Champions over Domains

[mastin2]

It'd be easier to list the ones I'm not:

Concision, Patience

.

So for irony's sake, let's say that.

[mastin2]

Spoiler: As shown,

Once you insert yourself into a discussion, your influence will ripple and distort the social fabric, making it harder to see what's going on as people begin to move to acknowledge and persuade you... so you don't jump in all that often. By watching everyone else play, you can stay outside the discussion and look it over with detached clarity, akin to reading your own game like a replacement. This gives you a pretty sweet meta for lurking, which literally everyone else hates you for.

By using your charisma to garner the other players' confidence, you can watch people squirm under the pressure and decide whether they live or die. You thrive on being crazy enough to break the social norms that enslave others, and relish the leadership and control you can have over the game, but if you fail, you tend to take the entire game down with you and leave a lot of bitter victims behind.

Sometimes a scumtell is actually indicative of scum. Someone on this entire frigging web site needs to go after the lurkers and liars, because lurking and lying are what scum DO. Similarly, sometimes the easiest explanation is the correct one - that someone who allegedly forgot to use their Doctor ability or why they were pushing Yesterday's wagon on Town is actually scum. If they're not scum but just a garden-variety moron, there's still no reason to complain, because "too scummy to be scum" will burn you every time. You don't care.

Mafia is a game of understanding people. Not everyone with a given alignment will react the same way under certain circumstances. However, if you truly understand what goes on behind someone's eyeballs, you can figure out when and whether they're acting out of character.

Each and every post you make has a purpose. That purpose may only be known to you, but every time you say something, you've crafted it so the response is as meaningful as possible. You don't spend much time defending yourself as it risks putting you off-message. As a result, it's easy for people to also think you're intensely pretentious and frustrating to deal with.

You're fiercely proud and protective of your independence, and strongly resist others' calls for you to do what they want. You are that person who will stand alone on a wagon 24 hours before deadline, because you're not going to compromise yourself (or the game, for that matter) by making what you think is a suboptimal move. This fearsome willingness to stand apart lets you cut through the vagaries of the scum's manipulations, but some may also call you a dumbass who jumps pants-over-head into tunnel vision.

It doesn't matter how correct you are if you can't work with other people to get your preferred wagon to go through. Finding scum is obviously something you have to do, but your preferred goal is find Town instead, and then organize those Townies into a solid bloc of trust. With sufficient skill in aligning people to your side, a solid Town bloc can crush the scum into suffocation in the most satisfying way available, but the process of creating that bloc leaves you open to the danger of being easily manipulated into the wrong targets - if you can even get that bloc started at all in a group of suspicious others.

Simply put, thorough posts are better posts. You have valuable insights to share and anyone who reads them should become aware of exactly what you think and why you think it. Done properly, there should never be any reason to question your motives, as happens often with people who pivot from seemingly nothing into new positions. Similarly, you are absolutely capable of simultaneously interrogating others at length, keeping seamless track of several arguments at once as you pursue everything that might concern you. Very little escapes your notice and you very publicly arrive at conclusions that, right or wrong, are respectable for the thought you put in and judgment you apply. Your primary weakness - which has nothing to do with what you're actually saying - is that some people have a tendency to skip over your posts, if not on principle then once they get in a hurry and notice you're not talking to them.

Your actual strategy can be just as mercurial, with a willingness to try out gimmicks to see what kinds of reactions you get - plus the general kick you get out of, say, faking a post restriction. Being weird doesn't hurt your ability to function, but some people - let's call them "imbeciles" - will not be able to process what you're doing, and naturally assume that it's suspicious, so you tend to get scumread for things that strike you as absolutely asinine.

There are very few things that you cannot overcome with enough charisma and desire. Your belief in your ability to influence the game is your strength, and you flex that strength early and often to shape the game state to what you believe it should be. Your tenacity makes you a tough target, as at your best you are rarely in the path of least resistance. However, if you do not have a cause to believe in, you may lack the conviction to make any contribution at all, making you a target of opportunity.

All of the above fits, because none of the above contradicts.
(

EDIT:

Though, if I think about it: the ones I deleted the least from were verbosity and will, so if you want a

non

-ironic answer, that would be it.)

[mastin2]

mastin you're the poster child for verbosity

It's funny, about that.
Originally, circa 2010 I so embraced that image I wanted to exaggerate it. I prided myself in what was objectively an unreadable, annoying mess.
Then circa 2012 I tried actively moving away from that image, trying hard to break it.
But somewhere around 2015 or so, it circled back into acceptance.

At this stage, I just kinda roll with it. I don't play it up, but I also don't deny it.

Another pair of extremes: live in the moment versus read back through the past.

I feel like these are already covered, but that just might be me.

[mastin2]

and yes, mastina you are the poster child for verbosity

I'd say I'm more like the Captain of verbosity. You could say, perhaps, of walls, in the form of posts.

oh and happy scumday mastina!

Thanks!

I'd commemorate the occasion by posting with a shiny new account, but the site decided to be an ass and I'll need to wait a bit.

Butyeah. I've officially been on the site for eight years, as of now.