Thank you for the return of activity, Imp. Now can you answer my questions and discuss things post-Behemoth?
Imp: Now that Kleril seems to be attacking SBC do you think that they're trying to bus SBC or you were just incorrect about the two being scumbuddies?
Still deciding. I still think I see suggestive clues that supports the theory that they are a team with privileged information. I have already posted of that, and you ask me about after Behemoth, which I'm still chewing on. Together, all this info since is way more than I gave in Behemoth, working on it hard and with very limited inputs back as yet from Kleril, which would be helpful.
No piece of evidence is, to my eyes, a smoking gun. This thing is a whole. Gestalt and all, it's both each piece separately and a whole together and in order to be true, it all has to work together to be a whole.
I can see reason to support my being incorrect about either of them, and also, though I believe far less likely, that I am wrong about both.
For Superblackcat, I believe it would require these errors to be attributable to a mixture of:
innocent mistakes
extreme inexperience
deep conviction that he is probably already right no matter what multiple others say and any actual double checking he does himself
an unwillingness to read the opening post until extremely recently
an unwillingness or inability to count the number of players in play with himself for any reason at any point until VERY recently (or just have a basic confusion between 7 and 9)
AND an ability to suddenly (though not necessarily spontaneously) improve greatly with unbelievable speed.
Or I'm just more sure than should be. I'm willing to accept that I'm fooling myself, but I'd like help seeing it. He really didn't do anything 'damning and inexplicable' in my eyes, he just has looked more and more like Scum to me with most every post, be it from 'urging plans that seemed likely to fail' to 'enthusiastic failure to hunt' to 'failure to indicate a strategy I could understand might be highly successful in combining his no-lynch platform with, you know, winning'. Best I could see what 'it'll just happen, do it and you'll see, we've done all we need to do today once we've voted no-lynch'. Cause, that's what it appeared to me to be what he was doing, despite many different flavors of 'and how?'.
But assuming we decide that his 'I can't tell how many players I'm playing beside' defense is adequate and believable... that he actually cannot tell '7' from '9', yet does have all the other mental faculties that his performance to date suggests... and his sudden vast improvement in play makes sense too... He's going to be fine. It's not like he lied or anything - unless he lied about the numbers and perception. Can't tell you're playing beside 8 other people, not 6 other people for a full two weeks? No glance down the vote count, nothing? Nothing? I'm going to be a hard one to sell that too, but if the rest of you buy it there's nothing I can do - and hey, if I'm wrong, help me. I want to count to 9 too, if I'm only counting to 7 and thinking wrong thoughts and don't realize I am.
For Kleril, much the same errors of thought and judgment, but he did something far more guilty-seeming in my eyes -
I think I caught him lying. Not like Superblackcat's 'I want you to believe that I can't tell 7 from 9, really, but I realize my mistake and everything was always a misunderstanding, see I behave good now', nope, he changes how he talks - but just to me; in the same threads he talks to others quite differently. He attempts to talk to me similarly to how I talk; he speaks words of praise, he tells me and all with VERY strong words that I have gone, instantly, for him from vote to Top Town (never mind that he failed utterly to explain his reasons for that vote in a fashion I find believable... that's actually a smaller issue even though that appears to be a way to change the subject from his previous Scummy behavior), he speaks 'honeyed words of poison', backhanded compliments that seem calculated to express for my viewpoint 'Imp is great' and also quiet and soft, as if hoping to slip them past me under the message of 'Imp is great' he also says 'But Imp is terrible, fear Imp, fear what Imp can be'.
Now that's great. That's GREAT! That could be a trap. That SHOULD be a trap. I'm fine with traps! I expect them! I welcome them from skilled and unskilled alike - this is a game where traps are good! So I dance with him. I try to mirror his mirroring me - I remind 'sure, trap me, but don't get trapped - you haven't exactly done the right things...
He chooses to keep dancing, and now he tries to explain away his odd behavior earlier with a variant of 'I messed up cause I'm like you, I made the same mistake you did'. Only I check it, and it tastes false. It tastes of lies, and I tell him this, in the language we are both speaking, even if both of us don't know what these words mean - you are caught, what are you going to do -
And he says, I keep dancing, but I'm going to get a little stern, because I don't like how you are dancing. So I say back, Really? And I close the trap. Because why would a Townie lie? Trap me - really? Lying to trap me? You're smart enough to step up and dance, and
that's your strategy?
And he STILL had an out. He could have shown his trap. Even a bad one. But he didn't, he claimed I blew traps that were never meant for me (Huh? You lie to -me-, talking to -me- so very clearly, with the purpose of trapping another person? 'what is this I don't even.' and 'what how can work that?' in this sort of game, especially when your claimed prey is SBC - by this I mean making loads of mistakes and acting really scummy?
Seeing as how everyone's kept their second top FOS played close to their chests, I thought it'd be a smart play to follow suit. Had things played out differently, I would have come out here and said that SBC was who we all should be voting next round. Way to go, Imp. You dragged it out of me. It didn't need to happen, and now the scum's play is going to change accordingly, now that it's in writing.
@Imp's behemoth attacking me:
Re: 1) Nothing I would have said about cat hadn't already been brought up by other players. It's not helping town any if my contributions are entirely redundant forms of entire redundancy.
And also he says, 'But we were dancing! I like you! How can you attack me! If I was going to try and lie to you, I'd have done it from the beginning, not a couple days after start of play!' wut.
2) This is faith I have placed in you, based on how you've been playing. I have no fact to back it up, but this is what I believe. If I had facts (i.e. if I was scum), things would be different, and this convincing would have been from post one, and not 5 or so pages in. Use your head.
And also he says, 'No, really. I don't understand. You didn't catch nothing and what you say about how I don't see like you even though I say I did, you're just saying nothing.' What he apparently ALSO doesn't understand is that there's NO WAY for those posts to mislead him. When Deathsword posts, how the HECK does ANYONE misunderstand and think that somehow Deathsword's account is placing a vote against Deathsword from some player whose name is red in Deathsword's post?
3) It's day one, and where votes have been placed has been established as more of a scumhunting tool than anything. Using the votecount alone, and not the posts to justify them, is useless.
This is just blind panic defense. And he -told- me by being able to talk pretty good like me that he wasn't totally stupid. It's next to impossible for me to believe he's just some human Amazon Parrot or something who genuinely doesn't understand the words, or know what it means when you use them. Luke - ok, could have been 12. But 12 year olds rarely can use words to dance with any level of skill. What I see is stupid lies. And no reason for Townie to use them. Not even to showboat.
I even THEN try to give him an out.
I direct him to scum hunting, something he should have been doing all along, duh, but distinctly wasn't working very hard on before he called our dance - and didn't really get very far because his claims were so outlandish that really, there's no dance. I also specifically warn, yawn, don't hunt only Superblackcat. Cause, he's rather firmly being looked at right now. Look at Cat too - sure. But it's not going to convince -me- that you're hunting to chase after the obvious target. I'm perfectly happy -already- to say yes, the one of you who is not you is guilty. But to get me to agree that YOU are innocent, you need to either convince me you made multiple and ongoing completely Townie choices that just happen to all be so terribly terrible, but yeah, you ARE Town (Blink blink Waste of space? blink blink Don't lynch Town if avoidable blink blink Who to lynch instead?)
After all, I say BOTH are guilty, and I believe I've found and presented a ton of evidence on both of them. Some of it may be wrong, but is most of it? Keep in mind, if you want to judge them on my observations and interpretations being 100% correct - Ok, I'm not perfect, but am I wrong about so much that they don't look like Scum, really? So the easiest way out is to find someone Scummier.
You specifically ask what I think about Kleril seeming to attack SBC. I think it's dumb. Even if he gets even better proof against SBC, how's that supposed to get Kleril's neck out of the noose? I think this situation is such so that IF they are both Scum, bussing cannot save them, but I'm really not convinced that either of them plays well enough (except is there Mentor smiling on?) to understand 'bus or not bus in this case'. I think mentor would say no to bus... but who knows how well they listen.
So my biggest (but not only) question about SBC.... how'd he get better so fast? Can that be explained without Mr Mentor? Could he have someone else helping him? We're not supposed to talk to each other, but the rules don't forbid us from trying to ask someone not in play.... Seems good to me. How to prove it's outside help, or really him and not Mr Mentor? Well.... that's hard. I'll let others maybe solve that one. Besides, he make me work so hard! If he can play good, why'd he make me work so hard first while playing so badly? I am so not convinced.
And my biggest question about Kleril is 'why lie'. That whole lynch all liars thing. If he's brave enough to risk looking like Scum to set a trap - go for it. Doo eet. Make it clear what you're doing when you succeed - or fail. Then it's not a lie, it's an 'oh really. Really? Really?' And maybe alright. What in blue blazes makes anyone think I want to lynch them, if they are actually Town? How the heck am I scary. I'm just Scum hunting as best I can think how.