[MT2225] Chrono Trigger Chronicles - The Rise/Fall of Yakra

[mastina]

First!

Town.

VOTE: T3

Town?

If any of y’all watch Twitch, mastina (who has a different name on Twitch) is actually live with Chrono Trigger right now!

<3
town <3

And yes, since there's no rule against self-promo on this site, this is my twitch channel. (By the way, I need 50 followers for affiliate so following would do me loads of good there.) I was in fact playing CT until 7 am this morning.

When I signed up for this game, I had streamed my first steam NG+ to the exact point of this game, but by the time of last night I was just done with the first visit to 12,000 BC. And I got to near the end of the ocean palace.

My hope is to, next stream, get the flying Epoch, get Chrono back, and then tackle the new DS content for a NG+ game, the blueish purplish swirly portals that you need the flying Epoch for, and because I played the original all through my childhood, this will be my first time ever playing the new DS content.

I'm aiming for the lesser of the two original endings (the one from crashing the Epoch) in this playthrough.

I don't have much streaming content left on Chrono Trigger (you can only play the game so many times before the content is repeated, all I've really got left after the new NG+ DS content is speedrunning endings to the game one after another), but I plan to keep streaming exclusively Chrono Trigger until I do in fact run out of content.

Not sure what I'll be doing after I run out of Chrono Trigger content though.
I LOVE playing that game and I LOVE streaming it but I also know that I can't continue to grow my channel indefinitely by playing the same game over and over again. I can maybe try switching things up a bit by using different party combos for the dialog, but that seems more like speedrun-for-different-endings levels of content in being something I can do in a limited amount but not detailed.

Also, I

do

download all of my vods so my plan is to, eventually, smartly, upload the videos to youtube. I need to make sure it's allowed though because I can't afford to have my google account terminated which is why I haven't done so already.

That said, I am very much an amateur streamer. I'm trying to get better and better, having done 20 total streams, but I am still far, far, far, far away from being a professional. I've got a hackjob of a streaming setup, it's not optimized, I don't have good nightbot commands, I've got a lot of improving to do, but I'm trying to improve gradually! Another limitation though is that I stream at a timezone literally nobody is awake.

The strength to that is that, it being a timezone nobody is awake means that there's actually less competition. If I could get a streaming schedule (I don't have one as my streams are limited to being "when I can, subject to the whims of my family and myself"), rather than being at some random time between 2-7 am pacific, I could probably actually get a good following for the few people on twitch at that hour because if there's far fewer streamers streaming during that time, I can be competitive then.

It does require me finding a game I want to play that is viewer-rich but streamer-sparse, but hey, is something that I will work towards figuring out slowly, progressively. I may never succeed but if I do succeed, I have the pathway for it to be possible.

That said though.

For now.

I just love playing Chrono Trigger.

That game genuinely defined my life. It was one of THE two games that got me into writing in the first place. (The other also being a time travel story, SaGa III/Final Fantasy Legends III; by no coincidence, my first ever story I started writing was a time traveling story directly influenced by both games.)

Everything about Chrono Trigger is just so good.
The replayability (up to a point).
The story.
The music. (The medieval period music is my favorite of all but all of the music is top-tier.)
The characters.
The art.

I love the game SO fucking much.

(That having been said, I do have a confession--because of my love of Chrono Trigger, I abhor and absolutely refuse to play Chrono Cross or acknowledge it. I know there is in the DS remake of Chrono Trigger a bonus boss that ties the game to Chrono Cross; I will refuse to show that onstream because I refuse to acknowledge Crono Cross in any way shape or form. I realize the creators have the right to dictate the world they create as they please, but literally fucking over the entire cast of the original game with a complete and total Happy Ending Override means that I as a consumer of their game have my own right to choose not to play or acknowledge the game that shits on my favorite game in every way shape and form.)

ATTENTION! GUILLOTINA THE LION IS HERE! please look inside the spoilers for a big revelation!

VOTE: Kyouko[/,vote]

Scum?

sup nerds and Gamma I am here to destroy Yakra
VOTE: Gamma

Scum.
VOTE: ssbm

[mastina]

I actually dont care what happens this game but if T3 is a dayvig again he better not blow our heads up day 1 again.
-bear bear

Town. <3

[mastina]

I'm a mason JoaT. My partner is a mason bodyguard. The reason I am claiming is because we agree that their flip when I am targeted will confirm me and buy me an extra day, and we expect that I will not be the n1 target as scum typically avoids the "obvious" kill in order to prevent being busted by investigatives or preempted by protectives. I will not flavor claim until my partner dies, at which point I will claim flavor and the uses of my JoaT shots.

Sure, I'm willing to buy this.

[mastina]

uhoh mastina's day 1 fabricated readlist.

Oi!

I never fabricate readslists!

They are always real.

I may, in the rvs,

exaggerate

them for the sake of generating better content but I never

fabricate

them as every read has a reason backing it that makes it the truth.

I believe the only restriction to putting VODs on YouTube from Twitch is there has to be a 24 period between the original stream and the VOD upload

My concern is more google/YT terms of service (not twitch), and possible DMCA or some shit like that. I need to research that to make sure there's no violation to be had.

[LavosCore]

Like this as town.

Like this is town.

<3
Titus this wordplay is why you're amazing and wonderful and town. <3
(To be clear, this is in fact a read reversal from my initial 'scum?' call there; I didn't like that she made what looked like a deliberately broken vote on ssbm but her content since then is town.)

ssbm_Kyouko

(3)

:

House - Robert M Hunter - T3

Not Voting

(4)

:

Child of Fairies - Guillotina - Marashu - mastina

What

is

it with mods and missing my votes? (To be clear,

MOD: I voted ssbm

.)

I'd just woke up ok, and it looked like it was in the wall when I skimmed through for votes Added to next and will fix VCs

[mastina]

while I won't attempt to convince you otherwise about Chrono Cross (because I actually AGREE that the tie-in Chrono Trigger ending was a horrible idea)

To be clear, I am aware that Chrono Cross has a fairly happy ending, all things considered. Can depend, obviously, depending on the paths taken, but overall is more happy in endings than not.

I also recognize that Janus was

meant

to be in the game to give his arc closure, and that him not being in the game due to restrictions means that if the story was told that was intended to be told, he'd get his closure.

But I can't judge by what was intended, I gotta judge by what was actually in the end done.

And while the overall ending of Chrono Cross is still happy, even by the end of Chrono Cross it doesn't change how it fucked over the original happy endings of Chrono Trigger. I realize that Chrono Trigger basically implied a "and they lived happily ever after" and that no happily ever after is actually so, but the game at least carried the

implication

that the characters left lasting legacies.

Spoiler: Spoiler talk

(Fair warning; my talk about Chrono Cross may not be perfect, because I am, 1: talking from memory, and 2: my memory is about things I read about the game when I heard about there being a sequel to the game I belove above basically all else. So it's possible that I may be misremembering some details leading to me stating something that is technically not true and that the game is less harsh than I remember it being. BUT, at least to my memory, the ways they got fucked over were rather extensive.)

Chrono Trigger implied that, with the defeat of Lavos:
Prometheus/Robo got to live in a 2300 AD that was not post-apocalyptic, with his robo-girlfriend very much still alive, and he himself was

also

very much alive.

In Chrono Cross, they explicitly killed off Prometheus as part of the plot. And it is, explicitly by Word of God, him, Robo, the character you played from Chrono Trigger, you are killing. It's literally stated to be him explicitly by Word of God. (I believe the quote was something to the effect of, "I'm surprised players of the original game are not reacting more strongly to this death", in regards to Prometheus's mandatory destruction.) That's 1/7 player characters fucked over.

The Kingdom of Guardia is implied to last a long, long time, maybe to 1999 AD if not longer, and without Lavos may have even survived to 2300 AD.
Furthermore, Chrono and Nadia explicitly get married (this is admittedly shown in a cutscene that technically does tie the game to Chrono Cross butstill), and in the game it is explicitly stated they have descendants. They have children meaning they live decently long lives--and their children are still in positions of reasonable power, given that the descendant in 2300 AD was explicitly the head of his Dome.
Porre is shown to be prospering with a loving mayor that has a happy family and there is a boat fairing people from Porre to the kingdom of Guardia in peace that is stated to be expanding to Medina Village, with the implication of bringing in an even greater era of peace by the connection of the world.

Suffice to say: Dalton seeing Porre as the basis for his new empire, conquering the kingdom of guardia causing it to fall, with the explicit implication that

his forces kill Chrono and Nadia

, causing the entire kingdom to fall and for all of the above to be destroyed? Can't get more of a gut-punch than that, can you?

OH WAIT but you CAN by killing off Lucca in the plot of Chrono Cross! Which, when you add in the deaths of Chrono and Nadia and the destruction of their work and legacy, brings the player characters from the original game fucked over from 1 (Prometheus explicitly killed per Word of God) to 4 (Lucca killed in the plot, Prometheus killed in the plot, Chrono and Nadia

killed offscreen

in the background of the game).

And then to add insult to injury, Glenn's legacy was the powered up Masamune. He got it powered up by getting closure on Cyrus after having faced Janus. Well, the masamune ends up corrupted, fucking over Glenn's legacy, too! (Admittedly, I am aware that Dorean chastises the misbehaving Masa and Mune and that after doing so the blade becomes good again, bustill. It's an initial fuck over.)

Add to that that while Janus was planned to be in the game, but in the final version, wasn't? He ends up, technically, getting no closure and basically not existing, being absent. So while he wasn't fucked over the way the other 5 were, his absence means he's still honorarily fucked over.

Plus, the bonus boss saying "this is not your fight" when you can be max level and your characters are destined to, in the course of letting it be the next protagonists' fight, going to basically ALL END UP DEAD, in a game that explicitly has tones about not believing about destiny/fate in the first place for added bitterness, is just another gut-punch on top of the existing ones.

But I digress.

[mastina]

Can anyone help me get a read on mastina? Her posts read like a personal diary.

Well may as well, given I've given reads and don't have much to add to them since the game's technically out of the rvs but still feels like it's in the rvs in spite of being out so there's not a lot to have in terms of read progression.

Strongly North of Null:

House
Titus
Gamma Emerald
Angel Warriors
T3

North of Null:

Roden

Null:

Lukewarm (above the not-posters)
Marashu
Child of Fairies
Robert M Hunter (below the not-posters)

South of Null:

Guillotina

Strongly South of Null:

ssbm_Kyouko

I've not been able to get anything more refined than this though.

[mastina]

Is this a legit readlist?

uhoh mastina's day 1 fabricated readlist.

Oi!

I never fabricate readslists!

They are always real.

I may, in the rvs,

exaggerate

them for the sake of generating better content but I never

fabricate

them as every read has a reason backing it that makes it the truth.

So yes. It is.

I never have a readslist which

isn't

legit.

I don't know why the idea that I have readslists that are anything other than sincere has gained traction this year as I've made it very clear over the last five or so years that, no, I do not fabricate readslists in the rvs. They are

always

* genuine, sincere, and legitimate.

(*unless followed by a ' ' to denote that I am very very very clearly making what is a very very very obvious joke, e.g. having a readslist in the order of the playerlist, having a readslist based on the users' titles, etc., that are clear jokes made for clear memes that I unambiguously mark as such to make sure they are never to be confused for a real readslist.)

[mastina]

Care to give details on your reasoning?

Honestly, no, I don't have the energy to do so right now. I

can

, just...not now, not in my current mood/mindset/etc. with my energy levels and such.

Also, why Titus?

Like this as town.

Like this is town.

<3
Titus this wordplay is why you're amazing and wonderful and town. <3
(To be clear, this is in fact a read reversal from my initial 'scum?' call there; I didn't like that she made what looked like a deliberately broken vote on ssbm but her content since then is town.)

^

[mastina]

Spoiler: @Mastina wrt to Chrono Cross

I think that Chrono Cross is a poor sequel, but is actually a good game if you pretend it is completely unrelated to Chrono Trigger

I actually played Chrono Cross first, and really enjoyed it.

Which then lead me to playing Chrono Trigger, and really enjoying it too.

So, basically, I think that Chrono Cross is a good game, but the "sequel" elements are poorly done.

Oh, I agree--if Chrono Cross were a standalone game with all of the plot elements it has, just with the slight shifts needed to remove continuity with Chrono Trigger (change Schala/Lavos to some generic good and some past generic bad, change Dalton to be some generic evil overlord from a distant land, change Lucca to some generic caretaker, etc.), it'd stand strongly on its own as a unique, individual, highly enjoyable world, where the events still are bittersweet but the overall happiness would lead to it being good.

They could've done it. Had it be from the makers of Chrono Trigger, set in a world inspired by it, or something to that effect. It'd have been a better game for it.

But by tying the game to Chrono Trigger in the shittiest way possible by destroying the happy ending and completely overriding it the way they did, it alienates basically anyone like me who has a love for the original game. I cannot pretend Chrono Cross is a separate world from Chrono Trigger, so I cannot enjoy Chrono Cross. Because officially, Chrono Cross IS a sequel to Chrono Trigger and thus the events in Cross both in the game and backstory of the game are considered canonical followthrough to Chrono Trigger. And as the makers of both games, Square Enix had the right to do that. But I as a consumer of the game also have the right to then, knowing what Square Enix did in the sequel to override the happy ending of the original, choose not to acknowledge the override.

[mastina]

And as the makers of both games, Square Enix had the right to do that. But I as a consumer of the game also have the right to then, knowing what Square Enix did in the sequel to override the happy ending of the original, choose not to acknowledge the override.

(This is the same reason I've never watched the anime which is the sequel to Ereka7 by the way for much the same reasons.)

[mastina]

Can someone explain to me why,
1: We had 11 pages in 24 hours before the end of D1,
2: We sped through the D1 elimination when we had the thread open for ~3 days (meaning we had ~10-11 days left),
3: Why there are now over 50 pages, meaning that less than 48 hours after the thread opened, we've gotten over 25 pages?

Because if you think that I can read 40+ pages' worth of content...I can't.

So y'all got some explainin' to do and I need a summary of important things 'cause I'm not reading all that shit.

Catch me up on important claims, important events, etc. as if I were a replacement, re-ask any questions you may have of me, etc. because if it was important and it happened prior to this page, I'm not gonna see it.

[mastina]

To summarize to Mastina:
I got wagoned. A scum ability voted me (in vote count it shows up as dDroo with a bunch more o's). Wagon sort of faltered then picked back up. People eventually started wagoning robert/roden/guillo and now it seems people have landed on t3. At some point we also came to the conclusion that Gamma got his vote stolen (which I think might be what is powering Droo).

So like...nothing truly concrete?

They might be town.

They definitely are. Like, of my D1 reads, they're basically the only read that I have fully full confidence on still being accurate.

Have read since my last post, but...this is all I've got so far.

[mastina]

Nice to see you're back, what is your opinion of the t# wagon?

That would require me to have more knowledge than I have.

[LavosCore]

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

V/LA Noted, much love to you Mastina. My PMs are open if you need to vent <3

[mastina]

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

Can you answer 1 question? Do you counter claim a Chrono flavor claim?

No.

[mastina]

So with two scum dead and the last scum not conceding, do y'all finally want my help in scumhunting so that we can get the third and cinch the victory?

Because this seems like the

perfect

time to get a fresh perspective.

Normally, that'd require a replacement, but you're in luck!

With the fact that y'all haven't given me a chance to read before repeatedly ending the day, I may as well be a replacement so I've got that replacementesque fresh perspective on things!

Assuming, that is.

That you're. Yaknow.

Not gonna rush through a

fourth

elimination in less than 48 hours.

[mastina]

mastina = I've seen a lot of scum lie low the first half of the game and suddenly get active later on because it's easier to "look town" when there a lot of content already available to rehash and/or manipulate.

And when was I able to be active earlier on given that each day phase lasted less than 48 hours and I was largely V/LA and there were a lot of pages to catch up on and literally every time I came into the game the day basically ended immediately after in less than 24 hours?

I said it last game and I'll say it again this one.

You've nobody to blame but yourselves.

I'd have been all too fucking happy to be active early-on if y'all had let me, but you didn't. You rushed elimination after elimination after elimination. I COULDN'T be more active. It wasn't a choice. It wasn't strategy. It was your fucking negligence. If you wanted me to be active, then you should have fucking let me be active rather than speeding through elimination after elimination after elimination.

Elimination on scum be damned--information can sometimes be far more important than rushing through a scum lim. You can literally eliminate caught scum at literally any time. 24 hours into the day, or 24 hours before the deadline, or anywhere in-between. Choosing the former extreme rather than the latter has its consequences, namely, denying the information you'd have available by having let me play. Because the more I post, the more information is in the game, both on giving info that can help people read me and by giving info that can help people read others by reading my posts and thinking about whatever points I raise.

[mastina]

On the bright side Mastina, you didn't get night killed for finding scum if you're town here.

Not a bright side to me since my playstyle is deliberately designed to get nightkilled every game.

Ah well, still plenty of time.

[mastina]

@Mastina, we are trying to set up a mass claim, popcorn style. I think you are going first. Can you claim, then pick someone else to claim?

I mean half of that's easy; I'm a Knight of Guardia pretty damn obviously (since if I had a PR then I'd have less reason to be miffed that I've not gotten the chance to play this game at all since

some

people are in a rush to speedrun day phases).

The other half, not so much--you want someone who

hasn't read the game

and, explicitly,

has no reads

, to be the first person to choose someone next to claim?

Very poor decision.

I've got fuckall of any idea who to select next, it'd literally be selecting a name out of a hat.

Not-Angel Warriors and not-you would be the best I've got.

[mastina]

What if all someone knew about Day 3 was that T3 claimed Crono with no cc? That has me worried about Mastina tbh.

To be honest I didn't even know that much. Lukewarm asked me if I CC'd Crono and I said no--the post he did so in didn't mention that T3 was Crono so I didn't even know T3 WAS Crono.

[mastina]

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

V/LA Noted, much love to you Mastina. My PMs are open if you need to vent <3

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

Can you answer 1 question? Do you counter claim a Chrono flavor claim?

I'd vig Titus.

This is an interesting way to phrase this. You would vig titus? or you are going to vig titus?

I would ask Frog to vig Titus.

Well, mastina appears to be off.
VOTE: cyrus

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

V/LA Noted, much love to you Mastina. My PMs are open if you need to vent <3

I may not know you, but let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Mod: 48 hour V/LA due to rl stuff

I don't have the time to be around tonight and probably tomorrow, sorry. Family birthday celebration and me needing to battle transphobia.

Can you answer 1 question? Do you counter claim a Chrono flavor claim?

No.

This is the extent of what I read on D3 for the proof. In none of those posts is there a mention of T3 having claimed Crono. So I genuinely didn't have the knowledge to know T3 was Crono.

Granted, I imagine that doesn't hardclear me. I could still have the knowledge from scumbuddies, I guess. But I wasn't aware T3 was Crono until he flipped as such.

[mastina]

Strange statement if that's supposed to be coming from a town perspective, considering there's only 1 scum left.

Well I more meant plenty of time left in the day phase to establish myself as nightkill-worthy. But while we're on the subject of that, I guess it does apply to the number of night phases I can have to get nightkilled.

Obviously, if the last scum gets eliminated, then the game ends, but if we don't end the game today: I can die tonight.
If I live to see tomorrow, that's 5 alive; if the game doesn't end then, I can die then.

So less than I thought (for some reason I thought we had 9 alive so that there'd be 3 nights before lylo rather than 2), but still a reasonably long amount of time. I obviously prefer to be a bit more of a shortsighted battering ram of sorts, where I don't need to plan to the lategame since I intend to die or end the game with scum all dead before then, but that doesn't mean I can't. Whenever I am in a game where I've got decent reason to believe that I won't die like my preferred battering ram approach, I always plan ahead, I always think ahead, I always try to balance for the planning, long-term town strategy involved, thinking ahead, setting up for the long 'con' (in spite of being town). And I'm more or less saying that there's plenty of time for my planning and strategy to lead to my death pre-lylo.

Pretty sure it was probably mentioned in the PT.

I mean.

Granted, I imagine that doesn't hardclear me. I could still have the knowledge from scumbuddies, I guess. But I wasn't aware T3 was Crono until he flipped as such.

I believe all of us agree lukewarm is town so it should be good to do that?

While I'm not convinced Lukewarm's town, he does give off town vibes. He's definitely "town enough", as it were. We're not talking, "in final 4 autocleared town", if Lukewarm reached final 4 that would trigger alarms and a need to reevaluate if he's really town, but town enough means, basically, "cleared until final 4" to me.

For the record, you're the other slot I have in that category. Higher up mind you, borderline autocleared-even-in-final-4, but I've not done the needed isowork there to be sure. (You are a slot whose both heads I feel like I can read pretty well and you look town but I've not looked at your iso to make sure.)

Mastina please just pick somebody to claim next. That choice matters in regards to trying to read you.

Not-Angel Warriors and not-you(Lukewarm) would be the best I've got.

If you want better than that, what you need to do is to give me time to actually develop tangible reads. I'm mostly improvising, flying by the seat of my pants right now, in trying to find a direction, trying to get a lockdown, trying to get a grasp, a hold, on the game, where to look, what to focus on, what to dig into, where to search, etc.

On its own, that's a process which takes time. It can be sped up by people interacting with me, giving me better ideas on things to focus on, giving me information, perspectives, etc., but nobody has given me much in that way yet, soooooo.

I repeat:

you want someone who

hasn't read the game

and, explicitly,

has no reads

, to be the first person to choose someone next to claim? Very poor decision.
I've got fuckall of any idea who to select next, it'd literally be selecting a name out of a hat.

You have only yourselves to blame.

I

am

trying tho. I'm working on it.

I disagree on frog claiming vt. That seems pointless, and just sets us up to all claim VT, and get no where :/

For the record I've had my thoughts on the setup from the moment I got my role PM but I would like to stress that I feel like any speculation about the nature of the setup is anti-town and only serves to benefit the scum. If the scum don't know what to think about the setup, what to expect, etc., then why the fuck should we give them that insight? So I would strongly encourage you not talk about this chain of thought. Massclaiming is fine, setup spec is not.

We're in a really tough spot and I don't think it's wise to trust anyone unless we figure out a hard clear.

I have a philosophy for precisely this situation!
It's a philosophy that causes a great deal of grief to town players who're, rightly, miffed that they are suddenly being scumread out of what amounts to paranoia, but in spite of that inherent flaw to the philosophy, I consider it a necessary evil to invoke it when we get to the situation where the last scum can't be found easily:
"When everyone has a reason to be town, it means at least one person who has reason to be town, isn't."
Or some variation on that to give the same basic meaning.

Which is that you have to delve into the reasons for every player being town and delve into the reasons for every player being scum. If a player has absolutely no reason to be scum, then you aren't being critical enough in your evaluation/thinking. Even a player who you can soulread, have strong meta on, have very very strong reasons to be town, isn't immune to this--if you can't see the reasons for that player possibly being scum, you've made a grave mistake, even if the read you have is 200% correct.

The point of this isn't so much to have zero townreads and to scumread everyone, but to engage in more thorough critical thinking, that both gets rid of your biases, gets rid of your preconceived notions, and forces you to analyze more deeply and thoroughly every slot in the game and then weigh them on a scale. So that player who you can soulread and have strong meta on and has strong reasons to be town? After you can see the reasons for that player to possibly be scum, you then dismantle the reasons for why they could possibly be scum by recognizing how weak those reasons are, how unlikely those reasons are, and reestablish how strong the reasons for them to be town are, to solidify them as a slot you should never ever eliminate, at the top of your tierlist from towniest to scumiest.

And then you keep on doing that for every slot in the game, repeating the analysis. Weighing the merits of the reasons for them to be scum (are they valid or are they surface) vs. weighing the merits of the reasons for them to be town (are they valid or are they surface) to evaluate towniest to least-townie overall, instead of trying to necessarily locate the final scum.

[mastina]

Btw RE: House v Dwlee:
If I were forced to choose a side I'd go House > Dwlee but I actually think both look town.

I realize both looking town isn't good enough when everyone has a reason to look town, which is why if I were forced to pick a side I'd side with House over Dwlee, but I obviously need time to make a better call there by doing my own digging. If the last scum were definitely between House or Dwlee I would say the scum was Dwlee but I need time before I say the last scum is Dwlee if that makes sense.

[mastina]

Mastina, are you going to be doing catch-up, or just playing fresh through D4?

I'd be lying if I didn't say I held delusions of grandeur of doing the former--the former is always the more thorough route that leads to better chances of being informed and catching things others have missed. I always want to, I always entertain the possibility of doing it, I always think about doing it, wondering about it, considering delving into it.

But I used the phrase 'delusions of grandeur' for good reason because realistically speaking, no, I can't catch up on everything, and the best way to do things is sadly the latter, so yes, it will indeed be fresh. Aside from delving into random isos with the appropriate inspiration/drive/kick/influence/lens to look at them in. (Mod iso for vcs, checking player isos, etc.) Maybe with select pages highlighted to see expanded context not shown in an iso.

Haven't had an inspiration in where to start looking yet though, with a good lens to focus on. (Basically, I don't know what to look for, yet, and isos that I don't know what I am looking for in cause my eyes to glaze over as I go, "I see these words here. They sure are words.", and that doesn't really help. I need focus, I need purpose, behind an iso and I've yet to hone in on a purpose/iso combo, if that makes sense. I'm trying, it's just not an instantaneous process.)

[mastina]

Start with my ISO, mastina. It's a roller coaster.

Will do this next night I have time. (I prioritize keeping up with the thread > reading past stuff including isos, so I need to stay up to date on the thread. I'm up to date on the thread but it's literally 6 am right now and I am tired. I can keep up to date with the thread right now until I go to bed but I don't have the lucidity to handle an iso. So the next time I log in, I'll be lucid, but I'll need to catch up on the thread. If after catching up with the thread I am still lucid I'll do the iso then. Basically in order to do isowork I need to be caught up with the present AND be in a mindstate to handle the extra work beyond the caught up with the present. I have the former now but not the latter due to 6amness. Next time I log in I'll have the latter but initially not the former, the hope is that I will get the former quickly and still have the time/lucidity for the latter.)

Will probably be heading to bed soonish tho. Artificially woke myself up today to have time to take a shower and try to wake up before I'd be in prod range (I failed by about 30 minutes unfortunately in that if I had taken a shorter shower and less time on breakfast I'd have accomplished my goal but sadly did not), and that's taken its toll on my tiredness. Also bad depression has set in (it should tell you something that in less than two weeks, I've gotten to the second Q&A on ELLC and read that far into the story in less than two weeks; this is the same depression-induced speed-reading which allowed me to get through 2/3rds of the entirety of Worm, literally over a million words, in that same timeframe) so between bad depression + lateness of the time + artificially interrupted sleep schedule I def am tired and don't have long left in me.

[mastina]

(Noteworthy reading accomplishments:
Reading Twilight in one night;
Reading New Moon in one night, the night immediately after I read the entirety of Twilight;
Reading Eclipse in one night, the night immediately after I read the entirety of New Moon;
Reading Breaking Dawn in two nights, the night immediately after Eclipse;
Reading the third book of The Last Dragon chronicles before realizing it was the third book in the series, and then reading the first book, second book, and rereading the third book in the course of a single plane flight that lasted less than 24 hours;
Reading through ~25 chapters of Worm in ~2-3 weeks, a wordcount of over a million words, then taking a hiatus from the story;
Upon returning to reading Worm, finishing the remainder of the story in ~2-3 weeks;
In less than 2 weeks started I think 2 weeks as of this upcoming Friday or so getting to this point in Everybody Loves Large Chests.

I am both a fast reader and someone who is suffering from borderline insomnia due to severely crippling depression who also has way too much free time on her hands and the unique combination of all of those and that reading stories often helps me sleep mean that when I have something to read, I read it quickly. Webcomics are like this, too, but less impressive. After all, it's not

really

that impressive if you binge-read over 1k comics in a couple of nights, is it?

...Is it?

...Okay maybe it is but I've done that for so many webcomics that I don't keep track of them--bingereading ~300-600 comics in a single night is a "light read" for me--whereas for stories that are purely literature the number of times is precisely the above as far as I can recall.)

[mastina]

UNVOTE:
I'm losing faith in this read.

If you want my perspective;
You v Dwlee looks like a so to speak dick-waving contest measuring egos and accomplishments.

Scum can partake in that behavior but it's fairly rare, and this is where my "both town" conclusions stems from in your fight.

[mastina]

UNVOTE:
I'm losing faith in this read.

If you want my perspective;
You v Dwlee looks like a so to speak dick-waving contest measuring egos and accomplishments.

Scum can partake in that behavior but it's fairly rare, and this is where my "both town" conclusions stems from in your fight.

(I've only seen a couple of pages' worth of this, but that's where I am coming from.
House looks town;
Dwlee also looks town;
House looks more town than Dwlee, but both still look town;
It's only a couple of pages I've seen of this interaction, so I need to look into it more when I am more lucid and take House's suggestion of iso'ing House to get a better grasp on things, but while I've not the energy to do that House iso right now due to tiredness I am still awake enough to state that I think the fight looks like two townies both believing they deserve credit for catching scum in a way that is typical of town players after scum die and is atypical of scum players in that most scum players do not try to flaunt their status in this way. They CAN, it's just...usually done differently, so. Both town to me, but not absolutely. I would blace things in the tiers right now as basically:

(Asolute tier--blank)
(highest not-absolute-tier)
Angel Warriors
(clear-as-can-be-for-now-barring-lylo)
Lukewarm
(still good but not as cleared)
House
(not as good but still think town)
Dwlee
(unsorted yet)
Everyone ekse.

Sorry that I can't give you better more lucid more coherent thoughts, am trying to get things done but this is as best as I can do right now.)

[mastina]

That's all well and good, but you're still in my PoE for reasons already stated.

Fair, me being town would be something I'd ideally have had a chance to establish earlier but I'm all too aware that I've little in the way of towniness there.

We have not actually been popcorning lol

Well that's what you get for choosing poorly for who starts the popcorn.

Choosing someone who hasn't had the chance to town up to start the massclaim is fair enough; they're not clearly town so they could be scum.
Asking someone who hasn't read the game and has no reads to select a player to claim next is pretty damn stupid tho.

This feels gross to me. Like maybe very true at Elo, where we are right now, this looks like trying to enlarge the miselim pool

Read it again? Actually READ read it? Because the approach I mentioned is doing the opposite of enlarging the mislim pool--it is attempting to narrow it down to the precise number of scum in the game, in a gamestate where doing so is difficult.

By critically analyzing what could make a slot be scum versus what could make that slot be town, pointing out the strengths/weaknesses in both sides to determine which side is stronger and by how much, you can rank people more easily from towniest to least-townie and the *number of scum--in this case, one* at the bottom of your list after you go through this effort is the most likely to be the remaining scum.

If everyone has reason to be town, at least one player with a reason to be town, isn't. In the case of this game, precisely one player. The approach I mentioned doesn't cast suspicion onto everyone. It evaluates, critically, everyone but then rebuilds the townreads on some players to be stronger than they were originally. (Basically, it's like the process of a muscle getting stronger. You tear down the muscle and it rebuilds itself to be stronger. In this case, you tear down the townread but then rebuild it to be stronger than it was before.)

Ideally, you rebuild the townreads on all but the scum, who then you promptly eliminate. But in a worst case scenario, it still is useful for you in determining which players you trust the most.

(Technically speaking, this approach can be applied at any time. However, it is more difficult than normal scumhunting so I only employ it when either the entire playerlist is filled to the brim with folks I know are skilled as both alignments a la team mafiaesque games or when we've eliminated the obvious scum and are struggling to close the game out, as is the case for this game since we don't have an obvious third scum to eliminate here. Normal scumhunting can just be snap-judgements of X is scum Y is town, but this approach is far more thorough and time-consuming require more in-depth analysis and thought and effort and mental loops to jump through so I'm too lazy to use it most of the time.)

[mastina]

We're not getting anywhere.

Well you weren't getting content because I wasn't playing.

Now I am.

It'd help if folks could bounce things off of me:
Key game events, key pages to link to, key reads they have backed by reasons and whatnot, things they want me to read, areas they want me to focus on, so I can view them and review them and form my own thoughts.

On that note I'm about to grab my coffee and start reading House's iso to see if it gives me better direction, too.

[mastina]

*sees a three-page iso from House*

*immediately regrets choice*

...

*a-HEM*

ANYWAY my first and immediate thought; I sincerely doubt that House gets that many posts and is that involved if he were scum. Yes, his iso when he's scum isn't exactly

short

, but he's on an entirely different level this game especially given how short each day phase has been. I'll obviously need to actually READ to bump him up to the highest of high town tiers but just from the volume, I'm bumping my townread on him up a notch.

I realize "effort != alignment" necessarily, that quantity of posting is not a reliable indicator a slot is town--but in the case of House specifically, I don't think he gets THIS much done if he were scum.

[mastina]

Meh. RMH is a better vote.

So I'm quoting this basically as a bit of a bookmark for a few reasons.

One of the things I did aside from starting the House iso is iso myself, as while I've not gotten to play 90% of the game, of the 10% remaining, 8% of it was in the area I am reading from House's iso. Which is to say, I was actually actively participating in the game for about a day and a half or so on the first ~400 posts (376 to be more exact).

I was looking from two metrics:
How well did House's thoughts line up/resonate with my thinking at the time,
And How well does House's thoughts from back then hold up to the test of time?

On both metrics, House passes with flying colors.
His thoughts at that time had a high resonance with my own thoughts at the time while not being carbon copies of them. He had a lot of the same general ideas and thoughts that I did but was clearly not trying to get on my good side with them, coming up on his conclusions on his own and pushing his own thoughts forward.

And with the benefit of hindsight, his thoughts from back then still line up as being good, of being strongly town, and have good areas of support. Such as the feeling of Lukewarm being town but not locktowningly so, and many other thoughts from the area.

Also, this was one of the first pushes on flipped scum, so that, too.

I feel confident moving House to locktown now. Still going to read the rest of the iso to see if there's more that gives me better direction but that puts me at:

Locktown:
House

High town:
Angel Warriors

Clear-for-now-town:
Lukewarm

Lean town:
Dwlee

Remainder:
{Roden, Marashu}

[mastina]

No redactions from me; you'll see why I'm not too terribly disappointed once the scum PT is released.

[mastina]

I do think that town needed less strong flavour claims.

I mean town having strong flavor claims isn't a problem so long as you also give mod-provided strong flavor claims to the scum, flavor claims that do not rely on the scum having knowledge of the source material.

[mastina]

I do have the next game planned, CTC II

/pre-in

^This pls. I see no reason to not play every game in this series. <3

[mastina]

I operated under the assumption the game was being ran true to lore and only expected the 3 main characters of the battle to be PR's.

While I wasn't sure of this, it was something that I more or less had guessed at, too, past a certain point.

[mastina]

I said this a few times, but the only reason that the claims broke it was because the scum team was not very aware of the flavor. I think that the only change you really needed to make was to give them a list of flavor appropriate flavor claims. Like 1751

Flea did give flavor claims, just not appropriate for the setting; the only claims that would've fit for the time period in question were claims from the accessible area in 600 AD the first time you go to 600 AD--and Flea did not limit safe flavor to that era so with the only person flavor-knowledgeable not able to chime in quickly enough to inform them to not make the wrong claims...

[mastina]

No one seemed like scum

We're in a really tough spot and I don't think it's wise to trust anyone unless we figure out a hard clear.

I have a philosophy for precisely this situation!
It's a philosophy that causes a great deal of grief to town players who're, rightly, miffed that they are suddenly being scumread out of what amounts to paranoia, but in spite of that inherent flaw to the philosophy, I consider it a necessary evil to invoke it when we get to the situation where the last scum can't be found easily:
"When everyone has a reason to be town, it means at least one person who has reason to be town, isn't."
Or some variation on that to give the same basic meaning.

Which is that you have to delve into the reasons for every player being town and delve into the reasons for every player being scum. If a player has absolutely no reason to be scum, then you aren't being critical enough in your evaluation/thinking. Even a player who you can soulread, have strong meta on, have very very strong reasons to be town, isn't immune to this--if you can't see the reasons for that player possibly being scum, you've made a grave mistake, even if the read you have is 200% correct.

The point of this isn't so much to have zero townreads and to scumread everyone, but to engage in more thorough critical thinking, that both gets rid of your biases, gets rid of your preconceived notions, and forces you to analyze more deeply and thoroughly every slot in the game and then weigh them on a scale. So that player who you can soulread and have strong meta on and has strong reasons to be town? After you can see the reasons for that player to possibly be scum, you then dismantle the reasons for why they could possibly be scum by recognizing how weak those reasons are, how unlikely those reasons are, and reestablish how strong the reasons for them to be town are, to solidify them as a slot you should never ever eliminate, at the top of your tierlist from towniest to scumiest.

And then you keep on doing that for every slot in the game, repeating the analysis. Weighing the merits of the reasons for them to be scum (are they valid or are they surface) vs. weighing the merits of the reasons for them to be town (are they valid or are they surface) to evaluate towniest to least-townie overall, instead of trying to necessarily locate the final scum.

This feels gross to me. Like maybe very true at Elo, where we are right now, this looks like trying to enlarge the miselim pool

Read it again? Actually READ read it? Because the approach I mentioned is doing the opposite of enlarging the mislim pool--it is attempting to narrow it down to the precise number of scum in the game, in a gamestate where doing so is difficult.

By critically analyzing what could make a slot be scum versus what could make that slot be town, pointing out the strengths/weaknesses in both sides to determine which side is stronger and by how much, you can rank people more easily from towniest to least-townie and the *number of scum--in this case, one* at the bottom of your list after you go through this effort is the most likely to be the remaining scum.

If everyone has reason to be town, at least one player with a reason to be town, isn't. In the case of this game, precisely one player. The approach I mentioned doesn't cast suspicion onto everyone. It evaluates, critically, everyone but then rebuilds the townreads on some players to be stronger than they were originally. (Basically, it's like the process of a muscle getting stronger. You tear down the muscle and it rebuilds itself to be stronger. In this case, you tear down the townread but then rebuild it to be stronger than it was before.)

Ideally, you rebuild the townreads on all but the scum, who then you promptly eliminate. But in a worst case scenario, it still is useful for you in determining which players you trust the most.

(Technically speaking, this approach can be applied at any time. However, it is more difficult than normal scumhunting so I only employ it when either the entire playerlist is filled to the brim with folks I know are skilled as both alignments a la team mafiaesque games or when we've eliminated the obvious scum and are struggling to close the game out, as is the case for this game since we don't have an obvious third scum to eliminate here. Normal scumhunting can just be snap-judgements of X is scum Y is town, but this approach is far more thorough and time-consuming require more in-depth analysis and thought and effort and mental loops to jump through so I'm too lazy to use it most of the time.)

This wasn't me being scum, by the way! This was my genuine advice for how to solve that situation!

When everyone has a reason to be town, but at least one person by necessity is not town, this is the approach I use.

On the last day phase, everyone had a reason to be town, but at least one person was by necessity scum--granted I didn't mention that using my own approach would lead me to be the scum since by my own method I would be the universal elimination because I had the fewest good reasons to be town and the most reasons to be scum due to surprise surprise being the last scum, butstill. I wasn't making some scum ploy with this advice; I was genuinely giving you how I recommend approaching things in that situation.

[mastina]

Subject: [MT2225] The End of Time (Dead/Spec)

Amusingly Cyrus wasn't actually brought back by the mystics either, it was his restless soul that did that and Glenn proving himself worthy of the Masamune was enough to let Cyrus rest.

... just don't take Magus into that scene.

Is it bad that I take Magus to that scene on literally every playthrough?