Well, had a feeling I'd be the next one to go, given the way this game has been going.
Still, might as well make this clear:
Rather than setting up a hammer this early (remember, I'm -1 to Hammer, though I'm sure that's one of the reasons Rat hasn't voted; hammering this early is just too damn risky), lets go over things.
First off, I was considering Cid during work and how he has spoken. He's been here not all that much, and kind of stayed out of the whole Alex loop, and like Gate said, he seemed to have a stronger case for Alex than me, yet kept the vote.
Next off, remember, this is scum Alex. He's not one to fall into a trap so easily as "Let me support my other scum buddy!" That's gotta be one of the easiest scum tells. If NOTHING ELSE, I'd imagine Alex did that on purpose. Support me, if he goes, that makes me look bad (especially if I was supporting him), thus protects his scum buddy another day, forcing town into LYLO. I'm aware I didn't bring a b
ig case to Alex despite saying how I did find something a bit off with him...that's cause I couldn't put my finger on it. Yes, it was a hunch. Something around the whole Alex circle felt off, I couldn't put my finger on WHO though, and at the time, Kilga seemed the worst. The way he just kind of ignored how I proved him wrong about me misintepretting something (as though to paint another easy mark on, it felt), and instead basically trying to reverse the tides...I dunno.
REFLECTING on this behavior, this does seem like a huge risk for Scum Buddies to do; go at it, hope they can win this late...yeah, for all I still can't shake this feeling about Kilga, I had to admit, this strategy would require a lot of things to fall in perfectly.
Then there's the fact that El-Cid votes against me initially based on low content within my posts. He LATER says "I'm often wrong about this" or something to that effect. He's also only voted against one person the entire time; me. Now yes, I'm aware its cause he said I look suspicious both times but...well, his reasoning?
His playstyle this game has been structured too much around reacting to people questioning him and not enough building cases of his own.
That's it. That was his initial reason. So wait, cause I was put onto the defensive, I'm not allowed to be reactionary? This doesn't really make sense. Rat did the same at one point, after all. When people start attacking you, you react defensively. What am I suppose to do? Let the arguments stay, ignore them, and keep moving onto something else? Strikes me as odd, since no one refuting a point means the point stays, and it looks even LESS like you're paying attention. Someone calls you out, you respond, its that simple. That's just odd.
Now he goes after me again, for staying on Alex. That seems to be everyone's only case against me. As I said, the reason I didn't go so much after Alex was cause I genuinely felt Kilga was looking worse. He also doesn't Hammer Alex, despite claiming "he would be willing too."
He also makes a claim of "How can people be too insightful?" which found me as weird. As I noted, its saying "You can find anything if you look hard enough" when it comes to writing, and I used poetry as an example (I could even use how my friends and I showed how you could compare The Cat In The Hat to Communism, to give you an idea <_<.)
Now, keep in mind that while lots of people (including El-Cid) were on the Excal train, I actually DEFENDED Excal, saying I didn't honestly feel something was wrong with his statement. He was making a big deal out of numbers but...that's just him being himself. *GRANTED*, at the same time, this goes back to the whole "Alex doesn't like people agreeing with him!" so it could easily be a scum tell, at the same time, since he was one of the leaders of the Excal Lynch. My vote was on Cor, but it was Day 1; I had little suspicion of anyone, and Cor's whole "Brush off my vote and not properly respond" thing felt bad to me. Apparently I wasn't alone; QR voted for Cor as well, and she responds to Soppy saying this as ONE of her reasons:
-And when Meeple called him out for keeping his jokevote on him he...didn't really adequately respond.
Also remember the person to defend Cor was Alex...and then Cor dies that night anyway. Then Alex goes onto say "analyzing kills is very WIFOM." I don't know if this says anything, but its worth noting.
If nothing else, though, if I had noticed this earlier, I'd have called Alex out on the whole "QR hasn't been on your case the entire time; she voted for Cor initially!"
Too late for that, granted.
After looking over Rat's little "so only you and Meeple aren't scum?' thing, I can see why he made a slip like that (for lack of a better word.) Its easy to forget you're looking at things from the other person's PoV instead of your own, so you naturally ignore the lack of yourself on a list. This is an easy slip, it happens to anyone, its something you'd do subconsciously. Was that the point you were trying to make Rat, btw?
Now, bare in mind the problem I had with an Alex lynch as well? The reasons for lynching him weren't so sound. Kilga's main reason was "This isn't the Town Alex I know!" when it came down to it, and the whole Downplaying Mistakes thing. Soppy's was mostly Alex getting "Too Emotional" which...eh, couldn't see much into it. QR was basically saying Alex was twisting words over early parts in the game and Tunnel Visioning on Day 2, for all that I felt like she had the best case. Compared to the general feel I was getting from Kilga, it felt like he was the scum in the mess, so I aimed at him.
ANYWAY, back to El-Cid.
He basically calls Excal out on the 20% thing. He's the first one to vote for Excal. Now, Cor noted that Excal was blowing things out of proportion, but Excal responds and he responds saying he misunderstood, but still thinks Excal was making a bigger deal out than the numbers really mean. El-Cid, though, votes Excal...
*HOWEVER*, one thing makes me a bit...uneasy about this El-Cid equal scum thing. Its Alex's first post after El-Cid's post:
I very much agree with what Cid's been saying about Excal and find this the scummiest position currently in play.
As we've been saying, Alex isn't one to go on agreeing with his scum buddies so quickly...but at the same time, he's found a case he can exploit the hell out of, being an experienced player and scum, Alex can't drop this opportunity to frame someone is my thought. Now, its also possible that something like this happened in a scum chat or something:
Alex and El-cid talk, El-cid says he's not going to be available for some time. This means Alex can vote Excal while El-Cid stays under the radar from not existing, and try to push for a lynch from that, while El-Cid, the original voter of it, kind of gets buried and tossed out, in a sense.
Next off, both Excal and Soppy call out El-Cid for One Post in the serious phase with actual content and it was slim. Also, fun note for Alex near end of day 1 mentions the 3 people he'd want to lynch first:
1 is Excal, who got lynched; he's made this clear.
The next was El-Cid for a mere lurking charge.
The last is Rat.
Alex vs. Rat we've been over; its basically Alex accusing Rat for doing something, Rat being forced onto the defensive for a while, and Alex never actually dropping it. Later, he claims to have dropped suspicion for Rat...only to get it more for Rat's slip. This kind of arguing doesn't seem to fit in for 2 scum buddies, near as I can tell, so Rat's looking better.
El-Cid, though, his whole reasoning is for lurking...he votes El-Cid at the beginning of Day 2, El-Cid comes back, saying he was gone due to work and sleep (fair reasons, and something that'd be silly to lie about), then starts reading over...and ultimately votes me, which comes back to the beginning of my post.
Though, Excal brings up a point right before he was taken down, that El-Cid barely said anything in a whole day worth of serious discussion. Granted, this could be a simple "He's lurking, TALK MORE" but he also says his posts worth content were aimed at him only.
Now, back to El-Cid vs. me. I'm sorry for going on this whole Excal tangent, but felt worth bringing up since El-Cid DID start it, and then said very little about it after words, and Alex just sort of pushed it from there after a point.
El-Cid does a long post, and then says this:
So, I'm looking at Meeple right now. Took some prodding to get moving, and even made a couple posts saying that he was lurking because there was no serious content to respond to. I don't think that's ever a sound argument. If you believe there's not sufficient serious discussion going on, you owe it to yourself as a townie to start it.
Wait...I took prodding to get moving? The way this line is structured, you're saying that I claimed i didn't do anything UNTIL I came in and said "I was lurking cause there was no serious discussion."
I posted my initial reason BEFORE Soppy "prodded" me, and...Soppy was mostly being tongue and cheek rereading that supposed mistake he made. I reference the whole "I didn't care for the monkey brained soup!" comment. Cor was actually the one who started discussion, or at least was claiming too.
So I respond just repeating what I said, and that's that. You just go "You owe it to yourself to get it started as a townie!" Well, the thing is? Cor did the same thing...and people started looking at him. Rat actually tried doing the same thing, and people were suspecting him (though, this one was due to misinterpretations, and Alex was the first one who called him out on it...and Alex was scum, hence yeah.) etc. Soppy was even called out for making a mistake, one that he wasn't really being completely serious over either near as I can tell. So yeah, you can't just suddenly go "Lets get the ball rolling!" or else you can get yourself in trouble. I didn't know *HOW* to, as I said before, without looking bad, so I opted not to. Bad excuse? Maybe. Bad playing? Perhaps. But I do think you're either reading too much into it, or trying to label something on me for the sake of justifying your reasons.
Then you finally vote me for "not generating enough content on my own!"
So lets look at the rest of his posts on day 2, shall we?
His next post after voting for me is just "Flip doesn't surprise me, its often 2 townies yelling at each other." Doesn't really say a lot one way or another.
His next post is against Alex. He says something that's basically "Face it Alex, Meta-gaming is inevitable." Not as blunt, mind, but that's more or less what he says.
He then tries to claim that "Playstyles" and "Meta-gaming" are one in the same when focused on. That's...not true at all. Alex was talking about Play-styles in general, as in, "How has this person been playing throughout the game we're playing now" not "in comparison to others." One is an aspect in and of itself, the other is not. Alex was scum, granted, so you could take this with a grain of salt, but...well, El-Cid's nitpicking Alex here, in a way that feels off...in that its almost like he's trying to find SOMETHING to make him look unlinked with Alex.
He then talks about how Alex's attack on Rat wasn't a discussion starter. He ends the post saying "I agree with Kilga's point on you, and Kilga/Rat's reasons on Meeple." So he's taking a different stance than Alex, while arguing with Alex, not in a really stand out fashion? This feels like a way mainly to keep a link between him and Alex gone.
Next post, El-Cid takes a whole post against him, when only the first part of it was. I can see just throwing that out as "My structure was bad, its easy to get confused", and that's what I did. Still, bringing it up cause it does exist, for all that it tells us little.
Here's the first thing in El-Cid's next post that stands out to me of actual content:
So, what exactly are we supposed to do with the initial "discussion starter" votes? Ignore them? Nod along? Smile and wave? They exist to start discussion, and countering them with a vote is, I think, a very valid way of continuing that. It continues to baffle me that the above arguments were ever seriously made.
He misinterprets my objective explanation of what was happening. I said this:
Translation: Alex is saying Rat attacked flimsy cases that existed for the sake of discussion, and finds Rat's stance antitown as a result.
This is what that line is referring too. I don't get it...he's arguing over me summarizing a point, which says little? I was saying "this is what Alex did, and why he did it!" That's all; its pure objective. I didn't say "This is what Alex did, and why he did it, and why I think its right/wrong!" No, I was just summarizing...and he responds to THAT of all things?
Note that he combines my point there with one right above it, which says more or less the same thing. The fact remains, he's attacking something simple and objective which was just to shed light on Rat vs. Alex in hopes to get something out of it, and wasn't a main point at all.
Next off, he comes to my Minor Mistake point...
On the contrary, many a case is made from a collection of minor tells. This game would be damned easy for town if the scum were just massively incompetent. This is more of a general point, really. The accumulation of small details is actually quite vital.
He says "collection of minor scum tells" when there wasn't much of a collection. I later list all the things held against me...it was 3 total. No one defunked this (granted, now there's the whole "I didn't attack Alex!" thing which I have to deal with, which puts me in a real bad situation) list, from my knowledge, so...its a total of 3. One of which was a Meta-game reason that was based on someone not knowing how I was at all in other games (aka I played them the same I did Suikomafia where I was scum, and the other 2 I was not, and if you didn't notice, I'm acting here exactly the same way I do in other topics and chat.) The other two I admitted were legit (one was the mistake), but by themselves held little, and just the two of them alone aren't enough. At very least, Soppy said earlier that "cases against meeple aren't convincing enough" too, for whatever that's worth.
The he brings up "Too Insightful" and says "how does that work?" then says "Alex is being inconsistent is Kilga's reason." Yes, cause Alex played Random Mafia the same way he played his OTHER games and...wait, he was town there! Alex was scum, Kilga was right, but I can't help but feel he was right for the wrong reasons. The point is, Meta-gaming is very flimsy.
The "Too insightful" thing I covered; acting like its impossible to be "Too insightful" just sounds off.
Then El-cid says he's going to be gone for a whole hour...I'm not sure why he'd say that. Its one thing if you're going off for work, and aren't going to be around for a while, but getting paranoid like that feels...I dunno. This is probably me looking too much into it, so I won't really put much emphasis on it. Oh, right, before this, he talks a bit about soppy...and says nothing worth noting one way or another there.
He next posts after acknowledging that my post was not geared towards him and his simple misinterpretation (which as I said, was partially due to structure of the post), that I was blowing things out of proportion and it rewards a vote.
Now, after responding to Alex, he says HERE that he will "Change vote from Meeple to Alex" for the first time if things aren't nearing a deadline without a majority. So the deadline is coming up, and he...doesn't hammer? I suppose he could argue "there were 3 votes on Alex then, 2 on the others at most!" but it sounds like here, he's ready to vote Alex much earlier than the hammer...and doesn't do it later when he claimed he would.
His next post basically says "You defended Meeple and considered him a non-issue most of the game!" Then says he's ready to hammer, but doesn't.
I dunno, I can't help but feel Gate's right about something being off on El-Cid.
I'd vote now, but wanna here what others have to say about it first. I know I'm looking bad and I don't know what I can about it at this point. All I know is of the people who were facing Alex, El-Cid brought up very minor points at best, was the one least into the conversation, *AND* claimed he was ready to vote Alex *TWICE* but didn't.
