Checking back in. I’ve read up to date. Yay doctor for choosing the right person, and yay vigilante for choosing no one.
Honestly not sure where my suspicions lie today. Having been wrong about Oredigger I’m going to review and think more to avoid making another mistake.
Question for Lost fiends:
What do we think of the importance of Michael Dawson? I’m inclined to disregard this kind of argument because it reeks of metagaming and I have no real independent method of evaluation, but I might as well ask. I wasn’t all that suspicious of Chronos to begin with, however.
Bloody heck. I missed that on my run-through; IF posted his role PM in #467. Thanks for the correction, Chronos. Unvote Imaginary Fiend based on this correction.
I’m still curious why IF voted the way he did. Now, though, I’m more curious why CardinalFang voted for both of the runners-up, who have both claimed plain Town.
Well, the claims of plain Town should be taken with a grain of salt, given that the Scum have been given aliases. When evaluating such a claim, one needs to ask, how likely is it that this character was chosen as one of the original Townies in this game? From what I can tell from IMDb, Imaginary Fiend’s claim of Nikki Fernandez isn’t all that strong from this point of view: She’s only been in 14 out of 99 episodes, and her character bio is blank.
Just checking in for now. Last few days have been chaos. Will look over stuff.
Also, no NK, yay. But here’s a terrifying thought - what if the Scum get 2 NK every 2nd Night? No, I think a successful Doctor is the most likely explanation. Possibly a roleblock. Either way, this looks good.
I’d just like to say for the record that a Day voting cycle that includes weekends seems to offer an inherent disadvantage to town. (Being that there’s not going to be as much discussion over weekends. Didn’t someone else mention this?)
That being said, I’m not ready to vote just yet toDay, but I plan to work on that… After the weekend.
Good to see there was not a night kill. I have a few theories as to what may have transpired, but I won’t go into any more detail until we know more. Some of storyteller’s night posts had me a bit suspicious, but in light of the no kill, I’m going to withhold further judgement there.
Conversely, my previous day’s suspicions of Chronos are still there and without a night kill to give us any more information, I’m going to continue with my previous vote. And of course, Chronos is correct that all subsequent claims of Vanilla Town should be taken with a grain of salt. Particularly those that are word for word from a previous Vanilla claim. As far as I can tell we haven’t been told one way or the other if all the Vanilla PMs will match or not.
I already answered this question, at #887, in fairly explicit detail.
At what point did I decline to say that my name and alignment matched? I did say it, just not within the confines of an arbitrary timeline over which I had no control. How am I supposed to answer this otherwise? “Because I didn’t get around to it until after Mahaloth rendered it moot by giving the Scum aliases.” It’s valid reasoning to have increased suspicion of those who delayed, of course, it simply results in a false conclusion in my case.
I don’t, however, see it as parallel to the situation here, in which players have clearly seen and processed my request and directly refused to participate on the grounds that it might have some vague negative effects.
In any case, I’ll drop it now. It seemed a useful topic of conversation during the Night, when we couldn’t vote and thus active strategy discussion is historically modest, but too many people are disinterested or opposed to make it happen, and if everyone doesn’t participate, it’s worthless.
On to the actual game, for which I find myself considerably refreshed after four days of trying to navigate DC traffic, which was a reminder of what real frustration feels like.
Day One: How it Happened
A Completely Subjective Summary
PART THE FIRST: The Meeko pile-on
NOTE: I know I am Town. Until I am dead and confirmed, I recognize that none of the rest of you will know this. However, it would be beyond useless for me to spend time developing an analysis without using all the information available to me – and that information includes the fact that I am Town. If you suspect this argument on the basis of the fact that you think I am Scum, please revisit it later when I am dead.
I am also more or less assuming that Meeko is Town. I may be wrong about this, but at some point you have to make an educated guess about something in this game or you’ll paralyze yourself.
All numbers referenced with a number sign (#) are post numbers.
I start at #212, with pedescribe, who leads us off with a vote for CHRONOS, accusing the latter of trying to pretend lack of knowledge about the Scum by asking for clarification on their win condition. He withdraws this vote very soon thereafter.
Meeko discusses pedescribe. Meeko’s argument is about as weak and Day One-ish as ped’s own was for Chronos, and pedescribe perhaps justifiably votes MEEKO for misrepresentation. Worth noting: Meeko does not actually vote for pedescribe here.
BillMc offers a deconstruction of some of Meeko’s posts at #230, and FoSes Meeko (but does not vote for him). My suspicion is mildly aroused here. Why not vote? If Bill is a Townie, and has real suspicion of Meeko and no vote currently on the record, why not just vote for him and get things rolling? If on the other hand, Bill is Scum and trying to keep his nose relatively clean, perhaps he’s waiting to see if the case against Meeko gains any traction.
Jimmy Chitwood does the opposite of this at #237, firing a vote at PEDESCRIBE on admittedly little evidence. Meeko also votes PEDESCRIBE at this point.
Time passes. Meeko switches over to JIMMY CHITWOOD. I don’t… I can’t… I don’t understand why.
Chronos votes for ICHINI early, for the latter’s seeming inconsistency regarding my own post of LOST information.
Bill votes for MEEKO at #267, no additional reasoning given. Interestingly, since Meeko has garnered little additional suspicion and no additional votes since Bill initially FoSed him, my argument against BillMc above doesn’t really apply so much anymore.
Telecontar votes PEDESCRIBE, on the grounds that the latter appears to be playing reactively vs. proactively. I don’t agree with this reasoning, but I can’t fault it. It’s a fair argument, just not persuasive to me.
Blah blah blah and then cardinal_fang becomes the third vote for PEDESCRIBE at #287. He piggybacks a bit on TELECONTAR. Stuff happens, then Meeko alters his vote again and returns to PEDESCRIBE, putting the latter at four votes early in the Day.
Let’s pause for reflection. By this point, the PEDESCRIBE train is really humming. Four votes, his only serious competition for suspicion in the early Day is Meeko. If pedescribe is Scum, the Scum will probably attempt a bit of a redirect here, but without being too aggressive about it. If he’s Town, they’ll mill about a bit, trying to variously generate backup lynch wagons (in case ped claims Mason or something), and/or generate Town cred by voting for one another.
AllWalker’s post and vote at #306 bugs me. He votes for MEEKO, which whatever, but he also inserts that “suspicious as pede is” clause that seems so out-of-place here. Why say this? AllWalker’s previous two posts on the subjective of pedescribe have been decidedly noncommittal. They read thusly:
and then
I put it to the reader: do AllWalker’s comments regarding pede line up with his use of that pesky little “suspicious as pede is” thing? If pede is suspicious enough to mention it in the context of voting for a completely different player, why have his previous comments on pede been so carefully avoiding expressing real suspicion in favor of sort of faux-suspicion? Hm. Moving on.
Known Town Tom Scud puts MEEKO into a tie with pedescribe at #317, and known Town Oredigger follows immediately thereon with a fifth vote for MEEKO.
Five votes for MEEKO at this point: pedescribe, BillMC, AllWalker, Tom Scud, Oredigger. Two confirmed Town, three unknowns. Of the three unknowns, AllWalker seems suspicious for direct reasons (see above) and pedescribe for sort of meta reasons (if AllWalker is Scum and my hypothesis above is correct, it would make good sense for pedescribe to be Scum alongside him). BillMc I really have no active reason to suspect at present.
Lots of talking ensues, then Mahaloth announces that he will give aliases to the Scum.
At #382, Tom Scud jumps off the Meeko train and creates the IMAGINARY FIEND train for the first time. He regards IF’s really intense opposition to the name claim to be suspicious in light of Mahaloth’s change. This is not unreasonable.
ShadowFacts makes what I regard as a good point at #385, and votes for TELECONTAR. Please read. His point is not dissimilar to the one I made above about AllWalker.
Zeriel votes for ICHINI, for the same basic reason as did Chronos.
Oredigger and Telecontar, respectively, unvote Meeko and pedescribe. Telecontar, for his part, goes for IMAGINARY FIEND immediately (same reasoning as Tom Scud). Nanook agrees, and votes IF.
Yup. I mean, it’s all well and good to coast from Day to Day shouting at one another, but it is usually instructive, once a bit of information has come out about alignments of various participants, to look more closely at how we got to the places we got.
Part two will come later today. There may or may not be a part 3; depends on how wordy it gets.
I guess I just disagree with your conclusions then. I don’t watch Lost, but I know that there is no reason within this game to assume that all the players’ names will be drawn from Seasons 1 and 2. You admit that choosing the inclusion criteria of “one who was the focus of at least one flashback episode during the show’s first two seasons” is arbitrary. I think it would be detrimental to the Town to use your list as some kind of yard stick against which all claims are made. What if there was a character from one of the later seasons who is clearly Town aligned according to the canon of the show? Does that player automatically come under suspicion because s/he doesn’t fall on you list?
Conversely, compiling a list from all 5 seasons would be prohibitively long and probably even more arbitrary in assigning likely alignments.
In the end, I just don’t see how coercing the players to commit to being on an arbitrary list or not helps us out? In the end, it only works if every player says they are on the list because in that instance it forces the scum to use one of the names on the list if/when they claim and run the risk of being counter-claimed. But what if they’re Mod-given alias DOES fall on the list? Then we’ve falsely confirmed them.
I think we can probably assume from the lack of consensus from other players confirming their place on the list, that there are a significant number of players who are NOT on the list and don’t want to risk being falsely accused of being scum.
Chronos, you’re scum! Allwalker, everything you do is the most obvious anti-town strategy ever employed! Everyone knows you have a scum power role! Meeko, shut the hell up, and post more! pedescribe, how come you kept sticking up for Chronos while going after confirmed Town players, and then clammed up? Telcontar, why are you playing so passively? Chitwood, are you town?
Yes, douchebag.
What, did the not-playing-the-game factory explode here on the island?
Um, OK, what’s going on here? Near as I can figure, Jimmy is trying to elicit responses to get the game moving again, but the only response I can make out to that is “Huh?”.
I don’t know, I thought it was pretty funny. He’s right about one thing: this is a sad state of affairs. Where the hell is everybody? Weekend is long over, so that excuse is gone. When the Town is silent, scum wins. If you don’t have time to make your own case, at least comment on the cases already out there.
