Defense A: The Fantastic Four

With Reed Richards elsewhere, we have Fox as the Human Torch, Hobo as the Invisible Woman, and myself as The Thing.

I’d mentioned simple conclusions earlier one could draw from this, let’s look at the first one

WF as Deadpool – a homicidally insane loner – claims watcher
Hobo as the Invisible Woman - a considerably more likely watcher option I should say.

Peel away the info we now know to what I had then. I knew the enemy would be shapeshifters impersonating people, heroes seemed more probable infiltrators then Deadpool, and an Invisible Woman seemed a much more likely choice for Watcher.

In spite of what has been said implying otherwise, to go after a SK on Day 1 when you have a good lead is wholly townie, it just happens to be something a scummer would want to do too, and hardly a singular thing. Imagine if I was being accused of ‘trying to appear to be a townie’ or ‘keeping information secret instead of sharing it all on day 1’, those are both things townies want to do and scummers also.

Presented with an option – a good shot at a SK or a dismal shot at a shapeshifting scummer, which is more pro-town? One SK controls a kill and his death ends it, killing a lone scummer, particularly on Day 1 when you have little evidence (posts, votes, etc) to connect them to their allies while still a good thing is far less good for the town on average than killing a SK. That accusation in of itself is then absurd, imagine we had two people admit on day 1, with no ‘joker option’ or similar, that they were DF and SK, who would we kill? (Hint: Every time a townie dies we lose roughly half a day, and thus half a night action from each townie role)

But this was not so simple, as I told Hobo and Fox, if WF had claimed his other ability, regarding surviving a NK, it would have fit him far better and likely he’d not have been lynched, but with one of the principle characters holding such a better claim to watcher, his claim seemed highly dubious – it was dubious enough that 6 other people voted for him without knowing about an Invisible Woman.

And next, the NK aspect. I cited Punisher as an example of the ideal vig, a little mistake on my part at the time, I’d been trying to avoid using anyone’s actual character claims as examples and with the Comic Code he was one of the few characters it could even vaguely fit… I’d forgotten Fox had claimed him because I knew the claim was fake. I knew that that shining example of the vig option was fake. Fox had also claimed Magneto, I knew that was fake, I knew Yuna’s Lex Luthor was fake, he’s DC, not Marvel – if you go down the list based on what we currently know you’ll see not a single character remaining meets a ‘kill bad guys’ standard… so a vig seemed improbable. Nor did any of the remaining options besides Deadpool fit SK. Yet I had some NK resistance and as we later found out, so did White Flame. A single faction of baddies with one kill doesn’t usually face lots of NK protection. Fundamentally I think this analysis was wrong, but that hardly matters, merely indicates a good but incorrect guess that got layered on top of lots of other indicators. The evidence for WF was much more solid from my perspective than it was for others, and if what they had was enough for a lynch, mine was enough to accuse.

And that’s what it was, an accusation, I did not push it that strongly. The lynch leader invariably gets blamed for failure, since I’ve led probably half or more of our lynches, I’m familiar with it, people revise history, because a failed lynch they voted for is a bad thing. The evidence was fraudulent, manipulated to look thicker than it was… manipulated by the accuser of course. Happens every time, gets kind of wearing.

So, let’s bypass 20/20 hindsight and actually look back. I did not press it very hard, and finally posted four options for pushing forward, one of which was no lynch, none of which were vote for WF. Just a reminder:

Okay, mega-absurd posting slump
If we don't want to go for this lynch, then we need an alternate, and we can either start revealing more info hoping to find something or we can essentially do it random or semi-random, agreeing to vote for someone from a pool of less active players for instance then doing the whole Russian Roulette thing. Personally I can't see voting for anyone other than WF right now but apparently I'm the only person who feels that way, so, basically, either come up with an alternative or tell me which particular form of probable suicide you prefer, info dump, random culling, or semi random culling, and we can try to figure out how to go about doing this in the least harmful fashion, so let me get an informal vote here, are you for:

A) Info Dump

B) Random Culling

C) Semi-Random Culling

D) Terminating the day via a no lynch

Obviously the fifth option, lynching WF, is still on the table as well, and remains my preference, but you can show your support of that option in the obvious fashion. I'm also still open to any other options but I think we're past any route that essentially involves a 'wait and see' factor, if you don't have a viable plan of action to offer pick from the above.

Three hours later WF was lynched. As I said, WF was my stated preference, after all, I knew we had had third parties more often than not, that we probably had extra NK’s in play, that no other claim reasonably matched ‘vig’ (I knew Punisher was fake) and that he fit SK like a glove but his stated claim, watcher, while possible for the game was simply far more likely to be assigned to the Invisible Woman – she who is principally known for standing around Invisibly and watching people. Heck, half her acts in the old days was to be the cliche damsel in distress, she turned invisible and watched the bad guys reveal their nefarious acts then got caught somehow and the guys came to her rescue.

But I did not want the day to end yet at that time, and more importantly, did not think it would. Options B and D were included basically as absurdities, options A and C seemed more likely. I didn't really like any of them, but I felt if people went for C I’d be able to use that to possibly find a scummer. As I’ve said repeatedly in the past, semi-random day 1 lynches give the scummers a chance to decrease, not increase, their odds of being selected for lynch. I have done so repeatedly, using it as a chance to carefully maneuver off the pool of possible lynches some of my allies. It seemed probable I might be able to catch this happening in action, if I saw someone put someone off the list and they shared characters on a team, it would be probable they were a mason team of superheroes, like my own fantastic 4. If I saw someone put someone off the list for decent reasons that might equally or better apply to someone else, then it would probably be a move by a scummer to remove one of their own. Obviously Option A had its own possible benefits and downsides, again, I didn’t pick our options, or even have a say in them, I posted that, and when I came back 4 hours later to see which option people were favoring, I saw WF had been lynched over an hour prior.

So the charges that I was not seeking scum are wrong, that WF’s lynch was thin are wrong, that I had no reason to suspect a third party unless I was scum are wrong. A later accusation hinges on me voting for a no lynch instead of just suggesting it, as I did here, but I point out the parallels, both posts were in the nature of a cattle prod because we weren’t talking, I just took it further on day 2, the slump was worse. But that focuses on how the transition from suggestion to vote is the key difference – this is what FT has said – yet he has voted for me in the past for simply suggesting it, more than once, and has also said that my pressing of ? was scummy, and that even though I didn’t vote for him, there the transition from suggestion to vote does not matter.

If you’re paying attention you might now wonder what my reaction was when I found out WF was really a watcher, in regards to my allies, such an explanation will take a bit and isn’t too related to this piece, and besides I think you can guess form some off my comments earlier today, Hobo and Fox might be able to say something on that score too, if not I’ll go into it on request in a later post.