Quick Fix 64: Spies in Starsight

[Stick. she/her]

Just now, Matrim's Dice said:

Then why wouldn’t they kill you over xino

They are clearly allergic to killing talkative ones 

[Mat he/him]

Yes

But why

Kas’ theory was that none of us fit the bill for the ICs. If you’re right about why xino was killed then that no longer applies.

I can think of a reason beyond that which explains things (with a side of tinfoil) but I’m gonna keep it to myself for now

Edited December 22, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[Amanuensis he/him]

9 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

Re: e!Nerdy. That fits, tbf, but there's no way the team is just Silver/Nerdy. Which then I ask what partner lets that kill go?

Resurfacing in case this edit was missed and heading to sleep.

If we want to commit to an e!Nerdy world today, we need to figure out what third player would allow that Xino kill (whether intentionally or from their absence)

Otherwise, we need to seriously consider this was a deliberate framing of Nerdy and maybe Almond. Which leaves Hael, Kas, and Mat.

That or TUN is really just being an apathetic sniper.

ED1T:

Eager to hear thoughts later. Good night o7

Edited December 22, 2022 by Amanuensis

[Stick. she/her]

8 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

Also, hi @_Stick_. We totally haven't been talking about killing you. Nope. Why do you ask?

Re: e!Nerdy. That fits, tbf, but there's no way the team is just Silver/Nerdy. Which then I ask what partner lets that kill go?

I just went over the C4 thread smh 

My guess from last cycle is that there’s Almond and perhaps Hael, but I’d like to flip Nerdy first. It looks like Hael was around at EoD so im not too sure if I want to stick to that theory anymore 

[Stick. she/her]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

I do want to comment on one thing though, and that's that I disagree E!Stick would let the Aman lynch go through.

She notes that she's win con centric enough to want to save Aman because Village.

But doesn't that apply to E!you too, @_Stick_? E!you knows MLing Aman doesn't further your win con, for the very obvious reason that IC!Aman asking to die screws the Village over badly. So E!you would rather ML anyone else who has a remote chance of being IC in comparison. The best scenario for E!you is to get off a ML and a kill on IC. So I don't know why it would be incoherent with not MLing Aman, especially since Aman wasn't suspecting you at that point.

E!Stick is more sympathetic and does let Aman die (or steps back to let the village handle it), and also because losing a villager, while not furthering the elim win con, does always aid in eventually giving the elims the advantage of numbers. And since the vote state was uncertain then, it was possible that my hypothetical teammates get exe’d instead, so it’s risky. Also as elim I’d have my NK to use to further my wincon so I wouldn’t care too much about weaponising the exe as well. 

[Kasimir he/him]

59 minutes ago, _Stick_ said:

E!Stick is more sympathetic and does let Aman die (or steps back to let the village handle it), and also because losing a villager, while not furthering the elim win con, does always aid in eventually giving the elims the advantage of numbers

Sure. But do you kill a more or less guaranteed non-IC? Why go for one IC kill when you could have two, and therefore do better at furthering your wincon in a single cycle? >>

IDK, I don't think it's as irrational as you are painting it for E!you to go off Aman after that turning point. As you say, going to Fifth is functionally 'letting the Village handle it.' I say even as I squint at Hael again...

1 hour ago, Amanuensis said:

Re: e!Nerdy. That fits, tbf, but there's no way the team is just Silver/Nerdy. Which then I ask what partner lets that kill go?

That's sort of the problem we're back to, yeah.

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

My guess from last cycle is that there’s Almond and perhaps Hael, but I’d like to flip Nerdy first. It looks like Hael was around at EoD so im not too sure if I want to stick to that theory anymore 

Almond-Silver-Nerdy? Seriously? Aman asked what partner lets that kill go, I ask what GM lets that rand go. All new players. I mean, Mat did let Turtle/Bookwyrm go but theoretically Turtle has more experience than that.

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Kas’ theory was that none of us fit the bill for the ICs. If you’re right about why xino was killed then that no longer applies.

I'm not as sure now. Because yes, but at the same time - it's the thread control worries I was mulling over last Turn. It doesn't feel like it fits the team profile any longer, and while it might explain why I am not dead, you are not dead, and Aman is not dead...Yeah. Very crudely: it doesn't explain why Stick and Hael aren't dead.

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I can think of a reason beyond that which explains things (with a side of tinfoil) but I’m gonna keep it to myself for now

:eyes:

2 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

I could buy a two elim world, but then I'm forced to scrutinize <Stick, Mat, Hael, Kas, and maybe TUN>

IMO, Stick putting a Xino kill in only works in an e!Nerdy world. Technically, the Xino kill works for v!Stick and e!Nerdy too, so Nerdy would need to be flipped first.

Even then, what does e!Stick expect if that plan succeeds? A clear for not being at rollover to see Nerdy flip red? Would she really attempt that, given how much I kept pushing Xino?

ED1T:

That's more or less what leads me to believe this is a gambit. Which means one or more of <Mat, Hael, Kas> are playing mind games with the rest of us. Sicko(s)!

In a two Elim world, that'd be my pool/take, anyway. I'm more wondering how badly off my mental models are in that case. But I almost feel like it'd be down to <Stick, Hael, Kas> with a TUN side - why wouldn't you just bus Silver for Village credit in that world?

I think my question is still: cui bono?

And what's the expected gain of the gambit? Village cred for not submitting the kill? Skipping the kill usually is a hefty commitment, especially if you're already with a decent positive bank in Village cred.

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with the gambit hypothesis, but I'm trying to work out what the calculus is here and make it make sense.

[Kasimir he/him]

Before I forget:

TUN

Where I am now, I am ok going back to Nerdy later, but will at least need some sleep before trying to re-read/re-think.

Edited to add:

Tbh - it's just going to be a mess for me because I have a personal errand to run that can't wait tomorrow, and I really, badly need sleep, my brain is shutting down after two weeks of exam-report-World Cup sleep debt, so IDK how useful I will be. But I will do what I can in gaps, just need rest now.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Kasimir

[Stick. she/her]

Was TUN on during EoD?

Also, what if this wasn't a gambit??

What if it was a...mistake? This has happened before. Perhaps they meant to kill, idk, insanity or someone else in that range, and accidentally typed xino. I don't think this is the likeliest scenario but it's possible.

Edit:

I will point out that Almond has not been online since Cycle 3, so they could not have submitted the night kill. Doesn't clear them since we're looking at least two other elims but I'm inclined to village-read them for this maybe ;-; So where are the elims?

Edited December 22, 2022 by _Stick_

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

Was TUN on during EoD?

Not that I recall. I kept seeing myself and Mat, Aman showed up but could've been the remnant log, and Hael. Fifth and Devo and Araris too.

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

Also, what if this wasn't a gambit??

Do you have explanations other than a gambit and a mistake?

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

I will point out that Almond has not been online since Cycle 3, so they could not have submitted the night kill. Doesn't clear them since we're looking at least two other elims but I'm inclined to village-read them for this maybe ;-; So where are the elims?

I mean the Almond issue is back to: they had someone else who put in the NK + an Almond/Silver team doesn't work...

I am sticking to my conviction that V!TUN would have made more of an impact by now. Nerdy will be dead if he doesn't post but I can also understand your desire not to leave this to a late post.

Why are you hardlocking Mat Village?

I still come back to that opening TBH.

[Stick. she/her]

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Not that I recall. I kept seeing myself and Mat, Aman showed up but could've been the remnant log, and Hael. Fifth and Devo and Araris too.

Interesting. TUN voted Nerdy in the hopes of their elim flip clearing him (not sure what led him to that conclusion but well). If he wasn't on at EoD, he might've assumed Nerdy was getting exe'd, going off the present VC. e!TUN votes e!Nerdy off and gets a clear for the rest of the game - good trade off? He also said he'd been village reading Nerdy which is weird.

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Do you have explanations other than a gambit and a mistake?

1. Gambit

There is an elim among <Kas, Hael, Aman, Mat>

Other elim could be Nerdy/Insanity/wtv

2. Elim not present at rollover 

The elim team must contain Nerdy. Because if not, Nerdy's flip always leads to a xino exe.

Other elim would have have to be TUN, and maybe Almond as a fourth

3. Mistake

Who is likely to do this? lmao.

 

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Why are you hardlocking Mat Village?

I still come back to that opening TBH.

I'm having trouble seeing his posts coming from anything but a villager's perspective. Might be because I'm having a lot of the same thoughts as him too (I promise I'm not trying to pocket you Mat) - and I empathise with his vote switch to Fifth C3. Speaking of that vote, E!Mat simply does not do this. Especially given xino's flip.

Edit:

@InfiniteInsanity what do you make of xino's village flip?

Edit2:

Quoting myself from last cycle:

On 12/21/2022 at 4:42 PM, _Stick_ said:

Mat is only an elim if xino is an elim, otherwise his vote switch last cycle makes no sense from an elim perspective.

E!xino =/= E!Mat and V!xino = V!Mat

(edit3: He was so strongly committed to the Aman exe that the switch was not necessary in the slightest.)

Mat is more or less confirmed village for me.

Edit4:

I've just realised something. Xino was slated to die to the inactivity filter right up until he posted at 12:22 am - Nerdy was not around to see that happen as they haven't been online since 7:14 pm. As far as they know, xino dies to the filter. So I think I can say with 100% certainty that Nerdy did not submit that kill.

BUT THEN WHO DID.

Edit5:

It's possible Nerdy wasn't paying attention to the inactivity filter? I feel like I'm conf-biasing my way into a Nerdy tunnel lol. Kas explicitly asked Szeth about xino being on activity warning, but Szeth's reply only came at 11:08 pm, which is after Nerdy had logged off.

 

Edit6:

TINFOIL THEORY BELOW. Open at your own risk.

Spoiler

Okay, crackpot theory time.

Let’s imagine a world where Kas is evil. (:0) We'll start from the beginning.

Cycle 1:

There is one problem that E!Kas has to address: sooner or later people will start to wonder why he’s not dead. Unfortunately this is an inevitable question that arises every game where Kas survives past the first few cycles.

Dannex votes Kas. This was placed as a poke vote but later interactions between Dannex/Kas indicate it will most likely not move off.

Fifth comes in with a post that is kinda paranoiding Kas but votes Mat. This is an opportunity. 

It’s an opportunity because if Kas can willingly get close to getting exe’d this early into the game, it’ll imply to the village that Kas is not IC. So it will not be suspicious if Kas continues to evade the NK because logically the elims should not be interested in NKing a non-IC villager.

So, Kas gets his teammate Nerdy to throw a vote on Kas and dip for the rest of the cycle. Kas later calls this vote ‘opportunistic’, and he’s not wrong.

(I do have one problem with this and that is the proximity between Fifth's and Nerdy's posts - Nerdy's post came a few minutes after Fifth's and I don't know if that's sufficient time for this deliberate plan to form, so points against E!Kas here.)

Now that Kas has accumulated two votes, he self-votes, bringing it up to three. I think the VC at this stage was 3/3 between Kas and Dannex? Not sure, but I dont think it matters because by the end of C1, Dannex had SIX votes so Kas was not in any significant danger. 

Except, to the thread (thanks to a chain of wrong VCs), it seemed as though Kas was in serious trouble. But anyway. Mission accomplished, no one will now question why Kas lives.

 

Cycle 2:

This is where Kas would bus Silver. I will note that he was hesitant to go there first ‘can sort of see where you are coming from - that there's no real point in mentioning the meta argument just to ignore it. In the sense that there's a difference from doing a Fifth and not caring and bothering to think through but still E lean and vote I guess. It's odd to me but I don't really know if I E read on that basis.’ and tried to get a bookwyrm/xino exe going first.

Should note that Nerdy votes xino before Silver was in any danger. 

Kas eventually votes Silver, and I think at this stage he’d decided that bussing was the most optimal course of action. 

Nerdy takes the lead with 4 votes versus Silver’s 3, and Kas then votes Nerdy. If he gonna bus, might as well get on the right train? I know that failed busses happen >> 

Except, as Kas himself points out in C3, at the time of Kas’ Nerdy vote cast he didn’t see Hael Silver vote - from Kas’ perspective he was putting Nerdy further in the lead with 5 votes, when in reality he’d accidentally broken the tie. Now it is 5-3 between Nerdy and Silver.

Mat switches to Aman off Nerdy - now it’s 4-3 between Nerdy and Silver.

Nerdy is still in the lead so Kas is on the right bus. 

I vote Silver, now it’s tied.

A tie means there’s a possibility Silver dies, in which case the bus is failed and Kas gets no credit either. Also, Winzik exists. Kas decides to break the tie in the only way he can, which is by voting Silver. This was now the correct bus to be on.

 

Cycle 3:

NGL C3!Kas reads village all the way to me. I don’t see the need for E!Kas to case Aman when Fifth and Mat were already on it and Aman had helped them with his own self vote. Especially since Kas had been staying clear of paranoiding too much on Aman for the past two cycles - I think the C3 suspicion comes from a genuine place. So this is the hole in my theory I guess.

The other hole is that Kas seems decently invested in this, which E!Kas has trouble with. He could be faking it, but it’s a point to be noted.

He notably votes on Nerdy for a short while C3 before switching to xino.

 

Cycle 4:

This is E!Kas again - very interested in pushing the xino exe, mostly staying clear of Nerdy while also publicly keeping them as a backup option. Although I have to ask myself why he doesn't just bus the second teammate too. Too ruthless?

The xino kill - Kas was online at EoD so he clearly knew xino was potentially getting exe’d. E!Kas world is a xino gambit world.

A point in V!Kas’ favour is that I’d expect E!Kas to be strongly pushing the Nerdy exe today, I think, in order to properly reap the benefits of said gambit. Since the gambit suggests Nerdy submitted the NK. It’s possible I’m reading the gambit’s intentions wrong.

A point against V!Kas is that I can very much see him making all these kills - I don’t doubt his ability to ID people off the IC doc. Remember AG8? He had nearly everyone’s identities down like, two cycles in. 

 

Cycle 5:

Now he appears to want to exe Bookwyrm, again keeping Nerdy as the backup option.

This is the tinfoil theory I’ve been spewing in my GM PM, and admittedly it’s got many holes most of which are concentrated in C3. But if there’s an elim in the <Kas, Hael, Aman, Mat> group, Kas is not looking like a terribly unlikely option, since Mat is village and I still lean towards V!Aman and V!Hael.

Does E!Kas work without E!Nerdy? I’m not sure. Maybe? Maybe not? Someone else figure that out.

I’m not a hundred percent convinced of this so I’d appreciate everybody’s thoughts.

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by _Stick_

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

If Xino was village, then I'm very certain that Nerdy is Elim.

If other evidence pushes me to vote for someone else, then I'll change it. I think TUN might be worth a look...

But I'm fairly certain that Nerdy is who we should go for.

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

Hmm.

Alright, I know I'm incredibly suspicious at this time. I'll even vote myself if people want me to.

Nerdy

I am somewhat suspicious of Aman, though. Make of that what you will.

[Stick. she/her]

3 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

Hmm.

Alright, I know I'm incredibly suspicious at this time. I'll even vote myself if people want me to.

Nerdy

No, I assure you people don’t want this  

3 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

I am somewhat suspicious of Aman, though. Make of that what you will.

But I’m curious - you thought the Aman train was suspicious C3?

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

Just now, _Stick_ said:

No, I assure you people don’t want this  

But I’m curious - you thought the Aman train was suspicious C3?

Aman's reaction actually made me more suspicious. I understand why he did that now, as I'm doing the same thing, but it felt a lot more like a guilt trip than I would expect from V! Aman.

[Mat he/him]

Can we go one turn without people voting themselves like cmon people

(Real thoughts in a bit)

Edited December 22, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

17 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Can we go one turn without people voting themselves like cmon people

(Real thoughts in a bit)

NEVER!

[Amanuensis he/him]

Gah. Why does everything Nerdy post make me want to v!read them?

@NerdyAarakocra plz if you're village, help us out. The easiest way to prove your innocence is to make genuine solving attempts. I like your thoughts on me, regardless of the conclusion, so I'd like to see more on other players.

You know how in my mega post I did a list of every living player at the time with colors for the alignment I believed they were and explanations for why? You don't need to go into a lot of detail, but reads lists are very helpful in that it lets you organize your thoughts and narrow suspects, while also helping us see your perspective and your process.

In an ideal world, a villager putting effort into solving naturally makes their own alignment known. Plus there's a good chance you notice something the rest of us don't.

I want to hear more about your Kas suspicions from C1/C2 especially. You never really spoke on them but have been consistent on that until recently.

ED1T:

Can someone tell me how many games Bookwyrm has played, and how many of those were elim / how they got caught / if they won?

Edited December 22, 2022 by Amanuensis

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

6 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

Gah. Why does everything Nerdy post make me want to v!read them?

@NerdyAarakocra plz if you're village, help us out. The easiest way to prove your innocence is to make genuine solving attempts. I like your thoughts on me, regardless of the conclusion, so I'd like to see more on other players.

You know how in my mega post I did a list of every living player at the time with colors for the alignment I believed they were and explanations for why? You don't need to go into a lot of detail, but reads lists are very helpful in that it lets you organize your thoughts and narrow suspects, while also helping us see your perspective and your process.

In an ideal world, a villager putting effort into solving naturally makes their own alignment known. Plus there's a good chance you notice something the rest of us don't.

I want to hear more about your Kas suspicions from C1/C2 especially. You never really spoke on them but have been consistent on that until recently.

The thing is, I DON'T KNOW how to read people. When someone does something suspicious, I E! read them, but I can't keep an active watch for 24hrs to see what people are doing! Any read that I post is probably wrong and could hurt the village, so I evaluate other people's evidence and add some of my own. In addition, I don't change my reads that much. What I should have done with Xino was wait for him to die from inactivity and voted for my other suspicions.

If I'm Elim, (which I'm not), then Kas voting with me on Xino makes him look incredibly sus, doesn't it? But if Kas is village, than am I suspicious for going with Kas?
Just throwing that out there.

[Amanuensis he/him]

51 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

The thing is, I DON'T KNOW how to read people. When someone does something suspicious, I E! read them, but I can't keep an active watch for 24hrs to see what people are doing! Any read that I post is probably wrong and could hurt the village, so I evaluate other people's evidence and add some of my own. In addition, I don't change my reads that much. What I should have done with Xino was wait for him to die from inactivity and voted for my other suspicions.

If I'm Elim, (which I'm not), then Kas voting with me on Xino makes him look incredibly sus, doesn't it? But if Kas is village, than am I suspicious for going with Kas?
Just throwing that out there.

Completely fair. Reading players is something that comes with experience (granted, experience doesn't guarantee success) and in a lot of cases is pure subjection, speculation, and luck.

Maybe one strategy is to just dump any thoughts you have in thread as soon as they surface. It's hard to be here all the time, let alone backread everything that people like Kas and I post and make sense of it, so I empathize with your situation.

I wouldn't be afraid of hurting the village if I were you. Tbh myself and Fifth did that a lot more than you could already + the real thing hurting the village would be us voting v!Nerdy out today. I don't want you gone unless you're really an elim, and I haven't felt that way since C1

I'm at the point where I confidently v!read every low-active, including Bookwyrm and TUN, but in Bookwyrm and TUN's case I'm willing to reeval.

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Amanuensis

[Mat he/him]

I’d say right now I v read Bookwyrm and Nerdy from that last post. Almond and Insanity are question marks. TUN is just null. I’d probably vote them out in reverse order of what I just said.

What does a v/v xino/Nerdy world even mean >>

[Amanuensis he/him]

6 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I’d say right now I v read Bookwyrm and Nerdy from that last post. Almond and Insanity are question marks. TUN is just null. I’d probably vote them out in reverse order of what I just said.

What does a v/v xino/Nerdy world even mean >>

Two villagers cross-voting for multiple cycles while the other villagers rip into each other and them >>

It also means the activity C2 was anomolous simply because of Silver. IMO that would suggest 2 elims were probably at EoD and needed to decide quickly if they were going to save Silver or bus Silver. And given how the votes landed, bus seems the case.

@Ookla the Unknown what do you think about Kas feeling v!you would have more impact by now. Is there an explainable reason why you're not very present this game?

[Kasimir he/him]

4 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

TINFOIL THEORY BELOW. Open at your own risk.

  Reveal hidden contents

Okay, crackpot theory time.

Let’s imagine a world where Kas is evil. (:0) We'll start from the beginning.

Cycle 1:

There is one problem that E!Kas has to address: sooner or later people will start to wonder why he’s not dead. Unfortunately this is an inevitable question that arises every game where Kas survives past the first few cycles.

Dannex votes Kas. This was placed as a poke vote but later interactions between Dannex/Kas indicate it will most likely not move off.

Fifth comes in with a post that is kinda paranoiding Kas but votes Mat. This is an opportunity. 

It’s an opportunity because if Kas can willingly get close to getting exe’d this early into the game, it’ll imply to the village that Kas is not IC. So it will not be suspicious if Kas continues to evade the NK because logically the elims should not be interested in NKing a non-IC villager.

So, Kas gets his teammate Nerdy to throw a vote on Kas and dip for the rest of the cycle. Kas later calls this vote ‘opportunistic’, and he’s not wrong.

(I do have one problem with this and that is the proximity between Fifth's and Nerdy's posts - Nerdy's post came a few minutes after Fifth's and I don't know if that's sufficient time for this deliberate plan to form, so points against E!Kas here.)

Now that Kas has accumulated two votes, he self-votes, bringing it up to three. I think the VC at this stage was 3/3 between Kas and Dannex? Not sure, but I dont think it matters because by the end of C1, Dannex had SIX votes so Kas was not in any significant danger. 

Except, to the thread (thanks to a chain of wrong VCs), it seemed as though Kas was in serious trouble. But anyway. Mission accomplished, no one will now question why Kas lives.

 

Cycle 2:

This is where Kas would bus Silver. I will note that he was hesitant to go there first ‘can sort of see where you are coming from - that there's no real point in mentioning the meta argument just to ignore it. In the sense that there's a difference from doing a Fifth and not caring and bothering to think through but still E lean and vote I guess. It's odd to me but I don't really know if I E read on that basis.’ and tried to get a bookwyrm/xino exe going first.

Should note that Nerdy votes xino before Silver was in any danger. 

Kas eventually votes Silver, and I think at this stage he’d decided that bussing was the most optimal course of action. 

Nerdy takes the lead with 4 votes versus Silver’s 3, and Kas then votes Nerdy. If he gonna bus, might as well get on the right train? I know that failed busses happen >> 

Except, as Kas himself points out in C3, at the time of Kas’ Nerdy vote cast he didn’t see Hael Silver vote - from Kas’ perspective he was putting Nerdy further in the lead with 5 votes, when in reality he’d accidentally broken the tie. Now it is 5-3 between Nerdy and Silver.

Mat switches to Aman off Nerdy - now it’s 4-3 between Nerdy and Silver.

Nerdy is still in the lead so Kas is on the right bus. 

I vote Silver, now it’s tied.

A tie means there’s a possibility Silver dies, in which case the bus is failed and Kas gets no credit either. Also, Winzik exists. Kas decides to break the tie in the only way he can, which is by voting Silver. This was now the correct bus to be on.

 

Cycle 3:

NGL C3!Kas reads village all the way to me. I don’t see the need for E!Kas to case Aman when Fifth and Mat were already on it and Aman had helped them with his own self vote. Especially since Kas had been staying clear of paranoiding too much on Aman for the past two cycles - I think the C3 suspicion comes from a genuine place. So this is the hole in my theory I guess.

The other hole is that Kas seems decently invested in this, which E!Kas has trouble with. He could be faking it, but it’s a point to be noted.

He notably votes on Nerdy for a short while C3 before switching to xino.

 

Cycle 4:

This is E!Kas again - very interested in pushing the xino exe, mostly staying clear of Nerdy while also publicly keeping them as a backup option. Although I have to ask myself why he doesn't just bus the second teammate too. Too ruthless?

The xino kill - Kas was online at EoD so he clearly knew xino was potentially getting exe’d. E!Kas world is a xino gambit world.

A point in V!Kas’ favour is that I’d expect E!Kas to be strongly pushing the Nerdy exe today, I think, in order to properly reap the benefits of said gambit. Since the gambit suggests Nerdy submitted the NK. It’s possible I’m reading the gambit’s intentions wrong.

A point against V!Kas is that I can very much see him making all these kills - I don’t doubt his ability to ID people off the IC doc. Remember AG8? He had nearly everyone’s identities down like, two cycles in. 

 

Cycle 5:

Now he appears to want to exe Bookwyrm, again keeping Nerdy as the backup option.

This is the tinfoil theory I’ve been spewing in my GM PM, and admittedly it’s got many holes most of which are concentrated in C3. But if there’s an elim in the <Kas, Hael, Aman, Mat> group, Kas is not looking like a terribly unlikely option, since Mat is village and I still lean towards V!Aman and V!Hael.

Does E!Kas work without E!Nerdy? I’m not sure. Maybe? Maybe not? Someone else figure that out.

I’m not a hundred percent convinced of this so I’d appreciate everybody’s thoughts.

 

Tbfh I really don't care. We know I'm not IC and if Orlok clearing lynching me is what it takes, go ahead. Sure, in an ideal world I'd make a compelling defense since that's my job, but in this game, technically it don't really matter if I die because the Elims sure as hell ain't gonna kill me because I'm not IC. Pragmatically, I have felt lost as all frick since the Xino kill, and since last cycle when I came around to the view the kill patterns don't make sense. That's probably a sign I badly need to rethink someone. But who.

Rethinking me is good and I encourage you to do it so go ahead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

At least someone is making more sense of this than I am.

FWIW if I'm on at the end and you need me to vote myself to settle a tie, I'll do it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

IDK if it's just the flu (hi, just went down, another reason I don't particularly care to), but I just feel very demoralised and confused by my inability to make sense of the last two cycles. MR56 flashbacks I guess. 

I'm tired still so I'm not going to do anything extensive here. I'd rather try to see if I can offer better suses. But I'm still disturbed by how much leeway TUN is getting, IMO, for what is essentially a C2 apathy clear. I don't see anything else TUN has done that helps the Village or is Village. Be happy if someone can point me to what I'm missing. It's C5 now. This is obscenely late to have an unhelpful TUN. I'm still on him.

I guess maybe I was too quick on Hael but I'm not sure about that one. Because if not Stick, and not Mat, then ok we can flip me. But after me, if you still want a noisy kill, FWIW, I think it has to be Hael.

I just do not intuitively feel good about Stick next to Hael tbh and that's the only thing driving the fact I keep coming back to Stick. Sort of "ok if I have to revise, gun to my head, who do I revise on." IDK if this is because bro feelings are blinding me to Hael but that's fine, I can go re-read him in a bit, I have meds and tea, and two hours before I need to get more sleep.

FWIW (sorry so many digressions):

-I'm not revising Aman. Hardlock Village.
-I get all the arguments for Village Stick. I just still am on everything I mentioned C4. But I also still feel her solving orientation and attitude feels fundamentally distinct from her approach in LG91. So IDK.
-I am worried I shouldn't lock Mat Village. I know the tunnel is what makes everyone else consider Mat Village. To me, it's still the opening claim. IDK how an Elim makes that. At the same time, I'm not fully sure I feel Stick on his play because I've been quite the opposite for chunks of this game. Potential sniper.
-Hael. ...Ok tbh the fact that I actually full null on Hael and the most positive thing I feel he has done is the Silver vote and the JNV-Winzik thing should make me worried I guess.

IDK. I guess I could say I should just equal opportunity rethink <Stick, Mat, Hael>. But I also worry I've talked myself into an AG2 trap here to be honest. My problem is I was ok with V reading everyone but I can't see how this works if one of them isn't Evil >>

K. So my unextensive replies:

• Low profile kill isn't my kill pattern. If you think I hid it, you can read through my Elim docs in MR59 and QF59 that I typically subordinate my kills to teammates to hide a distinctive pattern. This means that I would have been letting someone else make the kill decisions, but then you're essentially using someone else's kill patterns to say I'm Evil. You can argue that I IDed Devo and JNV off the IC doc, but I should've been able to recognise if Wiz wasn't IC. If you think I'm that good at IDing people off AG8, and I agree, I'm sorry, Wiz would not have been a snipe from me if I had IC doc access. I would like to think I have far better accuracy than that.
• So I'm the one who needs it to be explained why I'm still alive, but not you or Hael, both of whom have not been hardcleared as not IC? Really?
• Killing JNV C1 is harsh, even for me. I like playing with them, and I'm aware they like playing with me. Even if I IDed them as IC, why not give them a cycle or two? They're not going anywhere, and they can always be MLed as well. And...not to be cold, but JNV typically supports me in the thread. If I know they are IC, they can die whenever I kill them. Why would I immediately take off the board a player who is basically more or less guaranteed to be in my corner unless I do something majorly sus? They've said multiple games now that they have a tendency to V!read me, sometimes to their detriment. And if I theorised they were Winz, I'd want that vote manip on my side, holy chull.
• For that matter, my typical IDing accuracy is known. Why not go one or two weird kills to obscure things before going for the ICs? Again, they're not going anywhere.
• Why am I not guiding the lynch to IC candidates? What's the point of thread control if you don't even use it? I essentially sat back and shrugged C3 and went for Xino and refused to back Fifth.
• Why not make a more decisive Silver bus? There's no reason for me to switch between Nerdy and Silver, if both are Evil. I should be indifferent to them. Having at least made an argument for E!Silver and having had none for E!Nerdy, there's no reason for me to vote Nerdy at all. I said they were a null for me, but I'd get more credit having stuck to Silver instead of making that indecisive Nerdy hop.
• Tbqh I was honest in the thread when I said E!Kas is more careful about any kind of emotion than V!Kas because I have strong lines about emotional manipulation, whereas V me often just feels it and doesn't quash it, and doesn't have a doc/team place to vent into, and sometimes bad things happen like threadbrawls or explosions that I later regret. You can read between the lines in my conversation with Archer in the dead doc in LG91 on self-voting, and I point you back to the fallout and blowback from the AG8 finale where I was one of the players making a strong statement about how you have to be damned careful about it.
• I would like to invite you to carefully and thoroughly ask if I would, given these known profiles outside of the game, seriously and willingly make a controversial self-vote to try to guilt people into saving me and Village reading me. I would like you to ask if you think E!me would consider the impacts or the fallout after the game, if it was clear that that stunt was just to get a decent Village read and coast through part of the game. I would further like to ask you, and this is one reason why I Village read Aman so hard (sorry Aman), if you think this is a case of a player weaponising his pain to help his team get an advantage and if he would feel happy about winning that way, or any further effects on the community.
• In a simple sentence; if we can no longer trust players if they say they are not having fun, if the 'tap out' is no longer sacred, SE breaks down. Because we will be incentivised to question that in future, or we will be incentivised to leave. No one wants to keep getting gulled or taking the L. Just from me, I'd rather get C1ed and take the L than be known to do this. Which is where Archer says hard tells are bad and Connie is known to do it - which, sure. But admittedly I don't usually get that button pushed either and had been explicitly planning to play this game softing IC to try to draw a kill. But time wrecks all our plans I guess. Anyway if this line of reasoning makes you feel uncomfortable, feel free to ignore it. But I'm just putting it out there because I think willingly, thoughtfully or otherwise, you are saying E!me functionally decided the win mattered more than my ethics or any knock-on effects on the SE community. Which, ngl, is where I'd be a bit of a psychopath I guess.

But honestly I'm cool with a me exe. I haven't felt I've done anything useful beyond that last second vote that cycle, and since I'm sick, I'm just not going to be doing major analysis for the most part, but I'll give what I can for this cycle. I've been living on borrowed time so I'm pretty cool with this.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

12 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

What does a v/v xino/Nerdy world even mean >>

If this is the case, then I would have lost complete faith in my ability to read people and would have to go back to square one on who the remaining elims are...

For my sanity, I hope Nerdy flips Elim.

EDIT: I might consider taking a closer look at Kas if we have a V!Nerdy. I've never played a game with Kas where he was elim (unless I'm forgetting something...), so I don't really have something to compare it to, but that's probably where I'd start.

Edited December 22, 2022 by The Bookwyrm

[Kasimir he/him]

Edited to add:

1 hour ago, Amanuensis said:

Can someone tell me how many games Bookwyrm has played, and how many of those were elim / how they got caught / if they won?

LG90 - V, Village won.
BT3 - Odd game, do not rec looking, it's the Village kill one I was telling you about.
QF63 - Evil, found by opportunistic vote patterns and weird, pro-meta posts. Evil won because I failed the Village at lylo  But we lynched Bookwyrm at least.
MR61 - Village, MLed, still maintain the fact Ash and Mat said nothing should've been telling, Village won  
LG91 - Village, MLed, Village won.

Edited to add 2:

21 minutes ago, The Bookwyrm said:

If this is the case, then I would have lost complete faith in my ability to read people and would have to go back to square one on who the remaining elims are...

For my sanity, I hope Nerdy flips Elim.

EDIT: I might consider taking a closer look at Kas if we have a V!Nerdy. I've never played a game with Kas where he was elim (unless I'm forgetting something...), so I don't really have something to compare it to, but that's probably where I'd start.

You didn't even want to look at Xino's meta, and suddenly my meta matters to you?

Edited to add 3:

On 12/21/2022 at 0:25 AM, The Bookwyrm said:

Primarily those that the others are voting for. Most of you are experienced players, and I'm inclined to trust you; therefore, I'm going to be analyzing Fifth and Aman when I have more time.

Most of my analyses in SE so far are based on actions in the same game, rather than on actions in past games. If Xino's behavior this game really is corresponding closely to his actions in past games where he was Elim, than I would consider voting him. But I'd rather have a little more incriminating evidence in this game alone before I vote for him.

So right now the people that I need to look into are Aman and Fifth.

Edited to add 4:

I feel like the guy and the butterfly meme right now. Part of me wants to ask if this is overexplaining, part of me just goes "you fool there's nothing wrong with it."

I am seriously down for chilling in the dead doc with Fifth and Araris, FYI. I just feel like I'm bashing my head repeatedly against a wall rn.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Kasimir

[Amanuensis he/him]

Resurfacing this post because it's relevant to Bookwyrm discussion

We now know of a v!Xino world. Does e!Bookwyrm resist the Xino votes that much? I don't recall Silver being in the lead at this time either, but can't find a vote count from the time + too lazy to build one up to that interaction myself rn...