I like, kinda felt good about muffin scum before maybe impulsively? I feel meh about it now, but like, it's still gonna take a lot to convince me that he's just like town, I guess. I haven't seen a compelling argument for why he's town other than he's like, doing stuff that looks like he's trying to solve the game. But I am conflicted.
As stupid as this sounds, some of my paranoia wrt players like muffin is like, how expansive I feel like their scumrange is. There are certain players who I just don't feel have an expansive scumrange. And it makes their towngame like, more on the transparent side. Some players like muffin do, and it takes a lot more for me to townread him; if they seem "kind of townie" but not many things like specifically feel obvtown, that sets off alarm bells especially when I feel I am more confidently townreading many of the other slots this game.
Muffin is doing "town things" (in the sense that seems open with his thoughts, makes good observations, asks good questions and is projecting a "solving mindset") but nothing like, not fakeable by reasonably good scum, and muffin is more than reasonably good scum. Like I get that this comes off as "too town to be town" fallacy, but in this case, it's like, not even TOO town? As evidenced by how some other people feel about him? He's monologuing a lot in thread and I know NS told me earlier that this is just playstyle, and this set me off because I know that as scum I tend to monologue a lot more whereas town!me asks more questions, engages scumreads and really tries to figure out what's going on (and also has a way easier time producing content). And like 400 muffin posts later, I don't really see anything that is particularly AI on its own. So I'll admit that is one of my biases wrt muffin.
Here are some other things affecting my read on muffin. One is, as others have mentioned, the PoE.
This game has felt... a little worrying. We kind of just like, have to be incorrectly townreading a/some consensus townreads (Bell, morph, Rem, April, Bulge, midwaybear are all essentially kind of universal TRs at this point?). Part of it is because we are in the PoE and I know we're town but, I'm not confident at all that PlusJOYED flips scum? I think plus has kind of a scummy playstyle in general but their town style is very jumpy. I haven't really seen scum!plus so I'm not sure, but I remember plus giving reasonably town vibes near the beginning for feeling a bit like what I remember from town!plus. Mini Normal 2163 just ended where like, almost everyone except me scumread town!plus especially as the days went on, and there's some similarities there. NS gets a reaction testing vibe from plus and the absence of that I believe is his main reasoning for scumreading there, but I didn't really personally in Mini 2163, I mostly just felt the thoughts were transparent and he felt jumpy and uninformed.
Not really towncasing plus at all nor do I even think he's town especially with how town others feel (and PoE), just that I feel *sort of okay* about this. I'd need to reread plus to really get a sense of my read there but I don't think that's gonna happen before EOD.
Sorry, I got sidetracked on plus. But the point of me bringing that up is to suggest that my PoE is SMALL, I'm worried about there being a small number of consensus scumreads (including us) and I'm WORRIED because no one else really feels scummy enough here to fill the 3 scum slots so I keep. coming. back to muffin. AND I want this slot to be scum and I know am I tunneling here, I know it, and it's mostly gut, but it's possible I'm right.
Another muffin thought, NS summarized it well. For example the
5163 from muffin felt like he was really trying to pick apart my argument rather than sort my slot. Granted a post he made after that specifically clarified that he just wanted to see my thoughts, which DID townping me a bit because that's what I would expect a townie to want from the interaction. When people put a scumread on me especially when I'm not really in dangerous of getting elim'd, I'm interested in their thought process and if it's their genuine read, not whether or not the read is logical, consistent, and has good reasoning. It didn't really FEEL like that's what muffin wanted from us. But it's not impossible that he actually did see how 5163 could've pinged despite saying otherwise and backtracked to make it sound a bit townier? Anyway, this might be NAI, not sure if I scumping it. Also morph mentioned muffin just likes to pick apart arguments as either alignment, so, whatever I guess for now, but I still weakly feel given that info, projecting this mindset overall feels more scum!motivated than town!motivated.
This is kind of an example of a larger trend I have felt with muffin wrt the read on our slot and this is where I start to feel like I might be violating some BoP arguments or something. Morph mentioned townreading us based on the way we clumsily handled D2 day start and how it's like a really awkward scum entrance, and I am biased here but I think that's just like, the correct reaction. Even april came around on us around this time. I think, anyone could've seen that my readslist wall was obviously thrown together very briefly. So our agenda with scum!maid is to, have maid scumread us, claim sui bomber, soft that they'd blow us up so we can fake a contrived reaction of us feeling like we were going to get blown up, which probably wouldn't get much towncred or be super believeable anyway? Yeah yeah wifom whatever. But it's almost like, too ridiculous that I don't get how a player of that caliber sees the kind of stuff we did, and somehow spins this way to be like "yeah this is my crazy scum!maid/ST narrative of what happened, and I feel like totally fine about it, and I'm not really going to engage ST about it further even when notnoddy summarizes all their overnight intra-hydra thought processes, other than to dismantle their case on me". Muffin says his scumgame is all about "narrative and paths to victory". Here's one way I see it and some ways I see potential scum!narrative in what he's doing:
-the push on morph d1 just felt... slimy and postury. I didn't agree with it then and I *could* be colored by how towny the slot is now, but even then the slot felt pretty town and the more he pushed it the more it felt like he was posturing for free content purely based on objective observations ("lol when do you start being town?" "you feel *forced*" "how do you not have noddy as town yet" (okay, TMI there? and the read reversal on us when we suddenly become
a consensus read feels again, like it's coming at an opportunistic timing)). Like okay, we're barely out of RVS.
-then when alisae said pretty reasonably that the push is slimy to make morph into a elimable slot, he goes into all this self-meta about how he wouldn't push morph as scum. I don't buy that like, whatsoever, if he sees objective content that he can push it's just a freeroll to see if people buy the case, and if not, then he can backtrack on the read and people will townread him for trying to solve and maybe can pocket morph (i think townies can be pocketed by initial scumreading turned into a townread after engagement and i think muffin knows that). And I don't believe that he believes it either. I think town!him probably would understand that maybe scum!him sees some agenda there to push morph at least because, well, I certainly see one??
-the role flavor crumb feels... kind of forced, as if it's purely there to make us believe he's town. (the whole "nacho gave me words I didn't understand" and then quoting it later "see, I didn't understand it, really guys")
-having essentially most of the consensus reads, having us in the PoE and being lazy with us. And now he's pushing NS for "being boring with how he keeps bringing up the meta circles". How is it boring? If you're town in our spot and people start getting townread left and right, how is that like, not worrying? I think it's a very plausible concern that NS had been mentioning to me about repeatedly. And I know like, we need to put names to that instead of just yelling about it vaguely, because, well, then no one can help our concerns.
-scumreading us. It comes at an opportunistic timing, right as the suspicion starts to turn our way (now someone's going to be like "maybe the suspicion is coming at you because you are scummy today", and yeah, that's like, probably partly true but... town!muffin i think would know better lol as I've said) and the narrative on scum!us feels lazy/forced, I think I've mentioned this already but there is like, very clear scum!incentive for scum!muffin to push us here and turn us into a miselim, if you really want like more elaboration here like, idk what else to say
And I GET it like, we are doing the exact same thing here and being lazy with the PoE and maybe not thinking clearly about which scumteams are super plausible. I think one that really distanced muffin and maria was that one time he shaded beeboy for not asking Maria about her reads, and didn't say anything else, I thought that made it unlikely for them to be partners, so maybe like, I'm wrong on maid/muffin. (and btw, the longer the day went on without an asplosion the more I feel like maid could be scum. But I do feel it's just like, a silly claim for scum so that's why I kind of townleaned them EOD1).
