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[[
Bench, it's okay. No one's expecting perfect play. But if you're innocent, *do not* vote for yourself. You're the only person you 100% know the alignment of. You want your team to win, and you can still be a help, but only if you're actually around.
]]
[[Bench, if you're Town Cop, you'd be throwing away one of the most valuable pieces for an Innocent victory so a guy who hasn't posted might theoretically join in. That's no good. In fact, I'm now worried you have some sort of power that kills people for lynching you, or a Mafia version of the Tanner from ONUW. Cripes.]]
Altair grumbled under his breath. Despite his anger telling him to vote for the mismatched creature for wasting all of their time, the rational side of him put an end to it. There was still no telling who was and was not mafia and getting rid of the one reliable asset for determining who's who. He snarled at the mismatched one. "Count your blessings that you're actually useful to us. Don't put it to waste."
He looked over the silent ones and raising his voice, declared, "With no way to determine who's innocent and guilty thanks to our little distraction, we may as well dispose of the deadweight. If they aren't going to help us, then they might as well not be here at all." He shut his eyes and pointed in a random direction, allowing the gods do their work. When he opened them, the lucario was the closest to the direction he was pointing to. With a rueful smirk he decided. "I guess that's it then. Looks like I know who I'm voting for."
[[DW, all that flavour about Altair wanting to vote Arctozolt is just that, flavour. Other than that, I do feel bad for voting out Navarchu but with no other option, I feel the need to sway the votes away from Arctozolt, (as I sure as hell don't want to lose our Cop) and to do that, going for Lance looks to be the safest bet here. Sorry, Navar.]]
Chappie closed her eyes as she pondered over all of this information and voting that was happening. After a few minutes of quiet self-deliberation, she opened her eyes and looked around at everyone else.
"Right. Voting someone who hasn't been here... doesn't feel right, but I understand that it's probably the best thing to do."
[[ echo; I feel bad for Navar being inactive and all, and as such will not be voting for them ]]
"However, I will not be voting today. I still need to form more solid thoughts on, well, everything before I can say anything with certainty."
Windskull (Kyros) - Vaguely town. Seems helpful. Not super strong. Does seem more similar to town play in Fall Mafia than scum play last aniversary. Chappie (AbraPunk) - Ehhh. Null. Expecting nobody to target Chibi is weird because Chibi dying first is regularly memed upon. Hasn't played here before. Hasn't claimed their N0 target. Could see them being scum bus driver trying to get an easy shot at Chibi. Not sure why they'd claim in that case unless they have a teammate who told them to since it'd make them look better. DawningWinds (Nefari) - Me. IFBench (Arctozolt) - Seems genuine in their attempts to give information, probably town. Mafia who knew the Cop was dead most likely wouldn't have hinted at it at all. Nobody has counterclaimed them as Cop or Backup. Claiming cop early is something I've seen inexperienced town do and I don't really see Bench drawing so much attention to themselves like that as scum. Seren (Miyako) - I can't remember any of their posts even though I know they've made some so I'll put them as yellow right now and come back to them later. Equitial (Mewtwo) - Seems consistent with his town play. Nothing really pinging me. Only not greener because he's a good player and I'm not sure how hard it'd be to catch him as scum.
(Note for clarity: Blue green is more town than lime, less town than just green.)
[[I'm going to go a bit against the grain here and suggest lynching fusion instead of Navar. Yes they're both inactive but. Well. I played with Fuse in the last game. I've seen him make some absolutely blundered plays like that one, but I've also seen some galaxy brain plays in other contexts like blacklight. I do recognize that his play in the last game was partially due to a misunderstanding but. To me, town Fusion could be an amazing player. But... if he had a team of mafia members to back him up? That would be terrifying. Of course, all of this doesn't matter if he continues to be inactive.]]
Tefiren squinted at the half-zolt as they refused to unvote themselves after he'd told them they should. Something about this bothered him, aside from the fact that they might be useful for winning and it'd be bad to lose them.
"Maybe you're not very good at the game," he told the shivering creature pointedly. "But even if you aren't, you can't just give up. You can't just... want to lose. That doesn't make sense."
It didn't. It didn't make a single bit of sense in the world.
[[That was mostly me using this as an opportunity for some fun subtle RP flavour, but I'm seconding everyone's sentiments: IFBench, it's okay. Everyone makes mistakes. You have the chance to be really useful to us if you stick around and keep trying to help us. And the fact that people are starting to lean towards lynching Lance today doesn't actually have anything to do with your misplay and isn't your fault, so you don't need to feel bad if he does get lynched.]]
[[Bench, if you had've played differently, no attention would be on you in the first place and we'd consider Navar anyways. Fuse made a mistake of at least this scale in the Fall mafia and we're all still friends with him. ]]
"With no leads, I suppose I find myself with three options," Lusamine mused aloud.
"Even though I don't have any strong suspicions, I could pick whoever I thought seemed... least unsuspicious of those who've been involved and hope for the best. Not fond of that. Picking someone who's done nothing will also have a good chance of failing, but with less consequences. Or, I could cut the risk entirely by voting to abstain, which would leave bitter taste in my mouth, but would ensure we don't give our opponents a free kill...
"I suppose that, since we outnumber them, we're more expendable than they are. You don't get far without taking a few risks. Perhaps the Lucario need go"
"Mm. As much as I enjoy turmoil and misery on an innate level, I need to set aside my urges after seeing what happened last night." Alexander scanned the crowd. "There's more than enough as it stands."
[[I'm going to go a bit against the grain here and suggest lynching fusion instead of Navar. Yes they're both inactive but. Well. I played with Fuse in the last game. I've seen him make some absolutely blundered plays like that one, but I've also seen some galaxy brain plays in other contexts like blacklight. I do recognize that his play in the last game was partially due to a misunderstanding but. To me, town Fusion could be an amazing player. But... if he had a team of mafia members to back him up? That would be terrifying. Of course, all of this doesn't matter if he continues to be inactive.]]
Alexander conjured a screen again and started to look over the previous iterations that were being referred to, those with similar auras to this Cold Fusion fellow. After some time reviewing it, he hummed and then looked away. "...This is true. An extreme wild card with no known read, with either negative utility for town, a small chance of a positive utility for town, or a potentially devastating hand if guided by Mafia.
"What does everyone else think about this? Perhaps I would change my vote. They're both 'inactive,' after all."
I’m just not going to get to talk about anything before end of day so
I do not want to just jump on any bandwagons and I’ve made my stance on voting for inactives very clear already.
With that said, it still seems as though I’ve failed to convince most that I’m innocent, but I feel like choosing not to vote would be less suspicious than just picking someone.
So without proper time to make an informed decision...
[[A point to consider about Namco, whom it seems people are sussing among the (near)-inactives because they left their vote on Arctozolt: They voted just before Arctozolt claimed backup cop, and that's been the last post we've seen of them. They also said at some point around that time that they'd be offline for a while, like for (IRL) today and tomorrow or something? So it's entirely likely their vote is only still there because they genuinely haven't seen the claim and realised that they should change it.
Readpile time! Apparently I found the energy after all.
In approximate descending order of certainty:
Hard town
Dave - if Arctozolt is innocent, Dave is all but confirmed, and I felt good about him anyway
Nefari
Arctozolt - really feels like a genuine misplay to me
Mewtwo
Jesse
Miyako - no, really. apparently I'm alone on this, but I am absolutely ready to go to bat for her if it ever looks like she's going to be lynched, unless something significantly changes my view on her
Soft town
Chappie
Alexander
Altair
Kyros
Null
Lusamine
Wes
Inactive (or nearly so) and therefore super null
Spark
Lance
Fusion
Namco
Still keeping my vote on Wes, even though that doesn't look like it's going anywhere. I don't really like the idea of lynching inactives if we have other nulls who've actually done stuff and we can potentially learn something from their flip. If the Lance lynch happens, I'm fine with it I guess, but it just feels... eh.]]
"You're all taking the really boring option," Tefiren grumbled to nobody as he sat on his haunches waiting for the sun to set. (...Not that his approach was particularly interesting, either, but he didn't have to say that part.)
Catching Mafia was supposed to be exciting. The enemy was supposed to try and fail and make huge stupid blunders and show off what utter fools they were for ever thinking they could win. It wasn't any fun if they just did nothing.
Also, I should do reads I guess? I think I'm a little stricter with my reads than most people.
Very Probably Town:
Dave (Dragonfree) by virtue of being very probably inspected by Chibi.
Nefari (DawningWinds) because that would be a very weird (albeit hilariously chaotic) fakeclaim
Probably Town:
Tefiren (Elyvorg) by virtue of a much safer and unverifiable/unfalsifiable claim than Nefari but probably legit
Arctozolt (Bench) because I don't think they'd fabricate that whole debacle, I see no reason other than a good faith attempt to help that led to being pressed into this whole mess.
Chappie (Abra) because... Eh, maybe I shouldn't put a common scum role who facilitated a kill this high up, but the act of being honest about it and claiming makes it probably not scummy.
A Little Suspicious:
Miyako (Seren) I've forgotten the details of the reason rn tbh and would probably be neutral without other people reminding me that, yes, there was some sort of reason.p other than being aggro.
I got nothing either way on anyone else. I don't trust posts much as a source of readings... Most of us haven't been able to do anything with their roles yet, I get it, I'm in that boat too, but I can't lend posts too much weight because it's too easy for scum to talk the talk of there's no pressure for your actions to be where your mouth is..]]
A note on not reading Elyvorg as Hard Town like most people seem to: Yeah, HelloYellow's theory the mafia could've abstained from killing on purpose so Elyv could claim is unrealistic, but abstaining and OSBP are far from the only 2 reasons a kill can fail. Being a passive scum role is hard, and a failed kill would be an opportunity to claim it was because of OSBP to avoid suspicion.
The whole gambit of "guess why the Mafia didn't kill tonight" really didn't help much as town, but I can totally ee why scum looking to fakeclaim would ask that. Now, I'm not saying I think Elyv is actual scum, I still have them as probably town, but that gambit would make more sense to me in Mafia hands, "Please, if anyone has info that could prove a fakeclaim wrong, please 'guess what happened' and tell me before I claim. No? Nobody has any evidence that could disprove anything? Aight, I'm definitely OSBP, you're just gonna have to trust me on that, because it's impossible to verify now that it's been used."
It just... feels too much like what I'd want to do for me to give it a hard town rating.
Reiterating: This is a reason I put Elyv as probably town and not something better, not a reason I think they're probably scum. This is just something I think we shouldn't discard as a possibility.
There aren't many passive scum roles that scare me much anyways, probably just infinitely bulletproof or something, so even in the event Elyv was scum they're probably not worth much of our time anyways. Perhaps the only thing I'd expect to come of this would be, if we catch the scum killer, someone could check if they start taking actions: I bet a passive role would be top of the inheritance list.]]
Oh, so he did, did he? Almost like Dave was just fucking right. Of course the bastard hated that. He smirked, taking another sip.
He took a deep breath as the others squabbled over how to vote and began to settle on the Lucario who still hadn't said anything (Dave wasn't entirely convinced the guy was even conscious).
"Mmmm. I don't know. Could be him, but I'm not sure how much it makes sense to me. I mean, how much can the dude really be doing for the mafia if he's not even awake during the goddamn day." [[That's IC reasoning, but OOC: Navar happens to have mentioned on Discord that he's unable to post because he's having exams for the next week. On the one hand this means he's pretty much dead weight for the game either way - he's not going to get active anytime soon - but on the other hand it also means that his inactivity is completely null when it comes to alignment; he's not being quiet because he's nervous about having to lie, he's quiet because of real life.]] "The way he's accumulating votes right now feels like a very safe thing for the mafia to push. Not really buying it." He narrowed his eyes.
"You know what, I wasn't really convinced Wes going after Tefiren was suspect but it feels like he's just been trying really hard to come up with shit to go after people for and then flail when called out on it. Fuck it, I'm voting him. For what it's worth, here's my list for the moment."
Hard town
Nefari
Tefiren
Arctozolt
Soft town
Jesse
Mewtwo
Alexander
Slight town
Miyako
Chappie
Neutral
Kyros
Lance
Cold Fusion
Side-eye
Namco
Altair
Lusamine
Wes
"Namco's somebody who actually strikes me as being inactive in a suspect kind of way. Been around but just slipping under the radar. Altair and Lusamine jumped on the Lance train here in a way I'm not a fan of. Feeling the need to sit there writing up a more elaborate justification for targeting the guy who's literally a vegetable that a consensus is forming on, like they've got something to prove. Not exactly concrete proof of anything but I just don't fucking like it."
Dawning's Reads, part 2! DeliriousAbsol (Spark) - I'm genuinely not sure if she's posted. If Chappie is to be believed, she was the original target of the nightkill. I think even if Chappie's scum they would've used someone who's not part of the scumteam in case the switch failed, so unless Chappie's not a bus driver at all or a town bus driver who got blocked, Del's probably town on those grounds. Chibi Pika (Lexx) - Dead elyvorg (Tefiren) - I feel like a scum elyvorg would roleplay less. I don't know why I feel this, but I do- maybe because Dragonfree and her discussed she'd have a hard time roleplaying Tefy as scum last year? And her logic mostly makes sense even when I don’t agree. Plus she’s the only currently claimed plausible cause of no kill N0. Dragonfree (Dave) - Presumably copped by Chibi. I wouldn't know how to read Dragonfree and this seems like the most likely case scenario, so I'm just gonna assume/hope it's true. Inkedust (Altair) - Idk if they’ve played before, but their response Equi putting pressure on Phan was a bit weird- pressure is a required thing to solve this game. I do like that they pointed out the consistent playstyles aren’t the be-all-end-all for alignments, that was a good point, but I wish they’d explained their reads a bit more. This has overall been an issue with a handful of people just writing categories without reasoning. I guess it sticks out with Inkedust more because I don’t think they’ve given much specific reasoning on anything really? Ehhhhh. Dark yellow. HelloYellow17 (Wes) - I don't really remember any of their posts even though I know they've made some. Will come back to them when I check over the post of Seren and any inactives who have posted. Yellow for now.
There are seven more, should hopefully be able to get em done soon.
Feeling the need to sit there writing up a more elaborate justification for targeting the guy who's literally a vegetable that a consensus is forming on, like they've got something to prove. Not exactly concrete proof of anything but I just don't fucking like it.
[[I mean, I had reasoning, why withhold it? I'm short on attention more than typing time, and I already put in the attention to come up with why I preferred it over my other 2 options. I thought not giving reasons for a vote would get me in trouble. Think I'm a little damned if you do, dammed if you don't there. Especially because I've been opposed to lynching inactives in the past... while I was scum, yes, but I was trying to act pro-town when I said it, and I'll stand behind that reasoning against lynching inactives when the Mafia's not pulling double kills out of thin air.]]
[[Like I said, this is by no means concrete. It's less that any post trying to justify the vote like this would be suspect than it is about the timing - your two votes just kind of slot into when the mafia'd be likely to hop onto the wagon that's likely to win, and then when I read those posts they're not really giving serious consideration to other possible votes but still spending the time to ensure they justify why they're going for this one, which does match how I think the mafia would go about making such votes. Very circumstantial but at a stage in the game where there isn't so much to work with, it's something.]]
[[...You know, seeing Dragonfree's post, it really is giving me pause that three of the people currently on the Lance train - Wes, Lusamine and Altair - are pretty low on most everyone's readlists. Wes was basically the one to start the train here as we began to approach lynch o'clock, and without him having done that, we might not be doing this at all. (Alexander's vote was first, but that was cast sometime way earlier and is less likely to influence people right now.)
Then there's the way Lusamine just typed up a very elaborate case for how my gambit could actually have been a mafia ploy. She says she's still thinking I'm probably town, but it sure sounds like she wants people to start suspecting me, based on the unnecessary detail she went into. If you just want to remind others that I'm not quite as definite town as a lot of people think, you just need to say something like "I'm not convinced the gambit couldn't have been faked, guys", without this whole here is exactly what a mafia elyvorg would be thinking right now.
I don't really think now's the time to go into exact detail about why your argument really doesn't make much sense - we're running low on time and I'm still kinda tired - but I am side-eyeing that just a bit and almost certainly going to revisit this tomorrow.]]
