(sorry for length. this ended up being a "this readslist is for Nacho's sake" more than "this is a summary of my thoughts!")
TOWN (S ----> W)
{Shosin-Celestial Coordinates, Oversoul, Sakura Hana-----Gay Dance Gone Wrong, ----------gap----------, Something_Smart-----Dansflor---------gap--------PM}
Shoshin
The elephant in the room is
this, which plays a significant part of my townread on Shoshin. To be clear, I do not think that it is impossible for Shoshin to be scum and I don't think that Shoshin is above reproach because of this post, but it's a pretty crazy move from someone who doesn't seem to have a ton of respect for her scum game in general, and, if she is scum here, I think it is a "burning bridges" type of game as RC mentioned could be the case. It really hinges on how much she actually hates playing scum + what could drive her to play a good scum game; I've gotten completely wrecked because I've underestimated Tammy's drive to fool me and don't want that to happen here, but, odds are in our favor that Shoshin is just town and this paragraph is just a big rant saying that Shoshin is probably town.
I do like her general pushback against RC, in particular
1361 where she accuses him of scumreading Wisdom to buddy up to her is an approach that seemed genuine and it was a good look that she kept engaging even after the initial attack instead of making everything about RC like many scum would respond, but there's nothing that I'd die for outside of the "I'm going to Africa" posts.
Celestial Coordinates:
413 is where my townread on the slot firmed up - Nancy and I had an exchange that basically culminated in Nancy arguing with me about how I was wrong saying that her earlier mistake wasn't town-indicative and had her doing so passionately. I think it's a pretty weird position for her to take if she's scum here - I mean, clearly she respects RC's scum game more than her own, so the play here is probably not attempting to town clear yourself via dumbtell and instead to not make any significant moves and let RC guide the ship. There's still a world where she slips on accident and finds Dann's townread on her so compelling that she adopts his neighborhood, but doesn't seem very likely. RC's setup thoughts here are mostly correct if a bit overblown - if we don't hold people accountable with something concrete (whether by dropping baton lists before day's end or agreeing on lynches or whatever), then it seems like a much easier job for scum overall. Do lean slight town based on the intensity of the position alone despite acknowledging that "intensity" is a pretty bad reason to townread RC.
The timing of the read on Shoshin read makes a
lot
of sense to me, and it's probably not the route RC takes if scum when he can probably spin some of Wisdom's negging him against him or he can take that "Nacho is underwhelming" to a track where he's instead gaining momentum against me. The two posts that concern me about Shoshin the most are
706 and
709. I don't understand the reasoning for it and I don't know where he's coming from on Cephrir-Shoshin associations in particular - the two have more interactions than I expected they would but that seems to be coming from Shoshin's end almost entirely and chances of someone latching onto their scum buddy to that extent this early is slim and I don't agree it's something that's happening because WIFOM; you take a big risk doing something like that and if there's someone around who can read you pretty accurately, then it's not a risk you should be comfortable taking. Also think that Shoshin's observation in
1396 is a good one and is something that I've seen in a number of places where RC seems to burn himself out taking positions that don't particularly matter to him as scum.
Also really just like his scumhunting in general - especially in places like coming together on Gameplay/Wisdom. As a good scum player, you want to limit the opportunities for townies to project town; yes, you look townier and get more towncred for pushing a bunch of different people, but it's a game of diminishing returns. RC has done more at this point than he needs to as scum, plus there's just the fact that if he's pocketed me so thoroughly by coming to reads when I'm coming to reads and offering good criticisms of a couple while completely disagreeing with others that if he's scum at this point it's just :hitoshrug: for me. A big piece of my Wisdom scumread is simply because this is the role I expected Wisdom to fill, but he most definitely is not at this point in time.
Oversoul:
Oversoul is town here unless I completely forgot what his scum game looked like (which is possible!).
He starts out the game by declaring that he won't baton pass to any of the slots in the game who are a major threat to Oversoul-scum in that I think any could identify him and made him dead within a day. I don't think that's his approach as scum. I don't think that Oversoul scumreads Gay Dance early game when they're picking up a bunch of townreads because he's a scum player that lacks the level of confidence. I don't think Oversoul posts the "fuck you, peacing out until lynch phase" when scum simply because I don't think he's not paranoid of the townread on him disintegrating by then if he's scum. Like, if something major changed and someone needs me to explain this then let me know but otherwise Oversoul still town.
Sakura Hana:
Sakura Hana townread mainly build momentum once she had her split from RC, but even before then I thought there were two points that were important to me. The
first were from her interactions with grumprir simply because I don't think there's a scenario that makes sense to me where Sakura is scum and drives the knife in like she did. As scummates with Cephrir she'd be hyperaware of Ceph's feelings because daychat so definitely not there. Sakura scum and RC town then she knows RC is wrong so can't see her going as hard as she did here, and don't really see Sakura taking the position of "RC's sidekick" if they're scum together. I think her expression of not caring about the strong scumgame affecting her townread on RC
here came across as pretty genuine for whatever reason, and the progression from Shoshin's Africa Tell and how that ended up eroding her faith in RC and causing her to break from him in a couple of places came across as super town.
Gay Dance Gone Wrong:
This read is mostly based on what I assume from the Bitmap side. I like the glimmers of GiF that I've seen so far, but there's nothing substantive or anything that I feel any significant amount of confidence in. I talked a little bit about what looks like Bitmap's shower thoughts making their way into the thread (such as
336, and I still most certainly buy into that and don't think it's something that Bitmap thinks to fake as scum, but I like how aggressively he projects as town especially with RC hanging around, and I really like his progression wrt Shoshin-RC; moving from
strongly townreading RC and thinking that he'll catch flack for doing for that to
following RC onto his scumread to
getting lost in the weeds a bit and trying to become a logic bot to playing with the idea of Shoshin-RC scum together....
Like, if Gay Dance Gone Wrong is scum here, they're in a fantastic position in a good playerlist, so I think that Bitmap's overall approach would be to keep a steady ship; stay active, stay engaged, but I don't think there would be as much gamesolving effort and there is here.
Something_Smart:
Something_Smart seems to be just happily snarking himself to the end of time, which I'm actually pretty okay with at this point in time. Him savagely shooting down people scumreading him for weak reasons (
here and
here) takes a sense of chutzpah that I don't think S_S has as scum.
I liked the way he came about townreading me. Subtle progression, but moving from
"hmmm. not sure if alignment indicative." to
don't know what he'd look like as scum but like what he's doing to
probably town seems like he's just figuring shit out on his own time, and putting that much effort in a read that doesn't matter in the scheme of things if S_S is scum seems less likely to me than him just being town here.
This post is underappreciated. So is
this one.
I guess I don't have any magic bullets for this read but I'd be tickled if S_S is scum here, just don't think it's particularly likely at all.
Dannflor:
Dannflor's early approach seems to be mostly centered around Enter, which is something I think I like independent of everything else. I'd like to hear an expanded read on Enter from Dann, though - I didn't really understand why he started reading Oh as town when he did, but I like his read on gameplay especially if I'm right there and I like his "oh god I'm going to be a mislynch this game" talk especially since a bunch of people aren't really addressing him as a popular lynch target at the time, just seems to be asking for trouble.
PMysterious:
Just seems like lost town, waiting for a replacement here.
I liked him apologizing to Something_Smart for not voting him for the baton passing - if he felt obligated to do something like scum, I think he would because he's following the path of least resistance. I thought the "what is Nacho like nine times out of ten" question was a silly question but also cute and more likely to be coming from town.
"Playing with Nacho is like playing with a religious conservative." ~UncertainKitten
-- Fate, Vanilla Townie, was brutally stabbed by a throwing sword in endgame.
