A memes to an end(Meme Mafia: Game Over)

[Bill Hellsnake]

Alright, I'm going to go straight out and assume a 4 scum game.  Given the role madness and the extra killing power, it feels right.  Note also that the following is invalid in a 5 scum game, as it relies on our knowledge of what each scum member has done, and a 5 scum game leaves us with a hole in our knowledge that scum can sneak through.

So, there's still nine memes standing.  Let's start crossing off ones which have to be town.

2g1c - Was Roleblocked, and so far only two people have claimed roleblocking ability.  One of whom will be covered later, and the other is Combo Breaker, who is scum.  The other, Demo, stated he did have roleblocking Night 1, but he hit someone else.  Which suggests she was targetted by Combo.  And the attached Rolecop isn't something I'd peg as being wasted on scum.  So, she's cleared.

!Cake - While I can see scum being given a killing power like this, I can't see them trying to peg their own people with it twice.

Now we get to the trickier ones that require 4 scum to work.

Touhou and Demo.

What's that?  How have we gone from one must be scum to both must be town?  Pretty simple actually, they confirm each other.  See, the main reason I trust Demo here is because he brought up Touhou acting on Cake on his own without prompting.  And Touhou confirmed it.  So what, you ask.  And the answer is simple, if there's only 4 scum, we know what the three living scum were doing Night 2.

Namely, Killing Zerg, bussing Advice Dog and Combo Breaker, and blocking/copping the Ruskies.

There's no room in that for knowing who was paying attention to !Cake, and that was one hell of a gamble to take since we know they didn't have a chance to Rolecop Touhou before then.  So, they confirm each other, which also means that if one is Town, they're both Town, and if one's Scum, then they are both Scum.

This in turn means that Bel-Air has to be Town.  After all, either Touhou is Town, and therefore telling the truth.  Or Touhou is Scum, and therefore must be paired with Demo.

This covers five of the nine remaining people, which means our suspect list should look like this.

AYB
Rick & Roll
Shiki is OMG HAWT
X-BOX 360

[Li Syaoran]

This is surprisingly good and quite catchy, also relevant.

Relax guys already, seriously (FWIW, I find it very amusing that you guys poked me D3 to post something and then when I did...it was totally ignored. Way 2 go guize.). FWIW, barring my profs going completely insane in terms of workload, I should have more time for this game now, and as a result be a bit less low-profile.

@XBox 360: The reason I said that it does not follow is that: Cake targeted Breaker, and Dog got hit. Thus we are assuming a swap of Breaker and Dog. Actually, the part that doesn't follow is the earlier bit. A Dog/Breaker swap makes sense as Dog was likely to get NK'd due to playing extremely pro-Townie, and hitting Breaker with scum's own NK would have been remarkably fitting. However, the earlier logic doesn't hold: if Breaker was going to block Cake, then swapping him with Dog would still have his action...being aimed at Cake, and thus doing nothing. However, you do bring up an interesting point in that the bus driver could still be a well-meaning townie who screwed up badly. I'm unconvinced. In any order, rolespeculation in a role madness game is a wonderful way to lead us to ruin, so yeah.

Beyond that, Demote makes a good case on XBox. Pretty willing to vote him, he's been horrible since his replacement in multiple ways. Even today his cases seem to be too based on WIFOM than anything else. That being said, I haven't had proper time to devote to this game until now, and thus want to do a proper read over D2 with the current info we now have in mind, before voting.

As for Astley: for someone complaining about XBox using excessive WIFOM, you do a good job at it yourself, Demote: there is no way to tell if unconfirmed masons somehow makes it more likely for one of them to be scum than for both to be town, and short of reading the mod's mind (which, due to the mod's status as an Eldritch Horror, is considered inadviseable), trying to somehow clear or implicate Astley on how past unconfirmed mason pairs have played out is utter lunacy. Equally well I could state that it's MORE likely for one of them to be scum because past mason pairs haven't had this occur, and town currently is in a certain frame of mind when running into unconfirmed mason pairs, thus making it more likely for them to clear both on just their mason status. Either argument is stupid due to it being a classical example of WIFOM, and thus should be disregarded.

Onto Astley's actual scumminess: the problem I have with BelAir not going anywhere last night is that I was by far more suspecting *BelAir* to be the scum if there was one among the Astley/BelAir pair. BelAir was (and still is, sadly) universally horrible, whereas Astley is bad but in weird ways that make no sense for a scum to play as, similar to Soviet Russia D1/D2. The idiotic case on Advice Dog along with suicidiality at the end of D2? Just...what. But from a paranoid townie, it makes sense. It makes utterly no sense for a scum to make this type of argument, as nobody would have paid any attention to it, he would have (rightly) gotten slammed for making such a stupid and implausible argument, and if scum really wanted to off Advice Dog, then they have, y'know, a nightkill. That being said, clearing him on the basis of one post is premature. However, a lot of his posts seem to have a similar issue.

I am curious as to what his case on me is. Doing a reread, then posting observations and voting. Not really suspicious of ShikiShana for now. Touhou, Demote and Cake are low-priority right now due to (somewhat) lack of overt scumminess and roles checking out for the most part (though Demote: why are you claiming any responsibility for the N1 NK? It seems to be pretty clearly the case that it was Cake that actually hit lolcat, and the roleblock wouldn't have done anything terribly useful due to the fact that roleblocking a dead player is...somewhat worthless. But yeah.), and BelAir is slightly cleared, again, due to roles. I want to over this again in more detail, clearing people solely on role is a terrible idea in a role madness game imho, but Astley and XBox 360 both look so awful right about now in the face of the Breaker lynch that I'm fairly confident that there is at least one scum between the two, and I suspect XBox 360 far more strongly than I do Rick Astley.

Ninja Astley: FWIW, clearing people solely on role is a terrible idea for a role madness setup. However, it is valid for today (in fact I agree with it). That being said, how about some actual cases on the four "suspects" that you present?

[Li Syaoran]

On the other hand, there's still that awkward D2 unvote which I don't know about. Nitori makes the case better than I could - scum would either want to get Soviet lynched or get cred for lynching Combo, but Xbox did neither. Besides, the actions he's made with the leather jacket seem pretty poor in terms of scum when the role seems almost designed to work along with that roleblocker/rolecop combo. Randomly swapping with Soviet N1 doesn't seem very valid. It just...doesn't make sense as scum to me, which is irritating because his behaviour is anti-Town at best.

*sigh*. Other than this being quite plausible as noobscum flailing, I fail to see how this clears him somehow: if scum either saw that there was a good possibility that Soviet was going to lynched regardless of the actions of one player, then it makes sense for XBox to be off-wagon. More likely, though, I think XBox realised just how terrible his vote and the reasons for it actually were, and hastily tried to move off, but didn't want to help get Breaker lynched, and thus decided to form a case on a third player. It's not something a well-playing scum would do, but unlike Astley's end-of-D2 behaviour w.r.t Advice Dog, it's not something that's a completely 100%-terrible move for a scum to make.

As for his N1 action, what do you propose a better move by a scum having said Leather Jacket power would be on N1? Though it is interesting: it appears quite tailor-made (*snicker*) to fit alongside a rolecop. Definetly something worthy of note.

[Nathan Greaves]

As for his N1 action, what do you propose a better move by a scum having said Leather Jacket power would be on N1?

Besides 'hold onto it until the rolecop finds a good role, then target him as they get hit'?

[Margaret Houlihan]

In light of one of those brilliant parodies that generally got overlooked. And the one that failed earlier, in light of Jacket -> Russia Death.

Either argument is stupid due to it being a classical example of WIFOM, and thus should be disregarded.

This was aimed at me? Uhh, wasn't that exactly what I was saying already? >_> (I didn't, however, consider Rick's point of the Jacket changing that anyway.)

Demote: why are you claiming any responsibility for the N1 NK? It seems to be pretty clearly the case that it was Cake that actually hit lolcat, and the roleblock wouldn't have done anything terribly useful due to the fact that roleblocking a dead player is...somewhat worthless. But yeah.

Uhm. Re-read, please. I didn't claim to have anything to do with the NK on Lolcat, just that I roleblocked them on the same night. And they weren't dead until the end of that night, so it would have done something. >_>

What's that?  How have we gone from one must be scum to both must be town?  Pretty simple actually, they confirm each other.  See, the main reason I trust Demo here is because he brought up Touhou acting on Cake on his own without prompting.  And Touhou confirmed it.  So what, you ask.  And the answer is simple, if there's only 4 scum, we know what the three living scum were doing Night 2.

Namely, Killing Zerg, bussing Advice Dog and Combo Breaker, and blocking/copping the Ruskies.

There's no room in that for knowing who was paying attention to !Cake, and that was one hell of a gamble to take since we know they didn't have a chance to Rolecop Touhou before then.  So, they confirm each other, which also means that if one is Town, they're both Town, and if one's Scum, then they are both Scum.

Except Touhou isn't confirmed yet, actually. We still aren't certain if it's a bus driver or a hijacker. Touhou's just been cleared on the roles checking in and having damn good content throughout.

As AYB says, Rick's latest post is hideously reporter with no actual opinions - it's simply a summary of the role madness that's been 'confirmed' and nothing else.

Looking at the four left, I have real trouble seeing Shikiana as Mafia from the content that has been there, especially considering how bad the others have been in comparison. Current order is Rick/Xbox > AYB > Shiki, with Rick and Xbox seemingly changing every time I freaking post. <_< Still, hmmm. Think I can safely change votes, puts Rick at L-2.

##Unvote, Vote: Rick Astley

[Bill Hellsnake]

Just hold on a second, guys. Rick didn't forget about the case, and is working on it as we speak.

...I'd comment on some stuff, but I figure Rick's better suited to that. So, again, just hold on for a bit.

[Li Syaoran]

Uhm. Re-read, please. I didn't claim to have anything to do with the NK on Lolcat, just that I roleblocked them on the same night. And they weren't dead until the end of that night, so it would have done something. >_>

My reasoning to assume the target went through as planned N1 is because the kill on Lolcats went through as planned - I roleblocked Lolcat N1.

Nope, this much is at least valid. Anyway, it doesn't look as if you're claiming responsibility, but it still is worded extremely awkwardly, is my issue. Why would the roleblock be at all relevant if they had accepted the cheezburger and thus died?

[Bill Hellsnake]

Also: Demo, you have a point about Touhou. Probably doesn't change much besides Touhou itself, but things shall be double-checked.

And I shall now give way to Rick, who is almost done.

[Bill Hellsnake]

Yeah, just looking up relevant links for that post.  Should be done soon...  I hope.  Day 3 is a bitch and a half to pick through right now.

[Margaret Houlihan]

What he said.

Uhm. Re-read, please. I didn't claim to have anything to do with the NK on Lolcat, just that I roleblocked them on the same night. And they weren't dead until the end of that night, so it would have done something. >_>

My reasoning to assume the target went through as planned N1 is because the kill on Lolcats went through as planned - I roleblocked Lolcat N1.

Nope, this much is at least valid. Anyway, it doesn't look as if you're claiming responsibility, but it still is worded extremely awkwardly, is my issue. Why would the roleblock be at all relevant if they had accepted the cheezburger and thus died?

Right. Cake claimed the kill on Lolcat. If Lolcat had been switched, then somebody else would've been killed, meaning my roleblock must've gone through as intended.

[Bill Hellsnake]

Hopefully this won't be too long.  But it will be a two parter.  My system is bitching about having too many windows open at a time, and at least one post is going to require a lot of digging into.

Anyways, with that preamble done, let's crack this out.

##Vote: All Your Base

Alright, let's start off by being nice and listing the best points in his favor I can spot.  Namely, this and this.

Credit where it's due, he tied things between Combo Breaker and Russia right after Roll's push got Russia into the lead.  And that's his best post in the whole game so far.  Possibly excepting the one he just ninja'd me with.

But, the thing is, it comes right after the push on Russia, with 2g1c and XBox both still looking like they favor the soviets, as well as with both of them not having their votes on anything important.  ie. if there was a tie break, odds were good the Breaker of Combos wouldn't be the one getting KOed.  But that's just why I'm slightly cynical about his vote (as opposed to Touhou, and even Demotivator despite his changing back.  They both started momentum for Combo Breaker and against Russia with their swings.  AYB didn't do that).

However, the big thing is, AYB barely commits to anything day one.  His opinions are muted, and most of his posts are wordy recaps of what's been going on with a bit of 'I think' fluff tacked on.  That's most of what you need to know for Day 1 AYB.

So, let's go over Day 2, shall we?  Because, it's the only day where he's been contributing until now (and why yes, I am including that wonderful post Shik...  I mean, you made on Day 3)

Here's as good a place to start as any.  Paragraph 1 is fluff about Lolcats that can concludes there's nothing to conclude.  Awesome!  Paragraph 2 can likewise be summed up as "Here's what Russia's done, and LAL on Day 2 is bad."  Hell, let's ignore the LAL argument to go with, you recapped all of that in order to just have that to tell us?  Yeesh.

The rest of this is also interesting.  Tells !Cake and Trotski they need to elaborate on stuff, but not what.  Also tosses in Shiki in the people who need to clarify despite the only other mention being a defense.

Post 2 looks fine, and most of it is original, but Post #3 involves him basically restating the Soviet's actions all over again, and coming to no conclusion he hasn't come to before.  ie. a complete waste of four paragraphs.

Post #4 I already linked to, and is, bar none, his best post so far, so not really going to waste time there, since Day 3 is the more interesting one now.

Day 3, all of it.

So, he starts off with a promise of content, sweet!  Namely, asking for info that hadn't been given yet.  Followed by a lot of things which he presents as his own, but which has been presented by other people.  The one I most closely associate with his words being Shiki is hawt.

I'd have a whole lot of links for you to back this up with, but apparently I'm now at L-1, (L-2 before Roll forgetting our Role Restriction in an answer to you guys.) so getting this out before we're killed by a ninja.

[Helga Pataki]

"Demotivator has my night target correct; I in fact did do nothing during the night."

"And I believe either Demotive or XBox questioned the Air/Hijack comment. The logic's simple; if Bel Air is scum, he had to have acted (swapper/killer). Touhou claims to have seen him do nothing, which would be a lie, thus Touhou would also be scum. However, if Touhou is scum, he could say anything he wanted about Bel Air - including "confirming" the mason claim. Thus, Hijack can be scum without Air being scum, but Air cannot be scum without Hijack also being scum.

"Demotive, you're correct; I didn't think you'd be Ninja Trainee, which actually really sours a few things - I was guessing Shikiana, for a few reasons which are now somewhat irrelevant.

"I will return in a bit, but I... am... uncertain on mainly Shikiana and Touhou as it stands. I'll enumerate upon returning."

[Bill Hellsnake]

Alright, this gives me some time to actually think about Demo said, namely.  Touhou and Bel Air.  Sadly, I think they're both uncovered now, since if Touhou is a hijacker, then this means that they could easily pull off what they did Night 3 and have it fit with facts.

I'm...  not inclined to buy it for reasons stated earlier.  Touhou got onto Combo Breaker at a time when it helped push the train to prominance, and then stayed on.  And Bel Air, again, Mason Chat gives me a good feeling.

But, yeah.  As much as I hoped for it, operation get half off game off the table has fallen to pieces.

[Nathan Greaves]

L-1 this early in the day is bad.

##Unvote: Rick

In other news, why has Bel-Air still said nothing all game?

[Nathan Greaves]

EBWOP: All day, even. Dammit it's late over here.

[Li Syaoran]

@Astley: honestly, this case seems about as bad as the one on Advice Dog. Yes, I had no solid opinions D1. It's D1. Come on. As for D3, what issues do you have? There was a scum that needed to hang, I see no issues with coming to that set of conclusions regarding Cake/Touhou/Demote, and...what else do you want?

Incidentally, the reason post #3 detailing Soviet's actions exists is because I was specifically asked by Advice Dog as to why I came to my conclusion on Soviet Russia. Hence, that post.

And could you please link to the actual posts in the future, not just to a given page of the game? Especially when it links to a page on which the post referenced is: A) non-obvious, B) no posts by me exist on said page.

Seriously.

[Bill Hellsnake]

Bugger if I know why he hasn't been saying anything.  He was around last night, early this morning.  Honestly, I suspect the main reason he posted the whole Mason thing was so that he could try and coast on that.  Which...  argh, would make me more suspicious of him if I didn't know a) who he was (now it's more of a null tell), and b) have Touhou's report, which would mean Touhou has to be a Hijacker (har, har, Gate), and c) he seems like he's actually thinking about this stuff as a Townie, and I don't like to think he could be fooling me that badly.

Since I've been asked for opinions.  Shiki...  seemed pretty decent to me until I went over the list of who's left.  That's left her looking worse.  Still need to give her a more thorough once over, but AYB seemed more pressing.  XBox, my last readthrough actually was pinging Bad Town until I, again, looked at who was available.  If I had to rate people right now, I'd actually go

AYB > Shiki > XBox > Touhou = Bel Air

at this point.  With #2 and 3 being pretty volatile at the moment.

Aside from that, I've got a nasty headache coming down, and need to let all this stuff from the game actually get digested so, I'm gonna be sporadic until tomorrow.  Which means, answering questions and making points on recent/ongoing stuff.  But likely no deep research until then.

Ninja by AYB.

All of the links should have led to posts by you.  If not, then C+P failures, and more validation of my usual Quoting schtick.  Regardless, the windows I had your posts open in are now closed so my comp will actually run.

As for your day 3 stuff, a decent amount of it was cribbed from Shiki.  Which is my main concern.  Another telling part was where you asked for info that had already been given.

As for Day 1, you're actually going to try and claim it's ok to not have solid opinions when you also pulled that BS on >9k about his "claiming" that the target of the Day 1 lynch matters less than the circumstances of it?

Note: the claim is in brackets because >9k never actually made such a claim.  He responded to someone who did, arguing against such a position.  Naturally, the reason for AYB's vote on >9k is because of holding this position he argued against.

Which reminds me of something else that I've noticed about you, AYB.  You have this neat little habit of saying things about people which looks true if you only look at the surface, but turns out to be a subtle twisting or ignoring what happened before if your claim/statement actually gets looked at.  Hell, your >9k vote is a textbook example of that.

[Richter Belmont]

What is a meme?  A miserable pile of cats!  But enough talk - have at you!

Votecount
Rick Astley (3): Touhou Hijacker, The Cake is a Lie, Demotivator, O R'LYEH?!
HUEG LIKE XBOX (0): Demotivator
All Your Base (1): Rick Astley

With 9 memes, it takes 5 clicks to win the free iPod.  So Mr. Astley was indeed at -1 vote from being given up and hurt before.  There are 68 hours left.

[Li Syaoran]

Also,

But, the thing is, it comes right after the push on Russia, with 2g1c and XBox both still looking like they favor the soviets, as well as with both of them not having their votes on anything important.  ie. if there was a tie break, odds were good the Breaker of Combos wouldn't be the one getting KOed.  But that's just why I'm slightly cynical about his vote (as opposed to Touhou, and even Demotivator despite his changing back.  They both started momentum for Combo Breaker and against Russia with their swings.  AYB didn't do that).

Hm? What? So there was a time when it looked as if the Soviets were going to be lynched over Breaker, by your own admission a good chance of this occuring, and thus me voting for Breaker thus tying him with Russia instead of trying to seek what would have been at that point a still quite attainable Russia lynch is a totally meaningless vote? Apparently, in Astley-land, swingvotes are meaningless, even when they are for a scum over a town, at a time when the townie could still likely have gotten lynched!

Ninja Astley:

As for your day 3 stuff, a decent amount of it was cribbed from Shiki.  Which is my main concern.  Another telling part was where you asked for info that had already been given.

A) Please link this, this is the link I was complaining about that failed, B) D3 featured a shitton of trolling from Breaker, with lovely side-effects of browser lag. There is a possibility that info I asked could have been answered earlier and I had just missed it.

As for the stuff cribbed from Shiki, I posted late in the day phase, and happened to have the same opinions on most things. What's your point? There wasn't much to discuss D3 anyway beyond the Touhou/Cake/Demote night action debacle, as the end action of the day (lynching Breaker) was already decided before the day even began.

As for Day 1, you're actually going to try and claim it's ok to not have solid opinions when you also pulled that BS on >9k about his "claiming" that the target of the Day 1 lynch matters less than the circumstances of it?

Key word highlighted. I did have opinions D1, this is evident if you like, read my posts. They are going to be less valid than ones on subsequent days, because it's D1 and there is far less to go off of.

Note: the claim is in brackets because >9k never actually made such a claim.  He responded to someone who did, arguing against such a position.  Naturally, the reason for AYB's vote on >9k is because of holding this position he argued against.

Misrep: >9K was arguing about No Lynch being bad, in his third paragraph responding to Russia. I was referring to his final paragraph, where >9K states that we should just get a lynch and NK going, and cares more about the target than circumstances. Also, there was way more at issue with >9K in that post, namely his self-contradiction re: Zerg Rush, and his voting for a lurker for no good reason after reasoning why this was bad was discussed to death between several people.

tl;dr it is fine to have opinions which are not particularly strong on D1 because nobody's generally is: let's take a look at your D1 posts: jokevote, vote on Russia, iffy reasoning on Russia, followed by disappearance for the entire day, followed by a self-proclaimed worthless vote for Milhouse because "something you can't state right now is rubbing you the wrong way about him", followed by hammering >9K because of "town demand" (an awful, awful, awful reason to place a hammering vote). You have opinions that are actually solid and backed up by relevant posts on: Soviet Russia. With a couple scattered ones in your third post of the day. Everything else either doesn't exist, or could equally well not exist anyway. Whatever you do have that's relevant has some amount of scumminess to it. In fact, going over most people's D1 postings, you'd find similar things, though I doubt anyone is as egregiously bad as you and XBox.

[Alice Margatroid]

Oog. I think I might have had too many Pepsi Ice Cucumbers over the last 24 hours. Not feeling too well. I certainly don't trust myself in the workshop in this condition, though I expect it to pass soon enough. In the meantime, let's see what new notes I can wrap my head around.

I'll admit Shana and CATS have mostly snuck past my sensors all game, given their lower post volume, but I remember agreeing with their notes for the most part as they presented them, so neither have had higher priority than Mr. Astley or the Box. A proper reread of both will have to come at a later time - likely tomorrow, though we'll see how I'm doing in a few hours. Based on how the end of Day 2 unfolded I like CATS a bit more than Shana; Shana agreed that the Breaker looked bad but still wanted people to vote for the Russian, while CATS voted for the Breaker at a time when voting momentum was starting to swing back the Russian's way.

CATS, I will not claim the strange Day 2 vote for Demote clears the Box by any stretch, but I believe it puts him at a lower level than Mr. Astley.

In studying the current argument between CATS and Mr. Astley, I don't entirely get Mr. Astley's argument about the end of Day 2. I particularly don't get why he says the girls looked like they favored the Russian (presumably you mean in terms of who to vote for) when they had just posted that they were "uncertain" between the two trains. We also don't know what Cake would have done had he been there, and the Russian was also obviously going to vote in self-defense, so it seems a stretch to say the odds of a Russian lynch were "good". I also have a hard time holding lack of Day 3 content against anyone, really, since it was basically role speculation + predetermined lynch. It's not nothing, but I don't think it's as important as you seem to think it is.

I would like to see that promised reread + vote from CATS, however. Hopefully you haven't forgotten about it in defending yourself from Mr. Astley.

[Alice Margatroid]

Actually feeling better now, as hoped! I have some project deadlines tomorrow morning, so I want to get this out now since I'm in a condition to do it.

This game is terrible for rereads, because I find myself stopping on every page to re-read flavor I found amusing at the time and still find amusing now.

Something very notable surfaced upon my re-read of Day 1: this post. Let me bring the important part to the microscope.

"There is never anything wrong with voting for someone who is not posting" is a goddamn lie out of him. On day one it's a stupid cheap trick that allows you to assume a default position on the grounds of some myth that everyone who doesn't post is scum. LaL is not effective on day one on it's lonesome. It can be effective if one observes that what someone has posted is suboptimal, but alone? Too many potential mitigating factors. Never mind that the scenario for these kind of votes generally goes like that

-Player A: "Player B isn't posting! VOTE"
-Player B: "posts anything"
-Player A: "Right, Player B has posted, so I can drop this now."

The reason it can be dropped so easily is because there was no basis in the first place.

So no, you aren't allowed to escape on that. Assume lurkers do not exist at the moment, and talk/vote for other people who are doing things. LaL can be instituted later. ##Unvote, ##Vote: 9000

This scenario Shana describes is exactly what the Breaker did on Day 2. Shana agreed that the Breaker looked bad and acknowledged the Breaker's switch to the Russian, but she did not cite her Day 1 scenario, her vote still sat on the Russian, and she even expressed agitation over people not voting for him. Shana, your explanation of why the lurker pressure vote is useless and bad is correct. So why did you not switch your vote to the Breaker for it?

This inspired me to read through the rest of Day 2's Shana/Breaker interaction. They seem to pick at each other a few times throughout the day but it's never anything serious or powerful. Examples can be found here (and in the post right after it) and here. This could very easily be a distancing tactic on their part, looking like they are interacting meaningfully when they really aren't.

I can't believe I didn't see that lurker vote thing earlier. This is enough to push her ahead of Mr. Astley and the Box. ##Unvote, ##Vote: OH GOD SHANA IS HOT

This new hypothesis has distracted me from my research into CATS, so I am presenting these findings for the academic community to read over and consider while going back over him.

[Chiaki]

Touhou: I really, really didn't like the way Russia was putting pressure onto lurkers. I am entirely cognizant of the fact that lurkers are often scum, but felt his reasoning was quite flawed as I pointed out a few times.

Right now, my thoughts have returned to Touhou being likely scum owing mainly to his claim and role shenanigans, as he has claimed a themed role tied to her character name, which is incongruent with the rest of the flipped roles (and claimed roles, and my own rolename, for that matter.) BUT OH NO META??!! well actually yes that is part of it. More relevant is continuing to play the rolegame; note that his tracker target today was Bel-Air, who is a mason, who very likely does not have another role that would cause him to, um, go anywhere unless he's actually scum on the kill, thus enabling Touhou to pretty much dodge needing to guess results whilst looking smart about it to boot.

The rest of his investigations, as I believe someone pointed out, were called only after the results were already publically known; thus his investigative role has.. provided us nothing, unlike demotivators, which is... more nonstandard and appropriate for this game so far, unlikely the relatively ordinary tracker.)

##JUSTIFIED GODLY VACUUM: Touhou

[Alice Margatroid]

If nothing else, CATS's penchant for infrequent posting makes the process of going through his notes much quicker.

While CATS's posts are mostly content, they do have bits of reporteriness to them, more than I remembered. There is also a lot of uncertainty from him: "not sure" is a more common phrase in his posts than I'd like it to be. Strangely, it sometimes boards trains of thought that actually do reach a station. This is more prevalent in his earlier notes than his later notes, though, so I guess some of that can be chalked up to less information. Day 1 is Day 1 and reads decently to me anyway, and on the whole I think his Day 2 is fairly strong, especially punctuated by the Breaker vote. He's not perfect, but I would place him at the bottom of my four suspect list.

Ninja'd by a Shana OMGUS founded entirely in rolegaming and...flavor meta, or something. Wow. I've already said I tracked Bel Air because he was my #1 suspect last night: I felt my role was better spent trying to hunt scum than to be used in self-defense, and if I had caught Bel Air doing something nasty it would have accomplished the latter anyway. I disagree that the result has provided us nothing, as Bel Air has now effectively been removed from people's suspicion lists, unless they believe he and I are the remaining scum.

[Li Syaoran]

Okay. Today's suspectlist has basically been significantly reduced due to roles, and I've already specified as to how I don't really find much fault with ShikiShana so far, so it basically boils down to Astley and The Box. First, Astley:

D1 play has already been discussed. D2...opens with some back-and-forth arguing with 2g1c, settles on a Soviet vote after a bit. While the mudslinging accusation was a bit over-the-top, I think he was the only person who had anything approaching a valid case on Soviet D2 (mainly due to the obvious case of Soviet persisting in voting him even after it was clarified the reason for Soviet voting Astley was actually based off of a misread of one of Astley's posts (which, in Soviet's defence, can be awfully cryptic at times)). Directing the Vig is...honestly not that valid of a charge, considering the vig can, y'know, just ignore the advice, not to mention that vig'ing Breaker would have been the obvious thing to do for a Town vig. The Advice Dog Nonsense-and-Asshattery(TM) near the end of D2 is beyond fucking terrible, but...hm. I had previously pegged it as being not actually scummy due to just how patently stupid it is for a scum to do it, but there are definetly shades of trying to shove a Soviet lynch through at any cost, and suddenly it goes from "Astley writing a stupid case on Dog for no good reason" to "Astley trying to shove through a Soviet lynch, and needing to first discredit Dog before doing this". I'm not convinced on this interpretation, though. Hm. Hmm. Hmmmmm.

Nothing much to say about his D3 play, beyond the fact that I think that prior to today, there was absolutely no reason to trust BelAir as much as he did, considering that you two are unconfirmed masons and BelAir's D2 play was probably the most utterly terrible play out of everyone here.

Today's post is similarly..."what", in the sense that the case makes no sense, and appears to be written assuming my guilt first and then trying to find some evidence for this claim, instead of attempting to find evidence on me to support me being scum or town. At the same time, for similar reasons to end-of-D2 Advice Dog, this case is one that makes absolutely zero sense for a scum to push right now, for the most part.

tl;dr scummy, but still not the top suspect. Enough completely bizarre shit there that makes me think he's more likely to be town, for similar reasons as to why I found Soviet Russia townie despite the (on the surface) terrible play.

Anyway, now it's time for dissecting XBox 360, and the case on him is quite huge...like an XBox!

D1 he's nonexistent, whatever, D1, etc. D2 the vote from Breaker on him doesn't say anything about him really, because it reads as if Breaker fully intended to move it as soon as XBox started posting...which actually looks quite terrible for the 'box. Furthermore, the interaction between Breaker and XBox is...decidedly baffling, to say the least. His replacement's opening post is awful, voting Russia for absolutely asinine reasons, and actually using Too Townie as a legitimate argument for someone's potential scumminess. Augh. Fail. Not sure if him forgetting that Dawg was dead is something a scum or a townie is more likely to do when replacing in, so I'm going to peg that as a null tell. The rest of his posts read like some kind of exercise in identifying bad logic for the most part. Particuarly notable is the backpedal, I've explained before why this is unlikely to make him more townie, it is 100% null tell really. Do find it weird that XBox wondered why Dog knew that the Meelhouse modkill would be day-ending, considering it's in the bloody rules post of the first post of the game, but again, more 100% null tells.

Anyway, I really need to organize my thoughts better, but: the interesting thing to note is the Breaker/XBox interaction. Breaker places a vote, with the full intention to remove it later by all appearances as soon as XBox starts posting...why? Then after Breaker's big defence post, XBox haphazardly jumps off the Soviet train and onto Combo, and in general they do a fairly wonderful job of being tsundere for each other. Combined with the rest of his scumminess, I'm going to ##Vote: XBox 360 right now.

Ninja Touhou, ShikiShana: what. Huh, interesting. Still what. Going to respond to said posts in my next post, want to get this out now.

[Chiaki]

The way you have played the rolegame so far has been through a number of steps that fail to provide new information yet remain relatively safe for you to claim, so unlike demotivator (who at least would need to be working with 2g1c or otherwise have additional information than what is present to reliable fake it)...

It all just seems very convenient and unlikely. Maybe it's what actually happened. I sorely doubt it.