Do I buy the notion that Ice genuinely believes (if innocent) that the value of his contribution to this game is greater if he's dead (to communicate/invest with dead innocents) than if alive (posting, voting, debating, rooting scum)? Not for a minute. That's a load of crap. Ice is well aware of his worth to the town for his ability to poke through smokescreens and call people out for suspicious behaviors. And that's where my problem with Ice's remark lies.
When he first said it, he was under no pressure. No real interest about him had come up.. no votes on him.. no one questioning him. The probability at that time that Ice would actually get lynched on Day 1 was
slim to none. Since making the statement, however, Ice has drawn votes and has been grilled about this by several people. The town's focus has shifted his direction, he's picked up several votes, and many people are now questioning his motives, agenda, and possible allegiance. In that situation, trying to retract what he said would be disasterous. Ice is no simpleton and would take care to guard against reacting badly when he's under some pressure. For Ice to survive, he needs to take it all in stride. He stands by the statement he made, doesn't try to weasel his way out of this, fields questions about it without overreacting to them, and clarified his meaning/intent wherever necessary. Grace under pressure demonstrated by a consummate mafia player.
Unfortunately, none of this helps us in any way to determine whether Ice is innocent or evil. Ice would respond to this situation exactly as he has done regardless of his role. Ice's reaction to all the scrutiny interests me now a lot
less than the reaction this has drawn from other players.
There was one little naggy detail in the back of my mind when I voted Ice.. and I'm giving that a little more weight now than I did yesterday. That is..... JL has become an instigator of sorts in this game who has already (on Day 1) managed to point our focus and our votes toward 2 leading lynch candidates... first FF and then Ice. Whether this was intentional and he's giggling about this in the scum den or unintentional... wish I could tell.
A simple exchange between FF and JL...
Looks like I have to go old school -
I vote to lynch Fishfriend1.
He was the first one to role play.
I should have known from reading the earlier threads that this would happen. I hope you dont plan to keep you vote there John, that would be bad for both of us.
....... has resulted in this:
My vote on FF was a joke vote, but his response was no joke.
.....
And this:
(5) FF - JL (19) JRR (87) CCM (145) Annie (155) Rich (216) ILM (332)
Whether JL is innocent or evil (for the moment)...... who among those 5 other voters also make good mafia suspects?
I can accept JRR and CCM voting as they did at the time they made their votes. Neither of them have dealt with FF and his nonsense as much as the rest of us have. Fairly quick votes from new (returning) players seems reasonable where FF is concerned.
IMO both Annie and Rich stand out a lot more as potential scum who (when they're evil) generally like to sit back, lie low, and let someone like JL hand FF's head over to us on a silver platter.
As does... the way ILM conveniently jumped on at the end of the line where she likely thinks it'd be easy to claim she was mislead by other opinions should FF get killed and prove to be innocent.
For that matter, Annie's later retraction off FF to vote Lab Rat (all by himself) would be a very good move for scum to disassociate himself from helping to lynch an innocent. Annie's singleton vote on Lab is safer and less consequential once the imminent death of a townie is well assured.