WW16: The Outlaws and The Olives

[zakalwe]

Alright, I guess it's time to spill the beans.

My top suspect is Ichabod. This is based on a very strong gut feeling, which I'll try my best to explain now. Remember that I've been looking for people who tried to deflect thestick's lynch at an early stage. Ichabod made a post which looks like an archetypical wolf Ichabod post, right at the time when thestick really needed relief. Thestick had recently surged to a 5 vote lead, with no more than 2 votes on anyone else. (Although Waterbat moved his vote off thestick shortly after that happened, so it was 4-2 at the point Ichabod posted.)

Since this post is so central to my case, I took the time to reassemble it with nested quotes, even if it's a pain:

Bleh, I'm actually going to just walk away for a bit. I keep looking at this sequence of events:

• Catwalk announces he's going to be AFK on Day 1.
  
• I suggest Catwalk might lurk as scum because he's less comfortable lying.
  
• Others agree with that assessment.
  
• Injera leaps to his defense and attacks me.
  
• Catwalk finds he has time to play.
  

And finding it incredibly suspicious. Of course, logically I understand that Injera is unlikely to make so obvious a slip. But I can't stop fixating on it.

Nonetheless, Injera.

I find this post by gaspar a bit suspicious. Meiz kind of thought similarly, but my thoughts are a bit different.

Meiz post:

Game setup stated that there is no traditional seer, so running for mayor is not that big of a risk as usually.

Gaspar, so you're saying that both injera and catwalk would be wolves? If that's the case, wouldn't it then make more sense to go for catwalk, since he has already votes on him?

Gaspar answer (easy one to make, if wolf or village):

No, I 100% believe you and I don't want to start getting specific about people's real lives - I think that's unfair. My comment was more in the generic.



Well, I suppose I am. But I could also conceive a wolf Injera who knows alignment could be defending Catwalk here to gain cred when he does die. I see a wolf Catwalk and an innocent Injera as a less likely scenario.

My problem with Gaspar post is his fifth comment. This one:

"[*]Catwalk finds he has time to play."

What does it have to do with the rest of the post? As far as I can tell, nothing. Gaspar already admitted that his early comment about Catwalk probably lurking as scum wasn't one directed to his behaviour here, but only an hipothethical one. So, I get, from that, that he didn't suspecy Catwalk.

His case in this post, as can be seen by his vote, was against Injera. He suspected Injera due to the Catwalk defense. So why add that little snippet about Catwalk finding time to play? The only explanation I can see for this is an attempt to herd the cats, to add strenght to his argument based on a thing that doesn't have to do with the argument itself, it's just indiciary.

Thing is, that's not how Gaspar usually rolls when he's a villager. He's not a cat herder. If Zak made the same thing (and he did things similarly this game already, like inflating the interpretation of a post to make his case better), it wouldn't be a scum tell, becuase that's Zak's way of playing.

---

The vote against thestick seems like a nice one. I agree with the reasoning behind it, but those multi-quote posts aren't only a wolf thing. I tend to do them when I miss the thread for a long time and I have a lot of posts to read. Every interesting post during the time I'm reading gets quoted and later I comment on some/all of them. But, yeah, there wasn't much of a thread to read when he made that.

So, I wouldn't mind with a thestick lynch, but I don't want to vote for him right now.

To me, this post looks like Ichabod trying to come up with a compelling case, building on some established suspicions but adding his own "twist" so it looks insightful. Only he fails pretty hard, at least in my view. The argument against Gaspar is nonsensical. I was actually thinking at the time that this screamed wolf Ichabod trying to move our attention away from thestick, but I mostly held my tongue because I didn't want to weaken my case by showing too much confirmation bias.

I did pick apart Ichabod's case on Gaspar, though, and he quickly backpedaled furiously:

I recall gaspar saying his vote for Catwalk was a joke one. But that's not exactly the point. It's more subtle than that and hard for me to explain.

Either way, it's not a big thing. As you can see, I'm not voting yet. But I felt in need to share that particular view.

I think I can better verse my thoughts now:

Gaspar post seemed to be more of a "throw suspicions around where they fit" then a "I suspect player X". The line between such posts is very thin, but then again, that's normally what we have to go about early.

By the end there, his argument has warped into something completely unrecognizable.

His tone throughout this exchange is just incredibly subservient. I think he realized how exposed thestick was and really felt on thin ice. Ichabod never rejoined the discussion after this, and as expected, his promised vote on thestick never materialized. It's as if he was afraid to rear his ahead again, for fear of getting smacked back down.

Also notice how he managed to sneak in a comment about me inflating the interpretation of a post. Thestick's post, in particular, although that went unsaid. Classic wolf Ichabod, trying to sneak in backhanded compliments or jabs while seemingly making some unrelated point.