Anniversary Game 8 / AN11: Back to Beginnings

[Chartreuse Penguin]

3 minutes ago, Violet Axolotl said:

I'm pretty sure you are actually Rae doing an impersonation.

At one point I was briefly convinced Meerkat was Rae doing an impersonation like that other time with wyrm ngl 

[Pearl Chameleon]

14 minutes ago, Violet Axolotl said:

I'm pretty sure you are actually Rae doing an impersonation.

Must be one heck of an impersonation.

[Violet Axolotl]

3 minutes ago, Pearl Chameleon said:

Must be one heck of an impersonation.

Well, of course. It's Rae.

[Emerald Falcon]

48 minutes ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

Ignore that. Emerald is Village. How many times do I need to say it???

Wow bro ty so helpful yes keep saying this ty

[Charcoal Hyena]

54 minutes ago, Pearl Chameleon said:

I am half tempted to suggest we keep you alive, for old time's sake. Just have you hanging around as our pet Spiked Hyena. That is probably a very bad idea, considering your reputation, however.

I mean. I wouldn't say no. I promise I'll be a good boy. Just feed me treats, and I won't pee on the carpet.

53 minutes ago, Salmon Meerkat said:

Side-eying.

53 minutes ago, Onyx Flamingo said:

ISN'T THIS WHAT HE'S KNOWN FOR??

It's probably what stands out most in people's memory, at least.

52 minutes ago, Pearl Chameleon said:

did

did you guys

did you guys miss the part where i said it was a bad idea

do i have to add the  to show it was a joke?

i was trying to stay in the serious character for that post

Maybe you should try using more. 

43 minutes ago, Coral Swan said:

Hey Aman! Nice to finally meet you properly. I’ll read your post when I’m not on mobile  

Praise the Ja!

Hey Coral! No idea who you are, but I've been reading you town practically since your very first post! Keep up the good work!

36 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

More important question’s whether you’re really Mistborn 

Ooo, I like the way you think. But I also like honesty and avoid lying whenever I can. Except, of course, when I fully expect to get executed and have an opportunity to buy my friends more time.

29 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

They’ve also got either a soother or rioter+ smoker, cuz hyena was open to proving he rolled soother this cycle

Yeah, I dunno about that. No one would have given me the chance to actually prove it anyway, which I already knew when I said it. 

25 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

Yes and yes, agreed 

edit: this was a nice interlude im going back to sleep 

Sweet dreams

22 minutes ago, Violet Axolotl said:

I'm pretty sure you are actually Rae doing an impersonation.

You know, I've been wondering if Rae is in this game. I hope they are, but if they're not, I hope they're well.

17 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

At one point I was briefly convinced Meerkat was Rae doing an impersonation like that other time with wyrm ngl 

7 minutes ago, Pearl Chameleon said:

Must be one heck of an impersonation.

4 minutes ago, Violet Axolotl said:

Well, of course. It's Rae.

Ya'll are just making me miss Rae more. Stahp.

5 minutes ago, Emerald Falcon said:

Wow bro ty so helpful yes keep saying this ty

I mean, does repeating it actually change anything? Either way, I hope Salmon gives you an honest chance.

[Salmon Meerkat]

33 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

At one point I was briefly convinced Meerkat was Rae doing an impersonation like that other time with wyrm ngl 

first that was a really poor wyrm impression 

the real one is more bloodthirsty like when he went on a rampage in MR27 and lynched Fifth & murdered me 

... but i still think the war pandas were a bit much

but no im kel =) 

[Charcoal Hyena]

Friendly reminder that while this is fun and all, the village still has a job to do. Please don't let me distract you. My team welcomes the challenge.

[Coral Swan]

16 minutes ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

Hey Coral! No idea who you are, but I've been reading you town practically since your very first post! Keep up the good work!

I think I've played/GMd with you once or twice, but this is certianly the most active you've been and so I can count it as the first. Very memorable (a good thing) and I'm amazed at your skill with words. A true writer indeed  

7 minutes ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

Friendly reminder that while this is fun and all, the village still has a job to do. Please don't let me distract you. My team welcomes the challenge.

So do we  

Praise the Ja!

[Emerald Falcon]

34 minutes ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

Hey Coral! No idea who you are, but I've been reading you town practically since your very first post! Keep up the good work!

"Reading" coral town? Tmi smh, Coral must be an Elim, otherwise there would be no reason to "read" him as anything

Checkmate liberals

[Coral Swan]

1 minute ago, Emerald Falcon said:

"Reading" coral town? Tmi smh, Coral must be an Elim, otherwise there would be no reason to "read" him as anything

Checkmate liberals

Says the player who was supposedly scanned green by an elim

Praise the Ja! 

[Charcoal Hyena]

4 minutes ago, Emerald Falcon said:

"Reading" coral town? Tmi smh, Coral must be an Elim, otherwise there would be no reason to "read" him as anything

Checkmate liberals

*Is Liberal. Does not feel checkmated.*

21 minutes ago, Coral Swan said:

I think I've played/GMd with you once or twice, but this is certianly the most active you've been and so I can count it as the first. Very memorable (a good thing) and I'm amazed at your skill with words. A true writer indeed  

So do we  

Praise the Ja!

Ooo, interesting. Yeah, over the last couple years I've had trouble maintaining activity. This is a bit closer to the halcyon days. I'm glad it's been memorable, and thank you for the compliment. It means a lot :cry:

2 minutes ago, Coral Swan said:

Says the player who was supposedly scanned green by an elim

Praise the Ja! 

Corals got a point, Em.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Charcoal Hyena

[Emerald Falcon]

1 minute ago, Coral Swan said:

Says the player who was supposedly scanned green by an elim

Praise the Ja! 

Can't argue with the mech, man. I'm confirmed village there's no disputing it B). 

Just now, Charcoal Hyena said:

Is Liberal. Does not feel checkmated

...try again, please. Just try a little harder to feel checkmated? Please? For me? ;-;

[Charcoal Hyena]

Just now, Emerald Falcon said:

Can't argue with the mech, man. I'm confirmed village there's no disputing it B). 

...try again, please. Just try a little harder to feel checkmated? Please? For me? ;-;

I'll sleep on it. Goodnight friends. Do be productive while I'm gone. I will return for proper commentary on the morrow.

[Emerald Falcon]

Guys, I still think they're actually rae

[Magenta Albatross]

So there's been a lot of high tensions and I was avoiding posting to not get dragged into things before now, and I haven't checked the thread for like 8 hours, so, wow that's a lot to take in. I remember people calling for memes earlier so here's two I whipped up.

Spoiler

D3 summary

 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/680520430964047923/931405535138435142/MeerkatAmbulance.jpg

D4 after starting to be convinced Hyena was legit

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/680520430964047923/931407341826490418/Hyena.jpg

So I guess we'll have gotten two in a row, about 22 hours from now. 

Edit: I know other people have mentioned the image posting thing but I thought I got it right, guess not.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Magenta Albatross

[Oxblood Beagle]

10 minutes ago, Magenta Albatross said:

So there's been a lot of high tensions and I was avoiding posting to not get dragged into things before now, and I haven't checked the thread for like 8 hours, so, wow that's a lot to take in. I remember people calling for memes earlier so here's two I whipped up.

  Hide contents

D3 summary

 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/680520430964047923/931405535138435142/MeerkatAmbulance.jpg

D4 after starting to be convinced Hyena was legit

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/680520430964047923/931407341826490418/Hyena.jpg

So I guess we'll have gotten two in a row, about 22 hours from now. 

Edit: I know other people have mentioned the image posting thing but I thought I got it right, guess not.

These memes are perfection.

[Melon Dingo]

Scimon Tlag didn't set up his cart today.

It was strange. Three days ago, someone was found dead, and the village was thrown into bloody chaos. Today, someone was found alive, and the village was thrown into the same state. For good reasons, considering the living one claimed to be a murderer, but it was strange. He'd been right, last night. This town wanted these saboteurs gone, and it didn't seem to care how many corpses piled up in the process. That bothered Tlag more today than it did most days.

It still didn't bother him much. Still, as he wandered around town, the town was empty. Everyone was at the meeting house, either arguing or saying their piece on the floor or whispering in one of those not-so-secret rooms. Tlag had never really enjoyed that business. Merchants of death could make good money, but Tlag hadn't seen the appeal of killing someone when you could get their money. And messing with words in dark corners led to merchants of death with unnerving accuracy. He knew that far too well. 

Scimon Tlag figured he should show up to that meeting, at some point. He'd already gotten a few hushed invitations; they'd be more forceful soon enough. But for now, he did want to hold out some hope that the town would try and act with a bit more normalcy. Buy some things. Sure, the dying would continue, in dark alleys and dark councils. But people could walk the streets, look at melon carts, and try and make life a little better. Pretend the town wouldn't be overrun for a little while. Pretend the crops wouldn't die out for a little while. Pretend the world wouldn't end for a little while. 

Or maybe the point was that if life was so close to ending, then why live it so long pretending?

Tlag paused. That was a different way of thinking about it. One he was a bit surprised he'd thought of. It was a little ironic, considering the current state of the town. But it was a good one.

He smiled. Maybe he'd go to the meeting after all. Or maybe not. He could wait a little longer.

Praise the Ja!

[Quartz Zebra]

4 hours ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

(OOG response start, do not analyze for purposes of game, simply need to get this off my chest, not sure if it's appropriate to blue text:

Regardless of my alignment now, I often feel like as a Villager, I'm rarely allowed to survive long unless I find an elim quickly and secure village protection, since elims want me dead for my ability to direct others and solve late game; it leaves me very little room to make real mistakes before people start worrying I'm deceiving them. As an eliminator, it similarly impacts my ability to perform for my team because unless I bus a teammate early on, the same worries surface and make it extremely difficult to convince people who know me of anything because they come back with things like "You're a diverse enough player to bus one day and stalwartly defend another elim the next."

I've convinced a lot of very good players that I was village when I wasn't and betrayed them in the end. I've collected information, saved it for a rainy day, and pulled off insane gambits like the time I got 4(5?) villagers killed in a single night because I convinced them all to use actions on me like protection when I had a secret role that kills anyone who targets on me every 3rd night of the game. I've openly claimed to be an Eliminator Coinshot (Cook in that particular game) out of pity and struck a deal with the villagers to only use my kills on inactive players, and actually convinced them into letting me live until we achieved parity.

Perhaps it's time I accept this instead of fighting it. The reason I've left so many times is because I feel these scenarios are unfair, no matter what alignment I get

Quote

(OOG response to your OOG response)

seems like you feel a lot of pressure to play a certain way, based on what you view your own reputation to be.

So my question is, if that's the case, why didn't you take greater advantage of the Anonymous nature of this game? 

Nobody knew you were Aman at the start, there's no pressure or assumptions or anything, its the beauty of these games. You could have played however you wished.

To be 10000% clear this isn't a crtique on your playstyle this game or anything, I'm purely curious as to your thought process.

 

[Ivory Dragonfly]

ah aman

ye that makes sense

probs dont matter really now but may as well put down a vote on hyena in case theres vote weirdness somehow

[Emerald Falcon]

Smh fools who believe they're aman smh

[Fuchsia Ostrich]

Hi, I wasn't here for all the drama as I dipped for the night because of a headache. So I've got few things to say 

13 hours ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

how there's no damnable evidence that hasn't been severely blown out of proportion because of my player reputation (the very reason I left SE in the first place)

Hyena, I don't know if this was an attempt at AtE but if you genuinely felt this way during the game, then I'm sorry. All arguments made (at least by me, personally - but also I don't think Meerkat or Vulture did this too) have not been made taking into consideration of your reputation. Reputation calls caution, yes, but always preceded by facts and thread activity. We really don't do threat-eliminations or threat kills anymore. Kel [not Kas, mind you ] has been back here for a while now and despite a reputation of being a very good villager, almost always makes it to C3 or later. Really sorry if you felt you were being voted out because of your reputation.

7 hours ago, Emerald Falcon said:

Whatever Hyena's alignment, I believe his frustration to be genuine

He's being killed right now on something that started with a suspicion of me, not him.

This is not true because the main argument against him was D3 voting actions and thread behavior [and from my end, D2 actions as well wrt Gorilla and Iguana]. The claimed scan on you [and the Lurch on him] supports the above arguments and not the driving force behind them. 

5 hours ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

As an eliminator, it similarly impacts my ability to perform for my team because unless I bus a teammate early on, the same worries surface and make it extremely difficult to convince people who know me of anything because they come back with things like "You're a diverse enough player to bus one day and stalwartly defend another elim the next."

My bad xD Sorry Hyena, but my logic was more focused that bussing becoming such a norm nowadays that it's likely to be more looked at than defending an elim. See a large train on red flip? Immediately assume there are a few buses on it - which is not a bad assumption but elims can use this to defend teammates and that'd be looked at not as suspiciously as the bus itself. In fact, you by yourself theorized that you "wouldn't be surprised if 3 of the elims" are on the Gorilla train. Normal to assume the bus, less common to assume strong defense as an action of elim teammate. What may seem as a reputational backed statement [well, maybe it was just slightly reputational because it still takes a good elim to take advantage of the fact ] was my take on buses being suspected as the norm now.

[Chartreuse Penguin]

1 hour ago, Quartz Zebra said:

Nobody knew you were Aman at the start

Heck I didn’t realise until last turn  (thanks to Falcon for saying they’d never played w him before, that’s when I finally gained a braincell) Admittedly that was because I never gave it a thought, plus the text ain’t justified so,,,

We should move on and try to not lose momentum when we are finding elims; expect a post soon. 

[Emerald Falcon]

15 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

plus the text ain’t justified so

lmfao

17 minutes ago, Fuchsia Ostrich said:

This is not true

uh then we're reading different threads but ok

EDIT

and so it must be*
on the doorway to paradise*

Edited January 14, 2022 by Emerald Falcon

[Salmon Meerkat]

3 hours ago, Fuchsia Ostrich said:

despite a reputation of being a very good villager

foul lies

u shld ask fifth about the tragedy of LG19 when the Cellar(THE CELLAR REIGNS!) was opened so mashadar-infused koloss rampaged in luthadel :eyes:

freakin' kel

edit: <OOG> I don't want to inflame the thread further, but it's really been grinding my gears so I'm just going to say what I have to say and bow out of the thread for the rest of the Day. Some of this is really better addressed in a meta thread but I'm done enough that I'm just going to out and say this here: if there's anything, I beg the mods actually take seriously the notion of coming up with stricter ethical guidelines around emotional manipulation tactics. I don't care what the norms are in MU, and I'm not afraid to say it. MU is MU. SE is SE. We are a different community - as @Orlok Tsubodai said during the disaster that was AG7 - we had the gentleman killer rep.

I don't know what to say anymore.

I don't claim to have the answer as to how to do this significant task, but I'm going to say upfront one of the reasons Wyrm stopped playing was because he was done with seeing that in games (not all games, yes, but if the community doesn't care...), and I got sick to the fecking gills of being gaslit (THANK YOU LEN).

You know my principles on blue texting. I am considering whether or not to do this, because I think it will add a bit more heat than I am comfortable with, but I think it will also spell out some of why I have been so bloody done with the last Night and Day.

I've not made any secret on the SE Discord that I have been freshly recovering or dealing with the after effects of an abusive intimate relationship. Certain events on N3 gouged open those scars again, and I've noticed myself falling back into behaviour patterns that existed during the relationship, mostly shutting down/shutting out/nonengagement - if you're aware of the term, 'grey rock.' For these reasons, I am withdrawing for the rest of the Day. I need some time to recover and to regain my balance and to decide if I can continue or need a pinch-hitter. This game is not worth that.

This means I acknowledge I am biased because I have a particular history with these techniques. I don't care for them ethically and for reasons of personal history. When used without caution, they can drag me back mentally to one of the worse periods in my life. I'm also uncomfortable with how this causes me to reflexively shut down, and thereby hurt people who might not have expected a sudden icing out.

I also acknowledge I operate in a grey area, because El has theorised I am by nature a very open and honest player. Being Evil is hard for me because one of my biggest Evil tells is that I become very guarded, emotionless, and shut people out. (I say this independent of what my current, actual alignment is, and this should not be taken as OOG confirmation or denial of what my actual alignment is. I don't want to play this way.) Part of this is my discomfort at the thought of unduly deceiving people with that honesty. But it is also very difficult to live and play that way, which is why yes, I hate being Evil. I acknowledge that being a player who generally just wears his emotions on his sleeve, it's hard for me to avoid influencing players by that.

I think the emotions we have all been feeling are real. God only knows mine are. I don't for one second think anyone is faking emotion. I certainly haven't been, barring the D3 gambit.

But I believe in this: that I choose how much of my pain and my emotions to reveal, and how to reveal them, and when and where to reveal them. I believe that even in that pain, I have a choice as to how much to reveal, and how to reveal them. I could go further into detail - when writing up this post, about how bad the past few days were for me. But I don't see a point in doing that. That choice would dredge up more pain in thread, and cause perhaps more unhappiness, more hurt, and basically be nothing but performative.

I just think it's important to remember that the framing of the emotion, how you choose to reveal it to others, is often at least in part a deliberate choice. I can't help replying to players in terms of my emotions because I'm a heart before head kind of guy. But I can choose to be careful about what I let them see, because of the effect it has on them. If there is a good way to frame my belief, it is this: we have a duty to others, even in our pain.

I shouldn't have slipped up with Beagle. I think it was a mistake, not because of emotional manipulation, but because Beagle knew my views on emotional manipulation. In other words, Beagle knew I would cut off my own right hand before I willingly manipulated her, meaning it was not an Elim tactic to gain trust, and thereby adduced a strong belief I had to be Village on account of my distress. There were unfortunate reasons for the slip, which I've already said a bit about. But I think it was a mistake, and should probably have asked to be modkilled on the spot.

Let's take a brief aside to talk about rep. I think some of this game blurs the line between rep issues where Wilson was automatically distrusted just because she was Wilson, because people felt she had magical powers to the point she could make them think she was Village while Evil just by opening a PM with them, or existing in thread. That was the extreme of the rep end, and I'm extremely sympathetic to how players like Orlok, Wilson, and Aman will struggle with reps. I believe this was part of the reason the threat tiers ('Holy Batman', 'Crouching Badchull' and so on disappeared.)

But rep is also what we earn. I work with Orlok because he has a reputation for honour, because I know he can be relied on, and I know that if I can make a logical case to him, he will accept it on its merits. This was one of the many reasons I went directly to him, because I knew he could bracket paranoia of my gambit (again, this should not be taken as OOG confirmation or denial of what my actual alignment is) if I gave him a case with a cost-benefit analysis laid out. I work with Wilson because I know if she gives me her word, she is good for it. In a past life, before this generation of SE players, players trusted me because they knew I kept trusts, and because I refused point-blank to betray no matter what. I'm not saying this was right. I'm saying this was my reputation. And I'm saying I built this reputation through consistent behaviour across games.

I think it's disingenuous to say that the events of N3 to D4 were purely about rep. There was, as I kept pointing out, a basic prima facie case for a lynch, one that should have been true, should have been damning and acceptable grounds for a lynch in any other cycle, in any other game, with any other player. If Aman's rep fed into this, it was as a player who will aggressively defend and erode normal and reasonable grounds for a lynch using a variety of strong tactics. The rep was not the basis for the lynch. The rep was the basis for how events played out.

To put it bluntly, if you have a strong reputation for being able to convince players there are five lights through a combination of argumentative erosion tactics, and emotional punches, and you continue to play into that earned reputation, I think it is fairly disingenuous to claim this cycle was just about rep. No. No it was not. It was, and it was also about players actively continuing to play into that rep, both defending the lynch, and trying to pressure against it. 

As I told Axl in a PM, I was more than happy to have this be a proper debate in thread, like Orlok would have wanted. It was also fairly obvious this was not going to be happening.

In my view - and this is where it goes back to my concerns about emotional manipulation - I've said this before about bluetext. If you require bluetext for basic interactions, you create a situation where SE players feel that anything not in bluetext cannot be trusted. You effectively create a norm where suspicion of basic human emotions is fair game.

In my view, emotional manipulation poisons that well. Players either decide they are better off not playing in a community that can't be bothered to think through the lines on what is acceptable and what is not (Wyrm), or players end up prepared to use any tactics possible to blunt the force of such tactics. To put it more bluntly, Falcon and Axl doesn't like that they're not being heard out. Ok. And in any other cycle, with any other player, I would give you this. There's no reason not to hear the player out. Swan heard me out.

What just happened last two Turns? In my view, the aggressiveness of what we just saw creates an arms race and a zero-sum game. Players either decide they need to adopt unorthodox tactics to not have to lose, to not be taken advantage of, or players, again, make the Wyrm move and leave. And in the process, players who genuinely may or may not be expressing frustration get lost in the noise. Flamingo was extremely distraught in my DMs. That alone in my view made this entire mess of the last two Turns not worth it. To anyone who says these unorthodox tactics are unacceptable, I challenge you to explain why you immediately presume the other set of tactics are fundamentally acceptable, thereby privileging them.

You can't have it both ways.

I actually wrote a post as a counterpress, as I expected a strong series of pushes from Hyena. This post weaponises a significant amount of my pain and my personal demons. I didn't feel good about it, and I still don't. I requested that El, Fifth, and Wilson read it. [Edited to add: For the record, they approved it.] I was not comfortable with the extent to which I was pushing. El felt it was powerful, and I agree. But I also clarified I didn't feel okay using it, and really felt a bit filthy as a result. And I was never, ever going to drag things to that level, unless it was already dragged there. And that, too, felt like a lot of retroactive justification for unacceptable tactics. I've destroyed it. I don't want to go there.

Again, this creates an arms race.

The well has been thoroughly poisoned, and I'm past the point of being done with this. The last AG I outlined some stuff we needed to have a conversation about, and nothing happened either. I don't know if I'm expecting the horrors of the past cycle to matter, but whatever. I really hope it does. Make that shite worth something.

I'm withdrawing for the Day. You all have fun and do whatever you want. Will be reachable by PMs if necessary but I'm going to unplug from this and try to regain some of the progress and recovery I've made. At the end of the Day, or by the Night, I will be requesting a pinch-hitter or a modkill if I do not feel myself able to continue, in which case I thank you all for the amount of fun I had D1-D3 as I embarked on my trolling rampage.

There's a separate debate to be had about a lot of the disingenuous argumentative moves made but I don't feel like getting into it and I feel it's rather pointless at this point in time. I said what I said, and I think that this at least should be acceptable Spiked tactics.</OOG>

Edited January 14, 2022 by Salmon Meerkat
edited for typos in oog section

[Emerald Falcon]

<3 @ kel