Within a Deep Mafia Forest - Game Topic (GAME OVER)

[Otter]

Well then.  I'm sad that smodge didn't fight harder than he did, but I can't fault town for the lynch either, given his behavior in that regard.  All the same, I'm going to take a look at the smodge train; when a train starts on a townie, it can be tempting for scum to nudge it along (especially if they think it might overcome a train that's dangerous to one of them), and with the majority of players in the game total on the train, it's a helpful way to organize my overall analysis anyhow.

Smodge (7): Andrew, Excal, Nitori, LadyDoor, Fnorder, Corwin, OK

Andrew: first voter on smodge.

Of course, I also have a problem with Smodge at the moment. Any chance you could elaborate on why you are voting for me beyond you doing the same thing as scum in WoW mafia? It is really bothersome to have someone put down a vote, say they'll explain later and then have a fairly large chunk of time lapse without any elaboration.

Add in that he's also one of the more lurky posters at the moment, and I'd say this feels far more distressing than Corwin's own, somewhat ironic, mistakes.

Cites faulty logic (smodge accusing him based on the fact that he was acting the way smodge had acted previously as scum) and lurking (connected with not elaborating, as smodge had promised to) as reasons.  Looks legit enough to me, here.  I've had my own problems with Andy this game (bit of inattentiveness early on, generally not saying enough and staying out of the spotlight which is a Bad News sign for me) but he struck out on his own here, having noticed an inconsistency no one else had brought up yet, and I approve of this.

Excal: brings his vote in almost immediately after Andy, along with a decent-sized post of analysis on various people.

Smodge would be the first.  What with his jumping on Ciato around the same time Otter does, going for a softer reason at first (namely for not acting the same way she did once) and then making a seperate post that pulls a 'that's what I meant' me too right after Otter launches into his spiel against Ciato.  And...  that's it.  ... Not to mention that Smodge is letting himself fixate on a single first day vote of one time he was scum, which just seems off no matter how you look at it.  As such, I think I'm gonna join Andy here with a quick...

So, he's citing a me-too attitude and "softer," indecisive reasoning.  Then he goes ahead and agrees with Andy on the logic point.  This looks decently justified as well.  Excal's seemed solid to me all game, in addition, so I'll move on for now.

Nitori:

The smodge thing is interesting, as the issue obviously isn't the amount of the time between the vote and the justification, but why someone would do something like that in the first place; laying a vote then saying "reasons later", as has been pointed out, does look really bad, although any argument made in favour of voting Andy at that point in time would be due to that gaffe. His reasons...aren't great, though. He does mention the gaffe, but he also seems to question why a theoretical scum Ciato would ever vote for scum; scum can do that for confusion purposes. I'm also confused as to how he implicates scum Andy from scum Ciato. In short, the reasons offered seem a bit...cover-up-ey. I'd like to see how this works, when you get the time.

Adds some new stuff to the table!  Points out more bad logic from smodge (scum Ciato would never vote scum!! therefore we can infer things about Andy from Ciato's alignment!  yeah no).  This is pretty valid stuff.  My only problem right here is that, unlike Excal's post, Nitori's isn't also filled with plenty of analysis on other dudes.  Nitori's presence, as people are starting to note today, has been scarce and he's not sharing opinions.  I'm not going to lay a vote on him right now, because I think his vote was well-justified and he's already been called out with pressurizing votes to start posting more, but I'll be watching and waiting for him to respond to the pressure with good content and analysis.  If he doesn't, well, LaL.  No sideline members allowed.

I'll continue the list in a second post, as I've already been chastised in this game for making posts that were apparently too long to get into, and this is starting to get big.  Quotes will do that, but I think they're helpful and save you the trouble of looking them up yourself, so I'm using 'em anyway.

[Otter]

...oh right Excal got NK'd.  Disregard that.  Man, right after I chastise someone for inattentiveness, too.  -_-  Anyway, rest of the post is coming, so yeah.  Apologies for that, that was stupid.

[AndrewRogue]

Ho'kay, the big things out of yesterday are: me and the surrounding argumentation, Ciato/Otter and lurkers.

On me, the only real thing that developed was Smodge's strange attack that resulted in him getting lynched. Although Corwin came out looking a bit odd, I'm having trouble definitively calling the silliness of the rules scummy because it achieves the exact opposite effect that scum would want to: it looks like tremendously bad play that repeatedly had attention called to it.

The Ciato/Otter thing... eh. I still need to do some more rereading, but the major stand out moment to me is Ciato's uncharacteristic aggressiveness. Otter's rabid assaults stand out as well because, well, as people point out, their aggressiveness tends to obfuscate his actual point, especially when things start need. I will say that, while the argument did get pretty loud and large, it wasn't really a great smokescreen, as it didn't shut down other argumentation. Still, need to check some reactions on it.

The lurkers... most have given themselves some presence and some fairly decent commentary, except for Nitori, who I'm having trouble remembering posts from at all. Kilga and Fnorder feel like they are in similar boats, but I at least remember they are playing without issue

Ninja'd, but class is ending, so I'll have to get back to it.

[Otter]

Moving on, with what's left of my pride!

LadyDoor: huge post is huge, lots of opinions on lots of people, caps it off with...

smodge seems the worst off in this case with me amongst those who could conceivably attain consensus without a whole new line of argument, so that's where I'm going to put my vote.

This makes enough sense to justify her vote, considering her previous opinion on smodge (she criticizes him for lacking original thought and "independent direction" and instead throwing his vote around on low content; again, pretty hard stuff to argue against, considering), but it does imply that there are people she thinks are even worse-looking but she doesn't think it's worth the effort to go after them when a majority is forming around smodge.  I'd like to ask her: who was that, in your opinion?  You talked a lot about plenty of players but you didn't notice you saying specifically "I think this person looks scummier than smodge" anywhere.  It's clear from your wording here that there was someone like that, so please, don't keep your opinions to yourself.  Do tell.

Fnorder: simply reiterates Andrew's "smodge's logic is bad when he votes for me over doing something he did as scum" point and hops aboard.

Smodge is saying that his capricious jokevote action in game A where he was scum is, when reenacted, a scum tell in game B. This is terrible logic. It's like saying, "I was asked to pick a number 1-10, so I rolled a die and got four. That guy picked four too! Scum!"

Heck with it. I'm aboard this train.

Note that this is smodge's fifth vote, which means he's really being put into doom range at this point.  I really would have liked to see more than this from Fnorder to justify this vote.  Also, as a nitpick, the circumstance isn't really as random as Fnorder's die-rolling example.  smodge's logic, while bad and naive, was much more rational than Fnorder's portraying it as: he was saying that he felt driven to act in a certain way when he was scum, so when he perceives that sort of behavior in others, he is suspicious.  This is naive because scum can manipulate that sort of thing on you, but it's ... not really anything like the rolling-a-die example given here.  If you're only going to pick one justification for your decisive vote, don't pick one of the weaker ones, and then misrepresent it.

In fact, Fnorder's not saying enough either, and I think this train jump looks particularly awful, so yeah.  ##VOTE: Fnorder.  I'd like some defense from you, and also a lot more content.

I want to get that vote on the table real quick, so Corwin and OK are next post.

[Otter]

Righto.

Corwin: it's still stuck in my head that he was criticizing others early on for inattentiveness to vote counts when he himself was voting and unvoting and voting again, as if that all mattered, for a long time without activating his vote.  Apparently not noticing that it wasn't showing up on the votecounts that appeared.  But anyway, onto his votes!

In the middle of the smodge train (right after LadyDoor's vote), Corwin swapped his vote from Andy to Ciato, for shifty double-talk in her recent post.  Which I don't necessarily disagree with, I think Ciato should be a lot clearer about what she means because that post, as Cor points out, looks self-contradicting.  I noticed lots of that kind of thing from Ciato and it's one of the reasons I had my vote on her all yesterday, so I generally agree with Cor here.  Then!

Since it's the way your posts read rather than your actual arguments (after you explain them in follow-up posts) that bother me, Ciato, you can't really answer any questions, because I have none. I still find your continued choice of phrasing weird, but I'm willing to get smodge's flip and move on to debating based on an actual record day2.

So, he's not any more satisfied than he was, but he's willing to drop it and move on so smodge can die already.  Cor asks for a votecount, which he receives, and later he bumps smodge up to -1 just to keep things moving; no further justification is given in the later post.

Now, my problem here is that I don't think I saw Corwin commenting on smodge up till this point, at all.

Is he taking it as implied that he's read and agreed with other voters' views on smodge?  If so, which ones?  Lots of arguments came up against him.  But no, all he really says is that he "is willing to get smodge's flip and move on."  This is somewhat troublesome.  If he had simply said "There's nothing I can add to the arguments already on the table, I agree with his accusers, smodge looks the worst to me and it's time to move on" then I'd be much, much more comfortable.  Instead, he's bumping the man up to -1 with barely a word about why he thinks he deserves that.  I don't like this one much and I want a response from Cor on the subject.

OK: comes in with a big post to make up for the fact that he basically hadn't been around for a real-time day.  Lots of comments, calls smodge's roleclaim and defense weak (which they were).

smodge...the roleclaim is fairly weak.  Yeah, I know vanilla can be boring sometimes, but just the role, not the name?  Not much push behind it to try and save yourself - seems more like a resignation.  As per your voting style, that's what I've noticed - you seem to follow the same pattern each time and each game.  Still...

Little more waffling and hesitation and "Still..." than I might like, I think this sort of language is easy to hide behind and I'd prefer direct and decisive commentary, but he's right enough (I actively agreed and agree with the "this seems like resignation" comment).  Then he announces intent to hammer in a later post and gets it over with shortly thereafter.  So, what's the score on OK?  Fairly neutral with regards to that hammer, looks all right from where I'm standing, but OK would really benefit from posting a bit more.  The weekend's coming up, so hopefully we'll see more of him.  At the same time, he's delivering content (plus a bit of non-content hesitation fluff, which isn't ideal but isn't fatal right now), so he's definitely not my top choice of lurker to persecute right now.  Late vote activation wasn't great, but unlike Cor, he wasn't moving his "vote" around like it mattered for a while and really just seemed to think it was a triviality to take care of later; I'll grudgingly accept this explanation, since Alex has put us in a unique situation here and all, so there's no real precedent for behavior in reaction.  I'm going to keep OK in mind if only because of the infrequent posting, but he's not at the top of my list right now.

tl;dr version???  You should read my posts, I am kidding, but for reference:
- Voting Fnorder for a really sloppy and poorly-justified trainjump along with a huge lack of presence and content in general.
- LadyDoor: who'd you think really looked worst, regardless of chance of getting them lynched that day?
- Corwin: why'd you vote smodge?  Was it seriously just to jump on the biggest train and help end the day, and you felt no reason to justify it further than that with anything about smodge's behavior or posts?

I'll cut myself off here.  I apologize if this was too much monologue, but I wanted to cover my feelings on that entire train and didn't want to summarize too heavily or skimp on the quotes and force people to go check them to make sure I wasn't stretching the truth.  It is now dinner time, and I may be gone until quite a bit later tonight since it's a seminar night, so please respond, especially if I called you out personally, and I'll follow up when I return.

[Corwin]

Just got back from a party, will be going straight to bed, just a quick Otter response. More later, especially after Nitori posts.

First of all, let's just drop the inattentativeness arguments. Even if you believe I haven't read the rules rather than take my explanation at face value, forgetting that a person had been NK'd (and flipped as town) is hardly any better. And just so it doesn't feel personal, several people have made mistakes such as this, be they honest or be they slips. I don't feel this would be a very good way to measure scumminess on its own merits, unless we want to mass-lynch most of the players.

There was exactly one votecount that would have included my vote. One. Not votecountS, plural. A post of mine followed it, where I unvoted and revoted. It seemed pointless to point out to Alex that my jokevote had not been tallied in the same post that was removing said jokevote to begin with. Looking back, yes, it's unfortunate that I didn't just go with the flow from the start. But I can't really undo that. Ironically, I thought Alex's caution/request to read the rules referred more to keeping things civil and not disappearing. Eh, we all live and learn.

Smodge... looked as scummy as ever to me. After WoW I saw no reason to cut him any slack for 'just being smodge'. Even if the scumminess came from not playing too well rather than being outright scum, it seemed like a good learning experience to teach him, and a good choice for town to not keep it tied up in the following days over the issue of smodge's scumminess. I feel that the mere fact that I'm responding to an analysis post you've made based off smodge's vote train pretty much supports my decision to bring day 1 to a close and get us results to examine. And if not on its own merits, then certainly useful come day 3.

One final reason: while I didn't like the way Ciato and Andrew looked... it does feel true that most of the vocal day 1 fights are town vs town. I wasn't quite ready to lynch one side of the argument for day 1 stuff, so smodge was the better choice, all things considered.

If there's a need for more clarifications, I'll post that along with my thoughts on other issues when I'm not tired and drunk~

[Nitori]

Man, today sucked.

I can obviously understand the lurker votes; I was dealing with things for a majority of the day, but no assumptions should be made...I managed to find a few interesting tidbits of information, though.

Hm. Looking back, OK kinda sticks out to me. His last day 1 post really was filled with a lot of "hm, not sure", with commentary on smodge that had been hashed out at that point in time. It feels like he was just really trying to put in a whole day summary post so that it would be there, really. Although I do understand his schedule.

Yakko defended Ciato from Otter and has never been heard from since. Presumably he disagreed with the general tone of the Otter-attack, but it feels weird that he would postulate such a defense so early of a person of an unknown alignment. And of course, the disappearing act.

Kilgamayan started off by hitting Yakko's odd defense, which is certainly agreeable, but I disagree with the Otter attack at that time. Sure, the gaffe was there, but it did get its own discussion eventually. Plus, that is kinda how Otter plays, super close up and aggresive. His main points are that it seemed more about gaming philosophy and that it had emotional involvement; I question the gaming philosophy part since Ciato did do something suspicious with the nonvoting, so there was at least a point of that in there. Emotional involvement is admittedly hard to quantify and probably comes down to opinion there. He then says that there is a 'case' for smodge for attacking an easy target, but he doesn't comment on the immensely bad logic he uses.

Fnorder, as Otter said, hopped onto the train fairly late, but did at least call him smodge out beforehand. His post feels a little off since it doesn't really respond to smodge, but rather part of LD's defending smodge on one point and still voting for him (which is...also a little strange), but there's nothing inherently bad about it except the timing and possibly the language of him being aboard the train. Probably a odd test case.

Yakko and OK both kinda stick out here for those habits, but Yakko kinda hasn't been here for a long while. Kilga also feels a little odd to me too, in retrospect, since he seemed disconnected from most of the day's issues and a questionable quality of reason for the vote...eh, Kilga kinda gave off a laid back style too, though, and might have wanted to avoid the smodge train. If Yakko doesn't come back soon he really should be looked closely at, but for now, I'll go with...

##VOTE: Kilgamayan

[Otter]

Can't stay, must shower, but I'll address one of Corwin's points quickly: I don't think we should say "Inattentive play is totally okay now" just because it's been disturbingly common.  Bad play is bad play, and it should be taken into consideration as such.  These mistakes lead to confusion and turmoil for no good reason, if they're honest ones, and they shouldn't be that hard to avoid.  Obviously, we're all only human and I myself just made an error of complete forgetfulness, but I think I've minimized the harm dealt by noticing it first, pointing it out myself immediately, and retracting entirely.

I'm not saying this totally excuses me, because I still made a mistake for no good reason (forgetfulness is not a valid excuse to me), but I scanned the topic quickly, realized my mishap, and put damage control into effect immediately.  Forgetfulness like this shouldn't be ignored, but I'm usually much more forgiving to others when they instantly realize what they've done wrong and correct themselves in the next post, rather than only after somebody else points it out (in such cases, it seems a lot like the player was just hoping that no one else would notice).  I regret the mistake, and appreciate that there's a measure of irony since I've been tough on errors of all kinds in this game and in others, but I hope other players will consider my quick retraction before they tear me to pieces.

[Lady Door]

Um... well, first off, kudos to Alex for the quick flip and to the quick resolution of night phase. I completely wasn't expecting that quick a turnaround. Maybe WoW and VtM were misleading as far as how long that takes.

So. I'm going to try my hardest to be succinct here, but since this is NOT my normal mode of writing (which is pretty obvious at this point, I think) some things will probably come off sounding weird. Please do ask if something doesn't make sense. My behavior as an English major makes me want to re-explain things four times in a paragraph in order to get the point across, but I get the feeling it's actually obscuring the point in this environment.

With all this discussion about our lurkers, why has no one pointed out that Yakumo's been gone for about 45 hours? And his only vote was a jokevote that was never rescinded? Corwin voted Nitori for lurking; Dhyer agrees that Nitori is lurking and LaL might be a good idea; Otter agrees Nitori's presence has been scarce; Andrew lists the lurkers as Kilga, Fnorder and Nitori; Otter VOTES Fnorder partially for lurking; ... and then Nitori, lurker on the table, mentions Yakko's defend-and-disappear act and ultimately votes for someone else.

Has everyone seriously forgotten he's playing? Am I missing something? Or is there misdirection and willfull passing over that's going on?

Otter: Sure thing. I was suspicious of Corwin for reasons which don't hold quite as much water in and of themselves at this point (namely, the lack of small mammal), Andrew because of what I said in this post, and Kilga and Fnorder due to lurkerishness. I probably would have pursued Andrew the most if I didn't feel we really needed to get some info and move on, and I really did have a problem with smodge (increasingly so as he posted, in fact). I am really disappointed that he turned out to be town. I am inclined to want to return to the problems I had with Andrew -- well, assuming Yakumo shows up, that is, since his absence is far and away the biggest thing I have against anyone right now -- but I will need to read over new developments and go back through the thread in light of them to get anywhere with that.

Reading more, will post that in a little while. Hopefully in digestible chunks this time.

[Yakumo]

I can't help it you guys ended the day while I was still playing catch up yesterday.  You know I have a fairly short window of opportunity to post every day: if the day isn't open while I'm here then there's nothing I can do about that.  That's the reason why I "disappeared".  There were three pages of posts to catch up on when I got home.  OK hammered before I finished reading, despite Ciato at least mentioning that she was waiting for me to post.  I never even knew the game was that close to hammer until it was too late.

As far as defending Ciato is concerned, that was less me defending her and more attacking Otter for the reasoning he presented.  I have no idea whether Ciato is scum or not right now, but nothing she had done was really any different than the way she's acted in other games, so I saw no reason for Otter to jump on her for that. 

Smodge... well, I probably wouldn't have opposed that lynch, his logic did look rather odd.  I get the feeling what he needs is less a mentor and more an editor. >_>  Anyway, that train almost certainly has a scum or two on it, so it's worth a look.  Andrew, Excal, Nitori, LadyDoor, Fnorder, Corwin, OK. 

Andrew had what looked to me like good reason and was the first one to place a vote on the train.  Solid enough for me for the time being.

Excal's gone. 

Nitori has been quiet for most of the game, but at least when he did post recently it was solid, and his case against Smodge is actually fairly solid as well. 

LadyDoor... well.  I'd like to second Otter's call for info about who you thought was a better case than Smodge was, that does seem odd now that it's been pointed out.  I already commented on why I've been gone, but I'd like to point out that my vote isn't exactly a jokevote that was never taken back:

My vote stands where it is, rather more serious than it was before.

I left it on Otter because I didn't like his reasoning or the fact that other people were agreeing with it so readily.  I believed at the time that he had made himself look worse than the others. 

Fnorder has... just not a        go off of with that post.  I see what he's getting at, but it's a point that had already been made that he looks like he's trying to make look fresh, which is kinda odd.  I'm going to toss my vote out on him and ask for a bit more solid information on why he voted where he did.

##Vote: Fnorder

Corwin is cursed by his time zone: he kinda looks like he's not participating that much but when I think about it, there's not a whole lot of conversation going on when he posts.  I can understand why you would want to kill someone eventually, but why push Smodge to -1 to hammer before he even gets to claim?  That makes mistakes too easy to make.

Dinner's ready, finish this when I get back.

[Yakumo]

Anyway.  I'd like to hear something from Corwin on that score. 

The last person on the list, OK.  He waltzes in, makes a few comments on ongoing cases including Smodge's, removes a jokevote, and claims that he can't get a read on anyone else.  The only one that he really takes any sort of a stance on is Smodge, though, and then he announces intent to hammer and does so.  I'd complain about him cutting me off, but he did wait about half an hour after the last other post and probably didn't realize that I was trying to catch up at the time, so I guess this sentence is pointless whining. <_<  Anyway, he triggers minor warning signs but not big enough to deter me from pushing Fnorder for some substantiation of his condemnation of Smodge.

[Ranmilia]

Votecount!  With 11 alive, it takes 6 to lynch.

Nitori (2): Corwin, Kilgamayan
Kilga (1): Nitori
Fnorder (2): Otter, Yakumo

24 hours will have elapsed in day 2 when the hour hits after I post this.

(Tangentially, night 1 only lasted an hour.  I have no idea why nobody posted for the rest of the night.  Did y'all not know the game was open again?)

[Yakumo]

Uh, actually, I didn't.  I was watching people make fools of themselves in Kaizo LPs. <_<

[Otter]

Real quick: is there a reason my Fnorder vote wasn't counted?  It doesn't look to me like I messed up the format.

[Ranmilia]

No, I just missed it.

[Kilgamayan]

Nitori

Vote #3 for smodge. Her main issue with Ciato was an apparent flip from outright distaste for "voting for the sake of voting" to claiming a difference in philosophy, specifically citing Ciato's use of "retarded". I personally think using "Retarded" isn't such a big deal, given our generation describes things as "retarded" or "gay" or any number of other unpleasant things in a very casual manner. He talks about Andy's mistake without really saying much of anything about it. Meh. His next post combined with his recent post encouraged me to go back over smodge, and only now did I notice that he verbally concluded scum Andrew from scum Ciato somehow (I wish I could say I knew how >_>) and then voted for Andrew anyway despite apparently picking town Ciato. My apologies for missing that the first time(s?).

Also in regards to his latest post, I don't see how "that's how Otter usually is" is a viable defense of his actions.

Overall null to slightly scum read. Not bad enough to keep my vote there though. ##Unvote: Nitori

LadyDoor

No shortage of effort or content, that's for sure. I think she devoted more writing to Corwin than necessary, but I agree with pretty much everything else she said (and I'm glad I'm not the only one who found Otter overly confrontational). Not much else to say here. Overall town read.

Fnorder

Vote #5 on for smodge. As Nitori pointed out, however, he did call smodge out fairly early, despite not voting for him until later. I supposed it's possible he was playing the odds and setting himself up on someone with a better chance of becoming a Day 1 lynch (based mostly on notoriety) than anyone else, but that seems rather far-fetched. Could probably stand to post more though (yes, I'm aware of my status in that regard). Overall slight town read.

Dhyer

(Attempted) Vote #6 for smodge. His play reminds me a lot of the time I spent with him in SuikoMafia, but I have a couple of irks regardless. The phrasing of his initial mention of Otter potentially smokescreening seemed to be in answer to an argument that no one had presented yet. It seems like he was trying to stifle conversation in that area with a "don't bother thinking this way" attitude (albeit presented in a nicer tone). He forgot to unvote before voting Smodge, but I can't read that specifically one way or the other because it comes down to the ideals behind Otter's anti-mistakes sentiment vs. several townies being guilty of it in Touhou. That aside, the timing is in an "ideal scum position" (if there even is such a thing because votes in "ideal scum positions" tend to get far more town attention than ones that are not >_>). Last, he argues against my idea that Otter was being uncivil. I admit I hadn't done a great job at presenting my position, but LD certainly has, spending a lot more time on it and citing numerous examples. Why not respond to her?

Overall somewhat scum read. I'm quite curious to read Dhyer's response.

Corwin

Vote #6 for smodge. He has the small animal rule knock against him, but I'm not as concerned about that as I am about his vote for Ciato, where he apparently didn't read her post properly or something. I was able to figure out what she meant almost immediately myself. There was also some unnecessary snark regarding the small mammal rule here. His latest post was mostly defense, though he has had some opinions in the past. Overall slightly scum read.

(cont.)

[Kilgamayan]

Andrew

Vote #1 for smodge. Notable mostly for his gaffe. The wording in his post voting for Excal seems to indicate he genuinely thought Excal was voteless at the time. I have a hard time holding this mistake against him because, honestly, how much of an issue is it that he skimmed over the targets of Day 1 Page 1 joke votes at the bottom of Page 1? If he was paying little to no attention to them later while trying to form legitimate opinions on them, sure, that's a reason to be suspicious, but this situation is just silly. Has posted his fair share of opinion. Overall town read.

Otter

Major contributor to arguably the biggest event of Day 1. I still don't like his tone, and it turns me off to his argument on the whole, but I can at least see where he was coming from. I also thought about how I was going about things, and I realized I saw a lot of parallel to SuikoMafia's Day 1 Andrew vs. myself in his argument. I realized that some of my argument against him was likely a result of some double standard conspiracy theory I had set up in my head regarding my getting tons of negative attention for smokescreening and being uncivil whereas Otter was getting nothing more than disagreements. Given this, I don't believe my suspicion of Otter was as well-founded as it was yesterday, and am going to let it go. For now.

In other news, Otter has had plenty of opinions today, and he also pointed out that no one was defending smodge, which I am disappointed in myself for not noticing. On the flip side, he, like Nitori, seemed to take Ciato's use of "retarded" seriously, which I again do not agree with. Still, overall slightly town read.

OblivionKnight

Hammer on smodge, but not without announcing intentions. His first serious post was a decent one about Otter/Ciato, though it only devoted half a line to Andy. Not posting very much on the whole, but when he has it's been with content. Overall slightly town read.

Yakumo

Long silence apparently brought on by bad timing. I stand by my "cashing in on Otter" claim, slightly enhanced by Otter pointing out Yakumo making a mistaken argument. Posts with smodge train opinions, though she asks LD to publicize her other suspicions when LD has already done so. Uh. Overall somewhat scum read.

Ciato

The other major player in Day 1's biggest event. In retrospect, expressing a distaste for "voting for the sake of voting" seems rather odd when one considers that she had no problem taking part in other standard start-of-game silliness. Sadly, the vast majority of her Day 1 posts were defensive, so it's hard to get a read on her. There wasn't much that she brought to the table that wasn't already there aside from the post where she voted for me. In addition, despite Corwin making a mistake in his reasoning for voting for her, she seemed to make a mistake in return when she accused him of being rude, which he didn't come off as to me. Overall null read.

That took way longer than I would have liked.

[OblivionKnight]

(In response to posts 136/147) And I was sleeping.  Yay rotation times from hell.  

So, anyway...as I mentioned earlier, this rotation is going to be more of a pain than I thought.  It's an hour+ drive one way, so I spend about 2.5 hours on the road each day, in addition to me staying late this week and next due to having been sick last week.  So I probably am going to get fairly scarce, moreso than I already am.  I also need to be up and there in about 6 hours, but I feel the need to post.  Anyway, just want to let everyone know what's going on.

Yakumo: Sorry >_>  I did wait a bit, but Alex did seem fairly insistent on moving along, and I had thought, myself, that Smodge was worthy of my vote, so I did what I did.  

Anyway...

Regarding my wording (the "So..." and other ways of phrasing): It's the way I go about it.  I do have strong feelings, and I felt I made them fairly clear by stating I wanted to vote on Smodge, but I feel it's important to at least acknowledge the other possibilities and leave venues open with thought.  I will try to cut down on this, as I can see how it's a bit frustrating when trying to read people.

So, I had originally wanted to look at Excal, but...he's dead.  He did seem really insistent on killing Smodge (granted, I and others are/were also guilt of this as well), and that's all I remembered about him for the day.  But he's dead, so no.

When I stated I had no good reads on people so far, it was because, well, I didn't.  I really don't.  It's not to just throw up a wall -partly due to time and partly due to not getting a strong feel off of them, I'm just having trouble reading people.  I also am not used to the playstyle of a few of the people here, which doesn't help a lot.  Still, what I think so far...

Fnorder: ...I didn't even realize he was playing until Yakko voted for him.  Wow.  He's made 4 posts all game, 2 of which were...uh...nothing (day 1 junk).  Second post (Reply #65) he goes on about Ciato and Otter and how it's normal for them.  Fair enough.  I agree that it's Otter being aggressive (which is good), and Ciato defending her position (which is good), and that it looks more like townies.  He then makes a good point about Smodge's reasoning on scumtells (it took me a while to get the hang of the text phrasing) and calls him out.  Good for me.  Reply #76 is his last post, with a vote for Smodge...and reiteration of everything already said.  He finishes with "Heck, I'm aboard this train".  The phrasing of that is...odd.  But that could just be me.  Still...it almost seems like he was just trying to justify some reason to put a vote on Smodge, the 5th one.  There's not much there beyond what's already been said, and it's not expounded upon much, combined with the fact that he's had very little said so far all game.  The fact that I didn't even remember he's playing is...even more crazy!  I don't remember much of what Kilga has said (it too has been a lot of reiteration and small content), but at least I remember he's in the game.

Kilga: Hey, speaking of him!  Don't get a bad reading on him.  Been active, discussed things.  He's reiterated things, but he's also brought up some new things as well.  Granted, a lot of that was day 1 semantics ("How do you interpret this text?"), but he's made good points out of this and kept it open.  He's facilitated and been part of discussion, so I don't have any major qualms with him at the moment.

Dhyer: Has had a similar amount of stuff like Kilga.  Honestly, I see a lot of mirroring in their posts, and to an extent, it seemed like they were carrying on conversations to themselves for a bit.  His vote for Smodge, though not counted...mmm...he would have put him at 6 had it worked.  1.5 hours or so after Fnorder's vote occurred.  It seems odd that he'd still call it 5 votes at that point, but this is just something to look at.  Like with the previous two, I don't get much new content from him.  It's also I feel a bit odd that he does make an issue (well, not an issue, but he does comment on me standing out more) of my votes not counting or being serious, but does kind of downplay Corwin's jumping a bit.  He does explain why he feels that way.  Mmm...

LadyDoor: Wow, lots of typing!  I see lots of thought and discussion and content in your posts, and I feel that there's been plenty of benefit to town from her involvement.  She's brought up new topics, too, and not repeated old ones.  I have little else to say about her otherwise.

Those are my major thoughts at the moment.  Yakko, like myself, haven't posted a huge amount yet, but (EDIT!  Ok, nevermind), and my thoughts on Ciato, Otter haven't really changed.  Nitori...has come back with some thoughts, and I don't get a negative read from him.  Andrew...there's not much else there beyond day 1, and I want to see what else he has to say before I make judgments.  OK is, of course, awesomeness incarnate.

[OblivionKnight]

Blah, brain doesn't work with body well.

Anyway, with that being said, the person who looks like he needs some pressure is Fnorder, but he's got 2 votes on him already.  I'd like to shift a vote to Dhyer to get a bit more thoughts out of him, in particular, new thoughts and the like.  What was up with that Smodge voting?

##Vote: Dhyer

[Lady Door]

I appreciate that it's daunting to read through my wall o' text, especially that massive one in which I outlined my thoughts on things that were going on. But as Kilga pointed out, I've already answered Otter's question. Want more information than I posted? That's one thing. Your "seconding the call" is all kinds of off to me, though, since you also respond to something I said in the post which does exactly that.

Anyway. Writing more about those people in order to draw in recent activity.

Corwin was because of the rules thing. I no longer have a reason to push that issue, so that argument against him -- which was really all I had at the time -- wasn't worth pursuing and certainly isn't now. The only thing I have on him that's weird today is that he seems to have a fairly thought-out reason for voting to lynch smodge, one I can certainly agree with, but for some reason decided to leave the reason for his vote vague on the day in question.

Andrew was because of poor phrasing on his part. At the bottom of this post, he discussed the mistakes argument and said that we still persecute people for them because "if they are generally treated softly, it lets scum conceal their actions by claiming 'oops, bad play!'" There is never and has never been a time when bad play has been excusable as far as I'm aware. The poor phrasing lead me to read his post as having a sort of "scum posing as good natured town" feel. It was far too gut to pursue on its own, and I don't really feel the same way now. If I were going to pursue something on Andrew today, it would be his almost-but-not-quite lurking presence. However, I think there are worse offenders right now, and he at least seems to be making an effort.

Kilga and Fnorder still had something of an absent presence at the time, and I considered pursuing LaL in favor of an uncertain lynch. It was by far not the majority opinion, however, and I saw more merit in lynching someone I was already feeling weird about than in trying to push a case for someone new based on different game play theory. A la Otter v. Ciato, we can see how those kinds of arguments complicate and derail things. There was no need to start ANOTHER argument over it. Fnorder still has my eye for lurking, as well as for spurious logic in deciding to vote smodge to more-than-halfway-to-lynch. For spurious logic. Irony much? Kilga... no longer seeming lurkey. But there are some other things.

That and more in the next post!

[Dhyerwolf]

OK, my bringing up your voting pattern was more of a prompt to speak since I didn’t have much on you (And you technically hadn’t placed a vote down yet, since the mammal thing didn’t retroactively enable your vote, just enabled future voting). However, yeah, considering that my counting skills have been spilling lately (Good thing the computer does most of the heavy lifting at work!), it’s not something I strongly consider. It was just a generic “talk more” since I guess I really didn’t get much off of your previous posts. Definetely a different situation than Corwin, since his issue was rule-oriented.

Smodge mishap: Part stupid counting skills. The unvote part was basically that I made the post and jumped straight off to work and didn’t check up on myself since I was in a time crunch. Definetely a doh! moment when I read back on it later.

Why did I respond to Kilgamayan’s saying Otter was being harsh and not really think about Lady Door’s? Kilga pointed the question at me! It was more that it tied in with the smokescreening stuff that I found more relevant. Lady Door’s argument was more that Otter’s severity was weakening his points. At that point, I had already spoken my stance on how I viewed the Ciato/Otter fight, so I had already somewhat accepted the points he was making (and whether or not it would affect whether somewhat would accept his points would heavily fall on personal opinion, and since I wasn’t going to argue over that, just debating on whether he seemed rude or not didn’t have a point to me).

I mentioned the smokescreening right off because I saw the argument…and I generally think that cries of smokescreen are really badly off, especially in this case. Getting conversation started was definitely beneficial, Andrew’s gaffe wasn’t really causing any extra talking, and even if it was, the conversation still could have easily kept going. The conversation may have been about gaming philosophy but there really wasn’t anything else to speak on barring Andrew’s instance that no one seemed to be going into. Just yeah, a lot of the time I find smokescreening to be a really out-there charge, so I picked up on it quickly. And yeah, I was technically the first to use the word smokescreening, the what made me pick it up was Yakumo saying that Otter was obfuscating anything else that was going on.

I still want clarification from Ciato on reply 78. Did you think that Corwin had put a third vote on someone, because that seems to be the big criterion for why you found him suspicious?

General Thoughts on People:

My stronger suspicions are on

Ciato: partially for snapping at Corwin when it seemed uncalled for, and partially because I’ve asked the same question several times and still haven’t received an answer.

Yakumo: Reading back on his talking to Otter, I found his logic for voting off. Otter went over it at the time, but voting for someone because they put down a serious vote for a gameplay style that they found problematic makes sense to me if there really isn’t anything else to go on. Otter later gave reasons for why he went after Ciato this time and not before, but Yakumo wasn’t here to deal with that. I guess I’d like to hear his thoughts on the reasons Otter gave.

Anyone else I don’t have a specific suspicion on. I still don’t have too much on Nitori, Andrew and Corwin are similar to me (Both made a gaff and I don’t have a strong read either way) and I’m slightly more suspicious of Andrew for the Corwin reasons I gave earlier, but no specific read other than that. Otter has been really aggressive, which is pretty standard and gives me no particular insight. Generally agreed with his arguments though. Kilga and OK give me slight town vibes when reading their posts. Lady Door gives me the strongest town read.

##Vote: Ciato

Answer my question please!

[Luther Lansfeld]

I just think Andrew was an easy target for someone who had very little to say and just wanted to throw out a vote on someone who seemed easy to justify a vote against.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Anyway, there's been lots and lots (and... lots) of text since I last checked into the topic, so I'll be catching up.

[AndrewRogue]

Blargh. I really have not been feeling this all day. Post density is also wearing on me at the moment.

What I will say is that Yakumo and Fnorder are making a bit uncomfortable at the moment. Yakumo... I actually forgot was in the game. This says something about his presence, I think.

Fnorder has been relatively presenceless as well, including today. Furthermore, I do have to agree that the way he phrased his Smodge vote... mmm... is strange, primarily with its phrasing. The way he talks about it makes it look like he is merely assenting to logic or is left without another choice, yet at the same time, he seems to want to vote Smodge? It isn't damning, but it bothers me. Add in that he's been non-present today and... yeah.

Given that I have to be at work tomorrow and then am staying over in San Francisco, I'm not going to put a day 2 lurker at halfway to lynch with the knowledge that I won't be available to adjust my votes, so I am putting this as strongly forward as possible without actually voting. If Fnorder doesn't show up with some decent posts tomorrow by the time I get back, I will be voting him. Give us something to work with, man!

[Dhyerwolf]

Ciato, it was more the calling the 2 votes on Andrew a train, and then the hard to unwind math that is confusing me at the moment. And I missed Fnorder in my little summary! Right, he actually hasn't posted today at all. He already has 2 votes on him at the moment for lurking, so more pressure doesn't feel necessary at this juncture, but I agree that he needs to speak up really soon.