Micro 1089: the coalition, again [game over]

[fireisredsir]

1

[hellbooks]

that is how many posts i amgoing to make tomorrow.

[fireisredsir]

oh no

ive been bamboozled

[Infinity 324]

ok here's where i'm at

i actually think hellbooks makes quite a bit of sense as a skitt partner? like it's not the first thing that comes to mind, but "play up our playstyle differences to seem as unaligned as possible" makes a lot of sense as a scum strategy, especially in a setup that lends itself to bussing. the only thing i really would've done differently in a skittbooks world is to try to get hellbooks into the coalition and then bus her, rather than the other way around, but skitt pretty clearly tried to get hellbooks into the coalition and only stopped when it was pretty clear that's not how the game was going. and then there's 2857. i do want to believe that it's a townpost, but it seems to me that it would take the same impressive level of craft to write that post as town as it would to write it as scum, which kinda leaves me wondering what i am actually townreading the post for? there's some solid but wishy-washy analysis on shea, and some questioning of skitt which lean more on the side of feeling informed than trying to figure out her alignment:

Did you agree to putting sheep in the coal knowing that you'd vote him if the coal lost?

When you asked me why I was lasering you, did you ask because you were afraid of the laser?

If we swap fire for ari and then don't win would you be willing to consider limming ari?

and the whole sequence afterwards feels strange to me. in 3205 the part at skitter is again hidden, and in general it doesn't really feel that hellbooks really wants an answer despite following up on it multiple times. and i'm not sure those are the types of questions hellbooks really even gains that much from having skitter answer, so the whole thing seems to fall into the category of "trying to seem unaligned" more than trying to sort skitter.

i think the towniest thing to me about fire is that their iso is beautifully messy in a way that town isos tend to be. earlier i was very suspicious of the sequence around the skitter elim. first fire starts questioning/pushing skitt right after shea expressed suspicion there:

She's still talking to me like she thinks I'm town the whole time which is very different from how she talked to me early day 1 when we were disagreeing. Like drastically different.

skitter it feels like you scumread shea and sheep and isis and me which of those is wrong

it feels like you don't want to give up any ground towards any of those names which is like, idk, kinda questionable imo as a town approach?

it doesn't feel like you're trying to sort the slots you're just maintaining your scumreads bc you know you'll need them later

obviously not all of those are scum but it feels like every time you engage with any of those slots you're just like "well i think they're not town so"

then they back off and are more hedgy:

2 days left

probably prefer a tris yeet

partly bc i don't think i care about skitter's read there since it's a gamestate one based on suspicion of the sheepshea team which i dont really agree on

it's a possible world where that's just a town skitter misreading tris. there are notes of the stubbornness there

it's also possible it's a scum skitter white knighting tris. i guess an argument for this would be that she isn't really pushing much for eliminating the people she thinks are scum so she's kinda doing the willy wonka "nooo don't elim trissss" thing where she doesn't actually really care that much

i might be convinced by that argument actually idk

tbh the main reason i am hesitating to vote skitter is bc i pushed for her lim last game cause i thought her posting wasn't up to her town standard and then she ended up being just town who was busy

that doesn't mean she can't be scum who is also just busy here but idk some aspects do feel similar

its probably because my scum partner skitter is in danger of being limmed and im panicking

i just don't get what this is supposed to accomplish if fire is scum? if they were waiting for shea to turn on skitt to bus, why do they walk it back in a strange way that is almost certain to make them look bad when skitt flips? the only reason i can think of is that they weren't expecting skitt to be pushed, so they got worried and made a bunch of terrible-looking posts, but i just think fire!scum plans better than that and is more confident they can carry than that.

and they just have content that just feels genuine in a "idk it's what i got lol" kinda way. see 1641 (feels like his townread on shea is biasing this in a towny way), 1837, 3253 (esp the part about hellbooks haha), 4280. 4132 just feels very believable from the way they've played this whole game. they don't really feel like they came into elo with a plan, if they're scum it's more like they're trying shit to see what works but idk why they do that instead of voting me and hoping they actually can convince hellbooks since i seemed pretty convinced already

idk i feel like i'm taking all the towny parts from hellbooks's iso and thinking they're scummy now and taking the scummy parts from fire's iso and thinking they're towny now but this is just the narrative that makes the most sense to me atm

at the end of the day, i can much more easily envision

hellbooks, mafia goon

on my screen than

fireisredsir, mafia goon

and that has to count for something right? idk, i'm not confident enough to vote yet, and i sort of felt like i've read everything there is to read (is hellbooks meta actually going to help me here?), so idk i'm sort of stuck in limbo until ~something~ happens or until deadline.

[fireisredsir]

i have pretty much just been waiting to see if hellbooks has any thoughts or like response to latest stuff

but i think the way that (or lack thereof) has developed has only increased my scumread so far

it feels more like she's holding off until she has the time/motivation/energy to gather the requisite effort needed to Make Content when that isn't really what i need i was just hoping to see some sort of hipfire reactions or like any explanation of current solving thought process

and that pattern of approach does feel a lot more like a scum one

the plausible town explanation i guess would be that she doesn't feel confident enough in any of her thoughts to just openly spew them in the limited time she's been here. but like. if you are town you still gotta share them anyway

[hellbooks]

good morning

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

the most important thing for me right now is that earlier this game i communicated to infinity that i would be willing to be the first with the gun if they were fine with it
then a couple days ago i think infinity asked me something like "where would you vote right now" which kind of scared me a lot so i didnt want to be 100 percent clear abouy the fact that i would have voted fire but i think i ended up communicating that anyway
if infinity is scum i think the move then would kind of be to ask me to vote then and there but instead they were like "hm actually i think its hellbooks" which seems like excessive slowrolling behavior from scum

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

anyway this seems like such an important infinity is town thing that it surprises me a little that it didnt seem to factor into the conversaation already

the best explanation i have for why they didnt continue to nudge fire and i into a crossing situation so they can win about it, and instead sort of did a big pivot onto thinking im scum, is because they fear that my "yeah i'll vote when you tell me to" statement is another scum gotcha situation ive accidentaly constructed a la vp baltar doctor fakeclaim and as soon as they're like "ok vote fire then" i'll belike "hmm.... how opportunistic of you to capitalize on my own promises like that.... vewy suspicious..."
but i think thats just unlikely
now that im saying it out loud maybe its not that unlikely

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

but idk i think its way more likely that the timing of fire becoming more confident about me being scum is aligning with this pivot from infinity because they want infinity to vote me and now that infinity has kind of expressed that inclination any sort of active supicion about inifintiy themselves has kind of evaporated
but idk maybe thats because fire is kind of done assembling thoughts about infinity and doesnt need to express any additional paranoia because all of the posts from 5 or whatever pages ago still stand as their beliefs and so dont need to be updated
whereas i guess their paranoia about me continues to evolve

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i came up with a joke, its possible that i already made it but
well its not really a joke more just a statement that is insincere
which was something like "someone is trying to trick me into reentering the forgotten temple of skitter's iso for the purposes of defending myself, so that i can fall into some dormant mate-in-137 trap she set up to convince me of the wrong opinion from beyond the grave"

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok actually no im happy enough with that to upgrade that into an official "Joke" status

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i had made up my mind that im not going to use my one allowed post today to do a vote so once i send this you're going to have like 12 hours of free time to cross my hot buns without me being able to cross back
which is fine right
and is it also funny
and if its not funny then its definitely still fine and not actually throwing right

i guess there isnt any way i can verify this to you but my personal explanation for why i havent been posting is because one of the biggest motivators for me to post has been the stress of the prospect of coming in here and having to make some deciding vote and wanting to fully prepare and organize myself for that so that no one comes in during post game like "i cant believe we left the game decider to that bozo" and now that its looking less likely that i'll have to do that my body has kind of stopped producing the requisite adrenaline for me to cook up more silly words
but here i am nevertheless persisting

ok for example i find myself completely unable to click on a page number thats below, say, 191
and my whole "skitter temple" statement is just a way to communicate how little i want to go and reread right now
so i guess i'll just let whatever epic 인연 i have with skitter remain as a blemish on my record
sorry. datisi is going to modkill me for using cryptography or something for that

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i dont know the last time ive been in a situation where its like i have to remain alive or we lose the game, probably its gotta be dozens of months
i kind of dont know how to reconcile that with my principled stances on "please kill me i want you to kill me"

so ive kind of had all of these thoughts that are like "oh come on its literally so unlikely i would carry out these sequences of actions as scum" that ive just been keeping to myself because "please dont kill me i dont want you to kill me" would just feel so false and wrong coming out of my mouth and id kind of worry that everyone would think that. its like im just imagining the crowd going "oh now you dont want to get limmed? now that what, this silly little game hinges upon it? one little game is more important than your principles? how sad"

well now youre going to want to hear them
fire's gonna be like "uh huh. well then let's hear them. i want me to hear them"
ok i didnt actually have that many of those thoughts. just like vaguely gesturing at all of the people who are nightkilled and limmed and being like "ok then what the fuck was i doing with all that"
i guess fire is going to come up with some scenario in which scum hellbooks was like "ok yeah my best bet is to take these two people into the F3 and not literally anyone else"
probably a big part of it will be what they said earlier that i have some vague memory of which was something like "maybe scum is just taking the mislims that are in front of them" which surely seems to fit in with a scum books profile of limming sheep and tris i guess

idk i think looking at the broad strokes of the way this game has developed it seems to point to "scum fire's only plausible path to victory after having been assailed from almost all sides" and fire's method of acknowledging this has been to shrug helplessly and be like "yeah i guess it does look that way but..... im town"
which in all fairness is kind of exactly what im doing about the skitter and me being connected by a thread emoji

i guess another thing they said was that they believe they would have a better chance of winning with infinity isis than with infinity me and thats why they cant have killed isis as scum, which i cant really scientifically disprove so, we'll let that stand your honor

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

omg look at me making two big posts in a row ok lets get some small ones back in there too

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i definitely had the thought to come in here today and say something completely inane in three words or less and then be like "alright ive been prohibited from saying anymore" and i guess even now im resisting the impulse to delete all this and do that still
but then i guess id have to come back and say something on saturday so might as well get it all out now

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok so now that im thinking about it infinity backign off on fire and letting him continue to self-evolve his paranoia on me might be a scum move backed with the confidence of having me say "yeah ive been thinking its fire for like 80 per cent of this game"
its not nearly as implausible as i said it was ummmm like 8 posts ago
nevertheless she is goign to persist in thinking its probably fire

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

as soon as fire said 1 i was thinking that i was going to try and make a 20-in-1 post but ive completely run out of things to talk about and im only at, what is this, 12? but now fires like "ok hellbooks being siilent is literally so scummy" so i kind of have to come up with 8 more posts before i go and start all of the tasks i have today and oh god its literally already noon god help me

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

do you think infinity not using datisi's dried-blood color for scum roles (see here:

~ 2 x

mafia goon

) is like a manufactured anti-scum slip
i was thinking this because i thought about faithfully using datisi's colors for the library role PMs but was like no im just gonna pick from the default color picker because what if someone is like "hm... how did YOU know thats the scum color"
its a joke but admittedly a part of me is going like "unless..."

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

i still think there is a very small chance i feel confident hellbooks is scum this game can someone else vote

i guess thequestion is, is scum infinity either
1) scared of me to the extent that saying "can hellbooks vote" might cause me to flip onto them instead
2) confident of me and fire to the extent that either one of us is more likely to cross the other than to vote infinity

idk and the thing about being stuck in limbo until deadline feels like excessively noncommittal
like id expect from a general sense for town to feel more like they have to take some kind of initiative
but playstyle etc

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

ok sorry but i gotta be done
i have like a thing that i have to do at 9 AM every day and i havent done it yet which is already such a disaster

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

1

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2

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7

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

3

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vc

[here is where i would have hit the submit button.]

[fireisredsir]

i definitely had the thought to come in here today and say something completely inane in three words or less and then be like "alright ive been prohibited from saying anymore" and i guess even now im resisting the impulse to delete all this and do that still
but then i guess id have to come back and say something on saturday so might as well get it all out now

ngl this is kind of what i was expecting for a while but i appreciate busting out all the chops

[fireisredsir]

anyway this seems like such an important infinity is town thing that it surprises me a little that it didnt seem to factor into the conversaation already

but idk i think its way more likely that the timing of fire becoming more confident about me being scum is aligning with this pivot from infinity because they want infinity to vote me and now that infinity has kind of expressed that inclination any sort of active supicion about inifintiy themselves has kind of evaporated
but idk maybe thats because fire is kind of done assembling thoughts about infinity and doesnt need to express any additional paranoia because all of the posts from 5 or whatever pages ago still stand as their beliefs and so dont need to be updated
whereas i guess their paranoia about me continues to evolve

there's been a lot of things that have reinforced my thinking of infinity town especially with regards to how they've played this day phase, and i think them not taking a potential win/easier path to victory that they could have had is part of that

ive mentioned that a few times but like. there isn't really any point in me casing why confidence is growing for me in infinity town. if im right then there's nobody that i need to convince of that being true

i guess this goes back to the "maybe i should play elos like im scum" idea because there is actually some value in being performative and posting things just for the sake of getting people to townread you. it's just not something im particularly motivated to do unless someone asks me to explain a thought process somewhere

[fireisredsir]

i guess there isnt any way i can verify this to you but my personal explanation for why i havent been posting is because one of the biggest motivators for me to post has been the stress of the prospect of coming in here and having to make some deciding vote and wanting to fully prepare and organize myself for that so that no one comes in during post game like "i cant believe we left the game decider to that bozo" and now that its looking less likely that i'll have to do that my body has kind of stopped producing the requisite adrenaline for me to cook up more silly words
but here i am nevertheless persisting

i mean i still think that forcing your scumread to vote first is optimal and so i still would like for you to vote first so feel free to restore that motivating element

[Infinity 324]

idk i think looking at the broad strokes of the way this game has developed it seems to point to "scum fire's only plausible path to victory after having been assailed from almost all sides" and fire's method of acknowledging this has been to shrug helplessly and be like "yeah i guess it does look that way but..... im town"

i guess it just...doesn't look that way to me anymore. like "skitt lays down a bunch of false associatives and hellbooks coasts" seems realistic to me where fire's strategy has been "decide to bus and then decide not to bus and then now that skitt is dead come up with an impromptu sheep wagon and then let tris elim go through and hope hellbooks/infinity wins the game for me" (neither of which they could've really predicted)

like honestly it made a more sense to me when i thought it was realistic that fire felt they could win without much trouble. but that's just not the case and i think proactively pushing someone somewhere along the line would've really helped them out, they just didn't do that

[fireisredsir]

인연

i think it's both very cool and also a little tragic that there are words like this that express an idea where if you try to translate it into english it's missing some. well. je ne sais quoi. and it feels like even if you get close it doesn't quite capture it

it's like even having those words unlocked in your vocabulary helps you conceptualize ideas that you didn't fully appreciate as their own distinct thing before, and helps you see the world a little differently. but so much of that potential is locked away in other languages and we probably won't ever get to experience that understanding and new way of viewing things, and that's the tragic part i guess. it makes me want to learn every language and maybe even pay attention in french class

anyway cool word thanks

[fireisredsir]

ok i didnt actually have that many of those thoughts. just like vaguely gesturing at all of the people who are nightkilled and limmed and being like "ok then what the fuck was i doing with all that"
i guess fire is going to come up with some scenario in which scum hellbooks was like "ok yeah my best bet is to take these two people into the F3 and not literally anyone else"

i don't get how "two people who are treating you as pretty clear and are also currently trajectorying towards 1v1ing each other" is not like literally the best possible f3

and i can't think of any nightkill that you could have made at any point that would be better strategically than the ones that happened

they all seem pretty optimal to me

[fireisredsir]

if it is hellbooks scum then i rescind my immediate reaction of calling isis a bad kill it's actually like the only kill you can make there

[Infinity 324]

i was thinking she could've killed me cause isis townlocked her but you're banking a lot on her not reconsidering. isis kill leaves more things open i think

[fireisredsir]

yeah the only alternative is to try to pin a kill on isis but you or me dying would be strange enough that i think people would want to really reassess and figure out why that happened

its also just like unnecessarily risky, idk why you would since you are also basically clearing her

[Infinity 324]

인연

i think it's both very cool and also a little tragic that there are words like this that express an idea where if you try to translate it into english it's missing some. well. je ne sais quoi. and it feels like even if you get close it doesn't quite capture it

it's like even having those words unlocked in your vocabulary helps you conceptualize ideas that you didn't fully appreciate as their own distinct thing before, and helps you see the world a little differently. but so much of that potential is locked away in other languages and we probably won't ever get to experience that understanding and new way of viewing things, and that's the tragic part i guess. it makes me want to learn every language and maybe even pay attention in french class

anyway cool word thanks

mm and that's the word from past lives! very good movie

i feel the reverse of this when i try to translate my internal thought language. i wonder if everyone has an internal thought language like that, or just systems, or just us?

[fireisredsir]

i don't know if i necessarily have an internal thought language but i do have different thought processes and different levels of clarity when i am specifically putting things into words vs not

i usually find though that i am better able to recognize and understand and communicate my thoughts when im writing them down

but speaking is very different and things definitely don't translate there

[Infinity 324]

hellbooks and skitt have the opposite of 인연 which is itself a sort of 인연

[Infinity 324]

some part of us is still holding out hope that hellbooks is scum and wins

[Infinity 324]

fire I know you were trying to omgus more this game (against brass and against me) but it really felt like your heart wasn't in it? sometimes it's really valuable to not immediately push back and understand why someone is sr'ing you. but idk I get why you're doing it

[fireisredsir]

i am unsure if there's a question/prompting a response for me in there

[Infinity 324]

idk give thoughts if you want

[fireisredsir]

if you have specific questions then i don't mind answering but otherwise not really

[Infinity 324]

i was hoping to get you to townspew but that's ok ig

[fireisredsir]

im not feeling very spewy rn