Trying to end my inactive phase. Though I am going on vacation tomorrow so I am sorry if I just dip again after today.
My opinions on everyone:
AirC: Maybe this was addressed already but I'm really confused how #799 says "I think we should either shoot Flandrs or Celever" but then #801 says "I don't really see how Celever is mafia here"? I guess I can sort of see the process where shooting Celever would give either validity or invalidity to his reads if he flips town/mafia but I do think it's kind of weird to have both of those opinions at the same time. And reading a few posts further I see that Tommy also called this out but I don't believe it was ever answered? The rest of his reads are very surface level - very safe, but not a lot of indication on alignment. Fast forward to just now the DBD/AirC interaction is really weird lol... I mean his first post just comes off as direct OMGUS? Did AirC express a read on DBD earlier as a precursor to that post that I missed? That seemed to come out of nowhere for me.
a fairy: I still think some of af's day 1 stuff reads from a scummy POV but it's day 6 so I probably shouldn't be basing reads on tone/essentially WIFOM. Most of her content seems to be conversation surrounding meta/confidence of reads with Texas/Celever/realiti, with her big scumread/callout being realiti which turned out to be wrong. But tbh I'd probably side with her over realiti anyway in that scenario so I wouldn't call being wrong scum indicative. Also townread skipper. But also townread Flandrs to her credit (both early on and later on). #1076 is a breakout post that I think is really good. Up until reading that post I was thinking I was going to lean scum on fairy but I like her a lot more now. She reduced her skipper townread, doubled down on the flandrs townread, reduced the realiti scumread, all stuff in the correct direction and I don't think she would need to do that if she was mafia. She didn't have a lot of pressure of being shot soon with the shot options being either inactives or heroshots which she doesn't fit into either of.
Celever: I maintain that his gameplay was very Celever-core at the start, I think his and Texas's thing had no real impact on my read of Celever, it had some impact on my read of Texas but that's not who this section is about. I think, vibes-wise, if Celever is scum here he is wolfing really hard. Really hard in an unnecessary way, specifically I look at #743 and think that's not something scum would post. I think scum would advocate a lot more for one specific shooting strategy, because by doing that they have a lot more control over what happens and can steer things away from shooting their scummates or shooting townies who are dangerous to them with the gun. In the same vein I lowkey agree with #782. I don't have any more specifics to point to but I'm like 90% confident in a Celever town read right now. Apparently all it takes for me to not scumread Celever is for me not to be actively engaging with him in a game.
Dead by Daylight: His early content is mostly fine. I think his "big threat pool" of one scum between Clouds / realiti / Cel and maybe the wildcards like Texas and phoopes is kind of weird? Don't see the connection to those at that stage of the game. But Clouds did end up being scum so it's not like he was wrong. #345 is a bit of a red flag though, bragging that his thoughts were correct because Clouds ended up being scum when it was just one person out of an illogical pool of 5 that he was correct on. I feel like dbd kind of tunneled on Celever afterwards, which I don't think is a correct read, but I also think it's more of a tunnel than anything malicious. I don't think Celever's supposed "OMGUS"ing is really anything notable nor is a lot of the other "evidence" against Celever. It's hard not to pair him with AirC for the interaction just now - I feel like there's at least one scum in him and AirC but it possibly could be both?
des121: des hasn't posted a single game thought that I think is worth analyzing. The one notable game opinion she had was a small readlist with no justification, in which she said that Flandrs was mafia. Depsite Flandrs actively holding the gun at that point. This is low activity even for des, which may be a product of this format, but could also be a product of her being more cautious than usual due to them rolling scum for the first time. I honestly think that des will probably just need to be shot at some point to resolve her slot, but I hope she can come in and contribute so we can actually start to read her instead. But we cannot leave des for endgame if she stays at her current status.
Evie: Evie zeroed-in on me pretty early which makes it kind of hard for me to read her without it being just OMGUS. I think her read on me is mostly just because I haven't been active which, while true, I don't think is scum indicative for me. I've played scum (counting scum-adjacent neutral) twice that I can remember and I feel like I was pretty active both times. I just haven't gotten into this game. It is notable that she scumread realiti and then had a real wishy-washy read on Texas.
phoopes: The thread sentiment seems to be that phoopes gives towny vibes, which I agree with. I think phoopes gives off all the signs of someone who's new (/ hasn't played in a long time) to NOC and is putting in a solid effort. I don't think it's completely out of the question for phoopes to be scum but I see no reason to shoot them at the moment, and I think later in the game, as long as they continue to contribute like they are now, there will be a lot more to read them off which will make a read pretty clear cut.
pulsar512b: All I can see is small talk. I have to think if they were mafia there'd be at least a little more contribution to the game? That's what I'm going to go off for now but I would really like to see pulsar reappear. If not they are genuinely just a random shot.
ShyPebble: I think it's interesting that they gave a full reads list so early (#255). I'm not sure if this has been covered yet but what is your experience in mafia? I think that post is the type of thing I would more expect to see from someone who's played a lot (albeit probably with more reasoning rather than just a list). That post had a decent mix of correct and incorrect based on what we know now. They give me vibes that they are not in a scumchat, with them speculating about vengefuls and figuring out math in the thread. I feel like as mafia they would be more of a reserved slot.
Texas Cloverleaf: I think Texas was way too confident in his reads at the beginning. But he was right on skipper and that really throws a wrench in my read on him. I'm iffy on whether that could've been a bus or not. The one thing that makes me think it's possibly a bus is that he kind of used it to drive towards a Celever shot as well, which would have been a decent trade for him: he gains towncred and Celever's death while looking innocent because of skipper's death, costing one inactive mafia member who probably would've been shot anyway's life. I feel like since then too much of his reads seem based on early game stuff and not content later on. I want to hear more from him on whether he's reconsidering any of his reads or if he's locked in his opinions from the start of the game.
Tommy: I'm sus of Tommy at the moment. If I'm thinking from the perspective of being mafia, I think my goal would be to control the general opinion of the thread. If I'm going to be wishy-washy and unsure if we should shoot inactives, shoot at sus active people, or whatever, I'm leaving a lot of options open and risking all sides of my team. If we assume the scumteam is a mix of inactives and actives, then scum aren't necessarily going to protect ALL of their scummates, but what they can do is push the game in a certain direction where they have the best numbers and the best odds of getting to a good spot. That's where I place Tommy's behavior at the moment. He is pushing for the inactive shots because he knows that a certain percentage of the inactives are townie/mafia, and he knows that town will gain very little information and lose motivation over this time. As he takes control of the thread, even if it means a mafia or two dies, he's now in a super favorable position to carry his team to a win.
Trying not to put any neutrals on this readslist because I think it's too late to have neutrals. But if I can give myself a cop out some of the lower townleans and higher scumleans are pretty damn close to neutral.
Townread:
Celever
phoopes
ShyPebble
Townlean:
a fairy
pulsar512b
Scumlean:
AirC
Dead by Daylight
Evie
Texas Cloverleaf
Scumread:
des121
Tommy
Right now the team I'm thinking of is:
Tommy + AirC or Dead by Daylight + des121 or pulsar512b + Other of AirC/DBD or Texas or Evie.
Super shaky on the last slot. I think there are a ton of options still and I don't know what the best path forward is to resolve it. I'm not opposed to resolving des and pulsar soon but I feel like that's just going to drag the game more and give us very little. Also I am terrified of the thought of des having the gun.
