Deimos27
Panther and Fox/MariaR
HoldenGolden/Starbuck
Mikul/JacksonVirgo
popopopopopopo/Tipsy
TrueSoulEnergy/Donkey Kong
Battle Mage/jks
Shiro
Sujimichi/Titus
Tuxedo Mask/catboi
TheThirteenthJT/beeboy
Panzer
This is quickly shaping up to be a game where everyone has a reason to be town (well, almost everyone), but three people by necessity must not be.
Deimos is locktown here for good reason. While Deimos's later contributions to the game may be lackluster, this is easily explained by the fact that Deimos is V/LA currently and is struggling to keep up with the game now. If you look at Deimos's earlier content, it is self-evident that when Deimos isn't busy, when Deimos isn't V/LA, he's plain and simply, town. Period.
I maintain my case for Panther and Fox, via accidental mod circumstances, being accidentally conftown, because again: Panther and Fox were having trouble posting when the game went live. They had confirmed, but were unable to post in the game thread. The mod was made aware of this only after D1 had started. The mod being made aware of this only after D1 started indicates that Panther and Fox were unaware there'd be an issue posting prior to D1 starting. The presence of the issue therefore indicates that Panther and Fox would have no prior warning of this.
This is an unintentional accidental townconfirm because if Panther and Fox were scum, they would have access to a scum PT. PTs in this game were open during the pregame, before D1 started. Because PTs were open during the pregame, before D1 started, if Panther and Fox were scum, and they had trouble posting, they would've been unable to post to the scum PT. And thus they would've told the mod about this, and the mod would've announced it sooner. But because of the timing of the mod announcement, Panther and Fox were, accidentally mod-spewed as conftown.
Even lacking this--and I feel like it should not be discarded--their content this game was clearly town and MariaR just radiates obvtown here.
HoldenGolden was clearly town with everything he did and nothing Starbuck has done since then has diminished that, to the contrary strengthening that townread.
Mikul I maintain was approaching things from a town angle and I disagree with jks's analysis stating that Mikul wasn't contributing, the thoughts were there and the contribution present and more than that I find the replacement (while annoying) to still be insanely town with their thought progression.
popo was a strong town gutvibe even from so little content and Tipsy has certainly vindicated that by just being insanely town overall.
So those are my locktowns--my locktowns will not be budging at all because they are locked in at town because they are town, period, pure and simple, town.
From there, we go into what in the OPL league of legends professional play likes to call "The Mess".
TSE I leaned town on slightly, but it was not much of a townread. DK by and large being a meme alt memeing makes for a difficult read, but there
is
content there. Notably, DK has stated a townread on me, the Holden slot (Starbuck), and a scumread on the Tuxedo slot (catboi), and has been interacting with people and reaching out to them in a way that I feel is town-indicative, but due to them being an alt that is memeing, it's hard to get a lock on if this is town-indicative for sure or not. So I lean town there, but I'm not gonna locktown the slot from it.
You might notice that jks has skyrocketed in the readslist from near-dead-bottom to way up high, which I feel is justified. I do not think anything Battle Mage did was town at all. Battle Mage's content felt faked and forced. I made my case on Battle Mage fairly clearly here and I maintain its validity, that most of the defense of his slot is along the lines of, "This reminds me of something I did when new", "This is something Battle Mage always does", and blind VCA not taking into account the gamestate which led to that votecount when this game is unusual and unusualness usually breeds inaccuracies in blind VCA because VCA relies on typical patterns and this game is atypical.
So why the skyrocket upward?
Because contrary to what has been said about my stances, yes I do in fact have reasonable doubts to be presented. I haven't played with Battle Mage in years, and even when I last saw him I wasn't intimately familiar with him. The people who said "This is how Battle Mage always is" had recently played with him; I have not. They very well are probably more informed about his habits than I am. And while I maintain that my point about him being a competent scum player remains (thus, don't buy defending him on the basis of "BM isn't good at scum"), my points about his content being forced and fake are based off of traits that I fully admit
could
in fact be personality traits that don't condemn him.
I thought that they still indicated he was scum in spite of that because of what he was doing, but yes. jks's contributions were enough for me to singlehandedly call that into question and more or less not entirely reverse but mostly reverse that read. jks reached out to me, the largest attacker of their slot. jks gave good reads with good analysis and while I don't agree with them, their thoughts and views actually look sincere to me. Could it come from scum? Yes, but it looks like it comes from town.
Overall, this places the slot at nulltown (contrast with DK who is a townread proper even if a weaker one), the null slot most likely to be town.
I feel like my thoughts on Shiro are well-documented enough, but to briefly reiterate; I do like what Shiro's done this game in spite of me not exactly knowing how to read Shiro anymore. Overall, in the null slots, the slot is the representation of dead null.
Sujimichi did nothing town-indicative and believe it or not, I haven't gotten any true townvibes from Titus. I'm giving her some benefit of the doubt, here, and notably--I've been treating her as if she's town anyway in spite of not having a townread on her. Her reachouts to some players are something that objectively should indicate she's more likely to be town,
but
, something gut-wise is holding me back from townbinning her. In my gut, I haven't felt like anything she's done is actually town-indicative. I recognize that there are things that objectively should make her more likely town, namely the reachouts, but subjectively I don't feel she's done anything town.
It should be noted though that in spite of that gut feeling that she hasn't done anything town, I also don't get any vibes, objectively or subjectively, that anything she's done indicates she's scum. While of the null slots I feel that if any of them were scum she'd be the most likely, in spite of that view, I notably do NOT scumread her, at all. If my 3p lylo lynch choices were Shiro jks Titus right now I'd vote Titus, but that's literally the only situation where I would, and I feel giving more time will help me air out thoughts on the slot there more.
catboi's contributions have been far more reasonable than their predecessor, in line with how jks is an improvement in content over Battle Mage. I've liked a lot of the thoughts that have come from catboi, but in spite of liking them, none of them have made me actually think catboi is town. I think I've made it clear, catboi's contributions have made me doubt the scumread on the slot (contrary to beeboy's narrative, yes, there is proof that I have in fact doubted that read), but this doubt has never been "I think this slot might actually be town for this", so much as it is, "I'm having second thoughts about a scumread here".
I do feel that Tuxedo Masks's content here was more likely to come from scum than town and catboi's content, while looking good, hasn't actually felt truly town. There's enough to doubt a scumread on the slot, but there's nothing to make me think the slot is town, if that makes sense. So overall, the slot's loosely, "lean scum".
The Thirteenth JT's been a rollercoaster of a slot. I initially thought newbscum. Then with later thoughts, I thought they showed genuine thought process. But just before the replace-out, I was again beginning to doubt this reversal into a townread. Since then, with beeboy's replacement into the game, nothing beeboy's done has looked or felt town to me and the continued misrep of my stances and attempted strawmanning of them is suspect. That said, is this a lockscum read? No, not even remotely. It's a weak-scumread.
The only strong scumread I have is Panzer, because I don't believe the 3p claim, he literally claimed my auction power as my own, and all of his contributions to the game have felt slimey. His actions just feel like they're scum coasting by and cruising, taking advantage of the fairly stagnant gamestate to just cruise by.
I also realize that I no longer truly have a coherent scumteam. Battle Mage and Panzer felt like scumbuddies with scum-scum interactions, but if Battle Mage's slot is town as jks made me think, then that falls apart. catboi and Panzer don't exactly fit as a scumteam together, either. So this is far from a locked-down easy callout of a three-man scumteam.
I'm positive that my locktown are actually lockdown. I refuse to reevaluate any of the reads on those slots because I am absolutely convinced that they are town and nothing will shake that conviction.
But beyond that, my thoughts are more or less, "any of these slots could be scum", with all of them having reason to be town but three of them necessarily being scum. My reads are very much individual reads right now rather than scumteam composition reads, and I feel like the best way to get clarity there would be to get a few flips.