Death Curse

[MUSHSHAGANA]

WHOA. Uhh, my time has been buzzing away from me and I didn't get email reminders for this. Apologies, folks! I'll be active from now on. Going to be re-reading in a second.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Skipped the last page. I hit LLD's explanation of the perfect town play, and -- perfection. That was solid. I had to stop right there. LLD is basically confirmed town to me, I don't see a hole in that reasoning -- either the second person in the chain is scum (and we hit our 1-mark anyway so who gives a shit) or they aren't (and we get to work with them.) Yes I'm just restating the post I don't care it was that good.

In the first 13 pages I read, I came to the conclusion that Noraa is town but doomed and Tayl0r and LLD are town. LLD is, as far as I'm concerned, locktown until and unless I see undeniable, game-long associatives to the contrary. (FWIW, I see no associatives with any slot at all here unless that was the bravest and dumbest early game bus you ever did see on the back of probably the easiest player to explain as a mis-elim waiting to happen in history, so I'm going to go out on a limb and stretch real hard while saying that from my POV LLD is conftown and leave it at that.)

Tayl0r is more wavery, but this is identical to past Tayl0r play I've seen first-hand, so I'm going to stick with it. Tayl0r is a good player, but three things I've learned: her posts look iffy, her reasoning is complete garbo and her reads are pretty wonky (not unspeakably bad, just.... yeah). I'm going to say I don't think it's possible to use Tayl0r sucking at explaining herself as a scumtell. I'm sure plenty will disagree, but I think this is solid based on past experience.

If I was someone else or if it was someone else, I might try to defend Noraa's slot. But I don't think I can: the arguments have been put forward and the stage is set, Noraa's going down, I see no hope for her. Always possible to see a last minute wagon swap, but Noraa's play is poo and dirt. Doomed. Sorry bud.

Since there's no power roles unless I missed some whopping big habanero in some hidden fine print somewhere, my reads are going to be more confident than usual when I'm whiffing a scum scent. (Past performance indicates I almost always mixup scum and PRs, far less so VTs and scum.)

So then! Since I'll be more confident, how about those scumreads?...

Shelly and I have tangled in the past and I never win that scum matchup. She's elusive and I trust myself to read her play approximately 0%. Her town play is nigh indistinguishable from her scum play unless there's a binary choice to be made. I agree with uh, someone not sure who who said that knocking her out early is a good idea. She's a dangerous player to have around as scum, and while her intuition is good for town (I highly trust a conftown shelly's judgement), I get the feeling from past banter in this thread that this is going to be the sort of game where it's easy to just point at someone and watch half the town put on the Big Boots and go a-stomping. Big risk having her around.

But this isn't really a read, per se, now is it? No, it's just "meta suggests this player is scary." That said, it's just the closest I have at the moment. Lots of very light townreads and total nulls for me currently. This back and forth with Bell and shelly, normally the sort of thing I can get a ton of reads out of, is meaningless to me -- largely because Bell's play is not the play I have an easy time reading. Short posts and me disagree with each other, it's like feeding rice to water fowl, it just turns into a mess. Functionally, I have no read on Bell and that makes me nervous enough that I might want to add pressure and see if I can get content my brain can work with. We'll see if I see someone I'd prefer more for that, or maybe if I even find scum. It's happened once before, after all.

Future's boundless, folks, and anything might happen.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yeah, you're bang on the money with about half of why I didn't explain. Other half is, well, most of it boils down to what Tayl0r said and VERY loose meta. That meta: Scum Noraa is immediately abrasive to my mind even when she's being nice, and I'm getting more of the OOC fluffy friendliness I would usually expect of her as town in this game.

I don't want to harp on points Tayl0r's already presented and everyone's dismissed, that helps nothing and annoys everyone. As for the meta, it's my brain-worms and no one else's that are going to get that ping, and I can't exactly stick everyone inside of my head and let them see what I see. That's a dead end, hopeless defense as well. Nothing I can do for Noraa here. She's doomed.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I haven't brought out my patented "explain nothing, act ultra mysterious and lean very hard on someone while loudly yelling 'I'm not scumreading you, I'm not scumreading you'" technique yet, Tayl0r. I need to pick someone I think it'll work on first, and that's a toughie in this game. I'm sure I'll throw all my towncred out in getting a dozen rich associative reads before 24 hours pass, don't you worry.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Bell, I'm gonna ask if you can give me a megapost. Just, something gigantic. Summary of the game, your collected case against Noraa, I don't actually care, the important part is having a large block of game relevant content to gaze into. I don't really have the energy to go through my usual stuff, maybe being nice will pay dividends. I get the feeling that your answer's going to be no, but I have to ask or I might just be wasting my time to get what I could have gotten easier this way.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For Shelly: They're weak townreads. Pooky gives me very little to work with but it's more or less town-colored. I could get that content from any random schmo in any role though, just slightly less from scum than from town. There's a few others like that: weakly readable as town, but very possibly scum playing a low-info game. I can't even keep them searated in my mind: the posts just flow together. Bell's a step below -that- degree of readability which is my nervousness with them.

I might actually have gotten a read out of Isis with that post, but I am unwilling to go so far as to put any actual weight on that yet. I'm hoping to see Isis put together a case on me rather than just "oh hey there's a bad reason you're townreading this person"* and "let's set my vote here", because I can easily respect a good case against me but I can't abide saying "YEAH SCUM" with absolutely no damn meat to it. (And while she didn't /call/ me scum, the implication was clear.)





* Note: I mentioned having looked for and found no associative play whatsoever so far except for play that makes a LLD+Noraa team unlikely regardless of other team members. That indicates to /me/ (if I was viewing my play from the outside) that I was looking for a reason to be wary of this slot and found none, but I have a brain made of potato chips and a half-mad gerbil. Perhaps no one else gives people who throw down good mech play and have no scumsigns they can see a townread, or perhaps town normally looks for possible scumteams without looking for possible scum at the same time. Seems foolish to me, but I'm dumb as hell out here.

PEDIT: this thread just keeps goddamn well rolling I can't format a thing in this nightmare without having another half page of stuff to read help

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Good lord all that time and I STILL MANAGED TO TYPO "SEPARATE".

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I have no clue why Bell got angry here or why Isis started just throwing things out.

I just do not see the causative chain here. Someone enlighten me. Point out why this is going on, because I'm just seeing a mess where a second ago I saw a game.

Pedit: I get Isis now (and if its a town player smashing an under-scumread slot, it's smart, but I can see this being a scum gambit just as easily). Still don't see what happened with Bell.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Mmm, I recognize that feeling, Bell. (Ask Noraa.) That was part of why I was asking you for a megapost rather than doing my usual thing, because as I said in response to Tayl0r calling me obvtown: my usual technique is to press someone EXTREMELY hard without calling them scum. All sorts of interesting things happen when you death tunnel someone to bejesus and nitpick their every single little post to death without ever hinting that they're scum. Interrogation tactics sort of stuff.

Could I convince you to muster the energy for a megapost in the next 24 hours? I don't want to push anyone too hard, but I don't have any other options for getting content I can parse from recalcitrant slots.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Bell, the problem is that most of the content of yours I see is stuff that seems more or less weak-meta and talking about the value or lack of value of leashing the votes. The few posts that give me a window into how you yourself think and react, your internal narrative, they're things about /you/, and not about the /game/.

Go ahead and scumread me for that. Don't really care: I can't see it. I do not play the same as a normal player, what I look for is not stuff normal people look for, because I am fundamentally incapable of spotting normal tells. So I can't parse your ISO in an AI way. And I /did/ just try.

I'm content to give you space for now because I am more concerned about a different player, but there''s really no getting around sorting you eventually, and it sucks that I don't have a /non-shitty/ way to do that. If you get any ideas, let me know, because I do want to make sure I'm not giving you a bunch of shit at a vulnerable time, but there /is/ a game and if it comes down to me with the final scroll passing and you're in the mix of possibles, I'll /need/ to know how to read you. That's not a demand for ideas, just a... you know, if inspiration strikes.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sidebar: when you have the chance, Isis, I'd still personally appreciate an /actual case/ against me.

I think I am starting to get enough information to sort you, but I need more than n of 1 to work with.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Give me a case on the version of me you did scumread then. I'd like to see what you were seeing beyond "you have a single bad reason to townread a person", and I have a theory I'd like to test that that easily satisfies.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmmm. I give you the Tayl0r point, Isis. It's really just because in the game I played with her I spent almost the /entire game/ death-tunnelling her before I replaced out, and I got intimately familiar with her playstyle. Unfortunately, her playstyle could be equally at home in either alignment; fortunately, I don't see any changes from previous-Tayl0r that make me think I need to be concerned. There's a mismatch but its one of those "you had to be there" sorta things, I'd bet a box of Cheez-Its Noraa and Tayl0r can see how I end up typing that out that way.

I don't give you the Shelly part. I got fooled one hundred percent in the scum game she played against me: the only time I even sniffed something amiss was near the very end, but I was hoping the other conftown in the game was going to make an argument in favor of a scum-Shelly so I could reframe my view of her, but instead we both were fooled. I still cannot see how she was scum in her earlier play that game, there is no tell I can spot, I'm just staring in confusion. Even pretending I can read that slot is a mistake. I am worthless with Shelly, absolutely, positively worthless. I thought I could read her and I was so wrong that even with full knowledge and rereading, only the very endgame pings me /at all/. Long story short: I'm not curious because I'm terrified. Honestly, you should be too.

But that's just explaining stuff that you've said you aren't sure matters anymore.

Here's a question for you: how'd you end up with me as the best scumread that isn't Hopkirk there for a little bit? Like, I don't see how something this slim, this weak, gets me preference over everyone else you shaded. Could say it was pressure, but you put no strength behind it at all, so I'm going to dismiss that option: claiming it would be a cop-out and wouldn't make sense.

What else? Could say it was a gambit to draw reads out of other players. Could say it was legitimate, and you thought I was the second most likely scum on the board.

The post itself suggests that last one. Care to explain how I ended up there?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If you want something sigworthy, shelly, I would hold off. That stuff just isn't great, I can break out my creative writing skills and give you something that will shine if you /really/ want to sig it. (I normally don't do that without explicit request though, because it can come across as pointlessly rude rather than hilariously over the top when it's unexpected.)

If you just think it's neat, then go nuts.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I genuinely think Noraa is hilariously doomed town. This was really kind of like, uhh, shit I don't know. Dropping a compact SUV on a kitten? It's just an overwhelmingly anti-Noraa game in a lot of ways, because I'm seeing an eager and experienced town out for blood and Noraa just sort of plays Mafia the way I browse for groceries. This matchup always ends in Noraa going down. There is no survival possible for Noraa in this player list, regardless of alignment.

My town read is based on stuff I can't /really/ convince anyone with, so why am I bothering to bring it up again?

Honestly, I just sort of started typing and then I imagined Noraa as an unspeakably adorable cartoon cat staring up with big watery eyes at a cartoon anvil the size of a small house falling towards her with the words "Death Curse Mafia Game" slapped on the side in big red block letters and I knew I had to share with the class.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For my part, I'm building a picture around Isis. Theories haven't been panning out in either direction, a lot of "dead neutral and I still have to accept it" outcomes. But I have a box of associatives to stare at now, so I should be able to sit back and watch the thread to get reads there more or less passively.



For now, I want content from our lurkers. UNOwen is giving me nothing and giving the thread nothing. Zdenek is low-information and has mostly been engaging with mechanics. Adorable, to be fair, is busy, but I'd really like to see engaging with multiple points in the thread and not just a single question per, uh, 8 hour period. VaultDweller just plain doesn't initiate engagement, which makes their 7 posts a barren desert devoid of all association. Lapsa has no questions to ask and no input to offer aside from saying the game sucks because Isis got away with the scum-claim -- which, I mean, fair... but useless for sorting them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, except temporally flipped. Sound good?



Isis has little contribution to actually advancing the game outside of the most gross and graceless mechanical methods of advancement possible (e.g. beginning the scroll-pass process by brute force). Reads are meatless, and by her own admission the order of who's scummiest owes more to "looks like scum if you squint at a snapshot and ignore everything that might be out of frame" than any potential pattern of behavior. (Noraa is an exception there but we all know how I feel on Noraa.)

The gross and graceless advancement attempt was either a galaxy brain gambit one way or a galaxy brain gambit the other way, and no matter which direction you look at it was both risky and dumb. Given that LLD was the target (which I thought was the case the moment she mentioned hitting an otherwise untouchable slot) I immediately figured that this was going to be accepted and we'd see the funniest red flip ever ever ever in order to knock out a strong town leader early on. (Namely, immediately my brain jumped to scum gambit for functional immunity since why would scum ever play that stupid.)

Isis's ability to tilt LLD and refusal to back up and create space when LLD tried to disengage and reframe, just hinting that the scumometer was ticking down while still needling, that also struck me as a bit on the scummy side.

Pause here, step back. Flipside: I know absolutely nothing about Isis.

I have never played a game with Isis in it.

Multiple other players here are apparently familiar with Isis, and none of them are calling this an Isis scum move. Including tilty LLD.

Either this whole thing is scum theater with Isis, LLD and Pooky all looking red, which would be a hilariously unlikely coincidence... or Isis isn't as scummy as my initial reaction would paint her. My knowledge gap can't be filled here, I'm forced to throw my hands up and say "it's a null I guess".

What've you got for me?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

On a quick reread, I could also see a world where Isis and Pooky are red and LLD is green here. Gambit's still dumb as hell, but Pooky takes a LOT of the sting out of the risk and there's an interesting progression I see in the posts where it goes from "Calm Down LLD" as the primary goal to "Casting Doubt on Isis-as-Scum Possibilities", maintaining rapid contact and identical writing tone throughout. Interesting that Isis keeps needling throughout, but that mostly helps sell the illusion being offered if it's a Pooky+Isis team.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

In theory yeah. Not so much in context, check the progression again. It starts off as de-escalation, which is very good. And it casts doubt on a couple Isis-as-scum possibilities immediately following that, without any change in tone -- it looks like attempt to de-escalate OOG bleeding into the game itself at that point, not a blatant "not scum here!!!"

Main goal of that is getting the town leader off their back. If they keep LLD around, push for LLD town, and LLD eventually goes down to town intervention, they sit pretty off that green flip and in the meantime they avoid the searchlight of the town centering them for too long. Gambit functionally clears Isis as "too scummy to be scum", Pooky has plausible deniability and LLD's townread, everyone wins (well, except town).

Its not a likely world, just a /possible/ one. Most likely to me is Isis scum or I don't know how to read her.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Zdenek's posts so far have been a disappointment. I agree with Bell that this last one is fence-sitty, but more than that -- it's about as game advancing as a fart in a coffee shop. There is no substance:

-A request that is too vague to fulfill.
-The most obvious statement in the world. I think I saw like one person even float a Tayl0r-Noraa team here, and that got shut down. If you've seen Tayl0r's other games, she's prone to defending no-hopers, bad townies and scum as town anyway.
-The closest thing to substance, buried by not having a question mark on the important part (easy to overlook) and a comparatively massive sidebar into something that didn't even happen in the game and has all the bearing of beached squid in Iceland on Noraa's fate.
-Vague request of the most gnomic player in the game, which could be touching on 3 different posts I saw, none of which help find scum or town and which will take at least 24 hours to progress to the point that everyone can see that I was right.
-A reads list consisting of the easiest slot to bully, the lurkiest lurker we have, and someone I think is another easy miselimination if town.

Zdenek, have you considered that asking game advancing questions might be better for the town? Or being more specific if you absolutely have to ask questions that don't help sort slots? Maybe taking any kind of strong stand at all? (Noraa doesn't count, since there is literally no risk and you can sit back and let everyone else make your arguments for you.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

UNOwen is here! Quick, get 'em!

UNOwen, I would like your opinions. All of them (that are relevant to the game). I would like them soon, because right now your slot is /content free/. Zero calories. No fat, sugar, artificial flavors, natural flavors. 100% empty.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Primarily because I have played all of like what, 3 games since I joined a second time? (Lost my original account, no idea what the login info is and cannot access the email address I signed up with, and that account was many, many, many years ago.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

To get back to you, UNOwen, I think you could opine on /literally any slot except the universal punching bag/? I mean, you are taking /no stands/ here. I don't even expect your vote to move, I expect you to have anything at all to talk about with this 20 player game OTHER than the player that's been talked about to death.

Your slot is content free. Content. Free. You have taken no stand worth remarking on, you have chimed on on zero non-Noraa events of any sort, you have posted no reads that aren't the single easiest elimination/miselimination possible in this entire game. UNOwen, if I didn't know better I'd say you weren't playing this game at all, and that you're on the player list by mistake and using the opportunity to dunk on Noraa. /That isn't a compliment./

[MUSHSHAGANA]

To try and get posts out I have resorted to not even skimming stuff posted while I'm posting myself. I can now amend the above to the past tense.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I need to sleep, so I'm heading out. Tomorrow will be busy, I'll be active but only inconsistently so. I recommend anyone who has questions for me notepads them and bombards me when they see me post, cause I'm going to be power-skimming when I have time given how fast this thread rolls.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Starting this post before I finish catching up to say /Tayl0r/ what is /up/ this LLD play is like exactly parallel to my town play and I didn't throw the game, I nailed scum Noraa dead on the money! This isn't anti town play from LLD, this is play with subtlety AND a plan (which I DID NOT HAVE in our game). Step back, reframe the gamestate /yourself/ Tayl0r. I know you defend no-hopers, but this is the bad move for you and for town. Buddy c'mon.

(And as for generating reads, Tayl0r -- are you paying attention to how people react to this LLD dynamic, or are you ONLY looking at LLD? If you're only looking at LLD, you're gonna get nothing. Watch the other players too! There's material coming out of LLD's play!)

As for the rest of you -- this is highly Tayl0r-town play. Also, I'm going to just say Pooky's scum, keeps doing this nudging-people-onto-town-wagons thing without actually seeming to push hard. Also deflected from an Isis-scum world too easily and tried to make it seem natural. I like an Isis+Pooky+others (idk yet give me some time) team.

Now!

Coming back to Hopkirk: Hopkirk is entertaining but the play is garbage. Nothing meaningful coming out of it, obfuscatory posting style, half-focused on irrelevant OOG bullshit. I would not be sad to see this slot go down. I'm all for a Hopkirk wagon. I think Noraa on third is a bad idea, but Noraa is doomed ANYWAY and I am willing to risk that on Hopkirk being scum.

I also agree that Zdenek has all the town-posting of a goblin giggling about stealing toys from children. I would love to see Hopkirk and Zdenek go down today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Because I think Noraa's town. This is one of those things I've already talked about and I can't sway anyone's opinions on by the very nature of my reasons. You can't get inside my head and experience the same base-level reactions to her posting that I do. I have strong town feelings about Noraa, but Noraa's play is absolutely garbo here and all the good reasons to give it a pass were presented by Tayl0r and dismissed by everyone else. There's no point in me even explaining, but I'm doing it again so you can see that it's pointless and not think too hard about it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Noraa, I centered the entire town on my tunnels MULTIPLE times, particularly on Day 1. I forced everyone to react to what I was doing regularly. This is identical to my style, LLD is just corralling more players, which makes sense with 20 players. I would do the same thing -- I'd want to lock up 4-6 players to silence or polarized opinions so I could focus on content from the rest of them, then swap half of my locked players when I swapped focus so I could generate AI content for the whole lobby without total chaos.

Pay attention to LLD as the target pivots to Hopkirk, I've already noticed release of two players from the lock and addition of one. (Betting on more stuff from LLD, I'm not ready to put it out but I'll put a couple things down so I can say "haha called it": "from 1 to 2", and "sign flip".)



PEDIT: Noraa, you're beyond help. It's not even /just/ your fault. Yeah, your play this game is trash, but lots of townies have bad games and survive -- witness my second game with Shelly, where I threw away my towncred because I didn't understand the setup and perfect game strategy and ended up throwing the game. The problem is town is out for blood and your play is getting worse, not improving. There's no helping you here. I joined, read through, and IMMEDIATELY said "Noraa's doomed." I had genuinely wanted to help but I might as well ask the mod if we can all have quadruple votes for the chaos of it all. I'd have better success for sure.

I'm sorry.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Nah, UNOwen, it improves town's chances. The values LLD put out are accurate: we kill scum once, twice, or not at all. There's only one possible world where we hit scum twice and only one possible world where we hit scum none. If we hit one scum every time we win before game over. So if we treat the middle player as conftown and work with them, there is no downside: we get to shape the final kill (because we hit town, maximizing chances of a hit on the third, which maximizes chances of hitting two scum if we were lucky with the first scroll-recipient) or we already hit scum (because only scum has no reason to work with us). The mechanics argument is good for improving best outcomes too, don't be too hard on it.

As a result, I'm happy with just hitting one very scummy player (Hopkirk) right now, and letting my no-hope townread go since she's dead no matter what I do. That'd be, if my reads are worth a damned thing, a scum-kill value of 1, which means we're on track to win still.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No paranoia here: we just think the same. I am /very hard/ to pocket, I'm as likely to attack my townreads as my scumreads and I go hard when I pick my target, so I'm not worried about anyone who even brings up the possibility I might get paranoid of them. Only world where you aren't town is the world where you, Pooky, Isis and maybe even Bell are ALL in the scumteam (there are no other meaningful associatives at all with you, and all of those are OOG or tilting with a side of stupidly risky scum theater involved in this world I'm bringing up), which is so absurdly unlikely when I townread you this hard that I'm willing to dismiss it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Adorable, I have this feeling you won't respond, but I'm going to lean on you anyway to give us a readslist and make a case on your strongest non-Noraa scumread.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For now, I want content from our lurkers.

UNOwen is giving me nothing and giving the thread nothing.

Zdenek is low-information and has mostly been engaging with mechanics.

Adorable, to be fair, is busy, but I'd really like to see engaging with multiple points in the thread and not just a single question per, uh, 8 hour period. VaultDweller just plain doesn't initiate engagement, which makes their 7 posts a barren desert devoid of all association. Lapsa has no questions to ask and no input to offer aside from saying the game sucks because Isis got away with the scum-claim -- which, I mean, fair... but useless for sorting them.

And while I'm thinking of Adorable? A reminder! (Zdenek is now excused on account of becoming the scummiest player on the board from where I'm standing. UNOwen has stepped up content, so I'll be able to read them soon.)

Point to note: I don't quote if I can help it. You might have noticed. This is me getting lazy and overwhelmed in a very active game.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I love how I give up on my usual play because of the post pace and the thread /stops dead/ immediately.

Good afternoon Bell.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I could absolutely see town Noraa smashing LLD out of spite. I think it's less likely than the other option, but its fully within Noraa's playstyle and personality. I don't think it matters at that point, you treat Noraa as if Noraa's scum (e.g. try to work with her but expect nothing) if she's going down anyway. Personally I'd prefer to hit someone else on the third slot, and put Noraa as first to go down, but I cannot convince anyone about this, and I'd rather be able to agree on a scrollbearer for day 1 and work with associatives on the flips rather than champion a hopeless case and derail town while we're working on finding possible other targets and arranging our town-bloc.

Otherwise, MURDERCAT's post I agree with. Going down in a scroll-passing competition is fun as hell, and the nature of voting in this setup means a doomed target can still help the town out. Hell, if I read the rules right we can stretch days out to half again their original length, and give all our targets a ton of time to work with us. There's no need to be as cautious as in a normal setup early in the game, especially not on Day 1 where we have no hard facts that aren't vote placement and setup details.



PEDIT: Noraa, seriously, I'm not going to champion saving you. That drags me down and /no one is going to agree/. It's just throwing out towncred I need to be able to spend when I begin my patented pushes, and achieves nothing else. Absolutely not. It's TvT and it sucks but the read's all based on stuff everyone already dismissed and the way your posts ping my brain which is impossible to share, it's just a gut read based on brainworms. Cannot help you. Look elsewhere.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going to be honest: I bet Noraa probably skimmed the setup at some point along the line and totally forgot not just the info in it but that she had read it. Not because I think that's typical of Noraa, but because I literally did that exact thing and when I spotted Noraa's "townslip" post I had to go "wait a second /do/ we know the number of scum?" People, as in humans, all humans, are idiots by nature and bombarded with information. Things end up misplaced.

Consider: The outrage of an honest mistake, followed by an even dumber mistake, followed by maybe secretly realizing after the fact that you did in fact read it and your brain just betrayed you for 6 hours and now you're locked into actually lying because telling the truth legitimately looks even worse at this point...

I have /lived/ this. And Noraa's personality seems prone to that sort of dumb mistake, when it happens, spiraling out of all proportion.

This is all personal anecdotes and projection, so it's garbage and if it changes your mind you should feel bad, but it's where I'm coming from on the "townslip" side of things.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Nothing too important, but watch the pronouns for me, folks.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If I thought I had the most distant hope of actually making a good argument in favor of saving her, I'd prefer to give her the rest of this dayphase effectively immunized -- barring Isis-outburst-tier bad play, of course. But since we can basically guarantee that Noraa is doomed, I just want to make sure we hit some other scum slot. Worst case scenario is hitting all town. Let's Not Do That.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm not willing to give Bell a town pass on emotion yet, because I'm a big soft dipshit and claiming emotional vulnerability will get you an instant pass from me right up to the point of being game throwing.

My reads thus far are mooostly based on play and recognition of coherent town reasoning (or lack thereof). Noraa's the odd one out.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't scumread Bell either, to be fair. I have absolutely no reads on them, I can't pull thought processes or cause and effect out of that ISO.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For now, I want content from our lurkers.

UNOwen is giving me nothing and giving the thread nothing.

Zdenek is low-information and has mostly been engaging with mechanics.

Adorable, to be fair, is busy, but I'd really like to see engaging with multiple points in the thread and not just a single question per, uh, 8 hour period. VaultDweller just plain doesn't initiate engagement, which makes their 7 posts a barren desert devoid of all association. Lapsa has no questions to ask and no input to offer aside from saying the game sucks because Isis got away with the scum-claim -- which, I mean, fair... but useless for sorting them.

And while I'm thinking of Adorable? A reminder! (Zdenek is now excused on account of becoming the scummiest player on the board from where I'm standing. UNOwen has stepped up content, so I'll be able to read them soon.)

Point to note: I don't quote if I can help it. You might have noticed. This is me getting lazy and overwhelmed in a very active game.

See above: I have been pressing for Lapsa content, Bell. Lapsa's not contributing anything and I just don't like that.



With regards to your consideration of who is playing a definable scum game here... If we use your definition, I think you can look at Theta, Pooky, Hopkirk, and our lurkers. Theta refuses to rock the boat much, in general. I think Theta's the best by far of this bunch, willing to engage directly and proactively, and I see town play reflected. Seems like possibly unable to engage with the thread as much as they /want/ to, and unwilling to commit for lack of information to inform a push.

Pooky just keeps doing this thing I don't like that is hard to describe as anything but the devil on the shoulder, you know. "Go on, do it" sort of vibes.

Hopkirk has taken no stances of note, gets maddeningly turned around and stuck on mechanics, is using an obfuscatory posting style, and is dodging any attempt to corner them into producing content.

The lurkers all suck. Zdenek is definitely playing a similar game to Hopkirk's, but replace obfuscatory with distracting -- very caught up in OOG bullshit. Lapsa is doing nothing, has contributed nothing, and calls /us/ boring... Be the change you wanna see in the Mafia Thread, buddy, you know? VaultDweller is an unreadable, avoidant wasteland of an ISO. Gloria has literally no game relevant content at all. Adorable has an /excuse/ and still manages to underperform my lowered expectations. At least UNOwen started producing meaningful content and picking up post count... with some more posts from UNOwen I might be able to sort that slot.



PEDIT: Tayl0r, I normally don't use meta at all -- as you should know.

But it's the only way I can make sense of you or Noraa, your personalities are terrible for my brain if I treat you as tabula rasa. You're just stuck with this garbage townread of mine now, sorry.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Watching this from the outside is fascinating. It is literally exactly like I described: Pooky is the little voice in your ear, whispering that you should do it, go on, no one will mind, just, just do it, go, do it right now. There's just this chain of rationalizations ... Everyone else has settled with regards to Noraa, if someone disagrees they shrug and drop it. The conclusion is foregone, there is no point trying to get converts for either side now. But Pooky is working on Bell still, toiling away, providing rationalizations without providing arguments to prop them up.

I'm sure it's pointless, but I'd like to have LLD revisit her, Bell and Pooky's combined ISO and spot how it looks. It's alarming, really.

Oh, I guess all of this means I'm townreading Bell for the time being. Thanks for tightening up my townbloc, red team!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh no, Shelly's doing it. Am I going to finally catch Shelly being scum? Or is there something I've missed somehow?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Wanting to flip Noraa isn't a scumtell. But there's very few people are making anything of that desire left, because there is no way Noraa doesn't get cursed today. Noraa is inevitably and inescapably doomed.

...But here you are, with Pooky, treating it as if it's vitally important to hit Noraa right now or you might not have enough people somehow or something I don't know it's ridiculous. It'd be different if you were on Bell's side, but you're getting what you want regardless here. If nothing changes Noraa still goes down. /Bell/ has reason to try and play the proselytizer, but /you/ don't, and /Pooky/ doesn't. So what gives? Why are exactly two people acting as if the foregone conclusion is in danger?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That isn't what I saw happening. I saw Bell mention he changed his mind on Noraa. Pooky immediately starts telling Bell the wonders of Curse-Noraa-Now-ology, and halfway through you jump in with both feet to contribute.

Pooky was not trying to sort Bell. Pooky was evangelizing. The timing and wording you use indicate the same -- you didn't /ask questions/, you /made statements/. Arguably your request for explanation could be taken at face value, but given the target has absolutely flatly refused to megapost, the broad scope of the request, and you had left NO room for your mind to change at all, I think anyone would be safe in dismissing that as exaggerated, sarcastic "yeah sure let's see you change my mind" sort of wording.

I'm not a complete idiot, Shelly.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I said for your mind to change, not in your mind to change. One is rhetorical, the other is psychological, and rhetorically your wording said "don't argue with me, there's no point, you can't convince me of anything here."

Also, I haven't called you scum yet. Tricky things, those words. I'll give you a cookie if you can find an example of me definitely calling you scum here, mostly I promise this because it doesn't exist, I checked.

I am concerned by your play, Shelly, because you say you're sorting but you act like you're evangelizing, and the two aren't compatible. I want you to explain how one and the other connect. I believe you can explain that for me quite easily, presuming there is a connection at all.


PEDIT: First one ends with flat denial. As stated: "rhetorically your wording said "don't argue with me, there's no point, you can't convince me of anything here.""

Second, okay fair I give you this, sure whatever.

Third is ugly. Slim reasoning for calling something a scumtell and it's more baldfaced assertion than anything useful for getting reads from.

Fourth, you actually ask a question and your posting style changes. You're talking around the subject and centering Bell, the person you're supposedly reading finally -- after I called you out. Hmm, timing's a funny thing, ain't it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The above post is crap and I rescind it. Never post on hypoglycemia, kids.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That's just rude. Tell me your reasoning to scumread Pooky as penance.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Can I get some more insight on point 3? What sort of stuff should I be looking out for?

For my part, one point against Pooky being town is that Pooky is always "rhetorically" on the attack. Pooky is never explaining themselves or being approached by another player, and they deflect or ignore all of my criticism in a way that feels forced. I'm not sure how much of that is Pooky play and how much of that is this player list and how much of that is scum play, you're probably the only window into this for me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm not bothering to recap thoughts on the utter chaos that happened in my absence. If I'm skipping questions, get to me before 12AM CST.

I'll tell you my reads are mostly the same, except I'm willing to stuff Hopkirk into null. (I don't like the content, but the readable posts help. I'll need more time to determine my thoughts on what the content says for Hopkirk's alignment.)

I do like Titus. The aggression mixed into the curiosity is pinging me as town -- it reminds me of my high pressure pushes.

I'll also say that I think Pooky is super scummy and while I would love to save Tayl0r or doomed Noraa from the curse, Pooky is a great trade because they've been dodging deep inspection because of the town leader (who I think has been pocketed) running interference all game long. Noraa is doomed regardless, and Tayl0r's going to be hard to fit into everyone's townbloc and could create issues with town coalescence as a result, so we get game progression and easier reads for the folks who aren't getting what I'm getting from Tayl0r and Noraa.

Here's a funny little thing about Pooky: we've discussed the dangers of leashing scroll-passes, we decided that a Noraa leash was an acceptable compromise (well, not for me but I agree with the logic of the argument if I was scumreading Noraa), and then Pooky proposes a fully locked down chain of scroll-passing. I'm not sure if this is more likely to come from town who is not paying much attention to what they're doing, or more likely to be gambiting scum to retain their safe position, but I don't like it either way. (Another possibility is that it's scum playing a double layered gambit, presuming that Tayl0r has a spicier, townier target she'll take first if she does accept the scroll. See the Tayl0r vs LLD thing.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Pooky, there's so much happening that when I wake up to, just eyeballing it here but it looks like 17 new pages, I cannot keep track. Repost your question, I'll answer it, but I don't want to dig through that godawful slog again for it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, that?

I thought I covered that. I hadn't eaten all day, I got back to the computer after finally eating and I just was like "What the fuck was I doing". Hypoglycemia brain. My comments on the whole Bell/Pooky+Shelly area are garbage and poo and dirt and should be set on fire. I should be kicked in the head for it but they haven't invented Boots over IP yet.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm waiting to see what Tayl0r has to say on the matter first. If she accepts, I'd take that to see you flip.

Otherwise, I'll keep doing what I'm doing: building up a map of the gamestate and planning targets to push.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

wait, what

I was rereading, just got to the end, and Lapsa ... self-votes for no reason. And there's a chance its a reply to Toogaloo.

Uh. Well.

So, uh, had a Day today, still ongoing, but I am making some time to post real quick. I already disliked Lapsa's play, but now I feel like Lapsa is possibly game-throwing town? Consider their ISO. Game is boring, blah blah.

In other EXCITING NEWS, my reread has changed a bit of my reads list.

I'm now iffier on Noraa. She came back bright and I thought she might have a chance ... then back on the defensive. Yes, other players helped put her there but she didn't even struggle to ignore them the way I would expect of her personality -- straight from an attempt at a triumphant comeback to getting down in the mud again. This shift is more significant than I make it sound -- the break in personality puts her at weakly scum for me now.

Hopkirk is heading back towards scum -- there's too many posts that aren't remotely serious, and too many posts with inconsistent seriousness. The content seems intentionally obfuscated, but what I've seen I don't really like. Zdenek is town in what world? Hmmmm. Interesting to see the Hopkirk-Pooky-Tayl0r dust-up trio too, because I have scum on both Hopkirk and Pooky. The thing that pinged me is how intense Hopkirk got, the jokes forgotten, and yet at the end Pooky's still fairly high on the town list. Like, I get it, I've done similar things -- but it smells like scum theater when you take into account that Hopkirk has jokes on full blast everywhere else.

UNEXPECTED TWIST: Liking Shelly for scum. Someone (eyeballs sort of ricocheted off of who but it stuck with me) pointed out that shelly tunnels as scum, and I thought back to Shelly's town game. Yeah, she was only in it with me for one day, okay, sure, but she had TARGET LOCKED the entire day and it was a lot softer than the aggression she's showing here. I'm making this a VERY tentative read because that game was a while ago, I suck at reading shelly, and she has always struck me as an adaptive player. It very well could be the intensity of this player list... But I can't rule it being a good read out.

Murdercat is slightly towny. I'm going to call it a gutread even though it isn't, I just forgot the points I disliked. I'll grab them in a bit.

Same with Fidget but in reverse, I don't like Fidget's slot right now but I can't remember what pinged me. I guess I could also have them mixed up, this thread is a monster.

Finally: Don't know what to think of Toogaloo other than agreeing that this game is marching at too fast a pace for me to contribute as much as I want. Wanted to announce that mostly because I'm mad I can't read that slot -- can I get someone to explain a read on them? Town or scum, don't care, I just want points to fix my brain on and reread the ISO with, it's just sort of washing over me without anything to really grab onto right now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gloria:

I think Noraa stuck her foot in it so deeply there's no hope of saving her. That's actually true regardless of alignment at this point. But you should also take note of how eager they are to redirect the curse to other targets, with the possible exception of Shelly. Pooky offering a trade for Noraa and Tayl0r could be a way to take out someone else (which, admittedly, Hopkirk did bring up) and get Noraa a second lease on life, for instance.

In more detail: Hopkirk opens the possibility of a different target from Noraa for the third place without pushing for it, Pooky pushes back on the idea but treats it like a reasonable argument. If you treat those slots as scum then there's a picture being painted of trying to create room to unbus Noraa without looking like that's what they're doing and without losing towncred by jumping off wagon when Noraa flips red.

I think Shelly's treating this more like a townie of her caliber and style would (probing at others but staying committed to Noraa), which is another reason my scumread is so, so very weak on her... it's based on loose, possibly outdated meta that someone else mentioned, by no means a slam-dunk. I just have no way to grasp her play at the best of times otherwise and this keeps me from feeling powerless.

As I've said before: the above Pooky-Hopkirk story is not the most likely narrative, but it's a possible one and the feeling I get is Unwholesome enough over there to make me say "sure, let's go with this". There are other possibilities that lend themselves to a scum interpretation too, and the key here for me is Hopkirk dropping the jokes: this is stuff meant for an /audience/, not for a /target/.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't remember that being you, but admittedly my memory is positively ass at the best of times. I'll double check, that was only the first couple pages.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yes indeed. Memory fails me again.

That admittedly diminishes the chances of both Pooky and Noraa being scum to damn near nothing (scum team would need absurd confidence or to be riddled with morons), because a quick skim doesn't show Pooky even HINTING at hitting the brakes until after LLD calls time. Call it flip dependent -- but I'm MUCH more likely to call Noraa town than Pooky here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Mush,
1) why is pooky scum(you weren't that clear especially with all the remembering wrong stuff
2) if pooky is scum, who would he hand the scroll too?

for number 2, keep in mind that if pooky is scum, I'm basically conftown cuz scum never pushes partners that hard day 1. This means that scum!Pooky knows LLD is tunneling me hard which is exactly why I dont think scum!Pooky ever hands the scroll to LLD. Cuz as long as LLD is alive, LLD is gonna push me and that is one more free lim for the scums.

Quoting from laziness. Today was huge.

Pooky's one half gut read, one half noticing patterns of behavior.

Pooky takes pressure-free scumreads and reacts terribly to them... I tend to find I have to press town players to get reactions from them usually, I can stand off to one side and sort of talk around Pooky and get a guaranteed burst of anger, usually without any attempts to correct. When Pooky DOES correct me, they're noticeably /even more/ angry. General feeling is suggesting to me that Pooky's scum that doesn't like being scumread for "wrong" reasons. Similar to how I felt when you got angry about my scumread in our prior game -- like, this is way more anger than this statement and amount of investment and pressure deserves. When they can correct me, they do it with malice, like they're getting back for all the times they couldn't. This is sort of gutready, but its a definite pattern I'm noticing.

Pooky also does, as I said before, this "whispering in the ear" thing. Doing it to Bell was not necessarily the case though I believe an element of that remains. LLD is the big one, of course. But there's something I've noticed -- since my mistake with reading the Pooky+Bell interaction as that, Pooky hasn't done any intense 1-on-1 back and forth with anyone whereas before that it was the bulk of their ISO. That's not AI per se, but I don't know why a townie who plays that way stops when I press that button, which I feel tips it over into AI. (If it had continued, I might have wavered on this read somewhat, but I can't say how much.)

As for who to pass it to?

I think you're mistaken.

Pooky wanted to be second in line. Watch this: Tayl0r->Pooky->LLD. What does that do to you? Well, it looks bad. Looks like scum Pooky saving you from your biggest detractor -- easy to pull the town onto your wagon there. Better yet, watch THIS as if you're scum: Tayl0r->Pooky->MUSHSHAGANA. Whoa! Suddenly no brakes on your train right -- looks like scum angling for a miselim, right? And you get off the hook as easy miselim bait that shouldn't be taken, if you're scum. Presuming a less subtlety-aware player list, scum might do that second one with you as town since worse town players wouldn't catch themselves necessarily.

Why me for the second one? Simple: Your loudest two defenders are Tayl0r and me. I'm not actually putting any effort in but I restate my read of you often. With Tayl0r out I'm the biggest threat to a Noraa wagon. (Note: more likely I would expect that either world would kill someone unrelated to your wagon -- probably a middle-of-the-reads player with some garbo thoughts on the game, to attempt to send the town down that rabbit hole. But for the above, I wanted to focus on your wagon/defenders to show you how you're misreading what Pooky asked for as making a scum-Pooky-hits-LLD world impossible. It's far from it, it's just first order misdirection.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I like Gloria's posting. The aggression suits me.

Not getting town pings, though. Something's at an odd angle, antenna's on the fritz or something. It feels like Gloria's more interested in winning this argument than sorting. That isn't AI, but I note some dirty tricks -- demanding X, insufficiently defining X, getting ominous about provided-X being inadequate-X or even potentially rule-breaking-X, refusing to clarify/concede/drop/dismiss. It's not exactly fallacious, but it's ... underhanded? I don't like it and it feels like ends justifying the means, where the ends are apparently to get a scumread to concede that they don't have much meta they can discuss on one of the hardest to read players. That gains town ... what, exactly? Given enough players have been justifying strong reads on garbage meta all gameday long out of a sense of expediency, self included?

I agree with the POINT, I feel the ENERGY, but the APPROACH rubs me the wrong way. Town wouldn't still be rolling this rock uphill, would it? I mean, really, would it? I have no clue. I'm not doing a great job explaining here...

I mean, look at it like this: you're on the attack, and you've decided this slot is scum on the back of X interaction, approached in a Y manner. Vote dropped down, explanation of vote public, you're done here, yeah? You were on the attack -- when you get your read and drop your vote you have Won at Competitive Communication, good job, gold star. There's no need to get breathing room for you, there's nothing left to gain on this topic from this person. On to next steps, right? Well, you see...

Possible next steps:
--Look for second opinions. This involves reaching out to folks who are null or town on this slot and getting explanations of their reads or just sounding yours off to them for reactions from another person on the board. If you're continuing interaction you're changing the subject slightly to create an opening for third parties to butt in -- you're looking for outside input to check yourself against or to provide perspective you're missing.
--Build a case. If you go this route, you have /drained this subject dry/, there's nothing left here. So you start going at sideways angles, getting opinions on other events, asking for reads lists, you know, just generally trying to flesh things out. A favorite tactic of mine in particular is "let's you and him fight" -- dragging in two players with different POVs and incompatible personalities on the same topic and saying something contentious. The results are /always/ interesting to watch and provide fodder for reads. No matter what, you're aiming to increase the breadth and scope of your read.
--Find common ground. Very good in the early game: abusing pocket-happy scum to help nuance your reads out is very helpful for applying pressure where you want it and building a townbloc. Also helps you stay in the good shoes of townies who are widely scumread, which can help town coalesce later (there's emotional room for the outside townie to attach to the bloc). I make a point of trying to work with my scumreads once I'm ready for action, though I recognize this is uncommon. Either way, you don't harp on the same topic here either, it prevents you from finding common ground and room to coexist. The goal is to be able to play with this person regardless of your read on them, and use their play combined with your read to advance your wincon.
--Move to a new target. Drop it. Time to get more reads elsewhere.

But, well, you see, it's like, I dunno, really, except, uh, in this case, it's ... repeat the exact same words on the exact same subject to the exact same person. Slight exaggeration. It's as if the only important thing to you is winning the argument. Not the game, not a power struggle for town leader, just some singular tiny argument in a game of argumentation, argumentation you cannot always come out on top of unless you believe yourself to be perfect. And not even just winning the argument, but winning by the rhetorical equivalent of dropping a car on them: just brute force and relentlessness.

Anyone else seeing what I'm seeing or is this lack of sleep + adrenaline crash?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm starting to like Bell more.

By now, I've got most of a player map plotted out and have a potential target list that's only slightly too big.

I think I will pick on one. I was considering pressuring two slots, but I doubt I have enough towncred or personal energy to spend for that sort of sustained pressure, even though the two I had in mind would be far more instructive than just one or the other. Time to make Noraa and Tayl0r and Shelly all have traumatic flashbacks to my past games... soon.

In the meantime, anyone with VERY strong reads on Titus, Gloria, Zdenek or Hopkirk, I'd appreciate an outline of those. I'd also appreciate info on how Titus and Shelly view each other, and Zdenek's updated reads on me. Murdercat input on who is probably the most strongly positioned player currently active too, maybe? I'm cooking something.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Murdercat input on who is probably the most strongly positioned player currently active too, maybe? I'm cooking something.

What do you mean by strongly positioned exactly?

Sorry for the delay.

Town leader figures, obvtown showing strong solving mindsets, that sort of thing -- the player currently active who town never, ever gives the scroll. But specifically from your perspective. Not just your strongest townread, but the currently active (like, "significant chunk of posting in the past 24 hours") player you think is everyone's strongest townread.

"None" is an okay answer but I'd prefer it if you reached a little bit for a name too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry, folks. This thread is a trainwreck.

I agree Toogaloo is town here, but I respect and admire the willingness to be the sacrifice to avoid town losing scroll picks. I also agree with it and think I'd rather put a nullish townie in scroll-possession than let scum pick strong town members -- probably not the leader figures, I think they're all wrong. Most likely an obvtown or a middle-list with a bad solve. (Example. As scum, I'd take Murdercat here even if 3/5 are right, for instance, because you can have your team shape the direction the next shots go and discredit the whole list with green flips. There's levels of WIFOM possible here, but first order misdirection is more effective than anything more intense usually.) Point being that I'm more willing to let Toogaloo go here than I would in many setups, this one's just super conducive to sacrificing townreads you trust for scumreads you don't. The wagon looks stalled by how hard town has fragmented, so let's give it a push. I really want town to control the scroll flow here, folks. VOTE: Toogaloo

I'm even more on the "Hopkirk is scum" side of things now. Zdenek's ISO looks about as town as blobby things spilling out of a meteorite. The intensity of Hopkirk on that point makes me think Zdenek could either be extremely anti-town townie or scum -- WIFOM involved there, after all. Hopkirk seems like the type to do arbitrarily deeply layered WIFOM, so I don't feel like I can guess which. Either way, Zdenek is definitely not playing a good town game. Hopkirk also has a lot of scummy gut feelings surrounding. I don't think it quite qualifies as a gut read here, but there's also the way jokes are used to apparently obfuscate meaning and intent to a similar end as the use of the gimmick posting earlier on. (Which, for the record, makes me think Hopkirk is telling the truth about the why of stopping, and doesn't like that people are scumreading them for that. Gimmick posting to start was the scummy thing, not the stopping of it.)

I wasn't entirely cognizant of the closeness of the deadline when I was preparing for my big push, so I'm going to save it till during the scroll passing phase of things. The point is to create a map of the connections in the gamestate, which will help anyone who has the scroll and knows how to read around the edges of a big push. Doing it beforehand risks derailing the necessary wagon. I can say I've decided on my target and my approach, and I'm /very glad/ I picked the target I did. The other one I was considering was Titus, so you can see how that would go at this point in time in this game. (Still townread Titus: as I stated before, I will push my townreads if I feel I'll get more info from everyone else that way.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Shelly, Hopkirk strikes me as the type of player who does town work as scum and cherrypicks to create a wide pool of miselimination bait, then splits it into scummy and null more or less on the miselimination bait quantity. This is a LOT of work and it is weirdly active for scum (which is always risky), but it means that a scum Hopkirk gets unearned towncred and helps shape town direction of eliminations.

Which leaves the question: is Hopkirk willing to put too much work in as scum?

And that's an unquestionable yes. Hopkirk was willing to type every post in a gimmick style for about half of the first game-day. Regardless of alignment, that shows a willingness to put way more work in than you absolutely need to. Hopkirk strikes me as someone who needs to be juggling a dozen plates and a dozen hammers at once to really feel engaged, which I honestly sympathize with. That sort of personality gives themselves a really irritating fake post restriction. That sort of personality also goes the extra mile for better risk/reward as scum.

Have you considered that?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The reads Hopkirk's giving are trash though. Zdenek a townread? Ever? Also, like, on the face of it half of the nulls and half of the scumreads in Hopkirk's readslist make no sense.

Which strikes me as someone who is angling for miselimination bait more than actually paying attention to what looks town. Which would be way too much work for scum normally, but strikes me as a Hopkirk thing to do.

There's also the fact that most of Hopkirk's interactions where their reads are being questioned are obfuscated by jokes, sarcasm and generally ambiguous meaning. That seems not very much like town to me. Like ... jokes and sarcasm sure, but you'd generally separate those out or use them to punctuate points, rather than covering the surface of your post in an even coat.

So I mean, I don't think I need to do a metadive here. I'm not a fan of meta to begin with, and this is one of those things where these sort of elements come from a certain kind of personality. That sort of personality being faked when you normally play differently is scummy enough on its own, I think.


PEDIT: Noraa... god. Just as I start to townread you again you wreck it /why do you want to derail this wagon so badly just stop/ Toogaloo wants the scroll give 'em the scroll why is this up for debate with the deadline looming THIS CLOSE.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Toog wasn't universally townread before they obvtowned the response to being the target. Toog was universally nulled or scumleaned prior to that. This is why they're the wagon: it cleans the board up some and they are an easy elimination to agree on.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The cursing deadline is in (expired on 2020-10-28 03:35:35)

What are we doing crew?

You could always read, buddy.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Will switch to Toogeloo if this doesn't look like a viable wagon when I log in tomorrow morning. But if we are deadline eliminating, I'd prefer to deal with the borderline trolling player who may well be scum than the probtown demob-happy self-voting panda (who I pretty much entirely sympathise with).

whoever that is trying to start wagons is being anti town
we have no time
we have no time at all

Why you panicking so much?

Also, Noraa, this isn't AI. Scum does this to look town, town does this because this wagon is slow, there's a half dozen vanity wagons, and there's usually-good arguments for wagoning elsewhere that can demolish this wagon at a crucial moment and prevent town from starting off with control of the scroll's trajectory. In short, this is a ridiculous question to ask.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I mean, I agree, MURDERCAT, but that question is still not worth asking.


PEDIT: god who is townreading pooky come the fuck on people

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gonna be honest here, looking over the votecount and the player list, I think it might be a stretch to say we can't get 3 more folks on this wagon in 30 hours. So, Pooky's right about /that/ part. We grabbed all the non-Bell active folks and all the ones I think are obvtown regardless of activity other than Tayl0r. We'd need two of the dissenters and Bell, or for the lurkers to jump on to replace any of those. Lapsa might well lolhammer given past play, so assuming that, we need to get two to jump over. In 30 hours, that's very doable. I'd say inevitable.

The real problem is in building any other wagon. There is no other wagon you could get good consensus on in 30 hours, flat out -- except Noraa, who the strong scumreaders don't want to have first pick, so forget about it. Inarguable in the current gamestate: Toog's the wagon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cool, Pooky! That's one. Who else will go in on that?

...

...

Prediction: If you derail this wagon onto Noraa you get like all the actives trying to push ANY WAGON PLEASE to maximum before deadline, a couple "absolutely nots" from both sides of the is-Noraa-scum debate, and the lurkers don't get votes on wagon in time to push it over the hill. If someone doesn't scroll Pooky today in that world, I'll do it myself the next, swear to god.




PEDIT: Noraa, there's even less chance of a Pooky wagon. Look at the last votecount and tally the folks sitting on vanity and no-hope wagons. It just isn't feasible.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Noraa vs Pooky in a world where they're both scum is bold and pointless scum bussing, MURDERCAT. I checked the thread: Pooky started the Noraa wagon, dug up meta, was one of the biggest arguers for a Noraa elimination, and did not give Noraa the slightest hint of air to breathe until LLD hit the brakes. (And yes, LLD hit them first.) Pooky wasn't even the first to respond -- there were two or three replies to Noraa before Pooky went in, and all were ready to dismiss it as ha ha funny dumb. Scum would have seen they could have stopped that bus from ever being useful to town, especially if they checked Noraa's meta. There's no way that scum does that like that. Not even for a gambit. It's an alien world.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

she's basically admitting she's scum at this point

the question now is do we pivot off her and come back to her for the 3rd scroll or hard push this thru come hell or high water

see above

i also unvote Noraa b4 LLD

You were still questioning the possibility in 1045. 1053 (or 52, memory's fuzzing), LLD basically makes up her mind that allowing Noraa to shoot is bad. You do unvote first in the VERY next post, you do question the wisdom of the hard push first, but LLD makes the pivotal statement first. I consider that LLD going first, but I admit it's arguable.

PEDIT: I do believe a red Noraa flip clears Pooky. I also agree with MURDERCAT that no clear gives Noraa any town following, and I think that's also true of Pooky.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

God, I really am glad we got Toog to head this. Basically best case scenario it's looking like.

Hopkirk
Pooky
Shellyc
Zdenek
Lapsa

This is in order of what I think is valuable to town, not order of scumminess. I scumread (at least a bit) every slot listed, regardless.
My Hopkirk case has been gone into. A bit gut, dislike of the reads, disliking the combination of early gimmick posting and early joke/sarcasm posting, recognition of Hopkirk as probably a player who is very dangerous as scum. Number 2 scumread, but the danger and the lack of useful content to play off of bumps this slot up.
Pooky is hyper-active and has a lot more town sway than I'd like for my number 3 scumread. Pooky red clears Noraa. Pooky's postcount in thread may be a major contributor to the thread bloat (uncertain).
Shellyc is largely sheeping Hopkirk's garbo reads and propping up Hopkirk as a town contributor in an adverse environment. Some weak out of date meta brought up about Shelly hard-tunnelling as scum and being more uncertain as town. I don't trust myself to read this slot well, but I think this is one of the only cases where a red Shelly indicates a red Hopkirk, so that's valuable.
Zdenek: number one scumread. I think if this slot isn't scum I'll need to buy a hat to cut up, deep fry and eat. I see absolutely not one single solitary hint of town play in it. That said, the slot is weak and they give us little to no information.
Lapsa is blatantly obvious. Shitposting, self-voting, lurking. If they aren't scum they're gamethrowing town and we should eliminate there sooner than later no matter what... but they're such a universal scumread and their play is so unspeakably bad that I think their alignment is the hardest one to determine in this game. Essentially a policy elimination, I think we get no guarantees of hitting scum here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I actually find it really funny that my entire style of building plausible narratives and basing my reads on those is upsetting shelly, who should have recognized that is a thing I just always do by now.

Pooky has an excuse, at least.

And I do it because I cannot get reads otherwise. Human nature is not something I naturally "get," and a narrative way of looking at things is my workaround. If you want me to play the game, you're gonna have to put up with it. If you want me to shitpost to conclusion, you're being ridiculous considering my reads aren't trash when PRs aren't in the mix. In fact...

Hey, fun fact! If you metadive me you'll figure out that with the exception of shelly, my main pitfall is that I always mix up PRs and scum, while I rarely end up hard-targeting VTs. Shelly is almost the sole exception to that last rule -- my hard targets in the game I had with Noraa were, in order: scum, town PR, scum, finally slowly progressing to the OTHER town PR as a scumread. In the game with Shelly scum, I got two VTs as scumreads but also managed to hard-scumread every PR. In the game with Shelly town, I considered a scum a PR and scumread the actual town PRs, hitting only one VT while alive specifically due to their lack of awareness and engagement with the gamestate.

I'm not saying I'm about to solve or some crap, I'm just saying that I do better than random chance when you take PRs out of the mix. So maybe don't knock the narrative approach too much, hm?



PEDIT: I'm glad I'm not the only one who spotted the Toog wagon being murdered in real time.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I didn't say you /must/ have recognized, just that you should have.

Also, we were both in the dead thread for 2025 and I was talking about the game the same way there; in terms of possible worlds and narrative explanations.

To make this more clear, when I said "really funny" in my last post, I really did mean funny-haha.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I went to sleep feeling dread: the wagon would stall, it would fragment, momentum would be killed, no one would be able to jump-start it again and we'd lose control of the initial scroll trajectory and probably lose an obvtown.

I woke up to this. Toog's the scrollbearer and is running a campaign of /menace/. I love this. I feel hope for town.

I also am getting SO MANY GOOD AI POSTS out of the Toog-stomp. Keep it up. This is brilliant. It sucks we can't get two scum hits this game day, but this is probably the best possible outcome of that. Hell, it even got Lapsa to actually post. Just shitpost, but there's still posting there.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going to follow Toog on this one. What do you have to hide, Theta? Why not post your scumreads? Hell, I made /cases/ for mine. You know, because I'd hope to see those slots get eliminated anyway. As town /should/ here. Considering that /eliminating scum is how town wins./ And considering that in this setup, like most mafia setups, /town can't hit scum without convincing each other who scum is./ Which means /town should never hide their reads unless they have a plan around it/. You ain't gambiting here, you have no control and no say in how the game plays out currently, Toog rules this roost. So post your reads or claim scum and go.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

What is /dumb/ is saying "scrollbearer MUST FOLLOW TOWN." That leashes the scroll and lets scum influence the trajectory from the outside, without becoming targets themselves necessarily.

Toog is their own person here, and wants the information. Toog has promised nothing and offers nothing in exchange. The scroll isn't being leashed, information is just being shared. Best case scenario.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I really don't get how sharing our Day 1 garbo reads in an ordered list like you do in every other game because that's how you prioritize pushes and build a townbloc could be construed as dangerous to town when they're damn near guaranteed to change at least a little after flips and damn near guaranteed to be wrong right now why the hell are MURDERCAT and Theta doing this nothing comes out of keeping your reads secret except madness and horror and death /stop your foolish lies/ **WHEEZE**.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

What's especially funny about this is MURDERCAT has been pushing a 5 player game solve and now won't add another name to the list (since Toog's off the board effectively) to just move things along. Theta has posted reads lists at least once. They literally are just avoiding THE COMMITMENT. It's not even in character with their earlier goddamned play.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Honestly, ordering them /already happens,/ MURDERCAT. Look at the thread. Most reads-lists are at least 80% ordered and this game has been no exception. Even outside of reads-lists you have people talking about their preferences for who gets the scroll -- the order is implied strongly enough that if it was a real benefit to scum, they'd /have it already/. If Toog gave a fuck I'm sure they could get your answer and order without you offering it up, and that goes for every non-lurker in the player list. Come on, don't be stupid here.

Also, how the hell is passing the scroll off on someone who doesn't have a buddy in slot 1 better for scum than doing the same exact thing only using NK and based on readslists in a totally ordinary Mafia game? This argument is trash and also stupid.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also, reminder that if we hit scum with Toog we are already on track to win and the next stop on the scroll's path is less important. Oh yes. Especially if people remember that /the second scrollbearer is functionally conftown and should be worked with/ -- hey, not dissimilar to what we're doing here since /it doesn't matter anyway, they can only be town and scum and if we hit scum we hit damn scum/.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Mostly, MURDERCAT? Because you look like scum right now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh no! You've placed the second to last stone in the circle of doom, and now we are all fated to a terrible death! This town is done for!

Wait, hold on...

...

My producers have told me that absolutely nothing bad has happened.

But when Theta Alpine places that last stone in the circle, we SURELY will ALL be --

...

Ahem. Sorry. No, not then either.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Congratulations, Vax. You're my new favoritest hobby. I'll do my ISO dive tonight.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That's a possibility, but eyeballing lists, I think that only happens if Toog personally has a high grade scumping coming off of Vax. Feels more likely I'll get a shot at finishing my dive, I think I know roughly where the scroll's going to land.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I agree with Noraa about the "noncontroversial TRs". Hopkirk as town has been contentious all through, Gloria has almost nothing worth reading into, Tayl0r has been contentious, Adorable is one of the most polarizing slots in the game when you take into account we're lucky to get a post a day there, and Theta has struck me as a slot no one has made their minds up on. I'd say that Shelly deserves that list more than any of those, and I scumread Shelly and townread Tayl0r.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Well, there goes my new favoritest hobby. Toog won't let me have nice things.

I'll call Toog and Vax town for now, and, uh, sort of hope I'm wrong on one or the other.

I think Hopkirk and Pooky are scum still, then I have a small pack of garbage reads I'm just going to start ISOing for details if I don't catch a case of curse. Vax is one of the few people I think would dump the curse on my head here regardless of alignment due to the garbage "lurker" argument that I still don't get, given I've been posting more than enough in this hellhole of a thread and have actively tried to stay engaged when twenty pages show up in the blink of an eye. So, you know, I have some worries there.

Have to catch up on sleep for now, I'll see about those ISOs when I'm up. Or I won't. You know, depending.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't try to be town leader. I will actively fight people who sheep me: either develop my reads or go buy your own. About the only time I try to rally town around something is when it's mechanically the best -- keeping control of who the first scrollbearer is, sharing your damn reads, etc.

THEREFORE: MURDERCAT, don't listen to me or my reads. Given time and effort I can rationalize anyone in any game as whatever alignment I want them to be. To counteract this, I require my townreads to disagree with me or else my reads will suck -- I use the whole player list in a mafia game as an adjunct brain, with the issue being that as a result I have a case of demonic possession and not even the demons agree.

Also because my reads are currently Hopkirk and Pooky scum, a handful of townreads, "those sure are some lurkers I guess," and literally everyone else highlighted with brightly flashing signs covered in nothing but various sizes, shapes and colors of ?!?!?!?!, which is fucking useless.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The thing that pisses me off about toog is like everyone acknowledged they were killing town.

I was sick and I came back and we had no time and a guy saying "kill me or nothing happens".

Like I didn't really have much choice, but yuuup

This was basically my reasoning, just in a different order. I had no position on Toog at first, then the obvtown came out when the wagon started and I checked the time and went "wow, that sucks".

I think Vax was a bad scroll target anyway. I had just gotten invested in heavily emphasizing sorting there... and all for nothing.



Re:Hopkirk, one of my flaws is that I have a strong scum-tell and honestly, I don't know how effective it is.

Inconsistency is scum. Contradiction is NAI, but /inconsistency/ is scum.

Okay, dropping the poem gimmick, sure. I didn't like the posts after that, still too obfuscatory, but dropping the gimmick isn't necessarily a BAD thing. Particularly at the pace of this nightmare thread: I once wrote a parody sonnet that I had mostly prewritten for me by someone, and it still took me 45 minutes. I had a friend many years ago who tried to oompa-loompah post for a week and their responses took upwards of an hour for critically important things. Dropping the gimmick: I'll give you that, NAI.

But the post-gimmick posts were still ugly to me. I explained why in great detail. Sure enough, not long after I mention it, the jokes start to get cordoned off from the content.

I don't think town EVER successfully does this. Town might try and fail. Town might try and need to constantly correct their posts. Town might try and succeed better and better over the course of a full week. Town might say "bite me, asshole" and keep doing exactly as they are doing. I don't think town ever drops it entirely immediately. This is a me thing, and I've never gotten to test the tell before, but it pings me as scum.

This is because town has more incentive to just /be themselves/ in a game (people always talk about "their townie nature eventually showing through," which I think has some relationship to this), and jokes and sarcasm in every post tends to be a personality trait -- we all know That Guy who is inappropriately sarcastic for no reason and feels legitimate remorse when called out for it but can't help themselves. Scum is trying to fake their normal personality, because they have Secrets. Not everyone is affected by having Secrets, I grant you, but many people are. So for me, that inconsistency, the major changes in apparent personality, especially /prompted/ changes, these tend to be scummy to me. Hopkirk has shown evidence of this.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hey Fredrick. Ready to be my immediate scumread again?

I'm joking: you seem engaged this go around, we should be able to get along unless your role PM was red. Shame that you replaced into the Zdenek slot. Please read your predecessor's teeny, tiny ISO so you can understand why I say you have an uphill battle.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Just waiting on the flip now. I've been half-posting then getting distracted or hung up on something and I think it boils down to literally no enthusiasm for another five pages of shitposts every time. Thankfully it was only 3 pages this time and most of it wasn't shitposting.

Last words: does anyone think scum fakes town after the flips are decided but before they go down in this setup? I was assuming no, but now I'm less certain, probably out of wishful thinking. Still liking Pooky, but Shelly has gone a bit more null for me if Hopkirk's green, and I'm stooping to dredging up low info slots as "must be scum" or reassessing townreads in that world.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm giving myself a to-do list, because these flips sucked for immediate info and fucking hell I do not look forward to sifting through /160 some pages/ of /utter garbage/ to figure out how to continue based on them.

1: Find who was shading Hopkirk other than obvtowns, and if their shade predates obvtown aggression there. (Hooray, only the first 45 GODDAMNIT pages to hunt through and I can quickskim my way through most of it.) Especially interesting would be people who shaded there early, gave them a chance as town during the first, LLD-led, wagon, then went all in on the scumtrain when curses started flying, but I refuse to look that far into it.
2: Find who, if anyone, was trying to kill Isis but suddenly townread Vax, and compare their ISOs. (Again, good for quick skimming and limited pages.)
3: Find anyone who read Toog as town early and stuck to their guns. Oh, thanks Tayl0r. So: find ANYONE ELSE who read Toog as town early and stuck to their guns, then compare ISOs of ALL of them against whoever exists in groups 1 and 2. (This is the worst, though at least it's skimmable...)

Are there any other scum groups I can find off of this? Not particularly, I think. So I guess I should hope that the scumteam is greedy for towncred.

Oh yes. That's right. You can groan and facepalm now, because your worst fears are true.

I don't know that a single one of these groups (aside from 3: thanks Tayl0r!) exist, just that all of them WOULD look suspiciously good after these flips and yet would make no fucking sense in context. This tedious bullshit slog of a game...



For now, I'm parking on Bell. I was townreading there but I have nulled anyone who wasn't based on gut or obvtowning because otherwise my POE has to be wrong now. Also, I hate the hyper-posters with a passion borne of insanity because continuing to deal with five pages every few hours will give me pernicious fucking gout. VOTE: Bell

[MUSHSHAGANA]

More like "you post almost as much as Pooky and my reads can't be trusted right now so fuck it, you're my placeholder wagon."

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Tayl0r's reads are trash too. But she ISO'd Theta and found that Theta had been townreading Toog all along. I trust she wouldn't lie about something so easily disproven. For me, that's work I don't need to do on Theta and makes Theta likely to be scum regardless of Tayl0r's alignment.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

And also: no, Bell, I'm not voting elsewhere because I don't trust my own reads and I'm voting you because if we're going to just hit town every go around because we can't get decent reads in, I want to make that gamble on one of the thread-stretching hyperposters so I can at least avoid the dizzying heights of madness I'm headed for now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I can't just read everyone-else's posts however. Your posts are innately in the thread. Sure, sure, I could just try and piece together thread flow by ISOing everyone who's posted since my last post, but please remember I'm trying to /avoid/ the fucking tedium and hideous workload.

WHY do you care that I'm parking a placeholder vote on you with admittedly no reason other than "if we're going to eliminate at random, please let's at least make the thread readable"? If it was like, a scumread, sure, I get giving a fuck, but I'm clearly worn down and worn out and doing this for lack of energy and willpower to try and pick something reasonable right now. Why pick this fucking fight? Why bother? You have no hope of making any change to how I feel here, I'm burnt out and it's partially your fault so my vote's parked for lack of anything else I want to work with until tomorrow. What's your goal here, what do you /really/ expect to get out of this?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Partially out of frustration and partially out of pettiness I will agree to eliminate either of Tayl0r or Bell right now, on account of thinking that anything is going to come out of me at the moment but madness, horror and death.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Add Pooky to the list.

What's that, I'm not letting anyone even make a deal with me?

You're absolutely right, I am fighting for air and everyone is a menace right now. Give me space or I will bite your head off etc etc. Contribute meaningful fucking content. Go ISO someone so I don't have to. Something useful, something that means I can avoid doing literally any work, I beg of you.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

VOTE: Pooky

what part of my last few posts sounded like "please go shitpost some more and further clog the thread with irrelevant bullshit" i swear to fuck and YES i recognize im contributing to this HIDEOUS NIGHTMARE but if in the end i make these hyperactive shitposters do something that helps us sort through this mess i think we can all call it a win

...

Ahem.

Go do something /useful/.

USEFUL.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

VOTE: Tayl0r

I am playing a scorched earth game right now. You are getting /nothing/ from me until I have what I want, and right now I have nothing more specific there than "most of the content in thread to be the bare minimum of fucking worthwhile", so just assume you will receive nothing but terror and zero-basis death-tunnels from my slot until such time as morale improves. No helpful content will come from me until I see actual effort, and the bitch of the thing is it's not even something most folks have any real control over. You can be the most helpful and obeisant churl to ever bow before me and if Pooky's still shitposting I will step on your gifts and scream for the guards that don't exist. Doesn't that just suck? Isn't it the worst damned thing you ever heard? I'd say I'm sorry, but I think I'm incapable of remorse at the moment.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Look at that! Useful posting! Gold star! A+! Okay, not an A+, don't want to give too much away.

And ... I agree.

I was going to give Fred a temporary pass for the lack of disinterested "no one's posting anything useful so I have no opinions" garbage that got me highly (and admittedly, incorrectly) scumreading him in Newbie 2025. In fact, I did. In fact, I gave him such a pass that I saw him ask why I told him to take a moment to check his predecessor's ISO and let it go; maybe he just didn't see how bad his predecessor played. In fact, I took the slot out of my scumreads (where it was my number one scumread) to give him a fighting chance.

Too bad. I made a mistake, clearly: his posts have been coasty bullshit pushing and shading the easiest target in the entire fucking player list. Seriously, I think the only reason Noraa didn't go down in the scrollpassing yesterday is that no one wanted to deal with me and Tayl0r yelling "told you so" and /maaaaaaybe/ general feelings of "too scummy".

Town Fred also willingly engages in pointless setup spec and statistical nonsense, changes reads rapidly and without explanation, spreads his pressure out, and has trouble turning down a challenge being mounted on his slot. Bad looking play but engaged and capable of fighting the fight, more or less big-picture approach. I think that last part would be the most consistent tell of Fred's -- the personality doesn't strike me as suited to detail-work and I don't think that changes even if Fred's overall play has improved. I also think the change in level of engagement in the "science" of the game doesn't change, though interest levels in individual games probably vary.

Here we see coasty active-lurking tunnel play pushing the easiest miselimination possible, scummy garbo play that ignores or attempts to redirect any and all suspicion aimed in its direction. Disengaged without being disinterested, overly focused on small ball bullshit, inactive, unwilling to spread engagement around the player list. Not the town Fred I've seen, practically the exact opposite. Only the slightly snarky, arrogant tone of typing remains.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I just doublechecked Fred's ISO to be sure I wasn't asspulling the above post and SURE ENOUGH! Literally no pressure has been anywhere but on Noraa. Surprisingly enough, the pressure itself is absolute garbage -- I was giving Fred such a pass that I didn't realize that Fred is voting a slot for /no goddamn reason/, no case presented, literally just picking at supposed "contradictions" that don't even add up to anything even /if/ you assume they're from scum. Too bad that not even "assuming scum" holds here when Fred's arguing in favor of people townreading the very fucking slot the pressure is on. It's a totally incoherent mess of an ISO and it isn't even aimed in a singular direction.

Like, I look at the post Fred wants replies to and I go "wow if I was in the line of fire here I'd ignore your nonsense too".

VOTE: Fredrick A Campbell

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going to be honest: literally anyone who wants to avoid this thread, I don't blame them. Here's a drinking game:

Page through this thread.
When the only game-relevant content on a given page is repeated from no more than three pages prior, take a shot.
When there is no game-relevant content at all on a page, drink some water. You're going to need it.
When there is no game-relevant content for three pages, commence screaming. Do not drink, you will choke.
When a thread is half Pooky and/or Bell by post count and every post they make on the page is a content-free shitpost, dump the bottle out in the sink and have a friend bind you in a weighted blanket far away from any sharp objects for an hour.

Congratulations: you've been replaced out for inactivity.

So I'm going to agree with Gloria and Fred on that. More to the point, I'm going to side-eye Shelly for not realizing that reading through just a few missed hours of this thread is agonizing and attempting to avoid the misery should be considered NAI. Anyone who's played with me knows how I tend to prioritize keeping on top of posts in games I'm in. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure there's been a 24 hour gap or two for me, which just doesn't really happen. It's downright offensive.

I'm also going to say that so long as we are in a low-shitpost state I don't want to complain anymore about a total lack of content aside from shitposting. You know, since /the complaining/ is now making up the bulk of /this/ page and the primary shitposters have slowed the shitposting. Lead by example, or whatever the fuck.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I had a post mostly written, got distracted by ordering food, and hit F5 AS I NOTICED THE TEXT IN THE REPLY BOX AAAAAAAA.

So let me summarize:
UNOwen, I only give a fuck about how Theta read Toog.
Tayl0r and UNOwen, if you can dredge up Theta's Toog reads from early in the game and from just before the Toog push, I'd be appreciative because I'm still recovering from what happened to me last night and cannot be assed thread-diving yet.
Flea, I hate something about how you're playing right here, please give me a megapost on your reads.
Thank god there were only 2 or 3 pages to catch up with and no shitposts among them. Let's keep it up, my enthusiasm is returning slowly.
Anyone seen Fidget? Anyone at all?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I've been dealing with incredibly horrifying sleep schedule damage, so I haven't posted in, uh, I don't know how long. Sorry about that.

The catch-up is just sort of washing over me. A second pass at the Fred wagon? It keeps stalling? It keeps getting redirected? I'm upset and confused by this. Happened with a few other pre-flip wagons but those got way further along. Fred's bad scum and they DEFINITELY don't want him to flip because of associatives? I don't really know of course but it's interesting how fast Fred's wagon stalls and if I presume scum activity then I have to wonder why scum doesn't want to let that slot sink to save the others and my only thought is the associatives are absolutely horrible.

Let's please crush Fred. Third scroll to best associative in Fredenek's combined ISO presuming red. Bet you the scum hates to hear that. Maybe town also, I have no fucking clue.

Somehow I find myself agreeing with my pre-flip scumreads (reminder that I garbaged almost all of my reads post-flip) on Fidget, but I'm not sure how much of that is logical agreement and how much of it is charismatic arguments pinging my brain through the sleep deprivation haze. I might actually agree with them because I also dislike Flea's ISO, and that dislike predates brain becoming goo? I don't know. Still think Tayl0r and Noraa are town. Gloria might be town? Sure, Gloria can be town. Hopefully tomorrow my brain will be semi-functional again. I reserve the right to burn this post in fire, it is more an acknowledgement of personal failure than something binding or particularly helpful.

I don't like Adorable right now, I don't like -- wait, I just called Gloria town. Uhh, well, town can be wrong, let's roll with it, I'm trying to buy wakefulness so i can fall asleep and wake up at a normal human hour, this is just filling temporal space for me right now, I'm kind of stretching it here. Theta. Where the hell is Theta? Anyone seen Theta? I want someone to go get Theta. I want an interrogation, except tomorrow, not today. Also while I appreciate that Titus is having RL stuff (hi!, you might have noticed I'm in th same boat even though its a different shape, something like that) I want to actually be able to sort there, someone tell me how to read Titus and why so I can say that I don't need it tomorrow when I wake up. Oh also: Where's LLD? I miss my new best town-friend


PEDIT Wow Fred you think any scum-team would actually play that level of scum theatre ever for literally no reason? LLD has such strong associatives this is super bad play. why does anyone give this Fredenrk slot anything but votes and mockery? crush them

okay i have hit one hour it is time to go

[MUSHSHAGANA]

¶

Votecount 2.3

[6] Fredrick A Campbell:

Bell, MUSHSHAGANA, Flea The Magician, PookyTheMagicalBear, shellyc, UNOwen

[2] Noraa:

Titus, Adorable

[1] Fidget:

Tayl0r Swift

[1] Adorable:

Theta Alpine

[1] shellyc:

Fidget

[1] Tayl0r Swift:

Fredrick A Campbell

[1] PookyTheMagicalBear:

Noraa

[4] Not Voting:

MURDERCAT, Lady Lambdadelta, Lapsa, Gloria Cleary

With 17 alive, it takes 9 to curse someone with the scroll. If there is no majority by the deadline, the mafia will choose who to curse.

The cursing deadline is in (expired on 2020-11-06 21:29:24).

Joint moderator ISO.

¶

Votecount 1.20

(FINAL)

[11] Toogeloo:

Hopkirk, MURDERCAT, Titus, Toogeloo, Theta Alpine, MUSHSHAGANA, Lady Lambdadelta, Noraa, UNOwen, shellyc, Bell

HAMMER

[2] Tayl0r Swift:

PookyTheMagicalBear, Bell

[2] Bell:

Tayl0r Swift, Vaxkiller

[2] shellyc:

Fidget, Flea The Magician

[1] Noraa:

Adorable

[1] PookyTheMagicalBear

Gloria Cleary

[1] Adorable:

Lapsa

[1] Not Voting:

Zdenek

With 20 alive, it takes 11 to curse someone with the scroll. If there is no majority by the deadline, the mafia will choose who to curse.

The cursing deadline is in (expired on 2020-10-28 03:35:35).

Joint moderator ISO.

people who are scum:
fidget
bell
pooky
unowen
titus
toogeloo
shelly?

notice any patterns?

No.

The shared members of the two wagons are...

Me. I'm town to myself and apparently to everyone else, too.
Bell. Who was EXTREMELY against the Toog wagon early on and stayed pretty opposed until time was REALLY short, but pretty much founded the Fred wagon.
UNOwen. Well... UNOwen didn't drive the Toog wagon either, buddy. UNOwen was compromising. Check the ISO.
Shellyc. Same as UNOwen, but an earlier adopter of the "maybe when time's closer, but we should decide soon" way of looking at things. Also earlier on the Fred wagon than is shown in the VC, hopped off and back on for Tayl0r (? IIRC) pressure.

People on only one wagon who are in the scum list are...

Titus. I forget their Toog vote, I'll check back after I do dishes.
Pooky. I am again having some forgetfulness of the details, but I recall Pooky yelling and howling from beginning to end that Toog was a miselimination and we should hit you instead. Didn't take too much effort to get them on board with Fred, though...

People on neither wagon but on the scum list...

Fidget. That's it. That's all of it.

Drivers of the Toog wagon...

MURDERCAT (generally presumed town), Hopkirk (CONFTOWN).

Drivers of the Fred wagon...

Bell, Me (generally presumed town, conftown to myself), Shelly.

...



Hey, Tayl0r?

Yeah, so, uh, quick request?

Can I have you explain how there is any fucking pattern at all between who's driving these goddamn wagons?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

VOTE: Toogeloo

Not sure it's right but definitely not sure it's wrong and we need a wagon.

With thanks to Titus for making the ISO accessible without any actual effort involved for me.

GEE THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE TITUS IS DRIVING THE WAGON EITHER, TAYL0R. HUH. ISN'T THAT ODD.

I'm taking you out of my townbloc. You come across like a bad player, but you aren't this dumb.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'd say ... slow down there shelly.

I still don't like your play this game. And I agree with my sleep-deprived caffeine-withdrawing self about Fred's wagon stalling suspiciously early. Check the Noraa wagon stall point at around E-2 with some flickering around E-1 as people get hammer-wary, compare to this Fred wagon stalling at about E-3 with more live scum in the gamestate and FAR less time till stall.

I think I'm approximately 10,000% sure that Fred should remain the focus.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If I weren't still a little bit iffy on leashing the scroll passes at all, I'd say Tayl0r for third scroll makes SOME sense if Fred's first place, though.

Please note that this should not be considered binding for the second scroll holder. It's what I might do here, but I think I'd still prefer to ISO Fredenek and determine strongest associatives first, then balance the two of strongest-Fred-associative vs. Taylor according to informative flips, strength of associatives, and scumminess quotient (which is probably a real thing but I just made up my own version of, which is "which one's play do I like least here RIGHT NOW").

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Tayl0r is not that dangerous to town really. She's LHF as either alignment, and her ISO is going to be full of red herring associatives because she can't help herself when it comes to no-hopers. Fred's an easy elimination too, but there's SO MUCH friction there that I have to imagine it's because the scumteam doesn't like his or Zdenek's (not sure which) ISO for them.


I don't like your play because you have none of the personality traits I remember from 2025. Granted, those personality traits were absolutely goddamn awful for you there, and you managed to emulate them convincingly enough in 2026, where you were scum. I did do a quick doublecheck on the two games, and your play here reminds me more of your play in Space. Okay, I hate meta because any reasonably self-aware player can abuse it, fair enough, I just cannot sort you in any of my ordinary ways so I have to automatically scum-bias you, use garbage read methods like meta*, and use normally shit arguments for sorting a slot.

Generally speaking:
More confident on less info than in 2025. (And notably, there you were /right/ and had temporally immediate meta to prove it, and you still waffled and left room for being wrong. This is almost certainly an experience level difference instead of an alignment difference, but please see above.)
Irreconcilable read disagreements (hey remember when you called Zdenek town for pages and pages? Me neither) whereas we sort of could agree as a general rule on 2025 after we were eliminated. This game is more of a trainwreck and since the reduction in shitposting we've seen more agreement between us, but it's still a notable distinction.
Shitposting is definitely your style but you know when to dial it back normally; Pooky kept you contributing about a quarter of thread weight for ages. This argument is trash and I should be ashamed but please again see above.

It's not confident, and it's heavily weighted against you by default, but I don't like your play here anyway.



*- Meta for me is usually a course-correction when I know I'll fuck up sorting a slot otherwise. Hence why I'm using it for Noraa and Tayl0r and Fred. You are the only player other than Noraa for whom it's the primary component of my read, and Noraa's been making me /question/ every so often too, so...

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Main reason I can see a Tayl0r/Fred link is Tayl0r's normally at least remotely plausible reasoning (e.g. if she has any reasoning at all for her reads it's normally at least /internally/ consistent) completely being thrown out in favor of the biggest fucking reach I've ever seen displayed publicly in a Mafia game. Who the fuck says there's some pattern, even a weak one, in who's driving the wagons -- WHEN THERE'S NO OVERLAP THERE AT ALL? Literally zero! None of the major drivers are the same! Not a single one! The overlap is all at the goddamned periphery and it's a stretch to even say that matters much between the two wagons when most of the overlap hopped on Toog at the very end with some amount of reluctance and is crack of fucking dawn early on Fred. To make all of this more egregious, who says this and then puts all the evidence needed to disprove themselves in one of the very posts they make the garbage assertion in?

It's utter garbage and bullshit is what I'm saying. And that's not town Tayl0r, who has trouble justifying her reads and actions but generally just sort of shrugs when questioned because her approach to playing the game is fairly seat-of-the-pants.



MURDERCAT, I've nulled Pooky for now pending a reread, and I'm going to give Gloria the benefit of the doubt for the moment. And I'd like you to note that Shelly has jumped off wagon twice. If she had even put the slightest effort into it, I'd say she was blatantly attempting to derail, but this seems more like something else.


PEDIT: The LLD thing was just a response to me making all her arguments for her. Basically a naked vote out of context; in context clearly a "oh hey I don't need to do any work, thanks".

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Tayl0r, I'm rude there because that entire line of argument does not hold at all. Like, I can't even imagine a world where there's anything to look at there. I am mentally incapable of wrenching those wagons around to where it looks like your assertion can be even kind of true remotely in any world ever. Also, you're LHF because you never have good, solid reasoning for doing what you do, not because you're defending no-hopers. No-hoper defending just makes your ISO useless for finding associatives.

LLD's sudden activity drop could be scum indicative but the posting was like ... trying to find an ideal town strategy, hard pushes, making herself as bright and easy to hit of a target as possible for scum, etc. Then she gets sick and the posting stops dead. I have a feeling she expected to hit scum first pass and get taken out fast -- but we hit all town, so I can see her still recovering from illness, no plans for what to do on Day 2, reads are trash and the coffee does nothing, and just saying "fuck it, lurktime". If that continues for all of Day 2, I'm inclined to press there, but I think we can give her a break for most of the rest of the dayphase.

I think Pooky and Tayl0r are never scum together, and Pooky and Noraa are never scum together, and that Noraa and Tayl0r are likely scum together (the tenor of Noraa's protest of a townread continues to sound off-pitch, though I think not outside the realm of her town games). I hate Pooky's play here, but I'm still holding that at null until I have the energy to ISO dive that. So... so... so many posts.



PEDIT:
Tayl0r:
Okay, the Fidget argument holds. I think we can't say that for UNOwen and Shelly, because of the unvoting and revoting on Fred causing the vote timing argument to be false there on Fred (UNOwen only voted Fred once afaik) and just how slow Toog's wagon was when it got to UNOwen and Shelly (remember they were hoping for a counterwagon during the Toog push -- this IS scum indicative to me, but it means the votecount doesn't work for your argument vs. them necessarily).

The Bell argument is trash because of the differences involved: Bell was initially very against hitting Toog. Like, incredibly against. Meanwhile, Bell started the Fred wagon. These are so different of situations I don't think you can call them indicative yet.

Finally, none of them was driving the Toog wagon. That was MURDERCAT and Hopkirk. It's a stretch to call UNOwen a driver for Fred, since it's mostly me at this point. Bell started it but hasn't been posting much since, shelly went hard for a few posts, then got distracted by you, then came back, then got distracted by you again, so I think saying she's driving Fred's wagon is a stretch too.

If you're only looking at who started each wagon.... MURDERCAT for Toog, Bell for Fred. I was second on board (IIRC) both times.

So sure, I give you Fidget, and I think there's an argument (but a hell of a reach of one) for UNOwen and Shelly. But those are not what you said before. You said the same people were driving the wagons. That is profoundly, undeniably false on every level. Furthermore, even if we assume a different definition of driving, it's false. Furthermore, even if we assume you meant "same alignment" rather than "same people", it fails (unless you scumread me and MURDERCAT). Furthermore, if we give every possible benefit of the doubt while taking your scumreads at face value, it remains stubbornly, unmovingly false. It's so false it is false in every possible world simultaneously unless you are outright lying about your reads with regards to me and MURDERCAT, which should take you out of my townbloc /anyway/. That deserves some amount of punishment.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I just don't use meta at all unless I have to. And I'm absolutely willing to accept she could be scum. I'm mostly inclined to give her a break for a bit longer because for once the posting is possible to follow along with, and she /was/ recently ill. If she doesn't recover enough to start contributing again soon, my benefit-of-the-doubt stores are going to run low, and I ran out of give-a-fuck /days/ ago. I'm not saying don't hit there, I'm saying let's give it a bit first.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I didn't call you stupid, I said I was taking you out of my townbloc. Implication: I respect you more than the reaction to you asserting the same people are driving the wagons deserves. Further implication, since I just said you were out of the townbloc and not that you were definitely scum: you are playing a very different game than the one I saw from you before and it isn't playing to what I perceive as your strengths, so I need to /actually/ sort you.

As for me being an asshole, that event horizon was passed on the 31st. This game drove me to drink on my favorite combined holiday-birthday, the filters are gone, and that is just something all of us will need to live with until such time as I get a normal sleep schedule again or I am passed the scroll. No one is safe, etc.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fred's pretty indefensible. I think shelly and Pooky trying to pull the wagon off of Fred could be considered defense, given that actually arguing in favor of Fred being town doesn't work here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going to call Pooky provisional town for revealing the source of the thread-spamming shitposting energy. Fair. This game does sort of suck right now. Don't mistake me for apathetic though, I'm exhausted and sickly and recovering from the 31st.

Tayl0r says the thread comes to life as soon as the focus shifts off of Fred and like ... no. The only difference is Pooky and Bell coming back to life after a while of quiet time. Don't believe me? Tally who posts how much on each page for the past 10 pages. You can extend this as far back as you like to prove my point. We have two hyper-posters and two who can be induced to hyper-post fairly easily (shelly and Noraa), that is all this is. If you call this indicative, Pooky, Bell, Shelly, Noraa are the solve and we just have to find the last one. Which is laughable.

Also, I'd like to remind Tayl0r that I made a rather loud and aggressive request to /reduce the shitposting/ that it is very possible Pooky and Bell were responding to -- since, you know, they were /by far/ the majority of fluff garbage oneliners in the thread and they stopped near dead almost immediately after I started lashing out, which would indeed be suspicious timing if we were looking for people who wanted the other players to be able to enjoy the game instead of scum.


PEDIT: In this game, it seems like players can absolutely sit around with a thumb up their ass all game long and get townreads for nothing. Adorable and Flea have been coasting on near-zero content for ages, and everytime someone pushes them it dies out too fast to matter because they don't respond for 5+ pages if they ever do at all. Sorry, MURDERCAT, I think you're thinking of some other game.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

MUSH what is it about Fred you think is so bad? I admit I've been skimming a bit but it seemed like it was the empty push on Noraa with no real scum hunting. Was there more than that?

I was doing catchup, so I put this off. Fortunately, it was only 4 god damned pages in two hours for fuck's sake I thought we dealt with this shit--

AHEM.

So, there's the empty garbage push on Noraa. One thing you missed about it is it has no coherent point: it defends Tayl0r townreading Noraa to Noraa then votes Noraa -- like, where's this coming from? What's the angle, where's the destination?

Then there's the fact that Fred dodges most real confrontation. As someone else mentioned about Pooky recently (name already gone) but in a different way, Fred's doing this avoidant thing -- laser focus on my target, if I engage with someone challenging me I'm going to deflect it or dismiss it.

Fred has no reads, also. Like, uh, not literally no reads but basically no reads. Shall we ISO? Let's ISO.

--Comes in hard on easy miselimination Noraa.
--Doesn't even cast shade when people confront him. No engagement except deflection. No explanation of the reasoning for the push given.
--Questions shelly a little bit. Barely at all. Deflates the moment shelly responds. No explanation for the questioning given.
--Votes Tayl0r for not responding to the weakest push I've ever seen -- at first I thought it was a naked vote with an unrelated quote attached by accident. Weak pressure maintained.
--Explicitly shrugs about Flea's ISO.
--Finally posts a reads list where I, Gloria, and Fidget are town, Tayl0r and Noraa are scum, and everyone else is a shrug.
--Seriously, consider the absolute emptiness, the vapidness of that readslist. Holy shit. No explanation given for /any/ of these, by the way. Gloria floated a town Fred idea at some point along the line, so maybe that has something to do with it? Garbo reads. Absolutely trash.
--Mention of a reaction test on Tayl0r, I GUESS? Like, let me remind you the vote is for townreading LLD.
--Noraa to null because, uh, Gloria and Fidget say so I guess. To slightly paraphrase on account of I just closed the ISO around when I realized this might be useful to have here: "You've convinced me this read was for bad reasons".
--Denies shelly's literal depiction of the events around the Noraa read. No explanation given.
--Finally townreads LLD for, um, "a different reason". No explanation given. This is a recurring theme, huh?
--Returns to badly putting weight on Noraa and Tayl0r because Flea reminded him that he said stuff and then sort of let it drop. (The questions asked are technically about different posts but the thrust of the argument is damn near identical.)

And that is the entirety of Fred's ISO that actually matters. The whole thing. It's all there. Check for yourself if you don't believe me.

So, on top of that, I have some meta around Fred -- who I incorrectly scumread for very different reasons in our last game together. Meta's garbage, but I know I have weaknesses. I use meta to guide my hand when it comes to mis-reading players I've got history with. The meta is basically that in our last game: Fred spread pressure out, got lost in mechanics speculation, did a bad job of appearing town but approached the game with a solving mindset, took a big-picture approach, had trouble backing down from a challenge, remained engaged (but initially disinterested). Here we see small-balling, lack of engagement with expression of interest (there's a general disconnect there, regardless of meta), active-lurking, refusal to directly respond to challenges, no mechanics-spec despite a front-of-thread focus and the high mechanics-spec make-up of that area of the thread.

Make sense now? For the record, I'm not PEDITing a damn thing, I'll reread any posts after I get this out, because it took ages to type up.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry, MURDERCAT, I think you're thinking of some other game.

What does this mean?

It means that in /this specific game/ people are coasting just fine.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Let me quote my last post, cut the cruft and break it out. This is gonna take me awhile, bear with me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

--SNIP--

--Comes in hard on easy miselimination Noraa.
--Doesn't even cast shade when people confront him. No engagement except deflection. No explanation of the reasoning for the push given.
--Questions shelly a little bit. Barely at all. Deflates the moment shelly responds. No explanation for the questioning given.
--Votes Tayl0r for not responding to the weakest push I've ever seen -- at first I thought it was a naked vote with an unrelated quote attached by accident. Weak pressure maintained.
--Explicitly shrugs about Flea's ISO.
--Finally posts a reads list where I, Gloria, and Fidget are town, Tayl0r and Noraa are scum, and everyone else is a shrug.
--Seriously, consider the absolute emptiness, the vapidness of that readslist. Holy shit. No explanation given for /any/ of these, by the way. Gloria floated a town Fred idea at some point along the line, so maybe that has something to do with it? Garbo reads. Absolutely trash.
--Mention of a reaction test on Tayl0r, I GUESS? Like, let me remind you the vote is for townreading LLD.
--Noraa to null because, uh, Gloria and Fidget say so I guess. To slightly paraphrase on account of I just closed the ISO around when I realized this might be useful to have here: "You've convinced me this read was for bad reasons".
--Denies shelly's literal depiction of the events around the Noraa read. No explanation given.
--Finally townreads LLD for, um, "a different reason". No explanation given. This is a recurring theme, huh?
--Returns to badly putting weight on Noraa and Tayl0r because Flea reminded him that he said stuff and then sort of let it drop. (The questions asked are technically about different posts but the thrust of the argument is damn near identical.)

--SNIP--

1: Fake scumhunting. I agree scum doesn't need to hunt and can coast fine in this game -- which means that if town starts to coalesce, lurkers are at risk. It's a risk-reward thing -- scum tries to fake like town, if they succeed then they can coast on bullshit to the finish line. Lurking is lower effort, has less risk of them getting caught early on, but they get caught out by POE if town coalesces.
2: Faking town confidence in coming across as town.
3: There's two things here:
3a: First, people have been remarking on the total lack of engagement outside of Noraa around now, so a false-start push on a relatively strongly positioned player could provide some cover. It's noteworthy that this does in fact come after multiple people remark on the single-mindedness of Fred's play to that point, so this is ABSOLUTELY responding to potential pressure. It's obvious why scum would do this.
3b: Second, no explanation given -- scum has to fake reasoning. This is /very/ difficult for people who aren't natural storytellers and is in fact why I incorrectly scumread Tayl0r in our last game together. Scum is safer providing barebones or absolutely no reasoning.
4: See 1 for push and 3b for weakness.
5: See 3b.
6: These are the most absurdly pointless reads I've ever seen. The universal townread, the easiest miselimination, and the only prominent player with a serious contingent calling for blood. Oh, and two comparative nobodies (no offense meant, you two just aren't in the top quarter of active players). This is an under-pressure, asspull, "I have no idea what's going on" readslist. See 3b.
7: See 6.
8: ??? I don't see /any/ reasoning for this. Maybe 1 applies? This is mostly just, "how is this person in the same game as the rest of us, have they paid any attention".
9: See 3a -- this is also responding to pressure. It's also coming from alleged townreads, who also seem to townread Fred, so...
10: 3b AGAIN. Also, 2.
11: See 3b.
12: 1 and 3a.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

By the way, the reason number 2 is faked is simple -- town confidence tends to be dismissive or happily confused (e.g. "I don't get it but sure whatever suits you!"). Fred early on is more deflecting -- blaming the state of the thread for people misunderstanding -- and ignoring -- outright refusal to respond. Comes back to 3b for why scum would prefer to deflect and ignore over dismissing and playing dumb -- they don't know what town sees that makes them wary, they have to either guess (an educated guess, admittedly) or take explanations of it at face value and hope there's no missing nuance.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The reasoning is weak? Also, in an ISO of 48 posts, only two of which were completely off topic, he's said all of 10 things worth noting, and NONE OF THEM positively. So that's worse than a 4:1 ratio of "game-advancing content" to "actually meaningfully differentiable from the past few posts", and if his next post were amazing would be a like ... what, 48:1 ratio of "posts" to "good posts"?

If only 2% of my posts were worth wiping your ass with, I'd be out of the game by now, I'll tell you that as a certainty. Even the hyperposters have more than that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Noraa, I'd say compare Fred here to Fred in 2025 and boil it down to footnotes. Are those really the same sort of play from Fred? Keep in mind that why I scumread Fred there is the /exact opposite/ of his play here and /once I account for that he still comes across as scum to me here/. You're looking at "oh this player gets scumreads a lot" and not looking at "a player who has had experience scumreading this player incorrectly and is actively correcting for that fact is still getting scum pings from the sheer degree of inconsistency with past town play".

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't have a ton to say here but I DO have a couple things.

First, I would like to reiterate that I think meta is garbage and if my meta on Fred is convincing to you and you weren't in the game while it was happening, you should feel bad. I have reasons, plural, quite a quantity actually, in this game, right now, that you can see with your eyeballs, for yourself, live, in real time. Meta is subject to manipulation, even the personality based stuff, even by people who aren't aware of their own meta. The only stable meta worth relying on is the meta happening now, in front of you, live, on camera, since at least you can recognize rapid personality and playstyle changes as possible scumflailing to escape scumreads.

Of course, even if you disagree with me, why you'd fall back on my own personal meta-read of a slot I've admitted to misreading as scum before is incomprehensible to me. Still, more weight on the wagon, sure, let's hit scum, I can berate your reasons afterwards.

Second, I personally try /really hard/ to always have precisely enough scumreads to fill the scum slots, ideally with half as many (rounded up) in null for backup and at least one locktown I'm willing to re-examine on a moment's notice. I find that having more scumreads than the number of scum in the game is usually town indicative but ALWAYS points to garbage reads, and it is self-evident that someone who has fewer scumreads is not going to find as many scum as are actually in the game (consider: even if they have a 100% hit rate, when they run out of scumreads, they are no longer scumreading any scum that remains). So, y'know, that argument is almost as bad as borrowing reads from someone else's meta reads.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fred, you know better than to think someone in your position gets to boss other people around.

But you aren't flailing. That's something, right? You might be ridiculous in public, but you aren't flailing. You put on the jester cap of your own free will, and by god you're sticking to it. Well, no accounting for taste.

The entire point of the asking about the destination, Fred, is that there are only 2 meaningful outcomes to it. Sorting (some slot) as (Town/Scum). Pick anything else as your final goal? You have wasted our time, and you have wasted your own time, on something entirely pointless, and given up all your towncred in so doing. So who's your target? Or at least, are you looking for scum or for town? This isn't a laboratory, you're allowed to have preconceptions.

And if you don't want to share that little information, I'll just hope we finish this wagon fast so that we aren't wasting your time the same way you did ours.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fred, you know better than to think someone in your position gets to boss other people around.

But you aren't flailing. That's something, right? You might be ridiculous in public, but you aren't flailing. You put on the jester cap of your own free will, and by god you're sticking to it. Well, no accounting for taste.

The entire point of the asking about the destination, Fred, is that there are only 2 meaningful outcomes to it. Sorting (some slot) as (Town/Scum). Pick anything else as your final goal? You have wasted our time, and you have wasted your own time, on something entirely pointless, and given up all your towncred in so doing. So who's your target? Or at least, are you looking for scum or for town? This isn't a laboratory, you're allowed to have preconceptions.

And if you don't want to share that little information, I'll just hope we finish this wagon fast so that we aren't wasting your time the same way you did ours.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

MafiaScum, I hit that button exactly and precisely once, what are you DOING

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I want to pay really close attention to these flips and I want scroll-holders to hit their favorite targets, NOT who town likes. We tried this "work with the scrollbearer" shit before and it went wrong, there's a good chance of going 0 for 3 /again/ if we let the rest of the town influence this shit I think.

I'd say who I want to see Fred hit, but I want to minimize my influence here. Also, uh, I think Fred's scum anyway, so.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also, to explain why I think town is a bad influence here: I think the scum are hiding in our townblocs. If we try and aim for consensus, I think we hit middle-of-the-road or lurker green every time, except PROBABLY this one. The quick stall on this wagon makes me think it's the opening into the scumteam, I've explained that whole line of reasoning before. Consider that it's noteworthy that momentum returned to the wagon not too long after that argument, too. I think it's a bus to dodge the bullet I was tapping on. Too bad -- we can just discard anyone who changed their mind on Fred late and hunt for derailers in the front half of the wagon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Reminder that Shelly tried to start /two/ counterwagons. One was just as Fred was getting started, the other was at the stall point of the wagon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Reminder that Shelly tried to start /two/ counterwagons. One was just as Fred was getting started, the other was at the stall point of the wagon.

What stops Shelly and Taylor from being wrong town though?

Nothing stops it. I've already been wrong once this game (Hopkirk -- I was fairly sure Toog was town but was feeling time pressure, and I needed to dig into Vax before I had an opinion, then that became irrelevant). No one is immune to being wrong, or we could pick that person to do all the science for the rest of us.

I would have thought that was self-evident, though, so I didn't say it. Also, what's the point? Confidence lets me get ahead of the game on a red flip, and honestly if we don't hit scum this pass I think we're in for a long, grueling, miserable late game loss anyway, so confidence also keeps my interest alive.

I do think that scum is in the townblocs and sitting pretty, though. I think Fred's wagon stalled and they had over-distanced from each other too hard to create a useful narrative for building a counterwagon in time. Hence being in the townblocs -- we have a lot of prominent players who don't like each other but get a ton of townreads from the outside. Lurkers could naked-vote a different wagon, or Adorable could do another pass at Noraa though I think that ship has sailed -- oh wait, Adorable DID do that, so sure, Adorable can be scum, whatever.

But this doesn't account well for many -- you have to presume most of the scum is in lurkslots (which makes yesterday look like a freak coincidence where we precisely miss the few scum in the category) or that most of the scum is in consensus scumreads (which is weird since it's mostly consensus town slots getting those out of trouble, e.g. me with Noraa) or that the scum has at least some presence in townblocs. Which means that our townreads are going to be covering for 2-4 scum.

IF I am right about that, we need to rely on scrolled town shooting from the hip and taking no direction in the process, because scum is inside the town decision loop and building our consensus for us. If we let town help direct scroll-passes, scum that has near-universal townreads gets to control where it lands, and we never hit two scum in a day.

It also means we need to start doing serious VCA, and paying close attention to the context of that VCA. Some examples, right?

Shelly looks awful here if Fred flips red, not because of her position in the vote-counts, but because she jumped on, off, back on, back off of the wagon (and I don't recall her getting back on at the end) and kept trying to get attention spotlighting her when she hopped off.
Adorable looks sorta bad here if Fred's red, because of the eleventh hour Noraa push long after everyone else has sort of ruled Noraa out (though I'm reconsidering for the reasons I'm going into here).
I and Bell (but more me) look pretty bad in a world where Fred flips green, because we were the /primary drivers/ of this wagon, especially me. I think this is less useful for overall sorting, because I do believe my reasons for the scumread were damned good, and it's the ...what, second time Bell has shown animation about a wagon? Maybe even first. Also the first day's scroll hits show that town can't find town very well here, which does also diminish the degree to which we look bad. Or I'm biased and will be eliminated afterwards, but as I said: confidence, etc.!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No aggressive resistance to it, Tayl0r. Lots of more or less passive resistance, though. Resistance doesn't always take the form of "STOP NOW OR ELSE".

Shelly trying to pull votes onto different wagons (twice), Adorable attempting to resurrect a long-dead wagon, Gloria requiring a knockdown case that tickled her specific reads, MURDERCAT initially trying to resist softly then realizing that maybe their reads suck, Pooky trying to put more attention on you and themselves while the wagon was at a lull point. Add in you and Fred, and yeah, that's way more players than there are scum, but keep in mind scum distancing as well here -- defending too directly ties players to their scumbuddies. In a case where that scumbuddy isn't likely to go down, it's fairly safe. But Fred's wagon was more of a when than an if: his predecessor was Maximum Scum and his play was scummy even by the unique standards you have to read him by.

So passive defense is more likely for scum in such a position, because if they defend too hard it guarantees town goes 2-for-1 instead of 1-for-2. The scum team wants nothing less than that, because that's the path to a town win at this state (where we've already gone one day without hitting scum).

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If by levity you mean meaningless page-filling fluffy shitposting, I can't take it. I'll beg for you to catch the scroll at earliest convenience. I'm not even joking. We didn't hit damn near 200 pages this quickly by accident, and I'd like to not repeat the eternally hideous "tab back in 3 hours later to 10 new pages" nightmare that was Day 1.

If you mean Hopkirk-style "every post reads so sarcastically that it's impossible to tell where you're being serious and where you're joking so you could be scum using that as a smokescreen for terrible reads," please witness what happened to Hopkirk. I have learned NOTHING and I WILL do it again.

Otherwise, have fun.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I never used those exact words -- I said you were influencing people in a way that felt very much like "the devil on the shoulder".



But also, please, do not spam this thread again, I'm begging you. It drove me to drink on my favorite combined birthday-holiday. I can't take it. If you want to shitpost, at least do it in larger blocks of text so that I don't have to scroll past post after post of literal blank space due to one-liners that do nothing for the actual game. And give the rest of us regular breaks from it, please. I can't handle another recurring cycle of 10 pages in 3 hours. I just can't.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For me, Fidget, Fred coming up red makes you more likely to be scum. Mostly because for the first time this game, you jumped -- and you were the hammer vote.

It's a minor shift, but significant. I see a Fidget+Shelly+Fred world as more likely than a Fidget+any-combo-without-Fred one. That said, I have other places I'd want to check before you.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yeah, I'm inclined to pull the bandaid off quickly at this point. Maybe our scroll targets have better reads than the rest of us.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Adorable's inactive, and... By the way, I only just picked up on this because guess who finally had a full night's sleep!... their posting style reminds me of a very forced, fine-I'll-do-it-at-the-last-minute high school assignment persuasive essay. There's a clunkiness to the logic: There is always a single cause to a single effect, there's not much appearance of doubt, the phrasing makes it appear like, uh... parts-scrounging? Like, you know when you're building something out of LEGO and you're hunting for that one PERFECT piece you KNOW you have but you can't find it so you go "fuck it, this one works" and come up with some half-assed reason why it works? It's also sort of like when you're trying to defend a movie or game you like to someone when they have a good point but you're too convinced to let them have even one point, so you argue that the imperfection was better than the alternative.

So yeah it's this extremely clunky seat-of-the-pants rationalization to the phrasing, no nuance, no doubt. It's extremely mechanical, as in machine.

Also, on a full night's sleep I can remember Noraa asked me a question pages and pages ago! And the answer is: I have no solve right now. Every alley I've gone down is a dead end. Adorable has been null for me on account of the stuff above and I'm at "fuck it, scroll 'em, I don't care anymore I just want information to dig into". I'm honestly currently hoping that Adorable gives the scroll to you, Noraa, because you're the best slot to read off of. You have an excellent Day 1 wagon and you've had multiple long-term pushers. A confirmed flip from you makes for GREAT analysis no matter what your alignment is. I'm feeling it, even though I town read you.

For the record, if I was Fred, I would have hit Noraa or Tayl0r for big information and the fact that both of them excel as town when there's time pressure but not scumread-pressure. I would trust them to hit red with the third pass so long as they followed their heart, believe it or not.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Making a note here: Pooky can lead town after these flips. Pooky can even gloat and mock me for how wrong I was. I have seen the light. Just please keep the shitposting within safe-to-read-the-thread levels.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That is both understandable and upsetting.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Making a note here: Pooky can lead town after these flips. Pooky can even gloat and mock me for how wrong I was. I have seen the light. Just please keep the shitposting within safe-to-read-the-thread levels.

So what made you finally see the light?

After the flips.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Before Fred put down a HURT vote on Adorable, the rules of how the scroll passing works would give it to Fred's last vote in the game.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm honestly hoping for a high-info flip. Noraa and/or Tayl0r going down would break Day 1 wide open.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There are others too, of course. Those are just the most obvious ones, since they had a lot of pushing back and forth on them and a lot of player engagement.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I was just going over my case on Fred and goddamn I look good.
Like, just pristine. I'm basically an IC now.

Also, gunna chill out on posting for a little. I'm back to shit posting and that ain't good.

@Gloria, ah, I see.

Give me some credit here, I made 2 wallposts in a row for it and kept the train rolling while you were incommunicado for awhile.

Scumteam nearly had me giving up on everything there, gold star for them. I still want to hit Shelly here in third, the constant jumping off wagon and etc... it felt like a "I'll bus this no-hoper if I have to but I think they can be saved". As I /have/ been saying, by the way.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm not good for sure. I suck, I just bring an alien POV to the table that gives different angles into the gamestate. That's my biggest and best contribution to a mafia game as town.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Bell, how do you feel about some of those combos? Tayl0r + Shelly rings false to me, can't say why. Fidget + Shelly doesn't ring false, that sounds plausible. I'm particularly interested in thoughts on Theta + Shelly and Titus + any active "remaining" slot.

Unrelatedly, Adorable posts like someone who is trying to write a persuasive essay that they aren't feeling and don't agree with. I really hope I'm not the only one who notices the big, clunky, mechanical (as in machine-like) posting there.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Smells plausible to me. Actually, it's my preferred theory given where all the other general townreads were looking.

Not cursing Pooky might also suggest Tayl0r defense, though more weakly. It certainly makes me want to hit in the Tayl0r/Pooky area soon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

By the way: reason the scum might hit Pooky here is similar to why they'd hit LLD. Active player with low information, lack of engagement, and presumably scumreads outside of the scumteam. LLD was going to be getting revisited, had only two notable scum reads, one of which flipped green, and didn't have the apparent motivation to really get back to obvtowning. All of which combines to make her an extremely interesting and informative slot to hit.

Pooky shared most of this, except both of Pooky's scumreads were still live. So Pooky's scum or at least one of Tayl0r or Noraa is red.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fidget's a plausible one to me. I can see a Shelly+Fidget+Fred team. The immediate reaction for me thinking on that team is Adorable, Theta, Pooky, Tayl0r all fit to varying degrees, but Tayl0r takes some serious nudging to fit and can't pair with Pooky at all. That said, Tayl0r+Fred and Tayl0r+Theta look promising from a quick ISO skim, even though it feels inexplicably wrong to pair Tayl0r and shelly at all and Fidget+Tayl0r is sorta clunky too. Take Tayl0r out and the other three can all pair up in the last two scum slots pretty solidly. So Fidget is a fairly promising scum slot, though I'd hit elsewhere. I feel like the scumteam accidentally opened up their playbook to the town, which means we can get major POE off of red flips. So I think we should focus on extremely highly scum-like slots here, and leave middling slots like Fidget till later. (Or we can let Fidget grab scroll 3 this go around, I'm ok with that too, though I'd still prefer the top scum likelihood slots to Fidget. Up to LLD of course.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Remember to keep your possible teams open a bit, MURDERCAT. I would hate to have town charge down a blind path of a scumteam based on this (still unresolved) flip and the two obvious next steps and their own preconceptions to this point.

That said: I'm not too upset by that set of 4. If we have to take a gamble with a flip, I really would like to hit Pooky, because Pooky red I feel clears two slots outright (Noraa + Tayl0r). I think Tayl0r red clears Pooky and says nothing on Noraa, and Noraa red tells us fuck all. Pooky is a serious contender for best info flip, and has some degree of scum quotient as well. Clear two slots and treat our obvtowns as confs and we might be able to purely POE it to the finish line.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I think that 4 slots closed is asking for trouble this early. 3 slots closed is pretty fair, but wait till the curse resolves to make hard decisions on that, I say. Could be LLD pays attention, passes in the obvious kill zone, and one of the other two obvious targets come up green. I don't think that's likely with Shelly, but Fidget I'm unconvinced of.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If Adorable of all the slots was a target for even a moment, Pooky was on the table for sure.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Pooky green implicates Tayl0r tremendously, honestly. That whole back and forth smelled like SvT. Says nothing about Noraa though. Also, you have a GIGANTIC ISO and a lot of Day 1 back and forth, there's bound to be good stuff to work with in terms of VCA with you confirmed as green.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No, it's about the dynamics of the shit-fight you two had late on Day 1. Tayl0r seemed to be goading you on purpose, you were giving no ground on your scumread, someone was scum in there and yeah, it's most likely Tayl0r, but I'm uncertain still. Even discounting that, the VCA bonus for analyzing the numerous Day 1 VCs does give a green flip some value.

Keep in mind I said "if we need to gamble" -- I'd prefer not to and I think we can avoid gambling if we hit Shelly next and follow the obvious road.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fidget, from what I know of Tayl0r, her playstyle lends itself very well to TSTBS defense. She'd absolutely have a chance to do this as town too, I think, but it does make me question her alignment and increases the chances of Tayl0r + Fred.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Irrelevant. Pooky red would remove all doubt there, and I promise you doubt will be cast. If I had anything to bet, I'd wager on it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gotta be real with you here folks, I think the scumteam misjudged LLD if they thought she was just going to wreck Noraa and toss the game out. Best angle for a miselimination with Red Fred is inside of Bell, Gloria, MAYBE Fidget?, and Tayl0r/Pooky (whichever one is town, because I'm convinced that there is one and ONLY one green in there). LLD tossing the scroll to Noraa would be foolish as hell here.

...

Actually, hold up, let's do some quick sanity checks.

Shelly was clearly being defended, or I'd have caught a case of curse.
Fidget may have been getting defended, or else Adorable might have remained the target. (I feel like Adorable may also have been always intended to be swapped off of and could be a red slot.)
MURDERCAT would have smashed Shelly in a heartbeat.
Pooky would have hit Tayl0r.
Tayl0r would have hit ... not Pooky.

Okay, let's check Tayl0r's reads here. Who WOULD she have hit, based on what we can see?

Shelly and UNOwen, it's looking like. Bell was possible before the Fred flip was recognized for what it was. Fidget's a possible afterwards. Tayl0r's been scumreading Pooky but rarely emphasizes it except to force Pooky out of the limelight. First name mentioned in each of the past few reads list is Shelly's.

So Tayl0r's reads are following the rest of town's on Shelly. This also predates the Fred flip.
So I go back through and try and look for conflicts there. Scum theater, SvT, TvT feeling? And so on.

Oh, would you look at that, there's a lack-luster dustup near the very beginning of the Fred wagon between Shelly and Tayl0r. Shelly's attempt to derail. Well, it worked on me, apparently -- forgot the context and just remembered the vague discontentment there. It goes nowhere, does nothing, then Shelly tries to spearhead a wagon on Fidget, it goes nowhere and does nothing. Tayl0r tries to argue that this doesn't count as organized resistance so Fred clearly cannot be red. And then the hammer, and whoopsie, there goes Fred.

Way too strong of alignment assumption WRT Fred, garbage assertions, CONSTANT garbage assertions. After the hammer, even stronger garbage assertion based on nothing but "well, Fred's wagon sucked too bad to be town", which was trash when almost all of the obvtowns in the game were on board, and it was being most heavily argued for by an obvtown (even though I hate that's the case for me). Like, "bring out the industrial strength air fresheners" garbo bullshit here. And then Fred basically spoils the flip and Tayl0r ditches it all instantly.

Okay. Time out. Listen.

If I was a townie who townread someone THAT hard, I'd rationalize for them. I'd rationalize for them and make a hell of a lot of good arguments. I'd spend all my towncred on trying to recover there, and then some. I'd probably go down swinging for them. If I'm making absolute bullshit up to try and save them in the first place, if I'm assuming absolute certainty where none exists? I'll take it to the wall. I'll knock the wall down and take it further. If nothing else, I'll do it to prove that I wasn't a fucking idiot and anyone could have been taken in as badly as me, because by god is there gonna be egg on face for me.

Tayl0r? Nah, fuck 'em. Here's the new reads, same as the old reads except I have to give Bell a gold star for hitting red.

I take it all back. Yeah, Tayl0r/Shelly/Fred can be the team (minus 2 members TBD) for now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fred+Tayl0r is the new hotness, Noraa. Check my last post for the deets. I trust your judgement here because you're waffling on that slot, give me criticism.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fred did not interact with Theta, or if there was interaction it was so minimal it was basically meaningless. I did check. This isn't too impressive: Fred avoided the vast majority of the player list like the plague, even when some of them were trying to get his attention.

Still think Theta smells like scum. But I think scum has a higher chance of living in Shelly/Tayl0r/Fidget and want to crush those slots in just about that order first. The last one I don't even have hints on, but those three can go down in order until we hit green.

Way I see it:
Fidget's the only slot implicated by red Fred where we don't get a hint of where to look next if we hit green. So let them be last.
Shelly is so highly scummy with red Fred that this isn't worth considering too highly, but who's been pushing Shelly hardest all game long, just in case? Off the top of my head, it would appear to be UNOwen. (However, I have Thoughts about UNOwen and I want to hold them for later.)
Tayl0r green implicates Pooky pretty well, I can't see any world where that matchup is TvT.

"Hit the scummiest" implies Shelly first.
Tayl0r gives us good solid direction if green, so Tayl0r second is a good move.
Fidget's our wildcard, but still looks a bit worse off of red Fred, in part due to ugly associatives with Shelly -- Shelly and Fidget have been mostly living on each other's vanity wagons all game long, with rare jumps off. Also, with Fidget lolhammering Fred (to be fair, I didn't realize where the votecount was myself, I'll give this a pass) after restraining herself on Toog and otherwise staying on a momentum-free Shelly wagon, there's a slight implication of inherent knowledge being abused to catch towncred.

Theta /looks scummy/ but has no meaningful associatives, which I feel are way stronger for identifying scum. So I'd save Theta for later.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Good point. He was rereading the thread from front to back and he did get to the low thousands IIRC. I think that's very possible.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

So, Theta for LHF? Suits me fine.

I'm still intent on a Shelly->Tayl0r->Fidget elimination order, determine next steps off of flips. If all three come up red we have a VERY good shot of winning by raw POE and we can just curse our way through the playerlist. If one comes up green, we stop and reassess at that stage. Best case here is LLD hitting one of those three (preferably Tayl0r or Shelly) then we can hit the other two next day. If we hit S->T->S we are, if my math is right, on track to a win again next day, so we can afford one gamble on a high doubt slot with red associatives (Fidget) that day. I don't feel like Shelly or Tayl0r are gambles.

But if LLD hits in the top of that group and we somehow go S->T->T it stops us from going down a blind alley at a critical stage. If LLD eliminates outside of those 3 we're forced to figure out if it affects the associatives on the board before we hit them, and I have an unfortunate suspicion that the answer is "not by much" regardless of flip or LLD's target if she scroll-passes outside of there. Given we are pretty much coalescing around Shelly being highly scummy and most people are sort of like "yeah seems reasonable" on Tayl0r and Fidget as targets, that's crucial info to get out of the way with the coming guaranteed flip so scum can't mindgame us into reconsidering mid-scrollpass during the next day.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

FTR, if anyone has doubts that scum could fake us out day 2, recall how hard we bought Fred green before the flip spoiling LLD pass. If Fred hadn't spoiled the flip that way we would have ditched all these fine vintage associatives and almost certainly hit S->T->T -- which keeps us in the running but doesn't put us back on a winning track.

Now think: we hit some rando and go S->T->T today. We hit shelly scum next dayphase, shelly plays it off like we hit town, puts a hurt down on Tayl0r, we fall for it and let her pick some target from the LHF list. We go S->T->T and if Fidget is town, we are nowhere near being on track for the win as we close on the endgame.

Mindgames next dayphase are a serious concern, hence why I want LLD to pass in that group today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Honestly, ANY amount of doubt as to Fred's alignment at this point should be beaten with a stick. One, the flip is coming, we will learn the truth soon either way. Two, Fred basically scumclaimed when asked about what his post-LLD pass scumteam list was all about. Three, where the fuck does Town Fred, Townreading LLD In His Own Damn Words, pass the scroll? Not to LLD. Certainly not without explaining the /exact reasoning/ in detail. Absolutely not. And the taunting tone of all further Fred posts should cement the red. Burn it into your retinas:

Fred's Scum.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Can't really imagine scum bussing in this setup unless they're deferring their hit to scroll 3.

Fair warning: big event tomorrow, I won't be V/LA but I won't be posting at even my currently reduced rates. Lot of work to do. Expect something at some point though.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh hey, looks like Theta was town and we got fuck all out of the last flip of D2 and already people are trying to sow doubt on the obvious next step scroll bearer. Who could have seen this coming? Was it me? It was me.

VOTE: Shellyc

I'll quote Proof in a second then I gotta get back to work. Someone do me a favor and keep on quoting the post I quote in my next post.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Whoops, there were two. Still important, thanks.

So, Theta for LHF? Suits me fine.

I'm still intent on a Shelly->Tayl0r->Fidget elimination order, determine next steps off of flips. If all three come up red we have a VERY good shot of winning by raw POE and we can just curse our way through the playerlist. If one comes up green, we stop and reassess at that stage. Best case here is LLD hitting one of those three (preferably Tayl0r or Shelly) then we can hit the other two next day. If we hit S->T->S we are, if my math is right, on track to a win again next day, so we can afford one gamble on a high doubt slot with red associatives (Fidget) that day. I don't feel like Shelly or Tayl0r are gambles.

But if LLD hits in the top of that group and we somehow go S->T->T it stops us from going down a blind alley at a critical stage. If LLD eliminates outside of those 3 we're forced to figure out if it affects the associatives on the board before we hit them, and I have an unfortunate suspicion that the answer is "not by much" regardless of flip or LLD's target if she scroll-passes outside of there. Given we are pretty much coalescing around Shelly being highly scummy and most people are sort of like "yeah seems reasonable" on Tayl0r and Fidget as targets, that's crucial info to get out of the way with the coming guaranteed flip so scum can't mindgame us into reconsidering mid-scrollpass during the next day.

FTR, if anyone has doubts that scum could fake us out day 2, recall how hard we bought Fred green before the flip spoiling LLD pass. If Fred hadn't spoiled the flip that way we would have ditched all these fine vintage associatives and almost certainly hit S->T->T -- which keeps us in the running but doesn't put us back on a winning track.

Now think: we hit some rando and go S->T->T today. We hit shelly scum next dayphase, shelly plays it off like we hit town, puts a hurt down on Tayl0r, we fall for it and let her pick some target from the LHF list. We go S->T->T and if Fidget is town, we are nowhere near being on track for the win as we close on the endgame.

Mindgames next dayphase are a serious concern, hence why I want LLD to pass in that group today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

And you can replace Tayl0r with Pooky in those. I don't give a fuck for either of those slots anymore since Pooky's hitting the brakes on obvscum shelly and Tayl0r's just like "hell, fuck it, lets go". Tayl0r might be hoping for bus cred, but she will get absolutely NOTHING from me here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh yeah, one more thing before I slide off into work-land, I am town on UNOwen because UNOwen's play is pinging me the same exact way it did our other game, where he was killed D1: anonymous, slides off the brain, but every post has a good point.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gloria, if we aren't doing Shelly we're hitting you. How do you like that? Yes, I'm just copying LLD's play here, because /I LITERALLY WARNED EVERYONE ABOUT THIS EXACT THING BEFORE THE FLIP/ and if town doesn't get it now they're guaranteed to get us absolutely nothing but another LHF lurking garbage scroll pass to fucking town. That's a game throw. I swear, if I called the exact trajectory of the game yesterday, I reserve the right to crow about it and take it as a personal win even though it's a technical loss.

Go ahead: ignore me, you monsters. That's what happened to that ancient mythical hero Cassandra, and that's why Spain is a lost continent now. It's all your fault.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

He trusted LLD to hit town. Now please do look at my ISO during D2 and ask yourself who I hit.

If that's your theory, Shelly needs to go out today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay Mush I see your point, counterpoint might be what happens if she flips green? Why couldn’t Fred be afraid of a Shelley town flip? Think about this. Noraa and Theta flips are optimal for scum because they provide no info and that’s exactly what we got with a Theta flip. Don’t you want Shelley because she’s good info right? I would have much preferred her to Theta for that reason.

So, what does Shelly red flip tell us and then also ask yourself what Shelley green flip also tells you and think of what info. scum!Fred wanted to keep hidden.

Oh look, another thing I literally called over a day ago!

Fred did not interact with Theta, or if there was interaction it was so minimal it was basically meaningless. I did check. This isn't too impressive: Fred avoided the vast majority of the player list like the plague, even when some of them were trying to get his attention.

Still think Theta smells like scum. But I think scum has a higher chance of living in Shelly/Tayl0r/Fidget and want to crush those slots in just about that order first. The last one I don't even have hints on, but those three can go down in order until we hit green.

Way I see it:
Fidget's the only slot implicated by red Fred where we don't get a hint of where to look next if we hit green. So let them be last.
Shelly is so highly scummy with red Fred that this isn't worth considering too highly, but who's been pushing Shelly hardest all game long, just in case? Off the top of my head, it would appear to be UNOwen. (However, I have Thoughts about UNOwen and I want to hold them for later.)
Tayl0r green implicates Pooky pretty well, I can't see any world where that matchup is TvT.

"Hit the scummiest" implies Shelly first.
Tayl0r gives us good solid direction if green, so Tayl0r second is a good move.
Fidget's our wildcard, but still looks a bit worse off of red Fred, in part due to ugly associatives with Shelly -- Shelly and Fidget have been mostly living on each other's vanity wagons all game long, with rare jumps off. Also, with Fidget lolhammering Fred (to be fair, I didn't realize where the votecount was myself, I'll give this a pass) after restraining herself on Toog and otherwise staying on a momentum-free Shelly wagon, there's a slight implication of inherent knowledge being abused to catch towncred.

Theta /looks scummy/ but has no meaningful associatives, which I feel are way stronger for identifying scum. So I'd save Theta for later.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gloria can be scum. This stinks of flail.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Want to point out that I also called that we'd find scum in the townblocs. Look at that, Gloria was in my townbloc.

I feel like I go down today, and that makes me smile.

Back to work!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I just spent all night working on a song that I took from nearly perfect to absolutely ass in the final hour. I have backups, but I'm not happy.

Headed to sleep, but I'm gonna just say: Pooky and Tayl0r are both garbage slots at the moment. Shelly's going down today, so the real question is do we hit the bear or the pop star with round 3? Hey, maybe scummy shelly will oblige in kicking the town half of that pairing and we can hit /all three/ (Shelly, Tayl0r/Pooky, Fidget) in /one day/. That'd be awesome.

I like Fidget for scum still right now, but Gloria's not a townread for me at this stage either. I'm at the stage where POE is closing in on scum and it's just a matter of sorting through bad town at the bottom end of the list. It'd be real nice if the LHF townies could pull a Bell and confirm themselves while I sleep the sleep of late nights, disappointment and self-loathing. Not likely, but you'll never get nice things if you don't ask.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

And a HURT tag isn't a vote.

DGB replaced Lapsa, so DGB can be scum.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'll talk about Adorable more later. But if you're giving Adorable a town pass on that HURT tag, you're a fool. The entire point of a HURT tag is it isn't final -- it means nothing until near the deadline. Fred didn't let it go that long.

For now, I will say if we have a townie to get rid of, Noraa is our best bet. I trust her with the scroll and there's other reasons I want to sit on for a bit.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Of all the townies for scum to hit, Noraa was definitely the best one I think. I'll talk more about this when she gets the scroll for real. But for now, let me be clear that Noraa is one of a handful of players here I trust to hit scum when shooting from the hip on short notice.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hey, who's got the dirt on shelly associatives?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm headed to sleep. I sure hope scum makes this mistake, because lord knows they're going 1-for-2 this dayphase, easily.

Titus, I want your immediate no-brains-involved gut reactions on the following slots:
Flea
Pooky
Adorable
Fidget

Gloria, MURDERCAT, Noraa, I want your reactions on them too -- BUT, only after Titus has posted.

Bell, I want specifically your thoughts on Adorable, Tayl0r, DGF. Give it as much or as little thought as you have to offer at the time: I trust your brain to reach good conclusions, I trust the others' guts to reach good conclusions.

I'm going to do what I do regardless, and I don't give a fuck what anyone I didn't ask has to say on the matter of those slots.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'll tell you now that I adjusted my requests to take scum having the scroll into account. Scum has already fucked up by putting me in the right frame of mind, moving the scroll won't help them now. I am also denying them information (there's townreads in there and a scumread in one of the people I'm asking for opinions on, and I'm smart enough to have made it not or in addition to Titus), and sorting more slots than I'm asking about (and again, I'm not talking about (just?) Titus). MURDER, answer the question. Like it if Bell could too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I just woke up, sorry Bell.


MURDER, you aren't going to fuck it up by giving gutreads, unless gutreads are all you have to work with. Also! One time only, just for you, now on sale: You can replace any two slots in the list provided you replace them with the other people I asked for gutreads. Yes, all 3. I will make it no easier for you than this.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yes, Titus too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

OBJECTION: Thinking not allowed for these purposes. Gutread gutread gutread. Try again.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Your gut is awfully talkative, should watch your diet more.

Phase 2 begins when the scroll gets passed. No, it does not matter if it goes to me or not. Sorry scum.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Nah, that was good enough, I was making a goof. I know what I'm after and I know where I'm going now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh what.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm laughing so hard. We got Shelly to scumclaim and start putting tags down before she even properly had the scroll. Well done, town. I'm chalking this one up in the win column for that alone, regardless of actual game outcome.

Sometimes losers can be winners too. Sometimes winners can be double winners. But scum definitely has one loss here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There's nothing to read into. It was pure scum humiliation in public, even if the scum was doing it on purpose. Hell, especially if the scum was doing it on purpose.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No all the switches is making me paranoid because recently Mush asked a bunch of people for certain reads and im worrying that all that info mush gave is the reason scum wanted to scroll her or they wanted to make it seem like what she said is right. IDK *throws up my hands*

I took all of this into account. I specifically asked for gutreads from most of you that don't need to match your actual reads. Free association level reads that could be influenced by stuff like "their avatar bothers me". Titus picked up on that. (BTW: If you thought about your reads, Noraa, you need to Try Again. Right now.) That's good info for ME, put to the purpose I'm USING it for. Can scum see what I'm doing? If they can, they recognize that they may as well hit me now to keep me from taking this energy into the next few days. If they can't, they may as well hit me now because they don't know what's going on anyway.

So, what's that leave us? Can scum make decisions based on the info I grabbed?

Unlikely, because I'm not open with who my reads are right now.

Let me remind you I asked at least one scumread of mine who isn't Titus for opinions on slots that I partially townread. Is it Bell? Bell got a different list, after all. Is it MURDERCAT? MURDERCAT had to be given special concessions to get answers from them. Maybe Titus isn't a scumread, but I did single them out, so I mean, maybe, right -- but that'd still leave one other, so what good does that do you? Gloria? I gave her some strife earlier in the dayphase. Noraa? Maybe my wanting her to catch this scroll was covering up a scumread.

And fuck it, how about those partial townreads? Can /you/ guess who of the 6 people I asked for opinions on was my secret townread all along? Or maybe it's two. Or maybe it's three. Or maybe it's all of them and I have some galaxy brain take on the scum ALL lying in the townbloc.

Or maybe I'm just lying about all of it. In whole or in part, who knows.

The point being that town can do WIFOM just as well as scum can under the right circumstances, and I know some amount of what I'm doing. I'm good at manipulation, and if I wanted this to affect the scumteam I'd have the exact outcome I wanted. Unfortunately for them, now that they have gotten my attention, there is no hope and there is no escape. They can do whatever they want with this scroll and I will still ensure we hit red on round 3. Like I said: they might as well leave it exactly where it is, because the longer I live, the less chance there is they win.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yeah, but then they realize I'm up to something and take it away from me before I get the energy to start directing the game board and calling the shots. This way was much more effective, and now that I have my energy the direction the scroll goes is immaterial. I can close in on a solve as soon as the scroll leaves scum hands, no matter who it goes to. I mean, I guess unless it's another scum slot.

In which case, well, cool. Going S->S->T shouldn't be possible, but I'll take it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Tip for townies who are impatient and/or worried their reads will change if Shelly drags heels:

Write out a post, don't send it, save it off to the side instead. When the time comes, post it without ANY editing or commentary, and then and /only/ then begin to revisit it. I like to make sure to be absolutely adamant the first time someone questions such a post to make sure I'm confident enough in it that I'm building off of it rather than off of the crap I dreamt up while I was waiting. YMMV, however.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Phase 2 begins.

Everyone is at risk of dying today. Post like it's your last day in the game. If I am not entertained I will put the hurt on you. I will not accept pleas, I will only accept your absolute loyalty and obedience.

That won't save you either, but I'll be nicer about it.


Let's get started with an announcement: UNOwen is in your townbloc now, folks. Accept it, because I will not tolerate dissidence.

Pooky and Tayl0r, I want towncases on each other. Yes, I know you're each convinced the other is scum. Do it anyway. Failure to towncase your opposition may very well be your doom. I am a mad god and I hold absolute power over your continuing to play this game.

Titus, I want scumcases on all of your townreads outside of me, Gloria, Noraa. Yes, again, I am serious. Your pleas will not fall on deaf ears, but they will fall regardless. I don't even have ears. I am a worm god and I cannot hear you scream.

Gloria, I have a very special request for you. It is something you should be, in fact, the foremost expert on. A list of every person you hard-defended during this game, in order. You should not be alive -- your reads have seemed to suck tremendously thus far and you are otherwise obvtown: a perfect scum target in this scenario. I don't actually know /why/ you are alive still. Show me.

MURDERCAT, Bell, Noraa, UNOwen: now is the time to drop full readslists. While you're at it, one of you can scumcase or towncase (don't care which) Titus. Better still, all of you can, but I am merciful and don't need duplicated effort from you lot anyway. UNOwen, from you specifically I want your absolute favorite scumread here. I'm thinking of 2028 and I'm thinking you're going to lead me to a solve.

Anyone I have not assigned a job to is encouraged to explain exactly how the others are sucking at their job. I'm watching for something specific in the dynamics. So, you know, everyone here. Almost.

Everyone except Adorable.

Adorable, your role here is to convince me not to make you my final scroll target, because right now that's where I'm headed until my worshippers inevitably enrage me and I do the whole Greek God thing. I will give you a small reprieve, but there is no hope but the hope you make for yourself here. Convince me.


HURT: Hectic Nothing personal, you're doing a great job despite all the self-aware flavor posting and all. I simply want to show the lengths of disrespect I am willing to put on open display here. You get it, I'm sure.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That's /good/. Stuff that makes waves everyone else can rip into is what I want. I want to smash scum, and that means finalizing a POE and hitting red THIS pass, and I do that best when there is a lot of chaotic interaction. Feed me absolute madness.

But I'm going to bed soon myself so fair enough on the lateness.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, scum fucked up by considering me a viable target at all. Under high pressure with many players? Large number of obvtowns? No PRs to fuzz my reads? Most of the players who share my aggressive playstyle out of the game (in this case basically just LLD)? Ability to control the player list with an iron fist because I have the scroll and my wrath can be backed up mechanically? Scum's doomed.

I want the full list still. There are precious few reasons scum lets you specifically live this long in this game. You had a far larger chance of going S->T->T than LLD did, and I'm willing to bet you had a far larger chance of hitting town than I do this dayphase as well. I want to see what they see.



P-EDIT: MURDERCAT, what part of "I am a mad god" passed you by here?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Nah, I was sending that to Gloria. I want her full list of slots she's hard-defended this game so I can identify why she's still alive.

Still. Give me a full reads list though.

Yes, yes, obscuring your reads, blah blah. I am trying to get information and create an actual game-solve, your obscurity is useless to town here. Do you want to be the first person I put the hurt on, just before I go to sleep? That would be silly, MURDERCAT.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm not mad at Hectic at all. Hectic is fine. Hectic is simply an example to the rest of you that I will hit my townreads, I will hit my scumreads, I will hit the mod, I might hit the deadlist, no one is safe, etc. How can I truly ensure town understands that I will reign through fear and terror unless I nonchalantly injure an innocent for no reason? What I'm saying is, I'm the bad guy in the cheesy fantasy adventure movie right now and my reign of terror is both absolute and temporary, so I'm going to make the most of it.

And no, I think scum underestimated LLD's abilities, and LLD succumbed to the pressure of needing to scroll and not having the regular game engagement to make it happen. She wasn't considering Noraa as highly as Theta and there was (IIRC) another one between the two. You had a far larger chance because your reads were clearing scum, plural. Scum sees something I don't, I want to know what they see. I want to see who you hard-defended, I'm going to be watching your earlier reads lists, I'm honestly going to be casing you like a thief casing a bank where the security guard goes for a beer run every night, same time. Because I need to see what scum sees if I'm going to unlock this game.


PEDIT: Fidget! Just in time. Glad you could join us. Give me your biggest scumread and your biggest non-consensus townread.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Three /town/ reads, Gloria.

Town reads aren't worth anything if you're giving scum free backstage passes to the townbloc, and you tried your hand at that twice. If you had succeeded, we could have gone S-T-S yesterday and then S for the first scroll of today and if you'd convinced everyone, town would still lose as our POE ran into a brick wall. Bad reads. As for why scum would kill that? Look at how we're treating people who get scrolls. What part? Figure it out: I'm going to shut my fat mouth on the rest of that until I have a /real/ solve, and if you get a lightbulb on why scum would hit that player with scrolls you should keep it on the DL too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Those townreads /suck/, Fidget. I mean, there's a lot of town in them but there's no goddamn chaos. I'm looking for the townread most likely to cause fistfights. So for now, we'll let Adorable be that. AUDIENCE, HOW DO WE FEEL?



I have no idea how anyone's putting Gloria scummier than the Town in Tayl0r/Pooky (there is /zero/ chance that's scum theater), but I sure as fuck hope they show up soon. Wait. Wait, that's you? Oh gee, now you have to /justify yourself/. Don't you hate when that happens? Build me a Gloria scumcase. Beyond the hard-defending scum, I mean. I'm sure it'll take you awhile, so I want to make sure you don't forget. HURT: Fidget

I'll be around a bit longer but I doubt you'll finish before it's bedtime. I'll be sure to check your progress in the morning.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Mush clearly you have some master plan but if the scroll doesn't go to someone who voted UNO over shelly it would be a mistake

Town is wrong and dumb very very often. And you still haven't given me your full readslist so I'm disinclined to accept your guidance. I can't read. Help me read, MURDERCAT.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

My mind is made up on a great many things, like being a really entertaining asshole for the 48 hours and change for which I rule this land. It is not made up on my target: there are only two worlds where I get the scroll, you see; either I am right or I am wrong. It is far more likely that I am wrong by basic probability, so I will reanalyze using the now vast and untold power I wield and decide if I was right or if I was wrong, and in what ways.

You need to reread the post if you think I was /somehow/ saying S->T->S was anti-wincon. That is in fact the opposite of what I was saying. If scum are in the town bloc deep enough even the best townplay and best run of luck cannot win the game; that is the point. You were valuable to scum alive or dead, but I see far more use to you as someone who dies, if only because of the strength of town's POE at the end of Day 1. /That/ is why I need to know the list of people you were hard defending. Yes, townies too. If there was general town hostility in a direction and you stepped in front of that bullet, it counts -- So Fred, Shelly, first wagon on Noraa all count. I don't remember on Isis/Vax or the others, I was sort of trusting you to be the expert on your own play.

And in case you disagree on Fred: you didn't have your mind made up, but you were massive friction on that wagon for the first half.