Losing a night is unequivocally pro-town, IMO. That doesn’t precisely mean that scum would never be given the power or want to do it, but it’s a solid first assumption.
Anyway –
vote: Suburban Plankton
It seems I am to be visited by a plague of relatives AGAIN this week, so participation will be spotty toDay.
I sent a PM to Story with my intention to cast the spell. I did not receive any confirmation if it was fully cast.
Have you inquired as to whether you still have it then?
I will.
When Drain Bead mentioned the one-off power, my first thought was that it would be a night-skip, so I wasn’t surprised by this morning’s turn of events. And although it’s possible to imagine circumstances where it would disadvantage the town in some way, in most cases the mafia will be the ones to come off worse. What’s more, in this particular situation, with several villains freshly caught, and plenty of leads to follow up, it strikes me as especially helpful.
As for today’s more pressing business, I’m going to follow Normal Phase’s lead and vote: Suburban Plankton once again. I’ve still got a few leads to chase up on other players, so I might well change my mind later on. But my earlier misgivings about Sub’s behaviour in relation to peeker still remain.
So, are you voting for me based upon Normal’s arguments? Or because of my behavior in relation to peeker?
Regarding the latter, what exactly are your misgivings? As I recall, you took issue with my behavior on two different issues that were ‘peeker related’. You mentioned both in this post (Post 1699):
peeker and I were the only two people to raise serious doubts about your defense of Romanic. I thought that you might be Scum trying to build Town cred. peeker obviously knew all along whether or not you were Scum. Be could have been bussing you, knowing you were in no serious danger of being lynched, or he may have been trying to raise suspicion of you knowing you were Town.
I defended peeker when he was initially under suspicion for his slip. The odd thing here though, is that you attack me for trying to sow doubt on the case and asking peeker to defend himself; then two posts later you basically agree with both of those actions (Post 1701):
[bolding mine]
So either you are trying to paint me as Scum for taking actions which you yourself agree with and think are pro-Town, or you’re just placing an OMGUS vote because I placed suspicion on you back on Day 1.
Or maybe peeker was bussing you back on Day 1, and now you’ve seen Normal make a very long and detailed case against me and think I’m an easy target.
I have yet to review NP’s case thoroughly, but I know how she operates, and I very much doubt it’ll leave me seeing you as less scummy than I do now. But the foundations for my vote are my own suspicions, as mentioned earlier in the thread.
I made it easy for scum to smudge me, and you took the bait, as did peeker. That doesn’t make you scum, but it does count against you. Then you prodded at the peeker bandwagon, to see if it might be turned around, before joining when it became clear it would go the distance.
Not a slam-dunk case, I’m happy to admit. But in the absence of anything that gives me cause to think you more innocent than anyone else I could name, it makes you my default choice, at least until I’ve looked more closely at some of the other options.
So, in this version of events, I tried to build town cred, but my scum-buddy called me out on it? And, if that wasn’t dumb enough, I spent the next day demanding he make a decent case against me, while he looks ever more scummy by dodging my questions? Then I pointed out a piece of evidence which had been largely overlooked, and which was exactly the kind of thing likely to get him lynched around here?
Really? I mean, peeker was a roleblocker. What kind of mafia team will throw a power-role like that under the bus with such gay abandon?
Where convoluted logic and smudgy conclusions meet, scumminess is often found. You’re not helping your case here.
What I saw between you and peeker were a couple of people sniping at each other. I really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the interaction between the two of you at that point, because it seemed to be not a lot more than you two going “I think you’re Scum!” “I know you are, but what am I?”. Frankly, on Day 1 that sort of thing barely draws my attention.
As far as where you "pointed out a piece of evidence that had been largely neglected:, when exactly did that happen? I assume you’re talking about Post 1264, where you said “Did you read something on the scumboard, perhaps?” At that point, peeker is under no pressure whatsoever. After you post that, a couple people do take a closer look. And then in Post 1309 you say, in response to Natlaw questioning peeker’s ‘flip-flop’ on which post had him confused, “Sorry, I’m confused. I neither understand peeker’s post, nor why you find it significant.” You seem to be trying to lessen the impact of peeker’s posts here.
The discussion then moves away from peeker and centers mainly on Idle and NAF for the next 40 posts or so, until USCDiver revisits the topic in Post 1353. Your only comment on the subject after that comes in Post 1392
By this point, peeker had already picked up 8 votes (in just under 2 hours), in addition to the single vote you had placed against him the previous Day. Here you defend him against the 8 people who had just voted for him, but of course you can’t remove the vote you placed against him a Day earlier for a completely different reason.
So in this version of events, you and peeker were having some ‘harmless fun’ with each other, which everyone else was mostly ignoring. Then when peeker starts to come under scrutiny, you are able to deflect the discussion away from him. Later, when everything suddenly explodes against him, you come in and put up a defense, but by then it’s too late.
Am I certain this is how things went down? No, I’m not. Really, I hadn’t given much thought to the case against you until Today. Yes, I found your defense of Romanic suspicious, but without any other suspicious behavior it wasn’t nearly enough to make a case against you. But your case against me seems to amount to nothing more than “Peeker suspected me and he was Scum; you also suspected me so you must be Scum as well”. The fact that you continue to push such a case has led me to take a closer look at you, and what I see makes me question your motives all the more.
What case?
All you’ve really got as motivation here is my vote against you.
Everything else you’ve said is just explaining how my actions might not be as innocent as they appear, on the basis that the whole scuffle between peeker and I might have been some kind of elaborate charade that went horribly wrong.
That’s not even the beginnings of a case.
It’s still better than “I agreed with peeker on something, therefore we must both be Scum”.
I haven’t even come close to saying you must be scum. Why do you exaggerate?
I’m far from making my mind up about who should get lynched today. You’re not doing your own case much good, though.
I’m sorry, I assumed that because you voted to lynch me, that you thought I must be Scum. Or are you in the habit of wanting to kill people who you think are Town?
NETA: Upon reread, it occurs to me that you might be arguing with the phrase “must be”. If that’s the case then your argument in your last post (#2191) is technically correct. You haven’t said anything close to “Suburban must be Scum”.
But that wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.
No, I don’t. What did you mean by it?
I agree that my reasoning would be poor if I took your actions vis-a-vis peeker to mean you must be scum. But that’s not even remotely what I said:
Why is it that you’ve got so worked up over this? After all, I’m not the only one voting for you, and yet you’ve seen fit first to create a rather fantastical conspiracy theory around myself and peeker, whilst wildly exaggerating my confidence in the case against you.
This kind of response is not pro-town. Nothing you’ve said leads me to believe your comments are intended to catch scum, rather than simply to save your own hide by throwing muck at your accuser.
With the PM artifacts explained (and really, colour me astonished) I’m really not seeing the case against Mahaloth anymore.
I do however see the case against Suburban Plankton. Partly because I find Normal’s case persuasive but also because I’ve brought it up myself. I’m going to quote myself extensively here, but with the absence of multiquote you’ll have to follow the links back to see what I’m responding to.
In short: 1) In “only two posts” asked a lot of questions about the Martyr role/Chip; 2) Series of posts minimising peeker’s slip and sowing doubt on the case(s) against him; 3) By his own admission, drawing attention to (but never coming to a conclusion on) the potential for NAF to be lying.
vote Suburban Plankton
Plankton says here that he hasn’t got much prepared by way of defence:
But in this post he gives a pretty comprehensive defence of McGs case against him, quoting chapter and verse on her posts about him. Now, there are three possibilities:
He researched and wrote that post in the c.50 minutes between it and McG’s post. Plausible if he was online at that point, otherwise a lot of work in a short time.
Since he started coming under fire, he’s put a little bit more thought into how to answer the case against him.
He’s always been putting thought into the case against him.
Setting aside the oddity of the argument that only scum can adequately explain their arguments and votes, two out of those three possibilities are consistent with Suburban’s argument that making a well-researched defence is a scum tell. Or to put it another way, inconsistent with his claim that he’s just an innocent Townie who never concerned himself with how he looked.
Could we get a vote count, please?
VOTE COUNT
Suburban Plankton – 4 votes – Natlaw (2105), Normal Phase (2181), Mrs. McGinty (2185), Stanislaus (2195)
Mahaloth – 2 votes – special ed (2063), Hal Briston (2074)
PLAYER LIST
ALIVE
DEAD
MHaye (The Unctuous Plastic Surgeon), Town Vanilla
Oredigger77 (The Pharmaceutical Sales Representative), Town Vanilla
Chipacabra (The Complete A-Hole), Town Martyr
Omi No Kami (The Stubborn Skeptic), Town Vanilla
Idle Thoughts (The Inexperienced Religious Figure), Town Investigator
Rysto (The Grave Robber), Town Special
Romanic (The Hitchhiker), Town Special
peekercpa (Morphous, Nightmare Prince), Scum Role-Blocker
Astral Rejection (The Trickster), Scum Special
Telcontar (The Demon Mook), Scum Goon
Day to end Saturday, October 30, at around 1:30PM.
Thanks, Story!
I went over the entire thread yesterday, not making notes, but just looking for gut feelings about anyone.
I had been suspicious of Normal Phase, because the coincidence of her just happening to be attacked and Chipacabra just happening to protect her seems so great. But I noted that she was one of the first (perhaps the first) to aggressively pursue a case against Telcontar, and I can certainly see Scum killing her over that. It does, however, throw a little bit of suspicion on Mrs McGinty, for arguing fairly strenuously that this might have been a Scum ruse to convince Town that they were on the wrong track.
The fact that Mrs McGinty and Peeker spent a full Day at each other’s throats while largely ignoring what else was going on also looks as if it could have been an intentional distraction. But as I’ve said before, I don’t get Peeker, never have, never will, and I can certainly understand being sufficiently exasperated by him to focus on him as Mrs McGinty did. Still, it might have been a clever little ploy between the two of them. So Mrs McGinty is on my suspect list, but not highly enough to get a vote.
Drain’s claim bugs me a little, because it’s just so hard to understand why she would be classified as Vanilla rather than Special. But, for the life of me, I can’t understand why she would change it if it were a cover role provided by Story, and the role reads like Story. In my reread, I have to admit that she pinged me a couple of times, but I just don’t see enough evidence to believe that she’s Scum using the book and magically knowing that it would cause an apparent Pro-Town result. So for the moment, she goes on my Tentative Town list.
Mahaloth doesn’t ping me at all. I haven’t played with him before, so I don’t have any prior experience of his behavior to judge by. His claim seems fine to me, and I have no reason to distrust it. So, again for the moment, he also goes on my Tentative Town list.
Suburban Plankton, on the other hand, does strike me as plausible Scum. If you read the build up to Peeker’s lynch, it seems to me that he and Astral are playing both ends against the middle, making sure that Scum has a foot in on both sides. That’s something I’d think was a good idea if I was Scum - make sure that on any given point, you had at least one player on each side so that if they were outed, it wouldn’t reveal anything about “Scum behavior.” And I agree with Stanislaus that Plankton has done a lot of pot-stirring, which is in essence trying to keep a foot on either side by yourself.
So, for now, I’m going to vote Suburban Plankton. I find the cases against him more compelling than his defense of himself. Sorry I don’t have more to add.
An intentional distraction away from the otherwise pressing business of lynching townies? Why, as scum, would I go after peeker so aggressively, when it was clear that he wasn’t making himself look at all innocent by his responses?
If it was meant to be distancing tactics, I could easily have backed off after the opening exchanges. But I didn’t stop chasing him until I’d drawn attention back onto his comment about the book, in light of NAF’s revelation about having lost it, and everyone started piling onto the bandwagon.
After that, the case was made, and he offered nothing in the way of a defence. Job done.