Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hi folks.

Fair warning: My normal style of posting isn't going to be as common this game due to homelessness. It will not affect my ability to play, only my playstyle (less wallposting and/or less posting in general) to varying amounts from day to day based on what needs doing that day. I have no interest in discussing my personal situation further, this is just a heads up if you're foolish enough to rely on meta. Today is a more or less normal day for me, expect changes to be more evident tomorrow and onwards.



My assumption regarding the votecount is it's purely a visual reference to where the general consensus is; a decision-making aid for the gunbearer and a source of information on town opinions for the scum. I doubt Syryana would give us secret vote mechanics. No reference is made to a vote goal, implying a lack of mechanical pressure from votes regardless. I expect that votes are going to have negative utility (giving up information to scum) unless a gunbearer specifically asks for them, and even then they should only be useful near the end of a day.

This means that basically, the rest of the town is reliant on the gunbearer having their back to hard-push slots. I'm probably going to have some difficulty in this setup, because my normal aggressive playstyle will be functionally useless: I have no power to really lean on a slot unless I'm armed, and then I practically have total control of the game. A gunbearer trusting me might give me mechanical backup to really sink my teeth into the gamestate, but I can't rely on that. Based on my read of the setup, most of town's utility is going to be content production, rather than collective sorting. The gunbearer's reads are going to be the axis everything spins around, the rest of us have limited ability to influence the gamestate.

This is going to take some adjustment. Hopefully as more players join we'll get enough content for me to read the dynamics of this playerlist.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Thank you for the clarification, benevolent overlord.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The concern with voting in this setup is that the town has very little agency to begin with. Only one person has /any/ power, and we know they are town, so we should trust them to have town's back. Now, leashing shots to votes sounds great in theory. After all, it just puts us roughly at "ordinary mafia game", with a final adjudicator. In practice, however, it gives the scum team agency they shouldn't have, and takes away one major town-sided element the gunbearer gives us.

The exclusive advantage that the town has in a setup like this over an ordinary Mafia game is that it avoids the ironclad law of committees being absolute hot fucking garbage at actually performing tasks well. (This law is so ironclad that it's a major component of managerial level sabotage: you load important committees with more than IIRC 8 people, and ensure that at least one of them is dead weight, and nothing will ever get done, ever ever ever.)

Instead of /everyone/ simultaneously trying to herd cats in totally different directions oh and by the way some of the cats have rabies, you have a single point of control. No need to get everyone on the same page at all -- in fact, depending on the gunbearer, having literally no agreement could be a net benefit for sorting. (Just by way of example, I would be quite effective in a situation where every single player in the list was arguing with every single other player here.) No Abilene paradox scenarios come up here, because the gunbearer has no incentive to compromise to try and make the other players happy: if they miss their shot they're out, and if they hit then clearly they were right and it's hard to complain. They can use the rest of the town as essentially independent investigators to help them make their decisions, but they are not required to do what everyone else wants them to do.

I think we should lean into the advantage we have of a single guaranteed pro-town controller of the gamestate, even if it means the normal townies have less agency and control. In the process, we deny scum a large part (obviously not /all/, but I think /any/ advantage is important) of the only agency that they have in the setup while a gunbearer is alive: misdirecting the shot.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

With regards to the LAMIST/scumminess of wanting to be shot or not, I feel like the specific vibe I'm getting from Wheme is less "LAMIST" and more "I am the bestest scumhunter ever!" Wanting to be the hero figure. Gloria Cleary did something similar in Death Curse, and the mistake definitely damaged town's chances at the end. People forget that there's a reason there aren't very many hero figures... Obviously there's some overlap in the general themes between "let me drive!" and "look how townie I am!", but Wheme's minimal responses and general attitude here do strongly give me the former impression. PEDIT: My opinion is not changed after the past two Wheme posts.

On the other hand, Norfolk does give me an offputting feeling, to be sure, but I can't place if it's AI or something else. Need more data.

I agree that lurkers are going to be a serious problem. I don't know if we can count on lurking being even a little bit scummy, either, because scum benefits from putting themselves in the front of the gamestate in this setup. (Yes, I'm taking into account that I'm potentially telling the scumteam how to be effective here.) It may be valuable to lean heavy on lurkers as a group effort to forcibly squeeze content out of them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I just will have to hope you never get to take a shot then. Eagerness to shoot plus low confidence makes for a very bad combination here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Well, I missed a lot while getting food together.



For Duchess: detailed posts are going to come out of me on good days, and that's just how it is. I type walls. I speak walls, too. It's a thing, and it's only going to change on real bad days. I have a bunch of those coming, so you might consider yourself lucky.

As for giving scum information: don't be concerned about that from me. I play a very subtle town game, and I often do multiple things with a single post. If I'm giving scum information it's because I have decided it is for town's benefit in some way or another. There's a whole lot of ways that can be the case, if you think about it I'm sure you can come up with a few. Past games of mine will bear this statement out.



I don't really like anything I'm seeing of Wheme so far. So, Wheme, I have a question for you. What /are/ you bringing to the table here? So far we have bad reads but wants the gun, casting entirely baseless shade on one of the few players posting anything substantive (no offense intended to the players who have not posted anything substantive, game basically just started), and shitposting. What do you have that town benefits from? Don't dodge the question or meme about it, I want an honest self-assessment. What are you actually doing in this game to help town out?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm making a prediction here: 3. I'll clarify that after I get an answer to the following question from Wheme:

How does it "ping" you? And in what way?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm making a prediction here: 3. I'll clarify that after I get an answer to the following question from Wheme:

How does it "ping" you? And in what way?

You seem to be throwing shade but trying to stay on the fence which pings me.

Ah well, I was wrong. But only because the accusation is insubstantial and uses weasel words to make a very sensible thing seem bad.

For clarification on my prediction, I figured that the "ping" would come from line three of the post where I discuss my playstyle and the value of giving scum limited information. It's great low hanging fruit for baiting lazy scum into taking a swing. There's a few other things I have hanging around like that, but so far the playerlist hasn't hinted at noticing any of those, so I'll let them lie for now.

Back to the topic at hand:

You say "trying to stay on the fence," which is a very ugly way of saying "trying to get data to sort a slot with." You chose to word your sentence in a way that emphasizes the fact I haven't sorted you yet and entirely ignores that I'm attempting to pry information out of you to correct that. Which anyone reading my post can plainly see is the case, since I'm asking a question.

A question which you /dodged/, by the way, despite my requesting that you /not dodge it/. I asked for honest self-assessment, and instead I got a weak attempt to deflect the question back on me. When I ignored it to give you a chance to correct your mistake, you doubled down. Well, no accounting for taste.

How about you try actually giving me a straight answer? The question, in case you've forgotten, is "What are you bringing to the table that is helpful to town?"

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There's many reasons to not immediately shoot someone you think is scum when you approach the game the way I do. Also when you play in this setup in general, given there's a Godfather in the mix...

That said, jury's out on your alignment still.

I would recommend considering what you can do to help the town in this game and then focus on doing that, rather than, oh, just for example, actively trying to get the gun when you don't even trust your own reads, or casting frivolous, factually inaccurate shade on players who are actually contributing red meat instead of fluff and shitpost. (Again, it's still early game, apologies to the fluff-and-shitpost contingent.) Those are things that actively hinder the town, not help.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Are you saying people who don’t shit post are town?

This and the following vote are great, because the meaning should not have been in question, considering the order of the following posts (bolded for relevance)...

Duchess town

Why do you townread #28? I am getting scum vibes from it.

Is there anything else beside just a bad vibe? Is there another way you can describe what you are seeing?

It looked like a lot of trying to do something but it was just fluff. Im bad at explaining things sorry.

--snip for readability--

I don't really like anything I'm seeing of Wheme so far. So, Wheme, I have a question for you. What /are/ you bringing to the table here? So far we have bad reads but wants the gun,

casting entirely baseless shade on one of the few players posting anything substantive

(no offense intended to the players who have not posted anything substantive, game basically just started), and shitposting. What do you have that town benefits from? Don't dodge the question or meme about it, I want an honest self-assessment. What are you actually doing in this game to help town out?

So, let's not fool ourselves here. Wheme's approach to me has been to actively attempt to twist my play into something that it is not. Weasel wording it to make it appear I'm fence sitting. Taking a really tortured interpretation of something I described him doing -- not to mention removing that description from its context. Etc. This sort of play normally grinds my gears, but Wheme's approach to it is so boneless and ineffective that I mostly just want to dunk on him for it. But is it alignment indicative? Hmmmm, not so sure.

Someone town desperately trying to get the gun at any and all costs, up to and including the town turning their back on them entirely, is a very real possibility. Anti-town as fuck and all but guaranteed to lead to utter disaster, but still, very possible.

Then again, gambiting scum? Not impossible, especially if they're the Godfather -- someone taking them up on their offer has /some/ utility. That would be awfully telling in a lot of ways, though, so it's no guarantee itself.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It might be instructive to see the other half of both hydras add their lists (unless they both combined their lists already), and make this page a nice easy one-stop-shop for scumhunting after a red flip or two narrows things down.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I should clarify -- not that there's any guarantee of the lists pointing at scum, but it could be useful to rule out certain possibilities and/or hint at others.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's not so much the commenting on each major event that bugs me there as it is the extremely rigid, strict thought processes that are described in excruciating detail. It took a while to settle on that being the issue, but it's pretty unmistakable: check how there's no simple conclusions reached, EVERYTHING has an extended, multipart thought process involved, with one exception. That exception (Dunn) is left open ended, coming to no conclusions at all.

It rings very false.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I have a handful of reads I'm keeping close to the chest at this point. Just wanted to get that out there.


I also have some requests.


Regardless of alignment, I want to see more content from RLotus soon.

I'd like Norfolk's opinions on Wheme and Dunn.

Netflix has the only mechanical power, and the lion's share of the content is coming without much weight from them. I'd like to see more pressure from the only person whose pressure has any importance.

I really don't care about who does this (the participants can even do it themselves, I /really/ don't care), but I'd like to get opinions on the Dunn/Imperium interactions in general. There's a couple of them and they have some actual substance to them. I have my own thoughts, but I'd like to see what other people have to say. FTR, I'm not looking for alignment related opinions, just trying to figure out what other people see happening there.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If that question is aimed at me specifically, I've considered that -- but plans are easily disrupted, and I intend to disrupt.

Also, there's more reasons than the obvious for what I said and how I said it in my prior post. Sometimes it's almost more illuminating how other people react to something that has nothing to do with them. Just for example: If this question /is/ directed at me, I now know a bit more about how you think, what draws your attention, and what your priorities are. Now that I have that to work with, I can use that when sorting or lining up pushes, even if you aren't the target.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For Imperium:
Not familiar with it.

That said, the voice you should be reading my posts in is the stereotypical cyberpunk decker voice. You know the type. Cool hacker dude lit only by the light of his computer screen which is projecting the image in exactly the way computer screens do not do, grumbling with a voice that has met a million packs of cigarettes: "I'm in."

Except not a dude. Definitely still gruff from smoking four people's worth of cigarettes, though.



For RLotus:
I haven't seen anyone but you and Wheme talk about Duchess posting fluff. I'm seeing the opposite there. You'll need to explain how it's fluffy.

Also, it's not even ten pages and 48 hours in and you're making associative reads? PUBLIC associative reads, no less? I'm also gonna need you to explain /that/ for me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm mainly referring to their first post about how everyone should vote. It looks meant to appear as if they are invested in the game without actually committing to any reads. In hindsight it looks even worse given that he supposedly reads norfolk scummy yet didn't bother giving a read on him even though every post that norfolk made between the start of the game and when Duchess called him scummy were posted before Duchess' "fluffy" post.

I think it's odd that anyone expects anyone to have meaningful reads this early on, myself. I'm capable of it, but I play a weird game and I'm near guaranteed to discard most of my reads at some point or another so I see no harm in having garbage early game reads for me.

Why would someone's very first post in the thread, arriving in the first, what was it, 3 pages of the thread? Why would that contain actual reads? That sounds like a reach, given that even I didn't have any reads until page 6.

Also, it's not even ten pages and 48 hours in and you're making associative reads? PUBLIC associative reads, no less? I'm also gonna need you to explain /that/ for me.

Well, it mainly comes from a general vibe I'm getting about the gamestate. It seems to me that several people are pushing onto Norfolk and naturally scum are trying to push into a different direction. Duchess' seemingly disingenuous push onto Wheme fits the bill. Again, I can very well be wrong, it's a preliminary read. But, there does seem to be something strange going on in that area.[/quote]

I have thoughts about this half too, but I'm going to save the nitty-gritty details while I watch how others react. I'll summarize vaguely like so: I believe someone could believe this, and I believe you think you believe it, but I don't believe you /actually/ believe it. I smell doubt.

I'm requesting that you reread and give me your thoughts again after that -- it's still early, so I think a reread isn't too much of an ask right now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh for god's sake quote horror. Give me a moment to try and fix that mess for readability.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm mainly referring to their first post about how everyone should vote. It looks meant to appear as if they are invested in the game without actually committing to any reads. In hindsight it looks even worse given that he supposedly reads norfolk scummy yet didn't bother giving a read on him even though every post that norfolk made between the start of the game and when Duchess called him scummy were posted before Duchess' "fluffy" post.

I think it's odd that anyone expects anyone to have meaningful reads this early on, myself. I'm capable of it, but I play a weird game and I'm near guaranteed to discard most of my reads at some point or another so I see no harm in having garbage early game reads for me.

Why would someone's very first post in the thread, arriving in the first, what was it, 3 pages of the thread? Why would that contain actual reads? That sounds like a reach, given that even I didn't have any reads until page 6.

Well, it mainly comes from a general vibe I'm getting about the gamestate. It seems to me that several people are pushing onto Norfolk and naturally scum are trying to push into a different direction. Duchess' seemingly disingenuous push onto Wheme fits the bill. Again, I can very well be wrong, it's a preliminary read. But, there does seem to be something strange going on in that area.

I have thoughts about this half too, but I'm going to save the nitty-gritty details while I watch how others react. I'll summarize vaguely like so: I believe someone could believe this, and I believe you think you believe it, but I don't believe you /actually/ believe it. I smell doubt.

I'm requesting that you reread and give me your thoughts again after that -- it's still early, so I think a reread isn't too much of an ask right now.[/quote]

[MUSHSHAGANA]

....I'm not fixing that. It's good enough, sue me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For Imperium:

You're not wrong about it being formal and unnatural. That stuff about everything I post having multiple intentions and being very carefully edited and etc? Yeah, that wasn't making stuff up. It gets formal and stilted because I end up clipping giant chunks of text out, rewriting things, substituting words and phrasings to craft the correct end result, so forth... It's very similar to technical writing, where the exact phrasing is vital to getting your intended meaning across.

As such, I naturally fall into something between formal speech writing and technical writing when making Mafia posts that are loaded with a dozen little tricks and secret meanings. On one hand, I'm trying to get and hold attention, so formal speech writing gives me a structure to work with. On the other hand, I'm trying to get across exactly and precisely what I intend to have other people interpret from my posting and not a single other thing -- so technical writing helps.



For RLotus:

It's substantially less fluffy than anyone else's first post. Particularly because it asked a question, which opens a dialog, which means people should start to contribute content, which means you can start to make informed reads instead of making shots in the dark. That's what I saw there. So no, fluff doesn't cover it.

I still do recommend you reread.



For Cakez:

Why would I do something that means nothing?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I always am, apparently.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I think Norfolk is town

Care to elaborate?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For Cakez:

Why would I do something that means nothing?

It indicates who you want elimmed
Even if you don't actually have control over it

it only helps town later to see who was voting who

False. /Especially/ with the way I play Mafia, and /definitely/ in this setup.

My voting history is manipulative as hell in an ordinary Mafia game and attempting to get anything out of it is pointless. I'll often go without voting for most of a dayphase while I press multiple slots aggressively, or rapidly shift my vote around for only about 48 hours and then let it sit on someone I don't even scumread for awhile. So already, even if this were an ordinary game, me specifically having my vote down isn't helpful to town unless its time to wagon for an elimination, and then it's only helpful as weight on the wagon.

In this setup, it provides information to scum on who they can manipulate and in what way. Worse yet, unless the gunbearer /wants/ people to vote, it doesn't even help the town in the process. I even went over this in detail in one of my /very first posts in this thread/. Did you read my ISO before you decided to ask me to do something I went to great lengths to call out as having /basically negative utility/? No? Well, I would suggest you go and /do that/ then.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ahem. I got so caught up in /that/ that I forgot to respond to this.

I think Norfolk is town

Care to elaborate?

No

That's fair.

What if I said I scumread you for townreading Norfolk? Hypothetically.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Norfolk's posting just seemed excessively LAMIST to me

How so?

I hate this post. I hate this post a lot. There are a few different reasons I hate it. But oh, I hate it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Albert, Duchess: I'd like your thoughts specifically on the posts between 180 and this post (most likely 205). Do you see what I see? Can you hear what I hear?

I'm not dropping any hints to avoid bias, but it's not information I care about keeping hidden. Either of you can answer openly if you spot it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's interesting that you think I can stop anyone from answering your questions, or that I would even necessarily want to stop it. More content is better, right? I hate your first post on this page for reasons entirely unrelated to you getting an answer to your question.

And it's even more interesting that you think I'm butting into your conversations at all. Should I simply not post in the thread whenever you are waiting for replies? Don't bother answering that. It's rhetorical, because even if the answer is yes, it's an unrealistic desire that literally no one will ever follow for you. The point is that I have no earthly idea what your expectations for me are here. That said, even if I did know, I'm inclined to not humor them at all from this point onward anyway, given that you jumped directly to appeal to ridicule when you came to these entirely false conclusions.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

You still insist I was trying to interfere with your questioning, and still I cannot possibly see how I /could/ interfere with it or why I would /want/ to. You make no explanation of how it disrupts, you just assert that it does.

You call me condescending and abrasive, but looking back, I see you are the one who stoops to appeal to ridicule for no visible reason.



The repeated and pointless attacks on my character are noted. Your assertion that I am specifically disrupting you without evidence or explanation is also noted. Your attribution of thought patterns to me even though I have said nothing to support them is noted.

Would you like to add anything else while you're at it?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For all the accusing me of being condescending and abrasive, your inability to disengage without trying to put some zing in it is /also/ noted.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ahem. I got so caught up in /that/ that I forgot to respond to this.

I think Norfolk is town

Care to elaborate?

No

That's fair.

What if I said I scumread you for townreading Norfolk? Hypothetically.

Then you’d scumread me. Hypothetically.

False. I'd be /saying/ I scumread you. Hypothetically.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's easier for me to pick a specific shot I'd take than three to save, currently. If I had to pick three -- unwnd, Wheme, ugggggggghhhhhhh I don't know maaaaybe RLotus but I'm really straining hard to select that third one and there's like 3 players basically in equal contention for it.

Meanwhile, there's exactly and precisely one shot I'd take. But I'll keep that out of sight unless you actually want it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

RLotus is what you might call a "nullnullnulltown" for me. I disagree with a lot of the thought process I see, and I can see scum pushing for those conclusions -- it's just ever so slightly easier to see town doing it. Flip-side, I dislike the reads so much I feel like if he's town, he's going to be a bad slot with the gun.

The other two potentials for Lifeboat Seat no. 3 are Not_Mafia and Dunnstral.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I was talking about both of those. However, events since that question have made it irrelevant, I no longer need the information it would have given me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There's plenty of points in keeping things a secret right now. For example, doing so lets me know that you don't like that I did it and want me to stop.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The only information I'm worried about giving to scum is votes, because they take no effort to parse, and I always assume a competent scumteam.

I'm more worried about what information I miss out on if I /don't/ hide things. Hence my prior post -- I wasn't saying "haha this bothers you", I was saying quite literally that I have information about you now that I wouldn't have had if I /didn't/ keep it a secret.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I might as well throw down the shot I'd take now, since I've gotten enough data around it by now that I don't care about holding it back anymore.

SirCakez. That is the one slot I actually scumread /confidently./ Lots of nulls, a handful of shaky scumreads, but this slot <insert godawful pun on taking the cake>. Imperium found one solid reason to scumread the slot already. There's also an event that won't convince anyone but me that happened as well. Since inevitably the question will be asked: Let us simply state that there is no way Cakez simply did not see my rant about voting, read posts 21 and 23 as demonstrable proof of this, and move on from there since it will change exactly no minds on alignment but my own.

That said, 23 is also an interesting post even separate from my personal approach to Mafia. Almost the entire gamestate has evolved, but Cakez is still, as a practical matter, living on page 1 and has made little or no effort to move beyond that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

You didn't miss it, you literally directly responded to it. But nice try.

Also, I literally outright said it would convince no one but me. But nice try.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

...I should have quoted, but I didn't realize there was another full page. That prior was in response to Cakez's response to my saying he's the shot I'd make here.

PEDIT:

Cakez, I /highly/ doubt you skipped post 21. Did you even check the post numbers I gave? No?

VOTE: norfolk
Just cuz we can't elim doesn't mean we shouldn't vote yo

You might want to say that your commentary was in response to someone else, but you would be telling a lie if you did. The only other thing even referring to voting on the first page was someone saying they were curious about the votecounter, and my post about voting being non-optimal. That's it. You can go and look for yourself. This is publicly accessible information.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The issue is "doesn't mean we shouldn't vote". No one else had even said anything about not voting. Only me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

You said it's demonstrably false, and now it's something for people to make up their own minds about -- by definition debatable, rather than being demonstrably anything at all. This is the sort of thing about your play that makes me think you're the best shot in the game. Not inconsistency per se, but the way your statements change (even to actively contradicting each other) based on what would be optimal to be true in the moment. There's also the asserting specific things to be true (e.g. saying that Norfolk was claiming scumhunting is up to Netflix without a shred of doubt in your post, or that I said something demonstrably false) when they are one of multiple possibilities.

Your play comes across as phony and agenda driven.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Do you have a guesstimate at a rough ratio of right games out of total games with Cakez, unwnd? Asking because you said "pretty accurate", not "100%".

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I think the post at the top of this page is a decent enough summary for most folks. That said: if I think about it, there's some other stuff that tends to ping me but which aren't things most people are sensitive to. May as well just rewrite it all out for ease of access.

Generally speaking: Saying one thing, then saying a contradictory statement under pressure -- feels less like stating beliefs than trying to evade attention. Making baseless assertions that seem like trying to force an interpretation (e.g. the whole Norfolk scumhunting thing). General gut feeling of the play being phony, i.e. fake, but not so much "simply acting" as it is "crafted for specific effect".

More specific to how I build out reads: Apparent lack of a coherent chain of causation -- I don't see how he gets from point A to point B, it feels like it's abrupt jumps instead of actual changes in thought process. Play is "concentric" -- instead of his play changing focus at any point, it takes a specific point (in this case, "shoot Norfolk") and centers all of his play on that singular point. All play that isn't directly centered on it is pushing back on people questioning it. Hence "concentric", his play reaches ever wider circles of the playerlist but the center point never changes, indeed hasn't changed since page 1.

Because of these things, his play feels agenda-driven: he has a specific goal (shoot Norfolk) and does not attempt to search around outside of that goal. When dealing with things that are not necessarily "shoot Norfolk", his statements are not necessarily logically compatible with one another, and there is no apparent shift in belief or understanding to explain the incompatibilities (since the conclusions he comes to do NOT appear to change alongside the statements).

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Duchess, when you do your catch-up post later, read this page (should be page 19, but if it isn't, I do mean page 19) from start to wherever this post landed without stopping to post (or re-read after you've posted, whichever works for you, just want a nice big unbroken chunk of reading) and tell me what you see. This one should be more long-term relevant, and still be interesting by the time you get around to it. It may also be instructive to check back to my pressure on Wheme for compare/contrast purposes.

Also interested in what Wheme sees on this page, since he seems sensitive to the dynamics I'm seeing and has direct, real-time experience with the prior thing to work with. I like when Wheme types detailed responses, so I'm hoping to see one of those.



And a reminder that I'm waiting for an unwnd response to my issues with Cakez.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

--snip for readability--

Ok but
If you're saying someone should not be getting certain reads
Then that logically implies you believe the opposite thing.

Like that's not a crazy connection to make????

--snip for readability--

I don't care if you SR me but I think that of all things is a stupid reason to SR me. At least I can see Imperium's argument.

Another example of that "contradictory statements as the occasion suits" thing I mentioned. These two posts do not connect, because the arguments are exactly identical in form ("the reasons for this scumread are spurious"), but Cakez is /making/ the argument in the second quote and /considering it illogical/ in the first.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, not to mention that it goes from "I can see Imperium's argument" to (paraphrasing) "Imperium's argument is illogical".

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, so scratch my last post about shifting viewpoints on Imperium's argument (because they're two different arguments), I give you that.

You /still/ have a disconnect that makes no sense between the two posts, because /Imperium/ is the one arguing that the scumreads on /Norfolk/ don't make sense. So no, they are /still/ /identical/ arguments.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

/Emphasis./ I use a weird, custom made app for taking notes down that uses a weird variant of markdown (/ instead of *, basically, made for phones, where * can be harder to access), and it sticks when I type in other places because most people get the point and I don't care to fix it. It's muscle memory and it's readable, that's all I care about.

And Imperium isn't saying the scumreads don't make sense AT ALL, Imperium is saying the /reasons for them/ do not make sense. That they are insufficiently strong reasons to warrant a real scumread, in the strongest form (I'm unclear how strongly Imperium means it, so let's go with the furthest out possible version), which is /still fundamentally the same argument you made to me/. It's so close that it does indeed feel hard to believe you're arguing this way in good faith -- it should be blatantly obvious how closely related the two are.

PEDIT: Imperium beat me to restating it for the seventh time, but maybe it'll help to have me reword it also, just in case.

PEDIT 2: oh no don't let this be Death Curse all over again let me post

[MUSHSHAGANA]

So, before I address your reply, unwnd, I want to make a separate post here that isn't about you (you've been excellent with this as far as my memory is going).

People. Please. Don't keep fucking up my pronouns. They're literally /right next to my posts/. I've been trying to let it slide, but it seems like it's a third of the player list and at least one post on every single goddamn page now and I just want it to stop. Thanks.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'll try to break this down. First things first I think you're far too into Cakez' intention. I know the guy and I know for a fact he does not think this deeply about interactions, scum or town. Does this turn into a bit of a meta argument? Maybe a little, but it is a good starting point. As I continue down your own post it sorta becomes even more inward and you start interpreting actions from your own perspective. Maybe you look at this game like 'I would do this as town, therefore if someone else does it that makes them town too.' I think this way sometimes, but too much and you start seeing things that aren't there. You don't know what Cakez is thinking, so you're just assuming that it has an ulterior motive. Cakez is only focusing on Norfolk. Cakez hasn't changed his thoughts since page 1. Cakez contradicts himself ("logically incompatible") Whatever, whatever.

I wanna ask you a hypothetical: Do you think Cakez' behavior is exclusive? Meaning, that there's nobody else in this game that might be close to doing the same thing? I can tell you that's probably not true and could list examples off my head. The reason I ask this is I just don't find the argument of (Cakez scum) to be all that compelling.

So, this starts off with misunderstanding where I'm coming from.

The things I'm getting reads off of are not something scum /try/ to do, but indicative of /failings/ that overeager, underprepared, or non-self-aware scum tend to have when doing the actual things they try to do. They also come up with power roles, which is why I have been sticking to nightless mountainous games -- I have a known-to-me tendency to both find PRs scummy and consider scum likely to be PRs. I think I've only once found a VT likely to be scum when there are PRs in the mix (obviously, mountainous games are a little bit more challenging to read).

These things can be hidden or eliminated by someone who knows what to look for or has a natural inclination for storytelling (I have not found a scumhunting panacea, in other words), but they are effective on a large number of players. They are things that happen when you have something you can't share that gives you an agenda. So they are actually things that are /more/ likely to happen to people who don't think that deeply about things; thinking deeply about things is how these things /don't/ happen.

As for the "inward" comment or the possibility of projection as the basis of the later parts: you are entirely incorrect.

Let's take the chain-of-causation problem I have as an example here and dig into how I come to those conclusions. This is going to be a gigantic fucking wall, but I want to show you how I get to this point so you can see that it isn't simply a case of projection.

Spoiler:

When I think I've found an instance of someone jumping from belief-statement to belief-statement without any natural flow between them, I read the content between two posts that give me that impression, and I look for any data that might cause someone to update their beliefs in there. If I find that, I look for evidence that they took that data into consideration (most people will start to include related ideas in their posts when new information is making them update their beliefs), but that's mostly a formality. The sheer existence of related data tends to be pretty solid on its own unless they outright reject that data -- in which case I can ignore it safely.

If I don't find any relevant data they haven't outright rejected between their posts, I look through their ISO for evidence of doubt before the more recent statement, as it's possible that they changed their own mind if it was something that was weighing on them. Evidence of doubt isn't just saying "yeah I'm unsure", it's also humoring related but incompatible hypotheticals and taking cautious stances when relying on if-then chains based upon their belief. Most mafia players do this; only extremely strong convictions, desperation and hidden agendas really cause most people to override the natural tendency to approach a gamble with some degree of caution. (Yes, natural gamblers /can/ cause me to fail at this test.)

If there's no evidence of doubt and no data that would cause them to update, there's a /solid/ case to be made that the position has an ulterior motive and is not being submitted in good faith -- in essence, it just looks like they don't buy their own bullshit. But in the case that there is data or evidence of doubt, I do one more check before I give those cases a pass.

I see if there is evidence that their change in belief has actually affected their view of the gamestate. Best way to explain this is with a generic example: Consider the case where someone says "I don't know guys, everyone seems townie to me!" and then shortly thereafter starts to cast shade on someone else out of the blue, for no apparent reason. Now, this isn't always going to be scum. In fact, it's quite rare! Most of the time this is going to be a townie who saw something they didn't like and pivoted on a dime about it.

But you don't need to take their word for it, you can check.

Paying attention to how they react to people defending the slot they're shading, seeing how they react when things they said before that don't necessarily match up are brought up, and many more besides -- these are all ways to paint a picture of what they are seeing in the gamestate, and where the parts they're invested in come from.

The key to this last step is it can't highlight a lack of cause-and-effect in thought process, it can only point out that one apparently exists. This is because you might not have enough data to compare it to their prior beliefs and come to useful conclusions -- you rarely end up needing to ask people to explain their thoughts unless those thoughts are suspicious to begin with, after all. But if you do have enough data, it almost assuredly shows you a trajectory in their thought process.

So we have three tests here, and 3 possible outcomes:

1 and/or 2 pass, 3 pass: probably legit.
1 and/or 2 pass, 3 fail: can't tell.
1 and 2 fail, 3 skipped: probably not legit.

Yes, the above is made out super complex, but you have to understand that for me, I can literally scan a few pages and pull this data out without considering it too strongly. This is why I often say that I play a sideways game of Mafia and cannot scumhunt the way other people do: things that are incredibly weird and complex to others come naturally to me, and vice versa. Almost all of the stuff I use to build reads out is the same way; you can safely imagine one of these walls for each of my "more specific to how I build out reads" points, including all of the ones that aren't relevant to Cakez.

The important thing to get out of all that is that it isn't just projection. I presume that I have no way of knowing how other people think by default, not just in Mafia, because /I literally cannot know what other people are thinking/. My brain is fucked up and I cannot think like anyone else around me. I am aware of my failings and I do not step in that hole because of hard experience. Instead, it's based on assuming good faith while minimizing false positives. So you're wrong about my post, full stop, and I would like you to try again with that information in mind.


I'll answer your question now.


I believe that any /single/ behavioral element I have pointed out from Cakez is not exclusive. I believe the full mixture /is/ exclusive to Cakez so far -- certainly I can't think of but one other "concentric" player in the game, and that player doesn't contradict themselves and has a natural-seeming chain of cause-and-effect. That is not proof of towniness (concentric play is always vaguely scummy to me), but it reduces the degree of scumminess I attribute to them by comparison to Cakez.

However, I find this question to be pointless anyway -- since even if there were other players who did indeed have all of the traits Cakez does, there are multiple scum and it would not rule out all of them being scum. The premise (it mattering at all whether or not Cakez and Cakez alone is guilty of behavior I find scummy) is flawed.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I approach literally everything I do on that level, Cakez. It's the only way my brain functions.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ordered list from towniest to scummiest, huh? I'm not quite willing to do that, because pretty much everyone is nullish for me right now. It'd be a crap list, something like, oh god, uh

Wheme
unwnd

Dunnstral
RLotus
Imperium
Not_Mafia

<everyone else goes here at hard null in a basically random order>

<there are no scumleans or nullscums>

Cakez

Which tells you that I have 3 strong reads and 4 weak reads (to be clear, they're extremely weak reads, damn near homeopathic reads) and that's /it/. I have stronger opinions on some of my nulls than my weak reads, but the opinions are conflicting and I can't commit to any particular alignment for them without more data.

Well. Sorta.

I want to revisit the above in a moment, though, because I want to address some other stuff beforehand.



I'm frustrated by my position on every single goddamn list I've seen. I play like a crazy person, how am I getting the hardest townreads in the damn game! Flip side: STT putting me closer to scum is inexplicable, but at least I can sorta see it from a "do not trust the crazy" perspective...

Except that his reasoning for it and the way he reaches for other people to confirm his read (evidence of doubt) while signaling strong conviction in my alignment being scum reminds me of Death Curse on Day 1, and particularly of Zdenek. It feels like trying to weaken my position by any means necessary without committing such that he could be shown up by someone familiar with my play. Zdenek was obvscum to me from that half-assed push on me alone. I threw doubt and shade around anyone that townread him as a result, because I was trying to dig up his buddies.

Fortunately, Netflix did the work for me, and lo, there is bad reasoning for having STT as a townread. "Feels like it comes from a town perspective" is worthless until you analyze it and figure out what gives you that feeling, folks. That's where the lies hide.

STT, I have no scum games. Literally, not a single one, across any game of Mafia I have ever played. I also have no third party games. I also have no /power role/ games. I have no alts, I am part of no hydras; I wouldn't be able to take the pressure. I play a single game at a time, that's all I can handle. And my playstyle is too distinctive to get away with trying to hide my identity. I have been vanilla town in every single game I have played, period.

Your reaching to try and paint me as scum for having a wild playstyle itself wouldn't be too odd to me, except that you don't seem to trust your own read but still are putting me damn near the very bottom of your list. I'm calling this a scumclaim. You can have the bullet instead of Cakez -- I /think/ Cakez flips red, I /am certain/ that you do now.


Wheme
unwnd

Dunnstral
RLotus
Imperium
Not_Mafia

<everyone else goes here at hard null in a basically random order>

<there are no scumleans or nullscums>

Cakez

STT



Oh, and one more thing. Anyone who townreads STT, I'm going to be looking through the lists. I would very much like you to explain yourselves. In great, exhaustive detail. Really beat the hell out of your belief that STT is town, /challenge yourself/, because I will throw down a /solid/ wager that you are wrong. Say, winner gets to control the loser's first shot when they inevitably get the gun (because this is gonna look /real/ bad for whoever is wrong, and they shouldn't trust themselves to hit shit anyway). I'm not joking or exaggerating, STT looks awful here, and you can check Death Curse to see that I'm right. ISO Zdenek, and Ctrl+F "MUSH". Recognize that Zdenek was replaced by Frederick A Campbell, who was our very first scum kill in Death Curse, and opened the door to red flip city. I am putting my bet down, I want anyone who thinks I'm wrong to put their money where their mouth is and/or eat lead.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Realizing I forgot to address this.

I don't know MUSH. The simplest explanation I have for your own thoughts is that you suffer from overthinking.

I couldn't really follow half of the things you said either, so at some point you have to realize what you're saying is in some form incomprehensible. Critical thinking doesn't need to be at the expense of clarity

In case you didn't catch it: my brain is fucked up. This isn't overthinking for me, it is my default. It's incomprehensible because I am /incapable/ of thinking like other people. I literally /cannot/ be more clear than I already am, this is the hard limit when I'm explaining myself. It's not a choice I make. It is how it goes.

You might as well expect answers in perfect English when asking your pet dog about something.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Does anyone have any questions for me

I’m kind of ready for someone to get shot

I did ask for your thoughts on what was happening on page 19 awhile back (actually /on/ page 19).

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmm. You seem sensitive to these sort of dynamics, Wheme; would you say that the conversation was being pushed forward more by Imperium or by Cakez? What I mean is, if one of them dropped off the face of the earth at random during that, which one would have kept posting longer, in your opinion?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

ABR was replaced by unwnd immediately, Wheme.

Also: thanks for your input on page 19. I want to see Duchess's answers on it as well before I start making statements about what I saw.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, and one more thing. Anyone who townreads STT, I'm going to be looking through the lists. I would very much like you to explain yourselves. In great, exhaustive detail. Really beat the hell out of your belief that STT is town, /challenge yourself/, because I will throw down a /solid/ wager that you are wrong. Say, winner gets to control the loser's first shot when they inevitably get the gun (because this is gonna look /real/ bad for whoever is wrong, and they shouldn't trust themselves to hit shit anyway). I'm not joking or exaggerating, STT looks awful here, and you can check Death Curse to see that I'm right. ISO Zdenek, and Ctrl+F "MUSH". Recognize that Zdenek was replaced by Frederick A Campbell, who was our very first scum kill in Death Curse, and opened the door to red flip city. I am putting my bet down, I want anyone who thinks I'm wrong to put their money where their mouth is and/or eat lead.

I'm open for reconsideration. I do like their posts so far, I don't see how what happened in death curse is relevant here though since they're different people. To be clear, I'm not familiar with what happened in death curse.

I did like STT's posts, starting from the second one. The way he is looking at norfolk being above baseline for scum resonates with me

The fact is that town doesn't have any reason to approach this specific thing in this specific way. The issue: I don't play like other people /at all/. Almost all town players will recognize that that is not scummy in and of itself. Those who don't will be convinced I'm scum and be totally inflexible and unwilling to humor other possibilities about it until I start to hit red with my pushes.

But STT doesn't do either of these. STT pushes a narrative where I am scum, yes... But STT leaves an escape hatch where I might be town. This escape hatch appears to be ONLY based on meta -- and specifically calls for the rest of the player list to jump in on it.

You know what that looks like to me? That looks like someone looking to see if they can get away with talking utter nonsense about me without being called out by anyone else.

The relevant part is Zdenek in Death Curse did the exact same thing. I found it insanely scummy, indicative of scum who was trying to look for someone they could put hard pressure on for garbage reasons, and I was right.

Now, the problem with your defense here is that it's all reasons why it seems townie, and doesn't say a damn thing about why it /doesn't/ seem scummy. The entire goal of the scum is to seem townie, after all, right? So you are, at best here, just saying that STT is town or reasonably effective scum -- so we can rule out garbo scum play from the slot. Unfortunately, that should be self-evident, so it tells us absolutely fuck all.

From my perspective, you have three options. Take my wager, explain why STT isn't scummy well enough to convince me that you believe it, or get in the scumpit.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Well, we can make this very easy, STT. A one-for-one trade. You take the bullet this go around, then you get to shoot me.

I was originally going to say "or vice versa", because I wasn't caring about the order -- but it occurred to me that if you're the godfather, you got rid of two strong townies in a single go by doing that. So no, you go first, and I will absolutely accept me going down next if you aren't red. I'll even let someone else take charge of my shot after that, because clearly at that point my scumreads aren't worth a damn anyway. Besides, if you're a goon, it's still one for one -- your team can vengekill me, and then we're all good.

I suppose it might not be an even trade for you to go first if you're the godfather. In which case the scum team has no way to get me out of the game this go around -- gee, that sucks for them. I hope they make the dumb mistake of giving me the gun to get as close as they can to a kill in that case.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That's a shame. I think you 100% hit red every time if you do.

Granted, godfather in play, and STT /is/ openwolfing, so eh. Fair, I guess.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I wouldn't mind Imperium having the gun, yeah. The concern with my other nulltowns is that I think they'd be some degree of hot garbage with the gun, but Imperium I feel would be pretty excellent with it. Probably the three players I trust to do /literally anything/ useful with the gun as of right now are Imperium, unwnd and Duchess, so if that's a strong part of your consideration, that's where I'd place bullets. I strongly think unwnd is town though, so maybe not there so much.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry, I'm clearly slipping if I missed that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I have a lot of doubts about Duchess, but it didn't feel like bait to me (which is what I'd expect of a godfather). What's your criteria there?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Probably Wheme

Mm, fair, actually. But I think Wheme pings me as town strongly enough that I want to give him a flip to see if he plays better with information. Definitely find most of his play pretty underwhelming... it's the little things that have me thinking he's pretty townie. Given my only other strong townread is you, unwnd, I also am a bit loathe to give him up just because I like feeling that I have more than one slot sorted on my own side.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I wasn't super enthused with the choice, but it was FAR from an awful shot. It was maybe awful timing (far too early), but in the gamestate, Lotus was a good shot if you weren't convinced by the 3 or 4 major scumread pushes (2 which I think were mine). Lotus had a decent amount of contact with the majority of the playerlist, a fair amount of content, and no one at all with hard reads about him. That shot was solid for cleaning the gamestate up fast ... it just sucks that it couldn't have gone the other way and given us a red hit on top of it.

PEDIT: NOT liking Dunn or Wheme here at all. Wheme gets out of my townreads now.

This shit stinks of scum trying to demoralize the town.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Get in line, Wheme. STT goes first.

PEDIT: Dunn, I literally explained it in the same fucking post dude. Do not play these games with me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Because now we know all of Lotus's interactions were genuine, this gives us meat to dig into their interactions with and see if the other side of them looks genuine as well. Stop being deliberately obtuse.

PEDIT: Aimed at Dunn. Seriously, this is some bullshit aimed at demoralizing and creating chaos in the town. Someone else has to see this, tell me I'm not alone.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Wheme, as far as I know /no one/ scumread Lotus? What is your deal, guy? I literally said /no one had hard reads on Lotus/. Stop the bullshit immediately, you will not get me tangled in my own words like you're trying to do.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't like the demoralizing the town argument. It's a bit too dramatic for my taste.

It's something I rarely call out. But when I do, it's blatant. This is trying to create rifts (see how shade is being cast at you and unwnd), trying to call the town in general out as ineffective (insistence that the shot was bad on every level, Dunn asking me to explain the value of the shot in great detail as if I was the one who decided to make it), and generally geared at creating chaos where it does nothing but prevents town from rallying to do a better goddamn job next time. In fact, it does the opposite, because they propose nothing except that It Was Bad And Dumb And Maybe Scum Caused It.

PEDIT: Wheme, I said you get out of my townreads, not that you're scum. These are different things. Don't put words in my mouth, for fuck's sake.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Clearly by doing what you're doing, Wheme.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmm. You seem sensitive to these sort of dynamics, Wheme; would you say that the conversation was being pushed forward more by Imperium or by Cakez? What I mean is, if one of them dropped off the face of the earth at random during that, which one would have kept posting longer, in your opinion?

When you're done with your interactions w/Wheme I'd love for you to explain what the purpose of this line of questioning is and what you got out of it.

I'm done at this point, yeah.

I was hoping to get a feel for if it was TvT/SvT/SvS. I'm not good at pulling actual emotional vibes and not great at seeing dynamics of who is providing conversational momentum. You were in my nulltowns, so I was leaning away from SvS, but I wanted to check.

As for what I got? Nothing, really. The answer I got from Wheme was "Imperium, but defensively", which at least rules out SvS, but leaves both TvT and SvT (from either direction) on the table.

Since then I've come to read you as town a bit more strongly. Scum has no reason to try and get town lined up for the next round of scumhunting when it's trying to fall the fuck apart. Scum in fact would be actively going against their wincon to do so. So I would have asked different questions if I was asking them now, to try and get an actually useful answer with the assumption that you are town.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cakez I don't think it's in Tammycho's cards to continually battle your logic head-on, I think they'd rather handwave you instead of trying to appeal to your own reasoning

So if you want to bury them you should do it more precisely, because right now the back+forth does nothing

scum post

I sure hope it is!

I think you're sideline sniping and fanning flames. I think you've tried to pocket cakez and earlier were trying to look like you're being diplomatic, but you're not.

I'm pretty sure you're scum here.

I'm the only firefighter around here right now. If I were fanning the flames I'd be saying 'well Cakez, you may have a point after all' but instead I told him to be more concise in the nicest way possible. I get the aggression but I don't want to read it from either of you. If you think it's scum for wanting a bearable gamestate then like I said

I sure hope I am.

I want to sanity check this.

What made you think this particular wording was /nice/? Because where I'm coming from, I can see what Imperium means -- it's nasty wording, its just not nasty aimed at /Cakez./

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yes. It was nice to /Cakez/.

"if you want to bury them" is the issue. It's guaranteed to get the person who is the one being potentially buried a little pissed off. There lies the issue where it's fanning flames.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Fair. Like I said, I was sanity checking.

Thing is, the rest of us aren't in your head (a lesson I have learned the hard way more times than I can count) and so your wording will be taken whatever possible way it can be. In a heated argument, phrasing like "bury them" comes across like "fuck that guy". You aren't in the heat of it, so maybe you missed that, but it's important to consider regardless. For the future.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm exhausted. I've got a super busy day tomorrow, so I'm going to be making few posts, if any. Friday may or may not be better, it depends how screwed I am. We'll see.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Well, at least one person sorta kinda familiar with my play is here!

Welcome to the game.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Petapan, I expect you should toss the first few pages out entirely, since we had little to no input from half of the playerlist other than fluff and shitpost until ... what, page 5? 6? So we basically had to make our own content and be exceedingly pleased when anyone posted anything that wasn't just fluff and shitpost. Or, well, at least that's how /I/ felt.

You should be able to see the exact moment I change over, because I get actually aggressive when pushing to sort instead of light presses like with Wheme. Probably around the time I have my argument with Imperium?

Top shot picks right now are Cakez and STT. I could live with a lot of other shots, though. Honestly, I won't fight to save anyone but Imperium and unwnd at this point.

Content's gonna be pretty low today, but later on I'll make time to give you any other answers you want. PEDIT: Like that one. Making a note to answer 923 later.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I’ll be here, Duchess, but wallposts will not be happening to my usual degree. Give me another few hours to get my immediate needs dealt with.

Anyone else, if you want me I cannot promise I saw your posts. There’s the Duchess request, Imperium wanted something, I noted a petapan question, haven’t seen anything else. If I missed someone, give me a prompt, I’m making note of everything I see.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't disagree with you that STT's argument about IRL circumstances or MUSH explaining that her time may be limited is any indication of scum. That''s quite underhanded from STT and I'd like him to reconsider at least that aspect of their read. The instances about MUSH's extrapolated reads however rung a bit of truth, and I do see why STT would make those conclusions. I'll give you one thing I don't like about that wall now that I've actually read it and it's that STT seems to be mostly convincing himself in real-time. The wall goes through 'the effort is townie' to 'but the meta is scummy' to 'that reasoning about IRL circumstances justifies the inconsistencies' around to 'OK, OMGUS.'

The problem relies on the fact whether you believe STT thinks it's worthwhile to push someone like MUSH because let me be honest, there's a reason (no offense MUSH) most people do not respond to her walls. Why not pick an easier target instead of engaging yourself with a possible conundrum. This is not the basis of liking STT, rather there's just a lot of headway given.

Just caught this in time, but please actually check Zdenek in Death Curse because that's literally the exact thing that happened there, and also in one of the newbie games (2028? last one I played) word321 tried it and I caught scum there too (shame his replacement fooled me)

People see "weird player" and think "aha, I can get a push on this" and it's never going to work with me, but it doesn't stop them from trying

Phones about to die back soon

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I need to get some food in me and then I'll get to answering folks. While I eat, I'm going to address STT.


I am changing my STT read to "self-important null" instead of "guaranteed scum".

STT, buddy, I have to thank you for pointing out that you play with Yudkowsky-esque Bayesian reasoning. Why? Because it means that you can't sort me. Ever.

No, really. You are incapable of doing it. I play a subtle town game, I play a manipulative town game, my meta is to mislead and misdirect and hold back information and dangle things in front of people that are meant as bait to be taken. I play a "scummy" town game. You are working with numbers and probabilities, and here I am doing things that normally scum only do, and I'm doing them in the open, I'm even drawing attention to them. Other people can see the town in it, because they understand (if only subconsciously) what I'm doing by showing my hand, saying "I'm up to mischief" out in the open so everyone knows to look for it. They can recognize the differences between my play and scum play.

You cannot. You will /always/ come out scumreading me regardless of my alignment. Because you are incapable of seeing the town explanation. Because it isn't in your priors. In your priors, only scum do these things.

You cannot sort me by numbers. Period. I am the glitch in your system.

I'm typing this up so you have something to dwell on in the post game, mostly. There's no chance this changes your mind unless you drop your system, because your priors are based on ordinary Mafia players, and not mutant Yeti parasites like me. But your system is flawed and it will fail every time on me and you need to know that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's not so much the commenting on each major event that bugs me there as it is the extremely rigid, strict thought processes that are described in excruciating detail. It took a while to settle on that being the issue, but it's pretty unmistakable: check how there's no simple conclusions reached, EVERYTHING has an extended, multipart thought process involved, with one exception. That exception (Dunn) is left open ended, coming to no conclusions at all.

It rings very false.

why's that necessarily scummy though, idgi

It's not /necessarily/ scummy, but it certainly smells of scum. Town can (and has, remember Adorable in Death Curse I made the same comments about) absolutely do the same thing.

But I find scum are more likely to do it. Town is more likely to just go with the flow, and to skip steps in their trains of thought because the presumption is that they can be inferred. They'll say "X is scum because of Y" without explaining how "scum" follows from "Y" unless someone specifically asks them about it.

A very rigid and strict outline of every single step of a thought process implies there's something special about the thought process, that it has some extra special sauce. It's something best saved for showing how you make an intuitive leap (working backwards, obviously) to a non-obvious answer, or if you're like me and your brain works so differently from everyone else's that it has to explain itself in great detail or everyone presumes asspulling.

When it's extremely vanilla logic, or the steps themselves appear to be based on very strained interpretations, that's where scum can be hiding. Trying to look townie by appearing to put a lot of thought into things, but if you try to follow along it's kind of like taking a basic prealgebra problem and finding a way to force it into a calculus equation -- once you get to the end you go "you made me do all that work for this?"

That said, I think STT might be closer to the "alien mindset" side of overexplanation, due to being one of those Bayesian types, which makes it a case of NAI behavior for them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Funny enough, I only just realized that STT made my initial argument against them for me -- just flipped around at me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I wouldn't mind Imperium having the gun, yeah. The concern with my other nulltowns is that I think they'd be some degree of hot garbage with the gun, but Imperium I feel would be pretty excellent with it. Probably the three players I trust to do /literally anything/ useful with the gun as of right now are Imperium, unwnd and Duchess, so if that's a strong part of your consideration, that's where I'd place bullets. I strongly think unwnd is town though, so maybe not there so much.

Could you get into why you think that unwnd is town?
I'm having major doubts at the moment.

It's a garbage reason.

Ready?

1: I weakly townread Albert based on approach, so they inherited a bit of that.

2: Because they're one of the few players whose take on the gamestate I actually agree with at all right now. Almost everyone else is talking so differently that it feels like they're playing some totally different game. I mostly see where you and unwnd are coming from, and anyone else currently in play may as well be on another planet at the moment.

This does mean I'm technically at risk of being pocketed by you, unwnd or both here, but I need to have some stable baseline to parse the game with before I can try to get rid of my garbage bullshit reads and replace them with actually useful ones. Which is why I keep reaching out to other players like Duchess and Wheme for input on things: I'm trying to connect myself to the game that /they/ are seeing being played, because I'm clearly not in the same one, and it means my reads are garbage.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I am changing my STT read to "self-important null" instead of "guaranteed scum".

I was keeping this read in my pocket in an effort to get them to respond to the wall I made on them but if you're scum this game good job you've officially crawled into my cranium.

Please don't be scum this game because if you are scum this game I'm going to cry.

If it helps, it's a pretty vanilla take-away from a post talking about how they have the power of Bayesian reasoning and probabilities on their side so they are so good at this that you shouldn't even try them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Duchess, I'll take you up on that discussion when you're ready. I'm going to take a short walk while things are charging, so I might be slightly delayed in responding, but I'm actively keeping it in mind.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Either I took too long to get ready, or I'm too tired too early to catch Duchess.

Things to do tomorrow, I'm not able to try and push my luck with energy drinks here, so it'll need to wait for tomorrow or Sunday (Saturday is booked for me too heavily to guarantee literally anything.)

PEDIT: Oh, there's Duchess! Hi. You have like, a half hour before I need to be passed out, and I'm taking my meds as soon as I send this post. So its going to be time limited chatting, but I'm here till that time is up.

I don't disagree with you that STT's argument about IRL circumstances or MUSH explaining that her time may be limited is any indication of scum. That''s quite underhanded from STT and I'd like him to reconsider at least that aspect of their read. The instances about MUSH's extrapolated reads however rung a bit of truth, and I do see why STT would make those conclusions. I'll give you one thing I don't like about that wall now that I've actually read it and it's that STT seems to be mostly convincing himself in real-time. The wall goes through 'the effort is townie' to 'but the meta is scummy' to 'that reasoning about IRL circumstances justifies the inconsistencies' around to 'OK, OMGUS.'

The problem relies on the fact whether you believe STT thinks it's worthwhile to push someone like MUSH because let me be honest, there's a reason (no offense MUSH) most people do not respond to her walls. Why not pick an easier target instead of engaging yourself with a possible conundrum. This is not the basis of liking STT, rather there's just a lot of headway given.

Just caught this in time, but please actually check Zdenek in Death Curse because that's literally the exact thing that happened there, and also in one of the newbie games (2028? last one I played) word321 tried it and I caught scum there too (shame his replacement fooled me)

People see "weird player" and think "aha, I can get a push on this" and it's never going to work with me, but it doesn't stop them from trying

Phones about to die back soon

But I want to leave by expanding on this rushed crap post I made.

Certain scum /love/ to try and push me in the early game, because they don't understand how I'm getting townreads. It's weird as hell to me, and it never works. Seems to have no correlation to skill level or experience. Word321 in Newbie 2028 was a ton of logical fallacies and purposeful spin doctoring of my posts that reminds me of STT's later posts attacking me. Zdenek led in with a push on me based on "making excuses" with the escape hatch of "does anyone know if this is something MUSH does" -- also very reminiscent of STT's push on me, except Zdenek made the mistake of trying that in a game where a decent chunk of the player list knew my play.

This wasn't OMGUS. I have repeatedly pointed out instances where I scumread players doing very similar things to STT, and they were in fact scum each time. You can also check the inverse: it's possible to check almost any game I'm in and see where scumreads of me come in and I /don't/ immediately scumread back (2028 is a special case, I was having a horrible time during that game). Isis in Death Curse scumread me early on, and I pushed on that and ended up accepting the reasoning as decent enough even though even Isis no longer scumread me by that point. Zdenek, by contrast, didn't even strictly scumread me, just made a half-hearted push, and got a scumread for his trouble.

I /push/ anyone who scumreads me (because that's an opening for interactions that will be content rich and help me and others sort), but I only /scumread/ people who scumread me if it is deserved. It was in this circumstance, for reasons I've explained over and over, including yet again in /this/ post.

Of course, all the explaining was a waste of time and energy since I no longer think STT is definitely scum. Data still required there, I'm sure as hell not townreading. That said, the reasoning I was using doesn't hold with Bayesian-bots since they aren't beholden to such limited ideas as good and bad faith.

I still wanted to make sure it was clear that I wasn't asspulling or OMGUSing as most seemed to be assuming. This has a basis in actual play experience and actual details in the actual post STT actually made.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That seems accurate to me. I was uncertain if it was potentially personal conviction causing Cakez to put the cart before the horse or not, however. I've seen townies do similar things before, and most often I see it from skilled players who have a history of games together -- they have a very intuitive gutread on their counterpart, and they just try and rationalize it any which way they possibly can.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I saw both Imperium and Cakez rekindling the discussion on multiple occasions, myself. I didn't do a count of who did it more, though.

What I'm concerned about here is this: if Cakez has a strong, overwhelming sense of Scum off of Imperium and is town, I can see Cakez assuming that the familiarity and the strong gutping override logical debate, but that he has to be /convincing/ somehow to ensure his pet scumread gets shot. I think many people forget that having many different arguments that you abandon rapidly as they are shot down weakens how people perceive your argument as a whole rather than strengthening it, but I understand the impulse and am often tempted to succumb to it when it would serve me better to say "Fair, but I'm still scumreading them and you can't stop me."

In that case, it could be an SvT interaction still, but one where Cakez is the townie, and that flips the gamestate for me due to how difficult I'm finding it to parse what Cakez and co. are actually perceiving.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

To rephrase that last part a bit more bluntly, if Cakez is actually town in this interaction and Imperium is scum in it, then the gamestate is very likely to be scum-controlled, and information is being spun to keep town from finding each other. In such a case, I'm inadvertently on the scum side of things, and need to very rapidly figure out how I got here and who I was taking cues from.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Meds have kicked in. Leave me your final response and I'll get it when I wake up.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I like Cakez for scum and even I find Duchess's argument unconvincing. My main concern is a repeated /assertion/ that this or that thing /must be X/ when nothing of the sort is true. Examples include...

It is not possible that Cakez (regardless of alignment) actually read 334 before posting this

Actually it is, because 334 was posted first. Like, on the face of it this argument is false, on every single solitary level. You can say it is /unlikely/ he read 334, or that it /sounds/ like he didn't read 334, but you can't call it /impossible/ because the linear flow of time proves you outright wrong. I presume I am NOT the only one who perceives time having a singular forward flow and not jumping around randomly? Yes? Good. This might sound petty, but it isn't, because it's something that /keeps fucking happening in this wallpost/.

"At this point" does not at all imply "now that you have pointed that out". It implies that it hasn't been about Imperium's Norfolk read itself for some time now

"At this point" literally means "as of right now". To quote Dictionary.com: "Also, at this point in time or at this juncture or at this moment. [...] Even wordier synonyms for “now” than at present, all four phrases imply that what is the case now may not always have been so or may not remain so." This is falsehood again. This is literally you projecting a nonexistent connotation on a set of words. Why would someone do that? Well, the only reason I can see is they have an agenda, but I'm open to explanations.

From SirCakez' point of view at this time, it does not logically add up for him to keep pushing that they have backpedaled (which he is still doing in this post by saying Imperium have been deliberately shifting their posture).

Except that he didn't say that. "Posturey" isn't even a word, but if it were one, the meaning would be easy to decipher. To quote Dictionary.com some more:

-y: "characterized by or inclined to"

posture (v):"to place in a particular posture or attitude.
OR
to position, especially strategically."

=

posturey (adj): characterized by or inclined to posture (v)

Which is the /exact opposite/ of saying that the posture is changing, it says that a very calculated stance is being taken in the first place. This is /yet again/ baldfaced falsehood.

The whole reason Cakez has shifted to his "it's not about the read anymore" stance is because Imperium just showed they never townread him in the first place.

Yet another baseless assertion. Given that it may very well have actually no longer been about the read, as shown, asserting that it's a reaction to not being townread is based in fiction.

While I'm thinking of it, by the way, even if Cakez wants to come and tell me I'm somehow wrong about what his intentions were behind his words when I keep saying (x implies y), it is obvious from the language he is using that he is at least ok with them being widely interpreted that way.

You know what, you probably get the point by now.



This is not to say Duchess made /zero/ good points, but rather to point out that those points were surrounded by assertions as if of facts that were in no way necessarily true. This seriously weakens an argument, and Duchess seems intelligent enough to recognize as town that these assertions are unnecessary and going to get called the hell out in a player list like this one. There's plenty of good points being made around these shit assertions that are perfectly capable of standing on their own, after all.

The feeling I get is that this is an attempt to bury the majority of the playerlist under so much bullshit that they give up on trying to discern the true from the false -- they see the thing that pings them as a good point and presume the surroundings should be good to go since they reach the conclusion after all, so who cares. And then, it's such a long post pointing out so much, well, it must be scum, huh? Given there's off-handed mention from other players that no one is reading my walls, this wouldn't be an unrealistic or forlorn hope sort of tactic by any means, but a calculated strike at a perceived weakness in the player list.

Now my current concern is: is this bussing, or am I reading someone wrong? If I am misreading someone, who is it? And so forth.

Concerns I'll need to answer on Sunday probably, but I hope the other players will do some of this work while I can't.


One thing I want to address before I close this post out is the apparent ability for Duchess to flip my arguments here back on me, since I've been accused of asserting things by STT.

Unfortunately, that isn't how it works.

There's a Discordian concept called Reality Grids, or Reality Tunnels, or Black Iron Prisons (it depends who you talk to). Essentially, none of us really are living in the same world because the ways we perceive the world are so heavily influenced by our personal experience. Getting into this is a whole detailed topic, practically a graduate level course, but it's worth mentioning that it's useful for scumhunting and part of my playstyle.

When you are talking about things that aren't scientific facts or clear epistemological conclusions, Discordians have a tool to show that they are treading in grey areas, that they aren't able to firmly say something is true or false in this domain. It's called e-prime, and it works by getting rid of every version of the word "be" in your sentences. No "am", no "is". You're left having to say things like "I feel hungry" and "It looks like daytime to me". These phrasings prevent people from making assertions that may be true for them but are not necessarily true for everyone.

I don't use e-prime anymore, because it's sort of like linguistic training wheels for interacting with the concept of Reality Grids. But when I say something I take a similar approach, focusing on this being what I see, or being able to see a point of view where this is or isn't true. Go on, go look back through my posts. I make sure that when I talk about someone's motivations or where they're coming from or what their goal is, it's just what /I'm/ coming up with and that it isn't a hard fact.

Contrast Duchess's post here, with statements like "is not possible that" and "it is obvious that" and "it does not". I do, yes, call these falsehoods. I also prove that they are, and I'm careful not to call them intentional. Duchess has no room for being wrong in their post, which is a damn shame given that they are provably wrong on a regular basis in it.


And that's it for today's wallpost.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Mush the issues you have seem to be mostly semantic or stylistic. Yes, "it is not possible" is an exaggeration, however Cakez' continued representation of that post as a "hard defense" of Norfolk (Dunnstral is another person who has categorized it as such, I've noticed) is just so massively off-base that I would rather believe he didn't read it at all (or at least very selectively) than that his reading comprehension is so hopelessly poor. Imperium goes out of their way every time to make it abundantly clear that they are not taking a town stance on Norfolk. Any time they've mentioned a possible scenario where Norfolk is town, they consider the opposite as well, and that his early pushers were bussing.

I disagree with your assertion that I'm projecting nonexistant connotations. I'm not sure how to explain myself properly to you in that regard, but looking for dictionary definitions mean you are looking at the words too literally.

My hope when presenting a case on a scumread is that players will read it in full and take away whatever impression they get out of it. If you agree with many of my points but disagree with others, then for me I don't really care about accidentally weakening my argument by oversaturating the "good" points with the "bad". I've shown what I saw to come to that conclusion, and I can't reasonably expect everyone to follow every single train of thought I had when reading. I of course cannot stop you or anyone from changing your read of

me

based on my posts, but I hope that disagreeing with some of my points doesn't make people completely disregard the parts they do like.

I've never heard of those concepts by name but they seem to align with my own views of separate perceived realities. I am always aware of the language I'm using. I don't claim to be some expert communicator, and I'll take my own stylistic preference over clarity and precision in most cases. I am not a college-educated person. If you feel the language I used was too assertive then there's usually a good chance I had originally typed something along the lines of "I feel like..." before consciously deciding to go with language that is more persuasive and sure of itself.

This is a good response. I'll explain if/when I have time/energy. Short version: this is not persuasive; this is mildly surprised, bit indignant, kinda dismissive. Good.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

today is zero posting from me from now until maybe late at night and more likely till tomorrow, please save any questions until you see me post again or tomorrow because i will very probably not see a damn thing

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Exhausted. I can't post much tonight, but I can do a little bit.

Because now we know all of Lotus's interactions were genuine, this gives us meat to dig into their interactions with and see if the other side of them looks genuine as well. Stop being deliberately obtuse.

did this ever happen or is it just a thing you made noise about

It's something I've been intending to do but you may have noticed that practically as soon as the "BAD SHOT WHAT A DOOFUS TOWN'S DOOMED" crap died down I had my life fall even more to pieces and have been barely able to manage more than like what, five? of my normal wallposts in the past two days. On top of that, I had to deal with STT being obvscum (until Bayesian-bot evidence proved that scummy actions are NAI for them) and people following up on shit I asked them for all the way back when I actually DID have time.

Give me a fucking break.

I still absolutely think it's a thing worth doing but I do not have the time or the energy to do it at this point in time. If someone else does it I will be exceedingly grateful, but I'm expecting no one will, and that they won't get what I will out of it, so I intend to get to it when I have a chance even if someone else DOES do it. Probably, if luck is with me, I will do it tomorrow, but I can't actually promise it in my current condition so don't get all evil-rubbing-hands-together-moo-hoo-ha-ha-ha about this if I miss it either.

For the record, if you didn't mean this in a snarky "oh so you are just providing filler huh?" way, and my response seems harsh, please be aware that I'm fucking exhausted and sick and hungry and am just typing this in bed until I pass out and I made a pretty clear request to delay asking me shit until I got back to the damn game, so I'm more than a little annoyed that I get on to say "yeah I got some time for something if anyone needs anything" and have to immediately respond to some snarky fucking shade-throwing frivolous bullshit from someone who should know at least a bit of the way I play, and on the /same goddamn page/ that I said "hey hold your questions thanks" no less. So I might be a tiny little bit disinclined to give you the benefit of the goddamn doubt here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

unwnd, STT's play style is Bayesian reasoning and probabilities. It's /going/ to be overprepared and insincere by default, because LessWrong types are trying to run computer programs on Mark 1 Plains Ape hardware as a lifestyle. It's NAI, you can't make any reads off of that. Focus on results more than approach with that sort of player, that will show you what their aim is.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

(I should clarify that, as a Discordian, my needling of rationalists should be considered both Part Of The Joke and Divine Commandment. Being tired and cranky, I may be leaning too far into it for the audience, but I mean no harm.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ha! This is my time for myself. I need a distraction or I'll go mad and start spouting terrible prophecy again. The last time I did that, COVID happened. This is all for the best.

Appreciated nevertheless.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For unwnd:

I need to elaborate on why I liked Duchess's response to me at some point -- again, probably tomorrow. I don't think it's townie so much as it is not-scummy, which is a more interesting thing for me and has more town weighting to it in the way I build reads out. I will note that this doesn't make Duchess a strong townread; there's too many open questions that I have.

I see your point on the instruction thing, but I'd note that I'm doing something along the lines of instruction too. Check my pushes on Wheme and Imperium, and especially how I /end/ the pushes. This is a regular feature of my play -- if I press someone hard and decide they might not be scum, I point out what they did that made me pressure them, give advice to change it, and pay attention to see if they adjust their play in response to that, in what way, and how effectively. I don't think Duchess is doing the same thing I am, but I also don't think that you can make that a core feature of your scumread if you also townread me.

I have no particular issue with your Wheme or Dunn scumreads, I even agree with the substance of them, I just have some suspicions that I need to follow up on before I can sort them properly. Not giving too much away, but here's a riddle for you: who do they agree with? (Note: I do not know the answer to this yet.)



I probably have another hour before my meds kick in due to the time, so I'm available for probably that long.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yeah, I can agree with that. NM is a late game POE shot if ever.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going down for the night. One last question.

Where the hell is Dunnstral today?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Morning, folks.

Seems like today's going to be a good day aside from the afternoon dumping Eris's boredom on Chicago. Hopefully it's just the "look how boring you are" kind and not the "let's spice things up a little" sort. The Goddess's idea of "a little spicy" is "a shot of mace garnished with CS powder", after all. /Definitely/ a case of More Fun Than I Really Want. Fingers crossed.

As such, I'm going to do a different sort of initial catch up post today, because I want to start off with good vibes.

This post helped my emotional state.
You are my rock and you are a wonderful person. If you are scum then you are a heartless sociopath and you will not be invited to the barbeque.

Don't get too excited, now. I haven't completely sorted you yet.

Also, I think that's the nicest thing anyone's said about my Mafia play, ever.

I'm shooting Cakez if I get the gun

Care to elaborate?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Moving on from there, Dunn's lookin' pretty scummy now independent of the stuff mentioned by unwnd.

I'm going down for the night. One last question.

Where the hell is Dunnstral today?

What do you mean?

When I sent the post quoted here, Dunn's last post according to the Activity page had been 1 day 18 hours ago. So "what

mean" was patently obvious: he had been /entirely missing/ for over a day and a half. 42 hours.

But that's not the scummy part, people forget to check the thread after all... No, no. The scummy part you can find if you just take a look at those timestamps. Hooooooo-ee! 8:22 pm for me and 8:31 pm for Dunn's response to me -- which was his /third/ post after I asked where he was. Beetlejuiced as all get out when you consider that Dunn responded in a seemingly random order (but hold that thought!) to a bare handful of posts that don't even actually address anything except himself and the value of shooting Norfolk... then /immediately/ bailed without interaction after /42 god-forsaken hours inactive in the thread./ /Nine minutes/ to respond after just /six hours/ short of /two days/ of /complete radio silence/. Plenty of posting elsewhere on site, though...

And for kicks check out the posts responded to first there. Huh, the first four are /all/ focused on me and unwnd. Ordered pretty much from highest pressure to lowest, too. Note that the post numbers being responded to are /distinctly/ out of order -- I think the thing about Dunn's scumtells is in fact the earliest one of those posts, although Dunn didn't do me the favor of quoting it. I'll look into it later, or someone else will. It's /definitely/ before I ask where the hell he's been all day.

So! Pressure first, then admitting Norfolk might be a bad shot in this gamestate as that argument becomes increasingly obvious, then deflecting /implied/ critique from Imperium that isn't even outright stated in the post quotes, giving a complete non-answer to a riddle I posed about him to /someone else/, and then out of here. Like a shot. No sticking around for interactions, just in and out, quick and clean.

Hmmm...

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No

More serious, give me a Cakez quote that makes you want to shoot there. I'll come to my own conclusions, I just want to see what you're looking at.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Dunn, for at least the past 48 hours you have been dead silent except when I have brought you up. Now just what am I supposed to take away from that?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I can accept both of those, in theory, if I want to. I don't really want to, right now. I want to see what other people have to say first.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, petapan. Let me just say, I'm very, very sorry I haven't "done anything" this game. I'm sincerely, from the bottom of my heart apologetic that I'm lugging everything I own in this world from airbnb to motel room to Starbucks patio on a semi-regular basis, sometimes multiple times a day, while running errands from government center to doctor's office with a ton of busywaiting to try and get out of the mess I'm in. I apologize for barely having the time to eat on some days. I certainly apologize for the fact that I literally /didn't/ yesterday.

Please, allow me to say, I am extraordinarily, deeply sorry. Downright aggrieved on your behalf. I offer my deepest condolences.
/But you will just have to put up with it./

If that sucks for you, maybe imagine how much goddamn worse it sucks for me before you start saying I should be doing more.

Check my damn postcount and tell me I ain't doing anything again. Check how many slots I've put hard pressure on and tell me I'm not doing anything. Or, you know, give me a bit of goddamn slack for the circumstances. I'm making statements of intent for others to hold me accountable, some days I have more free time than others and I clearly haven't had shit recently, I keep the playerlist up to date on what to expect from me, it's only been like 3 or 4 damn days or something, back the fuck up.

You don't want a rant, don't talk shit about things that are beyond my control and semi-temporary.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

1. i think very few people in this game would be thinking that far in advance as scum. most people are just going to try to get town shot
2. scum don't want the godfather shot if they can help it, they want town to be shot above all else. if someone WERE trying to specifically direct your shot, i don't know why you'd assume it would be on someone who'd shoot godfather and not, yknow, town, which would cause us to lose the game.

Also, this isn't necessarily true. If all the townies are primarily scumreading scum, then the godfather would be the preferred target. This is unlikely, it is not impossible.

If I were looking for that, I'd look for a /universal scumread/, one with absolutely no one arguing against it. Especially one that was debated for awhile, then brought to the table by multiple players only AFTER a failed attempt to get scumreads off of other players (possibly multiple people trying to salvage the same slot, though not necessarily). Hey, just had an idea, maybe looking into that is something petapan can do. You know, so he doesn't have to worry about being accused of /not doing anything/.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm out for the day. Petapan, I was going to walk my shit back, because after I got it out I recognized it maybe was a bit too much. But you turned it into some fucking self-importance accusation. Self-importance. I'm fucking /homeless/. Nope, changed my mind, you can choke on my bile.

Anyone else needs me, tough shit, direct your questions and complaints at petapan. If you wanna give me scumreads and shit, I don't rightly care at all. I trust the gunbearer to not shoot me right now, and clearly I'm too full of myself to be "doing anything", so town can scumhunt without me until such time as I have the time and energy to contribute to petapan's high standards.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For petapan: Apology accepted. Sorry I flipped the fuck out.

I think what it is is that Mafia's my current escape from my bullshit, being reminded of all the things I can't do in it because of my bullshit hurts. If I dump core on you, it's a reaction to you accidentally poking a hole in a pressure vessel filled with a decade of bullshit when I've got my guard down, not something personal.



THAT SAID! I think its definitely scum-indicative that you'd push that harder each time that I made it clear that it's pushing my buttons, though. No offense intended, just... I did give you 2 clear "back up" signals, and you didn't until I bailed for a day. I don't see town getting anything out of continuing to push someone who clearly needs that specific subject to be dropped. Reminds me of Noraa in Newbie 2028, but more blatant -- Noraa had a good feel for what would get on my nerves and kept changing the specifics of it, so it just looked like I was getting irrationally angry at a poster no matter what she did.

You kind of make it obvious what you're doing and make it obvious that you don't give a fuck about me saying "could we DON'T" until after it impacts the gamestate. Again, no offense meant, but you clearly picked up the signals I was sending (because you specifically responded to them) and dismissed them (because you continued to press each time), repeatedly. You've been around long enough to know the benefits to doing that as scum -- which I'm not going to go into here, you can coach your team in the PT. This looks like scum activity to me -- obviously I was inclined to say that when I was mad, but I still see it now, when I'm not.

And the last time I said this sort of thing was scum, I caught scum. Because town literally neeeeever needs to push a subject in the exact way that pisses off another slot for /personal/, OOG reasons (pissing them off for purely in-game reasons, totally different story). There is /always/ a better way. And petapan, I know you are capable of saying something like "Okay, you want time, how's your next couple days look? Good? Okay, then I expect to see you actually do this stuff in the next couple days." But you didn't do that. You are capable of it, you surely are capable of thinking that "hmm, maybe I should try and get her to cooperate instead of fight back, that might get me a better response." You didn't do that, either.

So. I'm with Imperium here, and I'm calling this scum. You get to take STT's former position as Scum King. It's not all bad, though: I got a pretty crown for you.



I didn't bother doing the RLotus v everyone Day 1 reread yesterday because I was too steamed. I'll fix that today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ah. NM can be scum then.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm scanning through your Day 1 posting, Lotus. Talk to me about Wheme. NOTE: I don't want you to reread, I want your detailed thoughts there at this exact moment without reflecting on the past.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also, important point to note I think: if you honestly think you will hit red and NOT hit the godfather, you need to make an ultimatum post ("This is where I am shooting, I will not change my mind, any last words?" sorta deal) and give us 24 hours.

Let's say you hit a goon. The scumteam can knock a threat out of the game without giving them a chance to voice final thoughts. Give us a pseudo-twilight to give last words, just in case.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, I'm going to finalize my thoughts then.

Rushing here, but from your Day 1 interactions, I think Duchess comes out looking worse than I would have thought going in (as said before, I had a weak townread on them for the reply to my push on them). The interactions you have with them are very slow burning and very low momentum. There's no heat to them, really, it's just a calm back and forth. I tend to find that same side (TvT/SvS) 1v1s have a lot of heat to them (scum theater to make it convincing, town because both sides are paranoid as hell). On opposing sides (SvT) you get two kinds -- heated interactions when scum has momentum control and is on the offensive, and cooler interactions when town has momentum control and scum is on the defensive. Scum wants to be able to disengage if an interaction starts to get too risky, and they want to avoid being looked at too closely. Take a look at the posts starting when you swap your reads on Duchess, and the Duchess-defensive, Lotus-control dynamic is readily apparent. Duchess keeps trying to break free, but doesn't get a chance until you get shot. At this point, Duchess's play looks weirder: Duchess is /constantly/ on the defensive, and barely makes any pushes. Contrast Day 1, Duchess is about evenly balanced between pushes and defensive play.

My gut and my prior reads all say Duchess town, but the interactions say Duchess scum, and interaction-based reads with a known alignment are always far better for me. Sorry, Duchess.

As for other slots, you were too in-the-background with everyone else to make serious judgement calls on how they look when I know your alignment. You just don't have enough there. I didn't bother looking at Norfolk or Rock, since on Day 1 those slots were nonexistent. Interesting to note that while you threw at least one message aimed at everyone else who wasn't a lurker, you didn't give Dunn /anything/ that I saw on Day 1. I'm rushing, so it might be there and I just missed it, but I was looking and couldn't find it. I think that might have been a window into Dunn's alignment if I had that message to work with, but I don't. I only hope it doesn't come back to haunt us.

More thoughts soon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Gun to my head, scum is in (scummiest top):

petapan
SirCakez
Duchess
Not_Mafia

plus one nullread:

Dunnstral
Norfolk
STT
Wheme

Imperium is extremely town, unwnd is extremely town, and this list is hot fucking garbage. I'm angry that I don't have more firm townreads than this by now. I need someone to really bang out good towncases on some slots that I can dig into.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If I end up not eating a goon's venge shot, I'm going to want to beat the hell out of Dunnstral to sort that slot. It's a null for everyone /despite/ a lot of content, which gives me the exact kind of <alarm bells> that petapan mentioned having with Norfolk. Something's hinky there and it needs to get sorted or go down.

If I do end up eating a goon's venge shot, beware anyone trying to carry on my legacy. I play a WIFOM heavy game, which I can sometimes use to my advantage if I know I'm going down for sure, but can often be abused by scum (and they /do/ try, see Newbie 2025) if they aim the shot. Town can try this quite often too, but use your own judgement and read my posts in context if you see someone bring up things I said that were insightful in the past. It's possible it no longer holds, or that I had a secondary motive, or that I was just plain wrong. I'm not a genius.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Trying to think of any other last words right now, since there's no telling when Nacho shows up. Uh. Above subject to change after posting, do not presume my last thoughts would not change based on future events? Shit like that? If anyone can think of anything I might be missing as a just-in-case-I-spontaneously-contract-a-case-of-death, hit me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If you end up just deciding on Duchess all over again I swear I'm gonna be /so/ mad. Not because Duchess isn't a good shot, but because I'm vaguely hoping you have some galaxy-brained thought that blows the game open for me since no one else is giving me what I crave and I barely trust most of them anyway.

I'm going to take a couple hours and, presuming you haven't changed your mind again, I'm going to dig into a few other things I think I should have time for without overstressing my day.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I can also see a petapan scumreading Imperium situation coming where it is indeed terrible, but it's the only possible development of an earlier mistake (seeing Imperium as weak to a push due to underdeveloped early game reads and later waffling). Trying to back down after the teeth and claws are out and other scumreads are aimed his way would be effectively throwing away his slot /if/ he can't count on any useful backup. I'm gonna leave out the analysis, but I sanity checked and I don't think he can in almost any world I can see from where I'm at. In fact, only in a world where Wheme AND unwnd are simultaneously scum with petapan. Anything else wouldn't work, though I think I see unwnd giving it the good old college try there -- I'll see how that plays out before I use it to revisit my unwnd read.

Sidebar: I'm going to be furious if Imperium has the goddamn solve. Who does that, just comes in weak early game then left field BAM here's your scumteam, smell ya later. /Rude./

I am surprised by Norfolk bringing up Duchess trying to pocket, which is a thing I missed (I'm blind to pocketing happening, but I also cannot be pocketed, everything is tradeoffs) that is actually insightful. Where was this insightful Norfolk earlier? Hmmm. I'm going to make up my mind on your alignment, Norfolk. Soon.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, goodie! I'll have more time to do this.

I'm going down for the night. One last question.

Where the hell is Dunnstral today?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, goodie! I'll have more time to do this.

I'm going down for the night. One last question.

Where the hell is Dunnstral today?

dunn doesn't post that often, it's not AI for him

Oops.

At this point I think I have to lean into it anyway, lest I appear dumb in public.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

My feeling while it was happening was that there was an effort by scum to get cakez shot to get him to shoot us for the win.

Yeah this is kinda what I'm thinking too and SirCakez said something similar I think. That is, if Nacho is right about his solve. Duchess, Norfolk, NM, and WhemeStar have all been pointing at SirCakez today. I assumed that is where he is getting that solve from but I see it has more to do with peta.

At first SirCakez being such a big center of focus made me think he is gf, but you guys are making a lot of sense.

I want to be the sanity check on this whole line of thinking, folks:

/I/ scumread SirCakez. I think he's a less excellent shot than petapan, but he's my second in line there. So if you're townreading me, but you're scumreading others purely on the basis of Cakez being their scumread, I'd say double-check your reasoning.

I don't like any of the slots being pointed at (well, I like Duchess's playstyle but they're pretty much an undeniable scumread for me at this stage) but that doesn't mean they're necessarily /all/ scum. After all, wouldn't that presume a very bad scumteam, to put almost all their people on the potential flip? That's a hell of a gamble, going just shy of all in on a not-even-guaranteed miselimination, since they can't simply wagon to completion and can only hope to /influence/ the shot, not to direct it. Not to mention the risk of Cakez twigging to the tactic and going on a venge-shot spree...
Or: Cakez could be the scum getting bussed on the back of a scumread from a couple strong townies. I and, if you're capable of humoring it (I am not), Duchess would be the town here -- I'm not about to claim it's /likely/, it's merely a possible world.
Yet another scenario is Cakez just being a very scummy townie that is mostly being pushed by town so scum can posture around the flip. Easily the least likely possible scenario, but it isn't impossible.

Just... Step back and double-check that line of thinking.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also: no, unwnd, I also am hoping for petapan to eat lead. I just think my argument against his slot was ignored for a reason and isn't going to sway anyone at this point, so I'm waiting for petapan to do stuff I can actually convince people with.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry, last should have been directed at RLotus. My memory is failing! Don't get old, kids.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry, last should have been directed at RLotus. My memory is failing! Don't get old, kids.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For RLotus:

Some, sure. Almost the whole team is my thing: there are what, only 5 scumreads on Cakez if we take you out of the running? If you presume 4 of them are scum, you might as well go whole hog and throw me in there too. You'd be wrong and a fool, but functionally there's no difference in this setup under these conditions between gambling your entire team and gambling your entire team minus one, and the extra weight might tip the balance, right? Go big or go home?

Some things to consider.

Cakez was never a likely shot from where I'm standing. It's why I just sort of shut up about it; you have the wheel and you aren't going to be aiming the car at Cakez unless Cakez throws his hard-earned positioning out on some stupid gambit, case closed, time to sort other slots. Why would scum go /all in/ on one of the (if we presume Cakez is town) most stubborn and paranoid slots in the player list if they won't even get it shot?

Cakez is also one of the highest content slots -- Imperium, myself and STT are the ones who beat Cakez in wordcount, I don't think anyone else does yet (petapan might be aiming to). That means that if Cakez goes down... hey, remember the thing that caused me to flip my shit at petapan? The whole, "we might be able to sort some slots by interactions with Lotus now that we have alignment confirmation" bit? That gets so much worse for scum if any of the high content slots that were pushing the limit on Day 1 go down. Me, Cakez, Imperium, STT? Any of us flipping green would seal at least one red slot's fate, I think. Why go all in on that? Maybe they didn't think of it, but I did bring it up early in the dayphase, and if my read on petapan is correct, scum were aware of it. So if scum knew about that risk AND scum thought they stood a chance of getting the slot shot, why would they take /that/ risk?

Now, yeah. WIFOM applies. I'm not saying the world being posited is IMPOSSIBLE. I'm more just saying that I don't see many other /solid/ arguments for the non-Duchess slots being actually scum (so far it's been all "lurkers suck" and "bad reads"), and that it's an awfully huge gamble for the scumteam to make no matter WHAT their perception of the game state and their goal was. And that makes me think that something is wrong, that there is active misdirection going on.

I'm not saying don't continue down that road, I'm saying check for hazards on the path before you commit to that solve.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Given my point was to do with the /amount/ of content produced, wordcount absolutely correlates. You'd have to argue one of us wrote almost nothing but fluff before it stops bolstering my point.

Which I absolutely encourage you to try to do. Because it will be /really/ funny to see those mental gymnastics.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hohoho! I just got a big package in the mail!



I wonder what's inside! I'd pick it up and shake it, but it's pretty big. And heavy. Let's see...



Oh! They shouldn't have!



No, really, they shouldn't have.

I'll be rereading again today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hey, hey guys!

Don't forget about WIFOM!

Although if I was 90% accurate it's definitely too risky for most scumteams, I wouldn't doubt expectations that I hit another scumslot before I hit green, to push for spurious "clears". Top read is most likely to be wrong, second in line I'm less sure of -- especially since second-in-line is the one pushing that my reads must all be poo. The rest could go either way, but I'd say no fewer than 2 of my 4 stated scumreads must be wrong.

I think there's a chance of this also being positioning for a deepwolf that I townread.

All of these are things I am considering.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Given that you are deeply scummy to me, SirCakez, and that I play an extremely sideways game of Mafia, particularly when I have /mechanical control/, it shouldn't be a surprise that you cannot change my mind unless I want you to. Hunt scum, don't try and influence me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I should clarify: that goes for everyone. No one is going to change my mind unless I decide that I am open to hearing what they have to say. It is possible I will decide that and not say it. Anything is possible, in fact! But you should presume that I am a terrible tyrant and that I will rule with cruelty alone, just to be safe.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm going to make a bold statement.

STT is town. This is not absolute.
Not_Mafia is scum. This /is/ absolute.

I'm going to make a bold request, too.

unwnd, tell me one reason I shouldn't shoot you right now. Saying "I'm town" or "because Not_Mafia is right there" are not reasons, they are deflections. I want an actual reason from you that you cannot be scum.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

- I was pretty adamant on killing Duchess and she was trying to appeal to me instead of trying to read me, exclusively. Bussing can exist in this format, but it's less beneficial because a gun is far more direct than wagonomics
- I've mediated some conversations that I felt could've gone overboard (e.g I care about the health of the gamestate, something I would not give a shit about as scum)
- I have a pretty decent PoE so far, I'd be playing to lose at this rate if I were just tallying scum in the way I have

This is all crap for one simple reason:

Your "excellent reads" could very well be TMI. You certainly draw attention to them each time you get the opportunity. You very well could be playing mediator to get on people's good sides -- like an indirect, scattershot approach to pocketing, "that unwnd sure is a great person!" And you yourself mentioned that bussing can exist where the other side is trying to appeal to you. But I respect Duchess's scum game just from what I saw of their play, and I think they are extremely capable of deciding to have their team bus that way, being conscious of the risks and (more importantly) the benefits.

So, let's try this again. Why should I not shoot you?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, and in case it was missed, the "one simple reason" is "scum can easily do all of this, it isn't even a big risk really."

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cakez: I would like you to remind me, without checking, who you think first gave Duchess a scumread. No doublechecking. I'm going to insist on that. First thought that comes to mind.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If you don't believe my words then that's on your conscience, not mine. To me those reasons are completely fine

That's too bad.

Gun's pointed in your direction right now. It's a really big gun too, but unfortunately I was only provided inert rounds. No explosions! Who does that, gives someone a 280mm mortar and doesn't even let them make a kaboom with it? Rude, I tell you.

Anyway, I want to squeeze as much content as I can out of this day to ensure a solve, so you have time to try and think of more reasons. I encourage you to do so.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Anyway, I want to squeeze as much content as I can out of this day to ensure a solve, so you have time to try and think of more reasons. I encourage you to do so.

The only reason I would do this is because I greatly prefer you don't waste a shot. I can't really think of anything else however; guilty until proven innocent with you?

More like "no one is safe".

If I got given the gun, it means my judgement of the gamestate was wrong in some tremendous way, but that it was close enough that I'm a danger they want gone despite such things as changing my read on Duchess just before the flip and other things that would allow them to push a me-scum narrative.

That means that I cannot rely on my past reads, and need to reframe the gamestate. I can come to the same conclusions if I decide to, but I have to know PRECISELY why and how I'm coming to them, and come to them with the most data possible.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, I'm going to just hold onto this post for awhile here and come back to anything posted in the meantime later, so I can consolidate my requests.

Cakez: Who scumread Duchess first? Absolutely no double-checking, I want your gut impulse first name to come to your brain answer.

Interesting. Who second? Again, no double checking, I actually prefer you to not know the real answers here; I'm getting a feel for something in particular.

When petapan shows up, I'd like the Day 2 read matrix. Please and thank you. Also, give me your spiciest townread, the one everyone will disagree with.

STT? Give me a towncase on Imperium. Yes, I know you scumread them, that's why I want your towncase specifically. Think about it and you'll get the point of this request.

Imperium, why are you treating unwnd like town if you (to my knowledge) most recently scumread them?

Norfolk, I want a wall from you. You're next in line after unwnd right now, and you're going to have to put some work in to change my mind if unwnd manages to get out of my sights. I know you're capable, too. Now, I don't care too much about the subject of the wall, I just want a lot of text that you personally wrote. That isn't fluff, if you can, but fluff can be insightful too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cakez, your guesses at who scumread Duchess first are insightful, because they're wrong.

Wheme was the first one to say the word. Lotus was the second. unwnd didn't scumread Duchess until nearly the very end of Day 1, partially due to not being here until then.

I am taking something useful away from this, but I'm not saying what.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cakez, your guesses at who scumread Duchess first are insightful, because they're wrong.

Wheme was the first one to say the word. Lotus was the second. unwnd didn't scumread Duchess until nearly the very end of Day 1, partially due to not being here until then.

I am taking something useful away from this, but I'm not saying what.

CORRECTION: It was a day or two before nearly-the-end. Call it the second half of the day, where Wheme and Lotus were the first ~36 hours. I forgot the timeline on Netflix's "let's-play-a-game"s, my bad.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Here's another thing I want to bring up. Who do you think are the most thoughtful, in the "puts a lot of thought into things" sense, players in the playerlist? NOT the best or most skilled or whatever else. Also, you can't say me. Anyone can answer. Everyone can answer. I'm looking for something.

Also: I want someone to ISO unwnd. I don't need them to do a full writeup, just... read through and give me a conclusion on what you see with the benefit of flips.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It was your second post, yes. I don't seem to recall claiming otherwise. Perhaps you could point that out to me.

As I said in the very sentence you quoted, you weren't really here before that read... Did you read that part? No? Hmmm.

Also, as I said in the post where I corrected myself, I had gotten the timeline wrong and it was a couple days before nearly-the-end-of-Day-1.

You were so quick to defend yourself here that you didn't even check to see if your correction even contradicted what I said.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh. And it just occurred to me. Given I was speaking to Cakez about people who initially scumread Duchess, specifically the /first two/ in fact, I can't imagine why you'd feel the need to defend yourself at all here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Apologies. My memory was of Day 1 being much longer than it was. Three days! That's absurd. So you were in the first half of the Dayphase still there.

Regardless, you scumread Duchess MUCH later than Wheme and Lotus -- again, because you were not even here.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That's messing with me. THREE DAYS. I thought it was 5 -- still absurdly short, but way better than what we got...

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The contrasting difference between me and Wheme is that Wheme did nothing with his scumread despite having it, while I gave my reasoning as to why Duchess was scum and even entertained them at face value

This is not what I asked Cakez though. I asked Cakez who he thought, without checking, scumread Duchess first. I did not ask him who did what with a scumread.

You seem to be stuck in your own personal interpretation of what I was looking for, and you seem to think that it is somehow wrong, and that it being wrong is somehow important. None of these things are based on anything I have said or done. If you can prove me wrong, I encourage you to. But I wouldn't waste your time: I know what I asked. More importantly, I know why I asked it and what I meant to get out of it. You do not know those things, because I have not shared them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For what it's worth, I think there was some hard bussing from an early stage going on, but I don't think it was Wheme bussing Duchess.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Is it foolish to say that petapan seems like /exactly/ the sort of person to do something pulsating-universe-brain like that? I mean.... Town /or/ scum, just strikes me like the sort of person to get lost down rabbit holes that way.

This isn't criticism, by the way. I do the same thing, and it works out more often than it fails catastrophically -- but see Death Curse and my big-brained Rube Goldberg shit. No, I won't necessarily be pulling something that complex and fragile this go around. Blatantly manipulative, though, oh you betcha. It's practically my signature.

I have thoughts, many thoughts. I am going to separate them into special posts for their targets, so that everyone understands who I am speaking to about what. I wouldn't want anyone answering questions meant for other people.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

ScrewTheTells:

That is a bad towncase. I agree with every bit of it and still I think it is insufficient. I was expecting better. You're playing as a rationalist, for god's sake, give me some /meat/. Or is there no meat at all for Imperium? I'll accept that last one as a response, this one time only.

Let's talk now about your response to my deepwolf concerns. Because you have completely misunderstood them. It isn't about /me/ being /here/. It's about /them/ benefitting from me /not/ being here if they are scum. Scum gives me the gun in hopes of eliminating me. If I'm being "buddied" (their perception, not reality), they don't necessarily want me to be eliminated. First order misdirection: "Why the hell would I let my team give MUSH the gun? I needed her alive!" Anything deeper isn't very likely or sensible to consider, which is fine because I think this idea is well within the capabilities of about half of the player list to come up with and sensible enough to have a chance of working. You know, unless I put it out there that that might be what scum were trying... oops!

As for cooperative scum, one thing you'll learn about me is that if I find scum I can bounce my brain off of correctly, they can actively help me gamesolve. This isn't a common skill, but it's a simple one: it just involves lying through your teeth and manipulating them every step of the way. Like an asshole. I try not to be too mean, of course.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Although in all seriousness:

Mush, if I had the gun, I'd be hip firing NM/Norfolk ---> peta, let people react for 24 hours to see if Wheme had a super townie meltdown, then shoot him.

I'm extremely confident that Cakez is town. I'm decently confident that STT and unwnd are town. I would be surprised if Duunstral is scum.

Who do you want me to talk about?

BY EXTRA SPECIAL REQUEST!

I don't recall asking you who you would shoot. In fact, I'm not interested in who anyone would shoot right now. That information is easily manipulated garbage. I'm looking for information that people /do not know how to process/. I know what I'm after, but because no one else does, they have a very hard time faking it. Consistency is missing when I make multiple requests from them, consistency they don't even know should exist.

Now. As for what I want from you? Currently, nothing. Do your own thing. I am watching and processing.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I changed my mind, but only because it opens an otherwise nonexistent dialog.

Dunnstral! Give me your scum. All of them. Because I see you attack and attack and I see no substance come of it. Give me your scum and we will talk about your future and theirs.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

unwnd, I'm pointing the gun at you but making threats about what you'll do with it won't help you. It is a nonexistent issue in my mind.

If I think you're red, your spite shot cannot happen. Well, hold on. I mean... You might venge some poor townie if your team thinks its time to spend that token, but that's in the cards anyway.

Now, your conundrum is this: if I think you are red, and I have decided that I will shoot you, and the only thing that will make me change my mind is giving me a good enough reason not to, why would you simply throw these threats out that are, to me, entirely empty?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmmm. So, a question for the crowd. Does anyone else see the glaring issue with unwnd's response to me?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Dunn, let's say you somehow magically get /one/ free shot from the mod right now, but it has to be at someone you townread or who is so widely townread that they would normally be untouchable. Who's your galaxy-brain shot here? The one where you think that the only way they go down is if you get the gun.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

So, Dunn, it might seem like I'm getting a bit personal here. If you feel that way, please understand that it's only personal for you. Not for me.

So, my real question here is... Why have you got basically no read progression on anyone since Day 1? I mean, I'll give you Imperium. But changing /one read/ in /two dayphases/ in a game that started with /11 unknown players/ (you know your alignment and everyone knew Netflix's)? I mean, that's crap, isn't it? So what's the excuse here?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I mean, you're not exactly hyperengaged, and I doubt you're a scumhunter extraordinaire, so I don't think you can tell me your Day 1 reads are just /that/ good. It's simply mystifying to me. The more I try and think of an excuse for you, the less likely it seems that there's a good one.

Let's see... We can rule out your reads being super totally awesome from the word jump. We can rule out that there isn't enough content and data by now, given we have (functionally) three flips since Day 1 and over 60 pages to work with. We can rule out that you were focusing on only the dead people and me, since you've mostly had back-and-forths with currently live, unflipped players. We can rule out that you haven't engaged players because ditto. You have all this effort going in, but I don't see anything coming out of it, basically. And then beyond that, let's look at your scumlist, you got nothing but lurkslots and shitposters. I mean, they're all lurkslots, but at least one also shitposts a lot, so. This is practically the definition of LHF. It's /too/ easy. Fish in a barrel. Why would we have missed /any/ shots if that's the scumteam?

I just can't understand how we got to this point, Dunn. I really can't.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's Day 3 and we're only 2 missed shots from a loss. It really, really isn't that early in the game. I'd expect you to have /something/ more than what you have. Which is... Norfolk, a shot you mentioned first on page 4 and in your third post of the /entire/ game and have /never/ shifted your stance on. A handful of other reads you made on Day 1, like Wheme. Already gave you Imperium, who -- it's worth noting -- was in the /middle/ of your nulls anyway near the end of Day 1. I suppose I have to give you unwnd, but that was so close to Day 1 and Day 1 was so short that it was functionally the same day -- and unwnd was already right next to Not_Mafia at your end of Day 1 readslist, in the bottom half of the nulls. Right above Rockhopper, now petapan, who was in turn just barely outside of the scum section.

Your readslist has mostly just changed where you draw the lines at. Honestly, looking it over, it looks like you've only shifted the actual position of /maybe/ Imperium. Come on, Dunn.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmmm. That's not a very satisfying response, Dunn. I'll let you have Norfolk's place in line, right after unwnd. No expectations for you or anything, no, that's just where I think you go right now.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Question!

Did I ask for your input on this subject?

(The answer is yes, actually, I just decided not to post it. Goddamn psychics.)


I'll take that into consideration. Still, Dunn remains where they are at for now: second in line for the gun.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Nah, it's fine. I literally was going to ask Cakez specifically for input and decided against doing it right away to see how your responses played out. Like I said, goddamn psychics.

That said, there /isn't/ any response you can give me that I will enjoy, because I am not here for an entertaining read, but for chaos and disorderly conduct. I have decided you are someone I like for second in line for the gun, specifically. I am deaf to pleas, and, while I may take bribes, I will not be moved by them.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Eh, I can afford to buy it, Cakez. After all, if I'm wrong, we get a tasty red shot and no one even has to try too hard. This is exactly the sort of stuff you should just sit back and watch play out, because they either successfully blow past your wildest expectations or spontaneously combust in the breakdown lane, and it turns out town wins either way.



STT, I find it /hilarious/ that you are trying to figure out the one part of my current play that I have explained in detail to everyone. That in fact were some of my first posts for this dayphase. That's adorable.

ISO me.



petapan, I demand your Day 2 reads-chart! When you get around to it. (If you won't for awhile, I demand some acknowledgement that you have read my post. Also, my demands are not currently backed by mortar fire, so if you are boring and hate suspense you can substitute "request".)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I missed the Imperium part of STT's questions for me. Here's that answer.

STT, if you approach this game the way you do, you should always be willing to entertain counterfactuals. This means looking in depth at someone's posting to really beat the hell out of your reads on them and consider the case where you are wrong. And there should /always/ be meat for scum and town both for any given slot, because scum tries to look like town and town shouldn't really care too much about looking scummy. If you can't put meat on one side or the other, that means either you're working with a newbie, working with someone like me whose approach to the game is totally alien, or something is wrong with how you're looking at the game. Imperium doesn't seem like that odd a player, and certainly isn't a newbie. That leaves just one possibility.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

By the way, if anyone wonders why scum even try to push obvtown slots, the above is why. /Everyone/ looks scummy if you want them to, no exceptions. Same thing with town defending obvscum slots; there is almost no play that is so scummy that you can't rationalize a solid reason to do it as town.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Sorry for posting a /fourth/ time in a row, but I wanted to also add (and didn't think of until I hit Submit for the last one) that this is why I don't care for arguments that say a slot must be some alignment, and am much more interested in arguments about why that slot CANNOT be a different one.

PEDIT: thank god for Imperium breaking my post streak, now I don't feel like a monster.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh no. If I had wanted rationalizations, I'd have asked Cakez or Dunn. (No offense meant to either of them.)

WIFOM isn't it either. Look at it like this: scum are trying to look like town. Town aren't particularly concerned with appearances. As a result, scum will intentionally do things that town would do. By contrast, town will unintentionally do things that scum would do. The fact that you misread me proves one part of this absolutely: you are capable of seeing scum in town.

What I'm curious about is if you are capable of finding the flip side, the town parts in the people you scumread. Flat out: those parts /have/ to exist, or it's gamethrowing. The scum /have/ to blend in with the town, especially in this setup where all it takes is getting the wrong attention of the wrong fool at the wrong time.

But who gives a shit about all of that. I was digging through your ISO, looking for filth, as you do. And I started to notice something real funny. Like, hilarious.

So here's how you started this day off. I'm bolding the important bits here.

Okay so I was very wrong about MUSH being scummy. Sorry MUSH. :/ At least Duchess flipped scum, otherwise I'd think I'm probably hopeless this game.

--snip--

In general I have to re-calibrate the weight of my previous reasons for suspecting Imperium now that I know I was wrong about MUSH.

The most convincing reason to see Imperium as town is that their reactions, their emotions, seem genuine. They put a lot of effort into asking people questions to find out whatever info they need. They are not shy about putting themselves in the spotlight. When I called them scum it didn't deter them from their initiative, so it's either good town or scum trying to redirect. They're super hyped about their case on petapan in a way that seems town-like. I mean if I had a good reason to think someone is scum, as they say they do, I believe I'd act the same way (although, unwnd noted that they believe Imperium was capable of faking this conviction so....but then again how much should I weigh unwnd's words? I don't have a good reason to).

--snip--

Now see, what's really, really funny is that /that/ is supposedly coming from the same person as ALL OF THIS:

--snip--

So I think MUSH's scum meta would be highly valuable information in this situation. Like I said before, I place a lot of weight on scumhunting effort, and MUSH's consistent writing of walls is making me feel that she's town. But I can't actually find myself agreeing with the substance of most of those walls, and that's why I also had a contrasting feeling that she's scum. E.g. the psychoanalysis of Cakez.

I think MUSH is reasoning is overly specific, and relies way too heavily on arbitrary extrapolations, which seems like scum coming up with ad-hoc rationalizations, and wrapping them up in many words to fit MUSH's wall-posting meta. I just can't see how you can actually scum hunt by over-analyzing extrapolated scenarios that are mostly just biased opinions dressed up and presented as ironclad logic.

I think unwnd and Cakez also pointed out this as basically "over-thinking".

MUSH's defense is that she always overthinks, which is fine for a personal playstyle, and no I'm not expecting this to change, that's not the point. The point is that this doesn't convince me that she's not scum. Because scum would do the same thing and take advantage of this meta to push however they want. When someone points out that they're just over-rationalizing a dubious point, they'd just say "but it's totally in line with my meta!"

I might be paranoid but when MUSH's first post in the game is a pre-emptive "my playstyle might be off because of my special IRL circumstances", that rings alarms in my head. I'm not trying to make light of your IRL stuff, I'm not here to talk about that. I just think if you were scum, your brain would be more likely to recognize excuses you can use to defend any inconsistencies from meta.

Sure, town-MUSH might well also say this, but I think there's a relatively larger chance that town-MUSH wouldn't think that the IRL circumstances would impact her wall-making enough, to the point where it has to be pre-emptively mentioned. Like, scum-MUSH would almost certainly see that this is a thing they should say because they know faking zealous walls as scum is hard. Scum-MUSH probably want to cover any inconsistencies because any deviations from her meta would be noticeable. Whereas town-MUSH might say it, or they might miss that train of thought and not say it. Therefore it is bayesian evidence to me, basically, slightly shifting MUSH towards scum in probability.

And then all the bad arguments in the walls just made this more likely.

--snip--

So MUSH and Imperium both jumped off of their wagon on me with coordinated swiftness and grace. I think you should try for the 2021 Olympic scum team for synchronized gymnastics.

--snip--

--snip--

I literally post probabilities between 0 and 1 for p(scum) that add up to the number of scum in game. There, I also posted probabilities assuming a flip goes one way or another, exactly as I have talked about Norfolk here. My whole raison-d'etre in mafia is to apply probability calculations to see how well it works in this game. Conditional probabilities are a huge part of that. It would be dumb if I didn't massively update my estimates on Cakez after I've been proven wrong about Norfolk (since that list is made with the current idea that Norfolk leans scum). At that point the only reads I have on either Cakez or Imperium was their takes on the Norfolk saga. It wasn't strong evidence in absolute terms, so it should obviously be easily swayed by future evidence that weighs more heavily. In other words Cakez's position at the top of that list doesn't have much of a lead from others at the top of the list, and it's almost all based on his interaction with Norfolk-Imperium. If one of those two flip then of course his standing will change dramatically.

I really didn't think I needed to explain this; I assumed Imperium was trolling the point as scum.

Also why are you calling these mislynches? You claimed to think Cakez was scum intentionally misrepping you. You were not against a Norfolk lynch. From that POV, the only possible mislynch from me drawing this association might be you, if you're town. This doesn't make any sense. Sounds to me like you looked at a way to find my words scummy, then rationalized your way to "they're setting up mislynches by stating these associations".

Lotus, tell me you're not convinced by this bullshit argument. If you are I can write more walls but I thought this is enough. Imperium's rationalizing, I'm not trying to talk to Imperium here.

--snip--

And more besides.

Like, listen man, I had you pegged as the arrogant asshole of the playerlist. I knew exactly what to expect out of each post you put in the thread: big words and condescension. I really bought into that whole thing, got to looking forward to your next snarky post. Hell, it's why I asked you to towncase Imperium. And you know what you gave me? You gave me garbage. And not even snark to go with it.

I mean look at that -- "not shy" and "super hyped" and "seem genuine". That language.

Compare that to what we have before: "reasoning is overly specific", "relatively larger chance", "almost certainly". "Massively update". "Strong evidence in absolute terms". "Based on his interaction". I could go on.

And the snark! Where'd it go? "Sorry MUSH." You even used a /smiley/. And it hasn't reappeared since then, either. No "obviously would" or "it would be dumb" even. Instead we get "maybe I'm reading your chart wrong", and "I don't see" and "I don't get it". All that attitude just drained right out of you.

Damned shame.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Wheme, you aren't reading my posts, so there's not much point in telling you that I'm not taking directions for the shot, I'm trying to get people to scumhunt. However, I am a notorious fool, so here I am, typing into the void.

If by some odd chance your ignore-MUSHSHAGANA filter falls down, how about you find scum instead of trying to back-seat-fire-control?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

tbh i think STT's day 2 readlist speaks for itself thank u 4 saving me the trouble

Not that there's much of a point, but let's see here...

look there's a reason i went on this tangent to begin with. it's because i was composing this while i was catching up:



--snip--

Are we doing carryover of reads from Day 1? Cause then there's some missing ones. Or only if it's repeated? Or new reads only?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I was tasked with an absurd workload directly related to my current situation, so I'm going to be sparse today.

Sure would like to hear more from unwnd and Imperium.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmmm. unwnd, have you noticed any patterns of behavior around Wheme? Not around Duchess v Wheme, but Wheme in general. I spotted something yesterday that I've been sitting on until someone brought Wheme back up.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hello, HUB. I'll give you time to catch up anyway, because I want more data from other players. I want to close in on a solve before I even dare shoot, and I want to know that the town has enough solid data to line up a future shot accurately if I miss.

But yes, you read me wrong, because I'm the only living player whose alignment is universally known, and that alignment is town. Normally, I'd call it townie or NAI for you to not know this immediately after replacing in, because that's just sensible. However, for reasons I am leaving mysteriously unstated, I will call it scummy instead. This is non-negotiable, I will not explain, and I do still expect you to react to it.

For the record, Norfolk was a hard null for me, was leaning town the last time he posted, and his replacement does not factor into my decision on you.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also, I recognized this flaw in myself during Death Curse -- I have a bias towards townreading replacement players for at least one dayphase. I do wonder what could have possibly made me come to this conclusion.

And with that data now before me, I'll float my interim solve here: unwnd, HUB, Dunn, Wheme.

I want to see what other have to say about this.

PEDIT: Oh jeez that's a hell of a list if I'm right, two buddies in town and one in null.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I have played with absolutely no one in the player list, and I never pay attention to meta.

You may find my ISO informative, especially the second half.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

HUB, I'm not giving you anything as far as my reads go. Nothing at all. You get no explanation and no elaboration and not even a hint to work with. You might be able to pick those up if someone else asks, but my answers may just as well be total red herrings, because that's the Mafia game I play.

You are in the dark without a matchstick when it comes to what I am doing, and that is both intentional and a very good thing. You are on the list, so are others, the reasoning for all of them is wholly connected and I believe what I've got is a complete solve. You are only convincing me I am right.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I should in fact further prove my point by saying that I am /very/ interested in unwnd and Dunn's response to my current solve. I mean, beyond the obvious, I already know how they feel about their own inclusion. Also Imperium's.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

You commented on my reads, and how they were different from yours. The entire post in which you did that was phrased as if trying to open a dialogue. I am simply shutting that down.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmm two people who never let themselves lose arguments getting into an argument? I could get popcorn for that.

Making a note of this for the post-game. For now, don't bother getting popcorn. It'll be a waste and everyone will be sad.

Popcorn will be much more useful after I shoot.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't understand why you're townreading Not_Mafia?

I'm not. This is the opposite of POE: my interim solve is made of players who are so scummy to me that it overshadows the other slots. NM is first on the list in case of a miss.

If you want to change my mind, the goal you have isn't to try and convince me about your scumreads belonging there, its to try and convince me that your townreads do not belong there. This is a much harder and yet much more valuable sort of information. And you in /particular/ are someone I'm finding useful for this process, because you can dump data big time.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For your solve, I don't know why you don't include not_mafia there, especially with Wheme on the list. I'd shoot Not_mafia before Wheme for sure. To me they're going for a similar playstyle, one is just a lot more extreme. The parts that Wheme does offer seems a lot more believable as someone actually trying, while Not_mafia is clearly not trying.

Wheme is there due to the players he interacts with and the way he does so. I will not explain further, as you have eyes and a working brain. NM is ... just /like/ this.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't understand why you're townreading Not_Mafia?

I'm not. This is the opposite of POE: my interim solve is made of players who are so scummy to me that it overshadows the other slots. NM is first on the list in case of a miss.

If you want to change my mind, the goal you have isn't to try and convince me about your scumreads belonging there, its to try and convince me that your townreads do not belong there. This is a much harder and yet much more valuable sort of information. And you in /particular/ are someone I'm finding useful for this process, because you can dump data big time.

But this also doesn't just give you a free pass on not responding to my peta suspicion, FYI.
Please don't let me spend two hours explaining my approach to the game and then just immediately ignore it.

I'm not ignoring your posts. I'm keeping them in mind. I will remind you only once that I do things differently. You will simply have to trust me.

However, I can say that I /never/ skip posts longer than one line, and I only skip those from hyperposters who are spamming the thread.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There is no way I explain what I'm seeing there until closer to when I'm ready to shoot. Sorry, that's simply the way it has to be. I'm doing something fragile that is entirely dependent on myself. I believe responding to that petapan case too early would cause the whole thing to collapse and I am unwilling to risk it. Trust that I read the ENTIRE thing, and will end up rereading it a few times as time goes on, and you will get a response and at least 24 hours to respond to it before I shoot. If you can't deal with that, I cannot help you. I am looking at a bigger picture play than Imperium v petapan and I will not set it aside for that 1v1.

One thing about your unwnd case I would like to note is that regardless of /who/, I am absolutely certain that there is at least one high effort scum in this game. Considering our only medium-poster is Dunn, and literally everyone else is stratified into high content and active-lurk (time will tell which HUB is, but I think HUB goes into the medium-post pool right now), this is practically a given, since /everyone but me/ wants to shoot at mostly lurkers and no one seems to give a fuck about that happening. Hasn't all damn game, in fact.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

In fact, I think my interim solve has gotten the most reaction out of any list given all game long.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

1550 is what town dunn looks like and to date posts like this have been the only way I have ever sorted dunn correctly

I think I've tried re-evaluating dunn before and usually thinking about him more does not help me actually solve the game

I think I move Dunn up, I could re-evaluate more but right now leaning cakez/tammy <3 /peta/+1 I guess stt?

Please explain how 1550 could not come from Dunn as scum. Precisely. In detail.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I guess to clarify, that doesn't mean dunn is always right on peta there, more dunn catching things that specific tends to be town for dunn. But if I'm right on imperium I would think they're trying to solidify position in townblock (or they're town with a good read) so peta is probably scum regardless of imperium's alignment

I want to put a pin in this post. I'll address it at the same time I address Imperium's petapan case.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Anyone with meta on them, I want specifically to know HUB, Imperium and Cakez's histories of bussing. Yes, I'm asking this for a very good reason. No, it really is not the reason you think it is, even after you take this sentence into account, I guarantee you that 1000%.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Still looking for info on Imperium's and Cakez's bussing meta if anyone has it. Those parts were extremely important too.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Because that's the best way of explaining why mush has so much divergence on his reads with me (gamestate)

Now that I have time, two things.

1: Pronouns, please and thanks.

2: What will you do when you find out that some fundamental keystone of your assumptions about my reads is a falsehood? Now, you might have set your foot on the true thing, but you have no way of knowing (hell, I have no way of knowing), and I'm incredibly, intensely curious to hear how you think you would react if it all fell away.

Because that happens a lot when people put some sort of faith in me in a Mafia game: it turns out I've been stringing them along. Or that I was stringing someone else along and they just accidentally put their foot over the tiger pit. Or that I was creating an elaborate web of falsehoods to bait easily read players into giving me intense reactions to calibrate the rest of the player list by, like in Death Curse. Or that I, most commonly of all, was incredibly wrong at a basic level and nothing I put together is good for a goddamn thing (or maybe that's what I /want/ you to think).

What will you do when you are making your decisions on the basis of a lie?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It's implying that I MIGHT be. I must stress the MIGHT. It's also implying that I may be using intentionally bad reasons to come to my conclusions in public, to hide stronger ones. Or that I might be outright wrong. Or any number of things -- basically, I'm saying "there is a chance here I'm doing something very different than what you're looking at."

[MUSHSHAGANA]

How else do you think I'd get universally townread acting like this? It's all about letting everyone else in on the act. The man with the expensive watch will give it to you for you to then destroy with a rock if he thinks he knows you'll give it back to him undamaged. That applies to /everything/ -- people will take absurd risks for the novelty alone if they think that they can trust the results. It's con artistry, or a magic trick, depending on whether you like what's happening in the moment or not.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hoping someone can provide backup or contradiction to all this self-meta.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Damn. I was hoping for three intersecting elements to this. Two helps, but it isn't enough; I'll have to take a different approach after I'm satisfied with information gained here. I might be able to salvage the next couple steps, but beyond that is going to require a major reframing.

Support for Cakez and/or HUB bussing meta, anyone? Denial of Cakez and/or HUB bussing meta?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The circumstances they'd willingly bus under. Do they bus when there's no value in it? When they lose more than they'll gain? Do they avoid bussing where there IS value in it, and they could make up for being scumread heavily? That sort of thing.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

This is enough to say that I will wait for other players to chime in. Dunn, maybe, or possibly petapan. If there's no answers from those corners, I'll have to move on to the next step blind, which is not a pleasant feeling.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Don't worry, Cakez. After I have heard from Dunnstral, I take my next step. And if that doesn't kick the game in the ass, there's nothing that will -- not even the shot.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, you know, it's a good time for this, actually.

If anyone thinks they /might/ be in the line of fire for the shot, now is your chance to change my mind. Ears and eyes are open. Filters are off. Stubbornness disengaged. I am willing to listen to you for a short time. Call it 24 hours, though if everyone checks in before then, I might skip ahead. You will not know if you actually ARE a target until after this window closes. This is your one chance.

Remember that my stated solve /may or may not actually line up with what I actually intend to do/. I might decide to turn around and follow the solve everyone else is pushing, or I might hit three of my current solve and then knock out Imperium in the end. You do not know what my intentions are. So you should use your own brain to decide if you're a target, and not try and parse my play to figure it out.

Once the next stage of my time with the gun begins, it's going to be more about ordering who goes down first. Your time will be up and there will be no convincing me of anything. I would seriously consider if you trust a gamble on being the target or not.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

It might seem hard to believe, but it isn't impossible by any means.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, you know, it's a good time for this, actually.

If anyone thinks they /might/ be in the line of fire for the shot, now is your chance to change my mind. Ears and eyes are open. Filters are off. Stubbornness disengaged. I am willing to listen to you for a short time. Call it 24 hours, though if everyone checks in before then, I might skip ahead. You will not know if you actually ARE a target until after this window closes. This is your one chance.

Remember that my stated solve /may or may not actually line up with what I actually intend to do/. I might decide to turn around and follow the solve everyone else is pushing, or I might hit three of my current solve and then knock out Imperium in the end. You do not know what my intentions are. So you should use your own brain to decide if you're a target, and not try and parse my play to figure it out.

Once the next stage of my time with the gun begins, it's going to be more about ordering who goes down first. Your time will be up and there will be no convincing me of anything. I would seriously consider if you trust a gamble on being the target or not.

Again, you should rethink my interactions with the rezt of your poe pool. It doesn't make sense for me to be scum with those players based on how I am pushing them and they are treating me

I think WIFOM still applies, don't you? I mean, unless at least half of the scumteam is both loud and extremely cautious. I think any scumteam with, even say a single strong personality in favor of doing something mega risky and two go-with-the-flow types will inevitably end up taking high risk plays no matter how adamant the last person is, since deadlines are important here.

I also think unless every scum member is a gambler they never end up giving the gun to me if my reads are 3/4 right beforehand, so I can rule out some things. I agree with Cakez that the scumteam would be trying to get me to miss, but there's two layers to this -- the surface level "you have a couple reads no one agrees with, shoot those" that Cakez mentioned, and the second level "we think we can get you to rethink your pool and miss your galaxy brain scumshot by giving you the gun" that no one mentioned. So there's a risk for scum that I fall back on my prior pool here, because I'm actually keeping this in mind.

One thing that I think a lot of my current pool is missing is that, of my galaxy brain shots, I think those players have the highest chance of hitting red if they turn out to be town! The lurkslots are a massive gamble, and if I blow a shot on one of those first I reduce our chances by widening the pool of the next shot. As such, I should only shoot there if I'm /really/ confident, right? Because two misses and town is toast. So I need to find a confident shot first, and then if I can't confidently hit scum, I need to shoot somewhere that has some possibility /and/ I think is capable of hitting red if I'm wrong.

Do you think that you are EITHER obvtown OR obvtrash, Dunn?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Don't worry, Cakez. After I have heard from Dunnstral, I take my next step. And if that doesn't kick the game in the ass, there's nothing that will -- not even the shot.

Confused about what you're waiting for, if you asked for something I missed it. If it's my reads didn't I explain them?

As for this: Do you have meta for Imperium, HUB or Cakez as scum? Specifically: how they bus.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ah, so it isn't a complete loss going into the next phase.

I think, Dunn, that the issue you're having here may be that the scummiest person in the game is Not_Mafia, and I don't trust myself to read that slot confidently. I think it's VERY SCUMMY, even taking NM's playstyle into consideration, but I have no prior experience. I'm taking a gamble on the basis of a SINGLE SOLITARY POST, "Who is Duchess?". And if NM is town, I think NM misses every. single. solitary. time. It's damn near gamethrowing to shoot there unless I'm 100% certain beyond all doubt, and I am distinctly not.

Of the active players, there's a balance to take into account, as well. I'm balancing scumminess and non-trash play. The scummiest one in the game is still a gamble if their play or their reads are total crap and I'm not confident about them. If I'm gambling, right, I want the greatest return on investment and the lowest risk. So I'm aiming to hit the scummiest slot that I am confident can hit scum themselves if they are in fact town.

That's a tough choice to make!

Would you not put yourself in the top 5 when you combine both considerations? I mean, you aren't obvtown, you said it yourself. But no one outside of the lurkslots is obvscum either, and none of them are so obvscum that with the NEXT DAMN SHOT controlling the fate of the game, I would want to gamble it on them. And most people here, let's face it, have trash reads. Just, as a matter of course. You and unwnd have the same scumpool, you said THAT yourself too. Why would I not include you if I include unwnd?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Yeah, I don't think anyone except HUB is too torn up about HUB being the shot. Seems like a player I could trust to hit red, too. I got one concern is all.

Can anyone else think of a non-Imperium slot that hasn't been just telling everyone to shoot Norfolk/HUB from game start? Like, has literally /anyone/ else tried to apply the brakes there? Even on Day 1? In fact, wasn't the opposite the case; pretty much everyone jumping on the "Imperium scum" train for taking caution on reading that slot during the /single digit page numbers/ of the start of the game?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Who started that trend, also? Who first called for Imperium's head on the basis of "I won't scumread this on this thin of evidence"?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

No defense of yourself, unwnd? Now's your chance, as I said upthread, and you seemed quite invested in changing my mind before. Ears are open, I'm willing to talk it out.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I want evidence on this Cakez meta you're pushing, HUB.