I guess
communication styles are a good enough place to start. Squirtle is happy with most communication styles along the interweaving spectrums of long/short wordy/concise character/strategy humour/business rapidfire/hoursbetween adn tends mostly to just respond in kind. The redflags for badvibes come more from content and intent then from style:
- Straight up ignoring Squirlte. Either by just not responding (Pyramythra!) when seriously it should be a super basic rule not to log on here if you're not prepared to respond to all new messages in a reasonable window.
- Or ignorance by not actually responding to what was said/asked in the message they're replying to (also Pyramythra this round, though they're usually better, and Dedede to an extant, but this was donkeymonkey's major offence, and wario borders on it at times too, just ramming you with their current agenda after ignoring yours for hours so that he can pretend it's irrelevant now)
- Kind of a corollary of that is that ideally every message should open up the conversation some. Add something which invites a response, even if it's not a direct question. When Squirtle doesn't get that, Squirtle senses the other smasher doesn't want more talk with Squirtle and is just ticking boxes. Kingcruel falls afoul of this sometimes. But he's also willing to doublemessage later when something comes up, so it's easier to accept it as his style/preference - it just means that when he doesn't invite a substantial reply, Squirtle doesn't give him one. His stock with Squirtle has lowered this round because of the any hours that passed between messages, with Squirtle as last reply and Kingcruel not re-initiating the discussion.
- Building trust with information/gestures rather than promises. Darkpit sucked here, as ranted about above. And Falco was great with this so still holds a lot of Squirtle's trust even after taking other actions Squirtle was less keen on. Slowly revealing more and more secret/private information and opinions which would be dangerous if word got spread around - that's how trust is built, even before vote counts which are less significant in this merge stage anyway, given that the second-highest vote tally is as damning as the first. This is what Robin does the best (even though they're still saying their relationship with Falco is strained, despite Falco sharing with me very quickly that he got the smashball clue from Robin).
- Following through. The big one. If you say you'll do something, actually do it please. Not just about where you're voting, but even just who you plan to speak with about what. Multiple people came to me this round asking about details of alliances I'm apparently in but had never heard of before, arranged by Wario (eggalliance somethingorother) and/or Kazuya (a marvelous alliance of eight consisting quite conveniently of anyone Kazuya has ever been on a team with). Conventional wisdom would be to trust them more, for getting me included. Squirlte wisdom says trust them less, because they're not looping me in, and they're also stupid enough to Squirtle's name when working behind Squirtle's back, implying that the person they're talking with can/should tell Squirtle about it - and stupidity is another sign of a player Squirlte would rather avoid aligning with too closely.
- Honesty. If you lie to Squirtle but are seen through immediately, your stock plummets as quickly. Squirtle's happy to be open with information and very rarely makes a direct lie. And Squirtle seeks like-minded individuals! A counter-example: Squirtle now feels closer to darkpit then dededededede because when darkpit told Squirtle about Kazuya's stupiddreamalliance, Squirlte was able to be fullyhonest back, saying that A it was newnews to Squirtle, B Squirtle marks well that the three green-yellows didn't loop Squirlte in, and C Squirtle would accordingly resent that if the absurdalliance were to somehow pan out, and in theory see more reason to side with Kazuya/Dedede against the middle three green-yellows rather than wait for the three to take their picks from the four. Squirtle didn't really say anything incriminating, as it was all hypothetical and Kazuya et al know perfectly well that Squirlte wasn't warned about this. But Squirtle revealed part of Squirtle's thinking, honestly told a new squirtlefriend that there were gaps in Squirtle's current bonds, and honestly brought darkpit into confidence. So now has more reason to expect the same of darkpit down the line. It's not a huge leap toward being allies, but it's the kind of communication stepping stone that makes that more possible and maybe eventually more likely.
- Which is also Squirtle's last principle: reciprocity. Squirtle wants to feel that whatever level Squirtle is at on sharing and trustbuilding, the other party is there too.
- Keep getting new messages which offend the Squirtlesense so keep adding points here lol. Knowing when to use a private chat and when to use a group chat. Wario just asked a question of the captain (did he coordinate the stageselect with yoshi) which absolutely ought to have been private. In fact, I know the answer because I was liaising with both captain and yoshi, privately, at the time. Captain will be more willing to answer honestly, then build another trust stepping stone by asking a question back, if you ask him in private. In the group he's worried one of the other people there might have loose lips and let word get back to Falco, who's expecting Captian to at least not be actively leaning on the scale in Yoshi's favour, which he absolutely is.
The Merge RoundWas kind of an anticlimax, hey?
Falco came in guns ablazing trying to make the vote Yoshi and when his green allies realised that meant not letting the others try shooting for a green, and Falco kept pushing so as not to let the others try shooting for a blue, that seems to have stuck with the pinks. Despite an apparent last-ditch effort by Falco to make the target Wario once he realised the key to cross-team cooperation was going to be targeting greens. (Maybe in the next round, now, and probably not with Falco spearheading it.) Falco claims to have wanted a relaxing weekend off with safety so was the only one really pushing any name for the first 48 hours of the merge. And I guess it worked? Until/unless yoshi wins the duel, thanks to the captain's bid. (Please yoshi win the duel!)
Yellowteam was similarly hamstrung away from a green target. Yoshi took it upon himself to decide the best duel opponent because of course word pink might vote for him leaked out from every source possible. (It almost makes you get the squirtlesense that some of them were stuck in Survivor mode looking to build a simple majority and trying to recruit numbers on Yoshi, even when it was clear a supermajority of 8 (to split 4-4-3) was a virtual impossibility and they'd have been better off agreeing to vote together for one target, with enough votes to make them a duelist regardless, and without telling anyone who the target was. Instead,) All of yellow was happy to go with the flow because with a clear name for the pinkteam target that wasn't any of us, in what could have been a chaotic merge round of overlapping relationships... keeping this status quo kept most of us safe.
And Yoshi decided to name pyramythra. This brings up conflicting emotions and rationalisations, some of which I mentioned in the post above. Basically, positionally in the game overally it served team Squirtle best to lose greens (more below), but personally cutting Pyramythra loose (or trying to, duel dependant) was a signficant relief. They'd ignored me for most of the merge, replied very perfunctorily with no substance, and no real care that I even thought I could get any positive relationship out of them. I was willing to try, when I first reached out (both after tietierocks and after the merge) but there was clearly no rebuilding going to happen. So I didn't go straight to Yoshi and say please reconsider, Pyramythra willing went to the ring knowing whatever the duel they'd still have a good shot to pick their swaptribe, and untested dedede/darkpit are considerably bigger threats to our group overall in the longerterm. When Yoshi admitted some doubt I did try to reinforce it and suggested he run a switch to a green target past the others mostly to gauge their reactions, to see who shut it down out of hand, but by the time he saw my message it was too late for rocking the boat. And it was stuck on pyramythra and I was... fine with that.
Why the green worry? Well there's the numbers for starters. Plus the curious (though understandable) reluctance to cross-target greens from the other side, on both ends based on what I've heard from both Falco and Robin, and building on the old wario fears from early yellow days. Then there's the kazuyadream megaalliance which based on what darkpit said might have been an acutal attempt to arrange a 4-4-3, with non-green yellow designated one four as the 'yellowteam' vote while the greens overlapping flipped their votes. That's just speculation, and for what it's worth I don't think it was ever super likely to occur, but it sounds like it was something raised and discussed.
Kingcruel has promised to vote for a pink-green this next round, and it looks likely to go through even if yoshi loses and pyramythra is on the table again. Pink voting yellow-green seems less likely with Wario off the table, but Robin is potentially willing to explore othe roptions if the pink-greens rule the pink roost (which they can/will should pyramythra lose, as 2 of 4 including Robin). I don't want to float it yet until I know the duel result, but there is a potential supermajority here if Yoshi wins. Six yellow plus Robin makes 7, able to split 4-3-3 and choose the target of the two 3s upon revote. That's the difference knowing the tiebreaker rules makes, 7 can get there way here rather than 8. Obviously it all turns on Robin. But it's now theoretically possible, and I think there's enough baseline trust on yellow now, having voted together, to make it theoretically feasible too.
With this possible future in mind I was very glad to encourage yellowteam to bid on the safetysandbag, as if darkpit/dedede had it that plan would need to include voting Falco which I'm no prepared to do right now (even though he's in the bad books with most everyone else, having started the yoshi train without intending it to be a strictly pink thing, then trying to jump tracks onto Wario and failing at the last minute.) I was also sure to encourage a highbid for the attack sandbag, as that could make or break the duel outcome and I needed it to come out on Yoshi's side. There was some paranoia at the end which led to captain overhighbidding, but it was good he did bid as Yoshi 'forgot' again, an unfortunate recurring theme. I think I can adapt even if Yoshi goes out here, but it becomes far more likely that pink votes Squirtle. We'll see. Or hopefully not
Finally, a word for Marth whom I skipped last time so as to rant about everyone else. Always sucks to see anybody leave a game for IRL reasons beyond their control, all the moreso when it's a legitimate international crisis. Marth really had been hitting his stride too, fulfilling his promise from the early days on blue to return fully active and invested, until that was no longer possible. In hindsight it may hopefully hurt less and I'll find it legitimately hilarious that after days of mounting frustration and doubt while his presence and reliability waned, it was only in this final moment that I appreciated how truly honest he'd been. He messaged me to explain the situation and his quit, then asked me not to tell anyone else until there was an official announcement. And I realised we'd really bonded better than he apparently had with others - or maybe it was just that I'd sent a followup message checking in to see whether he was okay. Either way, he tragically proved his loyalty just as he had to leave. And possibly skirted some ID lines by telling me that the issue was with his work peaking because of the invasion rather than his physical safety, as it seems some of the other players have since presumed. They say you never really appreciate what you have until it's gone, and that was truly the case with Marth, in the end.
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