Maybe it's the fatigue talking, but this is the most baffling day so far in this game.
1. The Failed Super-Kill
Occam's Razor is that Esooa's tree stump claim is true, and scum tested that, meaning that the final scum is Hally or Michelle. A tinfoily-but-not-impossible alternative is that Esooa targeted herself to make it look like scum tried to kill her. If she's not a true stump and was only 1-shot unchoppable, I can imagine someone doing this as insurance that they wouldn't be chopped today. I can't really imagine anything other than those two options. Well, I can, but it's like a tinfoil hat on the tinfoil head of a tinfoil person in a tinfoil world.
2. Hold Up, Is Michelle Scum?
Despite previous nervousnesses, my bottom line on Michelle has hitherto been that she is not only town but a true, sane cop. First she red-peeked me, which confirmed either that she can see alignment or roles, then she red-peeked Bo, and he flipped scum. Those two things are more than enough for me to fully believe that she's a town cop. Not only that, but the latter half of the game and these past couple day phases especially, Michelle has read as nothing but supertown to me. Genuine scumhunting, well-formed reads, the whole package. I would be
in awe if she flipped scum. Like, I would want her to somehow put her autograph on a siren.gif so I could hang it on my wall.
Is it possible that she purposefully bussed BoKnows when she didn't have to? Is it possible she's a scum rolecop who found out I was a miller? Of course it's possible. A good chunk of my case against Odd was that he bussed Bo when he didn't have to, and I've personally won a scum game by doing the same. Do I think this is likely?
I really don't.
3. The Esooa Issue-a
Michelle was not the first to point out that Esooa's attitude towards this game, and towards anyone asking her questions, could be described as
uncooperative,
irreverent, or even
vaguely hostile. Now, I've known players in the past who have very similar playstyles, such that doing so is NAI for me. However, when it suddenly becomes a very real possibility that Esooa will get chopped again, she posts more
active discussion (i.e. not spam à la D5, or just saying 'who cares lol') on D10 than she has since D2. I counted. It's weird to me that a so-claimed tree stump who has voiced disinterest so many times would suddenly care about finding the last scum.
Unless requested, I won't post the actual breakdown of her post-count, because I don't want this to be misconstrued as being suspicious of a low-poster. The brief overview is
almost half of her current post count from D0-D2, significantly less until D5 when everyone was posting spam and going crazy over the fingersplints outing, 8 posts on D7 when we chopped her but
only one of those posts addressing her wagon (note the nonchalance), then 63 posts so far today—which is almost as many as she made D6-N9. And to reiterate,
it's not just the count of the posts, but the content. She got involved here and there with discussing the game, but whenever the discussion turned to
her, it was almost like someone flipped her give-a-fuck switch to
OFF.
Until D10.
Huh.
The only issue that gives me slight pause is the failed super-kill and her tree stump claim. I feel like if there was no NK, nova would not have posted that a kill was attempted. The only reasonable explanation for Esooa being scum would be that she self-targeted the NK. That would mean a) she knew that she would survive because she's also un-KN-able (even if x-shot), and/or b) scum NKs fail if they are self-targeted, and she knew that.
Is it tinfoily? Yeah, but not unreasonably. As I've said before, I've seen scum carry out insane gambits in the past. Doing anything similar to what I've described is well within the bounds of possibility.
4. But What About Hally, Though?
This one is short. Hally has given me no indication that she's scum, though I am concerned about this Michelle vote. She just says that Michelle's posts 'suck' today, and then leaves her vote on her. Which apparently counts double? That's concerning but doesn't quite give me scum vibes.
Is it possible she's a secret deepwolf who has been fooling us the whole time? If she's the talented player I have observed and who others have said she is, yeah, that's possible. Do I think it's the case here? No.
I'm glad it came off clearly. I often worry my writer brain makes things too complicated, especially in mafia games.