Spring is scum. Though why scum would kill her one scum read iiam. I don't know Firebringer - are they a good player? Maybe it was because they have a fearsome reputation or something. I don't know. night kill analysis is often wifom I suppose. I just thought - off the back of my earlier concern that GiF or myself would be the nightkill because scum-wants-to-kill-best-players having some meaning, surely killing Sesq who'd done basically nothing would have meaning too. I mean he was one of the only players townreading me at that point iirc (even if he just shit all over my posts) so I was like welp of course he died thanks scum, welp here comes the obvious mislynch on Sky from Icon and Skitter, and GiF won't even read my posts, ha ha ha rekt.
C - I initially scum read you because you gave Beefster crap for pushing against GiF on day 2, said that you scumread GiF but wouldn't vote there. When I pushed you on it during day 2 I felt that you were being evasive and not following up directly/pushing the conversation. Like you reacted to my questions but didn't push back. Conversely your responses in day 3 feel more probey, if that make sense. I actually feel like we're having a conversation whereas before it felt that you weren't interested in a conversation, at least, not with me. When I asked you to look at my case on Icon I expected you to be interested at least from any alignment but nothing happened.
I guess I thought I had set up something where 'something' could happen and I would get a good look at your alignment, but instead nothing happened. So I became 'OK, Skitter is scum with Icon' and that's probably where that all began.
D - OK.
E - At the time I thought it was fine because she was at L-1 and if I'm at L-1, I'd vote somebody else not-me-over-me.
The fact that they did it right after I had pointed it out was weird though. And now that we think she's scum? It strongly implies the other scum is one of Icon/Skitter/myself.

Looking for any lynch:
I had read twilight and seen you list 'Spring, gif, sky, icon, sesq, in that order' as your reads and remembered it as 'anybody who's not me' and thought 'huh'. Actually you had listed Spring ahead of me, so I was incorrect twice to state that I was your preferred lynch.

TL;DR - I was indeed misrepping Skitter at some points.

So I will apologise - I'm sorry for misrepping you.

Next up is 870 and I'll do that in it's own post.

[Sky_Paladin]

Spoilered for walls for Skitter.

Spoiler:

And if you clicked anyway, you get a cookie! What a good little townie you are, yes you are~

Unless you are scum >:V


Anyway; 870

Like 181 wasn't about Hawk, it was about Beef, so idk what you're talking about here.

The post in full is:

@Beef:

I don't really like the Hawk -> NM vote.

The Hawk vote in the first place was reachy imo, and when people pushed back on it you fell back on a safe NM vote.

Also I don't understand your readslist at all tbh. I have like only ~4 reads that vaguely much with yours, and I don't really get where you're coming from on most of the rest of them.

It was in RESPONSE to Beef, but you're talking ABOUT Hawk. I thought the @Beef only applied to the Hawk -> NM vote, and thought the rest of the post was in relation to Hawk (specifically Hawk's readlist).

Blaming someone else for a wagon that you let them talk you into joining with like no resistance is incredibly scummy to me. It's dogding responsiblity for your vote, and yeah, I had issues with Beef blaming GIF for the wagon when he happily joined him on it.

Why is this not a real thing?

Like we've gone over before - you held GiF accountable for the RF mislynch, which is why you initially scumread him iirc.
You then held Beef accountable for holding GiF accountable, but you don't accept you're doing the exact same thing.
That's why I scumread you.

It's not a real thing because I don't think (or forgot) you explained why you doing it is different from how Beefster is doing it. If I'm wrong/forgot, please say so/show me.

If it quacks like a duck etc.

I kinda feel like you approached my ISO with the intent of finding me scummy and are just finding reasons to back up that read, and are dismissing anything I may have done that could be town-motivated. That's kinda epitomized by:

This is completely true. I was certain I was going to find Skitter/Icon scum from ISO'ing the two of you. That's why I went through you two first.
But when I ISO'd Spring/Icon/GiF, I also went through the perspective of 'This player is scum'.

Like basically this quote from the end of my ISO on you applies here, there, and just about everywhere:

The progenitor of Skitter's scumread on GiF was because she held GiF responsible for the RF mislynch. I actually hold him responsible for this too because Hawk was the obvious lynch candidate for the day, which is why I thought GiF could be red mafia during day 3 - but because it was Alisae, then it's a wash. There's literally no reason I can think of for blue mafia to risk themselves to save Hawk. So this is, in my view, probably a town clear for GiF.

Skitter was scumreading Beefster, because Beefster had voted GiF, blaming GiF for the mislynch of RF. Skitter held that Beefster can't hold GiF responsible for Beefster's part in the mislynch of RF. Even so, Skitter still didn't change her position on GiF, and even day 3 chose Alisae over GiF for the lynch. Skitter is also holding me for being protective of GiF in this current phase but from my view she's basically doing the same thing.

It's hypocritical. Is it scum though? The problem is that Skitter, Sky and Icon have all been posting a crap tonne and Spring and GiF have not. It's much easier to find false positives in giant walls of text.

I feel like I've said the above six or seven times now so if you can satisfy me why you voting Beefster who was doing the exact same thing you had done (voting GiF for RF) I'm all ears. If you can ALSO do it in a way that doesn't use the difference I highlighted in GiF's ISO (because you hadn't voted RF in day 1) that'd be even better.

Re: Icon is blue newbie and not blue newbscum-

Icon's posts do not look like new player to me. They do look a lot like a very experienced player, either here or in other sites, who has created a new account. He has avoided all the pitfalls of a new player and barely anybody has voted or had reason to scrutinise him.

We have a difference of opinion on this. I am not giving him a free pass for being new. Post game I would love to hear the truth about it; perhaps we are witnessing the start of a new amazing player.

I just think that this is not his first rodeo. If you forget about his join date, does he look like scum? My thoughts are 'probably'.

I think that is probably everything except the fabricated reads comment which I'll go get to next.

[Sky_Paladin]

Fabricated reads:

This is specifically because I felt your newb-town read on Icon was fabricated - specifically, copied from TD's 48. Much of what I have read for you justifying a town read on Icon has been because of this 'obv-newb-townness' which I don't see, and I would like for you to have placed a read on him outside of his experience. While doing my ISO of you I haven't seen this.

The other read I flagged as fabricated was your read on Hawk, high-lighted by this quote -

So that's a long way to say: Skitter's excuse for not being on the Hawk wagon was because she was scumreading Beefster more, but that's not consistent with her reads, and the drop of Hawk as a scum read seems weirdly timed.
This looks to me like somebody wanting to avoid being on the popular wagon for the day. I don't really feel that Skitter was town-reading Hawk (and she did not say that, she just said she was 'not interested').

Hawk is long dead so it doesn't matter.

I am interested in you solidifying your position in Icon however. From where I stand, it looks like one of you or Icon are scum.

I think I have probably responded to everything I promised to, and Icon still hasn't checked in. Well it has only been a few hours and there's no rush.

Intent to hammer

when I get up which is ~16 hours from now.

[Sky_Paladin]

Hmm.

I can't see any reason that scum!Skitter would kill Icon; I would have thought her natural kill would have been myself or GiF as we're both loudly suspicious of her slot and townreading each other. So scum!Skitter makes no sense for her hitting Icon since it would basically be suicide.

I don't see why scum!GiF would hit Icon either. Surely he would have killed me - I'm not sure on his position on Icon; but he'd been suspicious of Skitter - leaving me up as one of the people townreading him does make sense though.

At the moment I'm leaning scum!Skitter as more plausible than scum!GiF but it's late and I'm going to sleep. I'll re-read my walls from the previous day phase and colour things in now we know Spring is blue.

[Sky_Paladin]

@Skitter my OG reason for scum reading you was because you pressured Beefster for voting GiF when you had done essentially the same thing. After that, the next problematic thing was what felt like a refusal to see Icon as scummy because he was new; I would have infinitely preferred you pointing out some reason for him to be town e.g. in post x Icon did y and that is town because z. It's much harder for me to sympathise with a feeling when I don't have that same feeling.

However having had a chance to sleep on it and remembering the game state, my current thought is that day 3, GiF stuck hard for a Spring wagon, and on day 4 he was the first person to vote Spring. Sure, we had all at some point chimed in that Spring was our preferred lynch, but GiF was the first person to vote. While I could see GiF bussing Spring in the previous day phase, I don't think it makes sense in the context of GiF bussing Spring for a good chunk of day 3 as well. There was every opportunity for him to have lynched Alisae without risking his team mate.

I kinda think GIF has sky pocketed and wanted sky in lylo cuz it doesn't really look like sky has ever really been open to considering the possibilty of scum!GIF; he's been townreading him fairly consistently.

This however is a possibility so I am interested in seeing GiF's thoughts on why he has actually town read me.

[Sky_Paladin]

I think I need to do my due diligence and ISO both of you and do the meta-dive thing before I vote.

Please do

I'll be away most of the first chunk of this phase and am checking by phone. I posted a fiarly extensive ISO of yourself/GiF/Icon in the prior phase. I'll revisit that read in light of your responses from the last day phase and evaluate.

My main thoguhts at this stage are;
by POE I cant see how it could be GiF (for all the reasons he highlighted earlier) unless super bus
So does that mean POE = Skitter? Or is that what scum!GiF wants me to think since I was leaning scum on Skitter for so long?

[Sky_Paladin]

I'm V/LA until 6 April. I have a few hours I can play then, then another 48 hour V/LA.

[Sky_Paladin]

I promise I will respond to both of your votes/questions before voting.

[Sky_Paladin]

Why does me being here/not being here matter for your vote?

[Sky_Paladin]

I'll clarify my earlier remarks and position.

I'm pretty sure it's scum!Skitter because for the strongest Cirno reason - POE.

I've been town-reading GiF since I think early day 2, and I've been feeling like there was scum between Icon/Skitter since mid-day 2.

Little has come up to challenge that position.

Main factors for town reading GiF:
Posts are for the most part on point, advancing game state, votes are all easily accountable/did not try to wriggle out of mislynch responsibility.
Presence on Spring wagon during day 3 despite ample opportunities to hammer Alisae.
First voter against Spring in LYLO.
Reads have been largely consistent or update over time

Main factors for scum reading GiF:
??? Not a whole lot that is relevant in the current game state - things like him pushing Alisae/Sky as a team evaporated naturally when Alisae flipped.
About the only thing that is worrying me is that during this phase GiF hasn't really weighed in and is content for Sky/Skitter to throw giant walls at each other.
I don't really see evidence of GiF trying to solve the game at this point. I'm worried he's just sitting by waiting for one of the other two to finally get mad enough to vote each other and then he'll just hammer.

Overall my reasons for town reading GiF are stronger because they are easily deducable from the game and the only reason for scum reading him at this stage is basically paranoia.

Contrast with Skitter -
Main factors for town reading Skitter:
A lot of posts
???

Main factors for scum reading Skitter:
What feels like mainly argumentative/reactive posting and I'm not really remembering any hard scum/town reads from Skitter.
A lot of posts but no cases/real pushes when it mattered.
Vote on Spring came after all players had suggested lynching Spring, and came fairly shortly after GiF's vote. So, a bus?

I'm struggling to add things under 'why I should town read Skitter'.

This is mainly a 'yes I am still alive, here is where I am' post and I expect to do a proper catch up and response in about 12 hours.

[Sky_Paladin]

My last scum game was this one that I replaced in to about day 3 iirc.

Before that I think my last scum game was somewhere in 2015, back before my big mafia break. This is, I think, only my fourth or fifth game since coming back.

[Sky_Paladin]

I guess you probably should ALSO have asked for me to link some town games too eh ^__~

I don't really like *his* beef vote in 556 - it kinda feels like he hopped on the wagon to vote beef despite being too scummy to be scum. Like he's voting Beef for not making sense and not so much for being *scummy*. Like doing derp-things isn't necessarily a scumtell and I think sky knows that. Like is sheeping someone although you don't know their reasonining pro-town? Probably not. Is it scum-indicative? Probably not also.

I voted Beef because he sheeped a player without knowing why he was sheeping them or even who that person was.

You may recall that the person he sheeped was me, and the case I had made was against you.

If my case on you back then was good enough for Beefster to sheep, but not bad enough for me to attack Beefster for sheeping, what was it?

It occurs to me that your initial scum read on GiF was something very similiar to this - you voted Beefster for his pressure on GiF over RF; while you yourself were also pressuring GiF for the very same thing.

p-edit suddenly all the posts. I'll hit submit and read zzz

[Sky_Paladin]

Not weighed in-

I know you don't do walls

I mean to be fair both of us are vla so what can you do.

But I was kind of hoping you would be asking both of us questions and directly interacting. I know you posted stuff on the previous page and ugh I was going to do this in 12 hours and respond.

It can wait. 12 hours. I'll be here.

or

p-edit

well either Im right or that's gg.

ANd no hammer

ok.

[Sky_Paladin]

So GiF is town. Or a troll.

VOTE: Skitter

I'll wait a few minutes and see

but I neeed sleep.

[Sky_Paladin]

Well now as they say, you have a captive audience.

It's 2 am and I have work. And there is no phase time limit so if you don't mind I'll call it here and you can tear up my posts/asks questions and I'll answer them all when I get up.

[Sky_Paladin]

Why town;

Short 2 am version

Accountable for votes/advancing game state (had made cases against Skitter/Icon as early as day 2)
Content is not solely focused around a few players.
Not blue because came up with 'why it's Spring' in my own time after considering all other player slots and didn't hammer/bus for town cred.
Spent most of the game trying to get Skitter or Icon lynched :/ Late previous day had Icon as stronger town than Skitter.
Reads clear and traceable. A good example is when I was town-reading Alisae-slot until day 3 when her posts/voting activity put her in the red pool.
Able to explain reads especially town read on GiF (which was often questioned by Skitter and only Skitter iirc).
Made mistakes - helped mislynch Beefster, cased Icon. Skitter was never on a town-controlled lynch except when voting her buddy.


And now I go

[Sky_Paladin]

a

I will be here in 12 hours.

I will be here for 2-3 hours.

Then I will be away for 3 days.

Then back to the end of the game which is

we have no phase timer. huh.

[Sky_Paladin]

I'm back and writing now, da ze~!

[Sky_Paladin]

I went to bed at 2 am

Then I woke up at 8:15 am

There will be a price to pay. Fortunately tonight is pay off sleep debt night so I just need to tnak through til 5 pm without getting fired or hit by a truck.

[Sky_Paladin]

947

Overall my reasons for town reading GiF are stronger because they are easily deducable from the game and the only reason for scum reading him at this stage is basically paranoia.

Contrast with Skitter -
Main factors for town reading Skitter:
A lot of posts
???

Main factors for scum reading Skitter:
What feels like mainly argumentative/reactive posting and I'm not really remembering any hard scum/town reads from Skitter.
A lot of posts but no cases/real pushes when it mattered.
Vote on Spring came after all players had suggested lynching Spring, and came fairly shortly after GiF's vote. So, a bus?

I'm struggling to add things under 'why I should town read Skitter'.

Why did Skitter town read GiF suddenly in LYLO? Looking at 949 reasons are:

1 - It's kinda idiotic for scum to soft doc to divert the nk off the real doc. Like the risk (getting nk'd) isn't really worth the reward imo (towncred from trying to divert the nk off the fairly obvious doc)
2 - I think that scum!gif would probably hop on the beef wagon at some point instead of townreading him after their spat. LIke it would be easy to vote him for beef's bad lolcase on GIF, but he didn't.
3 - I still think it's weird that he forgot we wanted to kill redmafia day3, but like, bluemafia is probably fairly likely to be cognizant of the fact that town wants to kill red. (ie I thought at the time it might be because he was red, but that isn't relevant anymore and forgetting that we wanted to finish off red after one already died isn't exactly a bluescum tell; if anything it might be a not-blue-scum tell).
4 - bluescum staying off the alisae wagon day3 because 'he doesn't think alisae is redscum' is just really weird. Like day3 bluescum!gif is voting his bluescum partner while staying off redscum alisae's *while scumreading them* because he doesn't think that alisae is *redscum*.

Let's go look at GiF's list of reasons why he is obv-town as posted in 924

1. I softed a doc claim day-flipping-1 to draw nightkill for ????
2. I didn't join the beef wagon Day 2, which I could've easily and still get away with it, for ???
3. Draw aggro like crazy during first 1.5 days, for ????
3. I went for spring over Alisae, bussing my partner with other scum alive for ????
4. I killed Ico, whom I could've kept for lylo ambiguity, for ???

I accept that Skitter's #3 is new, but everything else is almost a direct copy of GiF's previously stated reasons for being obv town. Also, GiF repeated 3 twice ^_~

To me her ISO on Sky/GiF reads as 'Sky isn't going to vote GiF, so I need to pursuade GiF to vote Sky' so she started our reads with the presumption that I am scum.

Even so, her read on me largely revolves around my uncertainty day 3 re Alisae/Spring and completely ignores that the reason I was favoring an Alisae lynch was because I had Icon/Alisae/GiF as the highest probability of being redscum. The other element she highlighted was my involvement in Beefster's mislynch; a factor I challenged in 952 which precipitated Skitter's sudden fuck it and vote.

Actually that post bears highlighting because I think it's super relevant now that I know Skitter is scum:
952

Skitter had a problem with me voting for Beefster, after Beefster had sheeped my case/vote against Skitter. But she didn't raise it at the time and she also didn't raise it until this point in the game.
Town!Skitter should have no issues with a player attacking somebody for voting her because town!Skitter would know that Beefster's vote against her was wrong.

Revisiting the sequence of events:
Skitter raises Sky mentioning Kop in 459 as 'weird' and does nothing with it. GiF also raised it as 'interesting' but left it at that.
Skitter pushed it further and dragged up all kinds of posts which are now irrelevant because red is dead but did ultimately result in me putting her in my suspicious books, as highlighted by 537 and backed up by a small case/vote in 543. At that time I'm voting her because:

I can't abide by you voting for Beefster yet criticising the wagon and not really pushing any other angle (other than my Kop post I guess). This doesn't look like the town Skitter I know.

It does look like scum trying to rake up anything that sticks, though.

Right after this (about an hour passed), Beefster votes Skitter with 'I can dig this' and Skitter responds to Beefster only in 546 asking Beefster to explain their vote. I also asked Beefster to explain his vote in 550 and Beefster responds in 551 with:

I'm sheeping the guy who voted skitter right before me (I forget who) because skitter had the worst reason to be on my wagon.

Skitter then questions

my position

but not

my vote

in 553:

Since you didn't really respond to my last post, can you explain:

a) Why you have a problem with me voting Beef even though I'm criticizing the wagon. One of the major reasons I'm scumreading him - and therefore voting him - is because of how he interacted with it. Specifically because he let GIF talk him into voting pretty easily, like without really evaluating it for himself, but then blamed him for it today. Like yesterday he was happy to go along with whatever was being pushed (this is one of those complacency votes I was talking about before) but today he tried to duck responsibility for being on a townflip by blaming GIF.

Why can't you 'abide' my Beef vote exactly? Like I don't really get why you're treating 'voting Beef' and 'criticizing the wagon and not really pushing any other angle' as being like contradictory or mutually exclusive notions.

b) why you don't like my criticism of the wagon in general? Like I strongly believe that there's very likely scum on that wagon given that it was a townflip in multiball and someone on it already flipped green. Is this a premise you disagree with?

c) how you think this differs from my towngame?

These questions are not from a towny perspective of "Hey Sky your vote is wrong", they are questions from the perspective of "What am I doing to make myself look scum/how can I fix that?"
She asked Beefster to explain their vote (fair)
She asked me to explain why I didn't like her Beefster vote
She asked me to explain why I didn't like her criticism of the RedFlavor day 1 mislynch
She asked me to explain what about

her game

is scummy, not to

explain my read

.

At no point did she disagree or question my vote against her. Shortly after I vote Beefster in 556 and Skitter unvotes Beefster because he's been put at L-1 and wants to wait for replacements. Then she goes V/LA and phase ends shortly after. She didn't bring up that she had issues with my vote until the last few hours.

So?

So.

Town Skitter would have looked at who I was voting and why, and realised "Oh crap, Sky was actually casing me!" and this would not have been a thing.

But Skitter made it a thing. It's her ONLY thing apart from attempting to tie in blue associations with Spring, which coincidentally is true.

I realise this is massive confirmation bias

because I know Skitter is scum

but to me this looks like the smoking gun.

I think I'm done. Yes, I'm done.

OK GiF. Over to you.

[Sky_Paladin]

It's her ONLY thing apart from attempting to tie in blue associations with Spring, which coincidentally is true.

Before this gets quoted as look Sky scum claimed, I mean that there appear to be associations that exist between Sky/Spring because of things that actually happened eg I did not hammer Spring when I could have, I did highlight that Spring was at L-1. Yes these things are true and did happen, and I am not disputing that. I am disputing her using this as a reason that I'm scum as an argument, because WIFOM.

[Sky_Paladin]

GG everyone I am still on holiday

Skitter everything out of my mouth was a goddamn dirty lie and I’m so sorry X____X

[Sky_Paladin]

Ah, finally home again!

So let's see. First of all, thanks everybody for the game, and thanks Viomi for running it.

For the main part of this game I have been preparing to move house and that has impacted my availability significantly; I'm moving across two states and there's a lot more to organise than I thought. I nearly dropped out on day 1 because of my low attendance but was able to wall post enough to feel that I should stick at it.

I was paranoid Skitter was going to see I was scum right away because we have a very similiar playstyle and I thought she would know something was up right away; she actually picked it up early day 2 when she started questioning me about me mentioning Kop - from there I tried to sweep it under the carpet but got caught on a lie and if she'd pushed it then probably I would have been dead. However it seemed that the only people reading our walls were Skitter and myself so we had a hard time persuading anybody to do anything. I thought she was possibly scum with Icon and that was my actual push on day 2 until Beefster sheeped me and couldn't remember why he had, and I thought, ok, this guy really is flailing scum. When he flipped town I was ??? so fortunately Spring was able to join the game, read through and go 'scum 1, scum 2' and shot the pigeon. My reads were way off - I thought the scum team was Skitter and Icon by this stage.

So I approached trying to get this out of Skitter - while she was not explicitly scum reading Icon, she was also not explicitly town reading him either. Meanwhile Icon was getting very close to accurate reads (and was the first person to solve the game, I believe), and it was inevitable these two would eventually townblock each other, so I was doing everything in my power to avoid this from happening, specifically, I stopped responding to Skitter's points and was trying to highlight to other players (such as GiF/Sesq) to look at and get their buy in. Unfortunately nobody was reading our walls, and GiF even said TLDR so I felt resigned on day 3 to probably having to hammer Spring.

I didn't want to hammer Spring on day 3 because it would make me look 'not-blue', which would mean that town!Sky surviving to LYLO would not be viable and I would be dead for sure. However Spring was at L-1 and Sesq was afk; the only players who could switch to hammer Spring were Icon or Skitter, the two that I'd been trying to break up. Icon was actually my preferred lynch for the day but I couldn't see anyway to shift the wagons from where they were.

I wasn't sure if I should have waited it out. I think maybe I was the only one who realised the wagons were tied? But it had been nearly four days and I was unable to wait. I was about 6 hours from hammering Spring when she appeared to counter-hammer.

On the first LYLO, my strategy was to try to get Spring/GiF to fight, and I felt the best way to do that was to be friendly to Skitter (who seemed undecided between GiF/Sky) so she would go for GiF. This seemed to work a little bit but with Spring's continued absence it became inevitable she would be the lynch. I decided to keep my options open and give out soft town on basically everybody except Spring so I could plausibly vote there, and then GiF forced the issue by voting and it was out of my hands.

Unfortunately Icon was not fooled one iota. I'd like to hear if Icon is actually new, because if he is, that is a fantastic game you played and you have a lot of raw natural talent. Keep up the good work.

The night before I had posted my thoughts in the scum topic but the post was deleted and locked so from memory it basically went -

Icon is 100% going to vote me. So which of GiF or Skitter do I want to try to fight against Icon with? I'd probably want GiF who has the best town read on me.
So then I put on my pretend-to-be-scum-GiF shoes and thought, who would scum!GiF kill? Both Icon and Sky have given town reads, so he'd want to kill Skitter. Seems legit - except GiF is actually town, and if Skitter died, he would think there's no reason for scum!Icon to hit Skitter, and go for me. So I couldn't hit Skitter.
So I thought about hitting GiF. That would leave me with Icon and Skitter - Skitter was softing town on me in the previous day phase but I had not been able to shake her null position on Icon. I felt that I would have to manipulate Skitter in order to get her to vote Icon and I wasn't confident that I could do this as I'd spent most of the game misrepping her and breaking any reason she had to trust me this game.
In the end that made the obvious kill of Icon my only real choice and I would have to try to get GiF and Skitter to fight for my love or something like that. I tried to provoke an early vote from GiF against Skitter by saying that I thought Skitter was more likely to be scum, but this did not get him to vote and only served for Skitter to abandon her town on me, oops. And the rest played out in thread.

At one point I realised, again, that GiF was not reading walls and so I considered just doing short posts to get his attention.

I did not get to see Icon under any pressure at all. Both Skitter and GiF had to fight hard to stay in the game and Icon could mainly coast and had time to get reads/post from a position of leisure. I had the most engagement with Icon/Skitter so it's hard for me to see much else outside of this; they are both town MVP in my opinion - GiF missing out only because he missed the vote in LYLO. That said his reads were mainly on point and he was the first to throw the stone at Spring the day before.

Overall this was a difficult game for me mainly because of Skitter; she didn't let me get away with anything and the only reason she didn't win was because people wouldn't read her posts. I also found people wouldn't read my posts, with the exception of Sesq who would quote massively scummy things and then say 'but probably town'. I was so sad when they replaced out - I would have kept them to LYLO if they'd stayed in.

I think I will take this 'nobody reads walls' to a few games and try to lazybones and see how differently it plays.

~~~

Skitter, I would love to hydra sometime. Once I've finished moving house and my situation is all good I'll let you know I'm ready.