So Ghennan.
I'll admit I haven't really been paying much attention to Ghennan most of the game. His posts were usually pretty far apart even when he was posting regularly so I couldn't follow along as easily.
Re-reading the whole thing, Ghennan looks to me like someone who in the first couple days was almost coasting - few posts, spaced widely apart, mostly without major substance. I say almost because Ghennan made sure that he voted on day 1 and on day 2, as well as making a few posts of asking questions or probing into things.
His day 1 vote is pretty much just the same reasons as the previous votes and comments:
Ghennan, on 22 October 2013 - 11:18 PM, said:
Wow, that post is ringing so many bells for me. The self-pity, the 'acceptance' if we lynch him, the 'lynch me if you have to' schtick. It's making me want to vote for him more.
I'll be around on and off for the next few hours, but I'll vote now to see if we can get something going.
vote ultama
Here's his day 2 vote. This was the second vote on Fanderay, after Trake who soon removed.
Ghennan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:
So, after a catch-up, I'm not really sure why Jalan stuck in my mind, but on a re-read I don't find him particularly scummy. And Cast has posted basically nothing. Monok's modkill has kind of taken the wind out of my sails, I was fairly sure we were on to something with Monok and Ultama, and suddenly it's all up in the air again.
Grasp is ringing some bells for me, and that drive-by vote was pretty scummy, but I need more time to articulate what it is that bothers me, and right now I need to go to bed.
I'm leaving my vote on Fanderay, because I think the link is interesting, and I need more time to decide how I feel about Ultama.
Vote Fanderay.
Night all!
It's much earlier this time, but he has almost no comments on any of the cases or goings-ons before this post. This was a contention yesterday, where Trake said it was a drive-by vote and Ghennan argued that he was online and posting before this vote. He was, but the 7 posts of the previous page (page 7) are almost entirely substanceless and none lead into the reasonings given here at all. He also drops suspicions of five other players in this same post, hedging his bets for later in the day, before disappearing for a while.
Ghennan won't show up again until the end of day, and when he does he feels the need to further defend his own vote, though he can still reiterate no better reasoning for his vote except that he finds the situation "interesting":
Ghennan, on 25 October 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:
So, I can see how my last vote could be considered scummy, but there were a few reasons I had for where I voted. The post I had made before that had been simply throwing a few names out to see what kind of consensus we could get about votes. When I had time to read back it seemed that my suspicions were unfounded, so I didn't vote that way. The whole day I had been focussed on Ultama and MO, and when MO was modkilled it took the wind out of my sails. I didn't have any strong feelings about anyone, but I wanted to leave a vote before I went to bed, so I felt it best to follow a vote that had already been made, as I didn't have time to build my own case.
Right now, it's past midnight on a Friday night, so I'm not going to make a case now. I'll definitely have time tomorrow before time out to return, so I'll see then what progress has been made, and share my suspicions about Grasp.
I do think it's interesting that Fanderay and Hanas have been linked, and since then they have both arrived and tried to start separate trains, so I'm happy with my vote where it is at the moment.
A half-dozen or so hours after that, it is near the end of day 2 and Grasp has now become the other possible train. Ghennan basically builds an entire case on Grasp, even though that's been already done and he's already at 4 votes. I won't overload this post with nested quotes by copying the whole thing but it is
post 454 and then
post 457, and then finally the actual vote in post 462:
Ghennan, on 25 October 2013 - 08:03 PM, said:
Well, Grasp has done nothing to convince me, or even defend himself at all, so I'm fine with this.
Vote Grasp.
(and then again in post 472 when he remembers to remove first)
^^that's day 2.
Day 3 is a whole different affair. Ghennan starts day 3 with a big push right out of the gates in the form of a case and vote on Fanderay:
Ghennan, on 28 October 2013 - 10:45 PM, said:
So, here's what's been bothering me about the previous day's voting. Fanderay starts getting some heat for being connected to Hanas. Hanas arrives, flails a bit, and then starts a totally new train on a "coaster".
Hanas, on 24 October 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:
You know what... let's just vote a coaster. This situation is damned unpleasant, and the mod-kills invite trouble by following too quickly with no info from them. In the current environment I'd rather lynch someone on whom I have absolutely no read whatsoever and who seems to like to keep it that way, despite a decent post count, than lynching someone on who some shades of grey are gathered and who at the least is being discussed.
Vote Jalan.
Now, without going in to my personal vendetta about low-poster witchhunts (seriously, voting low posters gives us no information!), Hanas accuses Jalan because Hanas has no read on him. But if we review Jalan's posting up to this point, he has asked a lot of questions and shared a few ideas about Ultama's crazy posting, suggested he is a symp and voted MO, which doesn't really look like coasting to me.
Next, Fanderay arrives, and to be fair he can't really defend himself against the case and votes, because it's almost entirely based on Hanas' behaviour. But his next action is to start yet another train, and I'm not entirely sure what his justification is.
Fanderay, on 24 October 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:
Everyone's being such busy worker bees.
just for the hell of it, here's
the most cumulatively scummy player in my books. (after Ultama, but the problem with his case is that it is at least partially grounded in MO, and MO is now a perma-question-mark)
Ghennan, on 22 October 2013 - 11:18 PM, said:
Wow, that post is ringing so many bells for me. The self-pity, the 'acceptance' if we lynch him, the 'lynch me if you have to' schtick. It's making me want to vote for him more.
I'll be around on and off for the next few hours, but I'll vote now to see if we can get something going.
vote ultama
he never came back after that.
Ghennan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:
So, after a catch-up, I'm not really sure why Jalan stuck in my mind, but on a re-read I don't find him particularly scummy. And Cast has posted basically nothing. Monok's modkill has kind of taken the wind out of my sails, I was fairly sure we were on to something with Monok and Ultama, and suddenly it's all up in the air again.
Grasp is ringing some bells for me, and that drive-by vote was pretty scummy, but I need more time to articulate what it is that bothers me, and right now I need to go to bed.
I'm leaving my vote on Fanderay, because I think the link is interesting, and I need more time to decide how I feel about Ultama.
Vote Fanderay.
Night all!
well, he's yet to come back. we shall see
remove vote
vote Ghennan
So apparently I'm scummy because on day one I said I would return and I didn't, and then on day two I voted for him?
This then leaves the vote count looking like this:
Path-Shaper, on 24 October 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:
It is Day 2. 2 hours and 37 minutes remaining.
9 players alive: Cast, Fanderay, Ghennan, Grasp, Hanas, Jalan, Lock, Trake, Ultama
5 votes to lynch, 5 votes to go to night.
2 votes Fanderay: Ghennan, Grasp
1 vote Jalan: Hanas
1 vote Ghennan: Fanderay
1 vote Ultama: Jalan
Players not voted: Cast, Lock, Trake, Ultama
That is a pretty big voting split, where previously there had only been one target suddenly there are four. Then later Ultama arrives, makes a case against Grasp and votes for him, and Fanderay immediately jumps on that train, and suddenly it takes off.
So this leaves me wondering if maybe Ultama was the symp after all. Up unitl that point, Ultama had said basically nothing about Grasp. But he returns to see that Fanderay is getting a bit of heat, and provides a new target that a few other people have already indicated suspicion about. Fanderay can't jump on Hanas' vote because they have already been linked, but Ultama's vote is a safe bet because they haven't been linked, and that way they can get an alternate train running.
This is seriously scummy.
Vote Fanderay
Trake, Fanderay and Hanas all criticize it a lot. Lock shows up and makes a big diversion, everyone ends up shifting to Lock. Ghennan's even got two posts much later once the Lock momentum is really building that to me read a bit like a low-key defence of Lock:
Ghennan, on 29 October 2013 - 08:53 PM, said:
I'll vote Lock if we get some consensus on him, because his play is annoying and unhelpful. He's actively resisting making any effort whatsoever, or even just posting a vote.
The thing is, though, his lynch doesn't really serve any purpose unless we actually think he is scum. If it's just because he's annoying, then it's just a waste on what is potentially D-day. He doesn't have any connections to anyone, so we wouldn't get anything useful out of his lynch even if it wasn't D-day.
Ghennan, on 29 October 2013 - 08:59 PM, said:
Also, I didn't see Lock's posting as being particularly defensive, just winding people up for shits and giggles. I'm not sure if it makes him more or less scummy.
So that's my lengthy and probably convoluted read up on Ghennan.
The sticking points to me are two things:
1 - Day 1 and 2, Ghennan kept a very low profile while still doing the right things to look active and contentful.
The reasonings for his votes are weak, he hedges out his bets with tons of light suspicions, and he adds defenses of his own actions even when he isn't really under pressure. I feel like the wide spacing of his posts and his efforts to have an early vote in day 2 really helped him to slip through the cracks and seem to have more content and activity than he really did.
2 - On Day 3, Ghennan suddenly flips around and pushes the thread with far more conviction than previously shown.
His Day 3 case was far more direct and large than any of his previous posts or additions. He seems to have made a suden switch from a very passive townie to trying to be a thread leader.
This reads to me like scum trying to avoid getting sucked into the more random lynches of day 1 and day-2-after-no-lynch-day-1, then coming out to steer the thread and be more active to avoid coasting accusations. This would be a concern for Ghennan as on day 2 there was several coasting accusations and votes, and Ghennan's original early vote on Fanderay didn't create a successful train and he had to switch at the last minute.
Lastly, yesterday's deflection of attention from Ghennan to Lock has me suspicious now, even though I didn't really catch it at the time. Lock seemingly came out of nowhere to make a big fuss for little reason, and Ghennan then began to seemingly support Lock a little. The easy answer would be then that Lock was a symp and Ghennan the killer, with Lock making a desperate move to keep attention off Ghennan. Whether Lock was or was not really a symp, Ghennan's reluctance to vote Lock could be Ghennan trying to avoid lynching a potential symp. Otherwise there's not much point in Ghennan as a townie being reluctant - if either you or another person will be lynched, and you know you're innocent so town lynching you is bad, you shouldn't be reluctant to lynch the other guy when there's a certainty of failure if they lynch you and at least some chance of success for the other guy.
Lastly, I find Lock's send-off to Ghennan before he dies interesting:
Lock, on 29 October 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:
Vote Ghennan
you old smoothy pants
That's about it. It's definitely not an ironclad case - no slip ups or comma-gates that I can point out. But Ghennan reads the most like scum to me out of all of you, and these are my reasons why / how I see that possibility played out.