Ugh. I realize now that I don't really like bastard setups. Like, it sounds fun, but this was just frustrating. Absolutely everything I did turned out to be wrong, but I had no way of knowing.

I even thought "Maybe my wincon hasn't changed and I should backstab zinger" on that one day where I had the chance.

Wish I'd done it. Ah well, I felt I did a decent job about not playing against my apparent interest.

I'm sorry, but with cult and mafia working together, I don't think it's feasible to attempt a town victory at this point. So I'm going to sit pretty and try to at least get a win for myself.

There is actually a cool piece of analysis to be made here. Mafia is really played in three dimensions: deduction, psychology, and politics. The long standing disagreement I have had with some players here is whether deduction or psychology is the most important. But in a bastard game like this where there is hidden information which cannot be easily deduced, and events which change people's alignment and motivation, thus nullifying any reads you might have on them, politics becomes far more important. Because at the end of the day, if you have no reliable information and no strong reads, it's a popularity contest. You and KoD refused to pay the politics, and now it looks like you will both lose because of it. Granted, I'm far from guaranteed the win still at this point, but at least I have a shot.

I will on principle not participate in any lynches of non-scum players at this point, but I accept that I'm powerless to stop them. I'm sorry.