The Syndicate

With regards to Ninja: I was losing my mind sitting on the sidelines and watching everyone not talk about her. When I came back I wanted nothing more than to seize the opportunity to thrust her name back in the discussion. Now that I've done that I can say that she's no longer my top suspect, and I don't think there's any doubt that Golden is wrong about her role. I do not think that completely clears her and am still far from clearing her name, but I'm coming down a little bit, at least. I'm still going to consider voting for her today if I'm not dead.

I also want to note that Jay made that statement before Bass was lynched and flipped town. Clairvoyant or scum?

Jay's Bass ISO came at a time when Bass seemed to have one foot in the grave, and by his own admission this, this was just an exercise in self-assurance. What bugs me is the final conclusion, that Bass was "probably a valid lynch", when a lot of the analysis in this ISO seems to point toward a more favorable read of Bass. I could see a scum Jay wanting to give the appearance of supporting a Bass lynch just to avoid being called out for preemptively distancing himself from the lynch. What made you so willing to lend your soft support of the Bass lynch, Jay?

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I thought the Cobalt votes from the last day were suspect primarily because i thought the general case against Cobalt seemed weak. The case against Bass seems a little better at least, even if it still hinges more on small pings and less on real meat than I'd like. If Bass flips town, that'll be a terrible look for everyone who represents overlap between these two lynches:

Golden
ninja
Marsh
Scotty
nutella

Care to follow up on these thoughtss? nutella was lynched, she was town. Scotty is dead, we don't know what he was. Golden, ninja, and Metalmarsh are all still here. Why specifically does this thing make them all look bad, and how would you approach each case individually?

I have been trying to case JJJ, but my laptop is not making it easy on me so I'm gonna try to gather my thoughts in some smaller phone-posts. Here's some questions for Jay:
Going back to when you first subbed into the game, you had said that you were following along "sporadically", with particular focus on This Guy. If this is the case, and you did have some understanding of the game prior to entering it, I would like to ask what your mindset was upon entering the game? You asked a lot of questions and seemed to struggle to get situated. I am particularly curious about your strategy of asking others to give you names to look at. What made you think this strategy in particular would be the most beneficial? Also, I'll ask completely narcisistically, why you didn't immediately look into my top suspects (by which i mean niju) after subbing in? If you were having trouble getting into the game, wouldn't the reads of such a familiar and trusted player as myself be a good place to start?
I am a bit puzzled by your change of heart regarding Cobalt here. First you were not going to vote for him at all, but then you were willing to join his bandwagon because he's a "point of contention". I don't recall you having a mindset like this in past games (wanting to lynch a player just because others are getting stuck on them), and it's especially jarring when you've seemed staunchly opposed the lynch of that player at a points prior to this. Could you elaborate on your thought process between these two posts?
I suspect you knew and know a few ways to give the game a kick in the keister here. But what caught my eye here was your comment about scotty. It's a lot more directionless than I'm used to from you. "Vaguely bad vibes" is much weaker than your usual reads. I've not looked at all your posts, so forgive me if you covered this, but could you substantiate what these "vaguely bad vibes" were?

It seems we're all very busy, and I propose the remaining bad guys just forfeit the game.

I'll finally deliver on my promise of juicy content in a few hours.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:Oh geez, did everyone wander away when I reminded them the night phase doesn't end for another 2 days?

I did not even realize this. I'll do some heavy lifting tomorrow evening. I'm sorry for my underwhelming contributions since the resurrection. Life is a lot more busy now than it was on days 1-5.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:

Metalmarsh89 wrote:

Sloonei wrote:I was reading through splints' history trying to decide if I should vote for her, and I rediscovered her post where she quotes Long Con of scummy past saying that he likes to set up his own sacrifice by taking an openly adversarial stance with one of his partners in the thread.

Doesn't the Day 2 nightkill kind of discount that? Golden survived a kill from Team Wildhorn, and I don't see a reason to believe that any member of that team should be able to survive a nightkill.

If anything, Golden would be on Team Webber.

Sloonei, you also suggested that Golden could be on Team Wildhorn (if I understood you correctly), and I don't think that's the case.

I do not have any developed theories about golden being bad at the moment, just a hunch. I'll try to substantiate it tomorrow or more likely saturday, if i'm alive

Lol, sorry I was paying zero attention to the thread tonight. I would have said something, but

Golden wrote:

Sloonei wrote:

Golden wrote:I don't understand what it is about basic mathematics which escapes you, MM.

@sloonei - in that case, did you miss the bit where I raised it long before splints did, when he was fighting with cobalt, hmm? And the bit where team two tried to KILL ME!

Fucking hell.

This is not my only reason for suspecting. It's something about the tone and direction of yojr recent posts. I'll try to pinpoint it when I have the time. I haven't read anything from the last 6 or 7 hours, so I don't know why everyone piled on Neverwhere. While she was probably my strongest suspect today, I do not like this lynch.

They piled on because you didn't show up, and they were waiting for you. When you didn't show up, the lynch was already decided.

I do not see any evidence of this being true. But, for the record, when I left for work the only vote that had been cast was Metalmarsh's. I had no time to even check the thread while I was there. When I got home the day had ended. I was silenced all day. Was no one aware of this?

Golden wrote:I don't understand what it is about basic mathematics which escapes you, MM.

@sloonei - in that case, did you miss the bit where I raised it long before splints did, when he was fighting with cobalt, hmm? And the bit where team two tried to KILL ME!

Fucking hell.

This is not my only reason for suspecting. It's something about the tone and direction of yojr recent posts. I'll try to pinpoint it when I have the time. I haven't read anything from the last 6 or 7 hours, so I don't know why everyone piled on Neverwhere. While she was probably my strongest suspect today, I do not like this lynch.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:

Sloonei wrote:I was silenced if that wasn't obvious. Missed the vote because work ran a little longer than I was anticipating. I would not have made a difference.
I think Golden might be bad.

I am starting to get a similar impression.

I really hoped he would have made a move to lynch me there at the end.

Why are you getting this impression?

I was reading through splints' history trying to decide if I should vote for her, and I rediscovered her post where she quotes Long Con of scummy past saying that he likes to set up his own sacrifice by taking an openly adversarial stance with one of his partners in the thread.

I was silenced if that wasn't obvious. Missed the vote because work ran a little longer than I was anticipating. I would not have made a difference.
I think Golden might be bad.

What do the people who've been paying attention to roles have to say about Jekyll & Hyde? Anything we can say or discern will be largely speculative, but I don't think it will hurt to raise the issue publicly.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I'm ready to quit screwing around and lynch Neverwhere.

Neverwhere and ninja both need to go imo.

Fair deal. I've only preliminarily looked into the points I raised in my last post. I don't knownhow they'll stand when they're expanded on.

Something that I've noticed about niju's and splints's votes is that they both gave the same reason for suspecting Nutella: her suspicion of splints did not seem authentic. Niju stated this reason before fingersplints did, here. Based on this content alone, I am inclined to say that splints was perhaps being a bit opportunistic by latching onto a Nutella bandwagon. I'll hopefully look back through both of their post histories to see how these things look with more context.

I had been trusting of Golden the whole time I was in the game prior to my death, but I have been less a fan of the direction his posts have gone since then. A number of his suspicions have been wrong, and that in itself is enough to raise some alarms. What I find more believable about his account of the end of day proceedings is that he expected Epi to vote for Neverwhere. I would, however, like to hear him explain why he was expecting that particular vote from Epignosis.

How would you rank the four Nutella voters from least to most suspicious?

Your explanation is a good one, and I have a hard time finding you at fault for anything really. But, just for clarification, could you run down the reasons why MM was (and perhaps still is) your top suspect? I have had varying degrees of suspicion about him all game and fresh perspectives never hurt.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:It's Night 11, but we still have a long way to go it seems.

You and spacedaisy seem to have sat out this last lynch by placing votes on each other. What made you so confident in your case against her that you chose not to vote for either of the two popular choices?

I would ask her the inversed version of this question.

I'll look for your breadcrumbs in the morning. I'm tired right now.

I shouldn't really be calling Jay a strong town read. I haven't done all my homework yet. Scratch that blue on my rainbow.

I can now assume that at least 2/3 of the people voting for Neverwhere are confirmed town, which is reassuring. And the third vote is my strongest remaining town read.

Golden wrote:

Sloonei wrote:

Dom wrote: Company – Somebody hold me too close, Somebody hurt me too deep. Bobby has commitment issues. On night 3, Company can establish anonymous BTSC with a player of their choosing.

nutella has had BTSC with a player since night 3. There is no reason to believe that person was civ, or that they're still alive. But it's something.

There is, in fact, pretty good reason to believe that person is not alive, based on that poll result.

Do you mean this most recent poll result?
Also could you elaborate on your thoughts about Ninja for me?

Dom wrote: Company – Somebody hold me too close, Somebody hurt me too deep. Bobby has commitment issues. On night 3, Company can establish anonymous BTSC with a player of their choosing.

nutella has had BTSC with a player since night 3. There is no reason to believe that person was civ, or that they're still alive. But it's something.

Epignosis wrote:I'm just here to break the ties, holmes.

Why did you break it for nutella and not neverwhere?

obligatory "epi needs to explain that one" post.

Well that's not good.

I think it's worth something that I abandoned my ISO of Neverwhere before reaching the end of it because her posts were overwhelmingly suspicious to me. I saw nothing in her posts that inspired confidence, and quite a bit that raised alarms.

Are you here, [insert player name]?

Are you here, nutella?

nijuukyugou wrote:Popping in. I will be short, sweet, and popping out after this, because after a fabulous night with friends I haven't seen in ages, I'm exhausted today from the late night travel and need a little less...cerebral activity. I can't even think of a good synonym for that.

Sloonei wrote:For the people currently voting for or suspicious of Nutella: which team do you think she is more likely be on? Why?

Based on vote record, probably Team Wildhorn.

Why? What specific votes make you think this? Pretend I haven't looked at her vote history at all. Because uh...

I think her suspicion of splints is contrived (I expressed this in an earlier post), as well as others she's voted for multiple times (e.g., Cobalt), to go for the consistency merit badge in case they don't end up flipping Team Webber. This also gives me pause:

Spoiler: show

Epignosis wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:

Metalmarsh89 wrote:Linki: What's a wasted opportunity?

To not use your vote strategically. It isn't vacant of value right now even if it might not be your final choice.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Look at me, capitalizing sentences (and fragments) like a real boy.

Split infinitive!

You know what I hate worse than rainbow lists?

Rainbow lists that make no sense.

nutella wrote:Sloonei
Golden
JJJ
SVS
Spacedaisy

Gumshoe
Niju (putting her in the middle because I was suspicious of her but am inclined to trust Golden and can see her as civ)

Devin
Epignosis
Metalmarsh

Neverwhere
DFaraday
Fingersplints

Gumshoe hasn't posted since Night 1. What warrants his place in your top six?

Devin hasn't posted since Night 1. What warrants his place lower than Gumshoe and nijuukyugou but higher than me?

I'm pleased to see brown was used in this "rainbow read." It's fitting.

It all looks contrived. I do have a heart and I feel bad reading nutella's recent posts imploring others not to lynch her, but I've been both burned by and laughed behind the scenes at baddie pathos too many times to let it sway me away from what I see regardless. I see sudden enthusiasm for a Neverwhere vote. I can see that from the inactive baddie perspective, but I don't have strong enough feelings in that direction to change my vote.

OH MY GOD I DID IT THE SPOILER TAG WORKED

I can understand these feelings and would like to see nutella's response.

I would prefer a Neverwhere lynch to Nutella, but I don't think either one is a terrible option at this point, and not enough to offer any strong defense of Nutella. I hope she is able to provide that herself.

There were two monsters

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote:No, I am just saying that your suspicion is 100% speculative, so there is nothing serious I can say in response to it. I am town because the Loch Ness Monster has ordained it so.

The Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist, dummy. Nice try.

I had to pay a fee of $3.50 to reenter this game.

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote:No, I am just saying that your suspicion is 100% speculative, so there is nothing serious I can say in response to it. I am town because the Loch Ness Monster has ordained it so.

The Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist, dummy. Nice try.

I had to pay a fee of $3.50 to reenter this game.

Epignosis wrote:I don't think of Neverwhere because Neverwhere is Neverhere.

I will vote to break a tie.

Is there something in the content of my posts since I was resurrected that gives you pause?

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote: I also plan on looking into him when I can.

When you cut me open with a hatchet?

is that permissible?

What do you think of Neverwhere? Why is your vote on me?

Neverwhere? More like NeverHere amirite?

I don't think of Neverwhere. No opinion. I'll vote to keep it from being a tie, as I've always said.

My vote is on you because you left when I asked you a question. You came back, ignored it, and then when I asked again, you treated it as though it was a joke.

It wasn't a joke.

I had left before you asked the question. Would you like to know what real life activity I was engaged in at the time? When I returned I responded to it when I saw it. I did not take it seriously because it was an entirely speculative point. You believe I was converted upon resurrection because hooded figures appeared in the mod's night message. You believe the mod told the thread that I am a bad guy. I am new to the Syndicate, but I don't think that sort of thing happens in any game of mafia anywhere.

Do you mean that, because you have been resurrected, you should be above suspicion?

I have witnessed a resurrected lynched civilian be secretly recruited to the Mafia's side.

Guess which team won.

No, I am just saying that your suspicion is 100% speculative, so there is nothing serious I can say in response to it. I am town because the Loch Ness Monster has ordained it so.

Why do you not think of Neverwhere?

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote: I also plan on looking into him when I can.

When you cut me open with a hatchet?

is that permissible?

What do you think of Neverwhere? Why is your vote on me?

Neverwhere? More like NeverHere amirite?

I don't think of Neverwhere. No opinion. I'll vote to keep it from being a tie, as I've always said.

My vote is on you because you left when I asked you a question. You came back, ignored it, and then when I asked again, you treated it as though it was a joke.

It wasn't a joke.

I had left before you asked the question. Would you like to know what real life activity I was engaged in at the time? When I returned I responded to it when I saw it. I did not take it seriously because it was an entirely speculative point. You believe I was converted upon resurrection because hooded figures appeared in the mod's night message. You believe the mod told the thread that I am a bad guy. I am new to the Syndicate, but I don't think that sort of thing happens in any game of mafia anywhere.

Epignosis wrote:

Sloonei wrote: I also plan on looking into him when I can.

When you cut me open with a hatchet?

is that permissible?

What do you think of Neverwhere? Why is your vote on me?

Golden's vote has shifted to Neverwhere, putting her in the lead. I am glad to see Golden is following along, even if he can't contribute.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Sloonei, what do you think of Epi numero dos?

I put him on the bottom, yellowy part of my rainbow, as you can now see. That's largely a neutral read, but I was trying to avoid neutral stances and am more inclined to lean scum based on very little substantial evidence at this point. I also plan on looking into him when I can.
I'd be asking him questions if I thought I could get satisfactory answers.

I partially-GTH rainbow list:

Strong town:
JJJ
Moderate town:
Golden
Slight town:
fingersplints
SVS 2.0
Spacedaisy
Neutral/Arbitrary indie suspicion:
Devin?
Metalmarsh
Slight mafia:
Gumshoe
Epi 2.0
Nutella
DFaraday
Moderate mafia:
Neverwhere
nijuukyugou

@ jay: Have you had a chance to look into MP/Epi 2.0?

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:

Sloonei wrote:I am not familiar with nijuukyugou, so I can't claim to know how she would typically respond to a case like this one, but her strong dismissal of it as "nonsense", and all the stuff about her rejection of the theory that she's on a team with sig/g-man, makes me feel like this reaction is not genuine, and that she's reaching to swat the case away rather than addressing things directly.

I can understand your perspective. I don't know her style either so we're both left with our judgment calls, and as you said: we don't agree. I've found that some players are just a little cranky by nature when they are accused (particularly when accused repeatedly by one person). I think her behavior in defense against you seems to gel well enough with her conduct elsewhere in the game that I lean in favor of authenticity. She strikes me as a confident and capable player, and that type of player is probably more likely to be dismissive of cases against them regardless of alignment.

It's a tenuous gut read.

I also have no trouble understanding where you are coming from here. I've considered both of these sides, and I am sticking with my gut scum read for now.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Sloonei, I've reviewed your old case against ninja and I do disagree with some of your perspectives. I don't think you're suspicious for having them, but I'm not sure you're being entirely fair in your treatment of her content. It looks to me like you might be reading her through the "find the mafia alignment in this player" lens rather than the "find out what alignment this player is" lens. I'll reference a few specifics, quoting only your own text for the sake of brevity.

Spoiler: show

Sloonei wrote:Her response to MP here reads a little bit like backtracking/covering her tracks. She admits to misrepresenting (whether intentionally or not) the truth in regards to her earlier post about the truce discussion and also provides an excuse for herself to get off to a slow start. However, she then starts to provide a few reads. However however, as has been noted a bunch of times throughout this game, with two scum teams, the baddies should be doing about as much scum hunting as the townies in this game, so her observations that Epi 1.0 seemed to be "genuinely baddie hunting" and that "LC's response looks too defensive" could just as likely have been made by a baddie, presumably a non-Wildhorn one. The three names she mentions here (Epi, SVS, Long Con) were the three that everyone had an opinion of on Day 1, so it would have been nice to see Ninja dig a little deeper for reads here.

The matter of the "truce" on Day 0 strikes me as meaningless -- from everyone involved. I don't really care about Devin, MP/Epi, or ninja's perspective of that, because it is such a tiny thing. Otherwise, you seem to be leading yourself in the direction of a mafia read with the underlined content. It is indeed likely that members of both mafia teams have engaged in some mafia hunting, but that doesn't mean this should be raised as a point against ninja. Otherwise it must be raised against everyone who has shown any effort to mafia hunt. I don't see the logic.

The point you make about her choices of people to discuss being unoriginal is a better one. It's also one that could be applied to a ton of people from the Day 0/1/2 era when the Cobalt/LC controversy seemed to be 90% of the thread.

These are all fair points, but the things you are commenting on are not major parts of my case anyway. The underlined bit in a particular was more me thinking out loud than anything else. I am similarly not interested in the content of the Day 0 truce stuff, and what I was trying to point out there was niju's behavior rather than any opinion that was stated.

Spoiler: show

Sloonei wrote:I can't help but now read this post as her leaving the door open on all three lynch possibilities, creating the freedom for herself to vote any one of the three lynch candidates from that day. The bigger middle paragraph where she runs through her reasoning about all three feels a bit contrived and doesn't seem to fit as well with her previous statement that she's excited to have "decent suspicion" of all three and is "okay with voting any of them". Immediately after saying this, she expresses that she's not actually okay with voting Cobalt, waffles a bit on SVS, and ultimately settles on Long Con because she "likes Epi's case". I feel like a town Ninja would not have been so quick to make a decision here, even with changeable votes. Her later comments about doing it for the "interesting reactions" also now comes back to me as not particularly fitting with the tone of this post, as it is suggested here that she at least feigned careful reasoning before voting, and was not just doing it to provoke others.

This is the point you made that inspired me to compile this post. I think there are a few problems with your reasoning. You started with "I can't help but now read this post as her leaving the door open on all three lynch possibilities", which is definitely true since she said exactly that in the very post you're talking about. You're "reading" her post to mean something, as if it's a veiled implication, when it was actually something she stated explicitly. Moreover, if her stated strategy of "generating reactions" for her LC vote is to be viewed with suspicion, I find myself wondering why? If she is Team Wildhorn, then she is bussing the crap out of her team mate on Day 1. If she is Team Webber, then why should she even need to employ this "generate reactions" method when all three lynch candidates are not on her team? She could just pick one regardless of how and when and be comfortable.

I'm pretty sure that's a typo in the post of mine, I meant to say "I can't help but not...", but that's not really relevant. What is relevant is that I find her strategy of generating reactions questionable because I do not believe it's really what she was doing. I never felt like that explanation matched the flavor of her vote, in real time or in retrospect. For instance, it took until I asked her to follow up on it on Day 5 for her to make any mention of the strategy again, and (as my case now hinges on in a lot of ways) I found the responses she claimed to have were questionable at best.

Spoiler: show

Sloonei wrote:I especially disagree with her when she says sig's reaction to her vote gave many people their "first real ping" about him. I know I first became suspicious of sig because of the way he handled his own vote that day. I did not even become wary of his response to niju's vote until after he had been lynched and I looked back through his posts, and the only reason it stood out to me was because of how strange he was acting towards niju in particular. I think it's also worth noting that she makes absolutely no mention of that sig ping in her big huge follow up post. She does spend a lot of time telling us why Cobalt is bad, though.

It must be said that ninja didn't claim "many" people's initial ping on sig was related to sig's take on ninja's LC vote. ninja actually asserted that this sig reaction was her own first ping "and others in their analyses". This doesn't imply majority, it only implies someone. If it can be verified that at least one other player referenced sig's response to ninja's LC vote as a suspicious thing, then I'm satisfied with that.

However, the point you make about ninja failing to mention this ping she had about sig in her large catch-up compilation is sound. ninja should answer to that now, even if she has already done so. I'd like to hear a fresh defense.

Yes, this is really the most important point I wish to make. I see no evidence in niju's posts that the reads she claims to have had are true.

Spoiler: show

Sloonei wrote:Lots of suspects, but still none named sig. She does offer support of Golden's G-man/Gamerguy theory, but she also remarks that it's "a bit of a stretch" and that she wants to give G-man a pass for a day. Perhaps setting herself up to begin bussing a teammate later on, but not right away. Because we can lynch Cobalt first (I'm aware I've just done a 180 from my previous stance on her "give G-man BOTD" remark).

Sloonei wrote:Here she finally mentions sig, after Scotty and I had both posted our cases against him and I specifically asked for people to respond to it a couple of times. As I noted in my previous post about sig/Ninja interactions, I find it a bit inconsistent that she claims to have both "forgotten about" sig and been "weirded out" by him. I now find it even more inconsistent, considering her later post about "getting her first ping" on sig after his reaction to her Day 1 vote.

I think these are the most suspicious moments in ninja's post history, so I agree with your concerns. I'll look back to see how she has addressed this problem.

Me too. I do not believe she's satisfactorily responded to these points yet.