Except it's not particularly likely - even if there is an SK, which is a moderate if, it only comes to that if they choose a different target than maf, and that they don't hit each other etc. etc.

And if it is 1 Maf + 1 SK then a mislynch generally makes those numbers worse, and town could be knocked out altogether overnight.

Plus, if the weirdest possible reality was true and Joe/Trial were fake-claiming, then, yeah, you almost certainly lose overnight. ;)

Would the twins surviving yet another night make you suspicious of them?

As you said, there is an implied agreement that everyone is town and lying and backstabbing is part of the game. I wouldn't hold it against my lover for "We're agreed to play for our joint win-con" and getting backstabbed any more than holding it against a mafia player for agreeing to scumhunt with me during day then backstabbing me during night.

Speaking of using and accessing QT, how do people feel about the way they confirmed their day-chat?
I mean, it was not breaking any rules and thus fully legit but I couldn't help myself and to think like I feel it shouldn't be possible to do and to confirm daychat. Even when I thought it helepd us as town I felt like it would be more in spirit of game to be left in uncertainity.
But maybe I just can't appreciate the creative way they did it and am jealous of them. Who knows.

I don't know about Joe but I wouldn't do it.

When I play I don't try to cheese the game at all cost and I hope most other people don't either.

I personally found it unlikely there is SK, but the way SPF hammered each wagon made me bit uneasy how willing he is to get any lynch so I was a bit suspect. I mostly pointed finger at him at the end of Day because I hoped maybe mafia will bite and NK him instead of "brothers".

That's what I hoped too!

There were plenty of clues for Tragic Lovers but I'm guessing it's so rare that no one clocked it

1. In night chat Joe joked of his lover, 'he's so trusting'. I thought it was unnecessary comment and it was a LAMIST comment in hindsight.
2. Their claim did not sound identical. I really thought at the time "Oh Gogtrial's said he's Town Lover/Sibling and Joe's not said the same. My Scumbuddy is going to get caught out". But no one picked up on it. In reality Joe was having to pretend he was Scum to Scum so slipped in not copying Gogtrial's claim 100% because of that conflict imo.
3. They admitted to having day chat, but for why? That should have been questioned because the only necessity for it is if they are hiding something.
4. They both wagon lynched Trent quickly as a team play. It's Tragic Lovers MO to initially eliminate Scum.
5. They kept staying alive

Allowing a cheesy tactic to exist is bad game design. Like follow the cop. Either give gogtrial read access or disallow copy paste. But leaving the rule on and counting on not cheesing it is a no-no.

As for "at all cost" depends what you mean by it. I would never for example choose to win by taking advantage of someone's real life situtation, or having mod modkill someone due to post edit that I know was an unintentional merge. But finding clever ways of using rules and loopholes in mechanics is part of the game. I hope other people do use the rules/mechanics to the best of their abilities. I'd hate to win only to find out I only did so because my opponent put arbitrary restrictions on himself that he found too cheesy.

We would've been only too happy to oblige! :D

See our chat for our thinking there, but basically:
D3 near EoD: Joe claimed "Town Sibling", I only confirmed. In later posts Joe added some details. Siblings are guaranteed to be of the same alignment, so if I had done the claim, this should've been a sure sign for trent that I was lying, and then he would have had to wonder why I was lying. We were hoping that with my involvement down to just a "confirm", Joe could spin a tale about sibling flavour, and that I never read the wiki so Joe was able to slip that capital S past me. (Turns out none of it was necessary.)
D4: Bookwyrm asked for a full claim, Joe was unavailable. I pondered prevaricating, but decided to just bite the bullet, and did a full "Town Sibling" claim based on Mason details from the wiki. Trent really should've seen at this point that I was lying. (I'm guessing he didn't read the wiki / overlooked the details of the claim, probably because he thought he knew them already, and I tried to hide them in the midst of a wall post.) Joe came back later to restate the same details.
Joe obviously wouldn't copy my claim 100%, since we'd both be working from our own 'PM' and rewording it. As far as I'm aware there was no functional difference in what we stated here.

I don't remember if it was, but if it wasn't, then that's probably because we brought out the hypothesis relatively early on that it was a bit of an offset for the weakness than lovers have compared to masons.

Aye, and then having flub around as a guaranteed town with strong insights to believably eat the NK was our saving grace. I suspect that without him, there would've been way more suspicion on us, even despite lynching trent.

Because you are evil bastards! :-p

Possibly, since the argument "They survived because they were scum" would be valid. The counter argument is, of course, "They survived because scum want you to THINK they are scum".

I wouldn't have gone for No Lynch on that last day. I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have gone for the twins on the following Day either, simply because I'd already considered and discounted the possibility of Tragic Lovers and 4 mafia; there simply wasn't any space for them to BE mafia.

Also, I've come to the belief that sometimes, you just make your decisions about the state of the game and then play it out. Sometimes you'll be right, a lot of the time you'll be wrong, but I've kind of gotten over the analysis paralysis. Lets kill someone and move on; if we lose, there's another game next time.

I respect that. I simply feel somewhat differently.

As a matter of personal preference, I just don't want to be playing co-op while my partner is playing betray-if-it-pays. I'll play betray-if-it-pays, and I can enjoy some betray-if-it-pays, but I don't care for treachery during co-op.

The Mafia aren't playing betray-if-it-pays with Townies. Their whole win condition requires betraying; they don't really have another option.

As is probably obvious from in-game play, I had no problem with it. :)

To me, it was just a clever use of resources to verify a power that one had, same as for PRs with a Night Action.

This is true.

What about Townies then? I'll rewrite my statement as: I wouldn't hold it against my lover for "We're agreed to play for our joint win-con" and getting backstabbed any more than holding it against a town lover for the implied agreement of winning together as town then him backstabbing me and going for the co-op win with his partner instead.

But overall: fair enough. I understand your position too.

(and maybe we can agree that overall setups which lead to such situations in general should be avoided?)

I'm not sure I understand your scenario here. How would I feel about a Town Lover agreeing with me to play for the Town win condition (instead of his Tragic Lover win condition?), then abruptly deciding to dump me and win with his Mafia Lover instead (causing me to lose)?

I don't think the betrayal aspect quite applies, since as an uninformed townie, I'm not sure he's got the same win condition as me in the first place; A mafia could try to bluff me with the same claim. I'd probably treat it like any other neutral survivor type claim, and I'd expect that the other person may suddenly change their mind.

The difference with me being a Tragic Lover versus me being in a game containing Tragic Lovers is that mod guarantee about our joint win condition. If the mod lies to me about my lover's win condition, then that falls under bastard mod territory, and I don't hold it against the player for doing their job (I'll probably complain some about the setup, but ultimately I won't hold it against the mod either. Some things seem like a neat idea, and we try them, and they just don't work out. No big deal)