Going to focus on the flashwagon that built up on me and not hunt through the early game semi-isolated votes from people look Peregrine.
-Let's start at Elyse's VC in #800. The only person voting me is Peregrine. From there, Wisdom votes me in #1105 (switches to massive in #1165, then back to me in #1389, then to TSO in #1452), rkvothe in #1106 (switches to massive in #2337), cheet in #1204 (never unvotes me, nor does his replacement shiro), silver in #1392 (switches to ABR in #1519), Jeanne in #1393 (switches to massive in #1727), rando in #1401 (switches to ABR in #1726), Frozen in #1403 (switches to massive in #1713).
-As has been the case many times, Wisdom was the progenitor of this wagon. Though he seemed to suspect me from the beginning of the game, the impetus for his first vote on me appears to be the post where I suggested rkvothe could be scum asking about flavor so as to come up with a fake claim. This is about in line with Wisdom's reasoning for a lot of his other votes: person x says something Wisdom doesn't think makes sense, Wisdom votes person x. He kinda confbiases me for a bit as he's voting me, pulling snippets from what I post and giving little quips on why he thinks they're scummy. Here's the thing about trying to figure out whether Wisdom could be scum: if he's scum, he's had it really friggin easy this game so far. Because he clearly has a lot of influence and people keep following him around and while a lot of his stuff appears to be confbias, it's been consistent across the board. So it's tough to look at any one case of his and say "this looks scummy." Like they all look simultaneously scummy and towny. I suppose one thing about Wisdom I do find to be towny looking is his ADD-like approach to wagoning. He flits around from person to person, calling a player scummy and then towny and then scummy again. Which, if it came from scum, would have to come from scum really putting on a show in a deliberate way so as to confuse town. Which, I'll admit, I haven't played a lot of larges before, but in the games I'm used to I just feel like scum don't like to take that route. Most scum, I think, try to put themselves in a more comfortable position of controlling their reads and trying to sort of sneak stuff by the town. If Wisdom is scum he is very aggressive scum is what I'm saying, and I would give the edge to scum not being quite this aggressive. Anyway.
-rkvothe's vote comes right after wisdom's, but it's backed up with reasoning that came before Wisdom's vote. Basically rkvothe saw my case and didn't like it. Which is fine, and as I've said before, I do get that I was likely wrong about parts of it (namely the flavor claim part). But rkvothe's response comes off a little weird to me. After critiquing my case, he votes me (right after Wisdom) while admitting that he's going to read other people to see if he wants to vote for somebody else. He also says that his vote is omgus. It just feels like he doesn't really believe in the vote all that much -- this, coupled with the promise (which he follows up on) to look at other people in the game, followed by what I believe was an argument about the semantics of me calling rkvothe one of the "reactionary/definitive" crowd in this game (#1710), as well as rkvothe's explanation for switching from the silver bandwagon to FA (#1786), just comes across as nervous. Like he gets nervous about me voting him so he attacks my case and votes me to get pressure off me, while searching for other people in the game to redirect attention to. And the explanation for hopping off the silver bandwagon doesn't quite do it for me. The point of being on a bandwagon, especially early on imo, is to get reactions. Hopping off the bandwagon takes away pressure that helps elicit reactions, and the hop-off seems like he was nervous about that wagon -- either the prospect of it going through or about being associated with it. Nervousness generally comes across as scummy to me because it makes sense for scum, especially new scum, to be nervous about messing up.
-Cheet's vote on me appeared to have been primarily motivated by my response to the SW/ika/Jeanne drama, and a misunderstanding at that. Much like Cheet's replace-out, this appears genuine. I don't get the reasoning, but I see Cheet's belief that I was going about it the wrong way and I think that comes from a place of Cheet being quite upset at the drama driving the game. For scum, drama is often a good thing -- it allows for confusion and distraction and oftentimes a way to take advantage of easy prey. I don't see anything of alignment-determining value in Shiro's iso, he was basically trying to catch up through the end of the day.
-Silver's vote on me came just after wisdom switched back to me and was clearly situated amid momentum, but again that's just par for the course when it comes to Silver's play this game. Silver's switch to ABR is much more about Albert than it is about me, and in fact Silver doesn't say anything about me looking towny until about 200 posts later in #1708. Nothing too useful in here.
-Rando's vote on me, as well as his switch to Albert, fits with the rest of his ISO which is essentially following momentum.
-I came into Frozen's ISO thinking I had remembered a very natural-looking arc of suspicion on me, but it's actually a little weirder than that. Her first mention of me is her simply stating she doesn't like my posts in #264. She continues with mild suspicion on me for a while, even gently nudging people about townreading/nulltownreading me as the game goes on, but focusing more on other people. Then in #909 she says I make useless posts but I'm not all that scummy. Then in #1388 she says I'm her second scumread, then in #1403 (when she votes me) she says "let's wagon a scum." The timing of this is suspicious, basically her read on me sways back toward scum right as momentum is building against me.
