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i think this is interesting and def. something to keep in mind. i have her currently in a very weak village read for participationConsidering the stunt she pulled when she village in the last game do you think she would have incentive to be more active this game if she randed wolf? Because that's something I'm starting to worry about
i may be interpreting this incorrectly, but wasn't that a self prez?Looks like in response to alissa vote that put katas in the lead
thank you for taking the time to do this bc holy crap that was a lot of work.I have to reevaluate some things based on April's flip in particular since I had a wolfy lean on her, so I'm starting the day off with a Zenge ISO. Zenge has said quite a few things that I've agreed with, but some things have pinged me as well, and ISOing didn't clear up my read of him as much as I hoped it would (despite the number of quotes that I pulled). I'm leaning toward the wolfy side of neutral at this point, based partially on some of his analyses and partially on some tonal things I noticed, and I'm curious to see what his posts are like today. This post is huge, and I'm sorry for that, but I tried to break it up with spoilers.
I wasn't at all surprised by this vote. It's very possible that a wolf jumped on the AM salt vote train and I'm not discounting that possibility, but there was so much salt directed at her after Goats that I don't want to read into this vote too much.
This seemed like legitimate reasoning to me. MsP was a misyeet in basics and did play exactly how we'd been told she tended to play (by people who had played with her before). Is this active wolf hunting - no, but I understand the reasoning behind it.
Reasonable.
The only reason that I pulled this quote in particular is because later on, he goes back to saying that it looks like it will be a repeat of last time, which I thought was a little strange just because the fact that MsP had posted at all to that point proved that it wasn't going to be an exact repeat of last time. That might be me getting hung up on semantics, but I made a note of it. I just saw that he made another post that mentioned her AGAIN while I was writing this ISO out, and I don't know how I feel about that. It feels a little tunnelly to me given that the posts she's made do have good content. It's pretty clear to me, at least, that MsP isn't playing in this game the way she did in Basics. And yet, he goes back to her later on to say it again, when clearly it's not going to be a repeat of basics.
He and I both started going after genny at this point because she wouldn't give any substantive answer when I asked who her wolf reads were or who was in her POE. This is one of the things that I agree with him on - I do feel it's, at best, anti-village play to do that. Regarding the bolded part, he did say earlier in the game that he was leaning more toward a village genny and then switched to a wolf lean, but that seemed to be based on her interactions with me regarding her reads. Because of that, I'm inclined to agree with the bolded; I think he reevaluated based on new information, but it's not striking me as hedging.
One of the things that stood out to me a little bit while I was doing this ISO is that there have been a few instances where I either haven't really followed Zenge's logic or I've felt like he's stretching a bit to try and make a particular point. I've pulled those and have them here:
Z is not the only person who got fairly hung up on Lupin's post calling April towny just based on when she posted, but he stayed on it for a while and read a lot into it. Again, not the only person to do that, but I made a note of it.
This feels to me like reading way more into Lupin's post than necessary and I don't really follow why he went on the attack over this so much.
This felt like a stretch to me when sunshine was just talking about Cyndia's PM preferences and how mkg wouldn't know that, being a nooblet and not having played with Cyndia before.
There were 3 people on this vote, and it really didn't build "fast" in the sense of multiple people jumping on within the same hour. The votes, temporally, were fairly far apart (several hours).
Then we get to Zenge's reads that he was asked for. I bolded those sentences because they seem stretchy to me. LIS wasn't pushing Alissa's vote switch more than some other people, and he and Zenge did have an interaction discussing Barks, so it seemed a little odd to me that he decided he had a wolf lean on LIS just based on this specific thing. I also don't think I agree with his feeling on Lupin and the amount of fluff vs non-fluff. He was super hung up on the towny comment for a while, and this felt a little like an extension of that.
He stayed on this train of thought and I don't really know why, given that LIS's vote didn't land on Alissa and that LIS wasn't pushing Alissa harder than other people, as I mentioned earlier. Again, feels stretchy to me, and that he kept with it feels really odd.
Already addressed this earlier this morning, but I don't like assumptions being made when my response to his LIS read was just to ask him what his read on Alissa was. No more, no less.
I just feel like I'm used to stronger analysis of players than this. Neither of us have played with LIS before, that's true, but I feel like Zenge can do much better analyses than getting hung up on one point like this.
Then there are some things that either struck me as very aggressive or that I straight up don't buy. Now, we've seen in previous games that Z can get very frustrated and angry - and he's been village all of those times. I've seen him rage quit before (emojis, although he then came back to get the last word) and do something that looked like a rage quit but wasn't (the hail mary approach that he tried in goats), so him getting angry at people doesn't ping me on its own. I'm sure that April kind of tunnelling on him, if he's village, frustrated him a lot - and that was part of why I had a wolf lean on her and some villagey vibes from him. But he's also said some things that struck me as unnecessarily snippy, and while I don't want to read into it too much, I do want to make a note of it.
Additionally, as I mentioned, there are some things he said that struck me as backpedaling on things he'd push, particularly related to how he was fixated on Lupin's towny comment.
I don't buy either of these things. Yeah, we've only played in games where it's been called wolf/village, but both of us have read articles on MafiaWiki and MU. I don't think this is the first time he encountered this language, and while the putting it on a scale thing was funny, I don't believe it. I'm unwilling to give him a pass on that.
I know he said this was a joke and apologized (below), but it did seem a little unnecessary and mean-spirited to me. I'm glad he apologized to sunny. I made a note of it because this felt different from angry Zenge - and maybe he really did mean it as a joke and just really missed the mark. But it felt mean when I read it.
And then we get to posts where I feel like he's making an effort to wolf hunt and providing reads. He did do some ISOing yesterday and pulled quotes to go with his thoughts, and some of this is what was giving me village leanings yesterday (although not enough for me to take him out of my neutrals).
This is a big post with a lot of information in it. I appreciate that he gives reasons with his reads. The wordiness is his norm.
Asking someone about a specific interaction like this strikes me as pro-village and is fairly typical Zenge behavior.
Both of these interactions with April, when they were occurring, didn't give me wolfy vibes because like I mentioned before, we've seen village!Zenge get angry before. In light of April's flip, I think you could make an argument for this being more than that. I'm not confident in that because I do see the reasoning behind his frustration; sometimes April's posts did read to me like they were criticizing him for one thing, and then criticizing him for the opposite of that thing. Again, that's part of what had contributed to my wolf lean on her; the criticisms seemed incompatible sometimes.
This was directed at genny in response to her calling him opportunistic, which was kind of a strange comment because as he pointed out here, she had put her yeet vote down before he put his. I will say that I can see an argument for his yeet vote on her being retaliatory based on how quickly he placed it after she put hers on him, but he had been vocal at that point about how her lack of providing a POE didn't sit right with him, so even if there was some retaliation in the vote timing, there was actual reason for it as well.
This was directed at Cyndia and strikes me as a reasonable point to make.
More talking to April about genny and the opportunistic comment.
Then we have where he got angry about the comment jaboo made about him at yeet. I have to admit that I thought that was an odd comment too - I think many of us were present at yeet and not necessarily posting because the thread was blowing up so fast. I do think it was odd to call him out specifically, but I don't think it was something wolfy by jaboo. I don't think that Zenge's anger about it was necessarily wolfy either, but I'll also put that on these posts specifically, I'm a little biased because he was very hangry and cranky IRL at this time and I think that bled over into his posts a bit.
It was not really a bandwagon, it was a comment by jaboo and then April said something.
Dear god, that might be the biggest post I've ever made.
tl;dr: I have a wolfy side of neutral lean on Zenge right now. I let some things slide yesterday based on his tone in previous games, but I'd like to see more analysis from him today and less arguing with people.
my feelings coming away from it are that zenge seems to be hyper-focusing on strange things, which i haven't really seen him do before. From what I remember he definitely picks things apart, which is a great approach, but a lot of what we saw yesterday was continuing conversation about a bunch of things that some/most people thought were little and not worth that much notoriety.
I'm slight wolf leaning zenge now, down from slight village lean.
This also looks like a village!shorty analysis that I'm used to so shorty is pretty squarely in village now.