Done re-reading; here's where I stand on everything.
Don't Shoot
CaffeineBoost / Duskfall98: I had a gut townread on CaffeineBoost's silliness from early on, which I mentioned in-thread, and I'm going to provide a spicy take: when a scum is providing a bunch of reads with no explanation they're almost always doing it by reading the atmosphere and trying to mindmeld with town to an extent. I'm going to say I was right on CB and this is why DS put him down as a TL instead of nothing. As for Dusk, I don't think he goes nuclear on his buddy hal when there is no attention on hal at that point (I myself was TRing hal). The one possible scenario would be if scum!Dusk wanted game control and saw his entrance as a chance to get it, and then the two planned the bus out IRL... but realistically that's not worth the loss of a buddy in this set-up and I think Dusk seems competent enough to make a splash a scum without the bus entrance. Keep in mind game mechanics means scum can't win with only one player alive, so a deepwolf carrying its team solo through bussing can't happen. As far as I'm concerned, this is the towniest slot currently alive.
Samoyed: Early SR on DS (
#145), called out by Clarinet early (
#147), early calling for a Clarinet shot (
#173). My SR on Clarinet was heavily due to his weird reactions when pressed by Samoyed early on; with Clarinet's flip confirmed that interaction looks like scum trying to reason with a townie pushing them. SvS usually has more decisive action to distance the two posters whereas Clarinet bargained with the public appeal of "I don't know how to read Samoyed here guys" (
#198). The passive-aggressive stance makes me think he was focused on coming out of the interaction looking good to other players, indicating he didn't have any control over Samoyed's push like he would if they were buddies. Other than that Samoyed reads very town tonally. This is not QUITE as strong of a townread as Dusk - we have a flipped scum who was on Clarinet, so I could be misreading the Samoyed/Clarinet interactions and the scum gameplan was to bus Clarinet from the start, whereas I doubt hal was bussed. That said I am pretty confident on my reading of Samoyed/Clarinet as TvS and I'm 90% on Samoyed being town.
WaterLily3: The nonsense push she took back was on Clarinet the flipped scum (
#206) which I think looks better. I don't expect newbscum to be trigger-happy enough to bus over a case they don't fully understand (esp because newbscum is likely talking to their buddies in scumchat about their cases and Clarinet would go Wtf that wasn't something I actually posted bro. also lmao at what Samoyed edited the quote into in hindsight) but I do see this coming from newbtown feeling out the game.
This Clarinet post at WaterLily3 looks like trying to bargain with a townie to me. I don't think this is scum with Clarinet. I won't fault her for hard preferring Clarinet over DS since I had the same reads. Also, I disagree with Flyhn that hal TRing her for Fenrir read is suspicious; if anything that seems like hal namedropping a random townie who is town to look like he's town-hunting. The reason that it's incongruent with his read on Fenrir is simply because he's scum and his reads aren't real.
Null
Aura Guardian: Early SR on DS in
#142 and
#350. It was never a strong push though so I don't give him much cred for it. Overall, AG has been around, but he hasn't been a very strong voice in discussion. I think starting discussion with the RNG plan and being on DS are more likely town behaviors than not but I don't feel confident enough in it to stop a shot on him.
Fenrir Aesir: This guy has nothing really. All his posts seem like typical posts in a mafia game and there are minimal interactions with flipped scum. He
was on Clarinet, but not in a way I find particularly indicative of alignment. Will likely need to die before endgame but I don't see him as a pressing priority right now. Oh yeah but hal wanted him dead (
#302) (
#545). I'm not really sure how to read that interaction but I'm noting it here in case anybody else finds it interesting.
Shot Targets
tonithetourguide: I have no idea what this guy's alignment could be but frankly he needs to be policy shot sooner or later so that the lurker slots don't stack up at endgame.
Flyhn: I didn't like
Flyhn's opening post earlier in the game because I thought it was using a lot of words to not say very much and found his reasons for townreading Clarinet and hal disingenuous - he puts them down as townie for what amounts to "playing a mafia game normally". Looking back, hal and Clarinet... are the flipped scum!?!?! Buh!?!?!? It's entirely possible this is scum trying to contaminate the town pool TBH. It confuses me that he read Samoyed and Clarinet's earlygame interaction and came out of it putting them in the same boat for the same reasoning.
My issue with his recent posts is that he uses a lot a words and does a lot of discussing of different possibilities to come to townreads that are already mostly agreed upon. Frustratingly though this could easily be a playstyle thing and his tone reminds me of a lot of low self esteem townies I've seen and makes me question my issues with his actual content. My take is that he should die before endgame but we should shoot the other mafia-looking guys first so that he has the gun late if I'm wrong; my understanding is that in the original popcorn he was town and shot a bunch of scum guys??
XnadrojX: There's little to say about Jordan because all his content is earlygame and it's all very slim. Trying to look active early then chickening out of the thread for no discernible reason is stereotypical scummy behavior, ergo he is a good shot target. I also think DS' scumlean on him is another possible attempt to mindmeld with people on an already-proposed accurate read for cred here.
bonerman: The funny thing about this slot is that I'm pretty sure if Clarinet had flipped before DS everybody would be scumreading it on interactions. The way he agrees to disagree on Clarinet (
#223) while later
still saying he could be convinced to shoot Clarinet, keeping Clarinet both inside and outside his scum group / shot pushes, is literally THE #1 most common position scum take on their buddies ever. With Clarinet's flip in mind I don't really like his earlygame posts. He never goes in on any pushes except DS, the flipped scum he doesn't actually try to get shot (entirely possible this is his strongest case because he is informed TBH), and it's weird how backseat his play looks in retrospect. There was lots of time left in the day and scum likely didn't anticipate Asek hipfiring in the middle of it - I think bonerman was stalling out hoping Clarinet would look better and the shot could be moved elsewhere, most likely WaterLily or a lurker.
The elephant in the room here is that people keep TRing him over the DS interactions, but honestly I... don't think... him and DS.... looks like TvS......... It's actually pretty weak..............
DS in
#393: "shoot bonerman imo"
DS in
#409: "this sounds like something a scum!clarinet partner would say"
DS in
#414: "you seem'd to have a problem with me before we even began interacting, so as you say, seems like you've already predetermined I should be shot" (essentially an accusation of scumminess)
and then Samoyed and I engage DS and DS
doesn't want to shoot bonerman and bonerman
doesn't want to shoot DS. so you have an interaction where two players - one of which is flipped scum - go off on each other and then come out not wanting each other shot, but not townreading each other either. IDK how so many people aren't picking up on this as classic distancing. it is EXTREMELY easy for a scumpair of bonerman and DS to organize this to muddy up the interactions early on as neither comes out looking particularly bad and neither will look weird if they're not immediately pushing the other for the foreseeable future. It's also worth noting that
bonerman cops to waiting for Clarinet's flip to assess me and DS. I don't see a world in which scum is planning for DS to die over Clarinet at the point bonerman posted his reads list. I think bonerman is scum, and I think the plan for him was to distance from DS without really pushing the shot, not expecting DS to get shot until lategame. Then in the worst anticipated scenario for that day, where Clarinet gets shot, he can go GUESS I WAS WRONG LOL and drop his DS push entirely until it's necessary.
Okay that's enough saying the name "bonerman" with a completely serious face for one post.
Jalmont / Texas Cloverleaf:
#75 is still a godawful post and I don't take Jalmont as the sort of player to entirely skip out on earlygame. When he came back after more of substance had happened (
#220) he still wasn't posting game content. I'm repeating myself. My earlygame read on this slot was that Jalmont might be scum with performance anxiety and since this slot has yet to deliver anything of note it's hard to feel better about it in any way whatsoever. Texas has done nothing of value. A good shot target.
I would shoot Texas -> boney -> Jordan -> toni -> Flyhn, and then look into the nulls if the game is still going. toni can be bumped up to any earlier point on the list as there is nothing to read him on; he just needs to die before lategame. If I am right about boney then I might reevaulate Jordan.
BTW trying to figure out who the scum are by guessing how many scum a flipped scum has in each section of the reads list is nonsense guys. It's better to look at the context of each "read" and figure it out from there.
it doesn’t make that much sense long term though for dusk to soulbus Hal and Texas. However he did back off on Texas at one point.