My belief that Haunted Diamond should be lynched comes from a two part argument. The first is that heading into our Day One lynch, he had some of the best evidence of being mafia that we had on anyone. The second argument comes from the type of play he has used since the end of day one and into today has continued to be strange and suspicious.
This evidence is not iron clad. I admit wholeheartedly that a lot of this is "conspiracies" and "loose connections." However this is the information that we are looking for and there are so many pieces of information that one of these has to stick. If you are looking for solid evidence to lynch someone right now, then you're not going to find it in the forums. Only the inspector has hard information on someone provided he wasn't blocked, and he can't share this evidence for obvious reasons. Right now, all we have to debate in this forum are conspiracies and loose connections. So please pick apart these arguments with something better than "they're circumstantial" or "I don't feel it's enough."
Amianki has pointed out that he doesn't like the fact that even though I see Haunted Diamond as a good lynch target, yet I want to wait to hear other peoples arguments for other candidates. Whether he likes it or now, I will stress this again. Do not bandwagon lynch him following this post. Just because I put out an argument doesn't mean that this is the be all end all. Not only do I want to hear things I have missed, other peoples opinions and support for my argument, but I also think HD should have a chance to follow through on his claim he waved around earlier and also to get more information on who sides where. This is not an out by me. I think there is no way I am getting away with saying I wasn't sold on a HD lynch. However, I do want to give him one last chance to change my mind.
With that, lets begin to look at Haunted Diamond and what I find suspicious.
Day One, Part ILike some of our friends, Haunted Diamond doesn't seem to take much of an active roll in the game early on. His posts are short and his reasoning is not that strong. Like with Cancerous, Pokeguy, Sonny, and Ullar, a lot of us were kind of disgruntled with their floating around not contributing much.
Haunted stated a few times that his inactivity was based on his busy schedule with finals, doing something with teaching, and spending what little free time on the computer that he has is spent multitasking. A fair excuse that I bought and was willing to give him, and still give him as being legitimate. I don't think he is lying about his time zone or his schedule and even defended him on it to Spiffy that this is plausible.
However, what sets HD apart from this gang of inactives is that Spiffy makes a astute observation that almost all of HD's posts throughout the long stretch of Day One almost solely revolved upon Jalmont. If you go back and Ctrl+F through the first 12 or so pages you can see that the only topic that HD wants to talk about it Jalmont's weird play. Now, to be fair, Fatecrasher's and I also devoted a large chunk of time to question Jalmont and prolonged it a bit longer than it probably should have gone on. However, he rides this point and only this point for a long long long long time. Far past it's natural conclusion. And all of his posts are asking people why they are not voting for Jalmont. Kind of looking to start something/keep conversation stuck on this point.
He also does a really weird vote on Jalmont, bandwagon'ing on his case with no other reason than "obv mafia." Ullar calls him out on the bandwagon and that it looks bad, but he flings it off with his excuse that he was busy and just woke up and wasn't following things that close.
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Then comes the next weird thing with the Cancerous vote. At post #324 he it totally confused by why we want cancerous out but then after a very bare bones explanation by Fate he, as spiffy says, does a complete 180 flop and votes for him because he assessed the situation farther because there is something there, but doesn't go into details.
This led to a discussion about Fate and HD working as some kind of mafia team and following each others lead to bandwagon. But the evidence quickly kind of went down the tubes due to some misinterpreted timelines. I still dont find it entirely unplausible that they weren't working in unison and because of the time difference/schedules didn't work together right on point. And I think that it's kind of a coincidence that fate follows his lead on Jalmont and HD follows fates on Cancerous. And Fate's whole "let me break these ties damned quick and then say it was all just a knee jerk and state how there was no evidence on us anyways and look elsewhere" doesn't really mean much. Also, the HD argument was more based on his actions with the jalmont thing and the Fate connection was added in as an extra proof. But the Fate thing falling apart does nothing to excuse his weird behavior.
People debate Spiffy's post and go after him for some conclusions he made. They also go off a bit on HD, and suspect him, and he gives his story about time problems resulting in his weird behavior. And I back him up in this being a good reason, it also doesn't excuse a lot of how he is been acting, so I state that he is still suspicious and that he is a good target. Other people also agree, and bandwagon on him quickly. (This bandwagon makes me uneasy but it fades quickly) But then a lot of us aren't that sold on him to lynch him yet.
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Day One, Part II
This is going to look at his play after being called into question. He is pretty quick to blame everything on his schedule and time zone difference. While this is an excuse for maybe a few things, he blames the Jalmont ride and the coincidence Fatecrashers follow on this. It is his only real defense to things and at this point it's feeling overused to explain mistakes. To me, there is only so much bad play/actions that can be excused with using this defense on everything. He is going to be busy either if he was mafia or village, but I don't feel comfortable giving him a straight out pass for his behavior. He could just as easily have followed along blindly because of scum, made a mistake, and then blame it on his being busy to cover up. It's a convenient thing we would believe and gets him an out, and any good mafia would realize it's a good way to excuse some poor play at the beginning.
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To HD's defense, he says if we're going to continue to "bandwagon him when he is sleeping", he wants subbed out. This is on post #348. Kind of still reads the same as a hitting the reset button under pressure instead of playing the game, but he does allude to it before the whole fiasco in the next sections.
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Then you have what can only be known as the "Soft Claim debacle of Post #417" in which he states:
"Two more people suspecting me and i'll show you all how spiffy is so wrong. I hope it doesn't come to that though."
This kind of came out of no where and was pretty harsh of an overreaction to him being just slightly suspected over other people. I understand we were close to deadline and he seemed like the most likely choice, and he does have time issues to work with to act quick. But it still kind of seemed like a jolt.
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How he handles himself after the soft claim is that he pretty much lies a whole lot and tries to call suspicion onto Spiffy instead of defending himself and it works out well for him. But it's still devious and you guys should really catch what he does.
First he soft claims in post #417. I don't think there is any other way he can "show us how spiffy is wrong" without night actions.
Post #441 he goes after spiffy and back tracks: "lol how do you know it was a role power claim? If anything, it just proved how baseless and uncertain your lynch on me is."
So... is it a power claim or not? He seems hell bent to throw blame on Spiffy because of the reaction. Maybe that's not what he meant after all and spiffy is fishing for information? Maybe it's not. But spiffy takes a lot of heat for realizing what HD did and for calling him out on it. And now Spiffy has to defend himself. This heat on Spiffy is going to give is a lead on who is his mafia buddies if he flips scum because everyone bandwagons on lynch Spiffy for role fishing now and HD kind of goes unchecked.
However, here comes HD... claiming power role again. When... you know... he just said he wasn't a power role.
"You immidiately unlynching me showed how baseless and uncertain your suspect on me was. Why would you insist so hard on lynching someone when you aren't even sure they are mafia? Oh maybe you wouldn't care if someone important dies!"
Questioning spiffy again and taking the blame off of him. You can make the point that he is arguing spiffy's point of view to explain his actions... but then you have this on post #473:
"i have a headache. i'm gonna go to bed soon. just for you guys to stop voting me, yes i did soft claim a power role. i will be staying up for another 10 minutes to answer any questions and then i'm going to bed."
So... after screaming that Spiffy was this messed up role hunting son of a bitch, and going after him harshly for calling his bluff, he turns right around to him and says "yeah spiffy you were right that is exactly what I am doing. And even though we got side tracked by you calling me out and I have to answer for my claim, well shit, look at the time. You know I have time zone problems that caused me to act weird before. And I gotta run without claiming my power role and won't be back until after you guys all vote. So you really cant lynch me."
I mean, he literally lied in order to manipulate conversation from himself onto Spiffy who took the bait and went after him for what he was doing. And then used the same excuse he used the past 2 times to try to explain his weird behavior to get out of this lynch. It just happens to be at a convenient time where he knew he was going to make a soft claim and not have the right amount of time to defend himself properly if he kept us looking the other way. With the inactivity, Jalmont ride, with the blind fate follow, with the leaving before deadline without following through on his claim. One excuse, four times, four different suspicious plays. It's either this is all a coincidence that all of this happened as a result of one thing, or he is milking a legitimate excuse to make up for some really questionable play because he knows he can get away with it.
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Now, you might not believe me or spiffy in seeing these connections, but you have no real choice to listen to Light Wolfs thoughts. He is already proven village and he had some comments to say about it before he was killed off. You can go back and read his arguments, it's too hard to past these all in here, but he did say
“the way HD put it sounded pretty bluffy and desperate.” and “I actually agree with spiffy that his soft power role claim reeks of desperation”
He also believed that from voting out Haunted Diamond, if he flipped we would have a good suspect list based on the people who turned on Spiffy real quick. From what I understood, he said that unlike someone like Cancerous or Sonny, a Haunted Diamond lynch would give us more to go on than any other suspicious person.
Keep in mind he was possibly killed for saying this. Also keep in mind he was right. We have no real solid information on a Cancerous lynch. We would have had a lot more to go with on a Haunted Diamond lynch. These reasons still manifest today. And if you need to, it comes from a proven villager. There is nothing to suspect about him. He's out on the table and he's not trying to deceive you as mafia.
Day Two
Biggest thing from the night is that spiffy didn't die (though he might have been protected or the mafia thought he would be protected). Also the announcer says he almost was lynched, and the closest person besides cancerous to being lynched was HD. Spiffy I guess too, but that obviously didn't take hold at all and while we questioned his actions we weren't going to lynch him for them. So it makes sense that HD is the announcer. But at the same time it doesnt because he claimed to be a power role.
He also has a post restriction which I dont really get the rules to. I don't know if he is tagged with his last post on the thread, which would be the announcer thread, or if it's always the announcer post. Or what. But I cant determine these rules until we have another case night 2 or if he claims the announcer.
Doesn't really give us much, but it kind of shows he might have lied about his power role.
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I find it funny how all of a sudden HD is caught up and primed to argue and be one of the most active people in the game right now. When I mention my defense to Cancerous, I state that he seems to be the most clean because he was called out on his behavior and it didn't change. He remained inactive so I believe his defense. I said that a mafia who was called out on inactivity would most likely quit being inactive. And somehow, HD became active after we called him out on it. Starting through his lynch into Day 2.
Now we can buy his excuse that it was because it was his schedule and it lightened up. But it's kind of convenient that his schedule lightened up all during day two, from the weekend until the middle of the week. Where is this not reading and following along and not contributing? Is it possible? Sure is. I get it. Is it very convenient an excuse to get away with the sudden explainable activity? It is too. And this would make it 5 times it played conveniently to his strange actions. How many times does he get to use it?
I pretty much say that I'm not going to buy the "time zone/I'm busy" excuse as a legitimate excuse anymore just because it happened so much and in crucial spots. There is no way that I can excuse him again for using the same reason over and over for all his slip ups and weird play. It's just not right to me, and literally if he is mafia and we're giving him a pass for all of his actions he ever does, why are we playing this game? Because we are all busy. We can all use it as an excuse. And if we're not going to question people for their actions based on this we're fucked.
I had exams last week and I still played pretty well. Spiffy had exams this week and he's not using it as an excuse to do weird things. We all have things in our lives that are pressing and I get that. But it's not excusable for mafia action over and over and over and over.
And it's not like you can say he is just defending himself. He is asking questions and playing deeper than he did at any point day 1 about things not regarding him. Look at #765 real quick. And there are others.
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I can't get into my reaction of Spiffy and his call for HD to claim right now, because until he does my "trap" is still in place for his claim. But I see something bigger in Spiffy's actions and I see how much information we could get out of the end of day one's actions if he flips. I also see him as being the most suspicious based on the Jalmont/fate following/inactivity thing. It's weak, but no one else is close.
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HD refuses to claim because he thinks it will give the mafia information. Yet he was very much willing to give the mafia information in saving himself. So this claim is kind of weird. He says he wants to limit the information to the mafia but gave them information he was a power role.
Another argument is that he was allowed to live because he was an easy lynch target and we would go after him like we are. I said how dumb that was because if he just claims and his claim is right, there is no damned way in hell anyone of us is going to lynch him for being mafia. If anything keeping you alive would be a response to an attempted body guard and targeted you with another action to see if you were going to be body guarded. You weren't bodyguarded because an action on you went through (I think this is how this works?)
Anyways these arguments make no sense and I see them as poorly crafted stories. Other people somehow buy onto these arguments (I just see it as more proof on our next action if he flips) and some people get that this is weird too but are still kind of unsure about the claims and the direction.
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In post #676, HD pretty much says that everything he did during the day 1 claim was in self preservation and he sees how nothing good can come from the town. I see this as him pretty much admitting that he lied about the power role to save himself to confuse the mafia.
Fatecrashers says this too. Which... I dunno. Seems like kind of a set up if they are scum pair for a future claim strategy. Anyways fate agrees with me and says in post #791:
but looking at haunted's response to buttered, it seems he admits that the power role claim was a desperate self preservation tactic, and his unwillingness to confirm today is about confusing the mafia, that's how i read his responses anyway
It's weird to me that in a "pressure situation" that he would have this ingenious idea to fake a claim just to draw attention to him from the mafia. I far more buy that he would be lying at the time to save his own ass and now has a reason after the fact that was passed to him quite easily and will help him get out of something in the future.
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Also, anyone find it funny that again HD jumps on the Fatecrashers bandwagon on Day 2 as well? Fatecrashers votes for Pokeguy on post #727 and only redacts because of a bandwaggon flood. Then on post #765 after Fate's argument is kind of over, here comes freaking HD on a post taking about lynching Pokeguy.
Seriously. Here is more connection between the two. Third person in a row. Maybe it's coincidence or maybe they're just a trash mafia team that can't get their shit together even after being called out on it. But it's weird as hell.
It's also a terrible lynch. It's like both of them learned nothing from the Cancerous lynch or listened to my arguments. My post #766 highlights this.
Also... look at his arguments for lynching Pokeguy. The "mafia tell" pretty much describes his Day 1 actions too. Bandwagoning lynches (kind of hypocritical as he is bandwagon on Pokeguy), not contributing (he didn't contribute anything all day 1), and lacking any real defense (he has used the same one the entire game for a variety of scum behavior and has worn thin on me).
Just I dunno. Seems like a absolute terrible vote for terrible reasons and he is most definitely jumping in a band wagon for another default lynch like Cancerous.
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Two more and I'll make this quick because this is humongous already and I'm on my third hour of forum reading on him. Literally I got all this info on HD and I dare anyone to give me this much info on anyone else.
Anyways, nearing what looks like a deadline and after being continued to be questioned by me, he asks to be subbed out. Literally this seems pretty convenient to me seeming how active he was the last couple of days. And I blow my stack seeing he is using the same excuse again to constitute how he should avoid suspicion and live another day. I'm also kind of pissed that he is avoiding the consequences of his actions and that we need to start from scratch with a new player. He just seems to have found a way to get out of answering to his suspicious and connections and strange actions. And I don't buy the I'm busy sub me when he is literally more active now than he ever has been. Maybe he's just disgruntled with the "personal attacks" about his behavior which he doesn't see influencing the game, let he uses as an excuse for every game mistake he has made to this point. Maybe it's just not fun. Or maybe he just figured out a way to give himself out of a lynch and have us bandwagon on an inactive because we have no one else to vote for.
Seriously guys, it's kind of genius. We wouldn't vote out a sub because of all the sifting through all the shit he would have to go through. Let alone a sub who has a claimed power role. And this sub can clear HD's mistakes by just saying "oh it was HD I don't know what he was thinking."
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Final point is he is so concerned with how him using all these "dirty" strategies and lying about his schedule would make him persona non grada on the forums. Logically though... I don't get how this would stick if he village. You tell me if he flips village who isn't going to believe his story. Anyone would see that if he was village, he would do all these things because of his schedule, and I'd just look like a moron and I would get the flack.
Only reason he gets so defensive and worries about using these "dirty" tactics is if he is scum. If he is mafia and didn't use his timezone and his schedule as a shield, then I see how if he flips, my theories gain credibility and he has to deal with the repercussions in other games.
His only defense to this was "It's not game related, don't read into it" which again... doesn't really do much for me in terms of an answer to say how this hurts his reputation if he is village and his behavior is actually explained by his schedule... Think I kind of caught him here...
