Mafiascum.net

is the closest thing i have to a logical rock this game. i think i want him to be town more than i actually think hes town but i dont really think it matters and if he keeps playing at this level and is town then its unlikely that mafia is going to want someone that smart in the game trying to parse things from start to finish. i personally think people should stop shading him unless they really want to flip him or have something specific to pick at beyond just "oh no dann why is it that you arent gorkington levels of town"? nobody is even capable of reaching that level of town except for me. youre not being fair to dannflor at all by saying that. also i think his pushes and sorts just generally feel like theyre coming from a genuine place so theres that as well.

also also, it feels like it would be extremely distracting to constantly be on edge about people floating you around as some kind of super secret subterranean wolf for extremely nebulous reasons. thats what we call slander. you fucking jerks.

if youre worried that hes mafia just like, look for who seems plausibly partnered with him and beat them up instead and then turn your brain back on for reading him on d4.

feels weird to have him in the upper echelons of this list but oh well! i woke up 10 minutes ago feeling some kind of moment of clarity about the fact that pooky feels like he doesnt have control in a way thats making him seem antsier in this game than in his scumgames when he felt like everything he did was calculated towards some kind of purpose. im probably not putting enough respect on his scumgame by feeling this comfortable with him. biggest hesitation would be that his reads feel a little sticky, but kazyan has moved around in his readlist so its not like hes been mindlessly pushing the same reads all game.
and, i'll get to this later, but his view of the game has generally been probably the closest to my assessment and i want to believe that im not assessing this game the same as scumPooky is lol. im choosing to believe that pooky has got my back. life's too short to doubt yourself, you know?

i could be getting entirely suckered on the "im being lazy" angle thats been the quintessential descriptor of their play so far, but i just generally believe most of dwlee's posting and think the reactions to LLD's and gamma's pushes have both seemed genuine. most of the pushing there feels like its for overly clinical/logical reasoning of why dwlee is doing X or Y, but i think dwlee is just approaching the game differently from what most people expect and thats making them more of a target. you might say that its ironic that such a desire to be lazy has ended up making the game more difficult for them P:

hes throwing a lot of attitude around that i generally associate more with town swagger vs mafia forced opinions. ive more than once this game thought "wow i hate you gamma you are very wrong about this thing you nerd" (this is exaggerated i dont actually think this it was just a moment god calm down i dont have a problem with gamma leave me alone) which is something that i dont think i would feel reading a series of a lot of mafiaposts in a row.

: i knocked him down in this list from my initial inclination to put him higher, particularly with his play the last few days. im partially holding on to a feeling that i had when he was more active/around last weekend. hoping he gets back into the game here because his play is kind of devolving into memes rather than trying to parse the gamestate. i would expect me to be fully paranoid again here coming in to d2 but for now im capturing this moment in time and right now i generally feel like house is just trying to relate and be involved in a way thats probably. i dont really understand what hes trying to do or where his head's at and am hoping thats just because hes busy.
this is probably the closest i have to a stale read at this point but im kind of down to not waste effort trying to do an ISOdive on him when we're not wagoning him today short of a miracle case.

======everybody except for house is allowed to read this, this was originally a spoiler but then i decided to spoiler my nightmare read breakdown post so now this is a futile attempt at a text spoiler===========
nobody tell house that im also a little influenced by pooky's read there. i do frankly think that it gets a lot harder to play scum as you get older/busier unless you have a strong inclination for it.
======okay house you can start reading again===========

this is where im starting to get close to the null line, but theyre still slightly above the line atm. i havent seen anything from their tone/posts that has particularly pinged me as scummy and theres moments that i think end up feeling more town than not, particularly some aspects of their LLD push in terms of the aggression in given moments but also taking a moment to tell LLD to take a step back in a way that felt like a natural way for town. this is all kind of a stretch. sorry about that. i probably would need to do an ISOdive to feel more strongly and i just dont really want to do that when theres no reason to right now.

this is probably slightly inflated higher than it should be. murdercat's tone is just like.. not great this game, but i do believe the general sentiment of being fed up of being pushed coming from him. willing to cut him some slack because his schedule this weekend seems fucked (and like the pedantic awful scumhunter in me is like "ay its been 3 hours since your meetings started WHY DIDNT YOU FEEL THE NEED TO COME BACK AND PLAY WITH US??? HUH!?!?!?!?") so im willing to cut him some slack and if mafia for some reason decides to let me live then tomorrow can try to make an effort to try to get him engaged and if hes still feeling really wooden then he should get the clamps.

i fucking hate that this read is here. im choosing to shut off the primal part of my brain that thinks theyre mafia and if they end up being the zaiden of this game then people can build me a monument because im better at reading newscum than all of the rest of you. (and i guess i dont hate some of their most recent posts even if the whole "i bet the mod would break up the scumteam if it were LLD and the worst"-being townread made me twitch).

i weirdly agree with my strongest scumread that theres a large contingent of Aisling's posting so far that just feels extremely probable for being agenda driven. if the worst were just stripped out of the game entirely i would probably be a lot more paranoid feeling of her here, but its pretty hard to imagine that set of interactions coming from partners. i think the dwlee push is fine and something i would expect from her either way. i'd like to give her some space to try to gain her footing. the defeatism of "people wont even let you trade a promise to flip you if your scumread flips town anymore" felt like a really weird sentiment to have given that we've collectively been pretty on board with getting the duck which would probably effectively semi-clear her if he flips mafia? the timing kind of makes it make sense given that a wagon on her was starting, but it just feels like something you say when youve been put in a corner and have no options left and it didnt really feel like that was the case.

i think the way hes choosing to play this game is very hands off and clinical which is basically 0% what i was expecting having followed along one of his towngames recently. i think hes very smart and makes quote-unquote "good points", but theres a layer of artificialness and an unwillingness to get into the weeds that makes me feel really icky about his play this game. i also just straight up hate the back and forth he had with the worst and the way his read has moved around on the duck makes 0 sense to me. i think theres something really off about the way he went from saying murdercat/the worst cant be partners, to saying the worst should bus murdercat, to suddenly townreading the worst. i know there will be logical "good points" for why this should make sense, but it doesnt really seem believable and if the worst does flip mafia then unwnd should be a high priority sort.

i appreciate the kind words and they do in fact make me feel a little guilty for this read which is probably ridiculous so you know what screw it! no more feeling mad at myself instead im going to roast YOU.
why did you name yourself Navi when youre not even TRYING to help us here?
oh SNAP.

but yeah for real i think the gimmick account was a little too crutchy and theres not enough solving energy from you coming out of it. for some reason it feels almost harder to understand where your head is at than when you were trying to make beautiful art posts. so. idk i feel like if you are town you should try to commit to getting a bit more invested here? this is more reach outty than it should be. i'll close this off by saying that im going to come get you D3 if you dont kill me so make sure im dead by N2 thanks.

this is the last read im writing and im almost out of steam oh no.
hopefully nobody is still reading at this point and just reads the tl;dr.

the worst was someone i was townleaning for a little bit and then suddenly something clicked and now absolutely nothing theyre saying is ringing genuine to me this game. pooky can feel free to take credit and claim that hes the best bear, especially if hes right that its just the duck/unwnd.

i think whats really missing is just this sense that the worst is trying to get shit done. his posting is just completely aimless in this game. like its a discussion thread rather than a mafia thread. i should feel like he wants to actually push LLD because he thinks shes scum but instead i feel like the read there is just that hes mad at her.
reading through the whole ISO, you arent going to hit a point where it feels like "oh yeah the duck is taking over this game and trying to drive things to try to win" and i strongly think thats because hes mafia and is just producing a lot of content rather than substantive scumhunting with an underlying genuine thought process.